California 
 
 gional 
 
 cility

 
 UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES
 
 A CA A 
 
 CO! R"S 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER BLACK 
 
 Author of " Miss Jerry " 
 
 SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRA 
 TIONS FROM LIFE PHOTO 
 GRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 NEW YORK MDCCCXCVH
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1897. BY 
 
 CHARI.HS SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 [AIL rights raer-veJ]
 
 TO 
 M. H. B. 
 
 2125574
 
 NOTE 
 
 " /I CAPITAL COURTSHIP/ like "Miss 
 Jerry," was written for oral delivery be 
 fore audiences, and is here much expanded and 
 otherwise changed to meet the requirements of hook 
 publication. In this fuller form the story, as such, 
 receives many elements which in the "picture play " 
 come within the province of the concurrently used 
 pictures. 
 
 The author begs the privilege of expressing his ob 
 ligation to President Cleveland, President McKin- 
 ley, Sir Julian Pauncefote, Speaker Reed, Colonel 
 Lamont, Commodore Melville, General Greely, and 
 Professor Mason, as well as to the many unofficial 
 sitters whose courtesy and patience made possible 
 the new adventure in pictorial realism represented 
 by his second "picture play." 
 
 The illustrations in the present volume, selected 
 from the two hundred and fifty plates used in the 
 "picture play," have been chosen with a view to 
 their individual interest as well as to their illus 
 trative office. 
 
 June 24, 1897.
 
 THE PICTURES 
 
 At last when be caught her band and demanded Frontispiece 
 
 Facing 
 page 
 
 A man who quite evidently had participated in the crash, 4 
 
 " I ve been looking over the field of the disaster" . . . 14 
 
 Viola struck Mm full in the face, 24 
 
 Under that incomparable Newport sky, 26 
 
 The most self-possessed man in the city, Speaker Reed. 
 (Taken in the Speaker s Room at the Capitol, Janu 
 ary, 1896), 40 
 
 " Are you a new woman"?" the Captain asked, . ... 46 
 
 " You like to tease me, don t you ? " 60 
 
 "Hello!" cried Mrs. Arlington, "there s Jerry," . . . 64 
 
 The Secretary of War, Colonel D. C. Lamont. (Taken 
 at War Department Head-quarters, January, 1896), . 76 
 
 Commodore Melville, Chief Engineer. (Taken at the Navy 
 
 Department, January, 1896), 78 
 
 Sir Julian Pauncefote, the most conspicuous figure in Am 
 bassadorial circles. (Taken at the British Embassy, 
 
 June, 1897), 80 
 
 vii
 
 THE PICTURES 
 
 Facing 
 page 
 
 President Cleveland s message. (Taken at the Executive 
 
 Mansion, January, 1896), 82 
 
 One of President McKinley s first messages. (Taken at 
 
 tbe Executive Mansion, June, 1897), &4 
 
 " Are you feeling better?" 92 
 
 " All right, Til go," 94 
 
 He did not appear to notice them, 100
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 i 
 
 ONE night in the spring they had a whist party 
 at Colonel Winfield s. The whist mania 
 had been rather late in reaching North 
 Pines, but when it came it came with some violence, 
 and in three months everyone in the place was in 
 some degree under the spell. In the days when the 
 big Silsbee barn was turned into a roller-skating 
 rink, Deacon Harris had been induced to go and dis 
 locate his shoulder ; but when whist came, even Par 
 son Atwick was heard asking whether whist was 
 anything like old maid, and the Episcopal rector 
 was positively known to have expressed the opinion 
 that " second hand low " is far from being a safe 
 rule. 
 
 The difficulty in North Pines was that of getting 
 men enough to go around ; and it became necessary 
 on all such occasions to label certain ladies who con- 
 i
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 sented to facilitate the due balance of partnership. 
 The labelling usually was accomplished with the aid 
 of a handkerchief tied about the arm a kind of 
 inverted badge of mourning for the obliterated sex. 
 There were ladies who always took this badge upon 
 them. Miss Parker, for example, who taught in the 
 High School, wore it by habit and preference, until 
 Dr. Binsbury formed the practice of calling her 
 " Mr. Parker," and used to tie the handkerchief for 
 her with a well-worn set of jokes, including the 
 comment that she was not " a perfect gentleman." 
 
 At the time of this Winfield party the epidemic 
 was at its height. The cookery class, the physical 
 culture club, and the Browning Society, all simply 
 had gone to pieces. It was whist that regulated the 
 new social code. A woman who was slow at deal 
 ing found her most precious accomplishments under 
 a cloud ; and a man who had trumped his partner s 
 ace had every immediate reason for wishing that he 
 never had been born. 
 
 So that the scene in the little Winfield parlor was 
 entirely characteristic of the place and the time. 
 That disproportionate excitement which is aroused 
 by a game of cards, and which is at once a eulogy 
 and a satire on the game, was here accompanied by 
 2
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 much of real human picturesqueness. If the Colonel s 
 interest fell far short of a passion, that of Miss War 
 ner, who had been spending a month in Boston, and 
 who was introducing a new phase of the game, arose 
 to the height of religious fervor. Dr. Binsbury, too, 
 took his cards very seriously. He would much rather 
 have guessed his opponent s hand than his ailment. 
 
 Perhaps this intensity of interest heightened the 
 effect of a crashing noise in the dooryard of the 
 house and a perceptible jarring, as if from the vio 
 lent falling of some object without. A unanimous 
 gesture of alarm recast the outlines of the group of 
 players. One of the women near the front windows 
 screamed, and young Haines made a peculiar noise 
 in his throat. 
 
 Then, while a dozen voices were gasping some 
 variation of the inquiry, " What has happened ? " 
 Colonel Winfield and the Doctor disappeared into 
 the hall, and in a moment returned, leading between 
 them a man who quite evidently had participated in 
 the crash. The Colonel plainly wished to get the 
 stranger into the light. " A runaway," muttered 
 the Doctor, and two of the younger men slipped out 
 of the house. 
 
 The new-comer turned to Winfield. " You will 
 3
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 have to excuse me, Colonel, for so unceremonious a 
 visit. I just dropped in, you know, and I seemed to 
 land on my head. The truth is, I didn t expect to 
 call on you till to-morrow." 
 
 " Didn t think I knew you," said the Colonel, 
 studying the white face, perplexedly. " Is he broken 
 anywhere, Doctor ? " 
 
 " No, seems not," returned Binsbury, " but 1 
 guess he s pretty well shaken up. Must be made 
 comfortable somewhere immediately let me 
 see " 
 
 " Don t know me, Colonel ? Don t remember 
 Jack Gerard ? " 
 
 " Well, upon my Jack, my boy, 1 didn t know 
 you, for a fact ! But look here ! you re hurt Ly- 
 die, see that there s a room fixed for Mr, Gerard, 
 won t you ? " 
 
 " Hold on, Colonel ! I wouldn t think of bother 
 ing you. I m all right " 
 
 " Young man," interposed Binsbury, " I suppose 
 you ll get over this, but you will please regard your 
 self as somewhat injured for the present." 
 
 " At any rate," remarked the new-comer, grimly, 
 " I guess I m not exactly fit for company. You see, 
 Colonel, I was bound for my uncle s missed the 
 
 4
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 train and was driving over from Lawson s Junction. 
 They told me that the horse was a trifle lively at 
 times. He was more than lively ; he was riotous. 
 What became of him ? " 
 
 " Repenting at a tree down the road," reported 
 young Haines. 
 
 " Look here, Gerard," said the Colonel, authorita 
 tively, " you ll stay right here. You ve got lots of 
 sand ; you always had ; but that horse smashed my 
 front fence with you, and you want time for medita 
 tion. Come, the Doctor and I will help you upstairs." 
 
 The victim of the runaway made as if to start off 
 toward the door on his own account, but with a 
 grim smile that was half a wince he accepted the 
 support of Winfield s arm, and those who remained 
 behind heard his step falter on the stair. 
 
 " Mercy ! " exclaimed Miss Moseley, " you don t 
 mean to tell me that is our Jack Gerard ! Why, he 
 was a dreadfully plain boy." 
 
 " I m afraid we ll have to deal again," Miss War 
 ner was saying, with great severity, at the table near 
 the piano. 
 
 " Ellen ! " ejaculated Miss Warner s mother. 
 " How can you think of the game after why, do 
 you know, I m all upset ! " 
 5
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " Anyway," said young Haines to Miss Winfield, 
 " we can t go on without your father, your aunt, and 
 the Doctor." Which seemed to be true, for the 
 company forsook the cards in the climax of Miss 
 Warner s experiment with the new phase. Miriam 
 Winfield and three or four others went out to in 
 spect the broken buggy, Miss Warner s mother set 
 tled down to reminiscences of runaways, and Miss 
 Moseley was conscious of an unvoiced query as to 
 how far the accident might affect the question of re 
 freshments. 
 
 The Colonel came down to protest against an 
 early dispersion, but even the agreeable entertain 
 ment in the dining-room did not banish the feeling 
 that it would be appropriate to go early. 
 
 " I m glad it was only the buggy that was broken, 
 Gerard," said the Colonel, when he returned to the 
 guest s room later in the evening. " How are you 
 feeling now better get to bed, hey ? " 
 
 " Don t you worry about me, Colonel. The 
 scratch on the head doesn t amount to anything. 
 This bruise on the hand is about all I have to com 
 plain of, and the Doctor has been very clever with 
 that." 
 
 The Colonel had taken a seat tentatively. 
 6
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Gerard went on: " I ve just been grinning to my 
 self over my arrival in your company. Quite like 
 a comic opera entrance, wasn t it ? " 
 
 " Came near being a tragedy, my boy. Yes, sir, 
 you might try that ninety-nine more times and not 
 have the joke on the fence again." 
 
 " Sheer luck," said Gerard, making some experi 
 mental passes with his arms that seemed to confirm 
 his faith in his shoulders. 
 
 " Now that I come to look at you," remarked the 
 Colonel, " you are getting to be of age, aren t you ? 
 Let s see ; how long is it since you left here ? " 
 
 " Seven years." 
 
 " Well, well ! is it so long ? Then you must 
 be " 
 
 " Thirty, Colonel ; not a day less." 
 
 " You don t say ! But that s a fact, you were a 
 grown man when you left here for Illinois. Is that 
 bandage of yours comfortable ? . . . And what 
 have you been doing, Gerard ? " 
 
 " Hustling most of the time." 
 
 " Yes, I ve no doubt ; I should have expected that 
 to be in your line." 
 
 " Eternal hustle is the price of progress, Col 
 onel." 
 
 7
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " And where have you hustled yourself to ? " the 
 Colonel asked, with something of the quizzical scru 
 tiny of an older man. 
 
 " Well, incidentally into Congress, if you want a 
 bill of particulars." 
 
 " No, Gerard ! you re joking ! " 
 
 " Fact." 
 
 " Then we re going to be confreres, my boy." 
 
 " What ! you, too, Colonel ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. I never expected any such thing ; but 
 it sort o came my way, and I let it come. It s a 
 mighty interesting game, politics, whether you win 
 or lose. And so you re elected from Illinois ? " 
 
 " Yes, and I m afraid I m going to feel pretty lone 
 some. There are not many of us in the next Con 
 gress." 
 
 " You don t mean to say " 
 
 " Yes, Colonel, Democratic." 
 
 "Gerard! and you such a promising boy!" 
 Gerard laughed heartily. " What would your father 
 have said your father, who was the leading Re 
 publican of this county for twenty years ! " 
 
 " It is too bad, Colonel, when you look at it his 
 torically ; but looking at it practically " 
 
 There was a knock at the door. " Father!" came 
 8
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Miriam s voice, " don t you think you had better let 
 Mr. Gerard get some rest ? " 
 
 " Looking at this practically," said Winfield, " I 
 guess that suggestion is good." 
 
 " Don t make an invalid of me," the younger man 
 protested. 
 
 " At any rate, Gerard, I wouldn t worry about 
 that political point to-night, anyway, if I were you. 
 Your good behavior will be a great extenuating cir 
 cumstance with me ! " 
 
 " Good-night, Colonel ! " 
 
 " Good -night ! " 
 
 Gerard felt that after all life was not wholly des 
 titute of the picturesque. The manner of his en 
 trance upon the scenes of his boyhood was altogeth 
 er different from anything that he might have 
 expected. He found his hand trembling a little as he 
 lighted a cigarette. Perhaps the stimulated condi 
 tion of his nerves made thoughts of the past partic 
 ularly vivid. Even a trifling accident like this could 
 make a man think of what might have happened. 
 He remembered a day when he lay on his back on 
 the Yale field, with a dislocated shoulder, excitedly 
 ordering his companions of the rush line to let him 
 alone, that he would be uil right in a minute. There 
 9
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 were ruptured tendons, and he was not all right in a 
 minute, nor in a month. But these things are ac 
 cepted in college days. They are part of the training. 
 
 In the morning Gerard found himself scarcely the 
 worse for his mishap of the night before. Save for 
 the bruised hand and a stiffness in one arm he was 
 so far free from damage, that he made up his mind 
 to get over to his uncle s before noon. 
 
 When he came downstairs he discovered no sign 
 of life in the sitting-room, but peering into the din 
 ing-room he found Miriam, in a fluttering house- 
 gown, at work over the table, and saw the silhouette 
 of Aunt Lydie Jane in the kitchen beyond. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Gerard ! how you frightened me ! " 
 The girl had started visibly. 
 
 " I didn t mean it. You will pardon my curiosity. 
 But I felt lonesome out here." 
 
 " But aren t you ill, or broken, or something ? " 
 
 " No ; I m all right. You seem almost disap 
 pointed." 
 
 " Well, I was sure you would be worse in the 
 morning. People don t always know how badly 
 they are hurt in the first excitement. Excuse my 
 going ahead with the table." 
 
 " If you will let me help." 
 10
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " You see our girl became engaged to be married 
 last night while we were playing whist and while 
 you were breaking our fence. She s to be married 
 this morning, and is going on her wedding tour this 
 afternoon." 
 
 " These things always do seem so sudden." 
 
 " It s awkward, anyway, for it s awfully hard to 
 get a new girl here." 
 
 " What s the matter with your clock ? " Gerard 
 had stooped with both hands full upon hearing a 
 faint guttural sound from the mantel. 
 
 " None of us can find out. It s the funniest clock in 
 the world. We discovered that it wouldn t go unless 
 it was tipped up that way and had the door open." 
 
