Chapter 21

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_ CHAPTER XXI

_In Which a Little Lady in Black Comes to Washington to Witness the Swearing-in of a Gentleman and a Scholar._

It was in February that Roger wrote somewhat formally to ask if his Cousin Patty might have a room in Mary's big house during the coming inauguration.

"She is supremely happy over the Democratic victory, but in spite of her advanced ideas, she is a timid little thing, and she has no knowledge of big cities. I feel that many difficulties would be avoided if you could take her in. I want her, too, to know you. I had thought at first that I might come with her. But I think not. I am needed here."

He did not say why he was needed. He said little of himself and of his work. And Mary wondered. Had his enthusiasm waned? Was he, after all, swayed by impulse, easily discouraged? Was Porter right, and was Roger's failure in life due not to outside forces, but to weakness within himself?

She wrote him that she should be glad to have Cousin Patty, and it was on the first of March that Cousin Patty came.

Once in four years the capital city takes on a supreme holiday aspect. In other years there may be parades, in other years there may be pageants--it is an every-day affair, indeed, to hear up and down the Avenue the beat of music, and the tramp of many feet. There are funerals of great men, with gun carriages draped with the flag, and with the Marine Band playing the "Dead March." There are gay cavalcades rushing in from Fort Myer, to escort some celebrity; there are pathetic files of black folk, gorgeous in the insignia of some society which gives to its dead members the tribute of a conspicuousness which they have never known in life. There are circus parades, and suffrage parades, minstrel parades and parades of the boys from the high schools--all the display of military and motley by which men advertise their importance and their wares.

But the Inauguration is the one great and grand effort. All work stops for it; all traffic stops for it; all of the policemen in the town patrol it; half the detectives in the country are imported to protect it. All of fashion views it from the stands up-town; all of the underworld gazes at it from the south side of the street down-town. Packed trains bring the people. And the people are crowded into hotels and boarding-houses, and into houses where thresholds are never crossed at any other time by paying guests.

To the inauguration of 1913 was added another element of interest--the parade of the women, on the day preceding the changing of presidents. Hence the red and white and blue of former decorations were enlivened by the yellow and white and purple of the Suffrage colors.

Cousin Patty wore a little knot of yellow ribbon when Porter met her at the station.

Porter was not inclined to welcome any cousin of Roger Poole's with open arms. But he knew his duty to Mary's guests. He had offered his car, and had insisted that Mary should make use of it.

"For Heaven's sake, don't make me utterly miserable by refusing to let me do anything for you, Mary," he had said, when she had protested. "It is the only pleasure I have."

Cousin Patty, in spite of Porter's preconceived prejudices, made at once a place for herself. She gave him her little bag, and with a sigh of such infinite relief, her eyes like a confiding child's, that he laughed and bent down to her.

"Mary Ballard is in my car outside. I didn't want her to get into this crowd."

Cousin Patty shuddered. "Crowd! I've never seen anything like--the people. I didn't know there were so many in the world. You see, I've never been far away from home. And they kept pouring in from all the stations, and when I reached here and stood on the steps of the Pullman, and saw the masses streaming in ail directions, I felt faint--but the conductor pointed out the way to go, and then I saw your--lovely head."

She said it so sincerely that Porter laughed.

"Miss Carew," he said, "I believe you mean it."

"Mean what?"

"That it's a lovely head."

"It is." The dark eyes were shining. "You were so tall that I could see you above the people, and Roger had described how you would look. Mary Ballard had said you would surely be here to meet me, and now--oh, I'm really in Washington!"

If she had said, "I'm really in Paradise," it could not have expressed more supreme bliss.

"I never expected to be here," Cousin Patty went on to explain, as they crossed the concourse, and Porter guided her through the crowd. "I never expected it. And now Roger's beautiful Mary Ballard has promised to show me everything."

Roger's beautiful Mary Ballard, indeed!

"Miss Ballard," he said, stiffly, "is taking a week off from her work. And she is going to devote it to sightseeing with you."

"Yes, Roger told me. Is that Mary smiling from that big car? Oh, Mary Ballard, I knew you'd be just--like this."

Well, nobody could resist Cousin Patty. There was that in her charming voice, in her vivid personality which set her apart from other middle-aged and well-bred women of her type.

Porter made a wide sweep to take in the Capitol and the Library; then he flew up the Avenue, disfigured now by the stands from which people were to view the parade.

But Cousin Patty's eyes went beyond the stand to the tall straight shaft of the Monument in the distance, and when they passed the White House, she simply settled back in her seat and sighed.

"To think that, after all these years, there'll be a gentleman and a scholar to live there."

