_ OF all titles ever assumed by prince or potentate, the proudest is
that of the Roman pontiffs: "Servus servorum Dei"--"Servant of the
servants of God."
In former days it was not admitted that the devil's servants could
by right have any share in government. They were to be shut out,
punished, exiled, maimed, and burned. The devil has no servants
now; only the people have servants. There may be some mistake
about a doctrine which makes the wicked, when a majority, the
mouthpiece of God against the virtuous, but the hopes of mankind
are staked on it; and if the weak in faith sometimes quail when
they see humanity floating in a shoreless ocean, on this plank,
which experience and religion long since condemned as rotten,
mistake or not, men have thus far floated better by its aid, than the
popes ever did with their prettier principle; so that it will be a long
time yet before society repents.
Whether the new President and his chief rival, Mr. Silas P.
Ratcliffe, were or were not servants of the servants of God, is not
material here. Servants they were to some one. No doubt many of
those who call themselves servants of the people are no better than
wolves in sheep's clothing, or asses in lions' skins. One may see
scores of them any day in the Capitol when Congress is in session,
making noisy demonstrations, or more usefully doing nothing. A
wiser generation will employ them in manual labour; as it is, they
serve only themselves. But there are two officers, at least, whose
service is real--the President and his Secretary of the Treasury. The
Hoosier Quarryman had not been a week in Washington before he
was heartily home-sick for Indiana. No maid-of-all-work in a
cheap boarding-house was ever more harassed. Everyone
conspired against him. His enemies gave him no peace. All
Washington was laughing at his blunders, and ribald sheets,
published on a Sunday, took delight in printing the new Chief
Magistrate's sayings and doings, chronicled with outrageous
humour, and placed by malicious hands where the President could
not but see them. He was sensitive to ridicule, and it mortified him
to the heart to find that remarks and acts, which to him seemed
sensible enough, should be capable of such perversion. Then he
was overwhelmed with public business. It came upon him in a
deluge, and he now, in his despair, no longer tried to control it. He
let it pass over him like a wave. His mind was muddied by the
innumerable visitors to whom he had to listen. But his greatest
anxiety was the Inaugural Address which, distracted as he was, he
could not finish, although in another week it must be delivered. He
was nervous about his Cabinet; it seemed to him that he could do
nothing until he had disposed of Ratcliffe.
Already, thanks to the President's friends, Ratcliffe had become
indispensable; still an enemy, of course, but one whose hands must
be tied; a sort of Sampson, to be kept in bonds until the time came
for putting him out of the way, but in the meanwhile, to be
utilized. This point being settled, the President had in imagination
begun to lean upon him; for the last few days he had postponed
everything till next week, "when I get my Cabinet arranged;"
which meant, when he got Ratcliffe's assistance; and he fell into a
panic whenever he thought of the chance that Ratcliffe might
refuse.
He was pacing his room impatiently on Monday mormng, an hour
before the time fixed for Ratcliffe's visit. His feelings still
fluctuated violently, and if he recognized the necessity of using
Ratcliffe, he was not the less determined to tie Ratcliffe's hands.
He must be made to come into a Cabinet where every other voice
would be against him. He must be prevented from having any
patronage to dispose of. He must be induced to accept these
conditions at the start. How present this to him in such a way as
not to repel him at once? All this was needless, if the President had
only known it, but he thought himself a profound statesman, and
that his hand was guiding the destinies of America to his own
re-election. When at length, on the stroke of ten o'clock, Ratcliffe
entered the room, the President turned to him with nervous
eagerness, and almost before offering his hand, said that he hoped
Mr. Ratcliffe had come prepared to begin work at once. The
Senator replied that, if such was the President's decided wish, he
would offer no further opposition. Then the President drew himself
up in the attitude of an American Cato, and delivered a prepared
address, in which he said that he had chosen the members ot his
Cabinet with a careful regard to the public interests; that Mr.
Ratcliffe was essential to the combination; that he expected no
disagreement on principles, for there was but one principle which
he should consider fundamental, namely, that there should be no
removals from office except for cause; and that under these
circumstances he counted upon Mr. Ratcliffe's assistance as a
matter of patriotic duty.