 " Evidently wants lots of air. Seems as if it was get 
 ting ready to strike or do something." After further 
 guttural noises that culminated in a sound resembling 
 a politely muffled sneeze, the clock did strike three. 
 
 " It always strikes three when it means eight," 
 laughed Miriam. 
 
 Gerard stared at the clock, which had the angle of 
 the Tower of Pisa, with affected awe. " What a 
 beautiful training in mathematics a clock like that 
 must afford in a family." 
 
 " Put those plates here," directed the girl ; " it s a 
 11
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 miracle you didn t drop them all, carrying them like 
 that, though I suppose I shouldn t scold you with 
 that bandaged hand." 
 
 " Oh, I don t mind doing an occasional miracle," 
 observed the Congressman-elect, still affecting to be 
 fascinated by the clock, " just to keep my hand in 
 that is to say, the other hand, of course. Do you 
 know that timepiece there makes me think of a man 
 out in Makanda who married a little woman not 
 more than four feet high. He grew over that way 
 trying to be sociable when they walked together." 
 
 " Why didn t she walk on the other side some 
 times ? " 
 
 " There was the trouble ; his good ear was on that 
 side." 
 
 Miriam laughed again until her heaps of saucers 
 rattled. 
 
 " Careful there ! " exclaimed Gerard. " Now that 
 you ve got me interested in this show, I don t want 
 to see anything broken." 
 
 " That favorite attitude of the clock," remarked 
 Miriam, " always makes me think of father s hat." 
 
 " I can t see how." 
 
 " Well, you know that when father has his hat on 
 straight you simply can t do anything with him. 
 12
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 But let him have it tipped up a little on one side, 
 and you can own him ! His hat is a perfect ba 
 rometer of his feelings." 
 
 " That s funnier than the clock, isn t it ? Where 
 shall I put this dish ? " 
 
 " There s father now. He s in a good-humor this 
 morning. 1 can tell by his step without waiting to 
 si e his hat." 
 
 " Well, I want to know, Gerard ! " The Colonel 
 swung into the door-way with his hands in the 
 pockets of his walking-coat. " I thought you were 
 in bed, where you ought to be, I suspect, and I 
 wouldn t call you." 
 
 " Nonsense, Colonel. Do I look damaged ? " 
 
 " No ; can t say you do and you surprise me. 
 But be careful. I hope this isn t a bluff. A bluff is 
 all right in politics, Gerard, but don t try it with 
 your doctor, or your head nurse. I ve been out for 
 a constitutional," the Colonel went on when they 
 had begun breakfast. " Been looking over the field 
 of the disaster. When you come to see our front 
 garden-bed, Gerard, you ll realize that you have 
 made a great impression here." 
 
 " I m sorry," Gerard returned, with a twinkle, 
 " that circumstances prevented me from making a 
 13
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 more modest approach. But I mustn t abuse your 
 hospitality. I shall have to ask you to drive me over 
 to my uncle s this morning." 
 
 " Hold on, young man ! Can t you stop hustling 
 for a little while ? Don t be in such a steaming 
 hurry. I want to talk politics with you for a while." 
 
 " Please don t," urged Miriam. 
 
 " I suppose you think it might be dangerous," 
 suggested the visitor. 
 
 " Oh, we are not likely to be explosive, are we, 
 Gerard ? And she must get used to it before we 
 go to Washington." 
 
 Miriam declared her impatience for the coming of 
 December. " I wonder if you men are as eager to 
 go as I am. It will be great fun." 
 
 Aunt Lydie Jane was quietly smiling her assent to 
 this suggestion. She was thinking of the relics and 
 souvenirs she anticipated picking up at the capital. 
 
 " You really must give Aunt Lydie a souvenir of 
 your accident, Mr. Gerard," said Miriam, mischiev 
 ously, " unless you wish to force her to be content 
 with a little button which she picked up out there by 
 the front fence." 
 
 " Hush, Miriam ! " protested Aunt Lydie, over 
 her coffee. 
 
 14
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " By the way, Colonel," said Gerard, who had 
 been studying Miriam s finely cut face, " I haven t 
 asked after your other daughter, Miss Viola." 
 
 Gerard had scarcely spoken when he became 
 aware that he had touched an unwelcome theme. 
 
 " Miss Viola is not at home just now," the Colonel 
 began, and Miriam contrived to change the direction 
 of the talk. " You have scarcely eaten anything this 
 morning, father," Miriam said, a little later. " I 
 don t believe you will be entirely normal again until 
 you have talked politics with Mr. Gerard for at least 
 three consecutive hours." 
 
 " As for that matter," said the gentleman from Illi 
 nois, " I m afraid the gentleman from Massachusetts 
 will find me rather tame." 
 
 " Am I to conclude, Gerard, that you are not go 
 ing to demand a chairmanship from Mr. Reed ? " 
 
 " Yes, Colonel, I m going to be modest by force of 
 circumstances. Now, it will be a good deal harder 
 for you, in the majority, to be as truly modest and 
 retiring as I expect to be, natural as that impulse 
 might be to you under other conditions. Hello! 
 there s Uncle Morris! " 
 
 A nimble, elderly man in a gray suit was hitch 
 ing his horse in front of the house. 
 15
 
 I! 
 
 JACK GERARD S arrival in North Pines occa 
 sioned considerable talk on the day follow 
 ing the accident. 
 
 The members of the whist party naturally exhib 
 ited an especial solicitude in the case. Even Miss 
 Warner, who had been not a little disconcerted by 
 the incompleteness of her experiment in whist, had 
 acquired some anxiety over night, and was actually 
 eager in her inquiries as to Gerard s condition ; and 
 Miss Moseley, who had secreted her regret that the 
 refreshments should have been hurried, solicitously 
 assailed a carriage which she mistook for Dr. Bins- 
 bury s, but which turned out to be another with 
 Gerard and his uncle inside. 
 
 Randy Ellis, who was questioned frequently as 
 much for the flavor of his opinions as for the ex 
 actness of his information, was stopped at least 
 three times on his way down to Main Street by 
 people who wanted to know whether it really was 
 
 16
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 true that Gerard had both legs and one arm 
 broken. 
 
 " Who said that ? " demanded Randy. " Why 
 didn t they say the other arm, too ? If that feller s 
 as strong as he was when he licked me for turnin 
 loose his father s trottin mare, yer couldn t muss him 
 up by droppin him off the M. E. Church ! I ll bet 
 it was Hackett said that. Y know, it sounds like 
 Hackett. Some people bother yer because they lie 
 sometimes. But Hackett, he s lyin all the time. 
 Yer kin depend on him." And Randy went on his 
 way again, whistling a monotonous, meaningless 
 tune, that began nowhere and ended in the same 
 place. Randy s whistle was part of him. It was 
 impossible to think of him without it. 
 
 Randy s philosophy was, in some respects, supe 
 rior to his talents as a farmer. At least his father, 
 a matured edition of the same lank and angular form, 
 was in the habit of expressing his convictions to this 
 effect. An immediate result of Randy s habits of 
 thought was his discontent with North Pines as a 
 point of vantage for an outlook upon life. 
 
 Indeed, it was well understood by everyone in 
 North Pines that Randy intended to break away 
 some day and do something heroic. During the 
 
 17
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 winter, while he was learning to set type for the 
 North Pines Patriot, he first declared his intention of 
 going to sea on one of Uncle Sam s war-ships. 
 
 " Seems to me," Randy said, " as if that s about 
 the cheapest way of gettin around and seein some- 
 thin ." And when the spring set in he began to 
 take on the air of one who is soon to depart. When 
 he learned that Gerard was a Congressman-elect, he 
 found occasion to call on the newcomer, and to in 
 form him, as he had Winfield, of his ambition to 
 serve the nation in another department. The visit 
 which accomplished this purpose was made ostensi 
 bly for inquiry as to Gerard s hurts, of which Randy 
 made circumstantial report to all questioners before 
 the afternoon had set in. 
 
 " That man s almost as good as new already," 
 Randy remarked to the Colonel, whom he found 
 superintending repairs on the courtyard fence. 
 
 Winfield welcomed the news. 
 
 " You ll have a bill agin him for this ? or maybe 
 agin the livery man, hey ? " and Randy shook his 
 lofty shoulders. 
 
 Aunt Lydie Jane was stealing a few minutes at a 
 book from which she was intermittently diverted by 
 the fence. 
 
 18
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Miriam Winfield bent over her shoulder at the 
 window. " What are you reading, Aunt Lydie, 
 When His Hair Turned Gray ? why, you were 
 reading that a month ago ! " 
 
 " Yes, Miriam, but, you know, I read very slowly. 
 And when it gets exciting I always fall asleep and 
 lose the place. Besides, I can t seem to keep my 
 attention on the book to-day. It seems as if ever 
 since breakfast I haven t been able to get Viola out 
 of my head." 
 
 Gerard s inquiry and her father s distress had re 
 turned to Miriam many times during the day, calling 
 up as they had the image of her absent sister. 
 
 Viola ! Throughout the whole of her life Miri 
 am s sister had been to her a personality, strange, 
 unreadable, unreachable. They had not, indeed, 
 been uncompanionable in the early days, when they 
 had romped together with no more, perhaps, than the 
 usual number of little sisterly quarrels, their minds 
 less frequently at variance than at a later time when 
 the peculiar, stormy, unmanageable nature of Viola 
 began, as it seemed, to isolate her. 
 
 To Miriam few memories were more painful than 
 those of scenes between Viola and her father. As 
 Viola approached womanhood something akin to an 
 19
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 antipathy grew up between father and daughter. 
 Each had that facility in misunderstanding the other 
 which contributes so much to the misery of people 
 whose incompatibility often seems wholly blame 
 less. 
 
 Winfield found no comfort in the discovery that 
 Viola repeated the tempestuous personality of her 
 mother. Eugenie Guymard, whom Winfield married 
 in 1872, was the daughter of an officer in the service 
 of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, and an 
 English woman who married Guymard at Havre, 
 and afterward separated from her husband, taking 
 her child with her to Southampton. When Eugenie 
 was five years old her father died, and her mother 
 then married an English jeweller named Westwick, 
 who brought them to the United States. 
 
 Winfield s marriage was called romantic, doubtless 
 because Miss Eugenie was a pretty foreigner; for 
 there was little that was romantic in the circum 
 stances attending the making of the match, unless 
 this element may be found in the suddenness with 
 which Winfield made up his mind that he was very 
 much in love, and in the precipitation with which he 
 communicated the fact to the young lady. Winfield 
 was always a handsome man. Miss Eugenie thought 
 20
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 he was the handsomest man she had seen in America. 
 They met and married in Boston. 
 
 The five years preceding Mrs. Winfield s death in 
 1877 were years in which Winfield learned to marvel 
 at the distressing degree in which charm and acerbity 
 may alternate in a woman. Eugenie frankly hated 
 all of her neighbors. North Pines, which began by 
 thinking her impractical, ended by regarding her as 
 a species of morose tigress, elegantly savage, and al 
 ways unavailable. 
 
 The two daughters presented one of those con 
 trasts that tease and delight students of heredity. If 
 Miriam reflected the character of her father, the 
 elder sister as emphatically reincarnated the spirit of 
 her mother. Twice while a mere child Viola had left 
 home, to return again as fitfully and inexplicably as 
 she had gone. Winfield came to dread punishing 
 her in any manner for an offence lest she should com 
 mit some retaliatory act. 
 
 In the autumn, just before the Colonel s nomina 
 tion for Congress, and two or three days after a 
 quarrel with her father, Viola went away for a third 
 time, sending word that she had taken a position as 
 governess in a New York family. Her fragmentary 
 letters during the winter were sent to Miriam. They 
 21
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 presented a strangely incomplete reflection of her 
 state of mind. 
 
 On the evening when Gerard came to say that he 
 was going back to Illinois, Miriam told him of a let 
 ter from Viola, saying that the Chilton family was go 
 ing to Newport in July; and the first letter from 
 Newport was singularly cheerful. It also was notable 
 as containing this passage : " I hope father is well." 
 
 Viola enjoyed her life with the Chilton children, 
 who gave many signs of their affection for her. She 
 had the faculty often owned by isolated natures of 
 winning the sympathy of the young. Little Arthur 
 heard her stories with breathless interest and admira 
 tion. When she said : " And so the giant took his 
 knotted stick and strode down the side of the moun 
 tain," his eyes fixed themselves upon hers in the 
 profoundest flattery of attention ; while Marjorie, 
 grown to be twelve, but still under the spell of primi 
 tive romance, would ask with an eager concern that 
 had in it more than curiosity, but something also of 
 reverence for the gentle wizard who invoked the 
 dryads and the cavaliers, " And did the Prince come 
 back again ? " 
 
 At Newport, as elsewhere, Viola was seized by 
 moods in which all rule, habit, and association be- 
 
 22
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 came intolerable. Under these impulses she fled 
 to the bluffs. In the solitude of certain favorite 
 turns in the cliff path she could enjoy the wind and 
 the smell of the sea and the surf symphony that 
 wafted itself softly upward through the salty air. 
 Oftentimes she clambered to a far point of the rocks 
 and brooded there motionless with hair unbound, like 
 some sombre spirit of the deep. In the exultation of 
 those hours she loved to look the ocean in the eye, 
 and let the spray sting- her face ; to peer far sea 
 ward when no living thing was in sight, and to feel 
 the intoxication of being supremely alone. 
 
 One day in August, when the children wished her 
 to "play queen " with them, and while she sat in the 
 little blue sitting-room with a rough wreath of flow 
 ers on her head, and Arthur and Marjorie filling the 
 remaining roles of prince and princess, a shadow fell 
 across the curtained doorway opening upon the ve 
 randa, and Viola became conscious that a man in a 
 golf suit was staring fixedly at her. 
 
 Count Rudolf, an Austrian of uncertain connec 
 tions, veneered by Paris, a hanger-on among the 
 foreign legations at Washington, and variously re 
 ported as a military spy, a tariff propagandist, and 
 an ordinary social mountebank, was enjoying his 
 23
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 first impressions of Newport. He was enjoying them 
 frankly as his habit was. He studied Viola as he 
 would have studied the Chiltons trotter in harness. 
 
