Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics

Congress adjourned on the 15th of June, just two months after it was convened in extra session. Thorndyke’s apprehensions had been confirmed. Few legislative follies had been committed—the House had gone with the people, leaving to the Senate and the Administration the disagreeable task of stemming the popular tide as far as possible, when it rushed on too fast. No reputations had been damaged in either House, and several had been made—but none to equal Julian Crane’s. As for Thorndyke, the newspapers seemed to have forgotten his existence.

By the time adjournment was reached, Washington was deserted. The class which is designated as “everybody” was either going or gone. The outgoing steamers carried half the town across the ocean. Thorndyke had promised himself a treat—a trip to Europe that year—the first since that long-remembered one which had settled his fate in some particulars for him. It was the first time in years that he felt he could afford it, for he was a free-handed man, generous to his invalid sister, not averse to lending money when he had it, and fond of giving presents. To do this on his Congressional salary did not leave much surplus. This summer, however, he concluded he could take a three months’ trip. Constance Maitland’s return had not changed his determination, because he felt that he could not, in decency, follow her wherever her summer wanderings might take her; and if he could not be with her, he would rather, just then, be in Europe.

But one word from Constance, on the afternoon when he went to bid her farewell, changed all this in the twinkling of an eye.

He found that she had just returned from a near-by place in Virginia, where her family had been established many generations before the Louisiana Purchase had sent them toward the Gulf of Mexico. Constance was full of her Virginia trip, and told Thorndyke that she meant to take, for the summer, the old family place, Malvern Court, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where many generations of dead and gone Maitlands had lived and flourished, after their migration from their first American home on the shores of the Chesapeake. She showed him a photograph of the place. It was an old brick manor-house, very tumble-down, but picturesque, with noble old trees around it, and even in the picture it conveyed a delicious look of repose. It was the sort of a place where nothing startling had ever happened except the Civil War, and nothing ever could happen again. The present owner of the place, an elderly maiden lady, “Cousin Phillis,” was the last of her race. She had taken up the notion that, she would like to spend the summer at “the Springs,” as she had done “in papa’s time, and grandpapa’s time;” and Constance, meaning to confer a benefit on her, had offered to rent Malvern for the summer at a price which would have been dear for a Newport cottage. The old lady, after a long struggle, had agreed. Constance did not tell all of this, but Thorndyke shrewdly suspected that the arrangement was designed to help Cousin Phillis far more than she imagined.

“And Cousin Phillis thinks she is doing me the greatest favour in the world, and that she is giving me the place for nothing,” Constance explained, smiling, to Thorndyke.

Then she went on to tell of her battles with Cousin Phillis regarding what was necessary for the house. Cousin Phillis could not conceive that anything should be wanting at Malvern Court, which stood exactly as it was at the beginning of the war, minus forty odd years of wear and tear; and Constance had only got the old lady’s consent to fit up the house somewhat, according to modern ideas, by promising to remove every one of the new-fangled fallals and gewgaws when she should give up the place. By hard fighting she had got Cousin Phillis to agree to have some painting and papering done, and hoped when once Cousin Phillis was out of the way, that the house could be made as comfortable as it was picturesque.

It was two hours by train from Washington and six miles from the nearest railway-station.

“Will it not be very lonely for you up there?” asked Thorndyke, smiling at Constance’s description of her efforts to benefit Cousin Phillis against her will.

“Ah, you do not know Virginia cousins,” answered Constance. “Nobody yet was ever known to want for company in Virginia. The two days I was at Malvern it rained cousins. Each one had to be treated with distinguished consideration, and after I had worn myself out with civility to them—for they were coming all day and half the night to call on me—Cousin Phillis gently intimated to me that if I wasn’t more attentive to my relations I might find myself very unpopular with them; and I find that in Virginia to be unpopular with one’s relations is to be an outcast. They regard me with great suspicion; my Louisiana ways and my Louisiana accent only half please them; and they seem to think me a very forgetful person because I do not remember every birth and death in the family which occurred during the seventy or eighty years that the Maitlands have been established in Louisiana. I hope,” she continued, smiling, “that you will have the opportunity to meet some of my Virginia cousins. I shall have a great many house-parties during the summer, and you are among those I shall invite. I hope you may accept.”

“I accept now,” replied Thorndyke, and in a breath his trip to Europe melted away and was as if it had never been. Then Thorndyke very artfully found out the hour of her departure, which was to be three days later.

When Constance, on a warm June morning, arrived at the station, with her five negro servants and her household and personal paraphernalia, to start for her summer in Virginia, she found Thorndyke waiting for her. In the station he had met Annette Crane, who had just seen a constituent off on the train. At the same moment they caught sight of Constance.