To all this Ratcliffe assented without a word of objection, and the
President, more convinced than ever of his own masterly
statesmanship, breathed more freely than for a week past. Within
ten minutes they were actively at work together, clearing away the
mass of accumulated business.
The relief of the Quarryman surprised himself. Ratcliffe lifted the
weight of affairs from his shoulders with hardly an effort. He knew
everybody and everything. He took most of the President's visitors
at once into his own hands and dismissed them with great rapidity.
He knew what they wanted; he knew what recommendations were
strong and what were weak; who was to be treated with deference
and who was to be sent away abruptly; where a blunt refusal was
safe, and where a pledge was allowable. The President even
trusted him with the unfinished manuscript of the Inaugural
Address, which Ratcliffe returned to him the next day with such
notes and suggestions as left nothing to be done beyond copying
them out in a fair hand. With all this, he proved himself a very
agreeable companion. He talked well and enlivened the work; he
was not a hard taskmaster, and when he saw that the President was
tired, he boldly asserted that there was no more business that could
not as well wait a day, and so took the weary Stone-cutter out to
drive for a couple of hours, and let him go peacefully to sleep in
the carriage. They dined together and Ratcliffe took care to send
for Tom Lord to amuse them, for Tom was a wit and a humourist,
and kept the President in a laugh. Mr. Lord ordered the dinner and
chose the wines. He could be coarse enough to suit even the
President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand. When the
new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief; who
was in high good humour with his dinner, his champagne, and his
conversation, swore with some unnecessary granite oaths, that
Ratcliffe was "a clever fellow anyhow," and he was glad "that job
was fixed."
The truth was that Ratcliffe had now precisely ten days before the
new Cabinet could be set in motion, and in these ten days he must
establish his authority over the President so firmly that nothing
could shake it. He was diligent in good works. Very soon the court
began to feel his hand. If a business letter or a written memorial
came in, the President found it easy to endorse: "Referred to the
Secretary of the Treasury." If a visitor wanted anything for himself
or another, the invariable reply came to be: "Just mention it to Mr.
Ratcliffe;" or, "I guess Ratcliffe will see to that."
Before long he even made jokes in a Catonian manner; jokes that
were not peculiarly witty, but somewhat gruff and boorish, yet
significant of a resigned and self-contented mind. One morning he
ordered Ratcliffe to take an iron-clad ship of war and attack the
Sioux in Montana, seeing that he was in charge of the army and
navy and Indians at once, and Jack of all trades; and again he told
a naval officer who wanted a court-martial that he had better get
Ratcliffe to sit on him for he was a whole court-martial by himself.
That Ratcliffe held his chief in no less contempt than before, was
probable but not certain, for he kept silence on the subject before
the world, and looked solemn whenever the President was
mentioned.
Before three days were over, the President, with a little more than
his usual abruptness, suddenly asked him what he knew about this
fellow Carson, whom the Pennsylvanians were bothering him to
put in his Cabinet. Ratcliffe was guarded: he scarcely knew the
man; Mr. Carson was not in politics, he believed, but was pretty
respectable--for a Pennsylvanian. The President returned to the
subject several times; got out his list of Cabinet officers and
figured industriously upon it with a rather perplexed face; called
Ratcliffe to help him; and at last the "slate" was fairly broken, and
Ratcliffe's eyes gleamed when the President caused his list of
nominations to be sent to the Senate on the 5th March, and Josiah
B. Carson, of Pennsylvania, was promptly confirmed as Secretary
of the Interior.
But his eyes gleamed still more humorously when, a few days
afterwards, the President gave him a long list of some two score
names, and asked him to find places for them. He assented
good-naturedly, with a remark that it might be necessary to make a
few removals to provide for these cases.
"Oh, well," said the President, "I guess there's just about as many
as that had ought to go out anyway. These are friends of mine; got
to be looked after. Just stuff 'em in somewhere."
Even he felt a little awkward about it, and, to do him justice, this
was the last that was heard about the fundamental rule of his
administration.
Removals were fast and furious, until all Indiana became easy in
circumstances. And it was not to be denied that, by one means or
another, Ratcliffe's friends did come into their fair share of the
public money.
Perhaps the President thought it best to wink at such use of the
Treasury patronage for the present, or was already a little
overawed by his Secretary.