 When the children scampered away at the sound 
 of carriage-wheels on the gravel path, the Count 
 glanced obliquely across the veranda, and then re 
 marked to Viola, who was gathering up the flowers, 
 that she was a very pretty girl ; a fragment of in 
 formation which Viola received with an impassive 
 silence that puzzled him. 
 
 " Very pretty indeed," continued the Count, 
 strolling into the room. When he touched her, Vi 
 ola struck him full in the face with a force so clearly 
 indicative of real anger that the Count for once lost 
 even the mask of self-possession, and could not find 
 a word until she had left him standing there tingling 
 under the blow. 
 
 When Arthur came back a moment later he saw 
 the Count pick up a yellow rose that lay near the 
 middle of the floor. 
 
 For half an hour a glittering stream of carriages 
 had been moving in the direction of the Casino. 
 Viola, escaping unobserved from the western gate of 
 the Chilton grounds, followed the procession with a 
 purposeless step. Her face was still hot with anger. 
 
 24
 
 Viola struck him full in the face.
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 It was the day of the semi-finals in the yearly 
 tennis championship matches. A cloudy morning 
 had been followed by a brilliant noon. Under that 
 incomparable Newport sky the gowns of the most 
 extravagantly dressed women in the world lost noth 
 ing of that theatrical splendor which society permits 
 itself to create at the crisis of each season. 
 
 The grand-stand was crowded. There was a ka 
 leidoscopic shimmer of color, the hum and flutter of 
 fashionable life. A few moments before the game 
 began Mrs. Chilton and her daughters made their 
 way to seats on the fourth tier. 
 
 As Mrs. Chilton adjusted herself she suddenly 
 turned and stared at the person on her left. 
 
 " Viola ! you here ! " she almost gasped, in her 
 astonishment. The Chilton girls leaned forward to 
 stare with bewilderment at the governess. For a 
 moment Mrs. Chilton was stupefied with anger and 
 embarrassment. 
 
 The elder Miss Chilton muttered, " How ridicu 
 lous ! " and her sister leaned over to ask, " Did you 
 say she might come ? " But Mrs. Chilton appeared 
 to hear neither of them. 
 
 At this moment Viola turned her inscrutable face, 
 and said, quietly, " I am no longer the governess." 
 25
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " I could have told you that," returned Mrs. Chil- 
 ton. And neither spoke another word. 
 
 There was a cheer from the crowd. Neal had 
 made a superb return, and was offering brilliant op 
 position to an adversary who seemed to pervade the 
 entire region beyond the net. The white spheres 
 flew back and forth between the two combatants, 
 who, with every nerve strained, and dripping in the 
 heat of the struggle, were fighting a modern bloodless 
 battle with all of the intensity that could have marked 
 the tournaments of old. 
 
 But it was to Hovey that the victory was to go 
 Hovey, before whom, three days later, the champion 
 fell in an exciting conflict of agility that aroused the 
 gloved enthusiasm of all Newport. 
 
 When it is all over in a discordant murmur, punct 
 uated with shouts, a clatter of heels on the grand 
 stand, a swish of silk, a grotesque dissolving of the 
 kaleidoscopic colors, a babel of talk on the lawn, and 
 a rumbling of wheels on the avenue, Viola is hurry 
 ing back to the house, from which, in the early 
 morning of the following day, she started for home. 
 
 26
 
 Ill 
 
 THE home-coming of Viola was a momentous 
 event in the Winfield household. Character 
 istically, it was an unheralded return on the 
 part of the absent daughter. Although Miriam had 
 long anticipated her sister s coming, it was quite im 
 possible to guess when she might appear at North 
 Pines. 
 
 When Miriam clasped her sister at the gate, in the 
 late afternoon of that autumn day, it was with moist 
 eyes, and a quiver of happiness, whose quality could 
 be understood only by one who knew the history of 
 their lives. 
 
 The Colonel s delight made it hard for him to 
 speak. He withheld no sign of that delight, avoiding 
 only any allusion to the past, which by instinctive 
 agreement remained unvoiced among them, except 
 in so far as Viola herself might choose to speak. 
 
 " What a jolly winter we shall have together in 
 Washington ! " exclaimed Winfield. " We ll be 
 
 27
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 great chums together, and go everywhere and see 
 everything, and 
 
 " And listen to daddy s speeches in the House," 
 said Miriam. 
 
 " Better not count on those. At any rate I should 
 be a useful Congressman with two such able coun 
 sellors." 
 
 The picture of the two sisters, of Miriam s open 
 happiness and of Viola s quieter content, was one 
 that long lingered in the Colonel s memory. The 
 way of life now seemed a little smoother and sim 
 pler. 
 
 The father s happiness in Viola s return was indi 
 cated in many ways. He took up riding again be 
 cause she loved the horse, and she was gayer and 
 chattier with him than he had known her to be in 
 recent years. They made long excursions into the 
 rolling country. There was no jealousy in the feel 
 ing with which Miriam watched them ride away. 
 Pleasure in the reunion dominated every other im 
 pulse. 
 
 Winfield and Viola talked of many things on these 
 long rides. Sometimes the Colonel began to think 
 he understood her better than he ever had before. 
 There were depths in her nature that he never hoped 
 
 28
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 to fathom. She was too much like her mother to 
 be explicable. Her personality seemed to illustrate 
 the tritest cynicisms as to the paradoxes of femi 
 ninity. Miriam was not at all complex. There was 
 a New England straightness in the logic and manner 
 of her life. She was not a prude ; but she was pru 
 dent. She had force without being severe, and all 
 the charm of one who is original without eccentricity. 
 In Viola there was a singular contrast to this sim 
 plicity. She had that fascination which we some 
 times find in eyes with a slight cast. Her contralto 
 laugh piqued the imagination, and even her silence 
 had a quality of personal meaning. 
 
 " Viola," said Winfield one day, when they were 
 off on one of her favorite roads, " do you know that 
 I have almost stopped being lonesome any more ? " 
 " I m glad of that. 1 have never been happier." 
 The acknowledgment was borne out by her own 
 demeanor, which had begun to seem less quiet, though 
 she still fell into reveries in which she seemed to for 
 get that he was with her ; and he could fall behind, 
 watching her graceful silhouette against the gray- 
 green and purple of the road-vista, and admitting 
 her infirmities of impulse with the softened resent 
 ment of an old sorrow. 
 
 29
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 To Viola herself there came something like real 
 peace. The autumn suited her mood. It had no 
 sadness for her, but only a kind of finished quiet. 
 The summer always seemed noisy and effusive, while 
 in the gray stillness preceding the storms of winter 
 came the deep, silent, thoughtful interval of the year. 
 Viola looked into the depths of that silence with 
 questions that were not mixed with impatience. She 
 yielded herself to its soothing spell, and when she 
 was utterly alone dreamed day-dreams of a time 
 when all the world should be set right, and there 
 should be no more bitterness anywhere. 
 
 One person remained ever secure from Viola s pet 
 ulance or inconstancy. Miriam was to her sister 
 a being apart, a choice and exceptional creation. 
 There might have seemed to be something of obsti 
 nacy in Viola s attachment. It made no conditions. 
 Whether she spoke or was silent, in this sentiment 
 she was steadfast. 
 
 On a certain afternoon in the autumn, when Viola 
 sat on the porch in the shadow of the old vine, her 
 eyes wandering down the road, she became conscious 
 of two figures that moved together over the foot 
 path in the direction of the house ; two figures that 
 strolled without excessive deference to each other s 
 30
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 step, yet with that companionable harmony in which 
 it is not difficult to detect a sentiment of accord. 
 
 Viola recognized Miriam at once, but not the man 
 with her. It was not until they had reached the 
 gate that something in the man s face recalled Miri 
 am s letter, with its account of the spring visit of 
 Jack Gerard. 
 
 " I scarcely knew you," said Viola. 
 
 " 1 am getting old," Gerard declared. 
 
 "Careful!" warned Miriam. "We both knew 
 you when you were very young." 
 
 Gerard found Viola rather quiet, though not 
 greatly different from the sort of young woman his 
 early knowledge of her might have led him to ex 
 pect. He felt her watching him narrowly. He fan 
 cied her eyes spoke some resentment. Possibly 
 the degree of this resentment might have been meas 
 ured by the extent of the friendship she saw in 
 Miriam s treatment of him. 
 
 Gerard had come back to give further personal at 
 tention to certain property matters. To Miriam he 
 explained, with some definiteness, the business neces 
 sity for his visit ; but he stayed for over a week, and 
 so far as the Winfield family was concerned, he did 
 not talk politics with the Colonel the whole of the 
 31
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 time. Twice they had had a four-handed game of 
 whist, Gerard and Miriam suffering defeat at the 
 hands of the Colonel and Viola. It was an inevitable 
 defeat, for Gerard played listlessly, in spite of Miri 
 am s rebuking comments. 
 
 One afternoon Gerard met Miriam at the post- 
 office, and he induced her to walk home by a 
 circuitous route. He pointed out many spots that 
 recalled his boyhood, and assured her that to re 
 visit them in such company was more than inter 
 esting. 
 
 She remarked that he had changed greatly since 
 he went away. 
 
 " I dare say," he admitted. 
 
 " You know you were a most offensive dude when 
 you came back from Yale." 
 
 " I believe you." 
 
 " And now I think that perhaps you are drifting in 
 the other direction." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Don t you think that you are becoming quite 
 negligent about your clothes? Perhaps you are 
 cultivating a certain effect for political purposes." 
 
 " I hadn t thought so. But you don t expect a 
 man to keep on being a dude after he gets some 
 
 32
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 sense, do you ? And a Congressional dude would 
 be out of the question." 
 
 " Unless it might be in a community where wom 
 en voted." 
 
 " No, no ! " laughed Gerard. " It is a matter of 
 whiskers in that case. Do you know," he went on, 
 " 1 think you New England women are changing 
 wonderfully." 
 
 " With the rest of them," Miriam added. They 
 had stopped before the wreck of an old cabin. 
 
 " I remember that old Watts, the shoemaker, used 
 to live in that crib," said Gerard. " Poor old 
 Watts ! What became of him ? " 
 
 " Went to the Legislature." 
 
 " Old Watts ? no ! What a joker you are." 
 
 " It was no joke for old Watts. He inherited a 
 lot of money from somebody, was nominated by an 
 accidert or a mistake, and got himself elected. You 
 never saw an old man so happy or so ridiculous. 
 Then when he failed to get a renomination he quietly 
 drank himself to death. Take warning." 
 
 " I was going to say," Gerard continued, absently, 
 " that you New England women don t appear to de 
 spise clothes in the transcendental way that used to 
 be the fashion." Miriam was peering into the cabin. 
 
 33
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " And I don t think you believe in love in a cottage 
 any more, either." 
 
 " It always would depend on the cottage," said 
 Miriam, speaking into the abandoned hut. " Viola 
 has told me about some cottages at Newport that I 
 think 1 should like with ten acres of lawn and two 
 acres of greenhouse." 
 
 " Just what I might have expected," complained 
 Gerard, studying her outline against the dark of the 
 door-way. She wore a trim gown of cadet blue, 
 with white collar and cuffs, and a little shoulder 
 cape with a high ruffle. There was something very 
 fine in her whole personality, he thought. 
 
 " Just what I might have expected," he repeated. 
 " You almost make me afraid to ask your advice 
 about something that has been bothering me a great 
 deal lately." 
 
 " Advice ? " Miriam glanced up at him with frank 
 surprise. 
 
 " It does sound odd ; but that s the word ; and if 
 there is anything in the fact of my asking you that 
 you may find to be discreditable, I am willing to ac 
 cept that as part of my punishment." 
 
 " You are deliciously mysterious." 
 
 " Well, the mystery shall stop right here." He 
 
 34
 
 4 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 paused a moment. " To begin, then, I am engaged 
 to be married but I am not in love with the lady I 
 am engaged to." 
 
 Miriam lifted her eyebrows. 
 
 Gerard could never have fancied how stupid the 
 announcement would sound. " I hope," he contin 
 ued, " that I feel the absurdity, the full discredit of 
 being in such a position." 
 
 His listener s perfect attention made him exceed 
 ingly nervous. 
 
 " She is a widow a charming woman ; any man 
 might feel honored by her affection. Well, I said 
 something to her one day that she took more seri 
 ously than I had intended wait a moment," he 
 added, when Miriam made a movement as if to 
 speak ; " I m not going to plead the baby act. I 
 liked her very much and I asked her to marry me. 
 May 1 go on ? " 
 
 " I m afraid you never should have begun." 
 
 " But I have begun, and I should like to go on. I 
 wish to tell you that she accepted me. I wish to tell 
 you that very soon I found that I was not really 
 in love with her ; that I was so sure of this that 1 
 couldn t feel that it was honest to have asked her." 
 
 He fancied that she was laughing at him. 
 
 35
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 t 
 
 " I don t think I am a coward, and I haven t any 
 yearning to be ridiculous either." He added this 
 with a feeling of protest. " When I came out here 
 in the spring I made up my mind to think the 
 thing over. But thinking it over hasn t been a suc 
 cess at all." He turned to her abruptly. " What 
 should you do if you were I ? " 
 
 " I only know what I should do if I were the 
 widow." 
 
 " What should you do if you were the widow ? " 
 
 " If I were the widow and knew I think I should 
 despise you." 
 
 He looked at her hopelessly. 
 
 " Do you despise me ? " 
 
 Randy Ellis in a buckboard wagon hove in sight 
 just ahead of them, and Miriam did not answer. 
 
 " I shall always feel sorry," Gerard said, a mo 
 ment later, " that you couldn t justify me in 
 
 " In changing your mind." 
 
 The sun was going down. But then the sun has 
 gone down a great many times. How one feels 
 about it depends greatly upon purely personal con 
 ditions. Sometimes it sets in perfect glory, and 
 sometimes its glory seems to be veiled in gloom. 
 
 " Of course," said Gerard, " I realize that this is a 
 
 36
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 somewhat unconventional confidence. Perhaps I 
 should not have bothered you." 
 
 " I m sure," Miriam remarked in a tone that made 
 him feel as if she were confirming this suspicion, 
 " that I wish I had the wisdom to counsel you. But 
 how should I know " 
 
 " That s true," exclaimed Gerard, with an effort to 
 rescue the situation from utter sombreness. " You 
 are neither a man nor a widow," and he laughed 
 uneasily. " But you must at least forgive me for 
 intruding this theme. There is one thing about my 
 imbecility, it is symmetrical. There should be 
 something mitigating in that circumstance. What a 
 beautiful sunset ! " 
 
 The sky was tumultuous with color. Yet Gerard 
 had seen sunsets that he liked better. 
 
