Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics

On the first Monday in December—a gloriously bright winter day—the flags were run up over the Senate and House wings of the Capitol building. Congress had met once more.

There were the usual thronging multitudes in the corridors, the usual pleasant buzz of meeting and greeting in cloak and committee rooms, and the cheerfulness and exhilaration of the last session was flamboyant in the present one.

Among the last members of the House to arrive was Julian Crane. He had come late because he wished to put off as long as possible the meeting with Senator Bicknell. Of course, they must meet early and often, but that did not make Crane take any less pains to postpone, if even for a day, the sight of the man he had betrayed. But almost the first acquaintance he ran across was the Senator in a group of brother senators who had strolled over to the House side.

Senator Bicknell greeted Crane with unusual cordiality. In the first place, he really wished to attach Crane to the Bicknell chariot, but he had such agreeable recollections of his August day in Circleville, of Annette and her spotless table, her roast chicken and boiled corn, her sweet, fresh spare bedroom, where he had enjoyed one of the best naps of his life, and her impromptu reception in the afternoon, that he felt an increased kindliness for Crane. He showed this by button-holing Crane in the midst of the group of senators, and telling the story of his day in Circleville. He paid Annette many sincere compliments, and declared that if Crane should enter the senatorial contest a year and a half hence, and should defeat him, it would simply be on account of the charming Mrs. Crane. It was not fair to pit a man with such a lovely wife against a hopeless and incurable bachelor like himself.

Under other circumstances Crane would have been highly gratified, but now it tortured him. He heard once more ringing in his ears Governor Sanders’s words, “It is absolutely necessary that Senator Bicknell be not taken into our confidence.” To cap the climax, Senator Bicknell said:

“Be sure and give my warmest regards to Mrs. Crane, and tell her I shall take the first opportunity to call on her—she is here, I suppose? She mentioned last summer that she was coming on with you.”

“Yes,” replied Crane, “we are established for the season”—and he gave the name of a comfortable, but not expensive or fashionable, apartment house where they had quarters.

“And say to her that, although I can’t give her a dinner half so good as what she gave me, I shall expect her and you to arrange to dine with me at my house at a very early day. Good morning.”

Crane escaped and went to his seat in the House. While he was contemplating the baseness of his own conduct, Thorndyke came over and spoke to him.

Thorndyke’s first impression of Crane was that he looked haggard and worn, and Crane’s impression of Thorndyke was that he had grown about ten years younger. His greeting to Thorndyke was very cordial, but he was conscious of a strange thing—that ever since his bargain with Sanders, the meeting with former friends, men of sterling probity, gave him a vague uneasiness. It seemed to him as if, in duping Senator Bicknell, he was duping every honest man he knew. Thorndyke, too, asked after Mrs. Crane, and it began to dawn upon Crane’s mind that Annette had the power, in a remarkable degree, of pleasing men of the world. Still, he thought her not quite good enough for himself, particularly if the brilliant future he planned should materialise—as it must and should.

The proceedings of the day were perfunctory, and it was but little after three o’clock when Thorndyke left the House. The afternoon was briskly cold, and the sun glittered from a heaven as blue as June. Just as Thorndyke came out on the plaza he encountered Crane, who would have avoided him, but it was scarcely possible.

The two men walked down the hill, and toward Thorndyke’s old quarters. They talked amicably and even intimately, but Thorndyke got a curious impression of reserve from Crane—and reserve was the last thing in the world to develop in Julian Crane. As they walked along the streets in the dazzling sun of December in Washington, they were speaking of the great economic questions with which the Congress would have to deal. Thorndyke, as an accomplished lawyer, saw certain difficulties in the way of regulating these matters which Crane did not at first perceive.

“After all,” said Thorndyke, “it comes down to whether either political party will deal honestly with these questions. If they do, a solution will be found, and the whole matter can, in the course of a few years, be properly adjusted.”

