Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 34, Number 145, 3 April 1909 — Page 6

TTr was one of those rare, enchanting days with I I which the wily climate of Washington someI I times palliates its month of February. The I I city warmed itself, deliciously, in the sun. XX The throng In P Street strolled and chattered and took Its time. And Senator Marwood, walking 4own from the Capital late in the after- - noon, felt as buoyant and as happy as a boy. During the four months which had elasped since hi marriage, the Senator bad been conscious, every now and then, of a secret surprise at this extreme and persistent joyousness. It wasn't that he had not expected to be . happy. On the contrary, he had been well, very nearly certain that he ahould be. Yet, when Senator Harwood married Alice Tyrk rell In October it was not without having frequently exhorted himself to remember that he was Just short of his fiftieth birthday, and that Alice, as she herself declared, had but a year or two longer to linger in the lap of the thirties. He did love her. There was no question about .that. But there was no question, either, that both of them had occasional panicky moments, when they rather hedged against the future by throwing out warnings in a tone of artificial gayety. "You'll find me a regular old blunderbuss," Harwood said once, with a nervous laugh. "I expect .I'll simply knock domestic etiquette into smithereens, and never know I've touched it." "Domestic etiquette!" Alice exclaimed, with an exaggerated but covertly anxious sigh. "Edward, if I have to live up to a domestic etiquette. I won't get married. You can just go down tomorrow and arrange for some banns so that I can forbid them myself." But the banns were not forbidden. In fact, there were no banns anyway; only a dear, quiet wedding. How he blessed her for the quietness of it! And how he had continued to bless her, for one thing or another, every day since then! He was thinking of her now with even more than usual satisfaction. The- indescribable feel of spring in the air stirred him to a keen delight in that other springtime which had blossomed with such unex- ) pected luxuriance in his supposably autumnal " heart. In spite of his fifty years, he was a .fine figure of a man as he strode easily along. Straight and ' tall, he had always been good to look at. Now, however, he trailed with him the side-shot glances of half the people he passed as, utterly unconscious of anyone's notice, he scanned the crowd, hoping by some lucky chance to interrupt the shopping his wife had planned for the afternoon. He had been busy in the committee room all the morning and, of course, had been obliged to be at the afternoon session, with its important discussion of Isthmian affairs. But at four o'clock, in the face of a volley of statistics, he had quietly struck his colors and fled. Spring was In the air and ove was in his heart. For the first time in his life he had the chance to meet the springtime with the woman he had chosen; and he wasn't going to let it slip now, if he could capture it. He could have laughed outright as he realized how absurdly young and happy .he felt. Younger, he told himself, than any whip'persnapper youth in all Washington. - He actually was smiling a little in spite of himself, when suddenly his glance fell on a show window near him and he gave an Involuntary start. The smile faded. And as he glued his disconcerted gaze upon the array' of flaming and flowery hearts spread out before him, he felt a sinking sensation in the region of his own. Oh! so he thought he was young, did he? He could teach whippersnapper Youth how to dream love's young dream, could he? He, to whom the fourteenth of February had meant only the date when, as he 'had informed the opposition, he intended to present an amendment to Bill number so-and-so, giving the government power to regulate At this point he drew a long breath and swore softly. What was the use? Some little girls, who had been gloating over the contents of the window, drew off with shocked giggles. But the big man paid no heed. Only muttered another exclamation and impulsively entered the shop. A luminous and lovely idea had come to him. Two minutes later a salesgirl found him hovering over a counter strewn with valentines. When the Senator admitted to her that his presence at that particular spot was not the result of accident, her tone became confidential. "Our best ones are up in front," she told him. "Well I wanted one for a a sort of an old- , fashioned little girl," he explained. . "Haven't you anything with " and his tone also dropped to a ' confidential pitch. The mention of the old-fashioned little girl seemed to have cooled the salesgirl's interest, but she pawed the valentines back and