Senator North Part 9

The house smelt musty and damp. Betty pushed back the door and let in the bright winter sunlight. Some one rose from the group beside the coffin and came slowly forward. Betty waited, clinching her hands in her m.u.f.f, her breath coming shorter. The dark figure in the dark room looked like the shadow of death itself. But it was not superst.i.tion that made Betty brace herself. In a moment the figure had stepped into the sunlight beside her.

Betty had imagined the girl handsome; she was not prepared for splendid beauty. Harriet Walker was far above the ordinary height of woman, and very slender and graceful. Her hair and eyes were black, her skin smooth and white, her features aquiline. Hauteur should have been her natural expression, but her eyes were dreamy and melancholy, her mouth discontented. Betty, in that first rapid survey, detected but two flaws in her beauty: her chin was weak and her hands were coa.r.s.e.

"You are Miss Madison," she said, with the monotonous inflection of grief. "Thank you for coming."

"I am your half-sister," said Betty, putting out her hand. And then the desire to use the best that was in her overcame the repugnance that made her very knees shake, and she put her arms about the girl and kissed her.

"You are mighty kind," said the other. "Will you come into my room?"

Betty followed her into a small room, simpler than any in her own servants' quarter. But it was neat, and there was an attempt at smartness in the bright calico curtains and bedspread. The furniture looked home-made, and there was no carpet on the floor.

"Poor girl! poor girl!" exclaimed Betty, impulsively. "Have you ever been happy--here?"

"Well, I don't reckon I've been very happy, ever; but I've given some happiness and I've been loved and sheltered. That is something to be thankful for in this world."

"I am going to take you away," said Betty, abruptly. "Mr. Walker wrote me that you'd be willing to come."

"Oh, yes, I'll go, I reckon. I told him I would. I want to hold up my head. Here I never have, for everybody knows. The white men all round here insulted me until they got tired of trying to make me notice them.

One of the young men up on the plantation fell in love with me, and they sent him away and he was drowned at sea. He never knew that I had the black in my blood, and he had asked me to marry him. They did not tell him the truth, for they feared he would then wish to make me his mistress."

She spoke without pa.s.sion, with a deep and settled melancholy, as if her intelligence had forbidden her to combat the inevitable. Betty burst into tears.

"Don't cry," said the other. "I never do--any more. I used to. And if you'll kindly take me away, I know I'll feel as if I were born over. If there is anything in this world to enjoy, be right sure I shall enjoy it. I'm young yet, and I reckon n.o.body was made to be sad for ever."

"You shall be happy," exclaimed Betty. "I will see to that. I pledge myself to it. I will make you forget--everything."

Harriet shook her head. "Not everything. Somewhere in my body, hidden away, but there, is a black vein, the blood of slaves. I might get to be happy with lots of books and kind people and no one to despise me for what I can't help, but every night I'd remember _that_, and then I reckon I'd feel mighty bad."

"You think so now," said Betty, soothingly, and longing for consolation herself. "But when you are surrounded by friends who love you for what you are, by all that goes to make life comfortable and--and--gay; it seems terribly soon to speak of it, but I shall take you to all the theatres and buy you beautiful clothes, and I shall settle on you what your father left me: it is only right you should have it and feel independent. You will travel and see all the beautiful things in Europe. Oh, I know that in time you will forget. When you are away from all that reminds, you cannot fail to forget."

Harriet, who had followed Betty's words with an eager lifting of her heavy eyelids and almost a smile on her mouth, brought her lips together as Betty ceased speaking, and held out her hand.

"Do you see nothing?" she asked.

Betty took the hand in hers. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "All that--the roughness--will wear off. It will be gone in a month."

"There is something there that will never wear off. Look right hard at the finger-nails."

Betty lifted the hand to her face, vaguely recalling observations of her mother when discussing suspicious looking brunettes seen in the North. There was a faint bluish stain at the base of the nails; and she remembered. It was the outward and indelible print of the hidden vein within. The nails are the last stronghold of negro blood. She dropped the hand with an uncontrollable shudder and covered her face with her m.u.f.f.

"I feel so horribly sorry for you," she said hastily. "It seemed to me for the moment as if your trouble were my own."

If the girl understood, she made no sign; hers had been a life of self-control, and she had been despised from her birth.

"Tell me what you wish me to do now," said Betty, lifting her head.

"When can you leave here? Do you wish me to stay with you? Is it impossible for you to go to-day?"

"I cannot leave him until he is buried. And you couldn't stay here.

This is Tuesday. I'll go Thursday."

Betty thrust a roll of bills into a drawer. "They are yours by right,"

she said hurriedly. "Go first to Richmond and get a handsome black frock; you will be sure to find what you want ready made, and it will be better--on account of the servants--for you to look well when you arrive. Spend it all. There is plenty more. Buy all sorts of nice things. I will go now. There is a train soon. Telegraph when you start for Washington and I will meet you. Good by, and please be sure that I shall make you happy."