Ratcliffe's work was done. The public had, with the help of some
clever intrigue, driven its servants into the traces. Even an Indiana
stone-cutter could be taught that his personal prejudices must yield
to the public service. What mischief the selfishness, the ambition,
or the ignorance of these men might do, was another matter. As the
affair stood, the President was the victim of his own schemes. It
remained to be seen whether, at some future day, Mr. Ratcliffe
would think it worth his while to strangle his chief by some quiet
Eastern intrigue, but the time had gone by when the President
could make use of either the bow-string or the axe upon him.
All this passed while Mrs. Lee was quietly puzzling her poor little
brain about her duty and her responsibility to Ratcliffe, who,
meanwhile, rarely failed to find himself on Sunday evenings by her
side in her parlour, where his rights were now so well established
that no one presumed to contest his seat, unless it were old Jacobi,
who from time to time reminded him that he was fallible and
mortal. Occasionally, though not often, Mr. Ratcliffe came at other
times, as when he persuaded Mrs. Lee to be present at the
Inauguration, and to call on the President's wife. Madeleine and
Sybil went to the Capitol and had the best places to see and hear
the Inauguration, as well as a cold March wind would allow. Mrs.
Lee found fault with the ceremony; it was of the earth, earthy, she
said. An elderly western farmer, with silver spectacles, new and
glossy evening clothes, bony features, and stiff; thin, gray hair,
trying to address a large crowd of people, under the drawbacks of a
piercing wind and a cold in his head, was not a hero. Sybil's mind
was lost in wondering whether the President would not soon die of
pneumonia. Even this experience, however, was happy when
compared with that of the call upon the President's wife, after
which Madeleine decided to leave the new dynasty alone in future.
The lady, who was somewhat stout and coarse-featured, and whom
Mrs. Lee declared she wouldn't engage as a cook, showed qualities
which, seen under that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
seemed ungracious. Her antipathy to Ratcliffe was more violent
than her husband's, and was even more openly expressed, until the
President was quite put out of countenance by it. She extended her
hostility to every one who could be supposed to be Ratcliffe's
friend, and the newspapers, as well as private gossip, had marked
out Mrs. Lee as one who, by an alliance with Ratcliffe, was aiming
at supplanting her own rule over the White House.
Hence, when Mrs. Lightfoot Lee was announced, and the two
sisters were ushered into the presidential parlour, she put on a
coldly patronizing air, and in reply to Madeleine's hope that she
found Washington agreeable, she intimated that there was much in
Washington which struck her as awful wicked, especially the
women; and, looking at Sybil, she spoke of the style of dress in
this city which she said she meant to do what she could to put a
stop to. She'd heard tell that people sent to Paris for their gowns,
just as though America wasn't good enough to make one's clothes!
Jacob (all Presidents' wives speak of their husbands by their first
names) had promised her to get a law passed against it. In her town
in Indiana, a young woman who was seen on the street in such
clothes wouldn't be spoken to. At these remarks, made with an air
and in a temper quite unmistakable, Madeleine became
exasperated beyond measure, and said that "Washington would be
pleased to see the President do something in regard to
dress-reform--or any other reform;" and with this allusion to the
President's ante-election reform speeches, Mrs. Lee turned her
back and left the room, followed by Sybil in convulsions of
suppressed laughter, which would not have been suppressed had
she seen the face of their hostess as the door shut behind them, and
the energy with which she shook her head and said: "See if I don't
reform you yet, you--jade!"
Mrs. Lee gave Ratcliffe a lively account of this interview, and he
laughed nearly as convulsively as Sybil over it, though he tried to
pacify her by saying that the President's most intimate friends
openly declared his wife to be insane, and that he himself was the
person most afraid of her. But Mrs. Lee declared that the President
was as bad as his wife; that an equally good President and
President's wife could be picked up in any corner-grocery between
the Lakes and the Ohio; and that no inducement should ever make
her go near that coarse washerwoman again.
Ratcliffe did not attempt to change Mrs. Lee's opinion. Indeed he
knew better than any man how Presidents were made, and he had
his own opinions in regard to the process as well as the fabric
produced. Nothing Mrs. Lee could say now affected him. He threw
off his responsibility and she found it suddenly resting on her own
shoulders. When she spoke with indignation of the wholesale
removals from office with which the new administration marked
its advent to power, he told her the story of the President's
fundamental principle, and asked her what she would have him do.
