Democracy: An American Novel by Henry Adams

Author:Henry Adams
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Widows -- Fiction, Political fiction, Socialites -- Fiction, Washington (D.C.) -- Fiction, Legislators -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2022-07-06T21:20:42+00:00

IX

Whenev­er a man reaches the top of the polit­ic­al lad­der, his en­emies unite to pull him down. His friends be­come crit­ic­al and ex­act­ing. Among the many dangers of this sort which now threatened Ratcliffe, there was one that, had he known it, might have made him more un­easy than any of those which were the work of sen­at­ors and con­gress­men. Car­ring­ton entered in­to an al­li­ance, of­fens­ive and de­fens­ive, with Sybil. It came about in this wise. Sybil was fond of rid­ing and oc­ca­sion­ally, when Car­ring­ton could spare the time, he went as her guide and pro­tect­or in these coun­try ex­cur­sions; for every Vir­gini­an, how­ever out at el­bows, has a horse, as he has shoes or a shirt. In a thought­less mo­ment Car­ring­ton had been drawn in­to a prom­ise that he would take Sybil to Ar­ling­ton. The prom­ise was one that he did not hurry to keep, for there were reas­ons which made a vis­it to Ar­ling­ton any­thing but a pleas­ure to him; but Sybil would listen to no ex­cuses, and so it came about that, one lovely March morn­ing, when the shrubs and the trees in the square be­fore the house were just be­gin­ning, un­der the warm­er sun, to show signs of their com­ing wan­ton­ness, Sybil stood at the open win­dow wait­ing for him, while her new Ken­tucky horse be­fore the door showed what he thought of the delay by curving his neck, toss­ing his head, and paw­ing the pave­ment. Car­ring­ton was late and kept her wait­ing so long, that the mignon­ette and gerani­ums, which ad­orned the win­dow, suffered for his slow­ness, and the cur­tain tas­sels showed signs of wil­ful dam­age. Nev­er­the­less he ar­rived at length, and they set out to­geth­er, choos­ing the streets least en­livened by hor­se­cars and pro­vi­sion-carts, un­til they had crept through the great met­ro­pol­is of Geor­getown and come upon the bridge which crosses the noble river just where its bold banks open out to clasp the city of Wash­ing­ton in their easy em­brace. Then reach­ing the Vir­gin­ia side they cantered gaily up the laurel-mar­gined road, with glimpses of woody de­files, each car­ry­ing its trick­ling stream and rich in prom­ise of sum­mer flowers, while from point to point they caught glor­i­ous glimpses of the dis­tant city and river. They passed the small mil­it­ary sta­tion on the heights, still dig­ni­fied by the name of fort, though Sybil si­lently wondered how a fort was pos­sible without for­ti­fic­a­tions, and com­plained that there was noth­ing more war­like than a “nurs­ery of tele­graph poles.” The day was blue and gold; everything smiled and sparkled in the crisp fresh­ness of the morn­ing. Sybil was in bound­ing spir­its and not at all pleased to find that her com­pan­ion be­came moody and ab­strac­ted as they went on. “Poor Mr. Car­ring­ton!” thought she to her­self, “he is so nice; but when he puts on that sol­emn air, one might as well go to sleep. I am quite cer­tain no nice wo­man will ever marry him if he looks like that;” and her prac­tic­al mind ran off

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