text:
The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter III

Chapter III. A Face in the Crowd
At the sound of the Lieutenant-Governor’s voice at the front door, Mrs. Rathbawne had beaten a hasty retreat, dragging her immensely edified half-sister in her wake, so that when he stepped through the curtained doorway Barclay found Natalie alone.

“I’m so glad you could come early,” she said, from the corner of the divan. “Now we can have a talk before dinner. I seem to see so little of you. I suppose that’s the penalty attached to being engaged to the second biggest man in the state. I’m sometimes jealous, Johnny boy, of Alleghenia’s place in your affections.”

“You’re the only person in the world who has no need to be,” laughed Barclay. “What is the news?”

“Probably,” said Natalie, “the only interesting items are that you are cold and a little cross, and that you want a big chair and a cup of tea and some hot toast.”

“Your summary of the situation is so exhaustive,” said Barclay, “that there seems to be nothing left for me to say, except that you are the most beautiful girl in the world, and that I think I must stand still a moment and just look at you, before I accept any of the luxuries you suggest.”

“I can’t imagine how you know that I’m so beautiful. You can’t possibly see me in this dark corner. But I see I’ve made one mistake! You are distinctly not cross.”

“Why should I be?” asked the Lieutenant-Governor, standing before the table, with his long legs far apart, and rocking from his toes to his heels and back again. “When a man has been walking for half an hour through a gnawing February air, and suddenly, out of all proportion to his deserts, comes full upon a rose in bloom, is that a reason for being cross?”

She was very small, and deliciously delicate, was Natalie Rathbawne, like a little Dresden image, with an arbutus-pink complexion, brown hair, and deep-blue eyes, now clouded thoughtfully, but oftener alight with humor, or dilating and clearing under the impetus of conversation. A doll-like daintiness of tiny pleats and ruffles, fresh bows, and fine stitching pervaded everything she wore, and if her voice inspired the hackneyed comparison of running water, it was of water running under moss, the sound whereof is as different from that of an open brook as is music from discord. To John Barclay’s thinking the barely believable fact that this little miracle of beauty — this pocket-Venus, as he was wont to call her — actually belonged to him remained one of the insoluble mysteries of life. He could not, in the thraldom of his present Elysium, be expected to remember, even if he had ever fully realized, that he himself was tall, broad-shouldered, clean-cut, and clean-lived, with the unmistakable stamp of the American gentleman on his linen and his simple, well-fitting clothes, and the evidences of a sane, regular existence in his steady hands and his clear eyes and his firm mouth, — a man of whom any woman might be, and of whom this particular woman was, extravagantly proud. For the first tribute which a lover lays at the feet of his lady is, in ordinary, the stamped-upon and abused summary of his personal attributes, which, in his own mind, he has taken remarkable pains to render as despicable as possible, and which, in hers, her imagination contrives not only to rehabilitate, but to imbue with a preposterously exaggerated splendor.

“I wonder,” added the Lieutenant-Governor presently, “whether when gentlemen are invited to tea they are supposed to kiss the hostess on entering.”

“If you are in any doubt about it,” observed Natalie, with an air of superb indifference, “I advise you to write for advice to the etiquette editor of the ‘Kenton City Record.’ She is probably sixty-two years old, looks like an English walnut, has never had a proposal in her life, and so knows all about” —

What the lady in question was supposed to know all about was for sufficient reasons never made clear. There are occasions, despite the manuals of polite behavior, when interruption cannot with any approach to justice be regarded as rudeness.

Barclay heaved a long sigh of satisfaction as he took his tea and two thin slices of toast and settled himself in his chair.

“Do you think it possible,” he asked, “for a man to be asleep for six weeks, dreaming that he is in another garden of Eden, with an Eve in a French frock, who has no partiality for apples” —

“I adore apples!” said the girl.