"He meant to tie my hands," said Ratcliffe, "and to leave his own
free, and I accepted the condition. Can I resign now on such a
ground as this?" And Madeleine was obliged to agree that he could
not. She had no means of knowing how many removals he made in
his own interest, or how far he had outwitted the President at his
own game. He stood before her a victim and a patriot. Every step
he had taken had been taken with her approval. He was now in
office to prevent what evil he could, not to be responsible for the
evil that was done; and he honestly assured her that much worse
men would come in when he went out, as the President would
certainly take good care that he did go out when the moment
arrived.
Mrs. Lee had the chance now to carry out her scheme in coming to
Washington, for she was already deep in the mire of politics and
could see with every advantage how the great machine floundered
about, bespattering with mud even her own pure garments.
Ratcliffe himself, since entering the Treasury, had begun to talk
with a sneer of the way in which laws were made, and openly said
that he wondered how government got on at all. Yet he declared
still that this particular government was the highest expression of
political thought. Mrs. Lee stared at him and wondered whether he
knew what thought was. To her the government seemed to have
less thought in it than one of Sybil's gowns, for if they, like the
government, were monstrously costly, they were at least adapted to
their purpose, the parts fitted together, and they were neither
awkward nor unwieldy.
There was nothing very encouraging in all this, but it was better
than New York. At least it gave her something to look at, and to
think about. Even Lord Dunbeg preached practical philanthropy to
her by the hour. Ratcliffe, too, was compelled to drag himself out
of the rut of machine politics, and to justify his right of admission
to her house. There Mr. French discoursed at great length, until the
fourth of March sent him home to Connecticut; and he brought
more than one intelligent member of Congress to Mrs. Lee's
parlour. Underneath the scum floating on the surface of politics,
Madeleine felt that there was a sort of healthy ocean current of
honest purpose, which swept the scum before it, and kept the mass
pure.
This was enough to draw her on. She reconciled herself to
accepting the Ratcliffian morals, for she could see no choice. She
herself had approved every step she had seen him take. She could
not deny that there must be something wrong in a double standard
of morality, but where was it? Mr.
Ratcliffe seemed to her to be doing good work with as pure means
as he had at hand. He ought to be encouraged, not reviled. What
was she that she should stand in judgment?
Others watched her progress with less satisfaction. Mr. Nathan
Gore was one of these, for he came in one evening, looking much
out of temper, and, sitting down by her side he said he had come to
bid good-bye and to thank her for the kindness she had shown him;
he was to leave Washington the next morning. She too expressed
her warm regret, but added that she hoped he was only going in
order to take his passage to Madrid.
He shook his head. "I am going to take my passage," said he, "but
not to Madrid. The fates have cut that thread. The President does
not want my services, and I can't blame him, for if our situations
were reversed, I should certainly not want his. He has an Indiana
friend, who, I am told, wanted to be postmaster at Indianapolis, but
as this did not suit the politicians, he was bought off at the
exorbitant price of the Spanish mission. But I should have no
chance even if he were out of the way. The President does not
approve of me. He objects to the cut of my overcoat which is
unfortunately an English one. He also objects to the cut of my hair.
I am afraid that his wife objects to me because I am so happy as to
be thought a friend of yours."
Madeleine could only acknowledge that Mr. Gore's case was a bad
one. "But after all," said she, "why should politicians be expected
to love you literary gentlemen who write history. Other criminal
classes are not expected to love their judges."
"No, but they have sense enough to fear them," replied Gore
vindictively; "not one politician living has the brains or the art to
defend his own cause. The ocean of history is foul with the
carcases of such statesmen, dead and forgotten except when some
historian fishes one of them up to gibbet it."
Mr. Gore was so much out of temper that after this piece of
extravagance he was forced to pause a moment to recover himself.
Then he went on:-- "You are perfectly right, and so is the
President. I have no business to be meddling in politics. It is not
my place. The next time you hear of me, I promise it shall not be
as an office-seeker."
Then he rapidly changed the subject, saying that he hoped Mrs.
Lee was soon going northward again, and that they might meet at
Newport.
"I don't know," replied Madeleine; "the spring is pleasant here, and
we shall stay till the warm weather, I think."
