With the assembling of Congress, in the first week of December, the usual crowd of officials, pleasure-seekers, fortune hunters, adventurers and adventuresses poured into Washington. Hotels, boarding houses and private dwellings were full.
The serious business of fashion and the light recreation of legislation began.
Mr. Force went down to the capitol every day to listen to the disputes in the House or in the Senate.
Mrs. Force and Odalite drove out to call on such of their friends and acquaintances as had arrived in the city, and to leave cards for the elder lady’s “day”—the Wednesday of each week during the season.
Letters came from Le. His ship was still delayed for an indefinite time at Rio de Janeiro, waiting sailing orders, which seemed to be slow in coming.
Le’s letters betrayed the fact that he was fretting and fuming over the delay.
“Don’t know what the navy department means,” he wrote, “keeping us here for no conceivable purpose under the sun. But I know what I mean. I mean to resign as soon as ever I get home.
“If there should come a war I will serve my country, of course; but in these ‘piping times of peace’ I will not stay in the service to be anybody’s nigger, even Uncle Sam’s!”
Odalite, Wynnette and Elva cheered him up with frequent letters.
Christmas is rather a quiet interlude in the gay life of Washington.
Congress adjourns until after New Year.
Most of the government officials—members of the administration and of both houses of Congress, and many of the civil service brigade, leave the city to spend their holidays in their distant homesteads.
In fact, there is an exodus until after New Year.
The gay season in Washington does not really begin until after the first of January.
The public receptions by the President and by the members of the cabinet take the initiative.
Then follow receptions by members of the diplomatic corps, by prominent senators and representatives, and by wealthy or distinguished private citizens.
Mr., Mrs. and Miss Force went everywhere, and received everybody—within the limits of their social circle.
Odalite, for the first time in her short life, enjoyed society with a real youthful zest.
There was no drawback now. Her mother’s deadly enemy had passed to his account, and could trouble her no more, she thought. Le was coming home, and they were to be married soon, and go to Europe and see all the beauties and splendors and glories of the Old World, which she so longed to view. They were to sojourn in the old, ancestral English home which had been the scene of her mother’s childhood—ah! and the scene of so many exploits of her ancestors—sieges, defenses, captures, recoveries, confiscations by this ruler, restorations by that—events which had passed into history and helped to make it. She would see London—wonderful, mighty London!—St. Paul’s, the Tower. Oh! and Paris, and the old Louvre!—Rome! St. Peter’s! the Coliseum! the Catacombs!—places which the facilities of modern travel have made as common as a market house to most of the educated world, but which, to this imaginative, country girl, were holy ground, sacred monuments, wonderful, most wonderful relics of a long since dead and gone world.
And Le would be her companion in all these profound enjoyments! And, after all, they should return home and settle down at Greenbushes, never to part again, but to be near neighbors to father, mother, sisters and friends; to give and receive all manner of neighborly kindnesses, courtesies, hospitalities.
Odalite’s heart was as full of happy thoughts as is a hive of honey bees. Her happiness beamed from her face, shining on all who approached her.
If Odalite had been admired during the two past seasons when she was pale, quiet and depressed, how much more was she admired now in her fair, blooming beauty, that seemed to bring sunshine, life and light into every room she entered.
Mrs. Force felt all a mother’s pride in the social success of her daughter.
But to Odalite herself the proudest and happiest day of the whole season was that on which she received a letter from Le, announcing his immediate return home.
“This letter,” he wrote, “will go by the steamer that leaves this port on the thirteenth of January. We have our sailing orders for the first of February. On that day we leave this blessed port homeward bound. Winds and waves propitious, we shall arrive early in March, and then—and then, Odalite——”
And then the faithful lover and prospective bridegroom went off into the extravagances that were to be expected, even of him.
Odalite received this letter on the first of February, and knew that on that day Le had sailed, homeward bound.
“He will be here some time in the first week of March,” said Mrs. Force, in talking over the letter with her daughter. “Congress will have adjourned by the fourth. All strangers will have left. The city will be quiet. It will be in the midst of Lent also. I think, Odalite, that, under all the circumstances, we had better have a very private wedding, here in our city home, with none but our family and most intimate friends present. Then you and Le will sail for Europe, make the grand tour, and after that shall be finished, go to my brother at Enderby Castle, where we—your father, and sisters, and myself—will join you in the autumn. What do you think?”
“I think as you do, mamma, and would much prefer the marriage to be as quiet as possible,” Odalite assented.