“And then wake up,” he continued, disregarding the interruption, “and find that the dream was only a dream, after all, — that he’s only a poor dog of a politician, that the garden is only a dingy office, and the flower-beds full of briers and pitfalls?”

“You’ve been eating pie for lunch again,” said Natalie severely, “and it always makes you morbid. No; I don’t think it possible at all. If I did, I should hang on to your coat-tails like fury and keep you in dreamland, whether you wanted to wake up or not.”

“It’s all too good to be true! How dare you be so beautiful?”

“John” —

“It’s gospel truth!”

Barclay paused for a moment, and then went on more seriously.

“You’re tired, littlest and most lovely in the world, and troubled about something.”

Natalie laughed shortly, with evident effort.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“Why not? Don’t you suppose I know? Do you think you could say a hundred words without my perceiving that? It almost seems to me that the knowledge that you were unhappy would make its way to me, no matter what distance separated us, and that I should come to you at top-speed to set things right. I’ve hardly seen your face, and yet I know your dear, deep eyes are troubled; I had barely heard your voice before I felt its weariness.”

Natalie bent forward until her face came under the light.

“Yes, I’m tired,” she said; “or, rather, I was tired when I first came in. I’m better now, since I’ve had my tea. But you’re right, Johnny boy, — there’s something more. I’m troubled, desperately troubled and heart-sick. I’ve been trying to make myself believe that it’s all imagination, that I have no reason for feeling as I do; but I’m afraid I can’t manage it. John, I thought I saw Spencer Cavendish to-day.”

“Spencer Cavendish? Are you sure? I had almost forgotten his existence! — Of course, it’s not impossible; but I imagined he had taken root in some South Sea island long ago. That’s what he was always expecting to do, you remember. How I have hated that man!”

“You were good friends once.”

“Yes, and should be yet, if I had not been the most suspicious mortal that ever breathed, and he the most hot-blooded. There was a reason, you know, — a little reason, but the most important in the world! I was jealous, Natalie, insanely jealous. I could forgive him everything now.”

“That hurts me, John. I’m so happy, boy dear, that I want everybody else to be happy as well. Oh, why is it that a girl must always have that one thought on her mind, which is so hard, so hard? — I mean the thought of the good men, the true, brave, loyal men, whom she has cared for, who have been her best friends perhaps, and yet whom she has been forced to hurt bitterly because they asked her for something she was not able to give. A man has so much easier a road! His happiness, when it comes to him, isn’t clouded by the thought of those to whom it means the loss of their last remnant of hope. They are there, the disappointed ones, but he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know! He hasn’t on his conscience the memory of hearts cruelly wounded, — wounded even to death. He doesn’t in memory see the eagerness in a good friend’s eyes die to disillusion, to hopelessness, to bitter, bitter sorrow. He doesn’t have to remember how the life died suddenly out of a voice that had been tender and eloquent. He doesn’t sicken with the thought that his hand has given a blow so merciless, so unmerited, and yet so inevitable. Worst of all, for the girl, is the after-discovery that her decision has made a difference — a hideous, irreparable difference, — that the man can never be the same again, that she has wrecked a life with a word! Oh, there ought to be some way! The man ought not to ask unless he is sure of the reply! It’s too much responsibility to force upon the girl!

“So with Spencer Cavendish,” she went on after a moment. “In spite of all — in spite of all, John! — I can’t forget that he loved me. I think a woman never forgets that.”

“Until the man marries another woman!”

“Ah,” said Natalie, with a faint smile, “then least of all, John! And besides, Spencer never married. He knew I loved you, long before you did! I felt that it was due to him that he should know; he was my oldest and best friend then, and so I told him! And then he went out of my life — out of his own — into darkness. I can’t forget it! I can’t forget that I broke up your friendship” —

“Dearest!”

