The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig Part 21

"That's right! That's right!" exclaimed Mrs. Whitson, a tender and dreamy sentimentalist except in her own affairs. "Love is best!"

"Love is best," echoed Margaret.

CHAPTER XIII

A MEMORABLE MEETING

In that administration the man "next" the President was his Secretary of the Treasury, John Branch, cold and smooth and able, secreting, in his pale-gray soul, an icy pa.s.sion for power more relentless than heat ever bred. To speak of him as unscrupulous would be like attributing moral quality to a reptile. For him principle did not exist, except as an eccentricity of some strangely-constructed men which might be used to keep them down. Life presented itself to him as a series of mathematical problems, as an examination in mathematics. To pa.s.s it meant a diploma as a success; to fail to pa.s.s meant the abysmal disgrace of obscurity.

Cheating was permissible, but not to get caught at it. Otherwise Branch was the most amiable of men; and why should he not have been, his digestion being good, his income sufficient, his domestic relations admirable, and his reputation for ability growing apace? No one respected him, no one liked him; but every one admired him as an intellect moving quite unhampered of the restraints of conscience. In person he was rather handsome, the weasel type of his face being well concealed by fat and by judicious arrangements of mustache and side-whiskers. By profession he was a lawyer, and had been most successful as adviser to wholesale thieves on depredations bent or in search of immunity for depredations done. It was incomprehensible to him why he was unpopular with the ma.s.ses. It irritated him that they could not appreciate his purely abstract point of view on life; it irritated him because his unpopularity with them meant that there were limits, and very narrow ones, to his ambition.

It was to John Branch that Madam Bowker applied when she decided that Joshua Craig must be driven from Washington. She sent for him, and he came promptly. He liked to talk to her because she was one of the few who thoroughly appreciated and sympathized with his ideas of success in life. Also, he respected her as a personage in Washington, and had it in mind to marry his daughter, as soon as she should be old enough, to one of her grandnephews.

"Branch," said the old lady, with an emphatic wave of the ebony staff, "I want that Craig man sent away from Washington."

"Josh, the joke?" said Branch with a slow, sneering smile that had an acidity in it interesting in one so even as he.

"That's the man. I want you to rid us of him. He has been paying attention to Margaret, and she is encouraging him."

"Impossible!" declared Branch. "Margaret is a sensible girl and Josh has nothing--never will have anything."

"A mere politician!" declared Madam Bowker. "Like hundreds of others that wink in with each administration and wink out with it. He will not succeed even at his own miserable political game--and, if he did, he would still be poor as poverty."

"I don't think you need worry about him and Margaret. I repeat, she is sensible--an admirable girl--admirably brought up. She has distinction.

She has the right instincts."

Madam Bowker punctuated each of these compliments with a nod of her haughty head. "But," said she, "Craig has convinced her that he will amount to something."

"Ridiculous!" scoffed Branch, with an airy wave of the hand. But there was in his tone a concealment that set the shrewd old lady furtively to watching him.

"What do they think of him among the public men?" inquired she.

"He's laughed at there as everywhere."

Her vigilance was rewarded; as Branch said that, malignance hissed, ever so softly, in his suave voice, and the snake peered furtively from his calm, cold eyes. Old Madam Bowker had not lived at Washington's great green tables for the gamblers of ambition all those years without learning the significance of eyes and tone. For one politician to speak thus venomously of another was sure sign that that other was of consequence; for John Branch, a very Machiavelli at self-concealment and usually too egotistic to be jealous, thus to speak, and that, without being able to conceal his venom--"Can it be possible," thought the old lady, "that this Craig is about to be a somebody?" Aloud she said: "He is a preposterous creature. The vilest manners I've seen in three generations of Washington life. And what vanity, what a.s.sumptions! The first time I met him he lectured me as if I were a schoolgirl--lectured me about the idle, worthless life he said I lead. I decided not to recognize him next time I saw him. Up he came, and without noticing that I did not speak he poured out such insults that I was answering him before I realized it."

"He certainly is a most exasperating person."

"So Western! The very worst the West ever sent us. I don't understand how he happened to get about among decent people. Oh, I remember, it was Grant Arkwright who did it. Grant picked him up on one of his shooting trips."

"He is insufferable," said Branch.

"You must see that the President gets rid of him. I want it done at once. I a.s.sure you, John, my alarm is not imaginary. Margaret is very young, has a streak of sentimentality in her. Besides, you know how weak the strongest women are before a determined a.s.sault. If the other s.e.x wasn't brought up to have a purely imaginary fear of them I don't know what would become of the world."

Branch smiled appreciatively but absently. "The same is true of men,"

said he. "The few who amount to anything--at least in active life--base their calculations on the timidity and folly of their fellows rather than upon their own abilities. About Craig--I'd like to oblige you, but--well, you see, there is--there are certain political exigencies--"

"Nonsense!" interrupted the old lady. "I know the relative importance of officials. A mere understrapper like Craig is of no importance."

"The fact is," said Branch with great reluctance, "the President has taken a fancy to Craig."

Branch said it as if he hardly expected to be believed--and he wasn't.

"To be perfectly frank," he went on, "you know the President, how easily alarmed he is. He's afraid Craig may, by some crazy turn of this crazy game of politics, develop into a Presidential possibility. Of course, it's quite absurd, but--"

"The more reason for getting rid of him."

"The contrary. The President probably reasons that, if Craig has any element of danger in him the nearer he keeps him to himself the better.

Craig, back in the West, would be free to grow. Here the President can keep him down if necessary. And I think our friend Stillwater will succeed in entangling him disastrously in some case sooner or later."