Harriet walked out to the gate, and Betty saw that there were fine lines on her brow and about her mouth. But she was very beautiful, sombre and blighted as she was. She clung to Betty for a moment at parting, then went rapidly into the house.

When Betty reached the street, she restrained an impulse to run, but she walked faster than she had ever walked in her life, persuading herself that she feared to miss her train. She waited three quarters of an hour for it, and there were four dreary hours more before she saw the dome of the Capitol. She arrived at home with a splitting headache and an animal craving to lock herself in her room and get into bed. For the time being no mortal interested her, she was exhausted and emotionless. She described the interview briefly to her mother, then sought the solitude she craved. And as she was young and healthy, she soon fell asleep.

XIII

When she awoke next morning she arose and dressed herself at once: in bed the will loses its control over thought, and she wished to think as little as possible. But her mind reverted to the day before, in spite of her will, and she laughed suddenly and went to her desk and wrote on a slip of paper,--

"Every woman writes with one eye on the page and one eye on some man, except the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who has only one eye."--HEINE.

"Some day when I know him better I will give him this," she thought, and put the slip into a drawer by itself.

The load of care had lifted itself and gone. She had done the right thing, the momentous question was settled for the present, and Betty Madison had merely to shake her shoulders and enjoy life again. She threw open the window and let in the sun. There had been a rain-storm in the night and then a severe frost. The ice glistened on the naked trees, encasing and jewelling them. A park near by looked as if the crystal age of the world had come. The bronze equestrian statue within that little wood of radiant trees alone defied the ice-storm, as if the dignity of the death it represented rebuked the lavish hand of Nature.

Betty felt happy and elated, and blew a kiss to the beauty about her.

She always had had a large fund of the purely animal joy in being alive, but to-day she was fully conscious that the tremulous quality of her gladness was due to the knowledge that she should see Senator North within five more days and the light of approval in his eyes. Exactly what her feeling for him was she made no attempt to define. She did not care. It was enough that the prospect of seeing him made her happier than she ever had felt before. That might go on indefinitely and she would ask for nothing more. Her recent contact with the serious-practical side of life--as distinct from the serious-intellectual which she had cultivated more than once--had terrified her; she wanted the pleasant, thrilling, unformulated part.

For the first time one of her ideals had come forth from the mists of fancy and filled her vision as a man; and he was become the strongest influence in her life. As yet he was unaware of this honour, and she doubtless occupied a very small corner of his thought; but he was interested at last, and he was coming to see her. And then he would come again and again, and she would always feel this same glad quiver in her soul. She felt no regret that she could not marry him; the question of marriage but brushed her mind and was dismissed in haste.

That was a serious subject, glum indeed, and dark. She was glad that circ.u.mstance limited her imagination to the happy present. She felt sixteen, and as if the world were but as old. Love and the intellect have little in common. They can jog along side by side and not exchange a comment.

"Come down and take a walk," cried a staccato voice. Sally Carter was standing on the sidewalk, her head thrown back. Betty nodded, put on her things and ran downstairs. Miss Carter was wrapped in an old cape, and her turban was on one side, but she looked rosier than usual.

"I've been half-way out to Chevy Chase," she said, "and I was just thinking of paying poor old General Lathom a visit. He does look so well in bronze, poor old dear, and all that ice round him will make him seem like an ogre in fairy-land. He wasn't a bit of an ogre, he was downright afraid of me."

"I suppose a man really feels as great a fool as he looks when he is proposing to a woman he is not sure of. I wonder why they ever do.

After I gave up coquetting, came to the conclusion that it wasn't honest, they proposed just the same."

"Some women unconsciously establish a habit of being proposed to. I've had very few proposals, and I know several really beautiful women who have had practically none. As I said, it's a habit, and you can't account for it."

"I went yesterday to Virginia to call on a relative who has just lost her last adopted parent," said Betty, abruptly, "and she looked so forlorn that I asked her to visit us for a while. I hope you'll like her."

"Ah? She must be some relation of mine, too. You and I are third cousins."

"Don't ask me to straighten it out. The ramifications of Southern kinships are beyond me. She is a beauty--very dark and tragic."

"That is kind of you--to run the risk of Senator Burleigh going off at a tangent," said Miss Carter, sharply. "By the way, you cannot deny that you have given him encouragement; you have neither eyes nor ears for any one else when he is round."

"He is usually the most interesting person 'round;' and I have a concentrative mind. But I never intend to marry, and Senator Burleigh has never even looked as if he wanted to propose. By the way, Molly has actually asked him to come to the Adirondacks for a few days. Can't you and your father come for a month or two? Jack has promised to stay with us the whole summer, and we'll be quite a family party."

"Yes, I will," said Miss Carter, promptly. "I haven't been in the Adirondacks for six years and I should love it."

"Harriet Walker--that's our new cousin--will be with us too, most likely. She looks delicate, and I shall try to persuade her that she needs the pines."