“I did, John! It wasn’t my fault, perhaps, nor any one’s, for that matter, but I did, just the same. Besides, it wasn’t only the question of your friendship. What hurt me most was the wilful wreck of his life. And yet, how could I have known what was going to happen? What could I do when it did happen? He was beyond my reach. He didn’t even answer the letter I wrote, asking him to come and see me. I thought, if he cared for me, I could save him. But it was just as he had said, — he must have everything, or he would have nothing at all. And so he went wrong — oh, so terribly, terribly wrong! — he who might have been anything, if it hadn’t been for me. I can never forget it — never! I can never forget the pity of it, the tragedy of its awful publicity, the newspapers, the scandal, people’s sneers, his mother dying of a broken heart — and I did it! Think of it! Think of a man like Spencer Cavendish in the police courts, not once, but a dozen times. Think of what Justice Meyer called him at last, and what was printed in the papers, — ‘a common drunk!’ Oh, John!”

“Natalie, Natalie!” broke in the Lieutenant-Governor. “Why should you think of such things, brood over them, above all, blame them on yourself? How could it possibly have been your fault? how could you possibly have helped it? He was a reckless, hot-headed chap — brilliant, of course, but a slave to his impulses and his nerves. If Lochinvars could act with impunity nowadays, he’d have ridden up to your door on a black horse, killed Thomas, and carried you off across his pommel. As it was, he let himself go, and disgraced himself. I tried to talk to him, just as you did, but he wouldn’t have it — called me ‘an insolent cub’ and — er — worse. I had to give it up. It was all very distressing, I admit, but then, dear, it was all so long ago. He hasn’t been in Kenton City for two years and more, and I’ve no doubt he pulled himself together long since, and is leading a straight life somewhere. He had lots in him, with all his recklessness. A chap like that, with no family hanging about his neck, and with his brains, and only his own living to make, could forge ahead almost anywhere.”

“But John, I’m sure I saw him to-day, and suppose I should tell you that he was — begging?”

Barclay almost smiled at her earnest, troubled face, as he replaced his cup on the table.

“Begging?” he answered. “I’m afraid I couldn’t bring myself to believe you, violet-eyes. Even granting that he has fallen as low as that, which I should think one of the most unlikely things in the world, it would hardly be in Kenton City, would it? — a place where his face is known to a thousand people. Tell me about it. What makes you think you saw him?”

“I was shopping this morning,” said Natalie, “all alone; and as I came out of Kendrick’s and was just about to get into the brougham, I saw that some one was holding the door open for me. I looked up carelessly, as one naturally would under the circumstances, and, John — I know it was he! At first I thought so, and then I didn’t, because he was so changed, so thin and pale, and because he had a beard. So, before I thought what I was doing, I stepped into the brougham, and put my hand on the door to close it. Then I looked up again, and saw his face, peering in at me through the glass, and that time there couldn’t be any mistake. It was! I was going to speak, but he was gone in a flash. I saw him disappearing in the crowd before the shop — slinking, John! — with that dreadfully pathetic air which all beggars have, his shoulders all hunched up, and his head bent, and his hands in his pockets. He was cold, John, I could see that, and, no doubt, hungry! And there I was, in that dreadful little brougham, with my hateful furs, as warm as toast, and I didn’t even speak to him. I could have died of shame!”

She buried her face in her hands, bending low over the tea-table. Barclay was leaning forward in his chair, his lips set.

“It’s impossible,” he murmured, “impossible!”

The girl looked up suddenly, a white spot in the centre of each cheek, where the pressure of her thumbs had left its mark in the tender, pink flesh.

“Improbable — yes!” she said, “but not impossible. Oh, I wish I could believe otherwise, but I’m sure, I’m sure! Oh, John! You are so big, so strong, so powerful now! Think of it — Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia! You can do anything. And if he is here in Kenton City, homeless, cold, starving, you must find and help him — for me, Johnny boy, for me!”

