Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Constance, however, blandly unconscious, passed on, and when she reached the point whence ingress is had to that select region known as “behind the line,” she was invited, with Sir Mark, to join the elect. Directly behind her was Thorndyke with Mary Beekman, followed by the Admiral with Mrs. Willoughby, and they, too, were invited within the holy precincts. The President himself had stopped Crane for a word with him, and, on having Mrs. Crane presented, had promptly invited her behind the line. This was partly due to the white crêpe gown.

In the general mix-up that followed in the hallowed spot, Constance found herself one of a group near Mrs. Hill-Smith, on the arm of the British Ambassador, and Eleanor Baldwin and the Honourable Edward George Francis Castlestuart-Stuart. Close by were Mrs. James Brentwood Baldwin and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin was gravitating toward the Secretary of State, who loomed large at hand. The Secretary was in a very bad humour for so amiable a man, but diplomatically concealed it. After eighteen months spent in labouring over a couple of treaties, they had been knocked out in three weeks by the Senate. The chief of the gang who perpetrated this nefarious act was a Southern Senator—the wildest, woolliest, and weirdest of all the wild and woolly and weird Senators to be found in the north wing of the Capitol. But he happened to be a lawyer, and he had punched the treaties so full of holes that they were literally laughed out of court. This injured the Secretary’s feelings very much, but he remembered that Beaconsfield and Gortschakoff and Bismarck used to be ruffled the same way, so he concluded to bear it like a statesman and a Christian.

Drifting toward the Secretary and Mr. Baldwin was a very odd-looking object, whom Thorndyke whispered to Constance was Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. These three got into conversation, very languid on the part of the Secretary and Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, but very strenuous on the part of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan. A part of Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin’s coyness came from the fact that he and Senator Mulligan were old acquaintances—a fact which Mr. Baldwin had no disposition to brag about.

The new Senator had a head of blazing red hair which was as good as a stove on a cold night. He might have stepped bodily from the pages of Life as regarded his contours, but his small, light-blue eye glittered with humour and shrewdness, while his great, slit of a mouth, which divided his face fairly in the middle, had lines of both sense and kindliness. He was enjoying himself hugely, and was not afraid to let anybody see it. Not so Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, or the Secretary of State, but a Senator is a Senator to the Secretary of State, and Secretary Slater had in mind other treaties to be laid before the Senate, and so was fairly civil to Senator Mulligan. Mince Pie, himself, was much struck by the appearance of Eleanor Baldwin, who was easily the handsomest woman present, except her mother, but although Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin owned up that Eleanor was his daughter, he made no move to introduce Senator Mulligan to her.

Eleanor Baldwin was a patriot. It was her sense of patriotic duty alone which took her to a White House reception. White House receptions, in every particular, including the cabinet people and those behind the line, were “mixed.” This word “mixed” meant, to Eleanor, a social Gehenna, while the word “exclusive” spelled, for her, the very joy of living. There were some “nice people”—by whom she meant the diplomatic corps and those who were intimate with them, and some people from the smart sets of near-by cities—but still it was “mixed.” There was Letty Standiford, whose father, had Eleanor but known it, was personally responsible for the present occupant of the White House being there. Then she noticed, quite close to her, the daughter of a Senator who lived in a very unfashionable part of the town—a girl whom she would never have known, except that paying calls one day, with Mrs. Hill-Smith, she happened to go to the Senator’s house. It had contained for her the one unattainable thing in life—some fine old furniture and portraits, and a beautiful old grandfather’s clock, which had been inherited, and by which the Senator’s daughter had not seemed to set any special store. Eleanor would have given all of their costly bric-à-brac for one single piece of old silver or furniture or lace that had belonged even so far back as to her grandparents; but neither the Baldwins nor the Hogans had inherited any silver, furniture, or lace, or anything except good, strong legs and arms, and the capacity to use them. The sight of family treasures always produced a vague discomfort in Eleanor Baldwin’s mind, and gave her a kind of pique toward those who possessed them. At that very moment she felt a secret dislike toward the Senator’s daughter, who had on a beautiful antique lace bertha, which had been worn by many generations of ladies before the Brentwood Baldwins had “arrived,” as the French say. There had been a fire in the Baldwin family, and likewise one in the Hogan family, and Eleanor had persuaded herself that the frame houses burnt down in these two fires were stately mansions, and priceless family treasures had perished in the flames—and she had hinted at this so often that she had really come to believe it. She was surprised to see that her father and also the Secretary of State were talking with that curious-looking object, Senator Mulligan, whose name she had heard. But seeing the British Ambassador approach with Mrs. Hill-Smith on his arm, and Constance Maitland with Sir Mark le Poer, Eleanor turned her whole attention to them. She, too, had brought dinner-guests with her. She had been the hostess at one of those extraordinary dinners introduced within the last few years by hostesses whose experience of dinner-giving is rudimentary. At these dinners, which are considered by their innocent perpetrators as being the acme of elegance, all the men are foreigners. When Eleanor Baldwin had achieved one of these dinners, she felt that she had accomplished a social triumph. Mrs. Hill-Smith had chaperoned the dinner; and the diplomats invited had refrained from laughing in the face of their hostess, although they had chuckled with amusement when in the dressing-room.

Mrs. Baldwin, who stood in the background, wore more than her usual expression of icy pride, which meant that she was more than usually frightened. Eleanor’s lovely face relaxed into a smile as she turned to the British Ambassador, who was a widower. He was a tall, handsome, high-bred-looking, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face, and a thin-lipped mouth, which had contorted itself into a grin on his first arrival in Washington, and the grin had become fixed and perpetual. He had no fortune beyond his salary and pension, he had rheumatism, liver complaint, nervous dyspepsia, chronic bronchitis, and a family of six unmarried daughters and four sons, ranging from thirty-six to sixteen years of age—yet Eleanor Baldwin would have jumped down his throat, and Mrs. Hill-Smith was going for him with the stealthy energy of a cat after the cream-jug.

Eleanor, putting on a roguish expression of countenance, said to the Ambassador:

“Ah, Mrs. Hill-Smith and I are becoming factors in diplomacy! At our dinner to-night, every man present was a diplomat, and you may imagine what state secrets were disclosed!”

“The results may be serious,” replied the Ambassador, laughing a little. “We shall have to keep our eyes upon the American diplomats who were present so as to find out how our secrets were betrayed.”

“There weren’t any Americans present,” answered Eleanor, gaily.