“What do you call perfect honesty in politics?” asked Crane, after a moment.

“That’s rather a large proposition,” replied Thorndyke, laughing. “I should say, if called upon to give an immediate definition, that perfect honesty in politics means keeping one’s hands clean in money matters, and being an outspoken friend or enemy.”

Crane’s heart sank at this. He did not know why he should have asked such a question, and he was hard hit by Thorndyke’s reply.

“There must be a good, wide margin allowed for offensive partisanship,” Thorndyke continued. “That’s the trouble with the professors of political economy in colleges—they leave human nature out of the equation. There’s my boss, Senator Standiford. He is as honest as the day as far as money goes, and honest in using his enormous power for the good of the party, and he was born with the notion that his party and the country are interchangeable terms. He uses dishonest men sometimes, but not dishonest methods. It is both shameful and ridiculous that a great State like ours should hand over such vast power to one man as it has to Senator Standiford, but that’s not his fault. It is rather to his credit that he has not misused his power. The trouble is, that the people will get accustomed to the system of one-man government, and when Senator Standiford goes hence, the party will choose another dictator, probably neither as honest or as able as he.”

“Senator Standiford is a rich man. Suppose he were poor? What percentage would you allow a poor man in political life in his efforts to be honest?”

“I can’t figure it out that way,” answered Thorndyke, “although I ought to know public life from the viewpoint of the poor but honest Congressman. I am not worth ten thousand dollars in the world outside of my Congressional salary. But as the Kentucky colonel said on the stump, ‘I am as honest as the times will allow.’”

“Don’t you think,” persisted Crane, for whom this discussion of honesty in public life had a powerful fascination, “that the same man in certain political circumstances would remain honest, while in different circumstances he might succumb to temptation? Take the case of a poor man in politics.”

“I admit that the most desperate venture on earth is for a man to attempt to live by politics. Some men have done it, like Patrick Henry, for example. But those men are quite beyond comparison with every-day men. However, Marcus Aurelius says, ‘A man should be upright, he should not be made to be upright.’”

This saying of Marcus Aurelius troubled Crane. He did not fully believe it. He thought that Marcus Aurelius, like the professors of political economy in colleges and universities, left out of account the great factor of human nature, which makes a bad man to do good acts, and a good man to do bad acts, and makes a man good at one time, bad at another, and both good and bad together. Presently he roused himself and said:

“It would be a great thing for any public man if he could lead such a life that every word he said or wrote could be printed.”

“Why, have you been writing letters lately?”

“God knows, no! I have always had sense enough for that—to write as few letters as possible.”

At that moment Crane felt a thrill of satisfaction—not one line did Governor Sanders have of his.

The two men then began to talk about the political situation generally, and Thorndyke noticed in Crane an exultant spirit, a disposition to brag which had been absent in him at the time of his first rise into prominence, when it might have been expected to develop. The truth was that Crane found the only solace for his moral lapses lay in contemplating the splendid prizes which Sanders had dangled before his eyes. He had come to believe that some of these splendid prizes must be his; it was incredible that he should not receive the price for which he had sold his honour. And as the case always is, whether a man is or is not wholly bad, Crane promised himself at some future time, when he had garnered all the fruits of his wrong-doing, to lead a life of perfect rectitude.

Then they came to the street corner where their paths diverged, and Thorndyke said at parting:

“Please give my warmest regards to Mrs. Crane, and tell her I mean to presume upon her past kindness to me and call to see her in the evening.”

“Have you seen Miss Maitland?” asked Crane.

“No,” replied Thorndyke, who had just proclaimed himself a man of truth. He had not, indeed, seen Constance to speak to her, but the night before, within two hours of his arrival, when he had gone out to smoke his after-dinner cigar, he had sneaked up to her house, and had watched her as she passed to and fro before the lighted windows of the drawing-room.