Mr. Gore looked grave. "And your politics!" said he; "are you
satisfied with what you have seen?"
"I have got so far as to lose the distinction between right and
wrong. Isn't that the first step in politics?"
Mr. Gore had no mind even for serious jesting. He broke out into a
long lecture which sounded like a chapter of some future history:
"But Mrs. Lee, is it possible that you don't see what a wrong path
you are on. If you want to know what the world is really doing to
any good purpose, pass a winter at Samarcand, at Timbuctoo, but
not at Washington. Be a bank-clerk, or a journeyman printer, but
not a Congressman. Here you will find nothing but wasted effort
and clumsy intrigue."
"Do you think it a pity for me to learn that?" asked Madeleine
when his long essay was ended.
"No!" replied Gore, hesitating; "not if you do learn it. But many
people never get so far, or only when too late. I shall be glad to
hear that you are mistress of it and have given up reforming
politics. The Spaniards have a proverb that smells of the stable, but
applies to people like you and me:
The man who washes his donkey's head, loses time and soap."
Gore took his leave before Madeleine had time to grasp all the
impudence of this last speech. Not until she was fairly in bed that
night did it suddenly flash on her mind that Mr. Gore had dared to
caricature her as wasting time and soap on Mr. Ratcliffe. At first
she was violently angry and then she laughed in spite of herself;
there was truth in the portrait. In secret, too, she was the less
offended because she half thought that it had depended only on
herself to make of Mr. Gore something more than a friend. If she
had overheard his parting words to Carrington, she would have had
still more reason to think that a little jealousy of Ratcliffe's success
sharpened the barb of Gore's enmity.
"Take care of Ratcliffe!" was his farewell; "he is a clever dog. He
has set his mark on Mrs. Lee. Look out that he doesn't walk off
with her!"
A little startled by this sudden confidence, Carrington could only
ask what he could do to prevent it.
"Cats that go ratting, don't wear gloves," replied Gore, who always
carried a Spanish proverb in his pocket. Carrington, after painful
reflection, could only guess that he wanted Ratcliffe's enemies to
show their claws. But how?
Mrs. Lee not long afterwards spoke to Ratcliffe of her regret at
Gore's disappointment and hinted at his disgust. Ratcliffe replied
that he had done what he could for Gore, and had introduced him
to the President, who, after seeing him, had sworn his usual
granitic oath that he would sooner send his nigger farm-hand Jake
to Spain than that man-milliner. "You know how I stand;" added
Ratcliffe; "what more could I do?" And Mrs. Lee's implied
reproach was silenced.
If Gore was little pleased with Ratcliffe's conduct, poor
Schneidekoupon was still less so. He turned up again at
Washington not long after the Inauguration and had a private
interview with the Secretary of the Treasury.
What passed at it was known only to themselves, but, whatever it
was, Schneidekoupon's temper was none the better for it. From his
conversations with Sybil, it seemed that there was some question
about appointments in which his protectionist friends were
interested, and he talked very openly about Ratcliffe's want of
good faith, and how he had promised everything to everybody and
had failed to keep a single pledge; if Schneidekoupon's advice had
been taken, this wouldn't have happened. Mrs. Lee told Ratcliffe
that Schneidekoupon seemed out of temper, and asked the reason.
He only laughed and evaded the question, remarking that cattle of
this kind were always complaining unless they were allowed to run
the whole government; Schneidekoupon had nothing to grumble
about; no one had ever made any promises to him. But
nevertheless Schneidekoupon confided to Sybil his antipathy to
Ratcliffe and solemnly begged her not to let Mrs. Lee fall into his
hands, to which Sybil answered tartly that she only wished Mr.
Schneidekoupon would tell her how to help it.
The reformer French had also been one of Ratcliffe's backers in
the fight over the Treasury. He remained in Washington a few days
after the Inauguration, and then disappeared, leaving cards with
P.P.C. in the corner, at Mrs. Lee's door. Rumour said that he too
was disappointed, but he kept his own counsel, and, if he really
wanted the mission to Belgium, he contented himself with waiting
for it. A respectable stage-coach proprietor from Oregon got the
place.
