Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics

The days went rapidly by for Crane, to whom they were full of events. The House committed fewer follies than might have been expected, and the management of the international crisis had put the country into a thoroughly good humour with both the House and the Administration. Crane gained steadily in consequence among the politicians, and it was with difficulty he kept his head; but he kept it.

He did not relax his efforts to win his children’s hearts, and in the effort he began to feel a strange jealousy of Thorndyke, who had won them without any effort at all. Thorndyke had not only taken Roger and Elizabeth to the Zoo on the first Sunday, but on the next he had appeared, looking extremely sheepish, and had requested the pleasure of their company to the Zoo again. The children were in paroxysms of delight, and Annette laughed outright at Thorndyke, particularly when he admitted that he had declined an invitation to a breakfast at the Brentwood Baldwins on the ground of a previous engagement in order to carry out this little trip to the Zoo. The trio went off together in great spirits, and Crane and Annette were left alone. Through all the laughing and joking with the children, Crane had sat silent and sombre—they had not yet laughed and joked with him. Suddenly, he proposed a walk to Annette. It was so long since such a thing had occurred that he was embarrassed in giving the invitation, and she in accepting it; but they walked together along the country lanes in the quiet Sunday noon, and a shadow of the old confidence was restored between them. But Crane was still fully convinced that Annette was not cut out for the wife of a public man, and could not shine in cosmopolitan society. He was soon to have an opportunity to judge of her in this last particular.

Constance Maitland had set her mind to work upon that difficult and interesting problem—the composition of a small dinner. More than that, she meant it to be one at which Annette would be at her best.

The materials to form a good dinner abound in Washington, and Constance Maitland knew it. As the smart set in Washington is composed largely of persons who have made large fortunes in trade, and who have come to Washington to enjoy these fortunes, Constance knew that from this particular element she could not well draw the material for a really sparkling dinner. The people in Europe know something after all, and their dictum that an elegant and brilliant society cannot be constructed out of retired merchants has not yet been disproved. Let us be candid to ourselves. But in Washington the materials for a real society exist outside of this element, and Constance Maitland had been lucky enough to find it. Sir Mark le Poer was in town again, which Constance reckoned as a special Providence. Like all Englishmen of good position, Sir Mark was bored within an inch of his life by the Anglo-American girl, who is an easily detected imitation. Constance, having been a friend of Sir Mark’s for many years, and knowing him like a book, spared him this infliction. She selected in the construction of the party Mrs. Willoughby, an accomplished Washington woman, whose family had social antecedents dating back to the days of Abigail Adams. Mrs. Willoughby had been a distinguished hostess for twenty years, until the influx of pork, whiskey, dry-goods, and the like commodities had overwhelmed everything to the manner born. She took it all good-naturedly, and got a great deal of amusement out of the status quo. Then there was Mary Beekman, of New York, young, charming, and rich, whose parents had owned a box at the New York Academy of Music, but who were conspicuously out of it with the Metropolitan Opera set. As Mrs. Willoughby remarked, when Constance mentioned the party she had made up:

“What a very interesting collection of has-beens you have got together, my dear.”

For the men, besides Crane and Sir Mark le Poer, Constance had secured Thorndyke, an admirable dinner-man, and a courtly old Admiral—for she was quite unlike the widow of a prominent shoe-dealer, who emigrated to Washington and became violently fashionable, and who declared that on her visiting list she “drew the line at the army and navy.” On the evening of the dinner there was to be a belated reception at the White House, in honour of an international commission which had just opened its sittings in Washington, and it was arranged that the dinner should be somewhat early, that the whole party, being invited to the White House, might adjourn there.

The rest of the guests were assembled in Constance’s drawing-room before the Cranes arrived. Crane himself always looked superbly handsome in evening-clothes, and Annette’s appearance was scarcely inferior in another way. As on her first meeting with Constance, Annette gave the impression of being exquisitely gowned. A simple white crêpe, cut low, showed off her beautiful arms and shoulders, and a few moss rosebuds in their green leaves gave the needed touch of colour to her costume. Simplicity is always the last form of elegance to be attained, and Annette Crane had attained it.

Constance Maitland, too, was at her best, in a shimmering black gown, like a starry night, and with her grandmother’s pearl necklace around her white throat. Mrs. Willoughby, with resplendent black eyes and snow-white hair, looked like one of Sir Peter Lely’s court of beauties, and Mary Beekman was pretty enough to shine anywhere.