There Branch laughed pleasantly, as at the finding of the correct solution to a puzzling problem in a.n.a.lytics or calculus.

"What a cowardly, shadow-fighting, shadow-dodging set you men are!"

commented Madam Bowker. Though she did not show it, as a man certainly would, her brain was busy with a wholly different phase of the matter they were discussing.

"Isn't Stillwater going to retire?" she asked presently.

Branch startled. "Where did you hear that?" he demanded.

The old lady smiled. "There are no secrets in Washington," said she.

"Who will be his successor?"

Branch's cold face showed annoyance. "You mustn't speak of it," replied he, "but the President is actually thinking of appointing Craig--in case the vacancy should occur. Of course, I am trying to make him see the folly of such a proceeding, but--You are right. Men are cowards. That insufferable upstart is actually bullying the President into a state of terror. Already he has compelled him to prosecute some of our best friends out in the Western country, and if the Courts weren't with us--"

Branch checked himself abruptly. It was not the first time he had caught himself yielding to Washington's insidious custom of rank gossip about everything and everybody; but it was about his worst offense in that direction. "I'm getting to be as leaky as Josh Craig is--as he SEEMS to be," he muttered, so low, however, that not even her sharp ears caught it.

"So it is to be Attorney-General Craig," said the old lady, apparently abstracted but in reality catlike in watchfulness, and noting with secret pleasure Branch's anger at this explicit statement of the triumph of his hated rival.

"Isn't it frightful?" said Branch. "What is the country coming to?"

But she had lost interest in the conversation. She rid herself of Branch as speedily as the circ.u.mstances permitted. She wished to be alone, to revolve the situation slowly from the new viewpoint which Branch, half-unconsciously and wholly reluctantly, had opened up. She had lived a long time, had occupied a front bench overlooking one of the world's chief arenas of action. And, as she had an acute if narrow mind, she had learned to judge intelligently and to note those little signs that are, to the intelligent, the essentials, full of significance. She had concealed her amazement from Branch, but amazed she was, less at his news of Craig as a personage full of potentiality than at her own failure, through the inexcusable, manlike stupidity of personal pique, to discern the real man behind his mannerisms. "No wonder he has pushed so far, so fast," reflected she; for she appreciated that in a man of action manners should always be a cloak behind which his real campaign forms. It must be a fitting cloak, it should be a becoming one; But always a cloak. "He fools everybody, apparently," thought she. "The results of his secret work alarm them; then, along he comes, with his braggart, offensive manners, his childish posings, his peac.o.c.k vanity, and they are lulled into false security. They think what he did was an accident that will not happen again. Why, he fooled even ME!"

That is always, with every human being, the supreme test, necessarily.

Usually it means nothing. In this case of Cornelia Bowker it meant a great deal; for Cornelia Bowker was not easily fooled. The few who appear in the arena of ambition with no game to play, with only sentiment and principle to further, the few who could easily have fooled her cynical, worldly wisdom could safely be disregarded. She felt it was the part of good sense to look the young man over again, to make sure that the new light upon him was not false light. "He may be a mere accident in spite of his remarkable successes," thought she. "The same number sometimes comes a dozen times in succession at roulette." She sent her handy man, secretary, social manager and organizer, MAiTRE D'HOTEL, companion, scout, gossip, purveyor of comfort, J. Worthington Whitesides, to seek out Craig and to bring him before her forthwith.

As Mr. Whitesides was a tremendous swell, in dress, in manner and in accent, Craig was much impressed when he came into his office in the Department of Justice. Whitesides' manner, the result of Madam Bowker's personal teaching, was one of his chief a.s.sets in maintaining and extending her social power. It gave the greatest solemnity and dignity to a summons from her, filled the recipient with pleasure and with awe, prepared him or her to be duly impressed and in a frame of mind suitable to Madam Bowker's purposes.

"I come from Madam Bowker," he explained to Craig, humbly conscious of his own disarray and toiler's unkemptness. "She would be greatly obliged if you will give her a few minutes of your time. She begs you to excuse the informality. She has sent me in her carriage, and it will be a great satisfaction to her if you will accompany me."

Craig's first impulse of sn.o.bbish satisfaction was immediately followed by misgivings. Perhaps this was not the formal acceptance of the situation by the terrible old woman as he had, on the spur, fancied.

Perhaps she had sent for him to read him the riot act. Then he remembered that he was himself in doubt as to whether he wished to marry the young woman. All his doubts came flooding back, and his terrors--for, in some of its aspects, the idea of being married to this delicate flower of conventionality and gentle breeding was literally a terror to him. If he went he would be still further committing himself; all Washington would soon know of the journey in the carriage of Madam Bowker, the most imposing car of state that appeared in the streets of the Capital, a vast, lofty affair, drawn by magnificent horses, the coachman and footman in costly, quiet livery, high ensconced.

"No, thanks," said Josh, in his most bustlingly-bounderish manner. "Tell the old lady I'm up to my neck in work."

Mr. Whitesides was taken aback, but he was far too polished a gentleman to show it. "Perhaps later?" he suggested.

"I've promised Margaret to go out there later. If I get through here in time I'll look in on Mrs. Bowker on the way. But tell her not to wait at home for me."

Mr. Whitesides bowed, and was glad when the outer air was blowing off him the odor of this vulgar incident. "For," said he to himself, "there are some manners so bad that they have a distinct bad smell. He is 'the limit!' The little Severence must be infernally hard-pressed to think of taking him on. Poor child! She's devilish interesting. A really handsome bit, and smart, too--excellent ideas about dress. Yet somehow she's been marooned, overlooked, while far worse have been married well.