The Lieutenant-Governor had risen, and was pacing up and down the room, with his brows knit, and his strong, white hands chafing slowly against each other, palm to palm. It seemed impossible, indeed! Spencer Cavendish, the last of one of Alleghenia’s proudest families; Spencer Cavendish, the brilliant young society pet and sportsman; Spencer Cavendish, the wit, the viveur — a beggar in the street? And yet —

The scandal of Cavendish’s sudden and reckless plunge into sodden, open dissipation, two years before, freshly called to Barclay’s mind by Natalie’s words, had pointed to almost any finale, however debased, however sordid. Barclay mentally invoked the face of his former friend, as he had seen it on the occasion of their last meeting, flushed, swollen-eyed, insolent, the fine patrician mouth hideously contorted and maundering insults, filth, banality.

“And I did it!” the girl was saying. “Don’t forget that, John. Unwittingly, ignorantly, helplessly, if you will, I did it, just the same. If I could have loved him, I could have saved him. As it was, I had to send him away, and he has come to — to this! Oh, don’t you see? Don’t you understand that something more than chance has crossed my path with his, just at this moment of my supremest happiness, and of his utter degradation? My duty is plain. It is to help him, to uplift him, to make a man of him once more — to undo what I have done! I’m responsible — and I’m helpless! What can I do? What can any girl do in such a case? I can’t go out into the streets and search for him. I can only turn to you, Johnny boy, and rely upon your aid.”

“But, Natalie dearest,” said the Lieutenant-Governor slowly, “don’t you see that it is impossible, all this? I cannot allow such an affair to come into your pure, sweet life, bringing with it the knowledge of the depths to which men may fall, and the shadow of misery and degradation. I cannot bear that, in even the remotest way, you should blame yourself for that which it was never in your power to prevent or remedy. A man — this man — has no business to cast on you the blight of his own weakness and folly, to establish a relation of cause and effect between your refusal of him and the subsequent transformation of a gentleman into a common drunkard.”

“John!”

“Ah, don’t think me bitter, dearest! If the man you saw was actually Cavendish, I pity him from the bottom of my heart. But it was his hands which built up the barrier between his life and ours, and it must be his that tear it down. It is intolerable that in his degradation he should come into your life again, and have, even in your imagination, the smallest claim upon you — intolerable! The paths of my love for you and my duty toward you are identical in this respect. There can be no alternative — no quibbling. At least until he has redeemed himself, if redemption is still possible, the thought of him, his presence, his misdoings, must not and shall not contaminate the atmosphere in which you live and move.”

Natalie had risen suddenly, her eyes ablaze.

“Ah, John!” she said. “Am I then a toy, a sugar figure, that I must be packed in cotton, and shielded from all knowledge of the evil in the world? Is that what it means to be a woman? Ah, no! It is bad enough to be hemmed in by the wretched conventionalities which prevent my doing openly what I conceive to be my duty, without adding to the restrictions that actually exist the imaginary one that I must not even think of the misery, the wretchedness, the sordid vice which abound just across the borders of the comfortable little world in which I live. And see, boy dear! — with all the force of my conviction that things should be otherwise, yet I am reasonable. I don’t ask to see Spencer, or to have an active hand in his redemption. I realize that the time for that has passed, and that you are just in saying that he must come to me, not I to him — and come to me another than the man he is to day. Anything else is impossible: that I see and accept. But the hideous fact remains. A man who loved me once, who offered me all that a man can offer a woman, is walking the streets of Kenton City, cold, hungry, homeless — a beggar! What business is it of yours or mine what his past follies and weaknesses were? His temptations may have been beyond our understanding, but his present plight is not. He is begging — begging at our very doors — a man whom we have called by the name of friend! I can’t help him. All I can do, as I said before, is to turn to you, whom I love better than all the world, and ask you to save him, in my stead. Ah, boy, boy! — I’ve given you all I refused to him, taken at your hands all I put away at his. You can afford to be generous!”

The Lieutenant-Governor came slowly toward her, and, placing his hands upon her shoulders, looked her in the eyes.

