Senator March, listening, tabulating and making notes, began to have a very high admiration for Colegrove's abilities and even a belief in the man. Great corporations, Senator March knew, are not associations of archangels for the benefit of the human race, but commercial organisations, with an eye to profit. All of this was taken into account by Senator March in judging Colegrove and his confrères. One thing, however, was certain: Colegrove was the real man who was making the fight. His colleagues showed great confidence in him, and it was plain that he had organised, and was directing, the campaign. He had contrived, however, to arouse the antagonism of certain members of the committee; the investigation threatened to become a prosecution, and Senator March found himself often in the position of defending, and bespeaking a fair show for, Colegrove. The interest of the public in the railway question was widespread and intense. The Presidential election was less than a year off, and the party in power was relying upon its treatment of two or three great questions, of which this was one, to secure the next administration. In fact, politics entered so largely into the railway question that many public men lost sight of justice. Not so Senator March. He had no higher ambition than the senatorship, and laughed when it was suggested that he should enter the presidential race, but swore when he was asked to consider the vice-presidency. He was entirely satisfied with his place as senator, of which he was now serving his third term, and believed that he could hold it as long as he desired it. He had, in short, reached that lofty height--always a dangerous point in human affairs--when his life, his surroundings, his career, everything satisfied him exactly. He had no children, and that alone was a disappointment.
The thought that all his wishes and ambitions were satisfied came over him one afternoon in March when he reached his own door. Alicia was waiting for him in her splendid victoria, perfectly turned out in every particular. She looked uncommonly handsome, and greeted him, as always, with the greatest amiability. Senator March getting into the carriage, they drove off toward the park. Alicia wore a particularly charming white hat, and her husband told her so.
"I was afraid the hat was too young for me," she replied, smiling.
"Not at all," protested Senator March; "a charming woman is always young. It is one of my greatest sources of happiness that you are not a girl-wife who would drag me around to tea parties and balls, and not have any respect for my years."
"Have you had a hard day's work?" asked Alicia.
"Very. So much so that I have not been able to glance at the afternoon papers. If you will excuse me, I will look at the headlines."
By that time they had reached the beautiful wooded park, where, fifteen minutes from the fashionable quarter of Washington, one can be in the heart of the woods. The afternoon was balmy and the scent of the spring was in the air; all the earth was brown and green, and on the southern slopes of the hillsides little leaves were coming out shyly; already the blue birds and robins were riotous with song, and between the interlacing tree-tops, full of brown buds, the sky shone blue with the blueness of spring. The stream, swollen by the melting snows, rushed and swirled, and the little waterfalls laughed and danced madly in the golden sunlight. The park was full of smart carriages, automobiles and men and girls on horseback.
Senator March, taking the newspaper out of his pocket, adjusted his glasses and began to read. Alicia March lay back in her corner of the carriage, seeing neither her husband nor the beauty and glory of earth and sky around her. It was the old story, she knew not where to turn for money, and the sum she had spent and what she had to show for it bewildered her. Colegrove, for the third or fourth time, had demanded copies of certain letters and documents, and Alicia knew that no money would be forthcoming until she had secured them. Colegrove had not become in the least insolent in his manner; on the contrary, Alicia saw, with the eye of experience, that he was becoming more ingratiating. She even suspected that Colegrove was after another kind of stake, and more delicate plunder than legislation favourable to railways. She felt a singular and growing dislike to deceiving her husband. It was new to her, and was a part of that strange dislocation and unreality of life that she should have scruples. Formerly she had not known what scruples meant and had no fears whatever, but now she was troubled with both scruples and fears, which bewildered and tormented her. If she ceased to hold any communication with Colegrove it meant a revelation of her debts, her duns, and complications to her husband, and if she continued upon the path in which she had entered a precipice lay before her.
Alicia March and her husband sat silent for half-an-hour as the thoroughbred horses, champing their bits, trotted slowly along the wooded road. All at once Alicia glanced at her husband; his face had turned an ashen grey, and his eyes, with a strange expression in them, were fixed upon the newspaper before him and he was as motionless as a dead man. Then as Alicia watched him with amazed and terrified eyes, he glanced at her and silently laid the newspaper in her lap.
On the front page, with great headlines, was a double-leaded article of several columns devoted to Colegrove. In it was laid bare Colegrove's whole career, especially his management of the great railway interests confided to him. As Senator March had seen long before, Colegrove had gained a complete ascendancy over his associates, who followed his leadership like so many schoolboys. Then came the most singular part of all--the assertion that Colegrove had got advance information, which was invaluable to him, through the wife of a certain public man, and although Senator March's name was not mentioned, it was so plainly indicated that it was impossible to mistake who was meant. Then came a history of Colegrove's alleged transactions in stocks for the benefit of the senator's wife, and many other particulars, which Alicia had supposed were known only to herself and Colegrove. She read the article through rapidly, to the accompaniment of the steady beat of the horse's hoofs on the park road and the soft carolling of the woodland birds. She felt herself growing benumbed like a person being paralysed by inches; when she finished reading the article she made an effort to speak, which seemed to cost her all her strength.