Crane went upon his way gloomily, turning over in his mind his conversation with Thorndyke, and all the difficulties of his situation, which were accentuated by his being in Washington. The strong fancy which Senator Bicknell had taken to Annette made everything harder. It seemed as if all those things which might be reckoned an unmixed good for an honest man were a burden and a perplexity to him, Julian Crane.

Thinking these uncomfortable thoughts, he found himself at the entrance to the big apartment house, and went to his own quarters.

They were small and cramped, but the locality was good and the outlook pleasant. Annette and the two children met him with smiles. The children had grown acquainted with him and had become fairly fond of him. As for Annette, she had never, in all her married life, so striven to help her husband as in the last few months, when she had seen that he was troubled and suspected that he was engaged in wrong-doing. All her pity, all her loyalty as a wife, had risen within her. She had gradually abandoned the attitude of reserve which she had maintained toward him ever since that first unfortunate experience in Washington so long ago. She reproached herself, as the good always do, for not having been better. Had she given him more of her confidence and sought his more, she might now be in a position to help him, or at least to sympathise with his trouble, whatever it might be. But her conscience should never upbraid her again for want of sympathy and tenderness to him. He might tell her of his perplexities, or he might keep them to himself, she would be all tenderness and softness to him. And then the hope was born and lived in her heart, which every neglected wife has, that calamities of the soul as well as the heart might bring her husband once more to her side. For Annette had never ceased to love her husband—and loving spells forgiveness with a woman.

Crane dutifully delivered Senator Bicknell’s and Thorndyke’s messages, and Annette’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. She felt an increase of courage. She thought Crane must have seen that she had been a help, not a hinderance to him, socially and personally, when she had been given a chance, and she meant to show him that she could hold her own in Washington as well as in Circleville.

A week or two passed in all the gay confusion of the beginning of the season in Washington. Thorndyke had watched his chance to call on Constance Maitland. Carefully avoiding her usual day at home, he had called on a peculiarly raw and disagreeable afternoon, very late, when he felt sure that she must have returned from her daily drive. He found her in her drawing-room, which was dusky, although it was not yet six o’clock, with a bright fire leaping high and making the charming room bright with its ruddy glow.

Constance, wrapped in rich dark furs, her cheeks tingling with the fresh cold air without, her eyes sparkling, was standing before the blazing fire. She was unaffectedly glad to see Thorndyke, and he felt that sense of quiet well-being which always came upon him when he was with her in her own house. They had much to talk about. Constance took off her furs and the long, rich cloak which enveloped her, and sat down on the deep, inviting sofa, and motioned Thorndyke to her side.

Among the persons they spoke of were Julian Crane and Annette. Thorndyke volunteered the suggestion that Crane was passing through some sort of a crisis—he was so changed, so silent where he was formerly talkative, so full of vague exultation and of equally vague depression. Thorndyke had seen Annette and the children. Annette had asked to be remembered to Miss Maitland, and Constance replied that she should call at once to see Mrs. Crane. She was not particularly interested in Julian Crane’s crises, except that she said, woman fashion, that he ought to be more attentive to his wife.

Thorndyke then mentioned that Senator Mulligan was in town, at which they both laughed. But soon the conversation got down to the you and I—the books each had read, the thoughts each had pondered, the places each had been. Constance had remained continuously at Malvern Court from June until late in November. She had had a succession of house-parties during the summer, but in the golden autumn she had been quite alone.

“It was the sweetest, the most peaceful life you can imagine,” she said, thoughtfully. “All the world was shut out, except Virginia cousins, but I even escaped most of them. All day I was out in the woods and lanes, riding or driving or walking, and in the evening, with a wood fire, a book, a piano, and a lamp—it was company enough, yet it was solitude itself. It was like Omar’s shady tree and loaf of bread and jug of wine and book of verse.”