“Dearest and Most Beautiful,” he said tenderly, “you are right. I hope — I believe — that you were overwrought, fanciful, that it is not true. But if it is, if Cavendish is begging in our streets, then, so surely as I am Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia, I will pull him out of them, and make a man of him, if it takes a month and every police officer and detective in Kenton City to find him. And that not alone for your sake, tenderest-hearted, but for mine. I can afford to be generous, God bless your sweet face, I can indeed!”

And he bent over reverently, and kissed her hand.

title: The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter III


text:
The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter IV

Chapter IV. As Between Friends
There were but two guests at the Rathbawnes’ dinner-table that night, the Lieutenant-Governor and Colonel Amos Broadcastle, a veteran of the Rebellion, brevetted Major for conspicuous gallantry at Lookout Mountain, and now commanding officer of the Ninth Regiment, N. G. A., the crack militia organization of Kenton City. Colonel Broadcastle had seen his sixty-five, but his broad, square shoulders, his rigid carriage, and his black hair, even now only slightly touched with gray, clipped twenty years from his appearance. His eye was one that was famous throughout the Alleghenia Guard, an eye accustomed to control, not a single man, or two, or three, but a thousand, moving as one at his command; an eye enforcing obedience immediate, machine-like, and unquestioning.

It had been a momentous day for the Ninth when Amos Broadcastle, retiring from the staff of a former Governor, had accepted, first a majority therein, and then, three months later, its colonelcy. He found ten companies, in no one instance exceeding twenty files front. He found a field and staff vain, incompetent, and jealous; company officers deficient alike in their knowledge of tactics and in their conception of their responsibilities; sergeants, corporals, and lances chosen without any view to fitness, and ignorant and tyrannical in their positions; and finally, the rank and file lazy, untidy, and frankly contemptuous of the school of the soldier. Some one had once said of the Ninth that there was consolation to be found in the mortifying knowledge that the men composing it were there with the unique view of escaping jury duty. The consolation lay in the probability that such infernally bad soldiers would have made jurors quite as infernally bad.

But Broadcastle, a born disciplinarian and a trained tactician, was now in a position to echo, albeit in a different spirit, the arrogance of Louis: “Nous avons changé tout cela!” Ten years had sufficed to change the indolent and incompetent Ninth of Alleghenia into a regiment rivaling in prestige the Seventh of New York. The commissioned officers were thrust upon, rather than achieved by, their companies, but, once established in their respective positions, proceeded without exception to justify, by their energy and ability, their selection from the best element of Kenton City. Among the enlisted men the exponents of the old spirit of sloth, indifference, and laxity were weeded out as fast as their terms of service expired, and their places filled from the same sources whence the company officers were drawn. Colonel Broadcastle was a diplomat as well as a disciplinarian. By some unknowable system of suggestion and example it came, little by little, to be regarded in Kenton City as “the thing” to belong to the Ninth. Before the capital was aware of the transformation, every company roster read 103, the field and staff had been reorganized and perfected, and the Ninth Regiment, N. G. A., was what it remained thereafter: a magnificent fighting machine, ably drilled, perfectly equipped, a credit to the state, to the credit of which there stood so little else. The declaration of war with Spain brought it suddenly into prominence by the astonishing readiness with which it went into camp twenty hours after the Adjutant-General of Alleghenia published the President’s call for volunteers; and although it never saw active service, it attracted at Chickamauga, and later at Tampa, the admiring attention of the regular army, and was spoken of as the most perfect body among the volunteer forces.

The citizens of Kenton City were not accustomed to discovering things in which they could take pride. The exact contrary was more apt to be the case. When, therefore, they discovered the rehabilitated Ninth, and its redeemer in the person of its commanding officer, they had a deal to say, and said it with unexampled arrogance and satisfaction. Thenceforward, Alleghenia meant much to Colonel Broadcastle, and Colonel Broadcastle considerably more than much to Alleghenia.