When they were seated around the table the men secretly congratulated themselves on the looks of the women with whom they were to dine; and Thorndyke voiced this opinion by quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes’s suggestion that peas and potatoes could be warmed into an early fruition by surrounding them with a ring of handsome women—such as were then present—which caused the ladies all to beam on him.

Annette, seated between the Admiral and Sir Mark le Poer, with Thorndyke’s kind eyes across the table to encourage her, and with Constance Maitland’s fine gift as a hostess to sustain her, felt perfectly at ease. Such was not the case with Crane himself. It was the first time he had ever dined at Constance Maitland’s house, and he yearned to distinguish himself. He wished the conversation would turn on public affairs; he felt he could easily lay them all under a spell then, forgetting that people don’t go out to dinner to be spellbound, but to enjoy an idle hour, and to exchange those pleasant freedoms and trifles which make up the sum of recreation.

The Admiral, a white-moustached, charming old man, who had hobnobbed with princes, and was none the worse for it, began to compliment Annette on her gown, after having previously called her “my dear.”

“Really,” he said, “that gown is a most stunning creation.”

Thorndyke chimed in here:

“Yes,” he said. “It makes Mrs. Crane look like a white narcissus blooming in a bed of mignonette.”

No woman is ever disconcerted by compliments, and Annette was charmed at the praises lavished on her—and particularly in Crane’s presence.

“I should say,” remarked Sir Mark le Poer, “with my feeble powers of comparison, that Mrs. Crane’s gown reminds me of some of your delicious American dishes, not all sauces and flavourings like our European things, but fresh and new and exquisite. I know I have a grovelling nature, but, ’pon my soul, is there anything more charming than a dish of delicate soft crabs on a bed of parsley——”

“Oh, oh!” cried Constance. “How your soul must grovel! However, it’s the highest compliment Sir Mark can pay you, Mrs. Crane, because I know he has an unholy passion for soft crabs.”

“I will pay you the highest compliment of all,” said Mrs. Willoughby, “I will ask you, who is your dressmaker?”

“I made this gown myself,” answered Annette, with a pretty smile.

Crane thought he should have gone through the floor into the cellar. He had never in his life felt such a rage of shame. There was Constance Maitland in a gown that shouted out its French nationality in every line and fold. Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Beekman wore the smartest of smart creations—probably not one of them had ever done a stitch of sewing in their lives, while here was Annette announcing that she made her own gown! The next thing he expected her to proclaim was that she had just completed six suits of pajamas for him, all made with her own hands and feet, on her own sewing-machine at Circleville.

Three persons at the table—Thorndyke, Constance, and Annette herself—saw how annoyed Crane was at what he regarded as a very damaging admission. Annette, however, was quite composed. She saw that instead of making a mistake she had really made a hit, for she was more complimented than ever upon her cleverness in making so beautiful a gown. In truth, the sweet and natural way in which she owned to her handiwork completed the charm of her simple and unaffected personality. Mrs. Willoughby, turning despairingly to the other women, said:

“We are simply outclassed. Every man here thinks that all of us, like Mrs. Crane, could make our own gowns if only we were clever enough.”

“I have always thought,” said Thorndyke, smiling, “that Napoleon’s idea of the education of women was probably right—a plenty of religion and needle-work. However, as I may get myself in trouble, I will say no more.”

“Very properly,” replied Constance, who meant to enlighten Crane on his wife’s accomplishments. “I have a great deal of religion, when I am not annoyed by anything, and I beg all of the gentlemen to observe that even if I were clever enough to make a gown like Mrs. Crane’s, I could not wear it. It is too well adapted to Mrs. Crane’s style for any one else to venture on it.”

“I could have worn it thirty years ago,” said Mrs. Willoughby, with dangerous candour. “But the fact is, Miss Maitland, all of these men are so absurdly prejudiced in favour of the gown, that they overrate it. After all, the rest of us are fairly well-dressed.”

Annette took all this in the spirit of playful compliment in which it was meant, and was flattered by it. Not so Crane. He thought that Annette had, at first, let an ugly cat out of the bag, and secondly, that Mrs. Willoughby was insolent in saying the gown was overrated. But before the dinner was over, his eyes were opened to the fact that Annette had made a most agreeable impression, and every man present admired her, and every woman present liked her.

As soon as the rather short dinner was through, the carriages were called to take the party to the White House. When Crane and Annette were alone in their cab, he said to her:

“It seems to me you made a bad break in saying you made your gown yourself.”

