Despotism and Democracy: A Study in Washington Society and Politics — Story, Setting & Ideas

to an extraordinary degree. She was no Perdita--no one would have taken her for a princess stolen in infancy. But not Ruth in the harvest-field was more natural, more sweetly graceful than this lady from Circleville, somewhere in the Middle West.

“Annette admired you tremendously,” continued Crane, in the easy tone of a man who knows his wife is desperately in love with him, and thinks her fully justified. “She said it was kind of you to call. Like me, she thought we were going to do wonderful things--I believe she used to pray that our hearts might not be hardened by our social triumphs. Well, you know all about it. We were asked to the President’s receptions, and my wife called on the Cabinet officers’ families, and at the houses of the Senators and the Representatives from our own State. We were asked to dinner at our junior Senator’s house. I thought it would be grand. It was, in a way--the old man is pretty well heeled--but it was exactly like one of those banquets a Chamber of Commerce gives to a distinguished citizen. Annette was the prettiest woman there, but she didn’t wear a low-necked gown like the other women, and that embarrassed her. In the end she found out more things than I did. She said to me before the season was over:

“‘Julian, it’s not being rich that makes people in Washington. If it were, we shouldn’t mind not being in it. But there are plenty of people, like the Senator, who have the money and the wish to make a stir socially--but they can’t, while a plenty of poor ones do. Look at Mr. Thorndyke’--she hit upon you the first man--‘he’s asked everywhere, and he says he is as poor as a church-mouse. No, Julian, to be as you would wish to be here, needs not only the money we haven’t got, but something else we haven’t got and can’t acquire, so let’s give it up. Another winter I’ll stay in Circleville--it will be better for the children, better for me, better for you’--for I own up to having been deuced surly all that winter. So we adopted that plan, and Annette has never been to Washington since. But--I’ll confess this, too--I had from the beginning a fancy to see the inside of those houses where the people live who make up this world of Washington. It wasn’t merely idle curiosity. I was convinced, and I am so still, that the number and variety of people in Washington must make these Washington parlours--drawing-rooms, you call them--the most interesting of their kind in the world. Well--I’ve got into some of them. It’s a good deal easier for a man without his wife than a man with her; and Thorndyke, I own up, I am bewitched. Oh, it’s not so much to you; you’ve known it too long, and seen too much of it all over the world to know how it strikes a man born and brought up until he is thirty-five years old in Circleville. I swear when I get a dinner invitation I am like the girls out our way, who will drive twenty miles in a sleigh to go to a dance. The mere look of the table--the glass, the silver, the flowers--goes to my head. The terrapin intoxicates me. Those quick, soft-moving servants fascinate me. And the conversation! They let me talk all I want.”

“You are a vastly entertaining fellow in your own mental bailiwick,” interjected Thorndyke.

“And the women! So unaffected--so unconscious of their clothes! And such listeners! I have never been to a stupid dinner in Washington. And the club--I never knew a man of leisure in my life until I came to Washington. I daresay you think me a fool.” Crane paused, with a feeling rare to him that he could not express half what was in him, but Thorndyke’s knowledge supplied the rest.

“No, I don’t. It is quite as you say, but you are taking it all too seriously.”

“Circleville,” murmured Crane.