forth, tossing an. occasional one toward the Senator, who put them aside after a hasty inspection. "Is that what you want?" she finally demanded, handing over a creation whose borders of lace paper could be made to stand up like an airy framework around a deep-set center, in which reposed a gay little floral device. . Lurking beneath, anyone who knew enough to look would have found the following touching couplet: The rose is red, the violet's blue. Sugar is sweet and so are you. Senator Edward Harwood, recently appointed chairman of the special committee for the investigation of our commercial relations with the Orient, eiied with delight upon this embodiment of the -beauties of art and poetry, had it inclosed in a -v repousse envelope of an unmistakably valentine character, and placed it safely in an inner capaciouV pocket, usually sacred to the reception of Important documents of state. As he left the shop. , he fett his heart throbbing contentedly against the interloper. .-'..-,:,,,;. . For an hour or more he wandered around with- ". out catching sight of his wife; but even that disappointment could not entirely quench his spirits. In the course of his stroll another inspiration had seized him at the sight of a jeweler's window, and he had impulsively acquired a heart-shaped pin of diamonds; an article which appealed to him as a particularly neat bit of sentiment for the day he - proposed to celebrate. Altogether, he felt as jolly as a sandboy whatever that is when he reached Ills hotel. This occurred shortly before six o'clock. At which hour the well-known Senator Harwood might have been. Indeed wsi dbserved to aeek a secluded corner of the writing room and to draw from an Inner pocket . a number - of official looking documents, one of which be carefully addressed. Ah! how true it is that these great men are never free from the cares of state! Some tourists said as much to one another as they watched him. But the Senator himself hummed cheerily as he put a stamp upon the repousse envelope and fondly Inspected (with a satisfaction whose novelty had not ye.t worn off) his wife's name, written thereon In his own bold hand. Then he carried the envelope out to the nearest mail box and Well, the moment the Md had clanged irretriev- . - .ably shut, he began to have qualms. It was all very .well, he told himself, to feel only ten years old, but . 'wouldn't a graven Image itself laugh at him if he acted only ten years old! The more he thought of ' It and he thought hard and fast the more forcibly tt struck Senator Harwood, chairman of the committee for the investigation of our commercial relations with the Orient, that he was a doddering . r Aid Idiot. What the deuce would a sensible woman x v. r ke AJice think of being presented with an im

passioned lace-paper assurance that "Sugar is sweet, and so are you'? Also of being offered a diamond heart labeled in some such striking and original fashion as; "Give me your heart!" or "Hearts are trumps!" both of which sentiments he had actually taken under consideration. The Harwoods were dining out that -evening, and the Senator, on reaching their apartments, found Alice and her maid engrossed in deciding the details of her costume. As he stood watching them, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder what that maid would think if she should discover that he had sent a lace-paper valentine to his wife and that if you coyly lifted the small floral device in the center of it you would learn that the rose is red and so on to the end. When one's demeanor threatens to become frisky there is no bridle so effective as the thought of how this giddiness would strike one's servants if they knew of it. So before Senator Harwood had finished dressing for dinner he had come to his senses as he told himself enough to feel the dew of mortification on his brow when he thought of the little idyl he had planned. He calmed himself, however, with the reflection that he could abstract the valentine from the morning mail before it should reach his wife. And as for the diamond heart, he could exchange that for another design; a lizard, for instance. He remembered seeing one with emerald eyes. He didn't care for lizards himself, but at any rate they were not open to the imputation of being sentimental. In short, the Senator was a chastened, middleaged being when he handed his wife into the carriage a little later. He even entertained though, only for a moment a wavering notion of not holding her hand while he ran over in his mind the probable attempts which would be made in the course of the evening to lead him, as a public character, to commit himself to various indiscreet opinions. He often occupied the drive to social functions with this little precautionary forearming.

