The Purchase Price Part 36

"With what purpose, then. Sir?"

"With the immediate purpose of learning at first hand the truth of the revolutionary system in Europe. I have not been abroad of late, indeed not for some years. But I know that our diplomacy is all a-tangle. The reports are at variance, and we get them colored by partisan politics. This slavery agitation is simply a political game, at which both parties and all sides are merely playing.

Party desirability, party safety--that is the cry in the South as much as in the North. Yet all the time I know, as you know, of the hundreds of thousands of men who are leaving Europe to come to this country. A wave of moral change is bound to sweep across the North. Madam, we dwell on the eve of revolution here in America as well as in Europe. Now do you see why I have come to you to-night?

Have we not much in common?"

"I am glad," she said simply; "I am proud. Me you overrate, but my wishes and my hopes you do not overrate. Only,--" and she hesitated, "why to-night; why in this particular way?"

"I arrive at that. My own plans take me soon to Europe. I am determined to investigate upon the very ground itself this question of a national repression of the human conscience."

She sat a trifle more erect, a trifle more haughty. He seemed to read her thoughts.

"Let me hope that you also have planned an early return. We have much which we might discuss of common interest. There is much of interest in that country beyond, which we might see. I do not venture any suggestion for you, but only say that if it were within your own desires to travel in the company of a man whose former station at least ought to render your reputation safe, you and your servants will be welcome in my company. My party will have other gentlemen and ladies, not of mean station, I hope."

She looked at him, hesitating, studying. It was hardly a fair contest, this of youth and scant experience against suavity and shrewdness strengthened by years of public life.

"I am somewhat helpless, Sir," she said, at length. "To converse with one so able as yourself,--what woman of my ambitions would not be pleased with that? But I am a woman, and alone in the world. I am already denounced as careless. There already has been talk.

Moreover, as you see, I am committed now fully to this great work of freeing and sending from America the negro slaves. Take them from this country. Replace them with three million men born closer to freedom and citizenship--"

"Yes. But you are here somewhat mysteriously; you come privately and secretly. What harm, then, if you return as privately and secretly as you have come to Washington? Let your agents carry on your work here. The mission on which I shall be engaged will have to do with Louis Kossuth."

"Ah!"

"Yes; and you know that n.o.ble patriot, I am told. Consider of what aid you might be to me. You speak his tongue, you know his history, you could supply me at once with information--Come, 'tis no idle errand. And, perhaps,--you will forgive me, since we both know how cruel is such gossip as this that has wronged you--the tongue of gossip wags the least when the eye of gossip has seen least. Tins is a most natural and proper--indeed, most convincing opportunity."

"That is precisely what I pondered, Sir." She nodded gravely.

"And let me add this," he continued: "every day you are here in Washington the tongue of rumor wags the more. Listen to me! Leave this place. Let gossip quiet down. It has been cruel with you; yet the public soon forgets. To remain and appear in public would freshen gossip anew. Come, it is an adventure! I swear it does not lack its appeal to me! Ah, would only that I were younger, and that it were less seemly and sedate! Dear lady, I offer you my apology for coming as I have, but large plans work rapidly at times, and there is little time to wait. Now there is but one word I can say; that you have courage and decision, I know."

He had risen, and unconsciously the young woman also had risen,--balancing, measuring, watching, warding, in this contest, all too unequal. Suddenly, with a swift and most charming smile she approached him a half step and held out her hand.

"You are a great man, Sir. Your country has found you great. I have always found the greatest men the simplest and most frank.

Therefore I know you will tell me--you will satisfy any doubt I may feel--If I should ask a question, you would not condemn me as presuming?"

"Certainly not. Upon the contrary, my dear Countess, I should feel flattered."

She looked at him for an instant, then came up to the side of the table beyond which he had taken his seat. Leaning her chin upon her hand, her elbow upon the table, in a sudden posture of encounter, she asked him a question whose answer took him swiftly far back into his own past, into another and forgotten day.

"Did you ever hear of Mr. John Parish, Sir?" she demanded.

The suave countenance before her was at first blank, then curious, then intent. His mind was striving to summon up, from all its many images, this one which was required. It was a brain which rarely forgot, even though years had pa.s.sed; and had it been able to forget, so much had been the better for the plans of the gentleman from Kentucky, and for the success of his proposed European mission.

At last, slowly, a faint flush pa.s.sed over the face she was regarding so intently. "Yes, I remember him very well," he replied. "He has not for very many years, been in this country.