“After you and Le leave us we shall still remain in the city until the girls shall have graduated. Then we will go down to the dear old home for a few weeks, and then sail for Liverpool, to join you at Enderby Castle.”
“That is an enchanting program, mamma! Oh! I hope we may be able to carry it through!” exclaimed Odalite.
“There is no reason in the world why we should not, my dear,” replied the lady.
Odalite sighed, with a presentiment of evil which she could neither comprehend nor banish.
“And now,” said her mother, “I must sit down and write to Mrs. Anglesea and to Mr. Copp. The house at Mondreer will need to be prepared for us. It wanted repairs badly enough when we left it. It must be in a worse condition now; so I must write at once to give them time enough to have the work done well.”
And she retired to her own room to go about her task.
When Wynnette, Elva and Rosemary came home in the afternoon, and heard that Le had sailed from Rio de Janeiro, and would certainly be home early in March, they were wild with delight.
When, upon much cross-examination of Odalite, they found out that the marriage of the young lovers was to be quietly performed in the parlor of their father’s house, and that the newly married pair would immediately sail for Europe in advance of the family, who were to join them at Enderby Castle later on, their ecstasies took forms strongly suggestive of Darwin’s theory concerning the origin of the species. In other words, they danced and capered all over the drawing room.
“We want Rosemary to go with us, papa, dear,” said Elva.
“We must have Rosemary to go with us, you know, mamma,” added Wynnette.
“That is not for us to say,” replied Mr. Force.
“It is a question for her mother and her aunt,” added Mrs. Force.
But the little girls did not yield the point. Rosemary’s three years’ association with them had made her as dear to Wynnette and Elva as a little sister. And when they found out that Rosemary was heartbroken at the prospect of parting from them, and “wild” to accompany them, they stuck to their point with the pertinacity of little terriers.
Now what could Abel Force—the kindest-hearted man on the face of the earth, perhaps—do but yield to the children’s innocent desire?
He wrote to Mrs. Hedge and to Miss Grandiere, proposing to those ladies to take Rosemary with his daughters to Europe, to give her the educational advantage of the tour.
In due time came the answer of the sisters, full of surprise and gratitude for the generous offer, which they accepted in the simple spirit in which it was made.
And when Wynnette, Elva and Rosemary were informed of the decision there were not three happier girls in the whole world than themselves.
The same mail brought a letter from the housekeeper at Mondreer, who was ever a very punctual correspondent.
She informed Mrs. Force that such internal improvements as might be made in bad weather were already progressing at Mondreer—that all the bedsteads were down, and all the carpets up, the floors had been scrubbed, and the windows and painting washed, and the kalsominers were at work.
But she wanted to know immediately, if Mrs. Force pleased, what that news was that she was saving for a personal interview. If it concerned her own “beat,” she would like to know it at once.
“Why, I thought you had told her, mamma,” said Odalite, when she had read this letter.
“No, my dear. I did not wish to excite any new talk of Angus Anglesea until you and Le should be married and off to Europe. I shrink from the subject, Odalite. I am sorry now that I hinted to the woman having anything to tell her.”
“But, mamma, ought she not be told that he is dead?”
“He has been dead to her since he left her. In good time she shall know that he is dead to us also. And, my dear, remember that he was not her husband, after all, but——”
“Oh! don’t finish the sentence, mamma! What will Le say?” sighed Odalite.
“Nothing. This will make no difference to you or to Le. That ceremony performed at All Faith, three years ago, whether legal or illegal, was certainly incomplete—the marriage rites arrested before the registry was made. You have never seen or spoken to the would-be bridegroom since that hour; and now the man is dead, and you are free, even if you were ever bound. Let us hear no more on that subject, my dear. Now I shall have to answer this letter, and—as I have been so unlucky as to have raised the woman’s suspicions and set her to talking—I must tell her the facts, I suppose. And—as for her sake as well as for our own, I choose to consider her the widow of Angus Anglesea—I shall send with the letter a widow’s outfit,” concluded the lady, as she left the room.
The whole remainder of that day was spent by Mrs. Force in driving along Pennsylvania Avenue and up Seventh Street, selecting from the best stores an appropriate outfit in mourning goods for the colonel’s widow.
These were all sent home in the evening, carefully packed in a large deal box, which, with a letter at its bottom, was dispatched by express to Mrs. Angus Anglesea, Charlotte Hall, Maryland.