As Castlestuart-Stuart went out on the balcony and took Mrs. Baldwin’s hand cordially, she blushed, but not painfully. She, too, had seen him yesterday, and he had managed to convey with that peculiar art of a simple and candid nature that he admired her for what she was doing. Again did she feel this sincere and admiring approval, and was profoundly grateful for it. Castlestuart-Stuart knew the history of the family—all the diplomats in Washington know the family history of those who race and chase after them. He remembered hearing Constance Maitland say “Mrs. Baldwin redeems the whole family.” Goodness such as hers could redeem much worse people than the Baldwins, thought Castlestuart-Stuart, and he proceeded to be bored by Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor with the best grace in the world. His chief had told him to take what was set before him in a social way, asking no questions for conscience’ sake. In the performance of his duty he had dined, breakfasted, and lunched with pork, dry-goods, whiskey, shoes, sewing-machines, and every other form of good, honest trade. But the word trade was never so much as mentioned among them—certainly not at the breakfast which was now served.
Chapter Eight
A NEW SENATOR—A RAILWAY JOURNEY—THE ROSE OF THE FIELD AND THE ROSES OF THE GARDEN
Crane was in nowise disappointed at the sensation his published letter made. The justice of his position was at once apparent. But it was equally apparent that he was making a serious break in the political dykes which held the party together in his State against the ocean of the party opposed to it. Under Senator Bicknell’s rule, insubordination had gradually crept in. The late landslide, which had elected a Congress in opposition to the party in power, increased the importance of States like Crane’s, where the balance of power shifted about every ten years between the two parties. Senator Bicknell, in the seclusion of his boudoir—for such was his luxurious den in reality—tore his hair and used all of the expletives permissible in polite society. In a week or two Governor Sanders, without any further newspaper controversy, appointed to the vacant senatorship Mr. Michael Patrick Mulligan, a gentleman of Hibernian descent, who had made a vast fortune out of manufacturing pies by the wholesale, and who cherished an honourable ambition to legislate for the hated Saxon. Senator Bicknell, Crane, and everybody in the State knew of Mr. Michael Patrick Mulligan, who was commonly called Mince Pie Mulligan. He was a ward politician of the sort peculiarly unhampered by prejudices or principles, and who bought and sold votes by wholesale, very much as he bought and sold pies. He was totally without education, but by no means without brains, and proposed to himself a seat in the Senate as an agreeable diversion, without the least idea of doing anything beyond voting as directed by “the boss”—for so he designated the Senator who was chairman of the National Committee of Mr. Mulligan’s party. It was, on the whole, about as harmless an appointment as could be made. Mulligan’s private life was perfectly clean, and he was known to have an open hand for charity, and never to have forgotten a friend. It gave both Senator Bicknell and Crane a breathing-spell, and they were willing enough to put up with Mince Pie Mulligan until the first of January.
Senator Bicknell, although easy enough in his mind about Mulligan, was far from easy about Crane, who had gone up like a rocket, but showed no disposition to come down like a stick. The Senator got into the way of stealing over to the House, “just to see how things are going”—in reality to see how Crane was going—and it scared him to observe how Crane was making good his footing everywhere. His first triumph, even after subtracting Thorndyke’s assistance, had been a real triumph. Following hard on this came his controversy with the Governor, in which he clearly had the best of it. The shrewd men in his party saw that in the readjustment of allegiances Crane must be counted, and the chairman of the National Committee said as much to Senator Bicknell when the two discussed the war between the Governor and Representative Crane. When the chairman said that, Senator Bicknell felt as Henry IV. of England felt when he saw the Prince of Wales trying on the crown before the looking-glass.
Meanwhile, Thorndyke was speeding West, as he had said, and after a week’s absence he turned eastward again, escorting Annette Crane and her two children to Washington, as he had suggested to Crane.