"There have been other scholars--and gentlemen," Mary reminded her.

"Of course, my dear. But this is different. You see, in our section of the country a Republican is just a--Republican. And a Democrat is a--gentleman."

Mary's eyes were dancing. "Cousin Patty," she said, "may I call you Cousin Patty? What will you do when women vote? Will the women who are Republicans be ladies?"

"Oh, now you are laughing at me," Cousin Patty said, helplessly.

Mary gave Cousin Patty the suite next to Aunt Isabelle's, and the two gentle ladies smiled and kissed in the fashion of their time, and became friends at once.

When Cousin Patty had unpacked her bag, and had put all of her nice little belongings away, she tripped across the threshold of the door between the two rooms, to talk to Aunt Isabelle.

"Mary said that we should be going to the theater to-night with Mr. Bigelow. You must tell me what to wear, please. You see I've been out of the world so long."

"But you are more of it than I," Aunt Isabelle reminded her.

Cousin Patty, in her pretty wrapper, sat down in a rocking-chair comfortably to discuss it. "What do you mean?"

"Mary has been telling me how far ahead of me your thoughts have flown. You're taking up all the new questions, and you're a successful woman of business. I have envied you ever since I heard about the wedding cake."

"It's a good business," said Cousin Patty, "and I can do it at home. I couldn't have gone out in the world to make my fight for a living. I can defy men in theory; but I'm really Southern and feminine--if you know what that means," she laughed happily. "Of course I never let them know it, not even Roger."

And now Mary came in, lovely in her white dinner gown.

"Oh," she accused them, "you aren't ready."

Cousin Patty rose. "I wanted to know what to wear, and we've talked an hour, and haven't said a word about it."

"Don't bother," Mary said; "there'll be just four of us."

"But I want to bother. Roger helped me to plan my things. He remembered every single dress you wore while he was here."

"Really?" The look which Roger had loved was creeping into Mary's clear eyes. "Really, Cousin Patty?"

"Yes. He drew a sketch of your velvet wrap with the fur, and I made mine like it, only I put a frill in place of the fur." She trotted into her room and brought it back for Mary's inspection. "Is it all right?" she asked, anxiously, as she slipped it on, and craned her neck in front of Aunt Isabelle's long mirror to see the sweep of the folds.

"It is perfect; and to think he should remember."

Cousin Patty gave her a swift glance. "That isn't all he has remembered," she said, succinctly.

It developed when they went down for dinner that Roger had ordered a box of flowers for them--purple violets for Aunt Isabelle and Cousin Patty, white violets for Mary.

"How lovely," Mary said, bending over the box of sweetness. "I am perfectly sure no one ever sent me white violets before."

There were other flowers--orchids from Porter.

"And now--which will you wear?" demanded sprightly Cousin Patty, an undercurrent of anxiety in her tone.

Mary wore the violets, and Porter gloomed all through the play.

"So my orchids weren't good enough," he said, as she sat beside him on their way to the hotel where they were to have supper.

"They were lovely, Porter."

"But you liked the violets better? Who sent them, Mary?"

"Don't ask in that tone."

"You don't want to tell me."

"It isn't that--it's your manner." She broke off to say pleadingly, "Don't let us quarrel over it. Let me forget for to-night that there's any discord in the world--any work--any worry. Let me be Contrary Mary--happy, care-free, until it all begins over again in the morning."

Very softly she said it, and there were tears in her voice. He glanced down at her in surprise. "Is that the way life looks to you--you poor little thing?"

"Yes, and when you are cross, you make it harder."

Thus, woman-like, she put him in the wrong, and the question of violets vs. orchids was shelved.

Presently, in the great red dining-room, Porter was ordering things for Cousin Patty's delectation of which she had never heard. Her enjoyment of the novelty of it all was refreshing. She tasted and ate and looked about her as frankly as a happy child, yet never, with it all, lost her little air of serene dignity, which set her apart from the flaming, flaring type of femininity which abounds in such places.

The great spectacle of the crowded rooms made a deep impression on Cousin Patty. To her this was no gathering of people who were eating too much and drinking too much, and who were taking from the night the hours which should have been given to sleep. To her it was--fairy-land; all of the women were lovely, all of the men celebrities--and the gold of the lights, the pink of the azaleas which were everywhere in pots, the murmur of voices, the sweet insistence of the music in the balcony, the trail of laughter over it all--these were magical things, which might disappear at any moment, and leave her among her boxes of wedding cake, after the clock struck twelve.

But it did not disappear, and she went home happy and too tired to talk.

At breakfast the next morning, Mary announced their programme for the day.