“Come,” said Thorndyke, “go with me and say good-bye to Miss Maitland. She is a real friend of yours, and I know she will be glad to see you before she goes.”

“I feel that she is a real friend,” answered Annette. “I never knew a woman in whom I felt greater confidence.”

“Constance is a very loyal and a very large-minded woman,” replied Thorndyke, absently. He had used her first name inadvertently, and only became conscious of it when Annette began laughing softly. Then he coloured violently, and explained that he had lost his mind, or lost his manners, or something of the sort, to account for his calling Miss Maitland by her first name.

They came upon Constance very smartly dressed, as always, and looking young and animated. She was superintending the tickets and luggage of herself and her five servants. There were innumerable boxes and trunks to be seen to, besides a couple of traps and a pair of horses, and Constance was doing it vigorously, with Scipio Africanus, her young butler, and Charles Sumner Pickup, her coachman, acting as purely ornamental adjuncts, giving her frequent and disinterested advice about the horses, the trunks, and other impedimenta, but in reality being waited on by their mistress. Whenever negroes go on a journey, they at once become children, and are treated as such by those who understand them. In a group stood the cook, an elderly, respectable negro woman, dressed in black, with the stamp of “fo’ de war” written all over her honest black face, and a housemaid and a lady’s maid, both chocolate coloured.

Whenever Thorndyke had observed Constance’s servants before, they had been dressed with entire correctness—but on this occasion they had evidently been allowed complete latitude. The two maids wore the shortest of short skirts, with violent-coloured shirtwaists. They had on hats exactly alike—large picture-hats of white, with wreaths of red roses. The same riot of colour had broken out on Scipio Africanus and Charles Sumner Pickup. Scipio sported a scarf-pin composed of two United States flags crossed, while Charles Sumner Pickup carried a cane from the handle of which fluttered red, white, and blue ribbons. The cook, who was plainly an ante-bellum product, had donned, for the journey, an immense crape veil, which dangled to the ground, and implied that she was in the first stages of widowhood. As a fact, she had “planted her ole man,” in the Afro-American vernacular, about thirty years before, but at intervals since, she had adorned herself with the crape veil, as a dissipation in dress akin to the maids’ wreaths of red roses, and the butler and coachman’s assumption of the national colours.

Thorndyke, on reaching Constance’s side, proffered his assistance, but his offer was promptly repulsed.

“How on earth would you manage five negroes?” she asked. “You would lose your patience in five minutes—you do not know what they know or what they do not know. I think I have everything straight now—I will keep the tickets myself”—and then, escorted by Thorndyke, she saw her five charges and the horses, the traps, and the trunks in their proper cars, and, sending Thorndyke after Annette Crane, herself took her place in the drawing-room car for her two hours’ trip.

When Annette stepped in the car to spend ten minutes with her, Constance was sincerely glad. She felt a strong and strange sympathy with Annette Crane. Never were women more dissimilar in type, in environment, in ideas, than those two women; but both were gentlewomen of sense and right feeling, and on that common ground they met and became friends.

Constance expressed a wish that Mrs. Crane might be in Washington the next winter, and Annette quietly replied that she expected to be.

Thorndyke then began telling her of his amusement at watching Constance, with five servants, working like a Trojan for them.

“Of course, you, with your cool Northern temperament, cannot understand the negro,” replied Constance, good-humouredly. “You would expect a negro to work when he could help it. What a delusion! Suppose I had trusted Scipio or Charles to buy those tickets and get those horses aboard, and meanwhile a street-band had come along?”

“I suppose Scipio or Charles would have got the tickets and attended to the horses just the same,” answered Thorndyke.

“Do you? That shows your utter density regarding Scipio and Charles. I daresay you thought it very amusing that I should work for my servants.”

“I did.”

“They work for me when I want them and make them—that is, they work in a certain way—their way. And I suppose you would have that United States flag pin off Scipio’s bosom and that cane with the red, white, and blue ribbons out of Charles’s hand if you were travelling to Newport with them.”

“I am afraid I should.”

“And you could not stand the wreaths of red roses on the hats of my two maids?”

“I am quite sure I couldn’t.”

“Then, Mr. Thorndyke, stop legislating for the negroes, because you know nothing about them.”

“I admit,” said Thorndyke, “that the patience and indulgence of Southerners toward negroes has always amazed and charmed me. But I believe the negro would be better off if he were made to assume greater responsibilities.”

“Go to. Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”

Just then, Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin and Eleanor sauntered into the state-room of the car. They were to join a yachting party at Old Point Comfort. They spoke distantly and coolly to both Constance and Thorndyke—the memory of Senator Mince Pie Mulligan’s candid praise of “ould Danny Hogan at th’ corner grocery” was still a green and smarting wound in their breasts.

