CHAPTER 3

Sir Percy Carlyon had declined to be domiciled at the British Embassy, as Lord Baudesert urged, but took modest chambers close at hand. He found plenty to do, and although he was supposed to be capable of bullying Lord Baudesert, it was impossible to force the Ambassador to a regular course of work every day. Sir Percy, however, watched the chances, and succeeded in getting more out of Lord Baudesert than any one else had ever done. Moreover, Sir Percy was a persona grata to Mrs. Vereker and the three girls, not that this mattered to Lord Baudesert, who, as far as women were concerned, was a natural and incurable bully and buccaneer. Lord Baudesert was neither bad-tempered nor bad-hearted, but it cannot be denied that he was a trying person domestically. It was in vain that Sir Percy reminded his aunt and cousins that Lord Baudesert had no power of life or death over them and could not eat them. Mrs. Vereker was horrified at the suggestion that she should exercise a little personal liberty, and the three girls thought Sir Percy slightly cracked when he advised them to assert themselves boldly in the presence of their uncle. On the whole, however, Sir Percy liked his new outlook upon the world, and considered that he was now in the sunshine of good fortune.

Mrs. Vereker, Jane, Sarah and Isabella worked hard in the society grind, and Lord Baudesert was less lazy in social than in official life. Sir Percy, up to the evening of the ball, had not paid a single visit, except of an official nature, but on the Tuesday afternoon following he put on a frock-coat and started out armed with his card case. In front of his own door he hesitated a moment to think whether he should call on the Chantreys or the Armytages. Ridiculous to say, Sir Percy had been haunted by the remembrance of the airy grace, the seductive eyes of this provincial coquette--for so he classified Lucy Armytage; and, calling himself a great fool, he turned his steps first towards the down-town hotel where the Armytages lived. He began to reckon what Lucy's age might be. She had a peculiar guilelessness of look and voice and manner which seldom lasts beyond a girl's twenty-first birthday; yet he judged her to be not less than twenty-five. One thing about her, he admitted, was adorable--an obvious ignorance of evil, a lovely innocence, which revealed itself readily to the experienced eyes of a man of the world. Sir Percy hated knowing women, and that recalled Alicia Vernon. He doubted if she, even as a young girl, had ever been truly innocent in mind.

The afternoon was warm and bright, though it was December, and carriages full of elaborately dressed women were dashing about the streets and standing in long lines before houses which were open on that day. Sir Percy found, when he reached the down-town hotel, that visitors were plentiful there also, and thronged the halls and staircases. He was shown up to the great public drawing-room, in which lights were already blazing, and where a bevy of Congressmen's wives and daughters were holding a joint reception. The huge room was well filled, the ladies being in the majority. Sir Percy, standing in the doorway, was searching for Lucy Armytage when a hand was laid upon his arm.

"I am delighted to see you, Sir Percy," said Colonel Armytage. "Lucy will be delighted, too. She has talked about you incessantly since she met you."

If the uncle of an English girl had confided to Sir Percy that she had talked about him incessantly since their first meeting Sir Percy would have thought it time to ask for leave to hunt big game in the Rockies. But, being a man of brains, he recognised the mental attitude of Colonel Armytage, and found himself rather pleased at the thought that this dark-eyed girl had chatted about him. Probably he was the first Englishman of his kind she had ever met. The next moment he was being introduced to Mrs. Armytage, a motherly soul, in a black velvet gown, which was the twin of Mrs. Vereker's robe of state. A little way off, Lucy, in a white gown, was talking earnestly with a group of plain, elderly persons. She turned her head and caught sight of Sir Percy, but with a little nod and a glint of a smile she continued her conversation, and even escorted the little group to the door, where she said good-bye. Then she came up to Sir Percy.

"They were constituents," she said. "They are very nice people at home, but they are not much accustomed to society, and naturally they feel a little awkward in a room full of strangers like this. If one takes them in hand, and is a little pleasant, they are eternally grateful, and will stand by Uncle Armytage through thick and thin when the nominating convention is on."

"I see you are a politician," said Sir Percy, looking down at her and trying to determine whether white or black were more becoming to her piquant and irregular beauty.

"No; I am a diplomatist, like yourself," replied Lucy, looking up with laughing, unabashed dark eyes into his face. "My uncle, you see, is not a diplomatist at all, and neither his worst enemy nor his best friend could call him a politician. I call him a statesman. He is the dearest man on earth, but he always acts on his impulses, and that, you know, is very unwise."

The gravity with which she said this made Sir Percy smile, but Lucy kept on with the air of an instructress:

"Of course, it is unwise. Imagine Lord Baudesert bolting out the truth upon every occasion! And that is just what my uncle does. My aunt thinks him the wisest person in the world, so you see I am the only one in the family who is capable of any diplomacy at all. Now, as I am twenty-five years old----"

"So old as that?" said Sir Percy, pretending surprise.