by the sudden perception of a touch of wist fulness . in the eyes which had grown so dear to him. That settled it. Ever since he had fallen in love with Alice he had exaggerated to himself the difference in their ages. And, locked up in a closet of his mind, had kept a particularly grisly skeleton the fear that he could not make her happy. The keenness with which he had watched for danger signals had discovered none, however, and he had begun really to taste the comfort of assurance. Now, at last, his fears seemed to find their justification; and he sat silent and constrained, summoning only an occasional monosyllable as his contribution to the conversation. Finally, on the truthful plea of a busy day before him, he went off; followed, as he was keenly conscious, by that unmistakably wistful look. The chairman of the committee for the investigation of our commercial relations with the Orient

too. in his own blamed-fool Tray and trust her to understand and just possibly like It. It was this he had said to himself, impulsively, as he stared out of the committee-room window. It was this he kept saying to himself the impulsiveness gradually subsiding into doggedness as he tramped along. And it was with a final defiant repetition of it that he overcame his hesitation at the door of a florist's shop. and. entering, demanded with an aggressiveness for which there was really no good excuse, whether they kept roses and violets. It appeared that they did. And a good thing it was, too! For the flowers seemed to share music's power to soothe the savage breast. The Senator visibly softened as he watched the arrangement of a box of violets and red roses and assured himself that his beloved, foolish, little valentine might get in, so to speak, on their pass. If Alice should seem to think the lace paper and the coy couplet ridiculous, why, he could just wave his hand with careless jocularity and pretend that he had intended all the time to be funny. And if it she should take it as he meant it, if she should see in it his avowal that love of her had touched his heart with magic, making It young and gay and tender if she should realize that, in looking beneath the absurd little floral device, she saw beneath the mask of his fifty years as well then his spring idyl would have Justified itself. "Do you wish to inclose a card?" What the Senator did wish, as he hastily felt for the repousse envelope, was that the young woman who fixed him with this demand were not quite so serious a person. But he bravely continued to grope for the valentine. Maybe he could slip it in without allowing its nature to become too evident. Um-m-m. You never can get hold of a thing when you want to. Er-r-r-r. He gave it up. Drew out the whole bunch of documents and ran them over. Over again. It wasn't there. In a flash he realized that he must have pulled

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And somehow, these past few months, he had grown so absurdly dependent on the touch of his wife's hand during the process, that whenever he went to an exclusively masculine affair he would fidget nervously all the way, for lack of that same slender hand in his. He took it now without further ado; even, with a secret impulse of defiance, kissed it before he proceeded to forget valentines and all such vagaries in planning a talk he meant to have with the Secretary of the Treasury that evening. He and Alice were due at one of the embassies after the dinner, so it was late and they both were tired when at last they reached .home. As usual, after these strenuous evenings, Alice kept her room till late the next morning, and the Senator had no difficulty in abstracting the familiar repousse envelope from the morning's post. He was surveying it with the embarrassed, morning-after smile with which we are apt to regard those little bursts of fancy which, yesterday, seemed so charming, when he heard the maid's deprecatory cough behind him and once more the sentimental missive was thrust hurriedly into the inner senatorial pocket. "Mrs. Harwood says would you please come to her room, sir, before you go away. She's awake now." He went. And at the sight of Alice in those bewildering morning laces and ribbons which made her seem so exquisite and so incredibly youthful, he half yielded to. a return of the spring madness of the day before. He did go so far as to grope tentatively in the inner pocket. But he couldn't seem to feel anything but unmistakably official envelopes; and before he could find the one he sought, or could even decide that he wanted to find it. all thought of it was driven from his mind

was famous among his colleagues for the amount of work he could put through. But his assiduity on that fourteenth of February was a surpriseamounting to a shock even to his secretary. That young man scarcely so much as drew a long breath all day. The Senator had been in and out of his committee room all afternoon, holding conferences, dictating letters, going over reports in fact, furnishing an example worthy the imitation of an industrious steam engine. About five o'clock, however, he came in without a glance at the mass of papers awaiting his attention. For fully five minutes he stood staring out of the window. And anybody who recalls the peculiarly circumscribed nature of the view from most committee-room windows will admit that the action or inaction was significant At the end of the five minutes. Senator Harwood turned with an air of decision. "You'd better finish those letters. Ransom. he said; "but that will do for today. I'm going home now. There's to be a night session and I must be back here early. See you in the morning." Doubtless the Senator meant what he said when he stated his intention of going home before the night session, but as a matter of fact he did not do so. He started all right. Walked down from the Capital, as on the day before though with what a difference! It was cold and cloudy now. People harried along, their shoulders drawn up to their ears. And Senator Harwood"-oh, weft! all day he had been dinning it into the ears of his mind that he was fifty years old. Also that years do not bring understanding of women, at least. Perhaps he did not understand them, he admitted, his eyes glowering back at the stormy sky. 3ut be :-v one of them! And he'd tell her so.

