So that in a few moments the black, curly head of the little artist and the white, flowing locks of the Senator were close together bending over the rack that contained the engravings. It was then that Carmen, listening to a graphic description of the early rise of Art in the Netherlands, forgot herself and put her shawl around her head, holding its folds in her little brown hand. In this situation they were, at different times during the next two hours, interrupted by five Congressmen, three Senators, a Cabinet officer, and a Judge of the Supreme Bench,--each of whom was quickly but courteously dismissed. Popular sentiment, however, broke out in the hall.
"Well, I'm blanked, but this gets me." (The speaker was a Territorial delegate.)
"At his time o' life, too, lookin' over pictures with a gal young enough to be his grandchild." (This from a venerable official, since suspected of various erotic irregularities.)
"She don't handsome any." (The honorable member from Dakota.)
"This accounts for his protracted silence during the sessions." (A serious colleague from the Senator's own State.)
"Oh, blank it all!" (Omnes.)
Four went home to tell their wives. There are few things more touching in the matrimonial compact than the superb frankness with which each confides to each the various irregularities of their friends. It is upon these sacred confidences that the firm foundations of marriage rest unshaken.
Of course the objects of this comment, at least ONE of them, were quite oblivious. "I trust," said Carmen, timidly, when they had for the fourth time regarded in rapt admiration an abominable something by some Dutch wood-chopper, "I trust I am not keeping you from your great friends:"--her pretty eyelids were cast down in tremulous distress:--"I should never forgive myself. Perhaps it is important business of the State?"
"Oh, dear, no!" THEY will come again,--it's THEIR business."
The Senator meant it kindly. It was as near the perilous edge of a compliment as your average cultivated Boston man ever ventures, and Carmen picked it up, femininely, by its sentimental end. "And I suppose I shall not trouble you again?"
"I shall always be proud to place the portfolio at your disposal.
Command me at any time," said the Senator, with dignity.
"You are kind. You are good," said Carmen, "and I--I'm but,--look you,--only a poor girl from California, that you know not."
"Pardon me, I know your country well." And indeed he could have told her the exact number of bushels of wheat to the acre in her own county of Monterey, its voting population, its political bias.
Yet of the more important product before him, after the manner of book-read men, he knew nothing.
Carmen was astonished, but respectful. It transpired presently that she was not aware of the rapid growth of the silk worm in her own district, knew nothing of the Chinese question, and very little of the American mining laws. Upon these questions the Senator enlightened her fully. "Your name is historic, by the way," he said pleasantly. "There was a Knight of Alcantara, a "De Haro," one of the emigrants with Las Casas."
Carmen nodded her head quickly, "Yes; my great-great-great-g-r-e-a-t grandfather!"
The Senator stared.
"Oh, yes. I am the niece of Victor Castro, who married my father's sister."
"The Victor Castro of the 'Blue Mass' mine?" asked the Senator abruptly.
"Yes," she said quietly.
Had the Senator been of the Gashwiler type, he would have expressed himself, after the average masculine fashion, by a long-drawn whistle. But his only perceptible appreciation of a sudden astonishment and suspicion in his mind was a lowering of the social thermometer of the room so decided that poor Carmen looked up innocently, chilled, and drew her shawl closer around her shoulders.
"I have something more to ask," said Carmen, hanging her head,--"it is a great, oh, a very great favor."
The Senator had retreated behind his bastion of books again, and was visibly preparing for an assault. He saw it all now. He had been, in some vague way, deluded. He had given confidential audience to the niece of one of the Great Claimants before Congress. The inevitable axe had come to the grindstone. What might not this woman dare ask of him? He was the more implacable that he felt he had already been prepossessed--and honestly prepossessed--in her favor. He was angry with her for having pleased him. Under the icy polish of his manner there were certain Puritan callosities caused by early straight-lacing. He was not yet quite free from his ancestor's cheerful ethics that Nature, as represented by an Impulse, was as much to be restrained as Order represented by a Quaker.