"Twenty-six next birthday," gravely responded Lucy, "and I have learned a great deal. One thing is, that constituents never forgive one if they are not shown attention in Washington. I assure you my attentions to Bardstown people in Washington got my uncle his last nomination. I took a grocer's daughter round with me sight-seeing, and I gave nine teas in one month for Bardstown girls. I didn't commit the folly of asking for invitations for them. Nobody thanks you for introducing the superfluous girl, and I can't see why one should expect other people to pay one's social debts. But I paid all my own debts, and made Uncle Armytage do a lot of things for the Bardstown men who were here, which he said he hadn't time to do. But I made him find the time. Isn't that diplomacy?"

"Diplomacy and good sense combined," answered Sir Percy.

He thought he had never seen so expressive a face as Lucy Armytage's. Every word she uttered seemed to have a corresponding expression of the eye. Her cheeks were colourless, like the leaves of a white rose, but her lips were scarlet and showed beautiful and regular teeth. A charming English girl always reminded Sir Percy of a beautiful rose in bloom, but this girl was like the star-like jessamine, which grows not in every garden, its white, mysterious flowers hiding in the depths of its green leaves and casting its delicious perfume afar. Then Lucy said, suddenly changing the subject:

"I have been in a dream all day. This morning I went for a walk far into the country, as I often do, and I took Omar with me."

"Omar?" asked Sir Percy, not quite understanding her.

"'The Rubaiyat,' I mean. Everybody reads it here. It always takes me into another world. Our life is so vivid, so full of action, so concerned with to-day, and Omar's world is all peace and dreaming. I daresay you can read Omar in the original?"

"A little; but I didn't know that Americans liked peace and dreaming."

"Wait until you see more of us. There is Senator March; I must speak to him."

She turned and went up to Senator March, who had come in and was standing talking with Mrs. Armytage. Sir Percy remained some minutes looking at the sight before him. He was reminded of those meetings of the Primrose League which bring together all manner of men and women. Meanwhile he was acutely conscious of Lucy's presence, although half the room separated them. She was indeed like the jessamine flower whose languorous sweet odour forces one to seek it.

Sir Percy found a few acquaintances, and while talking with them Senator March made his adieux and came up.

"Come," he said, "my brougham is below; let us take a turn together round the speedway."

Sir Percy liked the simple friendliness of Senator March's tone and manner, and readily accepted. As the two men passed along the corridor of the hotel another man was entering who came up and shook hands with Roger March. The new-comer carried a satin-lined overcoat on his arm and his hat in his hand. His appearance was so striking that to see him once was to remember him. He was of medium height, rather handsome, with dark hair slightly streaked with grey, a thin-lipped, well-cut mouth, and eyes of peculiar keenness--the eyes that see everything and tell nothing. A few pleasant words were exchanged and Senator March and Sir Percy passed on. Outside, a handsome brougham, with a pair of impatient horses, was waiting. The two men entered and in a little while were whirling along the level curve of the boulevard which skirts the river. The sun was sinking redly, and the water was wine-coloured, in the old Homeric phrase. The air was like champagne, with a sharpness in it brought by the breeze from the inland sea a hundred miles away.

"Did you observe," asked Senator March, "the man I spoke to coming out of the hotel? It was Nicholas Colegrove, one of those thoroughly American types that are worth observing. He is the son of a Congregationalist minister somewhere up in New England. He managed to pay his boy's way through a small college. Then Colegrove went into a railway office as clerk; by sheer force of intellect he has forced his way upward until he is the strongest man in railway circles in this country. Not that everybody knows it--oh, no! Colegrove is one of those men who avoids the shadow of power as much as he loves its substance. He keeps sedulously in the background; but there isn't a railway president in this country who would like to antagonise Nicholas Colegrove."

"One sees at a glance," replied Sir Percy, "that he is a strong man."

"A very strong man. He shows a sort of good will for me, but as I am Chairman of the Committee on Railroads I don't cultivate the intimacy of Nicholas Colegrove. I am a little afraid of the man."

"There are wonderful and diverse American types," said Sir Percy, "of men and women, who are so distinctively American that they seem to belong to this continent as much as Indian corn and the giant trees of California."

"Perhaps so, and our friends the Armytages, for example, are a very distinctive American type. Armytage himself is a sensible man, a good lawyer, and a hard worker in the House, but he is rashly outspoken and fiery tempered. His wife is a good creature, devoted and domestic, but of no particular value to Armytage in his public life, as she always approves of everything he does. The charming Miss Armytage is the real political manager of the family. She is a born diplomatist, if ever I saw one, and manages to conciliate the enemies whom Armytage makes by this hasty temper and unguarded tongue. I admire Lucy Armytage very much, and have often thought, if ever I had a daughter, I would wish her to be like her. I have known her ever since she was a schoolgirl, and often call her by her first name."