“And thou,” added Thorndyke, under his breath. He was watching her with a silent rapture which possessed him on meeting her after an absence. She surely had the softest and sweetest voice in the world, and those charming tricks of pronunciation—she called solitude “solee-tude” and piano “pe-arno,” and was quite unconscious of it, and bitterly denied any difference between her speech and Thorndyke’s. Constance was conscious of the adoring look in Thorndyke’s eyes; she had heard the one suggestive word; perhaps it was that which caused a happy smile to flicker for a moment on her lips, revealing the faint, elusive dimple in her cheek, but she continued as if she had neither heard, nor seen, nor understood.

“I have heard about the solitude there is in crowds, but I never could find it so. I am so dreadfully sociable—Southern and Creole French, you know—that I always find troops of friends and acquaintances in a crowd. But in that solitary old country house in the autumn—that, if you please, was to be alone.”

“You seem to have a passion for solitude,” said Thorndyke, rather crossly.

“Oh, no, only a taste for it at times. I never contemplated with pleasure a solitary life, and I have a horror of a lonely old age.”

What did she mean? Was she proposing to him? Thorndyke was a good deal staggered by this speech from the lady of his secret love.

The time sped fast with them, and both of them started when a neighbouring clock struck seven. Constance rose at once.

“I must go and dress for dinner—and you—you will remain?”

Such an idea had never entered Thorndyke’s brain before, but in half a quarter of a second he had accepted.

“Of course,” said Constance, airily, picking up her muff, and putting her bare hands in it, “it’s very improper for you and me to dine together without others, but we have reached that comfortable age when we can commit all sorts of improprieties in perfect safety. It is a fine thing to grow old.”

“That thought almost reconciles me to the loss of my hair,” replied Thorndyke. “You will have to excuse my afternoon clothes, of course, since you have asked me to stay.”

“Certainly. And out of consideration for your feelings, I shall make only a demi-toilette.”

Presently they were seated at a small round table, and Scipio was serving a dainty little dinner. How young they felt! There was no débutante or fledgling youth present to remind them that Time had meddled with their hair and complexions, no elderly persons to claim them as pertaining to middle age. Thorndyke had rarely been more exhilarated in his life. There might be a morrow; nothing was changed by these stray hours of happiness, but still they were hours of happiness. As for Constance, she was radiant with pleasure, and was at no pains to conceal it. Thorndyke, it is true, always found misery and disappointment waiting for him at his lodgings whenever he returned from Constance’s house; but they could not frighten off those occasional sweet hours which bloomed like snowdrops in a barren and frosted field.

One of the first visits that Constance paid was to Annette Crane. As Thorndyke had seen anxiety written all over Crane’s personality, so Constance saw that Annette was not wholly at ease. But she was unaffectedly glad to see Constance, and soon returned the visit. Crane did not accompany her. He was beginning to feel a species of resentment toward Constance. Why, although he had told her of the comforting and sustaining power she had for him, had she chosen to treat him exactly as she treated all other men, except the few whom she chose to favour outrageously? Why, when she showed him any consideration, was Annette the obvious cause? Self-love was beginning to do for Crane what conscience had failed to do—emancipate him from his admiration for a woman other than his wife.

A day or two after reaching Washington, Crane had left a card for Senator Bicknell. When Senator Bicknell returned the visit, Crane, luckily, was not at home, and the Senator paid his call on Annette and enjoyed it very much. He had said to her at leaving:

“Remember, Mrs. Crane, you promised to dine with me many times in Washington, so that I may repeat, as far as possible, that pleasant day at Circleville.”

“I am prepared to fulfil my promise,” replied Annette, smiling, “but I hope you will give me a better dinner than I gave you.”

“More kickshaws, perhaps, but nothing better. My dear lady, you must remember the difference between a gourmand and a gourmet. One, the gourmand, is a crude product, and would prefer my cook. The gourmet, who is a critic by profession, would certainly prefer yours.”

It was arranged that Annette and Crane should dine with the Senator to meet a large party the next week. If Crane should be found to have an engagement, Annette was to notify the Senator.