Something of all this went through the Lieutenant-Governor’s mind during the progress of the dinner. He sat at Mrs. Rathbawne’s right, than which nothing in the world could have been more cheerless, unless it was sitting at Mrs. Rathbawne’s left. But the good lady’s habitual complacency was plainly in abeyance, her customary volubility replaced by a fidgety reserve. The dinner, as a social achievement, was a distinct failure, save in so far as Mrs. Wynyard and Colonel Broadcastle were concerned. Several months before, Mrs. Wynyard had frankly announced that she had designs upon the Colonel. Latterly, Barclay had begun to suspect the Colonel of having designs upon Mrs. Wynyard. Thirty and sixty-five that looked forty-five — a widow and a widower! More wonderful things had happened.

“If I were thirty years younger,” Broadcastle was saying even now, as he did full justice to the celery mayonnaise, “I should say we were made for each other.”

“Since two single people may be made for each other,” laughed Mrs. Wynyard, “I wonder if two married people can’t be unmade for each other. Perhaps that is just what has happened to us!”

“I’ll think that over,” replied the Colonel with mock gravity. “I don’t want to commit myself on so serious a hypothesis, without due reflection.”

They were the only ones who were thoroughly at ease. Barclay and Natalie, unstrung by the events of the day, ate little and talked listlessly. Dorothy, victim to an inward excitement which was half happiness and half disappointment, chattered feverishly. Rathbawne was wrapped in his own thoughts, and his wife, innocently unobservant of emotional manifestations in any and every other, but pathetically sensitive to the slightest evidence of mental perturbation in this stern, kind man, between herself and whom existed a devotion dog-like in its silence and intensity, watched his clouded face with an anxiety which she made no effort to conceal. The dinner dragged hopelessly, until she shook herself into a bewildered realization that it was over, folded her napkin scrupulously, dusted a few crumbs from the black-satin slope of her obsolete lap, and, followed by her daughters and Mrs. Wynyard, left the men to their cordials and cigars.

The latter drew their chairs nearer, as the door closed, made little clearings in the wilderness of finger-bowls, silver, and discarded napkins, for the accommodation of their coffee-cups and cordial glasses, and, lighting the long Invincibles which were Rathbawne’s sole extravagance, inhaled that first matchless whiff of smoke which makes a whole day of anxiety and vexation seem to have been worth the while.

It is a moment apart and sui generis, this, and is rivaled only by that of early morning realization that one is awake — and not obliged to get up. It is apt to pass in silence, for a newly lit cigar is like a newly married wife: a man is deliberately oblivious to all else. The moment, too, is one of readjustment, of hasty mental survey of the chatter that has passed, and of preparation for the essentially dissimilar talk to come. With men of the mental calibre of the three here assembled this opportunity is sacred to some of the gravest and most vital thoughts which they exchange. Peter Rathbawne, in particular, whenever he reviewed the paramount conversations of his life, seemed to find their significance indissolubly fused with the fragrance of Havana cigars and the taste of kümmel or yellow Chartreuse.

His eyes dwelt thoughtfully upon his companions during the pause which followed. First, on Broadcastle. He could depend upon him as he could depend upon no other man on earth. They had fought side by side in many a tight place in the black days of ’62, and in many another, full as tight, since then, on battlefields commercial and political. It is doubtful whether so much as a single word of admiration or affection had ever passed between them. It is equally doubtful whether anything could have been more entirely superfluous than such a voicing of self-evident sentiments.

John Barclay, too! Peter Rathbawne, with what had been natural shrewdness at the outset now sharpened almost to clairvoyance by his years of dealing with a multiplicity of men and things, understood the Lieutenant-Governor absolutely, and admired him with all the force of his rugged nature. And Rathbawne was not given to admiring people. His business experience had not fostered the spirit of hero-worship. He had seen too much for that. But in the two men before him he recognized qualities so unusual, and in many ways so similar, that he was proud to count them friends.