“Far from it,” replied Annette, pleasantly. “It seems to have made them all like me better. Mrs. Willoughby and Miss Beekman both said they would be glad to call to see me, and so did the Admiral. I think I was a success.”

Crane felt like rubbing his eyes and pulling his ears. Was this his submissive Annette, who never questioned his word on any subject? He half expected her to call attention to the fact that he had been rather dull at the dinner, but although Annette knew it quite as well as he did, she forbore to mention it.

When they reached the White House, there was the usual crowd of carriages, their lamps twinkling like myriads of stars in the soft spring night, the roar of horses’ hoofs upon the asphalt, the crowds of gaily dressed women in evening-gowns disembarking at the north portico, the blare of music from the red-coated band within the corridors. Constance Maitland, on Sir Mark le Poer’s arm, and followed by her dinner-guests, presently found herself shaking hands with the President and bowing to the line of ladies of the Administration, which extended across the oval reception-room. Next the President’s wife stood the wife of the Secretary of State. She was a small, thin woman, with a determined nose and the general aspect of a mediæval battle-axe. She was simply though splendidly attired in black velvet, with lace and diamonds, and was as faultlessly correct as the Secretary himself, in language and deportment, except in one small particular—she could not pronounce the word “Something.” She invariably called it “su’thin”—a souvenir of her early bringing up on the banks of Lake Michigan. She greeted Constance coolly, remembering the meeting at her house for the Guild of Superannuated Governesses, but she was effusive toward Sir Mark le Poer.

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.

“Eh?” said the Ambassador, pretending to be deaf.

Eleanor repeated her words a little louder. There was Constance Maitland near enough to hear, and like Mrs. Hill-Smith, Eleanor was a little afraid of Constance Maitland, and also of Mr. Thorndyke, who had an uncomfortable way of laughing at very serious matters; and just at her elbow was that queer Castlestuart-Stuart, who blurted out things, such as not liking books, which other people kept to themselves; and it was this British bull which now proceeded to play havoc in the china-shop.

“Yes,” he said, with an air of infantine innocence, and addressing his chief boldly. “It’s positively true. Not a blessed American man there. Never saw such a thing anywhere in my life before. Fancy giving a dinner in London to foreign diplomats and not having an Englishman there—haw! haw!”

Both Eleanor and Mrs. Hill-Smith turned pale. Constance Maitland laughed outright; the Ambassador and Sir Mark le Poer looked gravely into each other’s eyes, and telegraphed, without winking, their amusement. Castlestuart-Stuart kept on.

“And Hachette, the new French third secretary, told us in the dressing-room about a letter he had got from his mother in Paris—terribly strict old lady. She said, ‘You have written me about going to dinners where no American men are present. You are deceiving your old mother. It is impossible that persons such as you describe us giving those dinners should not know any respectable American men. At all events, do not bring me back a daughter-in-law who has no acquaintance among respectable men in her own country’—haw! haw! haw!”

A flood of colour poured into the faces of Eleanor Baldwin and Mrs. Hill-Smith. The Ambassador’s chronic grin had become a little broader; Sir Mark le Poer was tugging at his moustache. That impossible person, Castlestuart-Stuart, was haw-hawing with the keenest enjoyment. Constance Maitland felt that it was time to come to the rescue of her country even at the sacrifice of her country-women—so, smiling openly, she said to the too truthful Castlestuart-Stuart:

“I can’t blame you for laughing—it makes all the initiated laugh. But you must see for yourself that it is only the newest of the new who do such things. All people new to society do strange things.”

“Never saw it done anywhere before, ’pon my soul,” replied this incorrigible Briton. “We have our new people at home—tea, whiskey, drapery, and furniture shops—and rawer than you can think—but they wouldn’t dare—haw, haw! to give a dinner without an Englishman at it!”

Constance bit her lip—Castlestuart-Stuart was telling the truth, and there was no gainsaying it; nor could she offer any fuller explanation than she had already given. Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin were glaring at her, but Constance remained calm and unmoved. Then from a most unexpected quarter came a terrible complication. Mince Pie Mulligan, having been frozen out by the Secretary of State and by Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, had been jammed by the crowd almost in Eleanor Baldwin’s arms, without the least resistance on his part, and had been an open-mouthed and delighted listener to Castlestuart-Stuart’s candid words. At the first break he proceeded to improve his opportunities by hurling himself into the conversation, and looking straight into Eleanor’s eyes the Senator bawled to Castlestuart-Stuart:

“To give such heathenish dinners as you say, people have got not only to be new, but they have got to be blamed fools besides!”