"Delilah has telephoned that she wants us to have lunch with her at the Capitol. Her father is in Congress, Cousin Patty, and they will show us everything worth seeing. Then we'll go for a ride and have tea somewhere, and the General and Leila have asked us for dinner. Shall you be too tired?"

"Tired?" Cousin Patty's laugh trilled like the song of a bird. "I feel as if I were on wings."

Cousin Patty trod the steps of the historic Capitol with awe. To her these halls of legislation were sacred to the memory of Henry Clay and of Daniel Webster. Every congressman was a Personage--and many a simple man, torn between his desire to serve his constituents, and his need to placate the big interests of his state, would have been touched by the faith of this little Southern lady in his integrity.

"A man couldn't walk through here, with the statues of great men confronting him, and the pictures of other great men looking down on him, and the shades of those who have gone before him haunting the shadows and whispering from the galleries, without feeling that he was uplifted by their influence," she whispered to Mary, as from the Member's Gallery she gazed down at the languid gentlemen who lounged in their seats and listened with blank faces to one of their number who was speaking against time.

Colin Quale, who lunched with them, was delighted with her.

"She is an example of what I've been trying to show you," he said to Delilah. "She is so well bred that she absolutely lacks self-consciousness, and she is so clear-minded that you can't muddy her thoughts with scandals of this naughty world. She is a type worthy of your study."

"Colin," Delilah questioned, with a funny little smile, "is this a 'back to grandma' movement that you are planning for me?"

The pale little man flickered his blond lashes, but his face was grave.

"No," he said, "but I want you to be abreast of the times. There's going to be a reaction from this reign of the bizarre. We've gone long enough to harems and odalisques for our styles and our manners and presently we are going to see the blossoming of old-fashioned beauty."

"And do you think the old manners and morals will come?"

He shrugged. "Who knows? We can only hope."

It was to Colin that Cousin Patty spoke confidingly of her admiration of Delilah. "She's beautiful," she said. "Mary says that you plan her dresses. I never thought that a man could do such things until Roger took such an interest."

"Men of to-day take an interest," Colin said. "Woman's dress is one branch of art. It is worthy of a man's best powers because it adds to the beauty of the world."

"That's the funny part of it," Cousin Patty ventured; "women are taking up men's work, and men are taking up women's--it is all topsy turvy."

The little artist pondered. "Perhaps in the end they'll understand each other better."

"Do you think they will?"

"Yes. The woman who does a man's work learns to know what fighting means. The man who makes a study of feminine things begins to see back of what has seemed mere frivolity and love of admiration a desire for harmony and beauty, and self-expression. Some day women will come back to simplicity and to the home, because they will have learned things from men and will have taught things to men, and by mutual understanding each will choose the best."

Cousin Patty was inspired by the thought. "I never heard any one put it that way before."

"Perhaps not--but I have seen much of the world--and of men--and of women."

"Yet all women are not alike."

"No." His eyes swept the table. "You three--Miss Ballard, Miss Jeliffe--how far apart--yet you're all women--all, I may say, awakened women--refusing to follow the straight and narrow path of the old ideal. Isn't it so?"

"Yes. I'm in business--none of our women has ever been in business. Mary won't marry for a home--yet all of her women have, consciously or unconsciously, married for a home. And Miss Jeliffe I don't know well enough to judge. But I fancy she'll blaze a way for herself."

His eyes rested on Delilah. "She has blazed a way," he said, slowly; "she's a most remarkable woman."

Delilah, looking up, caught his glance and smiled.

"Are they in love with each other?" Cousin Patty asked Mary that night.

Mary laughed. "Delilah's a will-o'-the-wisp; who knows?"

With their days filled, there was little time for intimacy or confidential talks between Mary and Cousin Patty. And since Mary would not ask questions about Roger, and since Cousin Patty seemed to have certain reserves in his direction, it was only meager information which trickled out; and with this Mary was forced to be content.

Grace marched in the Suffrage Parade, and they applauded her from their seats on the Treasury stand. Aunt Frances, who sat with them, was filled with indignation.

"To think that _my_ daughter----"

Cousin Patty threw down the gauntlet: "Why not your daughter, Mrs. Clendenning?"

"Because the women of our family have always been--different."

"So have the women of my family," calmly, "but that's no reason why we should expect to stand still. None of the women of my family ever made wedding cake for a living. But that isn't any reason why I should starve, is it?"

Aunt Frances shifted the argument. "But to march--on the street."

"That's their way of expressing themselves. Men march--and have marched since the beginning. Sometimes their marching doesn't mean anything, and sometimes it does. And I'm inclined," said Cousin Patty with an emphatic nod of her head, "to think that this marching means a great deal."