For the moment, however, as he took stock of them, he was measuring them by a new standard, more rigid, more severe than he had hitherto had reason to apply. It is one thing to trust a man implicitly, and another thing entirely to try to tell him so. For silence is most golden in the specification of friendship, and when employed in the particularizing of intimate emotion the silver of speech is apt to turn to veriest tinsel.

Yet the occasion was one which demanded speech. Moreover, and in direct opposition to his inclinations and the precedents he had established, he was forced not only to give practical expression to his feeling for Broadcastle and Barclay, but, what humiliated as well as annoyed him, to confess himself incapable of dealing with a question which confronted him. It was the first time within his recollection when he had mistrusted his own judgment.

But Peter Rathbawne was not the man to procrastinate, and presently he began to speak, in a low but curiously intense voice, from which the others instinctively took their cue. He was a short man, inclined to stoutness, but with the clear, sharp eye and the underhang of jaw which tell of right principle and indomitable perseverance. It was a question whether in calling him the second most obstinate man in Alleghenia, Governor Abbott had given him the full measure of his due.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with the somewhat stilted formality which was part of his manner, “I will say to you what I wouldn’t say to others, — I’m in a hole, and I want your advice. I’ll be as brief as possible, and I’ll come right to the point. For thirty years I’ve been building up the Rathbawne Mills, giving them every hour of my thought, every particle of my strength, every atom of my ability. I’ve seen them grow from a little shanty on the outskirts of Kenton City to a collection of buildings covering four solid squares, filled with modern machinery, and employing four thousand, two hundred and odd hands. I’ve been a business man, I’ve been a rigid man, but I’ve been a fair man, too. No one can say that I ever clipped wages, even when I had to run the mills at a loss, as I’ve had to do more than once. I gave my people an eight-hour day long before the law of Alleghenia jammed it down the throats of other mill-owners. I swallowed the Union, though it was a bitter mouthful. There has never been a just complaint from one of my employees that wasn’t attended to in short order, if it was in my power to do so. There’s many an old fossil on my pay-rolls to-day who isn’t worth his salt, but he stays there, and will continue to stay there, because he did his best when he could, and it’s not his fault that he’s dead wood now. I’ve given in, over and over again, in one way or another, sometimes against my convictions, and oftener against my will. But one thing I’ve stuck to, and that’s my right to discharge a hand when I see fit, without dictation from the Union or anybody else. In the past, this has been comparatively easy sailing. One man, now and again, isn’t a ripple on the surface of four thousand employees. Besides, there was always a good reason. The others saw that, and there was never a finger raised. They believed in me, through and through, and it has been my pride to know that they did, and that they had good cause to. But now it’s different. There has been a band of young good-for-nothings in Shop 22, who were full, chock-a-block, of socialism, and equality, and workingmen’s rights, and God knows what-not! They’ve talked enough poisonous gas to the other hands to blow up a state. They distributed pamphlets, and made speeches, and organized clubs, and fomented discord, till I got sick and tired of it. There wasn’t one square day’s work in the whole fifteen of them put together. So, when I’d stood them as long as I could — which was at ten o’clock yesterday morning — I discharged them all in a bunch, and if there’d been a steep place handy, I’d have expected to see them all run violently down it into the sea — like the other swine, in Scripture. For if ever there was a band of devils made incarnate, it was that same fifteen who were sowing anarchy broadcast through the Rathbawne Mills!

“Now — what? Lo and behold, they are all henchmen and disciples of Michael McGrath, whom we in Kenton City know to our cost, and regular and loyal members save the mark! — of his Union. Well, gentlemen, I’ve got that Union about my ears like a nest of hornets, with McGrath at the head, and unless those fifteen men are reinstated by noon to morrow, my four thousand hands will be out on strike, and the Rathbawne Mills will be tied up as tight as a drum!”

“Fight ’em!” said Colonel Broadcastle curtly, as the other paused.

