to relapse into old habits. Therefore he must succeed and succeed at once. She would have preferred a less ornamental position than the ambassadorship, but there were no other openings. The Alabama senators were firmly seated for at least four years and the Governorship had been carefully arranged for. A term of four years abroad, however, might bring Harry Cresswell back in time for greater advancement. At any rate, it was the only tangible offering, and Mary Cresswell silently determined to work for it.
Here it was that she made her mistake. It was one thing for her to be a tactful hostess, pleasing her husband and his guests; it was another for her to aim openly at social leadership and political influence.
She had at first all the insignia of success. Her dinners became of real political significance and her husband figured more and more as a leading Southerner.
The result was twofold. Cresswell, on the one hand, with his usual selfishness, took his rising popularity as a matter of course and as the fruits of his own work; he was rising, he was making valuable speeches, he was becoming a social power, and his only handicap was his plain and overambitious wife.
But on the other hand Mrs. ¬ÝCresswell forgot two pitfalls:
- the cleft between the old Southern aristocracy and the pushing new Southerners;
- and above all, her own Northern birth and presumably pro-Negro sympathies.
What Mrs. ¬ÝCresswell forgot Mrs. ¬ÝVanderpool sensed unerringly. She had heard with uneasiness of Cresswell‚Äôs renewed candidacy for the Paris ambassadorship, and she set herself to block it.