On and on they came, these women who marched for a Cause, heads up, eyes shining. There had been something to bear at the other end of the line where the crowd had pressed in upon them, and there had been no adequate police protection, but they were ready for martyrdom, if need be, perhaps, some of them would even welcome it.

But Grace was no fanatic. She met them afterward, and told of her experience gleefully.

"You should have been with me, Mary," she said.

Porter rose in his wrath. "What has bewitched you women?" he demanded. "Do you all believe in it?"

And now Leila piped, "I don't want to march. I don't want to do the things that men do. I want to have a nice little house, and cook and sew, and take care of somebody."

They all laughed. But Porter surveyed Leila with satisfaction.

"Barry's a lucky fellow," he said.

"Oh, Porter," Mary reproached him, as he helped her down from her high seat on the stand.

"Well, he is. Leila couldn't keep her nice little house any better than you, Mary. But the thing is that she _wants_ to keep it for Barry. And you--you want to march on the street--and laugh--at love."

She surveyed him coldly. "That shows just how much you understand me," she said, and turned her back on him and accepted an invitation to ride home in the Jeliffes' car.

On the day of the Inauguration, the same party had seats on the stand opposite the one in front of the White House from which the President reviewed the troops.

And it was upon the President that Cousin Patty riveted her attention. To be sure her little feet beat time to the music, and she flushed and glowed as the soldiers swept by, and the horses danced, and the people cheered. But above and beyond all these things was the sight of the man, who in her eyes represented the resurrection of the South--the man who should sway it back to its old level in the affairs of the nation.

"I couldn't have dreamed," she emphasized, as she talked it over that night with Mary, "of anything so satisfying as his smile. I shall always think of him as smiling out in that quiet way of his at the people."

Mary had a vision of another Inauguration and of another President who had smiled--a President who had captured the hearts of his countrymen as perhaps this scholar never would. It was at the shrine of that strenuous and smiling President that Mary still worshiped. But they were both great men--it was for the future to tell which would live longest in the hearts of the people.

The two women were in Cousin Patty's room. They were too excited to sleep, for the events of the day had been stimulating. Cousin Patty had suggested that Mary should get into something comfortable, and come back and talk. And Mary had come, in a flowing blue gown with her fair hair in shining braids. They were alone together for the first time since Cousin Patty's arrival. It was a moment for which Mary had waited eagerly, yet now that it had come to her, she hardly knew how to begin.

But when she spoke, it was with an impulsive reaching out of her hands to the older woman.

"Cousin Patty, tell me about Roger Poole."

Cousin Patty hesitated, then asked a question, almost sharply, "My dear, why did you fail him?"

The color flooded Mary's face. "Fail him?" she faltered.

"Yes. When he first came to me, there were your letters. He used to read bits of them aloud, and I could see inspiration in them for him. Then he stopped reading them to me, and they seemed to bring heaviness with them--I can't tell you how unhappy he was until he began to make his work fill his life. Do you mind telling me what made the change in you, my dear?"

Mary gazed into the fire, the blood still in her face.

"Cousin Patty, did you know his wife?"

"Yes. Is it because of her, Mary?"

"Yes. After Roger went away, I saw her picture. Colin had painted it. And, Cousin Patty, it seemed the face of such a little--saint."

"Yet Roger told you his story?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't believe him?"

"Oh, I don't know what to believe."

"I see," but Cousin Patty's manner was remote.

Mary slipped down to the stool at Cousin Patty's feet, and brought her clear eyes to the level of the little lady's. "Dear Cousin Patty," she implored, "if you only know how I _want_ to believe in Roger Poole."

Cousin Patty melted. "My dear," she said with decision, "I'm going to tell you everything."

And now woman's heart spoke to woman's heart. "I visited them in the first year of their marriage. I wanted to love his wife, and at first she seemed charming. But I hadn't been there a week before I was puzzling over her. She was made of different clay from Roger. In the intimacy of that home I discovered that she wasn't--a lady--not in our nice old-fashioned sense of good manners, and good morals. She said things that you and I couldn't say, and she did things. I felt the catastrophe in the air long before it came. But I couldn't warn Roger. I just had to let him find out. I wasn't there when the blow fell; but I'll tell you this, that Roger may have been a quixotic idiot in the eyes of the world, but if he failed it was because he was a dreamer, and an idealist, not a coward and a shirk." Her eyes were blazing. "Oh, if you could hear what some people said of him, Mary."

Mary could fancy what they had said.

"Oh, Cousin Patty, Cousin Patty," she cried, "Do you think he will ever forgive me? I have let such people talk to me, and I have listened!" _

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