 37
 
 IV 
 
 THE first day of December fell on a Sunday, and 
 Congress opened on the second. The Capital 
 presents an interesting spectacle when the 
 great legislative shop takes down its shutters for the 
 resumption of business. Something in the opening 
 of a new session affects the city like a stimulant that 
 animates without exciting ; for Washington never 
 loses its poise, nor sacrifices a certain self-possessed 
 relation to circumstances under any conditions what 
 ever. It is as much without violence as without a vote. 
 On Monday morning the big palace on the hill 
 began to hum like a hive. The nation s delegates 
 buzzed in and out of the hive at the little southeastern 
 basement door the kitchen entrance in the great fa 
 cade. It is a shock to the sentimental observer that the 
 delegates should not mount the front steps in a more 
 elegant and spectacular way ; but it is notorious that 
 this is not the only manner in which the delegates 
 ignore romantic and pictorial requirements. 
 
 38
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Standing in the outer corridor of this basement en 
 trance, you find an arched frame in which an interest 
 ing portrait gallery appears in a series of faces and 
 figures covering the most picturesque range of types 
 that is to be observed anywhere in the world. 
 
 There was a peculiar animation in these quickly 
 changing pictures on this Monday noon when the men 
 who composed the new House, and hundreds of peo 
 ple who were not Representatives, made the great 
 hallways hum and the sleepiest corners of the old 
 Capitol take on an air of resumed business. The 
 members lobby was surcharged with political energy. 
 The pages hopped and chattered like a lot of spar 
 rows. The doorkeepers strenuously attacked the prob 
 lem of remembering the faces of new members, and 
 the new members strove with varying methods, and 
 with varying degrees of composure, to adjust them 
 selves to the novel conditions. 
 
 When the turmoil of the opening days had in some 
 measure subsided the most self-possessed man in the 
 city remained as before, Speaker Reed. The Speak 
 er s room was the focal point of much of the early 
 excitement, but Mr. Reed s mastery of all possible 
 human complications was nowhere more significantly 
 illustrated than in those intervals when the Congres- 
 39
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 sional captain might entrust the wheel of the legisla 
 tive ship to another, and find time to glance at the 
 thousand and one things that demanded his attention 
 in the snug little cabin off the members lobby. 
 
 But first I must tell you that the Winfields found 
 habitation in a comfortable, homelike house on 
 Massachusetts Avenue, near Thomas Circle, presided 
 over by a Mrs. Barlow, who belonged to a very old 
 and a very good family, and whose house betrayed 
 evidences of a respectability that was neither com 
 plaining nor assertive. The fact is that Mrs. Barlow s 
 father had been a Senator, and her uncle a Minister, 
 under Lincoln. 
 
 Mrs. Barlow was a nervous, exact, and unhumor- 
 ous woman, who gave the impression of always being 
 in process of changing her clothes ; for in any crisis 
 it invariably happened that she was unable to do 
 more than protrude her head tentatively from a door 
 way, with one hand closing an imperfectly buttoned 
 gown. Her gray hair was strained back uncompro 
 misingly from her shining temples. The window cur 
 tains throughout the house were looped in the same 
 undebatable tension. No one remembered when any 
 thing about Mrs. Barlow or Mrs. Barlow s house was 
 in the slightest degree different. 
 
 40
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 The boarders at the Barlow household were hetero 
 geneous, and made up a not inharmonious group ; 
 that is to say, those inhabitants of the rambling old 
 house who were at all gregarious got along very well 
 together on short acquaintance. It is characteristic 
 of the Capital that the people in it adjust themselves 
 to new people as patiently as they relinquish those 
 who must go away. 
 
 Of an evening you were likely to meet in the par 
 lor the more socially inclined of the boarders, con 
 spicuous among them Captain W. Freestone Hartley, 
 who frequently had been called the Prince of Wales 
 of the Army. The Captain, in whom a likeness to 
 the British heir-apparent was, indeed, remarkable, had 
 become a somewhat mature bachelor without devel 
 oping any easily detected cynicism toward the oppo 
 site sex. The Captain s social situation appeared to 
 be due less to conviction than to procrastination. 
 He had given serious and consecutive thought to the 
 matrimonial question, but remained without clearness 
 of mind. An old maid seemed too formidable, the 
 self-possession of widows frightened him, and a young 
 girl seemed like too great an educational responsi 
 bility. His manner had, therefore, little of that satir 
 ical hopelessness that characterizes men who may 
 
 41
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 not have made their last move, but who have given 
 up winning the game. 
 
 Mrs. Bannister, who came but a few days before 
 the Winfields, was a youngish widow, whose manner 
 suggested a comparatively remote bereavement, and 
 who soon made known her interest in a pension bill, 
 " not," she explained to the Captain, " on my own 
 account, but for a woman whom circumstances have 
 wronged very cruelly." Mrs. Bannister s good nat 
 ure assured her popularity from the outset, the more 
 certainly because her vivacious contentment was in 
 different to this result. 
 
 Catlin, a department clerk from Ohio, filled the 
 r61e of younger bureaucrat without opposition. He 
 was a well-groomed, well-preserved young man, who 
 was often pinched for money, but was never known 
 to lack an opinion. Catlin, indeed, took occasion to 
 touch life at many points. He tingled with moder 
 nity. Captain Hartley had been heard to say that he 
 thought Catlin had everything the smoker s heart, 
 the writer s cramp, the fencer s shoulder, the Wagner 
 frown, the theatre neck, and the bicycle face. 
 
 Sometimes little Miss Perrine, who was in the 
 Congressional Library, would play on the old piano, 
 which, though it had not been tuned since 1873, 
 
 42
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 emitted a real sparkle of melody and rhythm under 
 Miss Perrine s ivory white fingers. 
 
 " Do you know, Captain," said Winfield, quizzi 
 cally, " that I should have suspected you of being a 
 ladies man ? " 
 
 It was on one of the most heterogeneous evenings, 
 and the Captain and Mrs. Bannister were becoming 
 further acquainted in a nook by the piano. 
 
 " 1 hope, Colonel, that you don t intend that in any 
 disrespectful sense." 
 
 " On the contrary, Captain, I envy you. And 
 think of being disrespectful to an army man. It s 
 inconceivable. I outrank you in title, Captain, but 
 then I m only an upcountry toy soldier from the 
 National Guard." 
 
 "Ah! Colonel, what is so nice as a nice wom 
 an ? " 
 
 " Nothing, my dear Captain ; nothing but another 
 nice woman." 
 
 Mrs. Bannister chuckled. " He could not do better 
 if he had come from Virginia," she called over to 
 Miriam, who was at that moment talking to Jack 
 Gerard. It was the evening of Gerard s first visit to 
 the house. 
 
 " Something tells me," said Gerard, with a glance 
 
 43
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 toward Mrs. Bannister, " that I don t need to tell you 
 that she " 
 
 " Is your widow," said Miriam. 
 
 " No she isn t my widow any more. We 
 ended all that. But how did you know ? She 
 didn t " 
 
 " No, she didn t ; it was sheer sagacity on my 
 part." 
 
 " Easy to guess, though, if she said she knew 
 me " 
 
 " Why do you wish to rob me of the credit of a 
 real divination ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " You are capable of any witchery." 
 
 " None that you seem afraid of." 
 
 " You don t know me. I am very timid." 
 
 " 1 don t think she would say that of you." 
 
 " Now you are severe." 
 
 " You are always tempting Providence." 
 
 " Or the Fates they were feminine." 
 
 " And there is safety in numbers." 
 
 Gerard looked at her at her profile ; she had been 
 talking to him at the elusive angle of forty-five de 
 grees. He wondered whether it was twice as hard to 
 guess a woman from half her face as from the whole 
 of it. 
 
 44
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " You don t look vindictive," he said, quietly. 
 
 " Vindictive ? " 
 
 Then he saw the whole of her face. 
 
 "That isn t precisely the word," he pursued, 
 " though I did wish to express the idea of persistent 
 cruelty. I haven t made you understand me that is 
 to say, the case." 
 
 " You don t either of you seem to be feeling at all 
 gloomy about that." 
 
 " N no. We were too good friends before it be 
 gan to be bad friends afterward. 1 suspect that you 
 think a little less of me because I seem to be taking 
 it so lightly." 
 
 " 1 haven t analyzed my feelings." 
 
 " You haven t stopped to think that the absence of 
 gloom on my part might arise from a sense of justice 
 done to her, and to myself, and to another feel 
 ing 
 
 " You almost seem to be trying to justify yourself." 
 
 " Almost seem ? Won t you believe me, 1 am try 
 ing to justify myself." 
 
 " But why should you ? I wish you wouldn t." 
 
 " If you insist on it I shall be ruthlessly complacent 
 from this time forth." 
 
 " Jack ! " called Mrs. Bannister to the young Con- 
 
 45
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 gressman, as their eyes met, " I have been wanting to 
 see you so much. I have a very important bill that 
 you are to help me with." 
 
 " Delighted, I am sure, Harriet." 
 
 " You see, 1 have begun work promptly, be 
 cause I want to rush the thing through. Not that 
 I m in a hurry, but the other widow is." 
 
 " I have to admire your enthusiasm," remarked the 
 Captain, a little later in the evening, with a glance 
 that had a reasonable degree of admiration in it. 
 " And you know so well how to communicate it." 
 
 "Oh, I shall communicate some of it to you, Cap 
 tain, if I find that you have any influence in the 
 House. But I m afraid your leave of absence will 
 expire presently, and then you won t be of any use 
 to anybody." 
 
 " Cruel, cruel woman ! You don t deserve to know 
 that I have saved up three months leave and am go 
 ing to take my fourth month on next year." 
 
 " How good your country is to you." 
 
 " Are you a new woman ? " the Captain asked, 
 when the company had left them with the parlor to 
 themselves. 
 
 " No not quite new. But I m not an antique, 
 either. Have you been trying to classify me ? " 
 
 46
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " That s about it." 
 
 " I think, Captain, that you had better classify me 
 as simply practical. 1 am terribly practical." 
 
 " You make me a little afraid of you when you 
 talk like that." 
 
 "Oh, 1 am very harmless, too." 
 
 " Yes, I have no doubt, but are you looking out 
 for the future ? " 
 
 " So you think it s time I began ! " The widow 
 laughed softly. " That reminds me of what I said to 
 Major Tetley the other night. Major, I said, you 
 are not providing for the future. Whose future ? 
 said the Major. Why, her future, 1 said. But 
 there isn t any her, snorted the Major. Ah ! that s 
 the trouble, Major, 1 said, there should be a her. 
 What has the United States been framing pension laws 
 for all these years, if you, a Union soldier, are doing 
 nothing to leave a widow to your grateful country? " 
 
 " But you weren t willing to help him out, were 
 you ? " demanded the Captain. 
 
 " Of course not. I am the most impersonal 
 woman in the world. Besides, I consider myself en 
 tirely too young to marry again." 
 
 " Perhaps you don t believe in love at second 
 sight," mused the army man. 
 
 47
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " Of course, I can understand the Major s position 
 precisely. I have become so confirmed in the habit 
 of not proposing that 1 have almost given up hope of 
 ever being able to break myself of it." 
 
 " And 1 have become so accustomed to refus 
 ing 
 
 " Yes, yes, I dare say you illustrate that modern 
 feminine principle of natural rejection. Well, when 
 a woman says she won t, sometimes she won t. 
 But beware of the haughty modern attitude, my dear 
 Mrs. Bannister. Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
 be married." 
 
 At which the widow laughed softly again, and re 
 warded the Captain with a twinkle that struck him as 
 superior in quality to anything he ever before had 
 observed. 
 
 48
 
 AUNT LYDIE JANE usually kept aloof from 
 the parlor gatherings, preferring the quiet of 
 the Winfield sitting-room on the second floor, 
 where she could stitch, read, or ruminate in quiet 
 comfort. Her relic-hunting and souvenir-gathering 
 occupied most of her leisure and her thoughts. The 
 Capital was a mine which she worked without fatigue 
 or disenchantment. 
 
 She invaded the Smithsonian in a glow of almost 
 scientific ardor. By dint of enthusiasm and persua 
 sion, and Professor Mason s sense of humor, she even 
 gained the privilege of access to some of the cases, 
 and handled Massachusetts specimens with rapture 
 and envy. Professor Mason marvelled at the range 
 of her information in matters related to archaeology 
 and ethnology. " You would make an excellent 
 curator for a museum," he said to her. 
 
 Her invincible good-nature carried her past all ob 
 stacles to an interview with General Greely, whom 
 
 49
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 she found in the library of the War Department, and 
 who was very patient throughout her inquiries as to 
 certain indexes and records of the Civil War. 
 
 " O Miriam ! " she cried, one day, in front of the 
 old Corcoran Art Gallery, " it would be delightful, 
 wouldn t it, if, when they finish the new gallery, we 
 could get one of these lovely lions for our front 
 yard ! " 
 
 On another afternoon Miriam found her again ab 
 sorbed in " When His Hair Turned Gray," and gave 
 vent to her amused astonishment. " Hasn t his hair 
 turned gray yet, Aunt Lydie ? What a time it is 
 taking. He must be pretty well advanced in years 
 by this time." 
 
 " Miriam ! " exclaimed Aunt Lydie, with an enthu 
 siasm which Miriam knew could have but one origin, 
 " did I tell you " 
 
 " Another find, Aunt Lydie ? " 
 
 " A triumph, Miriam. Look at that ! " 
 
 Miriam s plump and enthusiastic aunt had quickly 
 produced from the recesses of a box on the mantel a 
 fragment of granite that tottered in her affectionate 
 palm. 
 
 " What is it, Aunt Lydie ? " 
 
 "Can t you guess? : 
 
 50
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 "Haven t an idea." 
 