But he had made none. When he returned from the House that, evening, at six o’clock, Annette told him of the Senator’s visit and invitation, and, as ever since the summer, as soon as Senator Bicknell’s name was mentioned, a look of guilt and shame came upon Crane’s expressive and mobile face. There was, however, no ground for declining, and, besides, had he not agreed to keep on the best possible terms with Senator Bicknell until—until the time came to betray him? And as he would be obliged to meet Senator Bicknell socially many times in the two years he would be plotting against him, Crane had no object in avoiding him now; but in meeting him, Crane had the grace to suffer pain.

On the night of the dinner, Annette, arrayed in her white crêpe, was among the prettiest women present. It was a very large dinner, extremely magnificent, and made up of important persons, but Annette Crane was by no means unobserved or unadmired. Crane was forced to see that. She was placed near to Senator Bicknell, and he paid her a degree of kind attention which would have been flattering to any woman.

When the dinner was over, and the gentlemen were about joining the ladies in the superb Louis Seize drawing-room, Senator Bicknell whispered to Crane as they passed from the Louis Quatorze dining-room, “Remain half an hour after the others leave.”

Crane started—had the Senator heard anything? He reassured himself by remembering that the Senator would not attack him, an invited guest, and in the presence of his wife. But the thought of a private interview with Senator Bicknell on any subject was disquieting to Crane.

When the last carriage had driven off, and only Crane and Annette remained, Senator Bicknell said:

“Come into my den; and, as I propose to take Mrs. Crane into my confidence, on account of the extraordinary political capacity she manifested at my visit to Circleville, I shall ask her to let us smoke while I unfold a scheme to you.”

The den was a small, luxurious room, in the Louis Quinze style, and fit to harbour Madame Pompadour herself. It was shaded by opalescent lamps, Turkish rugs covered the parquet floor, and pictures and bric-à-brac worthy of a palace were to be found there. Some people thought that the Senator’s den was one of the causes of the weakening of his political power. Many rural legislators reckoned his “fixin’s” as wicked, and were only reconciled by hearing of the prices paid by the Senator for Percheron horses and Jersey heifers. The Senator did not care a rap for either Percherons or Jerseys, and scarcely knew a Percheron horse from a Jersey cow, but it was a concession to the rural statesmen, and he wisely reckoned these bucolic luxuries in his political expenses. Seated before a fire of aromatic wood, Senator Bicknell, offering a choice cigar to Crane, and taking one himself, began to unfold his scheme. Annette, her white gown brought into high relief by a ruby lamp swinging overhead, sat silent and listened. She did not, apparently, watch her husband’s face, but she knew every expression which passed over it, and could have interpreted it, as well as every tone of his voice.

“To come to the point,” said the Senator, blandly, “I am one of a number of gentlemen interested in a deal of about two million acres of land in Texas. We have had an offer to sell our holdings and we have determined to accept. Part of the purchase-money is to be paid in cash, and there is also a transfer of property contemplated for about a million of dollars. Our attorneys are in Chicago, but meanwhile we want a man to go down to Texas once in a while and see how things are coming on, and attend to some matters of detail which I will state later on. The whole matter will hardly be settled under a year. We propose to pay a fee of ten thousand dollars and a small commission. I should say there was something like twenty thousand dollars in it for the right man. Several, of course, have been suggested, but you know, Mr. Crane, I am like John Adams was about New England men—there never was an office existing or created during John Adams’s time that he hadn’t a constituent ready for it. So, when the necessity for a man for this work became evident, I suggested I had a constituent, likewise a colleague, in the lower House, who could manage the job if he would, and mentioned your name.”

