“Mrs. Vanderpool, I need your aid.”
Mrs. Vanderpool smiled politely, and murmured something.
“We are, you know, in the midst of a rather warm presidential campaign,” continued Mr. Easterly.
“Yes?” with polite interest.
“We are going to win easily, but our majority in Congress for certain matters will depend on the attitude of Southerners and you usually spend the winters in Washington. If, now, you could drop a word here and there—”
“But why should I?” asked Mrs. Vanderpool.
“Mrs. Vanderpool, to be frank, I know some excellent investments that your influence in this line would help. I take it you’re not so rich but that—”
Mrs. Vanderpool smiled faintly.
“Really, Mr. Easterly, I know little about such matters and care less. I have food and clothes. Why worry with more?”
Mr. Easterly half expected this and he determined to deliver his last shot on the run. He arose with a disappointed air.
“Of course, Mrs. Vanderpool, I see how it is: you have plenty and one can’t expect your services or influence for nothing. It had occurred to me that your husband might like something political; but I presume not.”
“Something political?”
“Yes. You see, it’s barely possible, for instance, that there will be a change in the French ambassadorship. The present ambassador is old and—well, I don’t know, but as I say, it’s possible. Of course though, that may not appeal to you, and I can only beg your good offices in charity if—if you see your way to help us. Well, I must be going.”
“What is—I thought the President appointed ambassadors.”
“To be sure, but we appoint Presidents,” laughed Mr. Easterly. “Good day. I shall hope to see you in Washington.”
“Good day,” Mrs. Vanderpool returned absently.
After he had gone she walked slowly to Zora’s room and opened the door. For a long time she stood quietly looking in. Zora was curled in a chair with a book. She was in dreamland; in a world of books builded thoughtfully for her by Mrs. Vanderpool, and before that by Miss Smith. Her work took but little of her time and left hours for reading and thinking. In that thought-life, more and more her real living centred.
Hour after hour, day after day, she lay buried, deaf and dumb to all else. Her heart cried, up on the World’s four corners of the Way, and to it came the Vision Splendid. She gossiped with old Herodotus across the earth to the black and blameless Ethiopians; she saw the sculptured glories of Phidias marbled amid the splendor of the swamp; she listened to Demosthenes and walked the Appian Way with Cornelia—while all New York streamed beneath her window.
She saw the drunken Goths reel upon Rome and heard the careless Negroes yodle as they galloped to Toomsville. Paris, she knew—wonderful, haunting Paris: the Paris of Clovis, and St. Louis; of Louis the Great, and Napoleon III; of Balzac, and her own Dumas. She tasted the mud and comfort of thick old London, and the while wept with Jeremiah and sang with Deborah, Semiramis, and Atala. Mary of Scotland and Joan of Arc held her dark hands in theirs, and Kings lifted up their sceptres.
She walked on worlds, and worlds of worlds, and heard there in her little room the tread of armies, the paeans of victory, the breaking of hearts, and the music of the spheres.
Mrs. Vanderpool watched her a while.
“Zora,” she presently broke into the girl’s absorption, “how would you like to be Ambassador to France?”
XXIV
The Education of Alwyn
Miss Caroline Wynn of Washington had little faith in the world and its people. Nor was this wholly her fault. The world had dealt cruelly with the young dreams and youthful ambitions of the girl; partly with its usual heartlessness, partly with that cynical and deadening reserve fund which it has today for its darker peoples. The girl had bitterly resented her experiences at first: she was brilliant and well-trained; she had a real talent for sculpture, and had studied considerably; she was sprung from at least three generations of respectable mulattoes, who had left a little competence which yielded her three or four hundred dollars a year. Furthermore, while not precisely pretty, she was good-looking and interesting, and she had acquired the marks and insignia of good breeding. Perhaps she wore her manners just a trifle consciously; perhaps she was a little morbid that she would fail of recognition as a lady. Nor was this unnatural: her brown skin invited a different assumption. Despite this almost unconscious mental aggressiveness, she was unusually presentable and always well-groomed and pleasant of speech. Yet she found nearly all careers closed to her. At first it seemed accidental, the luck of life. Then she attributed it to her sex; but at last she was sure that, beyond chance and womanhood, it was the color-line that was hemming her in. Once convinced of this, she let her imagination play and saw the line even where it did not exist.
With her bit of property and brilliant parts she had had many suitors but they had been refused one after another for reasons she could hardly have explained. For years now Tom Teerswell had been her escort. Whether or not Caroline Wynn would ever marry him was a perennial subject of speculation among their friends and it usually ended in the verdict that she could not afford it—that it was financially impossible.
Nevertheless, the two were usually seen in public together, and although she often showed her quiet mastery of the situation, seldom had she snubbed him so openly as at the Treble Clef concert.
Teerswell was furious and began to plot vengeance; but Miss Wynn was attracted by the personality of Bles Alwyn. Southern country Negroes were rare in her set, but here was a man of intelligence and keenness coupled with an amazing frankness and modesty,