 " Why, a piece of the Monument, of course ! " 
 
 " The Monument ? " 
 
 " Isn t it grand, Miriam ! You know I was down 
 there this afternoon and just by the luckiest chance I 
 saw a little tippy piece of stone just ready to break 
 off, about as high as this ceiling from the ground. I 
 suppose the weather had made it crumble somehow. 
 Do you know, my heart just gave a thump. But I 
 tried to be calm, and looked at it from several points 
 without letting any one notice. Then I saw a boy, 
 and I said to him, Boy, I said, haven t you got a 
 putty- blower or a bean -shooter, or something ? 
 No, ma am, he said. It was aggravating, but I said 
 to him, Could you get one if I gave you the 
 money ? Yes, ma am, he said. And so I gave him 
 ten cents, and pretty soon he came back with a 
 putty-blower I guess it was. Now, I said, you see 
 that tippy piece of stone up there I want you to 
 blow at it with your blower and blow it off. You 
 must understand, Miriam, that it was just ready 
 to drop. Somebody would surely have it anyway. 
 And the boy blew at it several times until I was all 
 upset with nervousness. Then off it tumbled ! 
 And just as it struck the pavement, out came the 
 51
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 elevator-man ! You could have blown me over with 
 a blower ! But I was perfectly calm, and standing 
 over the stone I said to the boy, Here s five cents 
 for you/ I said it was a good deal, wasn t it but I 
 was a little excited, and that piece of stone is worth 
 fifty dollars if it s worth a cent ! " 
 
 " Well, Aunt Lydie, it will be a good thing for us 
 if the police don t discover this." 
 
 " Miriam, don t be foolish ! I don t believe you 
 half appreciate what a grand souvenir this is." 
 Aunt Lydie fondled the fragment with the ardor of 
 a connoisseur. Miriam envied her the inexpensive 
 joy. " If I could only get something of George 
 Washington s! I believe they have most of his 
 clothes locked up somewhere, and I don t suppose 
 they would be within my means anyway. By the 
 way, did I tell you that Randy Ellis promised to 
 bring me something from his cruise ? " 
 
 " I m afraid, Aunt Lydie, that Randy won t get 
 very far on his adventurous voyage. He has written 
 to father asking him to get him off at Newport 
 News. He s tired of being a marine." 
 
 Randy had indeed made a start toward realizing his 
 long-cherished ambition. When he looked over the 
 fence at his father and said, " Pop, I guess I m goin / 
 52
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 the old man muttered, without looking up, " Waal, I 
 guess I can t prevent yer, Randy, if yer want t be 
 such a fool." And Randy found his way to New 
 York, where he enlisted on the Maine, which was fit 
 ting out at the Brooklyn yard. 
 
 At first he was much delighted with his new life, 
 and he might have continued in his contentment had 
 it not been his fate to have a quarrel with another tall 
 fellow from Connecticut. Big Meach, a stalwart and 
 pugnacious blacksmith, was the terror of the ship, 
 and he resented the superior inches of Big Ellis, 
 whose slighter angularity placed him, for purposes 
 of pugilism, in a somewhat lower class. 
 
 One day when some of them went to Coney 
 Island and had their pictures taken at a " tin-type 
 factory," as Meach called it, there was another quar 
 rel with Meach which resulted in Randy s visit to the 
 hospital that night. There was another disagreement 
 on the day when Meach s Brooklyn cousin, a pretty 
 girl with a loud voice, came down to see him ; and 
 Randy always felt that this was the most unjust of 
 all of Meach s injustices. 
 
 Things had gone from bad to worse in the mat 
 ter of Meach when Randy wrote a pathetic letter to 
 the Colonel. " I hope to Heaven you can do some- 
 53
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 thing to get me out of this," he pleaded ; and when 
 he got his discharge at Newport News, he was as 
 happy as he had been in breaking away from North 
 Pines. 
 
 It was in the early period of the Winfields Wash 
 ington experience that Isaiah, the handy man of the 
 Barlow household, seemed a little perplexed when 
 he told Miriam that there was a man " askin fo 
 any o th Winfield people ; he says his name is 
 Mister Ellis. " 
 
 " Mr. - Oh, tell him to come right up, Isaiah." 
 
 But, characteristically, Randy was already on his 
 way, his erratic and gusty whistle shaken by the 
 movement of each footfall. When he loomed in 
 the doorway Miriam s smile had as much of amuse 
 ment as of cordiality. 
 
 " Randy ! How do you do ? " 
 
 " Glad to be standin plain, on dry land again, 
 anyway." 
 
 " And so you got tired of being a marine." 
 
 " N no," muttered Randy, peering for a chair, 
 " I didn t git so tired o the Navy as I did o some 
 o the people in it." He almost joined in Miriam s 
 laugh. " I liked the ship well enough, though there 
 was a kind o sameness about it after a while. But 
 
 54
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 y see, I got inter trouble with a feller named Meach 
 Big Meach they called him, and he was pretty big 
 and pretty heavy and pretty strong." Randy looked 
 up grimly from his hat. " And Big Meach just 
 spent his time a-huntin me till there wasn t no fun 
 in the thing. I kinder made up my mind that it 
 would be better if I could get away; and so here 
 I am." 
 
 Randy placed his hat on the floor. " But what d 
 yer think, Miss Miriam that cuss Meach got off 
 somehow, too, and I believe he s in this town now. 
 I want t git the Colonel t tell me how t take the 
 Civil Service and git a job here somehow. An 1 
 ain t goin to stand any more o Meach, either 
 that s fer sure 
 
 " Randy ! " 
 
 llie visitor had drawn a formidable revolver from 
 one of his coat-pockets. 
 
 " What are you doing with that ? " Miriam 
 started toward him. 
 
 " I got that to subdue Meach with. But yer don t 
 need t be afraid. I ain t goin t use it on im, un 
 less he makes me desperate. The worm will turn 
 over sometimes." 
 
 Miriam made as if to take the weapon from him. 
 55
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " Randy ! you leave that here with me. If you re 
 not able to punch Meach s head, why just run." 
 
 " Waal," drawled Randy, with a grim look, "that 
 shows you don t understand Meach. When Meach 
 gits interested in yer, y can t git away from im ! 
 What y goin t do with that ? " Miriam had pos 
 sessed herself of the revolver. 
 
 " I m going to keep it for you. You know we 
 may have a war, and in case you may wish to try 
 the Army next time, this will be useful." 
 
 " No I guess I ll try bein just a plain citizen for 
 a little while. When d yer expect the Colonel 
 in ? " 
 
 It was under these circumstances that Randy be 
 came a regular visitor at the house on Massachusetts 
 Avenue. " I m about wearin a path t this house," 
 he used to say. 
 
 The young women counted Randy among the di 
 versions of the winter ; and of diversions there were 
 many. It was a winter with skating, either with the 
 aid of artificial ice at the Convention Hall, or with 
 the old-fashioned sort on the Potomac, where the 
 gleaming shaft of the Monument looked down upon 
 a merry company on favoring afternoons. Miriam 
 and Viola were among the most inveterate skaters, 
 56
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Viola often setting out alone, and haunting the most 
 unfrequented spots in her silent moods. Miriam on 
 several occasions found her sister skating where the 
 ice was threateningly thin. To a frightened warning 
 she answered only with her perplexing contralto 
 laugh. 
 
 Gerard had accompanied them on one occasion 
 when they went over in the morning. Miriam s 
 passion for the open air interested and sometimes 
 distressed him, though he sought to accommodate 
 himself to what he called her strange mania for 
 walking. 
 
 "The Capital seems to have made a hit with 
 you," he said one day when a fresh wind was scur 
 rying through the avenues. 
 
 ",Oh, 1 am delighted with Washington. I shall 
 never want to go home. Please don t hurry with 
 this session." 
 
 " I would do a good deal to please you, and if 
 you say so I shall introduce a resolution keeping 
 Congress in session during the whole period of 
 our terms." 
 
 " Thanks. I should appreciate that so much." 
 
 " Well, I am bound for the House now. Will you 
 come ? " 
 
 57
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " I should like to if you will walk." 
 
 " Haven t you discovered that they have an excel 
 lent cable service in this town ? " 
 
 " But I like to walk. And all of you Congress 
 men should walk. It would improve your disposi 
 tions and the quality of your wisdom." 
 
 She made him climb the western steps of the 
 Capitol. " Do you mean to say that you like this 
 wind ? " he demanded. 
 
 " I think you are sorry you came." 
 
 " Not at all, if you mean that I am sorry you 
 came. I will make a bargain to walk to the House 
 every day, if you will come with me." 
 
 " Then you should carry a dinner-pail to complete 
 the picture." 
 
 She did not make the bargain, but he frequently 
 took walks with her and sometimes to the Cap 
 itol. 
 
 " Sit down a moment," she said one day. " 1 
 believe you are a little ahead of school-time." 
 
 When he hesitated a moment she laughed merrily 
 at him. " Are you afraid that Mr. Reed will come 
 out and punish you for truancy ? " 
 
 " I don t suppose it strikes you as rather droll for 
 me, a Representative, and you, a Representative s 
 58
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 daughter, to be seen sitting here on the Capitol steps 
 at high noon ? " 
 
 " If you think it might make a scandal I ll get 
 up." 
 
 " Don t think of it if you enjoy it here. Good 
 view of the new Library." 
 
 " You like to tease me, don t you ? " he said to 
 her one February afternoon, when they had reached 
 Massachusetts Avenue, after walking from the Cos 
 mos Club. " And 1 wonder whether it is because I 
 am particularly good game. Do I really afford you 
 a great deal of amusement ? " 
 
 " No, I can t put it exactly that way. I shouldn t 
 call you actually an amusing person." 
 
 " 1 hope that you don t mean by that that I am 
 something of a bore ? " 
 
 " There now, Mr. Jack Gerard, don t beg for a 
 soothing compliment. I wouldn t spoil you for the 
 world." 
 
 " I m afraid you are spoiling me but not with 
 compliments. Hello ! Harriet ! " Mrs. Bannister, 
 out of breath, and flushed with the excitement of 
 the legislative chase, met them at the door of the 
 parlor. 
 
 " Jack ! you re just the man I want to see ! " 
 
 59
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " That s flattering, Harriet." 
 
 " You know that the bill comes up to-night." 
 
 " Yes ; isn t everything all right ? Good-by," he 
 added to Miriam, who was slipping away. 
 
 " It was I hadn t worked all winter for nothing, 
 but Mugridge is just wild about that warehouse bill. 
 He knows that you and the Colonel are interested in 
 that, and he says flatly that if I don t pull you and 
 the Colonel away from that bill he will go up to 
 night and raise the quorum question on the pen 
 sions." 
 
 " Friday," mused Gerard. " And what do you 
 expect me to do ? " 
 
 " Why, let me pull you away from the warehouse 
 bill, of course." 
 
 " I m sorry " 
 
 " Now wait a moment, Jack, until I explain." 
 
 He listened attentively. " In the olden time, Har 
 riet, when temptation was being depicted, the 
 tempted one took an attitude like this," and Gerard 
 threw himself into a melodramatic pose, "while 
 plausible allurements, accompanied by an odor of 
 sulphur, drifted over his right shoulder. Whether he 
 kept that shoulder cold or not depended, I suppose, 
 upon his nose and his nerve. Nowadays it is all 
 
 60
 
 You like to tease me, don t you
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 different. The tempter comes in the guise of a 
 charming lady, with no crimson about her save in 
 the silk lining of her skirt, which she has an artistic 
 reserve in showing a charming lady asking an en 
 tirely unreasonable thing in a charmingly reasonable 
 way 
 
 " Jack Gerard ! You re talking very silly, and 
 I m dead tired, besides being in an awful hurry." 
 
 " Harriet, I simply can t do it." She was going 
 to be scornful when he called her back. " But I ll 
 tell you what 1 will do." She listened and exclaimed, 
 " Splendid ! Jack, you re a genius of statesmanship. 
 It s only a question of time when you will be Presi 
 dent." 
 
 " Yes, 1 guess that s about all," he called after her. 
 
 61
 
 VI 
 
 GERARD saw Mrs. Bannister talking to Major 
 Tetley that night at a reception given by 
 Senator Tiffin, where the friendship of 
 Colonel Winfield brought many of the Massachu 
 setts contingent together. Mrs. Bannister called Tif 
 fin one of her Senators. " Deliciously unsenatorial," 
 she said of him. Catlin thought Tiffin lacked dig 
 nity. " But," he added, " Tiffin fits into our highly 
 seasoned and extremely indigestible society." Cat 
 lin always spoke of " our society " in a large and 
 authoritative way, as if he were discussing American 
 institutions with Emperor William. 
 
 A social occasion in Washington, unless wholly 
 unofficial in purport or association, acquires a pict- 
 uresqueness in its scope that is not frequently paral 
 leled in any other quarter of the globe ; a fact which 
 appeared in the instance called up by the course of 
 the present unromantic and circumstantial narrative. 
 
 " You young people seem to be in command to- 
 
 62
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 night," said Major Tetley, with one of his winning 
 glances at Mrs. Bannister. 
 
 " Yes," assented the widow, maliciously. " It s a 
 sort of evening-out party for Miss Dottie Tiffin, 
 and 1 don t see how you came to be invited, Major. 
 Do you know who that is over there by Senator 
 Simms ? " 
 
 "The Vice- President." 
 
 " No, no ! on the other side." 
 
 " Oh, Count Rudolf ! a nuisance." 
 
 " I have heard of him. An Italian ? " 
 
 " An Austrian, I believe, though I ll bet the lega 
 tion wouldn t own him. Anyway, an adventurer, 
 even if Mrs. Arlington has taken him up." 
 
 " I wouldn t call her discriminating." 
 
 It was, indeed, a miscellaneous company. Count 
 Rudolf himself thought so. " This is a remarkable 
 country," he said to the Major. " At Newport I see 
 a girl and she is a servant in one of ze family zere. 
 I come here to-night and mon dieu ! she is a Con 
 gressman s daugh-tere ! This is a remarkable coun 
 try so quick ze change! so, vat you call meex 
 up ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 The Count fluttered about with much dexterity 
 during the evening, dispensing his elaborate compli 
 es
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 
 
 ments and shop-worn cynicisms. " Ah ! Mrs. Ar 
 lington ! " he exclaimed to that lady, " it is not so 
 much what a woman says zat makes her fascinat 
 ing in conversation ; it is vat ve may say to her." 
 
 " Hello ! " Mrs. Arlington s gaze fell upon a lithe 
 figure in a noticeable gown of lemon-colored silk 
 flecked with black lace. " There s Jerry." 
 
 " Jerry ; who ? " asked the Count. 
 
 " Jerry Hamilton. That girl made a hit in Lon 
 don last season. Her husband is only a newspaper 
 correspondent, but the Lady Maveling set took her 
 up, and they tell me that no other bride had any 
 show in comparison." 
 
