Democracy

servant brought in a card, and Mrs. Lee had barely time to read the name of Mrs. Samuel Baker when that lady followed the servant into the room, forcing the countersign in so effective style that for once Madeleine was fairly disconcerted. Her manner when thus intruded upon, was cool, but in this case, on Carrington’s account, she tried to smile courteously and asked her visitor to sit down, which Mrs. Baker was doing without an invitation, very soon putting her hostess entirely at her ease. She was, when seen without her veil, a showy woman verging on forty, decidedly large, tall, overdressed even in mourning, and with a complexion rather fresher than nature had made it. There was a geniality in her address, savouring of easy Washington ways, a fruitiness of smile, and a rich southern accent, that explained on the spot her success in the lobby. She looked about her with fine self-possession, and approved Mrs. Lee’s surroundings with a cordiality so different from the northern stinginess of praise, that Madeleine was rather pleased than offended. Yet when her eye rested on the Corot, Madeleine’s only pride, she was evidently perplexed, and resorted to eyeglasses, in order, as it seemed, to gain time for reflection. But she was not to be disconcerted even by Corot’s masterpiece:

“How pretty! Japanese, isn’t it? Seaweeds seen through a fog. I went to an auction yesterday, and do you know I bought a teapot with a picture just like that.”

Madeleine inquired with extreme interest about the auction, but after learning all that Mrs. Baker had to tell, she was on the point of being reduced to silence, when she bethought herself to mention Carrington. Mrs. Baker brightened up at once, if she could be said to brighten where there was no sign of dimness:

“Dear Mr. Carrington! Isn’t he sweet? I think he’s a delicious man. I don’t know what I should do without him. Since poor Mr. Baker left me, we have been together all the time. You know my poor husband left directions that all his papers should be burned, and though I would not say so unless you were such a friend of Mr. Carrington’s, I reckon it’s just as well for some people that he did. I never could tell you what quantities of papers Mr. Carrington and I have put in the fire; and we read them all too.”

Madeleine asked whether this was not dull work.

“Oh, dear, no! You see I know all about it, and told Mr. Carrington the story of every paper as we went on. It was quite amusing, I assure you.”

Mrs. Lee then boldly said she had got from Mr. Carrington an idea that Mrs. Baker was a very skilful diplomatist.

“Diplomatist!” echoed the widow with her genial laugh; “Well! it was as much that as anything, but there’s not many diplomatists’ wives in this city ever did as much work as I used to do. Why, I knew half the members of Congress intimately, and all of them by sight. I knew where they came from and what they liked best. I could get round the greater part of them, sooner or later.”

Mrs. Lee asked what she did with all this knowledge. Mrs. Baker shook her pink-and-white countenance, and almost paralysed her opposite neighbour by a sort of Grande Duchesse wink:

“Oh, my dear! you are new here. If you had seen Washington in war-times and for a few years afterwards, you wouldn’t ask that. We had more congressional business than all the other agents put together. Everyone came to us then, to get his bill through, or his appropriation watched. We were hard at work all the time. You see, one can’t keep the run of three hundred men without some trouble. My husband used to make lists of them in books with a history of each man and all he could learn about him, but I carried it all in my head.”

“Do you mean that you could get them all to vote as you pleased?” asked Madeleine.

“Well! we got our bills through,” replied Mrs. Baker.

“But how did you do it? did they take bribes?”

“Some of them did. Some of them liked suppers and cards and theatres and all sorts of things. Some of them could be led, and some had to be driven like Paddy’s pig who thought he was going the other way. Some of them had wives who could talk to them, and some⁠—hadn’t,” said Mrs. Baker, with a queer intonation in her abrupt ending.

“But surely,” said Mrs. Lee, “many of them must have been above⁠—I mean, they must have had nothing to get hold of, so that you could manage them.”

Mrs. Baker laughed cheerfully and remarked that they were very much of a muchness.

“But I can’t understand how you did it,” urged Madeleine; “now, how would you have gone to work to get a respectable senator’s vote⁠—a man like Mr. Ratcliffe, for instance?”

“Ratcliffe!” repeated Mrs. Baker with a slight elevation of voice that gave way to a patronising laugh. “Oh, my dear! don’t mention names. I should get into trouble. Senator Ratcliffe was a good friend of my husband’s. I guess Mr. Carrington could have told you that. But you see, what we generally wanted was all right enough. We had to know where our bills were, and jog people’s elbows to get them reported in time. Sometimes we had to convince them that our bill was a proper one, and they ought to vote for it. Only now and then, when there was a great deal of money and the vote was close, we had to find out what votes were worth. It was mostly dining and talking, calling them out into the lobby or asking them to supper. I wish I could tell you things I have seen, but I don’t dare. It wouldn’t be safe. I’ve told you already more than I ever said to anyone else; but then you are so intimate with Mr. Carrington, that I