"I thought," said Sir Percy, "that American women took no share in public life?"

"Not openly, but every official position in this country, including that of the Presidency, has some time or other been determined by a woman. I know of a Presidential convention where, at midnight, a train was chartered and the party managers, making a run of one hundred and fifty miles in one hundred and sixty-seven minutes, knocked up a possible candidate at two o'clock in the morning and asked if he would consent to have his name presented to the convention. 'Wait until I talk with my wife,' was his answer. He went upstairs, remained fifteen minutes, and came down and said: 'No, gentleman; my wife has the doctor's opinion that my heart is weak, and she refuses to consent that I shall run.' It turned out afterward that the nomination would have been equivalent to an election. Oh, no! our American women, as a rule, carefully avoid any appearance of meddling with politics, but they have a great deal to do with it, nevertheless, just as the Roman ladies had in their time."

As they rolled along in the handsome, well-hung brougham, each man felt a growing regard for the other. Sir Percy, after the English manner, rarely brought a name into conversation, while Senator March, like an American, spoke names freely, and presently mentioned that he was due at Mrs. Chantrey's for a dinner call.

"Come with me," he said to Sir Percy; "the Chantreys will be glad to see you. I know that Mrs. Chantrey dearly loves a member of the diplomatic corps, and the daughter is charming--she is, in her way, as typically American as Lucy Armytage--I often call the child by her first name involuntarily."

"Miss Chantrey was kind enough to ask me to call," said Sir Percy, and after a while the two men were entering together a fine house in one of the best avenues of the town.

Sir Percy might have imagined himself in an English house. The large pink and white footman at the door was unmistakably English, and the quietness of the atmosphere and repose, which became at once obvious, were as English as the footman. In the beautiful drawing-room Eleanor Chantrey sat beside a tea-table drawn close to the fire. Mrs. Chantrey almost embraced Senator March when he mentioned the liberty he had taken in asking Sir Percy to come with him, and Sir Percy was figuratively invited to rest on Mrs. Chantrey's bosom--like the poor stricken deer.

Mrs. Chantrey had a hidden romance, a heart's dream, a secret aspiration, to be one day an ambassadress, to share Lord Baudesert's title and position. To say that Lord Baudesert's sharp old eyes had seen this, from its first budding, is putting it mildly. In fact, the wily old gentleman had, himself, planted the notion in Mrs. Chantrey's innocent, susceptible, elderly mind, and carefully cultivated it. Every season, for ten years past, Mrs. Chantrey had confidently expected to be asked to preside over the British Embassy, and every season she had been disappointed, yet not without hope. It was one of Lord Baudesert's chief delights in Washington to play upon the hopes and fears of various enormously rich widows, of whom Mrs. Chantrey was the first. And Lord Baudesert, having something like fifty years' experience as an accomplished flirt, managed to keep these ambitious ladies dancing to a very lively tune. Hence the advent of Lord Baudesert's nephew was to Mrs. Chantrey a delightful and encouraging sign, and she was ready to be an aunt to him at a moment's notice.

Only three or four persons were sitting around the tea-table, all of whom Sir Percy had before met. There were no introductions, and when Eleanor Chantrey handed Sir Percy his tea he could scarcely persuade himself that he was not in Mayfair. Eleanor Chantrey, with ten times her mother's brains, had not an atom of coquetry in her being; she was perfectly graceful, and with a sort of cool kindness which suggested sincerity. Instead of being the same to all men, she was different in her manner to each person present, according to her degree of acquaintanceship. To one infirm old gentleman, who was plainly uninteresting at his best, Sir Percy noticed that Eleanor was extremely kind and even cordial in her manner, and pressed him to remain when he made a feeble motion to go.

After a pleasant visit, Senator March and Sir Percy left at the same time; it seemed as if the two could not see too much of each other. When they parted, at Sir Percy's door, it was with the understanding that they should dine together at the club the next evening.

The clear December twilight was at hand and a new moon trembled in the heavens as Sir Percy, instead of going indoors, started for his invariable walk before dinner. He made straight towards the west and soon found himself on a wide avenue recently laid out, with young trees in boxes on each side. A quarter of a mile away from the houses it soon ran into the open fields, with clumps of trees and little valleys on either hand. Nothing quieter, more remote or deserted could be imagined, and yet Sir Percy was but fifteen minutes from his own door. Not a person was in sight, until, after a time, he saw, at some distance ahead, and rapidly approaching, the slight figure of a woman muffled in furs and walking rapidly. Something in the grace of her movements attracted Sir Percy as she came nearer. She held up her muff to her face in an attitude which reminded Sir Percy of Vigée le Brun's picture in the Louvre, "The Lady with the Muff." As the girl flashed past him in the grey twilight he recognised Lucy Armytage. A strange and almost uncontrollable desire suddenly rose within him to join her, but, with the hereditary caution of an Englishman, he turned his head the other way. The next moment Lucy faced around, and, coming up to him, cried breathlessly:

"How glad I am to meet you here! Pray walk with me as far as the car."