 " Jerry, it is a strange name for a woman," said 
 the Count. " I have not heard it before." 
 
 " I believe her name is Geraldine or something 
 of that sort. She is rather pretty." 
 
 Young Mrs. Hamilton had come in from the 
 music-room with Lieutenant Landwell. " Just like 
 him," remarked Mrs. Arlington. 
 
 The crowd in the door-way thickened, and when 
 Mrs. Arlington again caught sight of Mrs. Hamilton 
 that young woman was with Colonel Winfield, and 
 Miriam, with the Lieutenant, had just been presented. 
 
 " I m sure," said Winfield, " that Miriam wants to 
 
 64
 
 Hello!" cried Mrs. Arlington, "there s Jerry."
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 ask you whether it really is true that you used to 
 shoot Indians out there in the West when you got 
 tired of playing marbles with the cowboys." 
 
 " No," said Miriam. " I only wanted to ask you 
 whether you ever heard anything more about that 
 man with the awful wife you know whom I mean, 
 the cowboy fellow." 
 
 " Oh, Pink ! " Jerry Hamilton laughed her merriest 
 laugh. The thought of Pink Loper and his terrible 
 wife, whom she had known in her childhood days at 
 the Panther Mine and on the ranch : who had tried 
 their fortunes with the rifle on the stage of a Bowery 
 museum ; who had invaded the legitimate drama 
 with Pink as business manager, and who in the 
 dark hour of pecuniary disaster had sought to join 
 Buffalo Bill s show in Pink s hope of meeting Jerry 
 again in London the thought of this peculiar pair, 
 like some grotesque creation of comic opera, always 
 tempted Jerry s levity. 
 
 " Poor Pink ! " she continued. " You know they 
 went back to Colorado last spring after spending all 
 their money on Romeo and Juliet. " 
 
 Senator Tiffin soon took Miriam away to the 
 dancing-room with a gay crowd of the younger peo 
 ple following after. There certainly was the sparkle 
 
 65
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 of youth in this occasion, and the Colonel, the 
 youngest man of his years in Massachusetts, was 
 quick to respond to the spirit of the hour. When 
 there was an overflow set from the dancing-room, 
 Winfield sprang into the arena with Mrs. Hamilton, 
 and to the fling and rollick of music from a romantic 
 light opera they danced one of those lanciers that 
 make you forget all but the moment, the murmur of 
 merry talk, the rustle of silk, the twinkle of bright 
 eyes, and the flash of flowers in women s hair. 
 
 At midnight Viola, passing with Professor Thor- 
 ley, was startled to see Count Rudolf talking to 
 Miriam. She was so deeply affected by the sight 
 that even the absent - minded Professor felt the 
 trembling of her hand on his arm. If the Count 
 could have seen her eyes he would have shrivelled. 
 
 When Viola could get away from the Professor 
 the Count had disappeared. 
 
 " Miriam ! " cried Viola, in a tone that made no 
 disguise of her excitement. " Where is that man 
 who was with you a moment ago ? " 
 
 " I sent him for some water you know, he s a 
 live count ! What s the matter ? " She saw the 
 expression in Viola s face. 
 
 " He hunted me out," said Viola, inconclusively ; 
 
 66
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " had the impertinence to be introduced, and I turned 
 my back as soon as I could. Miriam, you must not 
 see him again," and Viola clutched her sister s wrist 
 until Miriam winced. " He is the brute who insulted 
 me at Newport." 
 
 They moved through the passage to the main 
 drawing-room. 
 
 " I wish we could go now, muttered Viola. 
 
 The Colonel had been looking for them. " Let 
 us go," said Viola, in a quiet tone which had the 
 flavor of a command. 
 
 " You are tired," said Winfield to Viola in the coach. 
 
 " No," she said, and did not speak again on the 
 way home. When the sisters were alone Viola ex 
 claimed without preface : " I have watched that 
 man and I know what he is. You must not en 
 courage Count Rudolf you must not speak to 
 him again ! " 
 
 " Encourage him ? I can t understand your anx 
 iety, Viola. I have no wish to see him again and 
 probably sha n t." 
 
 " I hope not," Viola said, quietly. " I hated to 
 see him so near you, and to see you even seeming to 
 give him any footing of acquaintance. Who pre 
 sented him ? " 
 
 67
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 "Mrs. Arlington." 
 
 " Adventuress ! " 
 
 " Viola ! the General s wife ! " 
 
 " What of that ? Are there no adventuresses in 
 official society ? I hate that snakey woman." 
 
 " I hope you won t worry about me, Viola. I am 
 not a very flirtatious person, am 1 ? " 
 
 Viola, her cloak thrown back, stood at the door 
 for a moment without speaking. " 1 shouldn t need 
 to warn you. It shines out of him he s a beast ! " 
 
 The intensity of her sister s feelings were scarcely 
 a surprise to Miriam. The mood was characteristic. 
 Viola either loved or hated. One prejudice was as 
 hard to anticipate or to explain as the other, and she 
 invested every mood with the sombreness of her 
 own inscrutable nature. Even her gayety had in it 
 the touch of tears. 
 
 There could be no doubt that Viola hated, or 
 thought she hated, the Count, yet Miriam could not 
 be unconscious of something in Viola s attitude 
 which had more than the elements of a simple aver 
 sion. The resentment seemed disproportionate, 
 though Miriam was not conscious at the time of 
 any doubt as to the natural force of Viola s feeling. 
 
 There was, indeed, nothing in the situation to pre- 
 68
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 pare her for an extraordinary thing which happened 
 before the end of the month. Walking one day in 
 the Mall, she saw Count Rudolf sauntering with 
 Viola. Halting for a moment in a kind of stupor, 
 and reassuring herself as to the identity of the two 
 figures in the path before her, she turned abruptly 
 and walked hurriedly home. 
 
 An hour later Viola came in. Miriam did not 
 hesitate, but crossed the room and placed her hands 
 on her sister s shoulders. "Viola, I have been walk 
 ing in the Mall." 
 
 When Viola turned, Miriam saw that she was very 
 pale. 
 
 " I shall never see him again," said Viola. With 
 a gesture that was unanswerable she turned to her 
 room and did not appear again that evening. 
 
 For a long time Miriam sat at the window looking 
 down toward the Circle. If she had been able to 
 solve this mystery it would have been because she 
 was able to read the most puzzling paradox of the 
 human heart. If she had been able to explain how 
 a woman might hate and yield, it would have been 
 because she had penetrated the veil that hides the 
 innermost machinery of human motive. 
 
 Viola had said that she should never see the Count 
 
 69
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 again ; but within the week Miriam had occasion to 
 know that he accosted her without visible rebuff in 
 the gallery of the House, and that he walked with 
 her as far as the cable on Capitol Hill before she 
 dismissed him. This information came from Ge 
 rard, who was utterly astonished at the incident and 
 placed the matter before Miriam with no conceal 
 ment of his anxiety. 
 
 " She is a bewildering woman," said Gerard. 
 " She must know that the fellow has an unsavory 
 reputation." 
 
 Miriam s grief shone in her wet eyes. 
 
 It turned out that Winfield had seen the Count 
 talking to Viola in the House gallery. There was 
 something characteristic of his caution when dealing 
 with Viola in the fact that he contented himself 
 with an ostensibly chance allusion to Rudolf in 
 Viola s hearing. His characterization of the man 
 was, however, without ambiguity. No one need 
 have doubted his actual sentiments. 
 
 On a certain evening soon afterward, Viola, re 
 turning home from the Avenue, saw in the light of a 
 street lamp the figure of the Count. She sought to 
 avoid him by crossing the Circle at a sharper angle, 
 and supposed she had eluded him, when a ring 
 
 70
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 at the bell followed her own entrance into the 
 house. 
 
 When she herself swung open the door it was, 
 perhaps, with the thought of sending him away; 
 but when he saw her he made no hesitation in step 
 ping- into the hall, and she led him into the parlor 
 without speaking. 
 
 Colonel Winfield left a dinner at the Metropolitan 
 Club early that evening to attend to some letters. 
 He was hurrying up to his room when he caught 
 sight of the Count in the parlor, and of Viola stand 
 ing near him. Turning impetuously, he confronted 
 the uninvited visitor. A sudden anger had filled 
 him. 
 
 " Pardon me, sir ! " he exclaimed to the Count, 
 who had turned at the sound of the footstep, "for 
 remarking that it would please me greatly if you 
 should never enter this house again ! " 
 
 The Count almost staggered, but retained the 
 outward signs of self-possession, reconsidered an 
 impulse to make some reply, and bowed himself 
 from the room. 
 
 The Colonel turned to his daughter. 
 
 " Viola," he said, with an effort to speak quietly, 
 " I have tried not to be unreasonable with you. 1 
 71
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 have tried, and nothing in my life has been harder, 
 to remember, when you have crossed and worried 
 and defied me, that you are my daughter, and that 
 I must be patient; that perhaps because I didn t 
 understand you as a father could wish to understand 
 his daughter, I was in danger of doing you a wrong." 
 Something tortured his throat. " But it seems to 
 have been ordained that you should be a grief in 
 my life, that in spite of every effort 1 could make 
 something should always put your purposes against 
 mine." 
 
 She had not said a word. 
 
 " You have heard me speak of this foreign hang 
 er-on ; you know what I think of him. You know 
 that he is a scoundrel. And yet you recognize yes, 
 and receive him. I find him here I don t say," he 
 went on when he saw her protest, " I don t say that 
 you asked him. He may have intruded under some 
 pretext. But you have encouraged him in some 
 way. You seem bent not only on annoying, but 
 on shaming me ! " 
 
 He could see her anger. 
 
 " Are you through ? " she demanded, coldly. 
 
 " No, I am not through, now or ever. I do not, 
 and 1 shall not, relinquish my right to defend you 
 
 72
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 even from yourself, Viola. Do you understand 
 what you are doing ? " 
 
 "But you don t hesitate to insult me!" Her 
 anger stifled her. 
 
 " Do I insult you when I protest against your 
 interest in a viper like that ? If that is an in 
 sult " 
 
 " I am not a child, to be berated here in a public 
 parlor ! Even my father might remember 
 
 The Colonel had stepped closer to her. " Your 
 father remembers always that you are his daughter, 
 and he commands you to refuse countenance to that 
 man ! Do you understand me ? " 
 
 " And I refuse to be commanded ! " 
 
 " Father ! " 
 
 Miriam had almost screamed the name. Standing 
 in the door she heard Viola s rebellious words, 
 and saw the father s trembling hand move as if 
 to strike her. 
 
 " God ! " he gasped, " that I should have such a 
 daughter ! " 
 
 Perhaps it was the thought that he might have 
 struck her that made him sink quivering into a 
 chair. 
 
 Miriam would have said some word that might 
 
 73
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 have drawn them together, but no happy inspiration 
 brought the word to her, and torn by conflicting im 
 pulses, she had to see Viola, incontrollably angry, 
 beaten by the storm of her passionate resentment, 
 leave the room in a silence that made her own heart 
 quake with dread. She felt her father s fingers 
 quiver as she knelt there stupidly beside him, and 
 she could have cried despairingly for Viola to come 
 back. But it seemed to be too late. 
 
 74
 
 VII 
 
 A WASHINGTON winter is full of surprises, 
 and the atmospheric vagaries were never 
 more perplexing than during the winter of 
 1895-96, when even the Weather Bureau lost its 
 composure. 
 
 But especially and particularly, this was a winter 
 of wars and rumors of war certainly of rumors, of 
 which every one talked before Lent set in ; when 
 by way of having an alternative topic, people be 
 gan discussing the approaching Presidential conven 
 tions. 
 
 These were the days when the jaded interest 
 even of the resident Washingtonians was aroused 
 by thoughts of the activities behind the sombre ex 
 terior of the State, War, and Navy building ; when 
 the State Department became invested with myste 
 rious and impressive possibilities. Yet the scenes 
 within doors might have given a shock to the senti- 
 
 75
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 mentalist, for the vast administrative and diplomatic 
 machinery moved with the same noiseless motion as 
 at any other time. 
 
 The Secretary of War, for example, betrayed no 
 sign of that excitement which appeared in the head 
 lines of the newspapers. Despite the pugnacious and 
 sanguinary things men were saying in print and out 
 of print, there was not the slightest evidence of flurry 
 in the War Department, nor in the demeanor of its 
 indefatigable chief, Colonel Lamont. 
 
 " I was over to see Lamont to-day," remarked 
 Winfield to Miriam, " and you certainly wouldn t 
 know there was any war talk to see them in there. 
 They seem to know how to take in a Pickwickian 
 spirit the things that other folks get excited over. 
 It certainly is a good thing that they know how to 
 keep quieter than some of the editors and some of 
 the Congressmen." 
 
 " Same in the Navy," said Gerard. " They are all 
 very cool as cool as Olney. 1 had a talk with 
 Commodore Melville 
 
 " What is he ? " asked Miriam. 
 
 " Chief Engineer ; remarkable man with a wonder 
 ful record the Jeannette rescue and all that more 
 than a man of iron, a man of steel, wizard of the 
 
 76
 
 The Secretary of War.
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 engine-room. Some of the fellows he saved in the 
 ice called him a brute he wouldn t let them die. 
 That sort of a man fascinates me." 
 
 " They are all alive over there," continued the 
 Colonel. "They are like the men in the engine- 
 room of a big ship obeying impassively but cou 
 rageously the signals from the bridge." 
 
 " And what role are you playing ? " Miriam 
 queried. 
 
 " Oh, Gerard and I are only seamen in the Ship 
 of State," laughed the Colonel. 
 
 " With Tom Reed for boatswain," added Gerard. 
 
 " Well," pleaded Miriam, " if you can arrange it 
 conveniently, I hope you won t have any war." 
 
 "I promise," said Gerard, "not to climb upon 
 my desk in the House and shriek for Spanish and 
 English blood, straight or mixed." 
 
 Nevertheless, these were days of some anxiety to 
 diplomatic Washington. Despite the outward se 
 renity, a nervous tension affected the life of those 
 official circles which were touched by the current of 
 international affairs. Venezuela s controversy with 
 England, and Mr. Cleveland s message asserting the 
 Monroe doctrine in unequivocal terms, directed new 
 attention to the distinguished diplomatist represent- 
 
 77
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 ing the Court of St. James, Sir Julian Pauncefote, 
 the most conspicuous figure in the ambassadorial 
 circles at the Capital. The British and Spanish 
 representatives were marked for much observation. 
 