Twenty thousand dollars! It seemed to Crane an enormous sum. Then he heard Senator Bicknell’s voice continuing:

“It would oblige you to take a trip to Texas during the Christmas recess, and you would have to spend two or three months down there next summer, but I am persuaded we shall reach an early adjournment, so it would not necessarily interfere with you in any way. Besides, it might be useful to you in other ways, and it would be decidedly useful to me. It would show the people in the State that you and I are working well together in harness, and God knows I need some assurances of the sort to be given! That scoundrel, Governor Sanders, has been knifing me right and left all over the State, and I look for trouble both at the convention next summer and when I am up for re-election a year and a half from now.”

Crane remained silent a minute or two and grew pale. Senator Bicknell thought he was a little overcome at what was really a very magnificent offer to a man in his situation in life.

Annette, who had taken in, with perfect intelligence, all Senator Bicknell was saying, kept her eyes away from her husband. If he were in league with Governor Sanders——

Crane was not only overcome, he was overwhelmed. The thought came crashing through his brain, “This is the man I am secretly trying to destroy.” Every word the Senator uttered seemed to have the force of a thousand voices. “That scoundrel, Sanders.” Yes, Sanders was a scoundrel, but he had never pretended to be a friend of Senator Bicknell’s, nor was he indebted to the Senator for anything. Their warfare had been open and above-board, while his—oh, God! Crane could have cried aloud in his torture when he recalled the league with hell into which he had entered. His head was reeling, he heard the Senator’s voice afar off; the ruby light falling upon Annette, in her shining white gown, seemed to be a hundred miles away. Yet, with a calm voice, and with only a slight tremor of his hands, Crane answered:

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have made me a very splendid proposition; twenty thousand dollars to a rural Congressman is a great deal of money, and as for the confidence you show in me, I feel it more than I can express.”

He was conscious that he was displaying wonderful nerve; when he began to speak he scarcely knew whether he could get through with a single sentence, but he had spoken with tolerable ease and composure. Of course, he must appear as if he would accept; he could not on the spur of the moment devise any plausible refusal; he must have time to think; but it was utterly impossible that he should consider the matter for a moment. He was not yet bad enough for that. If only he had remained honest! For nothing brings home a man’s evil-doing to him more than when he sees the result in a concrete form. His wrong-doing comes out of the regions of mind and morals, and becomes a tangible and visible thing, like an incarnate devil. He realises his sin when he receives the wages of sin.

Annette listened to every note in Crane’s voice, and heard there falseness. He was not happy, not grateful for the offer. But she, at least, thanked Senator Bicknell from the bottom of her heart for his kind wish to benefit them. When he finished speaking she leaned toward him and laid her hand on his, while her eyes glowed with a lambent light.

“I thank you—I thank you, not only for my husband and myself, but for our little children. It means an education for them—many things their father and I have longed that we might give them when they are older, but feared we could not.”

Senator Bicknell raised her hand to his lips and kissed it gallantly.

“My dear lady,” he said, “I am glad to oblige your husband, and I believe he will render a full equivalent for whatever he makes out of this transaction. And I have frankly told him that I think our co-operation in business will be a good thing for me politically. But the day I spent at your house, the kind hospitality to your husband’s friend, the sweetness of your home, the excellent behaviour of your children, quickened very much the interest I felt in Mr. Crane, and it was a factor in my effort to serve him. Come now, Crane,” said the Senator, tapping him on the shoulder, “all I ask is that when I am up for re-election, if you choose to contest the election with me, you will please leave Mrs. Crane at home. If ever she enters into the campaign, I am lost.”

“She will enter the campaign, but it will be for you,” replied Annette.

Crane then pulled himself together, and again expressed his appreciation of Senator Bicknell’s kindness, and asked when they could meet to go into details of the affair—a meeting at which Crane was determined to decline the benefits offered him.

“Oh, some day next week. I’ll let you know when I hear from Chicago,” replied the Senator, and after a little more desultory talk the Cranes rose to go.

“I took the liberty of sending your carriage away, and my chauffeur will take you home,” said the Senator, mindful of attentions to a pretty and pleasing woman.

In a little while Annette and Crane were seated in the Senator’s automobile, and rushing through the frosty December night toward home.