Mr. Baldwin’s English valet and Eleanor’s French maid were doing everything possible for the comfort of their master and mistress and with perfect intelligence. Thorndyke smilingly indicated it, but Constance shook her head.

“I am always hearing complaints about French and English servants in this country, but we who are accustomed to negro servants never complain of them.”

“Because you never require anything of them; however,” added Thorndyke, “I’ll admit there seems to be a comfortable sort of arrangement between you. It would drive any but Southern people mad, but you don’t seem to mind it.”

Then Constance, turning to Annette, said she would be so glad if she and Mr. Crane would pay her a visit during the summer. Annette’s eyes sparkled; it was a distinct triumph for her, because she knew, and knew that Crane knew, that he never would have been asked but for her. She thanked Constance warmly, but said she was afraid it was impossible—she never went away from Circleville in summer; and Constance, seeing longing in Thorndyke’s eye, repeated her invitation to him, and made his middle-aged heart beat fast by doing it; and then it was time to go, and the train pulled out, and Constance was gone.

Thorndyke put Annette on her suburban car, and walked back to his lodgings, through the hot, bright streets—hot and bright in spite of the lush greenness of the shade. But the day had turned lead coloured to him; and although there were still plenty of persons in town, and the capital was seething, for it was yet some days before adjournment, Thorndyke felt as if the whole town were silent and deserted.

The presence of Constance Maitland made any place full for Geoffrey Thorndyke, and her absence made a desert to him. He contrasted in his own mind his feelings of to-day and of a year ago. Then, he had reached a kind of dull acquiescence in fate, or thought he had. Despairing of forgetting Constance, he had learned to endure quietly the poignant pain of remembering her, and in default of all else in life to interest him he had thrown his whole soul and being into politics. Now, the sound of Constance Maitland’s voice, the touch of her hand, was always with him, and had turned an otherwise dull and prosaic world into a region of splendid tumult and delicious agitations, for he would not have gone back to his past state for anything on earth. Constance had a deep regard for him—of that there could be no doubt. She commanded his society whenever she could; she exerted herself to please and flatter him; and he accepted it as a man drinks water in the desert, not analysing it, but exulting in it. Even those frequent seasons when he called himself a blankety-blank fool were not devoid of enjoyment—at least, it was not stagnation. He yearned after a million or so of money, that he might lay at Constance’s feet, and ask her to throw away the fortune that stood between them, but he was too sound and sane a man to imagine that he would ever be a rich man. Politics had by no means lost its interest for him, but rather had it gained—that at least was something to give him value in Constance’s eyes. As for that bare possibility of the senatorship two years hence, in the event that Senator Standiford should retire, Thorndyke regarded it as an iridescent dream. He did not believe that Senator Standiford would retire. He heard no more of Letty Standiford’s delicate health, or the Senator’s, either. Letty was rushing about Washington in an automobile, helloing at young gentlemen on the street, and doing many loud, unnecessary, and innocent things which require much nervous energy and lung-power. The Senator himself gave no indications of ill-health and fatigue. In Washington he led a life as regular and temperate as that of a boarding-school miss, but when local elections were impending, or a national convention was on hand, Thorndyke had known the old gentleman to go for a fortnight at a time almost without eating or sleeping, and then come out looking as fresh as a daisy. So Thorndyke was a little sceptical about his boss’s possible retirement from the field, and took it that the Senator had been trying some sort of an intellectual bunco game upon him.

When the adjournment of Congress was reached, Thorndyke took the first train to his northern home. It was a comfortable old place, on the skirts of an old colonial town left high and dry among more progressive places; but shady, serene, and comfortable in the extreme. Here, in the house where he and his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather were born, Thorndyke’s summers were spent with his sister Elizabeth, a gentle, sweet-faced creature, who had not walked for many years, but whose mind and hands were busy doing such good as lay in their reach.

Down in the town before a wooden one-story office with a porch, hung a battered tin sign, which had been repaired and repainted twenty times since first, in Geoffrey Thorndyke’s grandfather’s time, it had borne the legend, “Geoffrey Thorndyke, Counsellor at Law.” Thorndyke still kept the dingy little office which had been his grandfather’s and his father’s before him. He had given up the best of his law practice at the time that he had been thrown down and securely roped for Congress by Senator Standiford and his trusty cowboys, the State Committeemen, but had always clung to the old law-office as a refuge in case Senator Standiford should relegate him to private life. Although he had been compelled to abandon the active and continuous practice of his profession—for according to the old axiom, “The law is a jealous mistress”—Thorndyke remained a student of law. He was by nature and training a very considerable lawyer, and his legal acquirements had helped to win for him the high and steady position he held in the House of Representatives. He was not a leader of men, but rather a thinker and adviser, and was proud of the somewhat scornful appellation of “the scholar in politics.”

