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SENATOR NORTH

BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON




_"When, Mr. President, a man, however eminent in other pursuits and
whatever claims he may have to public confidence, becomes a member of
this body, he has much to learn and much to endure. Little does he know
of what he will have to encounter. He may be well read in public
affairs, but he is unaware of the difficulties which must attend and
embarrass every effort to render what he may know available and useful.
He may be upright in purpose and strong in the belief of his own
integrity, but he cannot even dream of the ordeal to which he cannot
fail to be exposed; of how much courage he must possess to resist the
temptations which must daily beset him; of that sensitive shrinking
from undeserved censure which he must learn to control; of the ever
recurring contest between a natural desire for public approbation and a
sense of public duty; of the load of injustice he must be content to
bear even from those who should be his friends; the imputations on his
motives; the sneers and sarcasms of ignorance and malice; all the
manifold injuries which partisan or private malignity, disappointed of
its object, may shower upon his unprotected head. All this, if he would
retain his integrity, he must learn to ear unmoved and walk steadily
onward in the path of public duty, sustained only by the reflection
that time may do him justice; or if not, that his individual hopes and
aspirations and even his name among men should be of little account to
him when weighed in the balance of a people of whose destiny he is a
constituted guardian and defender."_
        --WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN

_In memorial address before the Senate, 1866._ _Miss Betty Madison
embarks on the Political Sea. Her Discoveries, Surprises, and Triumphs._





SENATOR NORTH




I



"If we receive this Lady Mary Montgomery, we shall also have to receive
her dreadful husband."

"He is said to be quite charming."

"He is a Representative!"

"Of course they are all wild animals to you, but one or two have been
pointed out to me that looked quite like ordinary gentlemen--really."

"Possibly. But no person in official life has ever entered my house. I
do not feel inclined to break the rule merely because the wife of one
of the most objectionable class is an Englishwoman with a title. I
think it very inconsiderate of Lady Barnstaple to have given her a
letter to us."

"Lee, never having lived in Washington, doubtless fancies, like the
rest of the benighted world, that its officials are its aristocracy.
The Senate of the United States is regarded abroad as a sort of House
of Peers. One has to come and live in Washington to hear of the 'Old
Washingtonians,' the 'cave-dwellers,' as Sally calls us; I expected to
see a coat of blue mould on each of them when I returned."

"Really, Betty, I do not understand you this morning." Mrs. Madison
moved uneasily and took out her handkerchief. When her daughter's rich
Southern voice hardened itself to sarcasm, and her brilliant hazel eyes
expressed the brain in a state of cold analysis, Mrs. Madison braced
herself for a contest in which she inevitably must surrender with what
slow dignity she could command. Betty had called her Molly since she
was fourteen months old, and, sweet and gracious in small matters,
invariably pursued her own way when sufficiently roused by the strength
of a desire. Mrs. Madison, however, kept up the fiction of an authority
which she thought was due to herself and her ancestors. She continued
impatiently,--

"You have been standing before that fireplace for ten minutes with your
shoulders thrown back as if you were going to make a speech. It is not
a nice attitude for a girl at all, and I wish you would sit down. I
hope you don't think that because Sally Carter crosses her knees and
cultivates a brutal frankness of expression you must do the same now
that you have dropped all your friends of your own age and become
intimate with her. I suppose she is old enough to do as she chooses,
and she always was eccentric."

"She is only eight years older than I. You forget that I shall be
twenty-seven in three months."

"Well, that is no reason why you should stand before the fireplace like
a man. Do sit down."

"I'd rather stand here till I've said what is necessary--if you don't
mind. I am sorry to be obliged to say it, and I can assure you that I
have not made up my mind in a moment."

"What is it, for heaven's sake?"