As for Jacobi, who was not disappointed, and who had nothing to
ask for, he was bitterest of all. He formally offered his
congratulations to Ratcliffe on his appointment. This little scene
occurred in Mrs. Lee's parlour. The old Baron, with his most suave
manner, and his most Voltairean leer, said that in all his
experience, and he had seen a great many court intrigues, he had
never seen anything better managed than that about the Treasury.
Ratcliffe was furiously angry, and told the Baron outright that
foreign ministers who insulted the governments to which they
were accredited ran a risk of being sent home.
"Ce serait toujours un pis aller," said Jacobi, seating himself with
calmness in Ratcliffe's favourite chair by Mrs. Lee's side.
Madeleine, alarmed as she was, could not help interposing, and
hastily asked whether that remark was translatable.
"Ah!" said the Baron; "I can do nothing with your language. You
would only say that it was a choice of evils, to go, or to stay."
"We might translate it by saying: 'One may go farther and fare
worse,'"
rejoined Madeleine; and so the storm blew over for the time, and
Ratcliffe sulkily let the subject drop. Nevertheless the two men
never met in Mrs.
Lee's parlour without her dreading a personal altercation. Little by
little, what with Jacobi's sarcasms and Ratcliffe's roughness, they
nearly ceased to speak, and glared at each other like quarrelsome
dogs. Madeleine was driven to all kinds of expedients to keep the
peace, yet at the same time she could not but be greatly amused by
their behaviour, and as their hatred of each other only stimulated
their devotion to her, she was content to hold an even balance
between them.
Nor were these all the awkward consequences of Ratcliffe's
attentions. Now that he was distinctly recognized as an intimate
friend of Mrs. Lee's, and possibly her future husband, no one
ventured any longer to attack him in her presence, but nevertheless
she was conscious in a thousand ways that the atmosphere became
more and more dense under the shadow of the Secretary of the
Treasury. In spite of herself she sometimes felt uneasy, as though
there were conspiracy in the air. One March afternoon she was
sitting by her fire, with an English Review in her hand, trying to
read the last Symposium on the sympathies of Eternal Punishment,
when her servant brought in a card, and Mrs. Lee had barely time
to read the name of Mrs. Samuel Baker when that lady followed
the servant into the room, forcing the countersign in so effective
style that for once Madeleine was fairly disconcerted. Her manner
when thus intruded upon, was cool, but in this case, on
Carrington's account, she tried to smile courteously and asked her
visitor to sit down, which Mrs. Baker was doing without an
invitation, very soon putting her hostess entirely at her ease. She
was, when seen without her veil, a showy woman verging on forty,
decidedly large, tall, over-dressed even in mourning, and with a
complexion rather fresher than nature had made it.
There was a geniality in her address, savouring of easy Washington
ways, a fruitiness of smile, and a rich southern accent, that
explained on the spot her success in the lobby. She looked about
her with fine self-possession, and approved Mrs. Lee's
surroundings with a cordiality so different from the northern
stinginess of praise, that Madeleine was rather pleased than
offended. Yet when her eye rested on the Corot, Madeleine's only
pride, she was evidently perplexed, and resorted to eye-glasses, in
order, as it seemed, to gain time for reflection. But she was not to
be disconcerted even by Corot's masterpiece:
"How pretty! Japanese, isn't it? Sea-weeds seen through a fog. I
went to an auction yesterday, and do you know I bought a tea-pot
with a picture just like that."
Madeleine inquired with extreme interest about the auction, but
after learning all that Mrs. Baker had to tell, she was on the point
of being reduced to silence, when she bethought herself to mention
Carrington. Mrs.
Baker brightened up at once, if she could be said to brighten where
there was no sign of dimness:
"Dear Mr. Carrington! Isn't he sweet? I think he's a delicious man.
I don't know what I should do without him. Since poor Mr. Baker
left me, we have been together all the time. You know my poor
husband left directions that all his papers should be burned, and
though I would not say so unless you were such a friend of Mr.
Carrington's, I reckon it's just as well for some people that he did. I
never could tell you what quantities of papers Mr.
Carrington and I have put in the fire; and we read them all too."
Madeleine asked whether this was not dull work.
"Oh, dear, no! You see I know all about it, and told Mr. Carrington
the story of every paper as we went on. It was quite amusing, I
assure you."
Mrs. Lee then boldly said she had got from Mr. Carrington an idea
that Mrs.