In his quiet summer home, among his few shabby books—which, unlike Mr. James Brentwood Baldwin, he read diligently, and never thought to mention that he lived among them—Thorndyke spent his placid summers. He read much, and observed a great deal. He was close to the border of Crane’s State, and their congressional districts were contiguous, and naturally Thorndyke knew the political happenings across the border.

In all his experience of men, Thorndyke had never watched with the same interest the development of a man in his public and private life as he watched Julian Crane’s. He saw the good and the evil struggling together in Crane, and had not yet found out which was fundamental.

Crane, with Annette and the two children, had returned to Circleville immediately after the adjournment of Congress, and immediately, on reaching home, he had been beset with a temptation, against which he had made a short, hard fight, and then was conquered, and gave up all the honesty of his soul as regards politics. One week after his return to Circleville, he had received overtures for peace from Governor Sanders, and a meeting between them had been arranged.

It took place in a neighbouring city, in the private parlour of a hotel. The two men were entirely alone. Sanders, a bull-dog of a man, came out frankly and told Crane that, by the cutthroat policy they were pursuing, they were simply playing into Senator Bicknell’s hands, and depriving the State of its just weight with the National Committee in the year of a Presidential convention. His proposition was a large one, but was put in a few words. The Governor began by freely admitting that Crane had got the best of him in the matter of the senatorial appointment—the politicians were agreed on that. But all men make blunders, and Governor Sanders proposed to atone for the blunder he had made about the senatorship by joining forces with Crane instead of opposing him further. It was plain that there was a strong revolt against Senator Bicknell, and a split was inevitable among the chiefs as soon as the Legislature met, which would elect a senator. When this break came, new alignments must be made, and Governor Sanders believed and said that if he and Crane should join forces they could oust Senator Bicknell and get control of the machine.

At the mention of Senator Bicknell’s name, Crane changed countenance, and mumbled something about his political obligations to the Senator. Sanders met this by saying that it was his opinion, if Senator Bicknell were not ousted, there would be grave danger that the party would lose the State at the next election; and, in any event, there must be a new arrangement of forces, and he was simply proposing to take advantage of the inevitable. He then went on to explain briefly his plan. The protocols must provide that Governor Sanders should throw all his strength toward getting Crane the party nomination for the short senatorial term in January, and second Crane’s efforts to succeed himself. In return, Crane was to devote all his energies toward securing the Governor’s election two years hence to succeed Senator Bicknell. Meanwhile, Senator Bicknell was nursing a very robust and promising Vice-presidential boom, which must, of course, be strangled in the cradle. Nothing must be heard of it at the next Presidential convention a year hence; but four years hence, when both Crane and Sanders would be in the Senate, it would be time enough to decide which one would strive for it. The geographical position of the State and the uncertainty of the elections for many years past would put them in a very good strategic position either to capture the Vice-presidential nomination or to dictate it to the convention; and that was a prize which could be held in reserve.

The success of the whole, however, depended upon keeping Senator Bicknell in the dark, for although he had not displayed the qualities of a truly great boss, like Senator Standiford, yet he was a man of considerable force, well liked, a gentleman, and a favourite in his party. If he suspected the plotting of an insurrection against him, he might in two years’ time overthrow it completely; but he was an unsuspicious man—a bad thing in a boss—and could be easily deluded into believing that no effort was necessary on his part to hold his own. For that reason, the warfare between Sanders and Crane should be ostensibly kept up. Especially must this be the case in selecting delegates to the National Convention. Senator Bicknell’s aspirations for the Vice-presidential nomination must be frosted on the apparent ground of dissensions among the leaders in the State—but as soon as the election was over they could come together and have four years’ amicable struggle to prove whether Sanders or Crane should be seriously put forward for the Vice-presidential nomination five years hence.

Crane listened to this nefarious scheme with disgust—a disgust in which a great longing was strangely and violently mingled. Every word that Sanders said was true; Crane knew that perfectly well. The machine was going to pieces—there could be no doubt of that—and Crane, with accurate knowledge of conditions, saw that the Governor’s plan, although far-reaching, was quite practicable. The whole thing, however, hinged upon keeping Senator Bicknell in the dark. If it had been a free, fair fight, the Governor and himself might be worsted. Senator Bicknell might be considered the founder of Crane’s political fortunes, and had certainly treated him with great kindness, and had procured his advancement; but then, it was a question whether the great law of necessity would not compel Crane to go with Sanders. Senator Bicknell would not, if he could, ruin Crane, but Governor Sanders was fully capable of it, and would, if he could. Indeed, Sanders conveyed as much.