For the purpose of acquiring knowledge of others and of one’s self, there is nothing like a long railway journey. Marriage itself is scarcely more of an eye-opener. The old Greeks, who reasoned so closely on the nature of man, would have been vastly informed could they have taken a few long journeys. Locke could have known more of the human understanding had he taken the Chicago Limited, with a party, from Chicago to Washington. In that journey Annette Crane found out all about Geoffrey Thorndyke, and Geoffrey Thorndyke found out all about Annette Crane. Their mutual discoveries changed the natural sympathy which had been established between them to a deep and lasting friendship.
Those five years of seclusion at Circleville had been developing years for Annette Crane. In appearance she had gained in dignity and had not lost in youthfulness. She had fair hair and a wild-rose complexion, and a pair of the sweetest, most limpid hazel eyes in the world. Everything about her bore the impress of a gentle sincerity—her frank gaze, her pretty smile, her soft voice, in which the Western burr was almost obliterated. Those five years represented a cycle to her. In that time all of her relations to life seemed to have changed—and especially were her relations with her husband curiously altered. In their early married life Crane’s intensity of love and excess of devotion had frightened her a little. But in time other passions had come to take the place of this one in his wife, and it had been shouldered out of place. He was a fairly good husband, but after the microbe has once lodged in a man’s brain that he is very superior to his wife, he may still be called a good husband, but scarcely an agreeable one.
At this stage of the proceedings—which was at the time she first came to Washington—Annette discovered that she adored her husband. As he had always accused her of coldness and reserve, she determined to show him all the treasures of her love. It was the common mistake of youth and ignorance; but Annette, whose secret pride was great, suffered a horrible mortification in finding that the display of her affection did not bring forth the response on which she had confidently relied. She had made no moan, and had deceived the whole world, including Crane himself, into believing that she was a satisfied wife; but her misery had been extreme. Her pride, informed by common-sense, had helped her over the crisis. She had herself proposed to spend the winters in Circleville, instead of Washington, thus forestalling any possibility of the proposal coming from Crane; and in Circleville she had set herself the task of making the most and best of herself, not only for her husband, but for her children. She had learned a good deal in that brief and unpleasant experience in Washington. Among others was a just appreciation of herself. She realised that she had certain great advantages, and she no longer had the self-deprecatory tone of mind which had made her feel that Crane had perhaps condescended in marrying her. She was as passionately attached to him as ever, but her eyes were opened and she saw.
She had taken to reading as a solace, and as a duty, and not because she was strongly attracted to books. The result, however, was good, and she found it enabled her to meet men like Thorndyke on a common ground. In training her children, she had performed the inevitable function of training herself. Under her system, her children had become quieter and sweeter than American children usually are. The American women in general can more than hold their own with the women of other countries, except in two trifling particulars—the arts of housekeeping and of bringing up children. In these two things they generally fail egregiously, and the more money they have the more conspicuous is their failure. To paraphrase the Scripture—“See you the house of the rich American man? Behold therein a tribe of undisciplined and impudent servants and children.” The newness of the rich in America may account for the undisciplined servants, of whom their mistresses are in mortal terror. But American women have been bringing up children ever since the settlement at Jamestown and the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and every year they seem to know less about it.
However, Annette Crane’s children were more quiet, more simply dressed than most American children. They had escaped, to a great degree, the demoralising influences of children’s magazines, “The Children’s Page” in newspapers, and children’s plays, and they had not been amused to death. Annette, it is true, had not mastered the science of managing servants, but in that she was at one with the women of other parts of the country, except the South—for, as Senator Hoar once remarked on the floor of the Senate, as a preliminary to a ferocious attack on the South, it is the Southerners alone, in this country, who have the habit of command. Annette Crane, however, although she could no more manage her household staff of one maid-of-all-work than Mrs. James Brentwood Baldwin or Mrs. Hill-Smith could manage her retinue of English flunkeys and French maids, yet, by tact and judgment, succeeded in keeping the maid-of-all-work within bounds—which is more than the Brentwood Baldwins and the Hill-Smiths could do with their maids and flunkeys.