There was a moment’s awful pause, and then an involuntary burst of laughter from all except Mrs. Hill-Smith and Eleanor Baldwin. The functions of society with them meant deadly serious things, such as baking and washing days had been to their grandmothers, and they thought one about as little a subject of a joke as the other. Eleanor Baldwin drew herself up, and looked coldly at the British Ambassador, whose mouth had certainly grown wider. Mrs. Hill-Smith, who was really timid, felt frightened to death. Like Eleanor Baldwin, she had thought it the acme of elegance to have a dinner where every man present was a foreigner and a diplomat, and secretly regretted that, from motives of state, there always had to be Americans at a cabinet house. And here were the diplomats themselves laughing at her! It was exquisitely painful.

However, something more painful still was in store for Eleanor Baldwin. Mrs. Baldwin approached the group, and at sight of her Mr. Mulligan held out his hand, and a broad smile carried the corners of his mouth back to his ears.

“Why, Nora Hogan,” he cried, “it’s good for sore eyes to see you. I haven’t seen you before for twenty-five years. Jim Baldwin didn’t tell me, just now when I was talking with him, that you were here, and didn’t introduce me to his daughter, though I gave him some pretty broad hints. Sure, you know Mike Mulligan, who was clerk in your father’s store thirty years ago.”

“Certainly I do, Mike,” responded Mrs. Baldwin, calmly and sweetly and offering her hand. It was the first time Constance Maitland had ever seen Mrs. Baldwin unbend from her cold stateliness.

The kindness of her greeting seemed to inspire Senator Mulligan with the greatest enthusiasm.

“A better man than your father, Dan Hogan, never lived,” proclaimed Mr. Mulligan, addressing the circle, “and it’s the training I got with him that’s made my fortune. ‘Dale square, Mike,’ Dan Hogan would say—he had a beautiful brogue on him—‘and give the widders and the orphans the turn of the scale when you’re sellin’ ’em sugar and starch and such.’ And I’ve done it, Nora, in memory of good old Dan Hogan—and if any man says it’s impossible to keep a corner grocery and be honest, I say to ’em—‘It’s Danny Hogan, it is, that was the honest man and kept the corner grocery.’”

Mrs. Baldwin’s face grew softer and softer as Mr. Mulligan proceeded. She was so great a lover of charity and had such beautiful humility of spirit that the idea of her father’s example having moulded a man into a like charity gave her the deepest gratitude and pleasure; and if pride had owned a lodgment in her heart she would have been proud at that moment.

But not so Eleanor, or Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, who now appeared hovering on the edge of the group. Eleanor, her face very pale, fixed her eyes on Senator Mulligan with a haughty stare, which he perfectly understood, and resented. A gleam shot into his eye which showed that he meant to pay her back for her insolence. Mr. Baldwin, in the most acute misery, practised the goose-step and tried to stem the tide of Senator Mulligan’s eloquence.

“Er—ah—eh—Mr. Mulligan, your compliments to the late Mr. Daniel Hogan are very much appreciated by me, as well as Mrs. Baldwin—especially as I recall with pleasure—what an—er—important—er—factor you were in the commerce of our native place. For myself, business has no real charm for me,” continued Mr. Baldwin, turning to the British Ambassador. “I have been reasonably successful, but my taste always lay in the way of books. I live among my books.”

Up to this time Mr. Mulligan had spoken with a very fair Irish accent, but now he chose to lapse into the most violent brogue that ever grew on the green sod of Ireland. This was accompanied with a wink to Constance, which gave her extreme enjoyment, and a nudge in the Ambassador’s ribs, which he did not in the least resent.

“Faith, and it’s the way yez always was, Jim Baldwin,” cried Mince Pie Mulligan. “Whin you an’ me was luggin’ the buckets of butter an’ jugs of the most iligant molasses to th’ cushtomers, it was you, Jim Baldwin, as was always a-savin’ your tin cints to buy a book. An’ when you was a-coortin’ Dan Hogan’s pretty daughter, ye’d actually mourn over the ice-cream ye filled her up wid bekase it wasn’t books wid a gilt bindin’!”