 These were the days when the light burned late in 
 the President s room; when the White House was 
 the scene of momentous conferences by day and by 
 night; when certain visitors entered and left the 
 building with a quickened step. 
 
 Indeed, these were the days when the diplomatic 
 storm centre hung very close to the President of the 
 United States, whose severe routine of labor felt the 
 added strain of these perplexing and momentous con 
 ditions. 
 
 It is characteristic of the extent to which private 
 interest affects life at the Capital, that Mrs. Bannister 
 used to dream that she saw the President bending 
 over her pension bill as if to sign it, and then won 
 dering whether he should or not ; and she had 
 dreamed of going to the White House and of telling 
 Mr. Cleveland that this was the most spotlessly de 
 serving, essential, and altogether inevitable bill that 
 ever had been passed. But when she tried to fancy 
 how she should begin when the President looked up 
 inquiringly at her, she couldn t find a word. 
 
 73
 
 Commodore Melville, Chief Engineer.
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 One day she actually yielded to an impulse to visit 
 the President, and turned into the White House 
 grounds, her heart beating a little quicker, and her 
 face becomingly tinted by the thought of her own 
 daring. When she reached the foot of the stair 
 leading to the offices, she saw that the East Room 
 was half full of people. Evidently it was a reception 
 day. It would be impossible to get at the President, 
 
 anyway, unless She passed into the East Room, 
 
 and when the line was formed took her place in the 
 somewhat grotesque procession. Fifty feet away 
 was the President. At the first glance she began to 
 doubt her right to deliberately dim his cordiality by 
 being ridiculous yes, the thing did begin to seem 
 to be ridiculous. By the time the President was only 
 twenty feet away she had begun to wish she hadn t 
 even entered the line, though there was no reason 
 why she should not go through so perfunctory a 
 ceremony. The fact was that she felt guilty of her 
 original design, though she had abandoned it thirty 
 feet away. Just then she became conscious of a 
 little woman in black, immediately in front of her, 
 who turned a colorless face, and said, " Do you know, 
 I am dreadfully nervous! " Whereupon Mrs. Ban 
 nister at once regained her composure, fortified the 
 
 79
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 nerves of the little woman in black, smiled a little at 
 her own recent trepidation, and when the President 
 took her hand, behaved in a manner to convince 
 herself that no trace of guilty conspiracy appeared 
 in the face she turned to him. 
 
 " I hope, Colonel," said Mrs. Bannister to Winfield, 
 after narrating this mild adventure, " that you won t 
 let the Cuban resolutions prevent you from remem 
 bering that they actually get around to my bill to 
 night." 
 
 " Oh, I sha n t forget you, Mrs. Bannister. We 
 must pass your bill, if we have to let Cuba go to the 
 dogs." 
 
 " Well, it won t hurt Cuba to wait another day, 
 and my widow is getting so anxious." 
 
 " Naturally. Now, you ve got Gerard on the 
 track of this thing, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I should say so ! Why Jack is working night 
 and day." 
 
 " What are you two plotting?" demanded Miriam, 
 who perceived in her father s face an anxiety not as 
 sociated with the pension bill. 
 
 "It isn t a plain plot, Miss Winfield, it s a con 
 spiracy." 
 
 " How exciting and dramatic ! " 
 
 80
 
 Sir Julian Pauncefote, the most conspicuous figure in 
 Ambassadorial circles.
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 "It s an awfully slow drama getting a bill through 
 Congress," sighed the widow. " There s the differ 
 ence between real life and a play in the last act of a 
 play everybody gets something. I wish Cuba would 
 sink into the sea." 
 
 But Cuba was destined long to be a topic of de 
 bate and consideration at the Capitol. One of the 
 first messages which President McKinley handed to 
 Private Secretary Porter related to the pitiful condi 
 tion of things on the war-devastated island. Mrs. 
 Bannister s pension bill was duly passed, but Cuba 
 did " wait " many a day. 
 
 "I suppose, father," said Miriam, "that if there 
 should be a war, you would insist upon leading a 
 regiment." 
 
 " I haven t begun to worry about that." 
 
 Miriam knew the real meaning of the distress in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Are you still fretting about her ? " 
 
 He turned and took Miriam s face in his hands. 
 " I m afraid I must always fret about her." 
 
 She kissed him, and said, reassuringly : " It will be 
 all right." 
 
 Viola had become ominously mute. She brooded 
 alone, smarting under her father s words. He had, 
 
 81
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 she thought, needlessly humiliated and belittled her. 
 His arraignment of the Count was insulting to her. It 
 was in resentment of her own chagrin that she made 
 it possible for the Count to see her again. She ad 
 mired the manner in which he made her discomfiture 
 a matter for his own apology. 
 
 " I would rather have given my right hand," he 
 exclaimed, " than have had you suffer." 
 
 He had made her believe that he understood her 
 better than they, and indirectly incited her rebellion. 
 " It ees too bad," he would say, with the appearance 
 of real grief, " that they cannot see your fine nature. 
 They are blind. MonDieu! it ees a crime! But they 
 do not know ; we must not blame them no ! no ! " 
 he would defend them from her with vehement 
 eloquence. 
 
 And they did not understand him, either, she 
 thought. They never could. They did not know 
 him. They believed all they heard, without investi 
 gation. There were brilliant qualities in him, and 
 qualities of sympathy which she permitted herself to 
 think were a response to something that came to her 
 in the French blood of her mother. 
 
 Miriam instinctively felt the progress of this sinis 
 ter courtship, while deluding herself with the hope 
 
 82
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 that Viola would, in her own time, emerge from the 
 complication as from one of her moods. 
 
 It is doubtful whether anything might have pre 
 pared her for the shock which came one afternoon in 
 March, when she found on the floor of the sitting- 
 room a crumpled note from the Count, asking Viola 
 to meet him at the Pennsylvania station at seven 
 o clock. " We shall reach New York in five hours," 
 he said. 
 
 A sense of horror stole into Miriam s heart. A 
 tragedy was opening in the path of her life, and 
 something in her rebelled against its harshness, its 
 deadliness, its vulgarity. Why should it be permitted 
 to happen now that chance had given to her an 
 instrument of defence ? 
 
 She must act at once if at all. To speak to Viola 
 was impossible. To cross her in such a crisis would 
 be worse than useless. An appeal to her father 
 would mean a terrible scene and a scandal. Nothing 
 would restrain him from seeking and attacking the 
 Count. Miriam thought fora moment of hurrying 
 to Gerard, but shrank from communicating her sis 
 ter s secret, even to him. And why endanger Ge 
 rard s peace ? If only there were some way in which 
 she could act alone ! 
 
 83
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 She ran softly to the landing and called Isaiah. 
 That young man appeared with unaccustomed alac 
 rity, as if something in Miriam s voice had made him 
 feel the urgency of the situation. His shining face 
 was an interrogation in brown and white. 
 
 " Isaiah ! " 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 " Listen to me, Isaiah, and you mustn t ask me any 
 questions about it." 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 " You told me one day, Isaiah, that you knew a 
 waiter at the Hemisphere Hotel." 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 " You must go to him, Isaiah, and find out for me 
 the number of Count Rudolf s room." 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 " And you used to be a coachman, didn t you, 
 Isaiah ? " 
 
 " Yes, Miss." Isaiah s wonderment was grow 
 ing. 
 
 " Now I want you to go and get a carriage, a 
 coupe, somehow, and drive it yourself, Isaiah, into 
 the Circle, on the north side, and wait until I come. 
 Then I want you to drive me to the side entrance of 
 the Hemisphere Hotel. You understand, Isaiah ? " 
 
 84
 
 o
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 " And I want you to wait there until I come out, 
 and then to drive me back to the Circle." 
 
 "Yes, Miss." He was becoming more deeply 
 dazed, and it was all he could say. 
 
 " And you will not speak a word to anyone, 
 Isaiah, and when you have come back you will for 
 get that you have done it." 
 
 " Y es, Miss." 
 
 " Hurry, Isaiah ! You are sure you understand 
 Oh, here is the money. Please don t make any mis 
 take, Isaiah it s very important." She pushed him 
 out of the room. 
 
 Her heart had begun to beat wildly. She must 
 make no mistake now. To fail in any particular 
 would be ruinous. In her imagination the Count 
 stood forth as something mysteriously despicable and 
 dangerous. She not only loathed but feared him. 
 Her fancy endowed him with supernatural wicked 
 ness. It was for this reason, perhaps, that she im 
 pulsively opened the drawer of the table and took 
 out the revolver that had lain there since the day 
 when Randy came up from Newport News, and 
 stood there in a moment of debate with her fingers 
 trembling over the weapon. 
 
 85
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 It had been a dismal day. In the morning a thin 
 film of snow covered the city, and snow fell fitfully 
 during the morning, melting as it fell. The switch 
 man at the Peace Monument remarked upon the 
 utter badness of the weather, upon the utter unrea 
 sonableness of the winter as a whole, and was in his 
 most morose mood. In the afternoon came a steady 
 rain that washed humanity out of the streets. 
 
 The weather suited the mood in which poor 
 Miriam in the coach reached the Hemisphere Hotel. 
 She climbed the stairs leading from the ladies en 
 trance with tremulous resolution. She never could 
 remember what immediately preceded the moment 
 when she stood with her back against the door of the 
 Count s room. 
 
 The Count sat at a table by the window. 
 
 " Vat ees it ? " he asked, with his head over his 
 writing. He evidently thought she was a bell-boy 
 with a card or a message. When he did look up his 
 astonishment was in proportion to the novelty of the 
 situation. 
 
 " Mees Miriam, vat 
 
 " Please be seated," she demanded, with a frag 
 ment of her voice, her right hand hidden in the fold 
 of her cape. 
 
 86
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " I do not understand 
 
 " I must ask you to sit down, please, and to remain 
 seated," she repeated, with all the firmness at her 
 command. But she was trembling under her poor 
 attempt at calm, and the revolver tumbled to the floor. 
 
 " Permit me " the Count began, with mingled 
 
 irony and doubt, moving as if to pick up the re 
 volver. 
 
 " Sit down ! " she demanded again, fumbling for 
 the weapon. " I have something very important to 
 say to you." 
 
 " But, my dear Mees - 
 
 " Keep quiet, please, until I have explained ! You 
 are writing letters. I wish you to write one for 
 me." 
 
 " Certainly," said the Count, a little amused and 
 much perplexed. 
 
 " I will dictate it, if you will permit me." 
 
 The Count, completely puzzled, prepared to write. 
 
 " My dear Viola. " 
 
 " My dear Viola remarkable," muttered the 
 Count. 
 
 " I am sorry that I cannot keep my appointment 
 to-night. I am called out of the country and must 
 leave at once." 
 
 87
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 "Sacre tonnerre!" The Count, with his face con 
 torted, half rose to his feet, glared at Miriam, and 
 then at a letter which lay near him on the table. 
 The Count had just read this letter. It was brief, 
 but pointed. This is what it said : 
 
 " COUNTY OLD MAN : 
 
 " The Bank has the Papers you must skip the town to-night 
 sure, and if you don t take to-morrow s steamer you are my 
 definition of a blasted fool. 
 
 "STEINWOLTEN." 
 
 It was impossible that Miriam 1 could know any 
 thing of that letter, or of its origin. And yet there 
 was an almost incredible coincidence in her inter 
 vention. 
 
 " But my dear Mees Miriam," expostulated the 
 Count, with growing annoyance, " this ees ridiculous ! 
 Vat do you mean ? I cannot write such a letter ! " 
 
 " I am sorry," said Miriam, standing very straight, 
 her lips white, the revolver in full view. " I think 
 that you must. I don t wish to make any trouble." 
 She paused, and realized that she was less fright 
 ened than at the beginning, though she was inwardly 
 praying that the situation might now demand noth 
 ing more of her than getting away. " I think it will 
 be best for you to write it." 
 
 88
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 The Count looked contemptuously at the revolver. 
 It would make a noise to begin with, and the girl 
 might faint ; in any case the game was spoiled ; and 
 trusting to avoid a scene, the Count took up the pen 
 again. 
 
 " I have not deserved the honor of your affec 
 tion, " Miriam dictated. " You may sign it Rudolf 
 just as you signed the note you sent to-day." 
 
 " Leetle devil ! " grunted the Count. 
 
 " Don t seal the envelope," directed Miriam. " I 
 want to see what you have written and don t get 
 up throw it to me," and she picked the thing from 
 the floor, as if it had been unclean, continuing, with a 
 new courage in her voice, " I have done this to save 
 my sister, but I have saved you from a great danger. 
 If you are a wise man you will avoid the chance that 
 my father may yet hear of this, and leave Washington 
 at once on the seven o clock train ; it will get you 
 to New York in five hours." 
 
 " Excuse me," appealed the Count. She stood 
 with one hand on the knob of the door and he had 
 arisen without protest from her. " Do I understand 
 that anything vill be said ? or that this letter vill be 
 all ? " 
 
 " This letter will be all if you leave to-night."
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 The Count maintained his ironical salute as she dis 
 appeared. 
 
 Back to the coach, back to the house, to the sit 
 ting-room. In all the journey Miriam had but one 
 clear thought Viola would be saved. 
 
 The revolver she replaced in the drawer of the 
 table, and having left the letter with Isaiah, fled to 
 her room, where only the consciousness of an impend 
 ing scene in the drama saved her from collapse. She 
 had forgotten to instruct Isaiah definitely as to the 
 delivery of the letter, but Isaiah was equal to the 
 emergency. 
 
 " They s a letter on the table fo you, Miss," she 
 heard him saying to Viola. 
 
 " A letter, Isaiah ? " 
 
 " Yes, Miss." 
 
 The Count s handwriting ! a letter from the 
 Count ! Viola tore the envelope unemotionally, 
 though her eyes spoke her perplexity. The words 
 stupefied her in the first moment. She could not 
 believe them. The Count throwing her over ! Out 
 of her stupor came a rush of anger, of a half-savage 
 rage that put a hot fire in her brilliant black eyes. 
 While the anger blazed in her brain, the room grew 
 dark. 
 