There was no help for it, and Sir Percy, with the feeling of delight which follows when a man is forced to do what he wishes to do, replied:

"With the utmost pleasure. Is it not rather late for you to be in so lonely a place?"

"Decidedly so. Our reception closed at five o'clock, just when other people's are beginning, and a friend asked me to drive out in this direction for a little air. She left me on a lighted street, but I wanted to feel the earth under my feet so I walked around this way. I didn't realise how late it was until a few minutes ago, and I was scurrying home half frightened to death."

As she said this, Sir Percy would have liked to open his arms wide and hold her to his breast like a timid bird, but Lucy dispelled this idea by saying:

"Afraid of my uncle, I mean. He makes such a terrible row when I am out late. I am not in the least afraid of anything else."

Her timidity had seemed charming, but her girlish courage was more charming still. Sir Percy's head was in a whirl. No woman had ever impressed him so quickly and so deeply as this black-eyed girl, and he was staggered at the intensity of his own pleasure in being with her. Meanwhile Lucy thought him the most impassive of men, and felt a curious feminine desire to disturb that cool placidity which was so like a lake covered with a thin skin of ice.

"I saw you and Senator March going into the Chantreys'," she said, as they walked rapidly along in the deepening dusk. "I admire Miss Chantrey more than any girl in Washington. At first I thought her a little cold, but her very coldness is a sort of sincerity. I should like to have a house exactly like the Chantreys', except that I would make the atmosphere a little warmer."

She rippled out a laugh, and her eyes, under their long lashes, sought Sir Percy's in the half gloom.

"I am afraid that you would find our English houses a little chilly, and they are not always redeemed by such grace as Miss Chantrey's."

"Oh, one expects a little British chilliness in an English house! You admit, you know, that your reserve is nothing but shyness after all. Now I am not in the least shy, and so I have managed to get on beautifully with the few English people I have met. My uncle, you must know, is an Anglomaniac of the deepest dye, and claims relationship with all the peerage and half the baronetage. He is the most prejudiced man! If it were not for me I don't know what would become of him."

Sir Percy was extremely diverted at the notion of a slip of a girl taking care of a member of that great body which had its origin at Runnymede in the far-off days.

The stars were coming out in the wintry sky and it was yet some little distance to the streets where the gas lamps flared. It was an enchanting walk to Sir Percy, and without a word being spoken concerning a street car, or a cab, Sir Percy and Lucy Armytage walked together along the quieter streets to the very door of the big hotel.

Lucy Armytage went upstairs to her room, the typical hotel bedroom, but which she had transformed into something resembling herself. She had been proud of the bower-like air she had given the large square room, and had regarded with confident admiration the spotless muslin curtains and the thin white draperies over her little bed. Now she looked about her with dissatisfaction. How unlike it was to Eleanor Chantrey's beautiful and artistic room! And then Eleanor had an exquisite yellow boudoir, in which Lucy once had tea with her. How much beauty and ornament and luxury was in Eleanor's life! For the first time Lucy Armytage began to wish for something which could not be furnished in Bardstown, Kentucky.

"At least," she said, rising and speaking to herself, "I know I'm provincial. It is a great thing to know the limitations of one's horizon. What a narrow, uncultivated, inartistic, uninteresting person Sir Percy Carlyon must find me after Eleanor Chantrey!"

Then she went to her constant and usually faithful consoler--her mirror. But to-night even the mirror seemed not in a flattering mood, and Lucy only saw a disconsolate girl who, to her mind, could stand no comparison with that fine flower of civilisation--Eleanor Chantrey.

At the same moment Sir Percy was smoking fiercely as he made his way back to his chambers. From the first moment his eyes rested upon Lucy Armytage she had commanded his attention. He had tried to escape from the enchanting spell she had thrown over him, but all in vain. What was the meaning of that stirring of all his pulses, that sudden joy, when he met her in the twilight? He reminded himself that he was thirty-eight years old, quite old enough to know better; that he was the First Secretary of the British Embassy and that he had firmly resolved never to allow himself to become in the least interested in an American woman. He determined to avoid Lucy Armytage in the future as a disturbing element; in short, he resolved to take up arms against his destiny.