At this point Mr. Mulligan squared himself off, and distributed a general wink around the circle, including Eleanor, who glared at him like a basilisk. Mrs. Hill-Smith felt acutely for her dear Eleanor, but, being secretly consumed with curiosity about antecedents as new to her as they were to Constance Maitland, could not forbear remaining. The Slaters were well established socially and financially at the time of Mrs. Hill-Smith’s birth, and she was as innocent of the phase of American life which Senator Mulligan was describing as if she had been born and reared in the royal apartments of Windsor Castle. Rochefoucauld has said there is something not unpleasant to us in the misfortunes of our best friends—and it was certainly true of Mrs. Hill-Smith—for while she was eyeing Eleanor Baldwin with an expression of the tenderest sympathy, she was inwardly rejoicing that there was no blot of butter or molasses upon the escutcheon of the Slaters. But a relentless fate seemed to direct Senator Mulligan’s tongue, and turning to her the Senator said, cheerfully, and without the least encouragement:

“And I’m tould ye are the granddaughter of Cap’n Josh Slater, that I knew like me ould hat, when I was but la’ad, and he was Cap’n of the River Queen, one o’ the floatin’ palaces of the day on the Ohio River.”

Mrs. Hill-Smith trembled a little, but answered, coldly:

“I think you must have been misinformed.”

“Well, hardly,” responded Senator Mulligan, blithely, “since it was your own father as tould me, not half an hour ago. I knew th’ ould man well—an’ he was an honest ould cuss, but for tobacco-chewin’ an’ bad whiskey ye’ll not find his match betune here and the lakes o’ Killarney. He knew how to turn th’ honest pinny though, did ould man Slater. No givin’ of widders an’ orphans the turn of the scale, nor the turn of a hair neither—he was out for the last rid cint. He was a good-lookin’ ould chap, when he was washed up and had on a clean shirt—and now, I’ll say, I think you’re like him—raymarkably like him—and it’s up to you to prove that he wasn’t your grandfather, begorra!”

Had a bomb with a burning fuse dropped at Mrs. Hill-Smith’s feet, she could not have been any more astounded. She looked from Mince Pie Mulligan’s laughing face to Eleanor Baldwin’s, and then glanced helplessly around the circle. It was impossible not to see that the British Ambassador, Thorndyke, and the wretched Castlestuart-Stuart, who was primarily responsible for the whole dreadful business, were all enjoying themselves extremely. Constance Maitland alone seemed to feel some sympathy for the unfortunates. It was, however, chiefly on account of Mrs. Baldwin, who began to be painfully embarrassed, that Constance said, smilingly, to Senator Mulligan:

“Your reminiscences are very interesting, and what you say of Mrs. Baldwin’s father must give her cause for honest pride. You have described a phase of American life of which nobody need be ashamed.”

“Except them as has been through it,” promptly responded Senator Mulligan. “There’s some things human nature”—he called it “natur”—“will always be ashamed of as long as it is human nature. One of ’em is that more people blush for a rise in their family than for a fall. And it ain’t so foolish as it seems; because, if you were born on top of the pile, and all your people were, bedad, you don’t do any of these outlandish things such as me young friend,” indicating Castlestuart-Stuart, “has been tellin’ us about. By the way,” asked Senator Mulligan, explosively, of the terrible Castlestuart-Stuart, “who was it give the dinner anyhow?”

And what should that scion of aristocracy, the Honourable Edward George Francis Castlestuart-Stuart, do but answer:

“Miss Baldwin’s was the last I went to—but there were plenty of others!”

Ambassadors are not supposed to laugh—but at this, the British Ambassador abandoned all hope of keeping serious. Constance was laughing frankly, Thorndyke was in quiet convulsions, Castlestuart-Stuart and Senator Mulligan were exchanging sympathetic grins—and then Eleanor Baldwin said, with the air of an offended queen:

“Papa, give me your arm.”

This Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, with a heightened colour, did, but not before Senator Mulligan genially remarked:

“Well, the best of frinds must part, so here’s good-bye and good-luck to ye, Jim Baldwin, and I’ll say to you, Miss Baldwin, I hope ye’ll live and die as honest as ould Danny Hogan, your grandfather, and a better man never stepped in shoe-leather;” and then, turning to Mrs. Hill-Smith, Senator Mulligan continued, “I commind to you the example of your grandfather, Cap’n Josh Slater, that I had the honour of knowin’ and who always got what he wanted, and was an agreeable man enough barrin’ the bad tobacco and mean whiskey. But in the polite society in which we find oursilves, in these dazzlin’ halls of light an’ scenes of pothry an’ splendour, both Cap’n Josh Slater an’ good ould Danny Hogan wud be about as much at home as a ham sandwich at a Jew picnic!”

With these words, Senator Mince Pie Mulligan bowed himself off, leaving a great trail of social devastation behind him.