Baker was a very skilful diplomatist.
"Diplomatist!" echoed the widow with her genial laugh; "Well! it
was as much that as anything, but there's not many diplomatists'
wives in this city ever did as much work as I used to do. Why, I
knew half the members of Congress intimately, and all of them by
sight. I knew where they came from and what they liked best. I
could get round the greater part of them, sooner or later."
Mrs. Lee asked what she did with all this knowledge. Mrs. Baker
shook her pink-and-white countenance, and almost paralysed her
opposite neighbour by a sort of Grande Duchesse wink:
"Oh, my dear! you are new here. If you had seen Washington in
war-times and for a few years afterwards, you wouldn't ask that.
We had more congressional business than all the other agents put
together. Every one came to us then, to get his bill through, or his
appropriation watched. We were hard at work all the time. You
see, one can't keep the run of three hundred men without some
trouble. My husband used to make lists of them in books with a
history of each man and all he could learn about him, but I carried
it all in my head."
"Do you mean that you could get them all to vote as you pleased?"
asked Madeleine.
"Well! we got our bills through," replied Mrs. Baker.
"But how did you do it? did they take bribes?"
"Some of them did. Some of them liked suppers and cards and
theatres and all sorts of things. Some of them could be led, and
some had to be driven like Paddy's pig who thought he was going
the other way. Some of them had wives who could talk to them,
and some--hadn't," said Mrs. Baker, with a queer intonation in her
abrupt ending.
"But surely," said Mrs. Lee, "many of them must have been
above--I mean, they must have had nothing to get hold of; so that
you could manage them."
Mrs. Baker laughed cheerfully and remarked that they were very
much of a muchness.
"But I can't understand how you did it," urged Madeleine; "now,
how would you have gone to work to get a respectable senator's
vote--a man like Mr.
Ratcliffe, for instance?"
"Ratcliffe!" repeated Mrs. Baker with a slight elevation of voice
that gave way to a patronising laugh. "Oh, my dear! don't mention
names. I should get into trouble. Senator Ratcliffe was a good
friend of my husband's. I guess Mr. Carrington could have told you
that. But you see, what we generally wanted was all right enough.
We had to know where our bills were, and jog people's elbows to
get them reported in time. Sometimes we had to convince them
that our bill was a proper one, and they ought to vote for it. Only
now and then, when there was a great deal of money and the vote
was close, we had to find out what votes were worth. It was mostly
dining and talking, calling them out into the lobby or asking them
to supper. I wish I could tell you things I have seen, but I don't
dare. It wouldn't be safe. I've told you already more than I ever said
to any one else; but then you are so intimate with Mr. Carrington,
that I always think of you as an old friend."
Thus Mrs. Baker rippled on, while Mrs. Lee listened with more
and more doubt and disgust. The woman was showy, handsome in
a coarse style, and perfectly presentable. Mrs. Lee had seen
Duchesses as vulgar. She knew more about the practical working
of government than Mrs. Lee could ever expect or hope to know.
Why then draw back from this interesting lobbyist with such
babyish repulsion?
When, after a long, and, as she declared, a most charming call,
Mrs. Baker wended her way elsewhere and Madeleine had given
the strictest order that she should never be admitted again,
Carrington entered, and Madeleine showed him Mrs. Baker's card
and gave a lively account of the interview.
"What shall I do with the woman?" she asked; "must I return her
card?" But Carrington declined to offer advice on this interesting
point. "And she says that Mr. Ratcliffe was a friend of her
husband's and that you could tell me about that."
"Did she say so?" remarked Carrington vaguely.
"Yes! and that she knew every one's weak points and could get all
their votes."
Carrington expressed no surprise, and so evidently preferred to
change the subject, that Mrs. Lee desisted and said no more.
But she determined to try the same experiment on Mr. Ratcliffe,
and chose the very next chance that offered. In her most indifferent
manner she remarked that Mrs. Sam Baker had called upon her
and had initiated her into the mysteries of the lobby till she had
become quite ambitious to start on that career.
"She said you were a friend of her husband's," added Madeleine
softly.
Ratcliffe's face betrayed no sign.
"If you believe what those people tell you," said he drily, "you will
be wiser than the Queen of Sheba." _