Even the few personal friends in his company were manipulated
with the utmost care, and their weaknesses put to use before they
had been in Washington a single day.
Not that Ratcliffe had anything to do with all this underhand and
grovelling intrigue. Mr. Ratcliffe was a man of dignity and
self-respect, who left details to his subordinates. He waited calmly
until the President, recovered from the fatigues of his journey,
should begin to feel the effect of a Washington atmosphere. Then
on Wednesday morning, Mr. Ratcliffe left his rooms an hour
earlier than usual on his way to the Senate, and called at the
President's Hotel: he was ushered into a large apartment in which
the new Chief Magistrate was holding court, although at sight of
Ratcliffe, the other visitors edged away or took their hats and left
the room. The President proved to be a hard-featured man of sixty,
with a hooked nose and thin, straight, iron-gray hair. His voice was
rougher than his features and he received Ratcliffe awkwardly. He
had suffered since his departure from Indiana. Out there it had
seemed a mere flea-bite, as he expressed it, to brush Ratcliffe
aside, but in Washington the thing was somehow different.
Even his own Indiana friends looked grave when he talked of it,
and shook their heads. They advised him to be cautious and gain
time; to lead Ratcliffe on, and if possible to throw on him the
responsibility of a quarrel. He was, therefore, like a brown bear
undergoing the process of taming; very ill-tempered, very rough,
and at the same time very much bewildered and a little frightened.
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