Mrs. Madison drew a short breath and readjusted her cushions. In spite
of her wealth and exalted position she had known much trouble and
grief. Her first six children had died in their early youth. Her
husband, brilliant and charming, had possessed a set of affections too
restless and ardent to confine themselves within the domestic limits.
His wife had buried him with sorrow, but with a deep sigh of relief
that for the future she could mourn him without torment. He had
belonged to a collateral branch of a family of which her father had
been the heir; consequently the old Madison house in Washington was
hers, as well as a large fortune. Harold Madison had been free to spend
his own inheritance as he listed, and he had left but a fragment. Mrs.
Madison's nerves, never strong, had long since given way to trouble and
ill-health, and when her active strong-willed daughter entered her
twentieth year, she gladly permitted her to become the mistress of the
household and to think for both. Betty had been educated by private
tutors, then taken abroad for two years, to France, Germany, and Italy,
in order, as she subsequently observed, to make the foreign attache.
Feel more at ease when he proposed. Her winters thereafter until the
last two had been spent in Washington, where she had been a belle and
ranked as a beauty. In the fashionable set it was believed that every
attache, in the city had proposed to her, as well as a large proportion
of the old beaux and of the youths who pursue the business of Society.
Her summers she spent at her place in the Adirondacks, at Northern
watering-places, or in Europe; and the last two years had been passed,
with brief intervals of Paris and Vienna, in England, where she had
been presented with distinction and seen much of country life. She had
returned with her mother to Washington but a month ago, and since then
had spent most of her time in her room or on horseback, breaking all
her engagements after the first ten days. Mrs. Madison had awaited the
explanation with deep uneasiness. Did her daughter, despite the health
manifest in her splendid young figure, feel the first chill of some
mortal disease? She had not been her gay self for months, and although
her complexion was of that magnolia tint which never harbours colour,
it seemed to the anxious maternal eye, looking back to six young
graves, a shade whiter than it should. Or had she fallen in love with
an Englishman, and hesitated to speak, knowing her mother's love for
Washington and bare tolerance of the British Isles? She looked askance
at Betty, who stood tapping the front of her habit with her crop and
evidently waiting for her mother to express some interest. Mrs. Madison
closed her eyes. Betty therefore continued,--

"I see you are afraid I am going to marry an Oriental minister or
something. I hear that one is looking for an American with a million.
Well, I am going to do something you will think even worse. I am going
in for politics."

"You are going to do what?" Mrs. Madison's voice was nearly inaudible
between relief and horrified surprise, but her eyes flew open. "Do you
mean that you are going to vote?--or run for Congress?--but women don't
sit in Congress, do they?"

"Of course not. Do you know I think it quite shocking that we have
lived here in the very brain of the United States all our lives and
know less of politics than if we were Indians in Alaska? I was ashamed
of myself, I can assure you, when Lord Barnstaple asked me so many
questions the first time I visited Maundrell Abbey. He took for
granted, as I lived in Washington, I must be thoroughly well up in
politics, and I was obliged to tell him that although I had
occasionally been in the room with one or two Senators and Cabinet
Ministers, who happened to be in Society first and politics afterward,
I didn't know the others by name, had never put my foot in the White
House or the Capitol, and that no one I knew ever thought of talking
politics. He asked me what I had done with myself during all the
winters I had spent in Washington, and I told him that I had had the
usual girls'-good-time,--teas, theatre, Germans, dinners, luncheons,
calls, calls, calls! I was glad to add that I belonged to several
charities and had read a great deal; but that did not seem to interest
him. Well, I met a good many men like Lord Barnstaple, men who were in
public life. Some of them were dull enough, judged by the feminine
standard, but even they occasionally said something to remember, and
others were delightful. This is the whole point--I can't and won't go
back to what I left here two years ago. My day for platitudes and
pouring tea for men, who are contemptible enough to make Society their
profession, is over. I am going to know the real men of my country. It
is incredible that there are not men in that Senate as well worth
talking to as any I met in England. The other day I picked up a bound
copy of the Congressional Record in a book-shop. It was frantically
interesting."

"It must have been! But, my dear--of course I understand, darling, your
desire for a new intellectual occupation; you always were so
clever--but you can't, you really can't know these men. They are--they
are--politicians. We never have known politicians. They are dreadful
people, who have come from low origins and would probably call me
'marm.'"

"You are all wrong, Molly. I bought a copy of the Congressional
Directory a day or two ago, and have read the biography of every
Senator. Nine-tenths of them are educated men; if only a few attended
the big Universities, the rest went to the colleges of their State.
That is enough for an American of brains. And most of them are lawyers;
others served in the war, and several have distinguished records. They
cannot be boors, whether they have blue blood in them or not. I'm sick
of blue blood, anyway. Vienna was the deadliest place I ever visited.
What makes London interesting is its red streak of plebeianism;--well,
I repeat, I think it really dreadful that we should not know even by
name the men who make our laws, who are making history, who may be
called upon at any moment to decide our fate among nations. I feel a
silly little fool."

"I suppose you mean that I am one too. But it always has been my boast,
Betty, that I never have had a politician in my house. Your father knew
some, but he never brought them here; he knew the fastidious manner in
which I had been brought up; and although I am afraid he kept late
hours with a good many of them at Chamberlin's and other dreadful
places, he always spared me. I suppose this is heredity working out in
you."

"Possibly. But you will admit, will you not, that I am old enough to
choose my own life?"

"You always have done every single thing you wanted, so I don't see why
you talk like that. But if you are going to bring a lot of men to this
house who will spit on my carpets and use toothp