it out along with the reports he had been working on that afternoon and have left It in the committee room, to which even now it would-be imparting an unaccustomed flavor of sentiment. Ye gods! If it should be discovered! He jammed the handful of documents back into his pocket, threw a bill and his wife's address at the serious young person behind the counter, and left, with a total absence of senatorial dignity. The young person sniffed disapprovingly as she addressed the box to Mrs. Elmer Norwood Wben It was returned later, with the Gamplan comment, "No such a person." she sniffed again. Meanwhile, the Senator, as he bad expected, found the valentine shuffled in among our commercial relations with the Orient. But it was too late. The bubble of his impulse had burst again. He was wide astray, once more, from that mood of tender credulity in his own fancies. He would have torn the thing up at once and thrown it into the wastebasket, but that he stopped for a moment's grim enjoyment of the incongruity of such an end for his bit of lace-paper sentiment. And while he lingered, in came Ransom. The Senator's dictation that day had attained a volume of which he, though not his secretary, had been blissfully unconscious. At the sound of the opening door, the vicissitous valentine was hurriedly plunged into yet another period of retirement. "Oh. is that you. Ransom? I found I had to come back after all. I'll have something to eat up "here and get in a little work" Ransom gasped "before the session. What are you back here for?" "There's some dictation yet - "Nonsense! You go home. What's become of that stock engagement of your for Wednesday night. ef

"I just telephoned I couldn't come. "You did? Well, you'll have to continue to waste your voice in riotous telephoning. Ransom. Go out and take it all back. Isn't this what d'ye call it? Valentine's Day? A nice time to pick out for disappointing some one that's counting on you!" As he and the relieved Ransom went out together, the phrase turned upon him. "Some one that's counting on you!" And as he called up his number on the telephone, he told himself that if Alice seemed to care But the maid's voice responded to his "Hello." "Mrs. Harwood hasn't come in yet. sir. , , . I'm to say that you'll not be in to dinner. . . . Not till after the night session. ... Yes. as soon as she comes in. sir." It was one more jar to his feelings. A worse one. though, was that which came later at the hands of a fellow-senator, as the two men smoked and talked in the cafe. Pointing to the receipt stamp on a letter they had been discussing. Harwood suddenly demanded, in a tone of airy persiflage: "How many years. Totten. since you sent a valentine?" "A what?" "A a valentine." "Caesar's ghost! I give It up. The memory of man doesn't go back that far." "How about the memory of woman? "Humph!" with an unpleasant curl of the Totten lips. "It takes a woman to shed that sort of sentiment early in the game. Valentines! If you want to give a woman a valentine that'll please her -you'll give her one of the kind your Uncle Sam gets out. He tapped his pocket book significantly. "Every day's Valentine Day for that kind." Perhaps the laugh with which Harwood received this theory was a trifle forced, but he attempted no other reply. He even began secretly to summon a troop of sophistries to prove that the theory was not so unpleasant as it sounded. Who could seriously contend, for instance, that It was reprehensible In a woman to prefer say a beautiful ring, selected by herself to please her own taste, than some blithering idiocy In lace paper and doggerel! He really did Mush for himself, instead of for the sordid ness imputed to women by undiscriminatlng Tbttens. And before he left the cafe he got some clean, crisp bills from the cashier and inclosed them in an envelope, which he put into his pocket. . The session an executive one wrangled on for hours. Until, when eleven o'clock csme and. with it. the knowledge that a vote could not be reached that night, at least one senator quietly made his escape. During a lull In the wrangling, the litilc god himself had seized upon Harwood's thoughts and set them face to face with the fact that for the first time since his