“The Baron has amused me very much with his account of Bucharest society,” Mrs. Lee would say: “I had no idea it was so gay.”
“I would like to show him our society in Peonia,” was Ratcliffe’s reply; “he would find a very brilliant circle there of nature’s true noblemen.”
“The Baron says their politicians are precious sharp chaps,” added Mr. French.
“Oh, there are politicians in Bulgaria, are there?” asked the Senator, whose ideas of the Romanian and Bulgarian neighbourhood were vague, and who had a general notion that all such people lived in tents, wore sheepskins with the wool inside, and ate curds: “Oh, they have politicians there! I would like to see them try their sharpness in the west.”
“Really!” said Mrs. Lee. “Think of Attila and his hordes running an Indiana caucus?”
“Anyhow,” cried French with a loud laugh, “the Baron said that a set of bigger political scoundrels than his friends couldn’t be found in all Illinois.”
“Did he say that?” exclaimed Ratcliffe angrily.
“Didn’t he, Mrs. Lee? but I don’t believe it; do you? What’s your candid opinion, Ratcliffe? What you don’t know about Illinois politics isn’t worth knowing; do you really think those Bulgrascals couldn’t run an Illinois state convention?”
Ratcliffe did not like to be chaffed, especially on this subject, but he could not resent French’s liberty which was only a moderate return for the wooden nutmeg. To get the conversation away from Europe, from literature, from art, was his great object, and chaff was a way of escape.
Carrington was very well aware that the weak side of the Senator lay in his blind ignorance of morals. He flattered himself that Mrs. Lee must see this and be shocked by it sooner or later, so that nothing more was necessary than to let Ratcliffe expose himself. Without talking very much, Carrington always aimed at drawing him out. He soon found, however, that Ratcliffe understood such tactics perfectly, and instead of injuring, he rather improved his position. At times the man’s audacity was startling, and even when Carrington thought him hopelessly entangled, he would sweep away all the hunter’s nets with a sheer effort of strength, and walk off bolder and more dangerous than ever.
When Mrs. Lee pressed him too closely, he frankly admitted her charges. “What you say is in great part true. There is much in politics that disgusts and disheartens; much that is coarse and bad. I grant you there is dishonesty and corruption. We must try to make the amount as small as possible.”
“You should be able to tell Mrs. Lee how she must go to work,” said Carrington; “you have had experience. I have heard, it seems to me, that you were once driven to very hard measures against corruption.”
Ratcliffe looked ill-pleased at this compliment, and gave Carrington one of his cold glances that meant mischief. But he took up the challenge on the spot:—
“Yes, I was, and am very sorry for it. The story is this, Mrs. Lee; and it is well-known to every man, woman, and child in the State of Illinois, so that I have no reason for softening it. In the worst days of the war there was almost a certainty that my State would be carried by the peace party, by fraud, as we thought, although, fraud or not, we were bound to save it. Had Illinois been lost then, we should certainly have lost the Presidential election, and with it probably the Union. At any rate, I believed the fate of the war to depend on the result. I was then Governor, and upon me the responsibility rested. We had entire control of the northern counties and of their returns. We ordered the returning officers in a certain number of counties to make no returns until they heard from us, and when we had received the votes of all the southern counties and learned the precise number of votes we needed to give us a majority, we telegraphed to our northern returning officers to make the vote of their districts such and such, thereby overbalancing the adverse returns and giving the State to us. This was done, and as I am now senator I have a right to suppose that what I did was approved. I am not proud of the transaction, but I would do it again, and worse than that, if I thought it would save this country from disunion. But of course I did not expect Mr. Carrington to approve it. I believe he was then carrying out his reform principles by bearing arms against the government.”
“Yes!” said Carrington drily; “you got the better of me, too. Like the old Scotchman, you didn’t care who made the people’s wars provided you made its ballots.”
Carrington had missed his point. The man who has committed a murder for his country, is a patriot and not an assassin, even when he receives a seat in the Senate as his share of the plunder. Women cannot be expected to go behind the motives of that patriot who saves his country and his election in times of revolution.
Carrington’s hostility to Ratcliffe was, however, mild, when compared with that felt by old Baron Jacobi. Why the baron should have taken so violent a prejudice it is not easy to explain, but a diplomatist and a senator are natural enemies, and Jacobi, as an avowed admirer of Mrs. Lee, found Ratcliffe in his way. This prejudiced and immoral old diplomatist despised and loathed an American senator as the type which, to his bleared European eyes, combined the utmost pragmatical self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and the meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable government. As Baron Jacobi’s country had no special relations with that of the United States, and its Legation at Washington was a mere job to create a place for Jacobi to fill, he had no occasion to disguise his personal antipathies, and he considered himself in some degree