He died abroad, some years since. I presume you mean Mr. Parish of New York--he is the only one I recall of that name at least. Yes; I knew such a man."

"That was very long ago?"

"It was when I was much younger, my dear Countess."

"You knew him very well, then?"

"I may say that I did, Madam."

"And you'll tell me; then--tell me, was it true that once, as a wild rumor had it, a rumor that I have heard--that once you two played at cards--"

"Was that a crime?" he smiled.

"But with him, at cards with him, Mr. John Parish, a certain game of cards with him--one day,--a certain winter day years ago, when you both were younger--when the train was s...o...b..und in the North?

And you played then, for what? What were the stakes then, in that particular game with Mr. John Parish? Do you chance to recall?"

"Madam, you credit me with frankness. I will not claim even so much. But since you have heard a rumor that died out long years ago--which was denied--which even now I might better deny--since, in fact you know the truth--why should I deny the truth?"

"Then you two played a game, at cards,--for a woman? And Mr.

Parish won? Was it not true?"

A new and different expression pa.s.sed over the face of the gentleman before her. Her chin still rested in her hand, her other arm, long, round, white, lay out upon the table before him. He could see straight into her wide eyes, see the heave of her throat now under its shining circlet, see the color of her cheek, feel the tenseness of all her mind and body as she questioned him about his long forgotten past.

"Why do you ask me this?" he demanded at last. "What has that to do with us? That was long ago. It is dead, it is forgotten. Why rake up the folly of a deed of youth and recklessness, long years dead and gone? Why, the other man, and the woman herself, are dead and gone now, both of them. Then, why?"

"I will tell you why. That happened once in my own experience."

"Impossible!"

"Yes, impossible. It should have been impossible among men at this day of the world. But it happened. I also had the distinguished honor to be the stake in some such game, and that because--indirectly because--I had won the enmity, the suspicions at least--well, we will say, of persons high in authority in this land."

"But, my dear young lady, the conditions can not have been the same. a.s.suredly the result was not the same!"

"By whose credit, then? Who thinks of a woman? Who is there whose hand is not raised against her? Each member of her own s.e.x is her enemy. Each member of the opposite s.e.x is her foe. One breath, one suspicion, and she becomes fair game, even under the strictest code among men; and then, the man who did not dare would be despised because he would not dare. Her life is one long war against suspicion. It is one long war against selfishness, a continued defense against desire, gratification. She is, even to-day, valued as chattel--under all the laws and conventions built about her runs the chattel idea. She is a convenience. Is that all?"

"My dear lady, it is not for me to enter into discussion of subjects so abstruse, so far removed at least from my proper trend of thought--our proper trend of thought, if you please. I must admit that act of folly, yes. But I must also end the matter there."

"Then why should not I end our matter there, Sir? It seems to me that if in any usual way of life, going about her business honestly, paying her obligations of all sort--even that to her crucifix at night--a woman who is clean wishes to remain clean, to be herself,--why, I say, if that may not be, among men great or small, distinguished or unknown, then most fortunate is she who remains aloof from all chance of that sort of thing. Sir, I should not like to think that, while I was in my room, for the time removed from the society of the gentlemen who should be my protectors, there was going on, let us say, somewhere in the gentlemen's saloon, a little enterprise at chance in which--"

"But, my dear lady, you are mad to speak in this way! Lightning, even lightning of folly, does not strike twice in the same place."

"Ah, does it not? But it has!"

"What can you mean? Surely you do not mean actually to say that you yourself ever have figured in such an incident?"

She made no answer to him, save to look straight into his eyes, chin in hand still, her long white arm lying out, motionless, her posture free of nervous strain or unrest. Slowly her lips parted, showing her fine white teeth in a half smile. Her eyes smiled also, with wisdom in their look.

The venerable statesman opposed to her all at once felt his resources going. He knew that his quest was over, that this young woman was after all able to fend for herself.

"What would you do?" she demanded of him. "If you were a woman and knew you were merely coveted in general, as a woman, and that you had been just cheaply played for in a game of cards, in a public place--what would you do, if you could, to the man who lost--or the man who won? Would you be delivered over? That woman, was she--but she could not help herself; she had no place to turn, poor girl? And she paid all her life, then, for some act earlier, which left her fair game? Was that it?"

"But you, my dear girl! It is impossible!"

"I was more fortunate, that is all. Would you blame me if I dreaded the memory of such an incident; if I felt a certain shrinking from one who ever figured in such an incident? If I could trust--but then, but then--Are you very sure that Mr. Parish loved that woman?"