“Of course,” he said, carelessly, as he lighted a cigar, “you would have to be very circumspect in every way from now on. Voters, you know, are easily offended. As a matter of business, purely, I shall mention to you that there has been some talk about your leaving your wife at home during your time spent in Washington. I have heard that, except for the short visit she paid you during the extra session, she has not been there since the first session at which you took your seat. Of course, everybody knows that it is all straight between you, but it was a mistake on your part, just the same. It will give your enemies a handle against you.”

Crane grew pale. How strange it was that in all those years he had never been conscious of the supreme folly of his behaviour! It had not once occurred to him until that evening in Washington, hardly more than a month ago!

“Mrs. Crane remained by choice in Circleville on account of the children,” replied Crane, “and because my salary as a congressman doesn’t admit of my having my family there as I would wish—particularly as I had some debts to pay, and my house in Circleville has a mortgage on it.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly, Mr. Crane. All of us who know you do. I was not speaking of the views of your friends, but of your enemies, on the subject. However, if money is the consideration, I think I could guarantee your senatorial term in good style; nothing extravagant, you know, but enough to put your mind at ease. Your notes, with my indorsement, would be accepted at any bank in the State, and the matter could be kept quiet.”

It was the old story—making chains out of his necessities. And they were very great. Crane spoke of paying his debts. He had scarcely made any reduction in the principal, and had only succeeded in paying the interest—which, with his living expenses, of which his own were twice as much as Annette’s and the children’s, and his small life-insurance, had galloped away with his five thousand a year. And if he should lose the nomination—there was not much danger of that now, but everything was possible with a machine and a man like Governor Sanders.

Crane’s better nature, however, rebelled against the deceit to be practised on Senator Bicknell. That he declared he could never bring himself to—and believed it at the moment.

“Then,” said Governor Sanders, rising, “we may conclude our conference. The entire success of the campaign I have mapped out depends upon Senator Bicknell not being taken into our confidence. We are not proposing anything against the party; we are simply proposing to do for ourselves what Senator Bicknell has done for himself; and if things go on as they have been going under his direction, I think we stand an excellent chance of losing the State at the Presidential election.”

Before Crane’s ardent mind loomed a vision. Six years in Washington as a Senator—and he was not yet forty-three years old; living in good style, and then, the chance, not a bad one by any means, of the Vice-presidential nomination in a little over four years. It was a glorious vista. Like the Arabian glass-seller, his imagination far outstripped itself. He saw himself, at forty-eight, Vice-president, at fifty-two, another term, at fifty-six, still in the Senate, with a great reputation—even the Presidency did not seem beyond him. He had the enormous advantage of youth over most of his rivals. A Vice-president stands one chance in three and a half of succeeding to the Presidency—altogether, it was a dazzling dream—so dazzling that Crane began to feel the old regret and longing that Fate had not given him a wife like Constance Maitland; he was afraid even, in thought, to wish that it might be Constance Maitland. How that woman would shine in an official position! And then, the other side—but there was no other side. Without Sanders’s help, he would have a desperate fight before the Legislature; and that outlook which had seemed so rosy when he described it to Constance Maitland in her drawing-room a few months before, grew dismal and gruesome when examined in parlour number 20 of the Grand Hotel. If defeated for the senatorship, and under the ban of Governor Sanders, his seat, a year hence, would be certainly doubtful, and if the machine ran over him it meant annihilation. So, tempted of the devil, Crane yielded, and promised everything the Governor required.

As the Governor had found him an uncertain quantity before, there were due precautions taken to keep him in the traces this time, by veiled threats of what would befall him if he kicked them over a second time. Crane understood perfectly well. He also realised that there were two men under his skin—one, honest and loving the truth, and the other, craving money and power and consideration, tormented with vanity, enslaved by self-love, a fierce and hideous object to contemplate. But he need not contemplate it; and with this determination he took a friendly cocktail with the Governor, and departed for Circleville. That hint about his wife opened Crane’s eyes to the necessity of the outward practice of virtue, and he then determined to compass, as far as in him lay, the whole comprehensive sin of hypocrisy. He would be very attentive to his wife and devoted to his children. He would go to church regularly. He would adopt a Cincinnatus-like mode of life, that out of his small means he might contribute to charity and have it known by the special correspondents. In short, he proposed to become that object of man’s hate and God’s wrath, a hypocrite.