 90
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Miriam heard the fall, and with a new and differ 
 ent terror she faltered to the door. Viola lay prone 
 near the table, her loosened blue-black hair shimmer 
 ing in the dim light and partly hiding the Count s 
 letter. Seeing her sister there, stricken as by her 
 hand, Miriam felt her courage, until that moment 
 unbroken, utterly give way, and she threw herself 
 despairingly beside the fallen form. 
 
 " Viola ! Sister ! " It was on her tongue to cry 
 " Forgive me ! " and to confess the origin of the let 
 ter ; but she held back the words. " Viola ! you 
 have hurt yourself ! . . . What can I do ! what 
 can I do ! " 
 
 There was no response from the white face on her 
 shoulder. She brushed back the heavy masses of hair, 
 and clung appealingly to the half-inanimate body. 
 
 " Viola ! You won t grieve at anything, will you, 
 without telling me and letting me help you ? I m 
 a stronger comforter than you think, Viola. Are 
 you feeling better? There, there! just let me 
 help you to your room and care for you for a little 
 while." 
 
 Viola pushed her away, then, repenting the gesture, 
 turned and clung tremblingly to Miriam for a mo 
 ment. 
 
 9t
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " Miriam, you are a good sister, but I wish you 
 would leave me alone." 
 
 " But not here, Viola ! " 
 
 " Let me sit here a moment, Miriam. The world 
 is better to you. Let me stay here a moment." 
 
 Miriam left her sitting dumbly at the table. The 
 world had gone wrong again. And all was irrepara 
 ble. " I was born to be miserable when others are 
 happy." It was an old thought coming back with 
 new momentum. And she had tried hard enough to 
 steal some happiness from life ; but life had grudged 
 it to her, had taunted her with it and taken it away. 
 The world did not understand her, and she did not 
 understand the world. The blood in her was relent 
 less, carrying with it the sad strain of her mother s 
 unhappy nature. 
 
 Her mother ! 
 
 That strange union of turbulence and of sweetness, 
 of sunlight and of gloom that inexplicable woman 
 whose face was only an indistinct memory rising in 
 the crises of her life like that of some attendant 
 spirit that felt its kinship. The face seemed almost 
 to shine faintly beside her at that moment ; a sweet 
 and a terrible face, longing, threatening, melting, 
 hardening, loving, hating, repelling appealing. 
 92
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 What was the good of a life that seemed to be a 
 mistake ? What was the good of a life that was 
 worthless to its owner and a pain to those who 
 looked upon it ? Would it pay to go on battling 
 with this legacy of bitterness ? 
 
 There were ways of stopping it all. Viola s eyes, 
 in which the fires were smouldering now, caught 
 the gleam of metal through the incompletely closed 
 drawer of the table. She drew forth Randy s re 
 volver, and held it without repulsion in her listless 
 hands. 
 
 How much of a sin was it to snap the ties and end 
 everything ? Was it cowardly to be afraid to live ? 
 Was it cowardly to hesitate to die ? How many in 
 the world had debated this question in hours of 
 lonely agony ! 
 
 How sweet it would be to end the struggle in an 
 eternal sleep ! One supreme pain and then 
 
 A low, irregular whistling came from the hallway. 
 Its origin could not be misunderstood. In a moment 
 Randy s angular length swung through the door 
 way. 
 
 " How are y Miss Viola? Is the Colonel in ? " 
 
 " No, Randy, he is not in." She spoke in the 
 shadow of a voice. 
 
 93
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " Is that so ? I m sorry. Bein no session t day 
 thought I might find him here. Wanted t ask him 
 about the Civil Service matter." 
 
 Her face was turned from him. " Randy, I wish 
 you would go away." 
 
 " Go away ? " He looked his uncertainty. 
 
 " Yes, Randy, please go away. I am not feeling 
 very well, and I 
 
 " All right, I ll go I ll come in again soon. I 
 want t see the Colonel about that thing. Good 
 eh good-by ! " And he stared at her again, as if 
 realizing at this moment of his going that her appear 
 ance was extraordinary. As he drew aside the por 
 tiere he shook his head slowly, and went uncertainly 
 down the stair. 
 
 The revolver gleamed in the drawer where Viola 
 had mechanically dropped it at the first sound of 
 Randy s coming. She looked at it again now, but 
 could not touch it. The dusk deepened, and she 
 sat there without stirring. House and street were 
 peculiarly silent. From a distance that seemed im 
 measurably vast came the deep melancholy note of 
 a bell. 
 
 She knew the note. It called up the image of a 
 sombre building, a red, blind-faced building; the 
 
 94
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 image of a woman on the steps of the building, a 
 woman whose white face looked from a whiter linen 
 frame in the shadow of black. . . . 
 
 In fifteen minutes the bell sounded again two 
 strokes. 
 
 Viola was writing, her hair falling about her face 
 like a cowl. Her mother had been reared behind 
 convent walls. There would be a fitness in the step 
 that carried her whence her mother came. . . . 
 Perhaps this was a destiny. At least it was a desti 
 nation. Miriam should know when she read these 
 lines. The pain to them would soon be past ; and in 
 that moment she hoped that they might be able to 
 think some good things of her. 
 
 The Count she did not love him. . . . No, 
 her first impulse had been true. But why had she 
 let him come into her life ? What was it in him 
 that had mastered her ? Heaven only knew that. 
 She would not have him back. Behind him there 
 had been an abyss. . . . 
 
 The distant bell tolled the strokes of the three- 
 quarter hour. 
 
 Miriam heard Viola go to her room ; but she did 
 not hear her leave it. And when she read Viola s 
 95
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 letter, which lay on the sitting-room table, she had 
 no suspicion that the writer was at that moment hur 
 rying impetuously through the twilight. A sense of 
 loneliness smote her and wrenched quick tears from 
 eyes that ceased to see the lines on the paper, but 
 that saw through the mist a shrouded face that 
 bore the hurt of pain, a face reflecting the grief of. 
 a gloomy soul, a face that already seemed to have 
 gone forever. 
 
 When she had read the words a second time she 
 yielded to an impulse to go to Viola s room. No 
 answer came to her soft knock at the door. Per 
 haps Viola had cried herself to sleep. 
 
 Miriam noiselessly turned the knob. The room 
 was empty. 
 
 96
 
 VIII 
 
 MIRIAM ! " Aunt Lydie Jane had called from 
 the stairs, but was at the door almost be 
 fore Miriam could answer. " Success at 
 last, my dear ! I told you I never should give up." 
 
 " What is it, Aunt Lydie ? " Miriam strove to 
 hide her tears for the moment. 
 
 Aunt Lydie was feverishly untying a bundle. 
 " And what will you say to this, my dear mercy ! 
 what a knot just what I ve been wanting so long ! 
 searched everywhere, and at last, at last, my dear, 
 I am rewarded. There ! and George Washing 
 ton s, too ! " 
 
 Aunt Lydie was holding up a crumpled pair of 
 trousers. Poor Miriam faintly smiled through her 
 tears. The long trousers were pitifully modern. 
 
 " Why, Aunt Lydie, I didn t know that Mr. 
 Washington wore " 
 
 " There ! " and Aunt Lydie seated herself abjectly. 
 " If I didn t forget that he wore bicycle pants ! The 
 
 97
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 idea ! And that man charged me seven -fifty for 
 them, too ! But I ll take them back ! I won t be 
 cheated ! And I was so happy over this ! " Aunt 
 Lydie looked sadly at her purchase. It was a shat 
 tering blow. "Isn t it a pity!" Then her eyes 
 wandered to Miriam s face. " Miriam ! you have 
 been my dear ! what is the matter ? " 
 
 Miriam s lip was quivering. " Viola has gone ! " 
 
 " Gone ? " 
 
 It was almost all there was to tell. In the quiet of 
 that night Miriam heard her father pacing the floor 
 of his room. It was a bad night for the Colonel. 
 
 The days that followed were dark days in that lit 
 tle group. When Easter came with its lovely spring 
 sunlight a change had crept into the life of Winfield 
 and his daughter. The Colonel and Miriam had 
 painful reminiscent talks together, and had settled 
 back into the old ways that had existed before Viola 
 came back from Newport. A sense of the inevita- 
 bleness of the thing which had happened, and a feel 
 ing of its finality, softened, perhaps, the sting of their 
 grief, but could not remove the consciousness of be 
 reavement. The Colonel s hair, prematurely touched 
 with frost, seemed to take on a deeper white. 
 
 It was on Easter Monday evening that Gerard 
 98
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 came in and found Miriam playing soft music at the 
 piano. He had noticed a difference in her since 
 Viola went away. 
 
 "What is so pleasant," he said quietly, "as to 
 hear music that one likes played by a person whom 
 one " 
 
 " I m afraid I m not playing very well to-night," 
 she said, as if she had not perceived the direction of 
 his remark. 
 
 " I have been enjoying that Grieg very much," he 
 said. Then a moment later, his arm resting over 
 the piano, his face near hers : " Do you know, I was 
 thinking this morning 
 
 But how should I know what he said after that ? 
 He was speaking very low, and her answers certainly 
 were not declaimed. And if I did know, is there not 
 a nice question of delicacy as to whether I should 
 tell ? Some things should be sacred. 
 
 There would be room for speculation in the visi 
 ble thing that happened. One might guess certain 
 conditions from the movement with which presently 
 he turned away from the piano and strode the 
 length of the room, returning again to find that 
 she had arisen. There was room for guessing in 
 his attitude as he spoke to her across the table 
 
 99
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 that stood between them. The least imaginative 
 person might have suspected his distress as he walked 
 the length of the room again to turn quickly, at last, 
 and face her on the near side of the table. Her 
 eyes were no enigma as they fell before his. It is 
 extremely doubtful (though this line of speculation 
 is, strictly speaking, excluded by the present condi 
 tion of decorous silence) whether her lips said a 
 single word. At last when he caught her hand and 
 demanded 
 
 But this surely is violating our delicate terms. 
 Let it suffice that when the Colonel came in there 
 existed definite occasion for that fine self-possession 
 with which he did not appear to notice them. 
 
 " How are you, Gerard ? " he said, rather 
 brusquely, as he went on with his letter. 
 
 " We simply won t dare say a word to him with 
 his hat on like that," whispered Miriam. 
 
 " I suppose not." Gerard studied the absolutely 
 horizontal situation of the Colonel s hat, which 
 Winfleld absently continued to wear. 
 
 " Now if there should happen to be anything 
 pleasant in that letter from North Pines there it 
 goes ! " 
 
 A faint smile was perceptible on Winfield s face 
 100
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 and his hand mechanically pushed his hat into an 
 acute angle. 
 
 " Do you think it is quite safe now ? " demanded 
 Gerard, grimly, and audibly enough, until the 
 Colonel looked up. 
 
 " Oh, it s entirely safe now," laughed Miriam. 
 
 " Colonel," said Gerard, with an attempt toward 
 the effect of addressing the Chair, that somehow 
 was not so successfully off-hand as he had expected, 
 " we have here a concurrent resolution of which we 
 wish to ask your approval. It is a measure for the 
 consolidation of two lives, and it is entirely non- 
 partisan." 
 
 The Colonel had stared at them suspiciously at the 
 first word. He had regained his self-possession be 
 fore the last word came, though there was a little 
 tremor in his voice as he said, " Well, I suppose 
 there is nothing for me to do but say, Bless you, 
 my children, or something of that sort. And this 
 explains, Gerard, why you have been away from 
 so many of those Committee meetings ! " 
 
 A peculiar whistling sound came from the hall 
 way. It was not properly the regulation whistle of 
 Randy, but unquestionably the sound was emitted 
 by that eccentric gentleman. 
 101
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 " He was to take the Civil Service examination to 
 day," said Miriam. " I wonder how he got along. 
 He ll be awfully broken up if he doesn t pass." 
 
 Randy, in the doorway, presented an extraordi 
 nary spectacle. His face was bruised and bleeding, 
 though retaining a grotesque composure, and his 
 clothes gave evidence of having been in the presence 
 of an energetic destructive force. His collar remained 
 attached by the back button only. 
 
 " Randy ! " Miriam and her father had exclaimed 
 in chorus. Gerard suppressed a laugh. 
 
 " Colonel," said Randy, solemnly, " I came right 
 here 
 
 Miriam could not wait to get the details. " You 
 didn t get this at the Civil Service examination, did 
 you ? " 
 
 " No," returned Randy. " Y see I just met 
 Meach." 
 
 The Colonel struggled with a convulsion of merri 
 ment. 
 
 " I met Meach and it was the old, old story, only 
 I think maybe a little more so, this time." 
 
 " He must have been very rough with you," said 
 the Colonel, sympathetically. 
 
 " He was ; and I did my best t reason with that 
 102
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 man, too. And I want you t take this thing up, 
 Colonel. That man is dangerous. I don t care for 
 myself, but that man ought to be put away. The 
 first thing you know " 
 
 " You poor fellow ! " cried Miriam, " let me at 
 tend to your bruises." 
 
 " Anyway," muttered Randy, " I m kinder tired, 
 and I ll sit down a minute if yer don t mind." 
 
 " Colonel Winfield ! " The shout was accom 
 panied by Mrs. Bannister s gay laugh on the stairs. 
 
 " What s happening now ? " queried the Colonel, 
 who turned to confront the grotesque phenomenon 
 of Mrs. Bannister dragging Captain Hartley through 
 the hall. 
 
 " Here s a good joke, Colonel ! " cried Mrs. Ban 
 nister, charmingly flushed with her efforts, " I m 
 going to marry the Captain ! " 
 
 " No you don t say ! I never should have sus 
 pected it ! " grinned the Colonel. 
 
 " You old fabricator," snorted the Captain. 
 
 " Miriam ! " 
 
 Aunt Lydie halted in embarrassment at the door 
 on discovering that the room was full of people. 
 
 " If one more thing happens," declared Winfield, 
 " I shall believe that the whole affair was arranged." 
 103
 
 A CAPITAL COURTSHIP 
 
 Aunt Lydie decided to go on: "What do you 
 think, Miriam ? I found that man again, and he 
 says that he made a mistake, that those trousers 
 were worn by George the Third ! " 
 
 " Gerard," remarked the Colonel, " I had no idea 
 that so many things not set down in the Congres 
 sional programme possibly could happen in this quiet 
 town." 
 
 And though he could not explain the thing at the 
 moment, Gerard caught Mrs. Bannister scrutinizing 
 Miriam and himself with a remarkably sagacious 
 expression. 
 
 104
 
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