She narrowed her eyelids.
“Yes, sometimes I do; once I was; but it’s
a luxury few of us Negroes can afford. Then,
too, I insist that it’s jolly to fool them.”
“Don’t you hate the deception?”
She chuckled and put her head to one side.
“At first I did; but, do you know, now I believe
I prefer it.”
He looked so horrified that she burst out laughing.
He laughed too. She was a puzzle to him.
He kept thinking what a mistress of a mansion she
would make.
“Why do you say these things?” he asked
suddenly.
“Because I want you to do well here in Washington.”
“General philanthropy?”
“No, special.” Her eyes were bright
with meaning.
“Then you care—for me?”
“Yes.”
He bent forward and cast the die.
“Enough to marry me?”
She answered very calmly and certainly:
“Yes.”
He leaned toward her. And then between him and
her lips a dark and shadowy face; two great storm-swept
eyes looked into his out of a world of infinite pain,
and he dropped his head in hesitation and shame, and
kissed her hand. Miss Wynn thought him delightfully
bashful.
Twenty-six
The election of Harry Cresswell to Congress was a
very simple matter. The Colonel and his son drove
to town and consulted the Judge; together they summoned
the sheriff and the local member of the State legislature.
“I think it’s about time that we Cresswells
asked for a little of the political pie,” the
Colonel smilingly opened.
“Well, what do you want?” asked the Judge.
“Harry wants to go to Congress.”
The Judge hesitated. “We’d half promised
that to Caldwell,” he objected.
“It will be a little costly this year, too,”
suggested the sheriff, tentatively.
“About how much?” asked the Colonel.
“At least five thousand,” said the Legislator.
The Colonel said nothing. He simply wrote a check
and the matter was settled. In the Fall Harry
Cresswell was declared elected. There were four
hundred and seventy-two votes cast but the sheriff
added a cipher. He said it would look better.
Early December found the Cresswells domiciled in a
small house in Du Pont Circle, Washington. They
had an automobile and four servants, and the house
was furnished luxuriously. Mary Taylor Cresswell,
standing in her morning room and looking out on the
flowers of the square, told herself that few people
in the world had cause to be as happy as she.
She was tastefully gowned, in a way to set off her
blonde beauty and her delicate rounded figure.
She was surrounded with wealth, and above all, she
was in that atmosphere of aristocracy for which she
had always yearned; and already she was acquiring
that poise of the head, and a manner of directing
the servants, which showed her born to the purple.
