“I am very glad to see you, Senator,” she replied, smiling, and then gravely introduced this member of the august Senate of the United States to the group sitting about the tea-table.
Nobody but Thorndyke and Cathcart took in the situation. The Virginia cousins, to whom political preferment means that the object of it belongs to one of the first families in his own home, supposed that Mr. Mulligan, although certainly very odd-looking, had a long line of distinguished ancestors, and it was with much cordiality that an ex-Confederate Colonel, grave and suave, with a snow-white moustache and imperial, shook Mike Mulligan’s hand, saying:
“I am pleased, sir, to make your acquaintance, and to bid you welcome upon the soil of old Virginia.”
The Frenchman, a retired army officer, and his wife, a thorough-bred French gentlewoman, were equally polite, but they arrived at a much more correct estimate of Senator Mulligan’s social status than the ex-Confederate Colonel. As for the Honourable Mike, he started in to enjoy himself in a whole-souled manner, which would commend him to all sincere persons. He drank three glasses of iced tea running, complimented the late President Davis and General Lee, declared that he meant to buy up a good part of the State of Virginia, and worked himself up into a whirlwind of enthusiasm over everything he saw. This completely captivated all the ex-Confederates present, amazed the French strangers, and amused Thorndyke and Cathcart beyond words. On leaving, Senator Mulligan told Constance nothing but the truth when he said that he had never enjoyed an afternoon more, or had found himself among more “conjaynial company.”
Then began for Thorndyke a week of rapture, mixed with agonising jealousy; for let no man suppose that his passions have no more power to trouble him after his hair grows scanty and his moustache grows grey. In all those years of separation from Constance, the edge of Thorndyke’s pain had been dulled, but the ache was still there; and from the April night he had first seen her, until then, he felt himself being steadily and securely mastered by that great love of his life—as steadily and securely as if he could have offered her his honest and devoted heart. And to be thrown with her daily—to spend the bright summer mornings in the cool, old drawing-room with Constance, listening to the pleasant, languid talk of people in a country house, the shady afternoons in driving over the rich, green, placid country, sometimes with Constance by his side—the deep, blue nights, sitting on the great stone porch, watching the silver moon rise over the distant pine-crowned mountain-peaks, and looking at Constance, in a thin white gown, seeming as young by night as in those sweet Italian nights long past—it would have been bliss but for two things. One was that she was as kind to Cathcart as to himself, and the other was that she was so very kind to him. For since she could not possibly think of marrying him, she could only be amusing herself at his expense.
Thorndyke was nearly forty-five years old, he was a member of Congress, and reckoned a peculiarly cool-headed and long-headed man, but he was thereby exempt from the agonies of love.
As for Senator Mulligan, Thorndyke did not need to recall the frank confession made on the train to know that Mince Pie had speedily made up his mind that Constance was worth the winning, and to go about it with promptness and energy. On the very last afternoon, Thorndyke, disgusted with the goodwill which Constance had shown Cathcart, retired to a rustic summer-house on the lawn, to writhe in secret with jealousy, and incidentally to read the New York newspapers. Presently he saw Constance and Senator Mulligan walking across the sward toward the house. Constance’s face was flushed, and she was walking rapidly. Senator Mulligan was talking earnestly to her, and his brogue was more evident than usual, under the stress of emotion. Immediately in front of the summer-house Constance stopped and faced the Senator.
“I must beg of you,” she said, in a clear voice, with a faint ring of indignation in it, “to say no more on this subject to me now, or at any other time.”
“Well, I’ve said about all I had to say,” replied Senator Mulligan, warmly. “I asked you to marry me, I did, and I tould you, I did, if you had to lose what money you had because I’m an American, thank God, that I’d make it up to you a dozen times over. I said that, I did, and I didn’t desaive you about the senatorship.” The brogue by this time was rampant. “The thing was going a-beggin’, and the Governor, he sends for me, and he says to me, ‘Mike,’ says he, ‘you’ll be nothin’ but a stop-gap, and don’t get any other notion into your red head but that—and ye’ll step down and out the first of January,’ says he; ‘and don’t monkey with the buzz saw,’ says he. And I says, says I, ‘I won’t, Governor, and I’ll have my fling at Washington, and I’ll take down my Panhard red devil, and go a-scorchin’ over the Washington streets, and have the time of my life,’ and bedad, I have. And I had no more thought of falling in love and getting married than I have of trying to get up a diligation to present my name to the next Prisidential convention. But then I met you, Miss Maitland, and I came up here after you, and you’ve bowled me over, senatorship and all, and I’ve tould the truth, and not a lie in the bunch, and I’ve offered to give up your money, and I don’t see that I’ve done anything for you to look at me like Lady Macbeth, and I beg your pardon if I’ve offinded you.”
During this speech Constance Maitland’s heart softened toward Mince Pie Mike. He had only claimed a man’s inalienable right, and he had behaved as honourably as in him lay. So she said, with a softening of the voice as well as the heart: