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Title: The Social Secretary

Author: David Graham Phillips

Illustrator: Ralph Fletcher Seymour
        Clarence F. Underwood

Release date: October 9, 2017 [eBook #55719]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David E. Brown and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOCIAL SECRETARY ***




Produced by David E. Brown and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









The Social Secretary

[Illustration]




  THE SOCIAL
  SECRETARY

  _by_

  DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
  Author of The Plum Tree
  The Cost etc. etc.


  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD

  Decorations by
  Ralph Fletcher Seymour


  [Illustration]


  New York
  Grosset & Dunlap
  Publishers


  COPYRIGHT 1905
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  OCTOBER




The Social Secretary




The Social Secretary




I


November 29. At half-past one to-day--half-past one exactly--I began my
"career."

Mrs. Carteret said she would call for me at five minutes to one. But
it was ten minutes after when she appeared, away down at the corner of
I Street. Jim was walking up and down the drawing-room; I was at the
window, watching that corner of I Street. "There she blows!" I cried,
my voice brave, but my heart like a big lump of something soggy and
sad.

Jim hurried up and stood behind me, staring glumly over my shoulder. He
has proposed to me in so many words more than twenty times in the last
three years, and has looked it every time we've met--we meet almost
every day. I could feel that he was getting ready to propose again, but
I hadn't the slightest fear that he'd touch me. He's in the army, and
his "pull" has kept him snug and safe at Washington and has promoted
him steadily until now he's a Colonel at thirty-five. But he was
brought up in a formal, old-fashioned way, and he'd think it a deadly
insult to a woman he respected enough to ask her to be his wife if he
should touch her without her permission. I admire Jim's self-restraint,
but--I couldn't bear being married to a man who worshiped me, even if
I only liked him. If I loved him, I'd be utterly miserable. I've been
trying hard to love Jim for the past four months, or ever since I've
really realized how desperate my affairs are. But I can't. And the most
exasperating part of my obstinacy is that I can't find a good reason or
excuse for it.

As I was saying--or, rather, writing--Jim stood behind me and said in a
husky sort of voice: "You ain't goin' to do it, are you, Gus?"

I didn't answer. If I had said anything, it would have been a feeble,
miserable "No"--which would have meant that I was accepting the
alternative--him. All my courage had gone and I felt contemptibly
feminine and dependent.

I looked at him--I did like the expression of his eyes and the strength
and manliness of him from head to foot. What a fine sort of man a
"pull" and a private income have spoiled in Jim Lafollette! He went on:
"Surely, I'm not more repellent to you than--than what that auto is
coming to take you away to."

"Shame on you, Jim Lafollette!" I said angrily--most of the anger so
that he wouldn't understand and take advantage of the tears in my eyes
and voice. "But how like you! How _brave_!"

He reddened at that--partly because he felt guilty toward me, partly
because he is ashamed of the laziness that has made him shirk for
thirteen years. "I don't care a hang whether it's brave or not, or
_what_ it is," he said sullenly. "I want _you_. And it seems to me I've
got to do something--use force, if necessary--to keep you from--_from
that_. You ain't fit for it, Gus--not in any way. Why, it's worse than
being a servant. And you--brought up as you've been--"

I laughed--a pretty successful effort. "I've been educating for it all
my life, without knowing it. And it's honest and independent. If you
had the right sort of ideas of self-respect, you'd be ashamed of me if
you thought I'd be low enough to marry a man I couldn't give my heart
to--for a living."

"Don't talk rubbish," he retorted. "Thousands of women do it. Besides,
if I don't mind, why should you? God knows you've made it plain enough
that you don't love me. Gus, why can't you marry me and let me save you
from this just as a brother might save a sister?"

"Because I may love somebody some day, Jim," said I. I wanted to hurt
him--for his own sake, and also because I didn't want him to tempt me.

The auto was at the curb. He didn't move until I was almost at the
drawing-room door. Then he rushed at me and his look frightened me a
little. He caught me by the arm. "It's the last chance, Augusta!" he
exclaimed. "Won't you?"

I drew away and hurried out. "Then you don't intend to have anything
to do with me after I've crossed the line and become a toiler?" I
called back over my shoulder. I couldn't resist the temptation to be
thoroughly feminine and leave the matter open by putting him in the
wrong with my "woman's last word." I was so low in my mind that I
reasoned that my adventure might be as appalling as I feared, in which
case it would be well to have an alternative. I wonder if the awful
thoughts we sometimes have are our real selves or if they just give us
the chance to measure the gap between what we might be as shown by them
and what we are as shown by our acts. I hope the latter, for surely I
can't be as poor a creature as I so often have impulses to make myself.

Mrs. Carteret was waiting for the servant to open the door. I hurried
her back toward the auto, being a little afraid that Jim would be
desperate enough to come out and beg her to help him--and I knew she
would do it if she were asked. In the first place, Jessie always does
what she's asked to do--if it helps her to spend time and breath. In
the second place, she'd never let up on me if she thought I had so good
a chance to marry. For she knows that Washington is the hardest place
in the world for a woman to find a husband unless she's got something
that appeals to the ambition of men. Besides, she thinks, as do many of
my friends, that I am indifferent to men and discourage them. As if any
woman was indifferent to men! The only point is that women's ideas of
what constitutes a man differ, and my six years in this cosmopolis have
made me somewhat discriminating.

But to return to Jessie, she was full of apologies for being late.
"I've thought of nothing but you, dear, for two days and nights. And I
thought that for once in my life I'd be on time. Yet here I am, fifteen
minutes late, unless that clock's wrong." She was looking at the
beautiful little clock set in the dashboard of the auto.

"Only fifteen minutes!" I said. "And you never before were known to
be less than half an hour late. You even kept the President waiting
twenty minutes."

"Isn't it stupid, this fussing about being on time?" she replied. "I
don't believe any but dull people and those who want to get something
from one are ever on time. For those who really live, life is so full
that punctuality is impossible. But I should have been on time, if I
hadn't been down seeing the Secretary of War about Willie Catesby--poor
Willie! He has been _so_ handicapped by nature!"

"Did you get it for him?" I asked.

"I think so--third secretary at St. Petersburg. The secretary said:
'But Willie is almost an imbecile, Mrs. Carteret. If we don't send
him abroad, his family'll have to put him away.' And I said: 'That's
true, Mr. Secretary. But if we don't send that sort of people to
foreign courts, how are we to repay the insults they send us in the
form of imbecile attachés?' And then I handed him six letters from
senators--every one of them a man whose vote he needs for his fight
on that nomination. They were _real_ letters. So presently he said,
'Very well, Mrs. Carteret, I'll do what I can to resent the Czar's last
insult by exporting Willie to him."

I waited a moment, then burst out with what I was full of. "You think
she'll take me?" I said.

Jessie reproached me with tragedy in her always intensely serious gray
eyes. "Take _you_?" she exclaimed. "Take a Talltowers when there's a
chance to get one? Why, as soon as I explained who you were, she fairly
quivered with eagerness."

"You had to _explain_ who a Talltowers is?" I said with mock
amazement. It's delightful to poke fun at Jessie; she always
appreciates a jest by taking it more seriously than an ordinary
statement of fact.

"But, dear, you mustn't be offended. You know Mrs. Burke is very common
and ignorant. She doesn't know the first thing about the world. She
said to me the other day that she had often heard there were such
things as class distinctions, but had never believed it until she came
to Washington--she had thought it was like the fairy stories. She never
was farther east than Chicago until this fall. She went there to the
Fair. You must get her to tell you how she and three other women who
belong to the same Chautauqua Circle went on together and slept in the
same room and walked from dawn till dark every day, catalogue in hand,
for eleven days. It's too pathetic. She said, 'My! but my feet were
sore. I thought I was a cripple for life.'"

"That sounds nice and friendly," said I, suspicious that Jessie's
quaint sense of humor had not permitted her to appreciate Mrs. Burke.
"I'm so dreadfully afraid I'll fall into the clutches of people that'll
try to--to humiliate me."

Tears sprang to Jessie's eyes. "Please don't, Gus!" she pleaded.
"They'll be only too deferential. And you must keep them so. I suspect
that Mrs. Burke chums with her servants."

We were stopping before the house--the big, splendid Ralston Castle,
as they call it; one of the very finest of the houses that have been
building since rich men began to buy into the Senate and Cabinet
and aspire for diplomatic places, and so have attracted other rich
families to Washington. What a changed Washington it is, and what a
fight the old simplicity is making against the new ostentation! The
sight of the Ralston Castle in my present circumstances depressed me
horribly. I went to my second ball there, and it was given for me by
Mrs. Ralston. And only a little more than a year ago I danced in the
quadrille of honor with the French Ambassador--and the next week the
Ralstons went smash and hurried abroad to hide, all except the old man
who is hanging round Wall Street, they say, trying to get on his feet
with the aid of his friends. Friends! How that word must burn into
him every time he thinks of it. When he got into a tight place his
"friends" took advantage of their knowledge of his affairs to grab his
best securities, they say. No doubt he was disagreeable in a way, but
still those who turned on him the most savagely had been intimate with
him and had accepted his hospitality.

"You'll be mistress here," Jessie was saying. She had put on her
prophetic look and pose--she really believes she has second sight at
certain times. "And you'll marry the son, if you manage it right. I
counted him in when I was going over the advantages and disadvantages
of the place before proposing it to you. He looks like a mild, nice
young man--though I must say I don't fancy cowlicks right in the part
of the hair. I saw only his picture."

A tall footman with an insolent face opened the door and ushered
us into the small drawing-room to the left: "Mrs. Carteret! Miss
Talltowers!" he shouted--far louder than is customary or courteous. I
saw the impudent grin in his eyes--no proper man-servant ever permits
any one to see his eyes. And he almost dropped the curtain in our
faces, in such haste was he to get back to his lounging-place below
stairs.

His roar had lifted to her feet an elderly woman with her hair so
badly dyed that it made her features look haggard and harsh and even
dissipated. She made a nervous bow. She was of the figure called stout
by the charitable and sumptuous by the crude. She was richly-dressed,
over-dressed, dressed-up--shiny figured satin with a great deal of
beads and lace that added to her width and subtracted from her height.
She stood miserable, jammed and crammed into a tight corset. Her
hands--very nice hands, I noticed--were folded upon her stomach. As
soon as I got used to that revolting hair-dye, I saw that she had in
fact a large-featured, sweet face with fine brown eyes. Even with the
dye she was the kind of looking woman that it sounds perfectly natural
to hear her husband call "mother."

Jessie went up to her as she stood wretched in her pitiful attempt at
youth and her grandeur of clothes and surroundings. Mrs. Burke looked
down kindly, with a sudden quizzical smile that reminded me of my
suspicions as to the Chicago Fair story. Jessie was looking up like a
plump, pretty, tame robin, head on one side. "_Dear_ Mrs. Burke," she
said. "This is Miss Talltowers, and I'm sure you'll love each other."

Mrs. Burke looked at me--I thought, with a determined attempt to be
suspicious and cautious. I'm afraid Jessie's reputation for tireless
effort to do something for everybody has finally "queered" her
recommendations. However, whatever warning Mrs. Burke had received went
for nothing. She was no match for Jessie--Jessie from whom his Majesty
at the White House hides when he knows she's coming for an impossible
favor--she was no match for Jessie and she knew it. She wiped the sweat
from her face and stammered: "I hope we'll suit each other, Miss--" In
her embarrassment she had forgotten my name.

"Talltowers," whispered Jessie with a side-splitting look of tragic
apology to me. Just then the clock in the corner struck out the
half-hour from its cathedral bell--the sound echoed and reëchoed
through me, for it marked the beginning of my "career." Jessie went on
more loudly: "And now that our _business_ is settled, can't we have
some lunch, Mrs. Burke? I'm starved."

Mrs. Burke brightened. "The Senator won't be here to-day," she drawled,
in a tone which always suggests to me that, after all, life is a
smooth, leisurely matter with plenty of time for everything except
work. "As he was leaving for the Capitol this morning, he says to me,
says he: 'You women had better fight it out alone.'"

"The _dear_ Senator!" said Jessie. "He's _so_ clever?"

"Yes, he _is_ mighty clever with those he likes," replied Mrs.
Burke--Jessie looking at me to make sure I would note Mrs. Burke's
"provincial" way of using the word clever.

Jessie saved the luncheon--or, at least, thought she was saving it.
Mrs. Burke and I had only to listen and eat. I caught her looking at
me several times, and then I saw shrewdness in her eyes--good-natured,
but none the less penetrating for that. And I knew I should like her,
and should get on with her. At last our eyes met and we both smiled.
After that she somehow seemed less crowded and foreign in her tight,
fine clothes. I saw she was impatient for Jessie to go the moment
luncheon was over, but it was nearly three o'clock before we were left
alone together. There fell an embarrassed silence--for both of us were
painfully conscious that nothing had really been settled.

"When do you wish me to come--if you do wish it at all?" I asked, by
way of making a beginning.

"When do you think you could come?" she inquired nervously.

"Then you do wish to give me a trial? I hope you won't feel that Mrs.
Carteret's precipitate way binds you."

She gave me a shrewd, good-natured look. "I want you to come," she
said. "I wanted it from what I'd heard of you--I and Mr. Burke. I want
it more than ever, now that I've seen you. When can you come?"

"To-morrow--to-morrow morning?"

"Come as early as you like. The salary is--is satisfactory?"

"Mrs. Carteret said--but I'm sure--you can judge better--whatever--" I
stuttered, red as fire.

Mrs. Burke laughed. "I can see you ain't a great hand at business. The
salary is two thousand a year, with a three months' vacation in the
time we're not at Washington. Always have a plain understanding in
money matters--it saves a lot of mean feelings and quarrels."

"Very well--whatever you think. I don't believe I'm worth much of
anything until I've had a chance to show what I can do."

"Well, Tom--Mr. Burke--said two thousand would be about right at the
set-off," she drawled in her calming tone. "So we'll consider that
settled."

"Yes," I gasped, with a big sigh of relief. "I suppose you wish me to
take charge of your social matters--relieve you of the burdensome part
of entertaining?"

"I just wish you could," she said, with a great deal of humor in her
slow voice. "But I've got to keep that--it's the trying to make people
have a good time and not look and act as if they were wondering why
they'd come."

"That'll soon wear off," said I. "Most of the stiffness is strangeness
on both sides, don't you think?"

"I don't know. As nearly as I can make out, they never had a real,
natural good time in their lives. They wear the Sunday, go-to-meeting
clothes and manners the whole seven days. I'll never get used to it.
I can't talk that kind of talk. And if I was just plain and natural,
they'd think I was stark crazy."

"Did you ever try?"

She lifted her hands in mock-horror. "Mercy, no! Tom--Mr. Burke--warned
me."

I laughed. "Men don't know much about that sort of thing," said I. "A
woman might as well let a man tell her how to dress as how to act."

She colored. "He does," she said, her eyes twinkling. "He was here
two winters--this is my first. I've a kind of feeling that he really
don't know, but he's positive and--I've had nobody else to talk about
it with. I'm a stranger here--not a friend except people who--well, I
can guess pretty close to what they say behind my back." She laughed--a
great shaking of as much of her as was not held rigid by that tight
corset. "Not that I care--I like a joke myself, and I'm a good deal of
a joke among these grand folks. Only, I do want to help Tom, and not be
a drag." She gave me a sudden, sharp look. "I don't know why I trust
you, I'm sure."

"Because I'm your confidential adviser," said I, "and it's always well
to keep nothing from a confidential adviser." The longer I looked and
listened, the larger possibilities I saw in her. My enthusiasm was
rising.

She rose and came to me and kissed me. There were tears in her eyes.
"I've been _so_ lonesome," she said. "Even Tom don't seem natural any
more, away off here in the East. Sometimes I get so homesick that I
just can't eat or anything."

"We're going to have a lot of fun," said I encouragingly--as if she
were twenty-four and I fifty, instead of it being the other way.
"You'll soon learn the ropes."

"I'm so glad you use slang," she drawled, back in her chair and
comfortably settled. "My, but Tom'll be scandalized. He's made
inquiries about you and has made up his mind that whatever you say is
right. And I almost believed he knew the trails. I might 'a' known!
He's a man, you see, and always was stiff with the ladies. You ought
to 'a' seen the letter he wrote proposing to me. You see, I'm kind of
fat and always was. Mother used to tease me because I hadn't any beaux
except Tom, who wouldn't come to the point. She said: 'Lizzie, you'll
never have a man make real love to you.' And she was right. When Tom
proposed he wrote very formal-like--not a sentimental word. And when
we were married and got better acquainted, I teased him about it, and
tried to get him to make love, real book kind of love. But not a word!
But he's fond of me--we always have got on fine, and his being no good
at love-talk is just one of our jokes."

It was fine to hear her drawl it out--I knew that she was sure to make
a hit, if only I could get her under way, could convince her that it's
nice to be natural if you're naturally nice.

"Tom" came in from the Senate and I soon saw that, though she was a
"really" lady, of the only kind that is real--the kind that's born
right, he was a made gentleman, and not a very successful job. He was
small and thin and dressed with the same absurd stiff care with which
he had made her dress. He had a pointed reddish beard and reddish
curls, and he used a kind of scent that smelt cheap though it probably
wasn't. He was very precise and distant with me--how "Lizzie's" eyes
did twinkle as she watched him. I saw that she was "on to" Tom with the
quickness with which a shrewd woman always finds out, once she gets the
clue.

"Have you had Miss Talltowers shown her rooms, Mrs. Burke?" he soon
inquired.

"Why, no, pa," replied Mrs. Burke. "I forgot it clear." As she said
"pa" he winced and her eyes danced with fun. She went on to me: "You
don't mind our calling each other pa and ma before you, do you, Miss
Talltowers? We're so used to doing it that, if you minded it and we had
to stop, we'd feel as if we had company in the house all the time."

I didn't dare answer, I was so full of laughter. For "pa" looked as if
he were about to sink through the floor. She led me up to my rooms--a
beautiful suite on the third floor. "We took the house furnished," she
explained as we went, "and I feel as if I was living in a hotel--except
that the servants ain't nearly so nice. I do hope you'll help me with
them. Tom wanted me to take a housekeeper, but those that applied were
such grand ladies that I'd rather 'a' done all my own work than 'a'
had any one of them about. Perhaps we could get one now, and you could
kind of keep her in check."

"I think it'd be better to have some one," I replied. "I've had
some experience in managing a house." I couldn't help saying it
unsteadily--not because I miss our house; no, I'm sure it wasn't that.
But I suddenly saw the old library and my father looking up from
his book to smile lovingly at me as I struggled with the household
accounts. Anyhow, deep down I'm glad he did know so little about
business and so much about everything that's fine. I'd rather have my
memories of him than any money he could have left me by being less of a
father and friend and more of a "practical" man.

Mrs. Burke looked at me sympathetically--I could see that she longed
to say something about my changed fortunes, but refrained through fear
of not saying the right thing. I must teach her never to be afraid of
that--a born lady with a good heart could never be really tactless.
She went to the front door with me, opening it for me herself to
the contemptuous amusement of the tall footman. We shook hands and
kissed--I usually can't bear to have a woman kiss me, but I'd have felt
badly if "ma" Burke hadn't done it.

When I got back to Rachel's and burst into the drawing-room with a
radiant face, I heard a grunt like a groan. It was from Jim in the
twilight near Rachel at the tea-table. "I'm going out to service
to-morrow," said I to Rachel. "So you're to be rid of your visitor at
last."

"Oh, Gus!" exclaimed Rachel between anger and tears. And Jim looked
black and sullen. But I was happy--and am to-night. Happy for the
first time in two years. I'm going to _do_ something--and it is
something that interests me. I'm going to launch a fine stately ship, a
full-rigged four-master in this big-little sea of Washington society.
What a sensation I can make with it among the pretty holiday boats!




II


December 6. Last Monday morning young Mr. Burke--Cyrus, the son and
heir--arrived, just from Germany. The first glimpse I had of him was as
he entered the house between his father and his mother, who had gone to
the station to meet him. I got myself out of the way and didn't come
down until "ma" Burke sent for me. I liked the way she was sitting
there beaming--but then, I like almost everything she does; she's such
a large, natural person. She never stands, except on her way to sit
just as soon as ever she can. "I never was a great hand for using my
feet," she said to me on my second day, "and I don't know but about
as much seems to 'a' come to find me as most people catch up with by
running their legs off." I liked the way her son was hovering about
her. And I liked the way "pa" Burke hovered round them both, nervous
and pulling at his whiskers and trying to think of things to say--if he
only wouldn't use brilliantine, or whatever it is, on his whiskers!

"Cyrus, this is my friend, Miss Talltowers," said Mrs. Burke. I smiled
and he clapped his heels together with a click and doubled up as if he
had a sudden pain in his middle, just like all the northern Continental
diplomats. When he straightened back to the normal I took a good look
at him--and he at me. I don't know--or, rather, didn't then know--what
_he_ thought. But I thought him--well, "common." He has a great big
body that's strong and well-proportioned; but his features are so
insignificant--a small mouth, a small nose, small ears, eyes, forehead,
small head. And there, in the very worst place--just where the part
ought to be--was the cowlick I'd noticed in his photograph. When he
began to speak I liked him still less. He's been at Berlin three years,
but still has his Harvard accent. I wonder why they teach men at
Harvard to use their lips in making words as a Miss Nancy sort of man
uses his fingers in doing fancy work?

Neither of us said anything memorable, and presently he went away to
his room, his mother going up with him. His father followed to the
foot of the stairs, then drifted away to his study where he could lie
in wait for Cyrus on his way down. Pretty soon his mother came into the
"office" they've given me--it's just off the drawing-room so that I can
be summoned to it the instant any one comes to see Mrs. Burke.

[Illustration: CLARENCE F. UNDERWOOD]

"I've let his pa have him for a while," she explained, as she came in.
I saw that she was full of her boy, so I turned away from my books.
She rambled on about him for an hour, not knowing what she was saying,
but just pouring out whatever came into her head. "His pa has always
said I'd spoil him," was one of the things I remember, "but I don't
think love ever spoiled anybody." Also she told me that his real
name wasn't Cyrus but Bucyrus, the town his father originally came
from--it's somewhere in Ohio, I think she said. "And," said she,
"whenever I want to cut his comb I just give him his name. He tames
right down." Also that he has used all sorts of things on the cowlick
without success. "There it is, still," said she, "as cross-grained as
ever. I like it about the best of anything, except maybe his long legs.
I'm a duck-leg myself, and his pa--well, _his_ legs 'just about reach
the ground,' as Lincoln said, and after that the less said the sooner
forgot. But Cyrus has _legs_. And his cowlick matches a cowlick in his
disposition--a kind of gnarly knot that you can't cut nor saw through
nor get round no way. It's been the saving of him, he's so good-natured
and easy otherwise." And she went on to tell how generous he is, "the
only generous small-eared person I've ever known, though I must say
I have my doubts about ears as a sign. There was Bill Slayback in our
town, with ears like a jack-rabbit, and whenever he had a poor man do a
job of work about his place he used to pay him with a ninety-day note
and then shave the note."

I was glad when she hurried away at the sound of Cyrus in the hall.
For a huge lot of work there'll be for me to do until I get things in
some sort of order. I've opened a regular set of books to keep the
social accounts in. Of course, nobody who goes in for society, on the
scale we're going into it, could get along without social bookkeeping
as big as a bank's. I pity the official women in the high places who
can't afford secretaries; they must spend hours every night posting and
fussing with their account-books when they ought to be in bed asleep.

On my second day here "pa" Burke explained what his plans were. "We
wish to make our house," said he, "the most distinguished social center
in Washington, next to the White House--and very democratic. Above all,
Miss Talltowers, democratic."

"He don't mean that he wants us to do our own work and send out the
wash," drawled "ma" Burke, who was sitting by. "But democratic, with
fourteen servants in livery."

"I understand," said I. "You wish simplicity, and people to feel at
ease, Mr. Burke."

"Exactly," he replied in a dubious tone. "But I wish to maintain
the--the dignities, as it were."

I saw he was afraid I might get the idea he wanted something like those
rough-and-tumble public maulings of the President that they have
at the White House. I hastened to reassure him; then I explained my
plan. I had drawn up a system somewhat like those the President's wife
and the Cabinet women and the other big entertainers have. I'm glad
the Burkes haven't any daughters. If they had I'd certainly need an
assistant. As it is, I'm afraid I'll worry myself hollow-eyed over my
books.

First, there's the Ledger--a real, big, thick office ledger with almost
four hundred accounts in it, each one indexed. Of course, there aren't
any entries as yet. But there soon will be--what we owe various people
in the way of entertainment, what they've paid, and what they owe us.

Second, there's my Day-Book. It contains each day's engagements so that
I can find out at a glance just what we've got to do, and can make out
each night before going to bed or early each morning the schedule for
Mrs. Burke for the day, and for Senator Burke and the son, I suppose,
for the late afternoon and the evening.

Third, there's the Calling-Book. Already I've got down more than
a thousand names. The obscurer the women are--the back-district
congressmen's wives and the like--the greater the necessity for keeping
the calling account straight. I wonder how many public men have had
their careers injured or ruined just because their wives didn't keep
the calling account straight. They say that _men_ forgive slights, and,
when it's to their interest, forget them. But I know the _women_ never
do. They keep the knife sharp and wait for a chance to stick it in,
for years and years. Of course, if the Burkes weren't going into this
business in a way that makes me think the Senator's looking for the
nomination for president I shouldn't be so elaborate. We'd pick out our
set and stick to it and ignore the other sets. As it is, I'm going to
do this thing thoroughly, as it hasn't been done before.

Fourth, there's our Ball-and-Big-Dinner Book. That's got a list of
all the young men and another of all the young women. And I'm making
notes against the names of those I don't know very well or don't know
at all--notes about their personal appearance, eligibility, capacities
for dancing, conversation, and so forth and so on. If you're going to
make an entertainment a success you've got to know something more or
less definite about the people that are coming, whom to ask to certain
things and whom not to ask. Take a man like Phil Harkness, or a girl
like Nell Witton, for example. Either of them would ruin a dinner, but
Phil shines at a ball, where silence and good steady dancing are what
the girls want. As for Nell, she's possible at a ball only if you can
be sure John Rush or somebody like him is coming--somebody to sit with
her and help her blink at the dancers and be bored. Then there's the
Sam Tremenger sort of man--a good talker, but something ruinous when
he turns loose in a ball-room and begins to batter the women's toilets
to bits. He's a dinner man, but you can't ask him when politics may be
discussed--he gets so violent that he not only talks all the time, but
makes a deafening clamor and uses swear words--and we still have quiet
people who get gooseflesh for damn.

Then there's--let me see, what number--oh, yes--fifth, there's my
Acceptance-and-Refusal Book. It's most necessary, both as a direct help
and as an indirect check on other books. Then, too, I want it to be
impossible to send the Burkes to places they've said they wouldn't go,
or for them to be out when they've asked people to come here. Those
things usually happen when you've asked some of those dreadful people
that everybody always forgets, yet that are sure to be important at
some critical time.

Sixth, there's my Book of Home Entertainments--a small book but most
necessary, as arranging entertainments in the packed days of the
Washington season isn't easy.

Seventh, there's the little book with the list of entertainments other
people are going to give. We have to have that so that we can know
how to make our plans. And in it I'm going to keep all the information
I can get about the engagements of the people we particularly want to
ask. If I'm not sharp-eyed about that I'll fail in one of my principal
duties, which is getting the right sort of people under this roof often
enough during the season to give us "distinction."

Eighth, there's my Distinguished-Stranger Book. I'm going to make that
a specialty. I want to try to know whenever anybody who is anybody
is here on a visit, so that we can get hold of him if possible. The
White House can get all that sort of information easily because the
distinguished stranger always gives the President a chance to get at
him. _We_ shall have to make an effort, but I think we'll succeed.

Ninth--that's my book for press notices. It's empty now, but I think
"pa" Burke will be satisfied long before the season is over.

Quite a library isn't it? How simple it must be to live in a city like
New York or Boston where one bothers only with the people of one set
and has practically no bookkeeping beyond a calling list. And here it's
getting worse and worse each season.

Let me see, how many sets are there? There's the set that can say
must to us--the White House and the Cabinet and the embassies. Then
there's the set we can say must to--a huge, big set and, in a way,
important, but there's nobody really important in it. Then there's the
still wider lower official set--such people as the under-secretaries
of departments, the attachés of embassies, small congressmen and the
like. Then there's the old Washington aristocracy--my particular crowd.
It doesn't amount to "shucks," as Mrs. Burke would say, but everybody
tries to be on good terms with it, Lord knows why. Finally, there's the
set of unofficial people--the rich or otherwise distinguished who live
in Washington and must be cultivated. And we're going to gather in all
of them, so as not to miss a trick.

The first one of the Burkes to whom I showed my books and explained
myself in full was "ma" Burke. She looked as if she had been taken with
a "misery," as she calls it. "Lord! Lord!" she groaned. "Whatever have
I got my fool self into?"

I laughed and assured her that it was nothing at all. "I'm only showing
you _my_ work. All you've got to do is to carry out each day's work.
I'll see to it that you won't even have to bother about what clothes to
wear, unless you want to. You'll be perfectly free to enjoy yourself."

"_Enjoy_ myself?" said she. "Why, I'll be on the jump from morning till
night."

"From morning till morning again," I corrected. "The men sleep
in Washington. But the women with social duties have no time for
sleep--only for naps."

"I reckon it'll hardly be worth while to undress for bed," she said
grimly. "I'm going to have the bed taken out of my room. It'd drive
me crazy to look at it. Such a good bed, too. I always was a great
hand for a good bed. I've often said to pa that you can't put too much
value into a bed--and by bed I don't mean headboard and footboard, nor
canopy nor any other fixings. What do you think of my hair?"

I was a bit startled by her sudden change of subject. I waited.

"Don't mind me--speak right out," she said with her good-natured
twinkle. "You might think it wasn't my hair, but it is. The color's
not, though, as you may be surprised to hear." The "surprised" was
broadly satirical.

"I prefer natural hair," said I, "and gray hair is most becoming. It
makes a woman look younger, not older."

"That's sensible," said she. "I never did care for bottled hair. I
think it looks bad from the set-off, and gets worse. The widow Pfizer
in our town got so that hers was bright green after she bottled it for
two years, trying to catch old man Coakley. And after she caught him
she bottled his, and it turned out green, too, after a while."

"Why run such a risk?" said I. "I'm sure your own hair done as your
maid can do it would be far more becoming."

Mrs. Burke was delighted. "I might have known better," she observed,
"but I found Mr. Burke bottling his beard, and he wanted me to; and it
seemed to me that somehow bottled hair just fitted right in with all
the rest of this foolishness here. How they would rear round at home if
they knew what kind of a place Washington is! Why, I hear that up at
the White House, when the President leaves the table for a while during
meals, all the ladies--women, I mean--his wife and all of them, have to
rise and stand till he comes back."

"Yes," I replied. "He's started that custom. I like ceremony, don't
you?"

"No, I can't say that I do," she drawled. "Out home all the drones and
pokes and nobodies are just crazy about getting out in feathers and
red plush aprons and clanking and pawing round, trying to make out
they're somebody. And I've always noticed that whenever anybody that
is a somebody hankers after that sort of thing it's because he's got a
streak of nobody in him. No, I don't like it in Cal Walters out home,
and I don't like it in the President."

"We've got to do as the other capitals do," said I. "Naturally, as we
get more and more ambassadors, and a bigger army, and the President
more powerful, we become like the European courts. And the President is
simply making a change abruptly that'd have to come gradually anyhow."

Her eyes began to twinkle. "First thing you know, the country'll turn
loose a herd of steers from the prairies in this town, and--But, long
as it's here, I suppose I've got to abide by it. So I'll do whatever
you say. It'll be a poor do, without my trying to find fault."

And she's being as good as her word. She makes me tell her exactly
what to do. She is so beautifully simple and ladylike in her frank
confessions of her ignorance--just as the Queen of England would be if
she were to land on the planet Mars and have to learn the ways--the
surface ways, I mean. I've no doubt that outside of a few frills which
silly people make a great fuss about, a lady is a lady from one end of
the universe to the other.

I'm making the rounds of my friends with Mrs. Burke in this period of
waiting for the season to begin. And she sits mum and keeps her eyes
moving. She's rapidly picking up the right way to say things--that
is, the self-assurance to say things in her own way. I took her
among my friends first because I wanted her to realize that I was
absolutely right in urging her to naturalness. There are so many in the
different sets she'll be brought into contact with who are ludicrously
self-conscious. Certainly, there's much truth in what she says about
the new order. We Americans don't do the European sort of thing well,
and, while the old way wasn't pretty to look at it, it was--it was our
own. However, I'm merely a social secretary, dealing with what is, and
not bothering my head about what ought to be. And as for the Burkes,
they're here to take advantage of what is, not to revolutionize things.

Mr. Burke himself was the next member of the family at whom I got a
chance with my great plans. When he had got it all out of me he began
to pace up and down the floor, pulling at his whiskers, and evidently
thinking. Finally he looked at me in a kindly, sharp way, and, in a
voice I recognized at once as the voice of the Thomas Burke who had
been able to pile up a fortune and buy into the Senate, said:

"I double your salary, Miss Talltowers. And I hope you understand that
expense isn't to be considered in carrying out your program. I want you
to act just as if this were all for yourself. And if we succeed I think
you'll find I'm not ungenerous." And before I could try to thank him he
was gone.

The last member was "Bucyrus." As I knew his parents wished to be
alone with him at first I kept out of the way, breakfasting in my
rooms, lunching and dining out a great deal. What little I saw of him
I didn't like. He ignored me most of the time--and I, for one woman,
don't like to be ignored by any man. When he did speak to me it was as
they speak to the governess in families where they haven't been used
to very much for very long. Perhaps this piqued me a little, but it
certainly amused me, and I spoke to him in an humble, deferential way
that seemed somehow to make him uneasy.

It was day before yesterday that he came into my office about an hour
after luncheon. He tried to look very dignified and superior.

"Miss Talltowers," he said, "I must request you to refrain from calling
me sir whenever you address me."

"I beg your pardon, sir," I replied meekly, "but I have never addressed
you. I hope I know my place and my duty better than that. Oh, no, sir,
I have always waited to be spoken to."

He blazed a furious red. "I must request you," he said, with his speech
at its most fancy-work like, "not to continue your present manner
toward me. Why, the very servants are laughing at me."

"Oh, sir," I said earnestly, "I'm sure that's not my fault." And I
didn't spoil it by putting accent on the "that" and the "my."

He got as pale as he had been red. "Are you trying to make it
impossible for us to remain under the same roof?" he demanded. What a
spoiled stupid!

"I'm sure, sir," said I, and I think my eyes must have shown what an
unpleasant mood his hinted threat had put me in, "that I'm not even
succeeding in making it impossible for us to remain in my private
office at the same time. Do you understand me, or do you wish me to
make my meaning--"

He had given a sort of snort and had rushed from the room.

I suppose I ought to be more charitable toward him. A small person,
brought up to regard himself as a sort of god, and able to buy
flattery, and permitted to act precisely as his humors might
suggest--what is to be expected of such a man? No, not a man but boy,
for he's only twenty-six. _Only_ twenty-six! One would think I was
forty to hear me talking in that way of twenty-six. But women always
seem older than men who are even many years older than they. And how
having to earn my own bread has aged me inside! I think Jessie was
right when she said in that solemn way of hers, "And although, dear
Augusta, they may think you haven't brains enough, I assure you you'll
develop them." Poor, dear Jessie! How she would amuse herself if she
could be as she is, and also have a sense of humor!

At any rate, Mr. Bucyrus came striding back after half an hour, and,
rather surlily but with a certain grudging manliness, said: "I beg your
pardon, Miss Talltowers, for what I said. I am ashamed of my having
forgotten myself and made that tyrannical speech to you."

"Thank you, sir," said I, without raising my eyes. "You are most
gracious."

"And I hope," he went on, "that you will try to treat me as an equal."

"It'll be very hard to do that, sir," said I. And I lifted my eyes and
let him see that I was laughing at him.

He shifted uneasily, red and white by turns. "I think you understand
me," he muttered.

"Perfectly," said I.

He waved his arm impatiently. "Please don't!" he exclaimed rather
imperiously. "I could have got my mother to--"

"I hope you won't complain of me to your mother," I pleaded.

He flushed and snorted, like a horse that is being teased by a fly it
can reach with neither teeth, hoofs nor tail. "You know I didn't mean
that. I'm not an utter cad--now, don't say, 'Aren't you, sir?'"

"I had no intention of doing so," said I. "In fact I've been trying
to make allowances for you--for your mother's sake. I appreciate that
you've been away from civilization for a long time. And I'm sure we
shall get on comfortably, once you've got your bearings again."

He was silent, stood biting his lips and looking out of the window.
Presently, when I had resumed my work, he said in an endurable tone and
manner: "I hope you will be kind enough to include me in that admirable
social scheme of yours. Are those your books?"

I explained them to him as briefly as I could. I had no intention
of making myself obnoxious, but on the other hand I did not, and do
not purpose to go out of my way to be courteous to this silly of an
overgrown, spoiled baby. He tried to be nice in praise of my system,
but I got rid of him as soon as I had explained all that my obligations
as social secretary to the family required. He thanked me as he was
leaving and said, in his most gracious tone, "I shall see that my
father raises your salary."

I fairly gasped at the impudence of this, but before I could collect
myself properly to deal with him he was gone. Perhaps it was just as
well. I must be careful not to be "sensitive"--that would make me as
ridiculous as he is.

And that's the man Jim Lafollette is fairly smoking with jealousy of!
He was dining at Rachel's last night, and Rachel put him next me. He
couldn't keep off the subject of "that young Burke." Jessie overheard
him after a while and leaned round and said to me, "How do you and
young Mr. Burke get on?" in her "strictly private" manner--Jessie's
strictly private manner is about as private as the Monument.

"Not badly," I replied, to punish Jim. "We're gradually getting
acquainted."

Jim sneered under his mustache. "It's the most shameful scheme two
women ever put up," he said, as if he were joking.

"Oh, has Jessie told you?" I exclaimed, pretending to be concealing my
vexation.

"It's the talk of the town," he answered, showing his teeth in a grin
that was all fury and no fun.

There may be women idiots enough to marry a man who warns them in
advance that he's rabidly jealous, but I'm not one of them. Better a
crust in quietness.




III


December 27. Three weeks simply boiling with business since I wrote
here--and it seems not more than so many days. And all by way of
preparation, for the actual season is still five days away.

I can hardly realize that Mrs. Burke is the same person I looked at so
dubiously two days less than a month ago. Truly, the right sort of us
Americans are wonderful people. To begin with her appearance: her hair
isn't "bottled," as she called it, any more. It's beautiful iron-gray,
and softens her features and permits all the placid kindliness and
humor of her face to show. Then there's her dress--gracious, how
tight-looking she was! A _thin_ woman can, and should, wear _close_
things. But no woman who wishes to look like a lady must ever wear
anything _tight_. To be tight in one's clothes is to be tight in one's
talk, manner, thought--and that means--well, common. What an expressive
word "common" is, yet I'm sure I couldn't define it.

For a fat woman to be tight is--revolting! My idea of misery is a fat
woman in a tight waist and tight shoes. Yet fat women have a mania
for wearing tight things, just as gaunt women yearn for stripes and
short women for flounces. My first move in getting Mrs. Burke into
shape--after doing away with that dreadful "bottled" hair--was to
put her into comfortable clothes. The first time I got her into an
evening dress of the right sort I was rewarded for all my trouble by
her expression. She kissed me with tears in her eyes. "My dear," said
she, "never before did I have a best dress that I wasn't afraid to
breathe in for fear I'd bust out, back or front." Then I made her sit
down before her long glass and look at herself carefully. She had the
prettiest kind of color in her cheeks as she smiled at me and said: "If
I'd 'a' looked like this when I was young I reckon Mr. Burke wouldn't
'a' been so easy in his mind when he went away from home, nor 'a'
stayed so long. I always did sympathize with pretty women when they
capered round, but now I wonder they ever do sober down. If I weighed a
hundred pounds or so less I do believe I'd try to frisk yet."

And I do believe she could; for she's really a handsome woman. Why is
it that the women who have the most to them don't give it a chance to
show through, but get themselves up so that anybody who glances at them
tries never to look again?

It is the change in her appearance even more than all she's learned
that has given her self-confidence. She feels at ease--and that puts
her at ease, and puts everybody else at ease, too. It has reacted upon
Mr. Burke. He has dropped brilliantine--perhaps "ma" gave him a quiet
hint--and he has taken some lessons in dress from "Cyrus," who really
gets himself up very well, considering that he has lived in Germany
for three years. I should have hopes that "pa" would blossom out into
something very attractive socially if he hadn't a deep-seated notion
that he is a great joker. A naturally serious man who tries to be funny
is about the most painful object in civilization. Still, Washington
is full of statesmen and scholars who try to unbend and be "light,"
especially with "the ladies." Nothing makes me--or any other woman, I
suppose--so angry as for a man to show that he takes me for a fool by
making a grinning galoot of himself whenever he talks to me. Bucyrus is
much that kind of ass. He alternates between solemnity and silliness.

I said rather pointedly to him the other night: "You men with your
great, deep minds make a mistake in changing your manner when you talk
with the women and the children. Nothing pleases us so much as to be
taken seriously." But it didn't touch him. However, he's hardly to
blame. He's spent a great many years round institutions of learning,
and in those places, I've noticed, every one has a musty, fusty sense
of humor. Probably it comes from cackling at classical jokes that have
laughed themselves as dry as a mummy.

We've been giving a few entertainments--informal and not large, but
highly important. I had two objects in mind: In the first place, to
get Mr. and Mrs. Burke accustomed to the style of hospitality they've
got to give if they're going to win out. In the second place, to get
certain of the kind of people who are necessary to us in the habit of
coming to this house--and those people are not so very hard to get hold
of now; later they'll be engaged day and night.

For two weeks now I've had my two especial features going. One of them
is for the men, the other for the women. And I can see already that
they alone would carry us through triumphantly; for they've caught on.

My men's feature is a breakfast. I engaged a particularly good
cook--the best old-fashioned Southern cook in Washington. Rachel had
her, and I persuaded Mr. Derby to consent to giving her up to us, just
for this season. Cleopatra--that's her name--has nothing to do but
get together every morning by nine o'clock the grandest kind of an
old-fashioned American breakfast. And I explained to Senator Burke that
he was to invite some of his colleagues, as many as he liked, and tell
them to come any morning, or every morning if they wished, and bring
their friends.

I consult with Cleopatra every day as to what she's to have the next
morning; and I think dear old father taught me what kind of breakfast
men like. I don't give them too much, or they'd be afraid to come
and risk indigestion a second time. I see to it that everything is
perfectly cooked--and it's pretty hard for any man to get indigestion,
even from corned beef hash and hot cornbread and buckwheat cakes with
maple syrup, if it's perfectly cooked and is eaten in a cheerful
frame of mind. No women are permitted at these breakfasts--just men,
with everything free and easy, plenty to smoke, separate tables, but
each large enough so that there's always room at any one of them for
one more who might otherwise be uncomfortable. Even now we have from
fifteen to twenty men--among them the very best in Washington. In the
season we'll have thirty and forty, and our house will be a regular
club from nine to eleven for just the right men.

My other big feature is an informal dance every Wednesday night. It's
already as great a success in its way as the breakfasts are in theirs.
I've been rather careful about whom I let Mrs. Burke invite to come
in on Wednesdays whenever they like. The result is that everybody is
pleased; the affairs seem to be "exclusive," yet are not. I know it
will do the Burkes a world of good politically, because a certain kind
of people who are important politically but have had no chance socially
are coming to us on Wednesdays, and that's just the kind of people who
are frantically flattered by the idea that they are "in the push."

Speaking of being "in the push," there are two ways of getting there
if one isn't there. One is to worm your way in; the other is to make
yourself the head and front of "the push." That's the way for those
who have money and know how. And that's the way the Burkes are getting
in--getting in at the front instead of at the rear.

It's most gratifying to see how Mr. Burke treats me. He always has
been deferential, but he now shows that he thinks I have real brains.
And since his breakfasts have become the talk of the town and are
"patronized" by the men he's so eager to get hold of, he is even
consulting me about his business. I am criticizing for him now a speech
he's going to make on the canal question next month--a dreadfully
dull speech, and I don't feel competent to tell him what to do with
it. I think I'll advise him not to make it, tell him his forte is
diplomacy--winning men round by personal dealing with them--which is
the truth.

Young Mr. Burke--after a period of unbending--is now shyer than ever.
I wondered why, until it happened to occur to me one day as I was
talking with Jessie. I suddenly said to her: "Jessie, did you ever tell
Nadeshda that you had planned to marry me to Cyrus Burke?"

She hopped about in her chair a bit, as uneasy as a bird on a swaying
perch. Then she confessed that she "might have suggested before
Nadeshda what a delightfully satisfactory thing it would be."

I laughed to relieve her mind--also because it amused me to see through
Nadeshda.

Of course, one of the women I needed most in this Burke campaign was
Nadeshda. And I happened to know that she is bent on marrying a rich
American--indeed, that's the only reason why the wilds of America are
favored with the presence of the beautiful, joy-loving, courted and
adored Baroness Nadeshda Daragane. The yarn about her sister, the
ambassadress, being an invalid and shrinking from the heavy social
responsibilities of the embassy is just so much trash. So, as soon as
"Cyrus" came I went over to see her, and, as diplomatically as I knew
how, displayed before her dazzled eyes the substantial advantages of
the sole heir of the great Western multi-millionaire.

As I went on to tell how generous the Senator is, and how certain he
would be to lavish wealth upon his daughter-in-law, I could see her
mind at work. A fascinating, naughty, treacherous little mind it
is--like a small Swiss watch of the rarest workmanship and full of
wheels within wheels. And she's a beautiful little creature, as warm as
a tropical sun to look at, and about as cold as the Arctic regions to
deal with. No, I haven't begun to describe her. I'd not be surprised
to hear that she had eloped with her brother-in-law's coachman; nor
should I be surprised to hear that she had married the most hideous,
revolting man in the world for his money, and was suspected of being
engaged in trying to hasten him off to the grave. She's of the queer
sort that would kiss or kill with equal enthusiasm, capable of almost
any virtue or vice--on impulse. If there's any part of her beneath the
impulsive part it's solid ice in a frame of steel. But--is there? She's
talked about a good deal--not a tenth enough to satisfy her craving
for notoriety, and, I may add, not a tenth part so much as she deserves
to be, and would be if we studied character on this side of the water
instead of being too busy with ourselves to look beyond anybody else's
surface.

Well, the Baroness Nadeshda has been wild about the Burkes ever since
we had our talk. And she has Mr. Cyrus thoroughly tangled in her nets,
and the Senator, too. And, naturally, she lost no time in trying to
"do" me. She has told Bucyrus what a designing creature I am--no doubt
has warned him that if I seem distant to him I'm at my deadliest, and
to look out for mines. He certainly is looking out for them, for,
whenever I speak to him, he acts as if he were stepping round on a
volcano. I'm having a good deal of fun with him. I wish I had the
time; I'd try to teach him a very valuable lesson. Really, it's a shame
to let a man go through life imagining that he's an all-conqueror, when
in reality the woman who marries him will feel that she's swallowing
about as bitter a dose as Fate ever presented to feminine lips in a
gold spoon.

Dear old "ma" Burke hasn't yet yielded to Nadeshda's blandishments. We
went to the embassy to call yesterday afternoon at tea-time, and I saw
her watching Nadeshda in that smiling, simple way of hers that conceals
about as keen a brain as I shouldn't care to have tearing me to pieces
for inspection.

The embassy at tea-time is always wild. For then Sophie comes in with
her monkey and Nadeshda's seven dogs are racing about. And the Count
always laughs loudly, usually at nothing at all. And each time he
laughs the dogs bark until the monkey in a great fright dashes up the
curtains or flings himself at Sophie and almost strangles her with his
paws or arms, or whatever they are, round her neck. I don't think I've
ever been there that something hasn't been spilt for a huge mess; often
the whole tea-table topples over. Mrs. Burke loves to go, for afterward
she laughs a dozen times a day until her sides ache.

As we came away yesterday I said to her: "What a fascinating, beautiful
creature Nadeshda is!"

Mrs. Burke smiled. "When I was a girl," she said, "I had a catamount
for a pet--a cub, and they had cut his claws. He was beautiful and
mighty fascinating--you never did know when he was going to fawn on you
and when he was going to fasten his teeth in you. The baroness puts me
in mind of my old pet, and how I didn't know which was harder--to keep
him or to give him up."

"She certainly has a strange nature," said I.

After a pause Mrs. Burke went on: "She's the queerest animal in this
menagerie here, so far as I've seen. And I don't think I'm wrong in
suspecting she's sitting up to Cyrus."

"I don't wonder he finds her interesting," said I.

"Cyrus is just like his pa," said she, "a mighty poor judge of women.
It was lucky for his pa that he married and settled down before he had
much glitter to catch the eyes of the women. Otherwise, he'd 'a' made a
ridiculous fool of himself. But I like a man the women can fool easy.
That shows he's honest. These fellows who are so sharp at getting on to
the tricks of the women ain't, as a rule, good for much else. But Cyrus
has got _me_ to look after him."

"He might do much worse than marry Nadeshda," said I.

"That's what his pa says," she replied. "But I ain't got round to these
new-fashioned notions of marriage. I want to see my Cyrus married to
the sort of woman his ma'd like and be proud to have for the mother of
her grand-children. And I ain't altogether sure we need the kind of
tone in our blood that a catamount'd bring. Though I must say a year or
so of living with a catamount might do Cyrus a world of good."

Which shows that even love can't altogether blind "ma" Burke.

January 3. I had to do a little scheming to get Mrs. Burke an
invitation to assist at the New Year's reception. It's always the first
event of the season, and, though it would have been no great matter
if I hadn't been able to get her in among those who stand near the
President's wife and the Cabinet women, still I felt that I couldn't
get my "pulls" into working order any too soon. Ever since the second
week in my "job" I've realized that nothing could be easier than to put
the Burkes well to the front, but my ambition to make them first calls
for the exertion of every energy.

So, in the third week of December I set Rachel at Mrs. Senator Lumley
and Mrs. Admiral Bixby--two women who can get almost anything in reason
out of the President's wife. Rachel is about the most important woman
in the old Washington aristocracy, and the Lumleys and the Bixbys are
in the nature of fixtures here, not at all like an evanescent President
or Cabinet person. So Rachel's request set the two women to work. And
although the President's wife said she'd asked all she intended to ask,
far too many, and didn't see why on earth she should be beset for a
newcomer who had been reported to her as fat and impossible, still she
finally yielded.

I hadn't hoped to get an invitation for them for the Cabinet dinner,
and I was astounded when it came. We had arranged to give a rather
large informal dinner that night and had to call it off, as an
invitation from the White House, even from the obscurest member of the
President's family for any old function whatever, is a command that
may not be disobeyed. Well, as I was saying, the invitation to the
Cabinet dinner came unsought. It seems that the Burke breakfasts are
making a great stir politically; so great a stir that they have made
the President a little uneasy. Of course, the best way to get rid of an
opponent is to conciliate him. Hence the royal command to Senator and
Mrs. Burke to appear at his Majesty's dinner to his Majesty's ministers.

Mrs. Burke is tremendously proud of her first two communications from
the White House. As for the Senator, he looks at them half a dozen
times a day.

I went down to the New Year's reception to see how "ma" was getting on.
As I had expected, she didn't stand very long. She cast about for a
chair, and, seeing one, planted herself. Soon the Baroness joined her,
and young Prince Krepousky joined Nadeshda, and then General Martin,
who loves Mrs. Burke for the feeds she gives. The group grew, and
Mrs. Burke began to talk in her drawling, humorous way, and Nadeshda
laughed, which made the others laugh--for it's impossible to resist
Nadeshda. When I arrived Mrs. Burke was "right in it."

And after a while the President came and said: "Is this your reception,
madam, or is it mine?" At which there was more laughing, he raising a
great guffaw and slapping his hip with his powerful hand. Then they all
went up to have something to eat, and the President spent most of the
time with her.

She doesn't need any more coaching. Of course, she's flattered by her
success. But instead of having her head turned, as most women do who
get the least bit of especial attention from the conspicuous men here,
she takes it all very placidly. "They don't care shucks for me," she
says, "and I know it. We're all in business together, and I'm mighty
glad it can be carried on so cheerful-like." At the Cabinet dinner,
to-morrow night, she'll have to sit well down toward the foot of the
table. But she won't mind that. Indeed, if I hadn't been giving her
lessons in precedence she wouldn't have an idea that everything here is
arranged by rank.

Jessie--so she tells me--had a half-hour's session with "Cyrus" the
other day and gave him a very exalted idea of my social position and
influence. No doubt, what she said confirmed his suspicion that I and
my friends are conspiring against him; but I observe a distinct change
in his manner toward me. He's even humble. I suppose he thought I
was some miserable creature whom his mother had taken on, half out
of charity. I'm afraid I have a sort of family pride that's a little
ridiculous--but I can't help it. Still, I am American enough to despise
people who are courteous or otherwise, according as they look up to or
look down on the particular person's family and position. I guess young
Mr. Burke is his father in an aggravated form. Yet Jessie, and Rachel,
too, pretend to like him. And probably they really do--it's not hard
to like any one who is not asking favors and is in a position to grant
them, and isn't so near to one that his quills stick into one.

The Countess of Wend came in to see me this afternoon and told me all
about the row over at the legation. It seems that the new minister is
a plebeian, and in their country people of his sort aren't noticed by
the upper classes unless an upper-class man happens to need something
to wipe his boots on and one of them is convenient for use. Well, every
attaché is in a fury, and none of them will speak to the minister
except in the most formal way and only when it's absolutely necessary.
As for the minister's wife, the other women--but what's the use of
describing it; we all know how nasty women can be about matters of
rank. The Count is talking seriously of resigning. I'd be dreadfully
sorry, as Eugenie is a dear, more like an American than a foreigner;
and I believe she really likes us, where most of them privately despise
us as a lot of low-born upstarts. I know they laugh all day long at the
President's queer manners and mannerisms--but then, so do we, for that
matter. And it's quite unusual for Washington, where each President is
bowed down to and praised everywhere and flattered till he thinks he's
a sort of god--and forgotten as soon as his term is ended. I suppose
there's nothing deader on this earth than an ex-President, with no
offices to distribute and no hopes for a further political career.

January 9. We had a beautiful dinner here last night--very brilliant
too, as we all were going to a ball at the Russian embassy afterward.
All the diplomats and army men were in uniform--and one or two of the
army men were really brilliant. But none of the diplomats. They say
that no nation sends us its best or even its second best. It seems
that diplomats don't amount to much in this day of cables. Those who
have any intelligence naturally go to courts, where the atmosphere is
congenial and where there are chances for decorations. So we get only
the stiffs and stuffs--with a few exceptions. If it weren't for their
women--

But, to return to our dinner--Mrs. Burke went in with the German
ambassador, and I saw that they were getting on famously. He is a very
clever man in a small way, and has almost an American sense of humor.
As soon as he saw that she intended what she said to be laughed at he
gave himself up to it. "Your Mrs. Burke is charming, Miss Talltowers,"
said he to me after dinner. "She ranks with Bret Harte and Mark Twain.
It's only in America that you find old women who make you forget to
wish you were with young and pretty women."

Jim Lafollette took me in--the first time I've had him here. I must
say he behaved very well and was the handsomest man in the room. But
he never has much to say that is worth hearing. Though conversation at
Washington in society isn't on any too high a plane, as a rule--how
could conversation in a mixed society anywhere be very high?--still it
isn't the wishy-washy chatter and gossip that Jim Lafollette delights
in. Of course, army officers almost always go in for gossip--that comes
from sitting round with their women at lonely posts where nothing
occurs. And they, as a rule, either gossip or simply drivel when they
talk to women, because all the women that ever liked them liked them
for their brass buttons, and all the women they ever liked they liked
for their pretty faces and empty heads. So, usually, to get an army
officer at dinner is to sit with a bowl of soft taffy held to your
lips and a huge spoonful of it thrust into your mouth every time you
stop talking. That's true of many of the statesmen, too, especially the
heavyweights. I suppose I'm wrong, but I can't help suspecting a man
without a sense of humor of being a solemn fraud.

You'd think American women, at the capital, at least, would be
interested in politics. But they're not. They say it's the vulgarity
of the intriguing and of most of the best intriguers that makes them
dislike politics, even here. I suspect there's another reason. We women
are so petted by the men that we don't have to know anything to make
ourselves agreeable. If we're pretty and listen well that's all that's
necessary. So, why get headaches learning things?

Of course, there are exceptions. Take Maggie Shotwell. Her husband
is a wag-eared ass. Yet in eleven years she has advanced him from
second secretary to minister to a second-class power just by showing
up here at intervals and playing the game intelligently. And there are
scores of army women who do as well in a smaller way, and a few of the
diplomats' wives are most adroit, intriguing well both here and at
their homes in a nice, clean way, as intrigue goes.

But most of the women are like "ma" Burke, who'd as soon think of
entering for a foot-race as of interfering in her husband's political
affairs in any way, beyond giving him some sound advice about the
men that can be trusted and the men that can't. I suppose if there
were real careers in public life in this country, not dependent upon
elections, the Washington women wouldn't be so lazy and indifferent,
but would wake up and intrigue their brothers and sons and other male
relatives into all sorts of things. Then, too, a man has to vote with
his "party" on everything that's important, and his "party" is a small
group of old men who are beyond social blandishments and go to bed
early every night and associate only with men in the daytime.

No, we women don't amount to much _directly_ at Washington. If Jim
Lafollette had kept away from the women and society he might have
amounted to something. It's become a proverb that whenever a young man
comes here and goes in for the social end of it he is doomed soon to
disappear and be heard of no more. The President is trying to make
society amount to something, but he won't succeed. Whatever benefit
there may be in it will go, not to him, but to men like Senator Burke.
He doesn't go any more than he can help, except to his own breakfasts.
But he sends his wife, and so, without wasting any of his time, he
makes himself prominent in a very short space of time and gets all the
big social indirect influence--the influence of the women on their
husbands.

Mrs. Burke's younger brother, Robert Gunton, arrived last night. He
reminds me of her, but he's slender and very active--a shabby sort of
person, clean but careless, and he looks as if he had so many other
things to think about that he hadn't time to think about himself. He
looks younger and talks older than his years. He's here to get some
sort of patent through; he won't permit his brother-in-law to assist
him; he refuses to go anywhere--in society, I mean. We rode up to the
Capitol together in a street-car this morning, and I liked him.

"Why do you ride in a street-car?" he asked.

"Because it's not considered good form to use carriages too much," I
replied. "It might rouse the envy of those who can't afford carriages."

"Then it isn't because you don't want to, but because you don't dare
to?"

"Yes," said I. "But things are changing rapidly. The rich people who
live here but care nothing for politics are gradually introducing class
distinctions."

"You mean, poor people who like to fawn upon and hate the rich are
introducing class distinctions," he corrected.

He is thirty-two years old; he treats a woman as if she were a man,
and he treats a man as if he himself were one. It isn't possible not to
like that sort of human being.

Invitations are beginning to come in floods--invitations for the big,
formal things for which people are asked weeks in advance. And we are
getting a splendid percentage of acceptances for our big affairs,
thanks to my taking the trouble to find out the freest dates in the
season. If all goes well, before another month, as soon as it gets
round that we are going to give something big in a short time, lots of
pretty good people will be holding off from accepting other things in
the hope that they're on our list.

Certainly, there's a good deal in going about anything in a systematic
way--even a social launching.




IV


January 12. We are all sleeping so badly. Even the Senator, whom
nothing has ever before kept from his "proper rest," is complaining
of wakefulness. Suppers every night either here or elsewhere, the
house never quiet until two or three in the morning, all of us up at
eight--Cyrus often at seven because he rides a good deal, and the early
morning is the only time when any one in Washington in the season
can find time to ride. "It's worse than the Wilderness campaign,"
said Mr. Burke, who was a lieutenant in the war. "For now and then,
between battles and skirmishes, we did get plenty of sleep. This is
a continuous battle day and night, week in and week out, with no
let-up for Sundays." And Mrs. Burke--poor "ma!" How hollow-eyed and
sagged-cheeked she is getting with the real season less than two weeks
old! She says: "I wouldn't treat a dog as I treat myself. I no sooner
get to sleep than they wake me. I think the servants just delight to
wake me, and I don't blame them, for they're worse off than we are,
though I do try to be as easy on them as possible." She doesn't know
how many long naps they take while she's dragging herself from place to
place.

On our way to the White House to a musicale she fell asleep. As we
rolled up to the entrance I had to wake her. She came to with a sort
of groan and gave a ludicrously pitiful glance at the attendant who was
impatiently waiting. "Oh, Lord!" she muttered. "I was dreaming I was in
bed, and it ain't so. Instead, I've got to enjoy myself." And then she
gave a dreary laugh.

"Ma" Burke dozed through the musicale with a pleasant smile on her
large face and her head keeping time to the music. When we spoke to the
President and he said he hoped she'd "enjoyed herself," she drawled:
"I did that, Mr. President! I only wish it had been longer--I'm 'way
behind on sleep." He laughed uproariously. It's the fashion to laugh
at everything "ma" says now, because the German ambassador tells every
one what a wit she is. And who'd fail to laugh at wit admired by an
ambassador?

Writing about sleep has driven off my fit of wakefulness. I'll only
add that Lu Frayne's in town, working day and night to get her husband
transferred from San Francisco to the War Department here. I think
she'll win out, as she's got two Senators who've been frightening
the President by acting queerly lately. It's too funny! When the new
Administration came every one was scared because the rumor got round
that he was going to give us a repetition of the Cleveland nightmare.
But there was nothing in it; the only "pulls" that have failed to
work are those that were strong with the last Administration, and
there's a whole crop of new pulls. Well, at least, the right sort of
people, those who have family and position, are getting their rights to
preference as they never did before. We've not had many Presidents who
knew the right sort of people even when they've been willing to please
them, if they could pick them out.

What a changed Washington it is: so many formalities; so many rich
people; so many rich men, and men of family and position in office;
so many big, fine houses and English and French servants. "Such a
stylishness!"

January 14. Our first big dance last night--I mean, formal dance to
show our strength. Everybody was here, and the dinner beforehand and
the supper afterward and all the mechanical arrangements, so to speak,
were perfect. The ball-room was a sight--even "ma" Burke, tired to
death, perked up. Almost all the diplomats, except those nobody asks,
were here. And I don't think more than thirty people we hadn't invited
ventured to come. We were all so excited that, after the last people
had gone, we sat round for nearly an hour. "Ma" Burke took me in her
arms and kissed me. "It was your ball," said she. "But then, everything
we get credit for is all yours; ain't it, pa?"

"Miss Talltowers has certainly done wonderfully," said "pa" in his
cautious, judicial way. Then he seemed ashamed of himself, as if he had
been ungenerous, and shook hands with me and added: "Thank you, thank
you, Miss Augusta--if you'll permit me the liberty of calling you so."

"I never expected to see as pretty a girl as you bothering to have
brains," Mrs. Burke went on to say. And for the first time in weeks and
weeks it occurred to me that I did have a personal existence apart from
my work--the books and bookkeeping, the servants and the housekeeper,
who is only one more to fuss with, the tradespeople, and musicians, and
singers, and florists, and--it makes my head whirl to try to recall the
awful list.

"She won't be pretty very long," said Cyrus--he's taking lessons of his
mother and is dropping his fancy-work speech and his "made-in-Germany"
manners--"if she don't stop working day _and_ night."

"Oh, I'm amusing myself," replied I; but I was reminded how weary I
felt, and went away to bed. I neglected to close my sitting-room door,
and as I was getting ready for bed in my dressing-room I couldn't help
overhearing a scrap of talk between Cyrus and Mr. Gunton as they went
along the hall on the way to their apartments.

"The Tevises were disgusting--they showed their envy so plainly," Cyrus
said. The Tevises are trying hard to do what we're doing in a social
way, and though they must have even more money than the Burkes, they're
failing at it.

"They'll never get anywhere," Mr. Gunton replied. "You can't collect
much of a crowd of nice people just to watch you spend money. You've
got to give them a real show. There's where Miss Talltowers comes in."

"She has wonderful taste and originality," said Cyrus. Cyrus!

Mr. Gunton sat out most of the evening with Nadeshda. I suppose
she was trying to make Cyrus jealous and also to create trouble
between him and his uncle. I've not seen a franker flirtation even
in Washington. Whenever I chanced to look at them, Mr. Gunton was
talking earnestly, and she seemed to be hanging to his words like a
thirsty bird to a water-pan. And her queer, subtle face was--well,
it was beautiful, and gave me that sense of the wild and fierce and
uncanny which makes her both fascinating and terrible. I think Mr.
Gunton was infatuated--indeed, I know it. For when I spoke of her to
him this morning his eyes seemed to blaze. He drew a long breath. "A
wonder-woman!" he said. "I never saw anything like her--in the flesh."
Then he looked a little sheepish, and added: "I mean it, but I laugh
at myself, too. There are fools that don't know they're fools; then,
there are fools that do know it and laugh at themselves as they plan
fresh follies--it takes a pretty clever man, Miss Talltowers, to make
a grand, supreme, rip-roaring ass of himself, doesn't it? At least,
I hope so." And with that somewhat mysterious observation he left me
abruptly.

When I saw him and Nadeshda together so much at the ball I looked out
for Cyrus. He seemed bored, and devoted himself to wallflowers, but on
the whole was surprisingly unconcerned, apparently. I had him in sight
almost the whole evening. Jim Lafollette, who stuck to my train like a
Japanese poodle--I told him so, but he didn't take the hint--said that
"the gawk," meaning Cyrus, was hanging round me. "He's moon-struck,"
said Jim. "So your little put-up job with Jessie seems to be doing
nicely, thank you." I wonder why a man assumes that the fact that he
loves a woman gives him the right to insult her and makes it his duty
to do it. And I wonder why we women assent to that sort of impudence.
There's another conventionality that ought to be stamped out.

I find I was hasty in my judgment of Cyrus. He's a lot more of a man
than he led me to suppose at first. I think he might be licked into
shape. He ought to hunt up some widow or married woman older than
himself and go to school for a few seasons. But perhaps Nadeshda will
do as well.

January 17. There were thirty-two at Senator Burke's "little informal
breakfast" yesterday morning, including four of the leading Senators,
two members of the Cabinet, an ambassador and three ministers, several
generals, half a dozen distinguished strangers, four or five big
financial men from New York who are here on "private business" with
Congress, and not a man who doesn't count for something except that
wretched little Framstern, who never misses anything free. And our
regular weekly informal dance was an equal success in its way. Senator
Ritchie told me it was amazing how Burke had forged to the front in
influence and in popularity. "And now that the newspapers have begun to
take him up he'll soon be standing out before the whole country." So
my little suggestion about the wives and families of correspondents of
the big papers, which the Burkes adopted, is bearing fruit. And Mrs.
Burke is so genuinely friendly and hospitable that really I've only to
suggest her being nice to somebody to set her to work. If she were the
least bit of a fraud I'd not dare--she'd only get into trouble.

January 18. I was breakfasting alone in my sitting-room this morning--I
always do an hour or so of work before I touch anything to eat--when
Mr. Gunton sent, asking if he might join me. I was glad to have him.
His direct way is attractive, and he never talks without saying at
least a few things I haven't heard time and again. He was in riding
clothes, and as soon as I looked at him I saw he had something on his
mind.

"Good ride?" I asked.

He made an impatient gesture--whenever he has anything to say and
doesn't know how to begin, the way to start him off is to make some
commonplace remark. It acts like a blow that knocks in the head of a
full barrel. "I was out with the Baroness Daragane," he said, "with
Nadeshda."

"And Cyrus?" said I.

He looked at me in astonishment, then laughed queerly. "Oh, bother!"
he exclaimed. "Cyrus doesn't disturb himself about _her_, or she about
him--and you know it. Miss Talltowers, I love her--and she loves me."

His tone was convincing. But, after the first shock, I couldn't believe
anything so preposterous. And I felt sorry for him--an honest, straight
man, inexperienced with women, a fine mixture of gentleness and
roughness, at once too much and too little of a gentleman for Nadeshda.
If I had dared I should have tried to undeceive him. But I'm not so
stupid as ever to try to make a person in love see the truth about
the person he or she's in love with. So I simply said: "She is a most
fascinating woman."

[Illustration]

"You think I'm a fool," he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, "and I am
a--a blankety-blank fool. Did you see her night before last in that
dress of silver spangles like the wonderful skin of some amazing
serpent? Did you see her eyes--her hair--the way her arms looked--as if
they could wind themselves round a man's neck and choke him to death
while her eyes were fooling him into thinking that such a death was
greater happiness than to live?" He rolled this all out, then burst
into a queer, crazy laugh. "You see, I'm a lunatic!" he said.

"Yes, I see it," I replied cheerfully. "But why do you rave to me?"

"Because I--we--have got to tell somebody, and you're the only person
in Washington that I know that's both sensible and experienced, wise
enough to understand, beautiful enough to sympathize, and young enough
to encourage."

That was rather good for a man who had had less than a month's real
experience with women, wasn't it? I recognized Nadeshda's handiwork,
and admired.

"Miss Talltowers," he went on, "I am going to make a fool of myself,
and she's going to help me."

"In what particular sort of folly are you about to embark?" said I.

"We're going to marry," he replied. "We've _got_ to marry. I'm afraid
of her and she's afraid of me, and we'll either have Heaven or the
other place when we do marry--perhaps big doses of each alternately.
But we've got to do it."

"You know it's impossible," said I. "Under the laws of her country
she mayn't marry without the consent of her parents. And they'd never
consent."

"Certainly they won't," said he, "unless you can suggest some way of
getting the ambassador and his wife round. We want to give her people a
chance." This with perfect coolness. I began to believe that there must
be something in it.

"Does Nadeshda know you aren't rich?" I asked.

"She knows I have practically nothing. In fact I told her I had less
than I have."

"And you're sure she wishes to marry you?"

"Ask her."

He was quiet a while, then raved about her for ten minutes, begged me
to do my best thinking, and left me. I felt dazed. I simply couldn't
believe it. And the longer I thought, the more certain I was that
she was making some sort of grand play in coquetry, which seemed
ridiculous enough when I considered what small game Mr. Gunton is from
the standpoint of a woman like Nadeshda.

In the afternoon I was in a flower store in Pennsylvania Avenue, and
Nadeshda joined me. Her surface was, if anything, cooler and subtler
and more cynical than usual. "Send away your cab," said she, "and let
me take you in my auto--wherever you wish."

As I was full of curiosity, I accepted instantly. When we were under
way she gave me a strange smile--a slow parting of the lips, a slow
half-closing and elongation of those Eastern eyes which she inherits
from a Russian grandmother, I believe.

"Well, Gus," she said, "has that wild man told you?"

"Yes, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said I, a little
indignantly. "It ain't fair to coax an innocent into _your_ sort of
game and fleece him of his little all."

She laughed--beautiful white teeth, cruel like her red lips. "It's all
true--all he told you," she replied. "All true, on my honor."

Every season Washington's strange mixture of classes and conditions and
nations furnishes at least one sensation of some kind or other. But,
used as I am to surprises until they have ceased to surprise, this took
me quite aback. "Do you love him, Nadeshda--really?"

She quite closed her eyes and said in a strange, slow undertone:
"He's my master. The blood in my veins flowed straight from the
savage wilderness. And he comes from there, and I don't dare disobey
him. I'd do anything he said. And when we're married I'll never
glance at another man--if he saw me he'd kill me. Ah, you don't
understand--you're too--too civilized. Now, I think I should love him
better if he'd beat me."

I laughed--it was too ridiculous, especially as she was plainly in
earnest. She laughed, too, and added: "I think some day I'll try
to make him do it. He's afraid of me, too. And he may well be, for
I--well, he belongs to _me_, you see, and I _will_ have what's mine!"

Yes, she would--I believe her absolutely. And I must say I like her at
last, for all her extremely uncanny way of loving and of liking to be
loved. I suppose she's only a primeval woman--I believe the primeval
woman fancied the lover who lay in wait and brought her down with a
club. I begin to understand Robert Gunton, too--that is, the side of
his nature she's roused.

"Do you believe us?" she asked.

"Yes, I do," said I, "and I apologize to you. I've been thinking of you
all along as--fascinating, of course, but--mercenary."

"Ah, but so I am!" she exclaimed. "It breaks my heart to marry this
poor man--and of such a vulgar family--even among you funny Americans.
But"--she threw up her arms and her shoulders and let them drop in a
gesture of tragicomic helplessness--"I must have him; I must be his
slave."

I can't imagine how it's going to end, as her people will never let
her marry him. Possibly, if "ma" Burke were to persuade the Senator
to settle a large sum on her--but that's wild, even if Gunton would
consent. I can imagine what a roar he'd give if such a thing were
proposed. He'll insist on having her on his own terms. As if his
insisting would do any good!

The last thing she said to me was: "Do you know when we became engaged?
Listen! It was the first time we met--after three hours. After one hour
he made me insult the men who came up to claim dances. After two hours
he made me say, 'I love you.' After three hours--it was on the way down
to my carriage--he asked me to come into the little reception-room by
the entrance. And he closed the door and caught me in his arms and
kissed me. 'That makes you my wife,' he said in a _dreadful_ voice--oh,
it was--_magnifique!_--and he said, 'Do you understand?' And"--she
smiled ravishingly and nodded her head--"I understood."

I shan't sleep a wink to-night.

January 20. I wish they hadn't told me. If ever a man loves me and
wants to win me he must be--well, perhaps not exactly _that_, but
certainly not tame. I'm not a bit like Nadeshda, but I do hate the tame
sort. I know what's the matter with me now. Yes, I wish they hadn't
told me.

January 21. Robert and Nadeshda have told "ma" Burke. She
is--_delighted_! "I never heard of the like," she said to me all in
a quiver. "I wish I'd known there were such things. I reckon I'd 'a'
made my Tom cut a few capers before he got _me_." And then she laughed
until she cried. It certainly was droll to picture "pa" capering in the
Robert-Nadeshda fashion.

She went to the embassy and told Nadeshda's sister, Madame
l'Ambassadrice. "She let on as if she was just tickled to death," she
reported to me a few minutes after she returned. "And when I told her
that we--Tom and I--would do handsomely by Nadeshda as soon as they
were married she had tears in her eyes. But I don't trust her--nor any
other foreigner."

"Not even Nadeshda?"

"Ma" nodded knowingly. "I reckon Bob'll keep her on the chalk," she
replied. "He's started right, and in marriage, as in everything else,
it's all in the start."

January 22. Nadeshda asked Mrs. Burke to give a big costume ball, but
I sat on it hard. "I don't think you want to do that, Mrs. Burke,"
said I, when she proposed it to me. "If this were New York it wouldn't
matter so much, though I don't think really nice people with means do
that sort of thing there. Here I'm afraid it'd make you very unpopular."

"Do you think so?" said she. "Now, I'd 'a' said it was just the sort of
foolishness these people'd like."

"Those who have money would," I replied. "But how about those who
haven't? Don't you think that people of large means ought to make it a
rule never to cause any expense whatever to those of their friends and
acquaintances who haven't means?"

"Don't say another word!" she exclaimed, seeing my point instantly.
"Why, it'd be the worst thing in the world. Out home I've always been
careful about those kind of things, but on here I don't know the people
and am liable to forget how they're circumstanced. They all seem
so prosperous on the surface. I reckon there's a lot of miserable
pinching and squinching when the blinds are down."

Cyrus happened to come in just then, and she told him all about
it. He looked at me and grew red and evidently tried to say
something--probably something that would have shown how poorly he
thought of my cheating them all out of the fun. But he restrained
himself and said nothing.

Presently he went out and must have gone straight to his
father--probably to remonstrate, though I may wrong him--for, after a
few minutes, the Senator came.

"My son has just been telling me," he said to me, "and I agree with
you entirely. It would be ruinous politically. As it is, if it hadn't
been for you we'd never have been able to keep both the official and
the fashionable sets in a good humor with us." I never saw him so
"flustered" before.

"What are you talking about, pa?" inquired Mrs. Burke.

"About the costume ball you were thinking of giving."

Mrs. Burke smiled. "You'd better go back to your cage," said she.
"That's settled and done for long ago."

"Pa" looked more uneasy than his good-natured tone seemed to
justify--but, no doubt, he knows when he has put his foot into it. He
"faded" from the room. When she heard his study door close "ma" said to
me in a complacent voice: "There's nothing like keeping a man always to
his side of the fence. When 'pa' began to get rich I saw trouble ahead,
for he was showing signs that he was thinking himself right smart
better than the common run, and that he was including his wife in the
common run. I took Mr. Smartie Burke right in hand. And so, with him
it's never been 'I' in this family, but 'we.' And keeping it that way
has made Tom lots happier than he would 'a' been lording it over me and
having no control on his foolishness anywhere."

What a dear, sensible woman she is! He's got good brains, but if he had
as good brains as she has he'd get what he's after and doesn't stand a
show for.

January 24. The whole town is in a tumult over Robert and Nadeshda.
People think she's crazy. When Cyrus said this to me I said: "And I
think they are--at least, delirious."

"A divine delirium, though," he replied, much to my astonishment. For
he's never shown before that he had so much as a spot of that sort of
thing in him. But then, I'm beginning to revise my judgment of him in
some ways. He is much nearer what his mother said he was than what I
thought him. But he's young and crude. I find that he likes--and really
appreciates--the same composers and poets and novelists that I do. I
can forgive much to any one who realizes what a poet Browning was--when
he did write poetry, not when he wrote the stuff for the Browning clubs
to fuddle with.

Nadeshda is in the depths--except when Robert is by to hypnotize
her. "I was so strong," she said pathetically to me to-day, "or I
thought I was. And now I'm all weakness." She went on to tell me
how horribly they are talking to her at the embassy--for they are
determined she shan't marry "that nobody with nothing." I always knew
her brother-in-law was a snob of the cheapest and narrowest kind--the
well-born, well-bred kind. But I had no idea he was a coward. He
threatens to have the Emperor make her come home and go into a convent
if she doesn't break off the engagement within a week.

We are tremendously popular. Everybody is cultivating us, hoping
to find out the real inside of this incredible engagement. And the
ambassador has to pretend publicly that he's personally wild with
delight and hopes Nadeshda's parents will consent. He knows how
unpopular it would make him and his country with America if his
opposition and his reason for it were to be known.

January 30. Nadeshda has disappeared. They give out at the embassy that
she has left for home to consult with her parents. Robert looks like
a man who had gone stark mad and was fighting to keep himself from
showing it.

We were all at the ball at the French embassy, Mr. and Mrs. Burke
dining there. I dined at the White House--a literary affair. The
conversation was what you might expect when a lot of people get
together to show one another how brilliant they are. The President
talked a great deal. He has very positive opinions on literature in all
its branches. I was the only person at the table who wasn't familiar
with his books. Fortunately, I wasn't cornered. Cyrus came to the ball
from Mrs. Dorringer's, where he took in the Duchess d'Emarre. "She has
a beautiful face in repose," he said to me as he paused for a moment,
"and it's not at all pretty when she talks. So she listened well."

I was too tired to dance, as were the others. We went home together,
all depressed. "It's too ridiculous, this kind of life," said "ma"
Burke, "and the most ridiculous part of it is that, now we're hauled
into it and set a-going, we'll never get out and be sensible again. It
just shows you can get used to anything in this world--except doing as
you please. I don't believe anybody was ever satisfied to do that. Did
you ever wear a Mother Hubbard? _There's_ comfort!"

I can think of nothing but Robert and Nadeshda. Have they some sort of
understanding? No--I'm afraid not.

I forgot to put down that Robert made the Senator go to the Secretary
of State about Nadeshda's disappearance. The Secretary was sympathetic,
but he refused to interfere in any way. What else could he do?




V


February 1. Last night Robert started for Europe. He is going to see
Nadeshda's father and mother. I begin to suspect that Nadeshda has
really gone abroad and that she has let him know. He is certainly in
a very different frame of mind from what he was at first. But he says
nothing, hints nothing. Rachel, who has a huge sentimental streak in
her, has given Robert a letter to her sister Ellen--she's married to
one of the biggest nobles in the empire, Prince Glückstein. Also, she
has written Ellen a long, long letter, telling her all about Robert,
and what a great catch he is. And he _is_ a great catch now, for
Senator Burke has organized a company to take over his patents and pay
him a big sum for them--it'll sound fabulously big to such people as
the Daraganes. For even where these foreigners are very rich and have
miles on miles of land and large incomes from it, they're not used to
the kind of fortunes we have--the sums in cash, or in property that's
easily sold. And the Daraganes have only rank; their estates are quite
insignificant, Von Slovatsky says.

"They might as well consent first as last," said Mrs. Burke to me just
after Robert left; "for Bob always gets what he wants. He never lets
go. Cyrus is the same way--he spent eleven months in the mountains
once, and like to 'a' starved and froze and died of fever, just because
he'd made up his mind not to come back without a grizzly. That's why
the President took to him."

And then she told me that it was Cyrus who thought out the scheme
for making Robert financially eligible and put it in such form that
Robert consented. That convicted me of injustice again, for I had been
suspecting him of being secretly pleased at Robert's set-back--he
certainly hasn't looked in the least sorry for him. But it may be that
Robert has told him more than he's told us. He certainly couldn't have
found a closer-mouthed person. As his mother says, "The grave's a
blabmouth beside him when it comes to keeping secrets. And most men are
_such_ gossips."

Mrs. Fortescue came in to tea this afternoon. Mrs. Burke was out
calling, and I received her--or, rather, she caught me, for I detest
her. Just as she was going Cyrus popped in, and she nailed him before
he could pop out. She thought it was a good chance to put in a few
strong strokes for her daughter. "Of course, it's very pretty and
romantic about Nadeshda," she said, "and in this case I'm sure no one
with a spark of heart could object. Still, the principle is bad. I
don't think young girls who are properly brought up are so impulsive
and imprudent. I often say to my husband that I think it's perfectly
frightful the way girls--young girls--go about in Washington. They're
out before they should be even thinking of leaving the nursery, and go
round practically unchaperoned. It's so demoralizing."

"But how are they to compete with the young married women if they
don't?" said Cyrus, because he was evidently expected to say something.

"I don't think a man--a _sensible_ man--looking for a wife for his home
and a mother for his children would want a girl who'd been 'competing'
in Washington society," she answered. "I don't at all approve the way
American girls are brought up, anyway--it's entirely too free and
destructive of the innocence that is a woman's chief charm. And as for
turning the young girls loose in Washington!" Mrs. Fortescue threw
up her hands. "It's simply madness. Most of the men are foreigners,
accustomed to meet only married women in society. They don't know how
to take a young girl, and they don't understand this American freedom.
The wonder to me is that we don't have a regular cataclysm every
season. Now, I never permit Mildred to go _anywhere_ without me or
some other _real_ chaperon. And I know that her mind is like a fresh
rose-leaf."

Cyrus and I exchanged a covert glance of amusement. Mildred Fortescue
is a very nice, sweet girl, but--well, she does fool her mother
scandalously.

"I should think a man would positively be _afraid_ to marry the
ordinary Washington society girl who knows everything that she
shouldn't and nothing that she should."

"Perhaps that's what makes them so irresistible," said Cyrus.

"Irresistible to flirt with and to _flaner_ about with," said Mrs.
Fortescue reproachfully. "But I'm sure you wouldn't marry one of them,
Mr. Burke."

"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "No doubt it does spoil a good
many, being so free and associating with experienced men who've been
brought up in a very different way. But"--he hesitated and blushed
uncomfortably--"it seems to me that those who do come through all right
are about the best anywhere. If a girl has any really bad qualities
anywhere in her they come out here. And if a Washington girl does marry
a man--for himself--and I rather think they make marriages of the heart
more than most girls in the same sort of society in other cities--don't
you, Miss Talltowers?"

"It may be so," I replied. "But probably they're much like girls--and
men--everywhere. They make marriages of the heart if they get the
chance. And if nobody happens along in the marrying mood who is able
to appeal to their hearts, they select the most eligible among the
agreeable ones they can get. I think many a girl has been branded as
mercenary when in reality the rich man she chose was neither more nor
less agreeable than the poor man she rejected, and she only had choice
among men she didn't especially care about."

Mrs. Fortescue looked disgusted. Cyrus showed that he agreed with me.
"What I was going to say," he went on, "was, that if a Washington girl
does choose a man, after she has known lots of men and has come to
prefer him, she's not likely--at least, not _so_ likely--to repent her
bargain. And," he said, getting quite warmed up by his subject, "if a
man looks forward to his wife's going about in society, as he must if
he lives in a certain way, I think he's wise to select some one who has
learned something of the world--how to conduct herself, how to control
herself, how to fill the rôle Fate has assigned her."

"Oh, of course, a girl should be well-bred," said Mrs. Fortescue, as
sourly as her sort of woman can speak to a bachelor with prospects.

Cyrus said no more, and soon she was off. He stood at the window
watching her carriage drive away. He turned abruptly--I was at the
little desk, writing a note.

"You can't imagine," he said with quick energy, "how I loathe the
average girl brought up in conventional, exclusive society in America."

"Really?" said I, not stopping my writing--though I don't mind
confessing that I was more interested in his views than I cared to let
him see.

"Yes, really," he replied ironically. Then he went on in his former
tone: "Poor things, they can't help having silly mothers with the idea
of aping the European upper classes, and with hardly a notion of those
upper classes beyond--well, such notions as are got in novels written
by snobs for snobs. And these unfortunate girls are afraid of a genuine
emotion--by Jove, I doubt if they even have the germs of genuine
emotion. All that sort of thing has been weeded out of them. Little dry
minds, little dry hearts--so 'proper,' so--vulgar!"

"Not in Washington," said I.

"No, not so many in Washington; though more and more all the time. Miss
Talltowers, will you marry me?"

It was just like that--no warning, not a touch of sentiment toward me.
I almost dropped my pen. But I managed to hide myself pretty well.
I simply went on with my note, finished it, sealed and addressed it,
and rang for a servant. Then I went and stood by the fire. The servant
came; I gave him the note and went into my office. I had been in there
perhaps ten minutes when he came, looking shy and sheepish. He stumbled
over a low chair and had a ridiculous time saving himself from falling.
When he finally had himself straightened up and shaken together he
stood with his hands behind him, and his face red, and his eyes down,
and with his mouth fixed in that foolish little way as if he were about
to speak with his fancy-work way of handling his words.

"Do you wish something?" I asked.

"Only--only my answer," said he humbly.

Would you believe it, I actually hesitated.

"I want a woman that doesn't like me for my money, and that at the
same time would know how to act and would be--be sensible. I've had
you in mind ever since you explained your system for--for"--he smiled
faintly--"exploiting mother and father. And mother has been talking in
the same way of late. She says we can't afford to let you get out of
the family. That's all, I guess--all you'd have patience to hear."

"Then you were making me a serious business proposition?" said I.

"Well, you might call it that," he admitted, as if he weren't
altogether satisfied with my way of summing it up.

"I'm much obliged, but it doesn't attract me," I said.

He gave a kind of hopeless gesture. "I've put it all wrong," said he.
"I always _say_ things wrong. But--I--I believe I _do_ things better."
And he gave me a look that I liked. It was such a quaint mingling of
such a nice man with such a nice boy.

"I understand perfectly," said I, and I can't tell how much I hated
to hurt him--he did so remind me of dear old "ma" Burke. "But--please
don't discuss it. I couldn't consider the matter--possibly."

"You won't leave!" he exclaimed. "I assure you I'll not annoy you. You
must admit, Miss Talltowers, that I haven't tried to thrust myself on
you in the past. And--really, mother and father couldn't get on at all
without you."

"Certainly, I shan't leave--why should I?" said I. "I'm very well
satisfied with my position."

"Thank you," he said with an awkward bow, and he left me alone.

Of course, I couldn't possibly marry him. But I suppose a woman's
vanity compels her to take a more favorable view of any man after
she's found out that he wishes to marry her. Anyhow, I find I don't
dislike him at all as I thought I did. I couldn't help being amused at
myself the next day. I was driving with Jessie, and she was giving me
her usual sermon on the advantages of the Burke alliance--if I could
by chance scheme it through. "You're very pretty, Gus," she said. "In
fact you're beautiful at times. Men do like height when it goes with
your sort of a--a willowy figure. Your eyes alone--if you would only
_use_ them--would catch him. And the Burkes would be--well, they might
object a little at first because you've given them a position that
has no doubt swollen their heads--but they'd yield gracefully. And
although you are very attractive and are always having men in love with
you, you've simply got to make up your mind soon. Look how many such
nice, good-looking girls have been crowded aside by the young ones. Men
are crazy about freshness, no matter what they pretend. Yes, you must
decide, dear. And--I couldn't _endure_ poor Carteret when I married
him."

Carteret is a miserable specimen, and Jessie's ways keep him in a dazed
state--like an old hen sitting on a limb and turning her head round and
round to keep watch on a fox that's racing in a circle underneath. Fox
doesn't seem exactly to fit Jessie, but sometimes I suspect--however--

"But," Jessie was going on, "I knew mama was my best friend. And when
she said, 'Six months after marriage you'll be quite used to him and
won't in the least mind, and you'll be so glad you married somebody who
was quiet and good,' I married him. And I love him dearly, Gus, and we
make each other _so_ happy!"

I laughed--Jessie doesn't mind; she don't understand what laughter
means in most people. I was thinking of what Rachel told me the other
day. She said to Carteret, "It must be great fun wondering what Jessie
will do next." And he looked at her in his dumb way and said: "What
she'll do _next_? Lord, I ain't caught up with _that_. I'm just about
six weeks behind on her record all the time."

But to go back to Jessie's talk to me, she went on: "And Mr. Burke's
not so dreadfully unattractive, dear. Of course, he's far from
handsome, and--well, he's the son of Mr. and Mrs. Burke--but though
they're quite common and all that--"

I found myself furiously angry. "I don't think he's at all
bad-looking," I said, pretending to be judicial. "He's big and strong
and sensible; and what more does a woman usually ask for? And I don't
at all agree with you about his father and mother, either--especially
his mother. No, Jessie, dear, my objections aren't yours at all. I'm
sure you wouldn't understand them, so let's not talk about it."

February 3. Yesterday Mrs. Tevis sent for me. That was a good deal of
an impertinence, but I'm getting very sensible about impertinences.
She lives in grand style in a big, new house in K Street--it, like
everything about her, is "regardless of expense." The Tevises have been
making the most desperate efforts to "break in" last season and this,
and as Washington is, up to a certain point, very easy for strangers
with money, they've gone pretty far. I suppose Washington's like every
other capital--the people are so used to all sorts of queer strangers
and everything is so restless and changeful that no one minds adding to
his list of acquaintances any person who offers entertainment and isn't
too appalling. And the Tevises have been spending money like water.

It's queer how people can go everywhere that anybody goes and can seem
to be "right in it," yet not be in it at all. That's the way it is
with the Tevises. They are at every big affair in town--White House,
embassies, private houses. But they're never invited to the smaller,
more or less informal things. And when they do appear at a ball or
anywhere they're treated with formal politeness. They know there's
something wrong, but they can't for the life of them see what it is.
And that's not strange, for who can see the line that's instinctively
drawn between social sheep and social goats in the flock that's
apparently all mixed up? Everybody knows the sheep on sight; everybody
knows the goats. And all act accordingly without anything being said.

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Tevis are goats. Why? Anybody could see it after
talking to either of them for five minutes; yet who could say why? It
isn't because they're snobs--lots of sheep are nauseating snobs. It
isn't because they're very badly self-made--I defy anybody to produce
a goat that can touch Willie Catesby or Rennie Tucker, yet each of them
has ancestors by the score. It isn't because they're new--the Burkes
are new, yet Mrs. Burke has at least a dozen intimate acquaintances
of the right sort. It isn't because they're ostentatious and boastful
about wealth and prices--there are scores of sheep who make the same
sort of absurd exhibition of vulgarity. I can't place it. They're just
goats, and they know it, and they feel it; and when you go to their
house they suggest a restaurant keeper welcoming his customers; and
when they come to your house they suggest Cook's tourists roaming in
the private apartments of a palace, smiling apologetically at every one
and wondering whether they're not about to be told to "step lively."

Mrs. Tevis received me very grandly and graciously, though dreadfully
nervous withal, lest I should be seeing that she was "throwing a bluff"
and should put her in her place.

"I've requested you to come, my dear Miss Talltowers," she began,
after she had bunglingly served tea from the newest and costliest and
most elaborate tea-set I ever saw, "because I had a little matter of
business to talk over with you and felt that we could talk more freely
here."

"I must be back at half-past five," said I, by way of urging her on to
the point.

"That will be quite time enough," said she. "We can have our little
conversation quite nicely, and you will be in ample time for your
duties."

I wonder what sort of dialect she _thinks_ in. It certainly can't be
more irritating than the one she translates her thoughts into before
speaking them. The dialect she inflicts on people sounds as if it were
from a Complete Conversationalist, got up by an old maid who had been
teaching school for forty years.

"I have decided to take a secretary for next season," she went on. "Not
that I need any such direction as the Burkes. Fortunately, Mr. Tevis
and I have had a large social experience on both sides of the Atlantic
and have always moved with the best people. But just a secretary--to
attend to my onerous correspondence and arrangements for entertaining.
The duties would be light, but we should be willing to pay a larger
salary than the position would really justify--that is, we should be
willing to pay it, you know, to a _lady_ such as you are."

I bowed.

"We should treat you with all delicacy and appreciation of
the fact that your misfortunes have compelled you to take
a--a--position--which--which--"

"You are very kind, Mrs. Tevis," said I.

"And we realized that in all probability the Burkes would have no
further use for your services at the end of this season, as you have
been most successful with them."

I winced. For the first time the "practical" view of what I've been
doing for the Burkes stared me in the face--that is, the view which
such people as the Tevises, perhaps many of my friends, took of it. So
I was being regarded, spoken of, discussed, as a person who had been
bought by the Burkes to get them in with certain people. And it was
assumed that, having got what they wanted, they would dismiss me and so
cut off a superfluous expense! I was somewhat astonished at myself for
not having seen my position in this light before.

And I suddenly realized why I hadn't--because the Burkes were really
nice people, because I hadn't been their employee but their friend.
What if I had started my career as a dependent of Mrs. Tevis'! I
shivered. And when the Burkes should need me no longer--why, the
probabilities were that I should have to seek employment from just
such dreadful people as these--upstarts eager to jam themselves in,
vulgarians whom icy manners and forbidding looks only influence to
fiercer efforts to associate with those who don't wish to associate
with them.

Mrs. Tevis interrupted my dismal thoughts with a cough, intended to be
polite. "What--what--compensation would you expect, may I ask?"

"What do such positions pay?" I said, and my voice sounded harsh to me.
I wished to know what value was usually put upon such services.

"Would--say--twenty-five dollars a week be--meet with your views?"
she asked, and her tone was that of a person performing an act of
astounding generosity.

"Oh, dear me, no," said I, with the kind of sweetness that coats a pill
of gall. "I couldn't think of trying to get you in for any such sum as
that."

I saw that the gall had bit through the sugar-coat.

"Would you object to giving me some idea of what the Burkes pay?" she
asked, with the taste puckering her mouth.

"I should," I replied, rising. "Anyhow, I don't care to undertake the
job. Thank you so much for your generosity and kindness, Mrs. Tevis."
I nodded--I'm afraid it was a nod intended to "put her in her place."
"Good-by." And I smiled and got myself out of the room before she
recovered.

I _wish_ I hadn't seen her. I hate the truth--it's always unpleasant.

February 5. Mrs. Burke had thirty-one invitations to-day, eleven of
them for her and Mr. Burke. Seven were invitations to little affairs
which Mrs. Tevis would give--well, perhaps five dollars apiece--to
get to. How ridiculous for her to economize in the one way in which
liberality is most necessary. Here they are spending probably a
hundred thousand dollars a season in hopeless attempts to do that which
they would hesitate to pay me six hundred dollars for doing. And this
when they think I could accomplish it. But could I? I guess not. To
win out as I have with the Burkes you've got to have the right sort
of material to work on, and it must be workable. Vulgar people would
be ashamed to put themselves in any one's hands as completely as Mrs.
Burke put herself in my hands.

Oh, I'm sick--sick, sick of it! I'm ashamed to look "ma" Burke in the
face, because I think such mean things about them all when I'm in bed
and blue.

February 6. I decline all the invitations that come for me personally.
I sit in my "office" and pretend to be fussing with my books--they give
me the horrors! And I was so proud of them and of my plans to make my
little enterprise a success.

February 7. Mrs. Burke came in this afternoon and came round my desk
and kissed me. "What is it, dear? What's the matter?" she said. "Won't
you tell _me_? Why, I feel as if you were my daughter. I did have a
daughter. She came first. Tom was so disappointed. But I was glad. A
son belongs to both his parents, and, when he's grown up, to his wife.
But a daughter--she would 'a' belonged to me always. And she had to up
and die just when she was about to make up her mind to talk."

I put my face down in my arms on the desk.

"Tired, dear?" said "ma"--she's a born "ma." "Of course, that's it.
You're clean pegged out, working and worrying. You must put it all
away and rest." And she sat down by me.

All of a sudden--I couldn't help it--I put my head on her great, big
bosom and burst out crying. "Oh, I'm so _bad_!" I said. "And you're so
_good_!"

She patted me and kissed me on top of my head. "What pretty, soft hair
you have, dear," she said, "and what a lot of it! My! My! I don't see
how anybody that looks like you do could ever be unhappy a minute. You
don't know what it means to be born homely and fat and to have to work
hard just to make people not object to having you about." And she went
on talking in that way until I was presently laughing, still against
that great, big bosom with the great, big heart beating under it.
When I felt that it would be a downright imposition to stay there any
longer I straightened up. I felt quite cheerful.

"Was there something worrying you?" she asked.

I blushed and hung my head. "Yes, but I can't tell you," said I. And I
couldn't--could I? Besides, there somehow doesn't seem to be much of
anything in all my brooding. What a nasty beast that Mrs. Tevis is!

February 12. Mrs. Burke and I went to a reception at the Secretary
of State's this afternoon. We saw Nadeshda's sister in the
distance--that's where we've always seen her and the ambassador and
the whole embassy staff ever since the "bust-up," except funny little
De Pleyev. He, being of a mediatized family, does not need to disturb
himself about ambassadorial frowns or smiles. It's curious what a
strong resemblance there is between a foreigner of royal blood and a
straightaway American gentleman. But, as I was about to write, this
afternoon the distance between us and Madame l'Ambassadrice slowly
lessened, and when she was quite close to us she gave us a dazzling
smile apiece and said to Mrs. Burke: "My dear Madame Burke, you are
looking most charming. You must come to us to tea. To-morrow? Do say
yes--we've missed you so. My poor back--it almost shuts me out of the
world." And she passed on--probably didn't wish to risk the chance that
"ma's" puzzled look might give place to an expression of some kind of
anger and that she might make one of those frank speeches she's famous
for.

"Well, did you _ever_!" exclaimed "ma" when the Countess was out of
earshot.

I said warningly: "Everybody's seen it and is watching you." And it
was true. The whole crowd in those perfume-steeped rooms was gaping,
and the news had spread so quickly that a throng was pushing in from
the tea-room, some of them still chewing.

Afterward we discussed it, and could come to but one conclusion--that
the Robert-Nadeshda crisis had passed. But--do the Daraganes think
that Nadeshda is safe from Robert, or have they decided to take him
in? Certainly, _something_ decisive has happened. And if Robert had
anything to do with it it must have been stirring enough to make the
Daraganes use the cable--how else could Nadeshda's sister have got her
cue so soon?

February 15. No news whatever of Robert and Nadeshda. Yesterday the
ambassadress came here to tea and said to Mrs. Burke that she had had
a letter from Nadeshda in which she sent us all her love--"especially
your dear, splendid, big Monsieur Cyrus." Mr. and Mrs. Burke are to
dine at the embassy five weeks from to-night--the ambassadress insisted
on Mrs. Burke's giving her first free evening to her, and that was it.

"I reckon we'll have to go," said "ma" after her departure, and while
the odor of her frightfully-powerful heliotrope scent was still heavy
in the room, "though I doubt if I'll be alive by then. Sometimes it
seems to me I've just got to knock off and take a clean week in bed.
I thought I'd never think of drugs to keep me going, as so many women
advise. But I see I'm getting round to it. And I'm getting _that_ fat
in the body and _that_ lean in the face! Did you ever see the like? I
must 'a' lost three pounds off my face. And the skin's hanging there
waiting for it to come back, instead of shrinking. I'm glad my Tom
never looks at me. I know to a certainty he ain't looked at me in
twenty years. Husbands and wives don't waste much time looking at each
other, and I guess it's a good, safe plan."

Mrs. Burke does look badly. I must take better care of her. Cyrus looks
badly, too. I haven't seen him to talk to since he made his "strictly
business" proposition. I suppose he wants me to realize that he isn't
one of the pestering kind. I'm sorry he takes it that way, as I'd have
liked to be friends with him. He quarreled so beautifully when we
didn't agree. It's a great satisfaction to have some one at hand who
both agrees and quarrels in a satisfactory way. But I don't dare make
any advances to him. He might misunderstand.

I've just been laughing--at his cowlick. It _is_ such an obstinate
little swirl. And when he looks serious it looks so funnily frisky, and
when he smiles it looks so fiercely serious and disapproving. Yesterday
I hurried suddenly into the little room just off the ball-room,
thinking it was empty. But Cyrus and his mother were there, and he
was tickling her, and he looked so fond of her, and she looked so
delighted. I slipped away without their seeing me.

February 16. We gave our second big ball last night with a dinner for
sixty before. It was just half-past five this morning when the last
couple came sneaking out from the alcove off the little room beyond
the conservatory and, we pretending not to see them, scuttled away
without saying good night. Major-General Cutler danced with Mrs.
Burke in the opening quadrille, and Mr. Burke danced with the British
ambassadress--the ambassador is ill. I had Jim on my hands most of the
evening--though I was flirting desperately with little D'Estourelle, he
hung to me with a maddening husbandish air of proprietorship. I don't
see how I ever endured him, much less thought of marrying him. Cyrus
Burke is a king beside him. Excuse me from men who think the fact that
they've done a woman the honor of loving her gives them a property
right to her. Mrs. Burke was the belle of the ball. She had a crowd of
men round her chair all evening, laughing at everything she said.

February 17. A cable from Robert Gunton at Hamburg this morning--just
"Arrive Washington about March 3." That was all--worse than nothing.
It is Lent, but there's no let up for us. We only get rid of the kind
of entertainments that cost us the least trouble to plan and give, and
we have to arrange more of the kind that have to be done carefully.
Anybody can give a dance, but it takes skill to give a successful
dinner.

February 19. Nadeshda's sister said to-day, quite casually, to Jessie:
"Deshda's coming back, and we're so glad. The trip has done her _so_
much good--in every way." Now, whatever did _that_ mean?




VI


February 26. No news of Robert and Nadeshda. Have been glancing through
this diary. How conceited I am, taking credit to myself for everything.
I wonder if I am vainer than most people, or does everybody make the
same ridiculous discovery about himself when he takes himself off his
guard? What an imperfect record this is of our launching. But then, if
I had made it perfect I should have had to go into so many wearisome
details, not to speak of my having so little time. Still, it would
have been interesting to read some day, when I shall have forgotten the
little steps--for although we've had in all only a month before the
season and five weeks between New Year's and Ash Wednesday, so much
has been crowded into that time. It's amazing what one can accomplish
if one uses every moment to a single purpose. And I've not only used
my own time, but Robert's and Jessie's and the time of their and my
friends, and that of Nadeshda and a dozen other people. They and I
all worked together to make my enterprise a success--and Jim and the
Senator, and "ma" Burke was a great help after the first few weeks.
Yes, and I mustn't forget Cyrus. He has made himself astonishingly
popular. I see now that he showed a better side to every one than he
did to me. Perhaps I can guess why. I wonder if he really cares or did
care--for me, or was it just "ma" trying to get me into the family, and
he willing to do anything she asked of him?

But to go back to my vanity--I see that Jessie, Rachel and Cyrus
were the real cause of my success. Jessie and Rachel alone could
make anybody, who wasn't positively awful, a go. Then Nadeshda, bent
on marrying Cyrus at first, was a big help--and every mama with a
marriageable daughter was hot on Cyrus' trail. So it's easy to make
an infallible recipe for getting into society: First, wealth; second,
willingness to act on competent advice; third, get a "secretary" who
knows society and has intimate friends in its most exclusive set,
and who also knows how to arrange entertainments; fourth, have a
marriageable son, if possible, or, failing that, a daughter, or,
failing that, a near relative who will be well dowered; fifth, organize
the campaign thoroughly and pay particular attention to getting
yourself liked by the few people who really count. You can't bribe
them; you can't drive them; you must _amuse_ them. The more leisure
people have the harder it is to amuse them.

Looking back, I can see that "ma" Burke passed her social crisis when,
on January 5, Mrs. Gaether asked her to assist at her reception. For
Mrs. Gaether was the first social power who took "ma" up simply and
solely because she liked her.

We have spent a great deal of money, but not half what the Tevises have
spent. But our money counted because it was incidental. Mere money
won't carry any one very far in Washington--I don't believe it will
anywhere, except, perhaps, in New York.

I ought to have kept some sort of record of what we've done from day
to day--I mean, more detailed than my books. However, I'll just put in
our last full day before Lent, as far as I can recall it. No, I'll only
write out what Mrs. Burke alone did that day:

7:30 to 10. She and I, in her room, went over the arrangements for the
ball we were giving in the evening.

10 to 12:30. She went to see half a dozen people about various social
matters, besides doing a great deal of shopping.

12:30 to 1:45. More worrying consultation with me, then dressing for
luncheon.

1:45 to 3:45. A long and tiresome luncheon at one of the embassies.

3:45 to 6:30. More than twenty calls and teas--a succession of
exhausting rushes and struggles.

6:30 to 7:15. In the drawing-room here, with a lot of people coming and
going.

7:15 to 8. Dressing for dinner--a frightful rush.

8 to 8:30. Receiving the dinner guests.

8:30 to 10:45. The dinner.

10:45 to midnight. Receiving the guests for the dance--on her feet all
the time.

Midnight to 6 in the morning. Sitting, but incessantly busy.

6 to 9. In bed.

9. A new and crowded day.

This has been a short season, but I don't think it was the shortness,
crowding much into a few days, that made the pressure so great. It's
simply that year by year Washington becomes socially worse and worse.
As I looked round at that last ball of ours I pitied the people who
were nerving themselves up to trying to enjoy themselves.

Almost every one was, and looked, worn out. Here and there the
unnatural brightness of eyes or cheeks showed that somebody--usually a
young person--had been driven to some sort of stimulant to enable him
or her to hold the pace. Quick to laugh; quick to frown and bite the
lips in almost uncontrollable anger. Nerves on edge, flesh quivering.

Yet, what is one to do? To be "in it" one must go all the time; not
to go all the time, not to accept all the principal invitations, is
to make enemies right and left. Besides, who that gets into the
hysterical state which the Washington season induces can be content to
sit quietly at home when on every side there are alluring opportunities
to enjoy?

No wonder we see less and less of the men of importance. No wonder the
"sons of somebodies" and the young men of the embassies and legations
and departments, most of them amiable enough, but all just about as
near nothing as you would naturally expect, are the best the women can
get to their houses.

It is foolish; it is frightful. But it is somehow fascinating, and it
gives us women the chance to go the same reckless American gait that
the men go in their business and professions.

I am utterly worn out. I might be asleep at this moment. Yet I'm
sitting here alone, too feverish for hope of rest. And I can see
lights in Cyrus' apartment and in Senator Burke's sitting-room, and I
don't doubt poor "ma" is tossing miserably in a vain attempt to get the
sleep that used to come unasked and stay until it was fought off.

It is Lent, and the season is supposed to be over. But the rush is
still on, and other things which crowd and jam in more than fill up the
vacant space left by big, formal parties. It seems to me that there is
even as much dancing as there was two weeks ago. The only difference is
that it isn't formally arranged for beforehand.

I'd like to "shut off steam"--indeed, it seems to me that I must if
"ma" Burke is not to be sacrificed. But how can we? People expect us to
entertain, and we must go out to their affairs also. The only escape
would be to fly, and we can't do that so long as Congress is sitting.

February 27. Robert and Nadeshda are both in town, he with us, she
at the embassy. They are to be married the twelfth of April. The
engagement is to be announced to-morrow. I've never seen any one more
demure than Nadeshda, or happier. I suspect she's going to settle down
into the most domestic of women. Indeed, I know it--for, as she says,
she's afraid of him, obeys him as a dog its master, and the domestic
side of her is the only one he'll tolerate. I've always heard that her
sort of woman is the tamest, once it's under control. She has will but
no continuity. He has a stronger will and his purposes are unalterable.
So he'll continue to dominate her.

"Ma" Burke asked him, "How did you make out with her folks?"

He smiled, then laughed.

"I don't know--exactly," he said. "They couldn't talk my language nor
I theirs. So it was all done through an interpreter. And he was Mrs.
Dean's brother-in-law, Prince Glückstein, and a regular trump. He saw
them half a dozen times before I did. When I saw them everything was
lovely. They left me alone with her after twenty minutes. Finally it
was agreed that we should come back on the same steamer, her brother
accompanying her."

"But why on earth didn't you cable us?" she demanded.

"I did," he replied.

"But you didn't tell us anything," she returned.

"I told you all there was to tell," he replied.

"You only said you were coming," she objected.

"Well," he answered, looking somewhat surprised, "I knew you'd know I
wouldn't come without her."

I'm glad he didn't get it into his head to "take after" me. A woman
stands no more chance with a man like that than a rabbit with a
greyhound.

February 29. "Ma" Burke is dreadfully ill--has been for two days. The
doctors have got several large Latin names for it, but the plain truth
is that she has broken down under the strain she seemed to be bearing
so placidly. She didn't give up until she was absolutely unable to lift
herself out of bed. "I knew it was coming," she said, "but I thought I
had spirit enough to put it off till I had more time."

It wasn't until she did give up that her face really showed how badly
off she was. I was sitting by her bed when "pa" Burke and Cyrus came
in. I couldn't bear to look at them, yet I couldn't keep my eyes off
their faces. Both got deadly white at sight of her, and "pa" rushed
from the room after a moment or two. The doctor had cautioned him
against alarming her by showing any signs of grief. But "pa" couldn't
stand it. He went to his study, and the housekeeper told me he cried
like a baby. Cyrus stayed, and I couldn't help admiring the way he put
on cheerfulness.

"I'll be all right in a few days," said "ma." "It wasn't what I did; it
was what I et. I'm such a fool that I can't let things that look good
go by. And I went from house to house, munching away, cake here, candy
there, chocolate yonder, besides lunches and dinners and suppers. I et
in and I et out. Now, I reckon I've got to settle the bill. Thank the
Lord I don't have to do it standing up."

Cyrus and I went away from her room together. "If she wasn't so good,"
said he, more to himself than to me, "I'd not be so--so uncertain."

"I feel that I'm to blame," said I bitterly. "It was I that gave her
all those things to do."

He was silent, and his silence frightened me. I had felt that I was
partly to blame. His silence made me feel that I was wholly to blame,
and that he thought so.

"If I could only undo it," I said, in what little voice I could muster.

"If you only could," he muttered.

I was utterly crushed. Every bit of my courage fled, and--but what's
the use of trying to describe it? It was as if I had tried to murder
her and had come to my senses and was realizing what I'd done.

I suppose I must have shown what was in my mind, for, all of a sudden,
with a sort of sob or groan, he put his arms round me--such a strong
yet such a gentle clasp! "Don't look like that, dear!" he pleaded.
"Forgive me--it was cowardly, what I said--and not true. We're all to
blame--you the least. Haven't I seen, day after day, how you've done
everything you could to spare her--how you've worn yourself out?"

He let me go as suddenly as he had seized me.

"I'm not fit to be called a man!" he exclaimed. "Just because I loved
you, and was always thinking of you, and watching you, and worrying
about you, I neglected to think of mother. If I'd given her a single
thought I'd have known long ago that she was ill."

Just then Mrs. Burke's maid called me--she was only a few yards away,
and must have seen everything. I hurried back to the room we had
quitted a few minutes before. "You must cheer up those two big, foolish
men, child," she said. "You all think I'm going to pass over, but I'm
not. You won't get rid of me for many a year. And I rely on you to
prevent them from going all to pieces."

She paused and looked at me wistfully, as if she longed to say
something but was afraid she had no right to. I said: "What is it--ma?"

Her face brightened. "Come, kiss me," she murmured. "Thank you for
saying that. We're very different in lots of ways, being raised so
different. But hearts have a way of finding each other, haven't they?"

I nodded.

"What I wanted to say was about--Cyrus," she went on. "My Cyrus told
me that he don't see how he could get along without you, no way, and
I advised him to talk to you about it, because I knew it'd relieve
his mind and because it'd set you to looking at him in a different
way. Anyhow, it's always a good plan to ask for what you want. And he
did--and he told me you wouldn't hear to him. Don't think I'm trying to
persuade you. All I meant to say is that--"

She stopped and smiled, a bright shadow of that old, broad, beaming
smile of hers.

"I'd do anything for you!" I exclaimed, on impulse.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't suit Cyrus," she drawled, good humoredly.
"He'd be mad as the Old Scratch if he knew what I was up to now.
Well--do the best you can. But don't do anything unless it's for his
sake. Only--just look him over again. There's a lot to Cyrus besides
his cowlick. And he's been so dead in love with you ever since he first
saw you that he's been making a perfect fool of himself every time he
looked at you or spoke to you. Sometimes, when I've seen the way he's
acted up, like a farmhand waltzing in cowhides, I've felt like taking
him over my knees and laying it on good and hard."

I was laughing so that I couldn't answer--the reaction from the fear
that she might be very, very ill had made me hysterical. I could still
see that she was sick, extremely sick, but I realized that our love for
her had just put us into a panic.

"Do the best you can, dear," she ended. "And everything--all the
entertaining here and the going out--must be kept up just the same
as if I was being dragged about down stairs instead of lying up here
resting."

She insisted on this, and would not be content until she had my
promise. "And don't forget to cheer pa and Cyrus up. I never was sick
before--not a day. That's why they take on so."

I think I have been succeeding in cheering them up. And everything is
going forward as before--except, of course, that we've cut out every
engagement we possibly could.

It's amazing how many friends "ma" Burke has made in such a short
time. Ever since the news of her illness got out, the front door has
been opening and shutting all day long. And those of the callers that
I've seen have shown a real interest. This has made me have a better
opinion of human nature than I had thought I could have. I suppose
half the seeming heartlessness in this world is suspicion and a sort
of miserly dread lest one should give kindly feeling without getting
any of it in return. But "ma" Burke, who never bothers her head for an
instant about whether people like her, and gets all her pleasure out of
liking them, makes friends by the score.

I'm in a queer state of mind about Cyrus.

March 3. "Ma" Burke was brought down to the drawing-room for tea
to-day. She held a regular levee. Those that came early spread it
round, and by six o'clock they were pouring in. She looked extremely
well, and gloriously happy. All she had needed was complete rest and
sleep--and less to eat. "After this," she said, "I'm not going to eat
more than four or five meals a day. At my age a woman can't stand the
strain of ten and twelve--my record was sixteen--counting two teas
as one meal." For an hour there was hilarious chattering in English,
French, German, Italian, Russian, and mixtures of all five. I think
the thing that most fascinates Mrs. Burke about Washington is the many
languages spoken. She looks at me in an awed way when I trot out my
three in quick succession. And she regards the women as superhuman who
speak so many languages so fluently that they drift from one to the
other without being quite sure what they're speaking. There certainly
were enough going on at once to-day, and a good many of the women
smoked.

But to return to Mrs. Burke. When only a few of those we know best were
left this afternoon, and Nadeshda was smoking, Jessie, who is always
so tactful, said to Robert: "I'm glad to see that you don't object to
Nadeshda's smoking."

Mrs. Burke laughed. "Why should he?" said she. "Why, when we were
children ma and pa used to sit on opposite sides of the chimney,
smoking their pipes. And ma dipped, too, when it wasn't convenient for
her to have her pipe."

"Do _you_ smoke, Mrs. Burke?" asked Jessie, with wide, serious eyes. "I
never saw you."

"No, I don't," she confessed. "Tom used to hate the smell of it, so I
never got into the habit."

Nadeshda was tremendously amused by what Mrs. Burke had said about
pipes. "I didn't know it was considered nice for a lady to smoke in
America until recently," said she. "And pipes! How eccentric! Mama
smokes cigars--one after dinner, but I never heard of a lady smoking a
pipe."

"Ma wasn't a lady--what _you'd_ call a lady," replied Mrs. Burke. "She
was just a plain woman. She didn't smoke because she thought it was
fashionable, but because she thought it was comfortable. As soon as we
children got a little older we used to be terribly ashamed of it--but
_she_ kept right on. And now it's come in style."

"Not _pipes_," said Jessie.

"Not _yet_," said "ma," with a smile.

When I thought they had all gone, and I was writing in my "office" for
a few minutes before going up to dress, Nadeshda came in to me. "Ma"
Burke used often to say that Nadeshda's eyes were "full of the Old
Scratch," but certainly they were not at that moment. She was giving
me a glimpse of that side which, as Browning, I think, says, even the
meanest creature has and shows only to the person he or she loves. Not
that Nadeshda loves me, but she has that side turned outermost nowadays
whenever she hasn't the veil drawn completely over her real self.

"My dear," she said in French, "what is it? Why these little smiles all
afternoon whenever you forgot where you were?"

I couldn't help blushing. "I don't quite know, myself," I replied--and
it was so.

"Oh, you cold, cold, _cold_ Americans!"--then she paused and gave me
one of her strange smiles, with her eyes elongated and her lips just
parted--"I mean, you American women."

"Cold, because we don't set ourselves on fire?" I inquired.

"But yes," she answered, "yourselves, and the men, too. Never mind. I
shall not peep into your little secret." She laughed. "It always chills
me to grope round in one of your cold American women's hearts."

"I wish you could tell me what my secret is--and that's the plain
truth," said I.

She laughed again, shrugged her shoulders, pinched my cheek, nodded
her head until her big plumed hat was all in a quiver and was shaking
out volumes of the strong, heavy perfume she uses. And without saying
anything more she went away.

March 4. Cyrus and I sat next each other at dinner at the Secretary
of War's to-night. It has happened several times this winter, as the
precedence is often very difficult to arrange at small dinners. Old
Alex Bartlett took me in, and as he's stone deaf and a monstrous eater
I was free.

Cyrus had taken in a silent little girl who has just come out. She had
exhausted her little line of prearranged conversation before the fish
was taken away. So Cyrus talked to me.

"She's grateful for my letting her alone," said he when I tried to turn
him back to his duty. "Besides, if I didn't meet you out once in a
while you'd forget me entirely. And I don't want that, if I can avoid
it."

"Thank you," said I, for lack of anything else to say, and with not
the remotest intention of irritating him. But he flushed scarlet, and
frowned.

"You always and deliberately misconstrue everything I say," said he
bitterly. "I know I'm unfortunate in trying to express myself to you,
but why do you never attribute to me anything but the worst intentions?"

"And why should you assume that every careless reply I make is a
carefully thought out attack on you?" I retorted. "Don't you think your
vanity makes you morbid?"

"You know perfectly well that it isn't vanity that makes me think you
especially dislike me," said he.

"But I don't," I answered. "I confess I did at first, but not since
I've come to know you better."

"Why did you dislike me at first?" he asked. "You began on me with
almost the first moment of our acquaintance."

"That's true--I did," I admitted. "I had a reason for it--didn't
Nadeshda tell you what it was?"

He looked frightened.

"Be frank, if you want me to be frank," said I.

"I never for an instant believed what she said," he replied abjectly.
Then after a warning look from me, he added--"_Really_ believed it, I
mean."

"And what was it that you didn't really believe?" I demanded.

He looked at me boldly. "Nadeshda and one or two others told me that
you and your friends had arranged it for me to marry you. But, of
course, I knew it wasn't so."

"But it was so," I replied. "You were one of the considerations that
determined my friends in trying to get me my place."

"Well--and why didn't you take me when I finally fell into the trap?"

I let him see I was laughing at him.

He scowled--his cowlick did look so funny that I longed to pull it.
"Simply couldn't stand me--not even for the sake of what I brought," he
said. And then he gave me a straight, searching look. "I wonder why I
don't hate you," he went on. "I wonder why I am such an ass as to care
for you. Yes--even if I knew you didn't care for me, still I'd want
you. Can a man make a more degrading confession than that?"

"But why?" said I, very careful not to let him see how eagerly I
longed to hear him say _the_ words again. "Why should you want--me?"

He gave a very unpleasant laugh. "If you think I'm going to sit
here and exhibit my feelings for your amusement you're going to be
disappointed. It's none of your business _why_. Certainly not because I
find anything sweet or amiable or even kind in you."

"That's rude," said I.

"It was intended to be," said he.

"Please--let's not quarrel now," said I coldly. "It gives me the
headache to quarrel during dinner."

And he answered between his set teeth, "To quarrel with
you--anywhere--gives me--the heartache, Gus."

I had no answer for that, nor should I have had the voice to utter it
if I had had it. And then Mr. Bartlett began prosing to me about the
Greeley-Grant campaign. And when the men came to join the women after
dinner Cyrus went away almost immediately.

I am _so_ happy to-night.

March 5. Cyrus came to me in my office to-day--as I had expected. But
instead of looking woebegone and abject, he was radiant. He shut the
door behind him. "_You_--guilty of cowardice," he began. "It isn't
strange that I never suspected it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, not putting down my pen.

He came over and took it out of my fingers, then he took my fingers and
kissed them, one by one. I was so astounded--and something else--that I
made not the slightest resistance. "It's useless for you to cry out,"
he said, "for I've got the outer door well guarded."

[Illustration]

I started up aflame with indignation. "Who--whom--" I began.

"Ma," he replied.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, looking round with a wild idea of making a dart for
liberty.

"Ma," he repeated, "and it's not of the slightest use for you to try
to side-step. You're cornered." He had both my hands now and was
looking at me at arm's length. "So you are afraid to marry me for fear
people--your friends--will say that--I walked right into the trap?"

I hung my head and couldn't keep from trembling, I was so ashamed.

"And if it wasn't for that you'd accept my 'proposition'--now--wouldn't
you?"

"I would not," I replied, wrenching myself away with an effort that
put my hair topsy-turvy--it always does try to come down if I make a
sudden movement, and I washed it only yesterday.

"What gorgeous hair you have!" he said. "Sometimes I've caught a
glimpse of it just as I was entering a room--and I've had to retreat
and compose myself to make a fresh try."

"You've been talking to your mother!" I exclaimed--I'd been casting
about for an explanation of all this sudden shrewdness of his in ways
feminine.

"I have," said he. "It's as important to her as to me that you don't
escape."

"And she told you that I was in love with _you_!" I tried to put a
little--not too much--scorn into the "you."

"She did," he answered. "Do you deny that it's true?"

"I have told you I would never accept your 'proposition,'" was my
answer.

"So you did," said he. "Then you mean that you're going to sacrifice
my mother's happiness and mine, simply because you're afraid of being
accused of mercenary motives?"

"I shall never accept your 'proposition,'" I repeated, with a faint
smile that was a plain hint.

He came very close to me and looked down into my face. "What do you
mean by that?" he demanded. And then he must have remembered what
his proposition was--a strictly business arrangement on both sides.
For, with a sort of gasp of relief, he took me in his arms. I do love
the combination of strength and tenderness in a man. He had looked
and talked and been so strong up to that instant. Then he was _so_
tender--I could hardly keep back the tears.

"Wouldn't you like me to tell mother?" he asked. "She's just in the
next room--and--"

I nodded and said, "I never should have caught you if it hadn't been
for her."

"Nor I you," said he. And he put me in a chair and opened the door. I
somehow couldn't look up, though I knew she was there.

"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," said "ma" Burke. "So I guess
I'll just do both." And then she seated herself and was as good as her
word.

[Illustration]




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

  Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.





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