marriage he had not eaten a meal with his wife, and had scarcely seen or Bpoken with her for twenty-four hours; and that, after all. it was the day of lovers and he was one. A vote itself, would have had hard work to hold him after that. It was almost midnight when, as quietly as pos . sibie. he let himself into their apartment. The lights were burning and. for a moment, the Senator listened anxiously. But he seemed to have been unheard and, tiptoeing to the hall rack, he tried to get rid of his overcoat. In spite of himself a slight groan escaped him. Instantly came his wife's voice from her room: "Is that you. Edward?" "Yes." carefully controlling' his voice. 'I'll be in directly." But before he could attack the overcoat problem from another point she was in the hall. He cursed his lack of resource as he found that he hadn't even wit enough to blush himself out of the pallor of which he waa conscious. He did not wait for questions, but plunged Into carefully careless explanations. "Can you help me off with my overcoat. Alice? I just had a little tussle with a man who seemed bent on twisting my hand around till it pointed nor'-nor-east while the rest of me was headed sou'sou'west. It doesn't amount to anything except when I try to imitate his tactics and twist my wrist ugh! There that's all right. Thank you. With his left hand he hung up the coat. Then, as he turned to his wife, he glanced consciously down at the very rumpled front he presented. "Don't look so distressed, dear. I'm all right but for that sprained wrist and a sort of cupola , on my head. I think the fellow wore brass knuckles. Or else he was a hard shell of soma variety." , The Senator gingerly felt of a large lump on his head. - "He must hsve seen me stow a little money Into my pocket, for when he lit on, me from the back and played corkscrew with my arm, he dived straight for that pocket. The Senator illustrated and. as a result; drew forth an envelope at which he gased In unconcealed surprise. Then he gave a hoarse chuckle. "Oh. Lord!" he muttered. "He's got your valentine!" "My valentine! There was a vibrating note la the cry. "Yes. He's gone and highway-robbed me of a ' darned fool filagree paper thing that I've been lugging around for two days, sticking it into mail boxes and yanking It back again, trying to sneak it into your box of flowers " "I didn't get any flowers. "Well. I sent some. And It was no credit to mo that I didn't send the valentine, too." "Edward! Really and truly, did yon get me a valentine?" She hung on his words. J"t as I tell you." he declared, with the air of throwing prudence to the winds; "I got the most infantile thing In the valentine lino that ever was made! And the most sentimental! And I never wanted anything in my life quite so hard as I wanted to send it to you." Of course he waa a much rumpled senator, anyway. Otherwise the way she fairly burrowed Into his embrace would have been most reckless. "Wasn't It silly of me? she confessed tremulously. "But I've been wretched all day, because I thought you didn't even know it was Valentine's Day." "Didn't know It! Why. I've simply wallowed in valentines. I got a diamond heart for you it's In my desk and Ldld send you flowers, and I was going to give you this, too." handing over the envelope which the robber had failed to secure. She glanced at the crisp bills inside. "Oh, thank you! It's awfully dear of you. Yon don't mind, though, do you, if I want the little valentine more than anything else? 1 suppose ft'a just like me to be so contrary." His face lighted up with pleasure and with a sudden determination; a determination which bore fruit In this advertisement the following day: "Valentine: Fifty dollars reward (no questions asked) for the return of the paper which waa taken Wednesday night from a man crossing the Capitol grounds. The address Is on the envelope." - , i - . , .. Within three days of grace, which evea the aril law allows for the discharge of an obligation, tho vanishing valentine waa at last delivered into the . . slender hands of Mrs. Senator Harwood. who . ; eyes grew very soft as she lifted the absurd little floral device and beheld: . The rose is red. the violet's blue. Sugar M sweet, and so are you. '