“That’s what I meant to do — but where am I going to come out? If I thought, for instance, that I was going to have your regiment to back me up, Broadcastle, or even the Kenton City police, why, well and good! But am I? No, sir! No, sir! Not with Elijah Abbott in the Governor’s chair, I’m not! You know that as well as I. Why, Broadcastle, I’d rather see McGrath himself at the capitol than that smooth-spoken skunk!”

He paused to relight his cigar, and then continued.

“The Rathbawne Mills are like the fruit of my own body to me. I love them! I love every stone and brick of them, that I’ve put in place, as it were, with my own hands. I’ve often thought that if they should burn down it would come close to killing me. And yet I could watch them go with a lighter heart, God knows, than that with which I foresee the misery that’s coming to these people of mine, who are going to starve at the bidding of a band of black-legs, and that not even because they think their cause a just one, but simply because they can’t help themselves. It isn’t only that ruin’s staring me in the face, though there’s that possibility in the situation, too, but that privation, bitter misery, and despair are lying in wait for them. God! — what an iniquity!

“But I can’t give in, Broadcastle — I can’t give in, John Barclay! It means the sacrifice of a principle I’ve held out for, and that I know is right. What’s more, it isn’t as if I were yielding one point. It would only be the beginning. If I give in now, I might as well turn over the mills to McGrath at once, and let him run them according to his own blackguardly will. You know how such things go. Give them an inch” —

“And they raise a hell!” put in Colonel Broadcastle.

“Exactly! It’s commercial suicide. And yet, if I don’t yield, I’m precipitating disorder, and bloodshed, and the untold suffering of four thousand souls. What am I to do?”

“Fight ’em!” said Colonel Broadcastle, with a sharp nod of his head.

Rathbawne turned from him to the Lieutenant-Governor, and to the latter, knowing the man he had been, there was something indescribably heart-rending in the sudden, irresolute trembling of his half-raised hands, the slow shake of his head, and the pathos of his raised eyebrows and drooping lips.

“John,” he said, “I’m an old man, and you’re a young one, but I’m a plain citizen, and you’re the Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia. You know how things stand. Now, I’ve given you my girl, and after that it’s not much to put myself into your hands as well. I’m getting on. My strength isn’t what it was. I’m not as fit to stand such a struggle as this is bound to be, as I was thirty years ago. I look strong, but, in reality, I’m not. My doctor has warned me, more than once. A sudden shock you know what these medical chaps say about sudden shocks! I’ve laughed at him, of course, and yet I — know there is truth in it. I’ve been up against hard propositions, but never one as hard as this. I’ve had big responsibilities, but never a responsibility that I felt as I feel this one. If I hold out, I know what people and the newspapers will say, — how they’ll blackguard me, — but I’m not afraid of that. I’m not even thinking of it. No, and I’m not thinking of what the strain may mean to me. Every man’s turn is sure to come — why not one way as well as another? But what I am thinking of is the result upon the lives of these people whom I’ve made, as surely as if I were another Creator. And McGrath’s another Beelzebub! There’s a fight on between us for the salvation of a little world of four thousand souls! But I’m not God! I can’t act with the conviction of omniscience. I’ve been the most independent of men. I’ve made my own fortune with my own brains. I’ve done as I saw fit, and the results have seemed to indicate that I’ve been oftener right than wrong. But now, I’m at a loss. It’s not the men I’m thinking of so much. They ought to be able to make their own way, as I’ve made mine. It’s the women and children dependent upon them — the women and children who have no voice in the matter, and yet who are bound to suffer most by a strike. I’ve got to think for them. I’ve reached a crisis — a cross-ways — and I’ve got to choose which course to take — and I can’t! All my experience counts for nothing. I’ve never — you probably know it — asked for advice before. But now I must have the unprejudiced, the outside point of view. I’ve always thought there was a clear, unmistakable boundary between right and wrong, but now there’s some right in the wrong, and a big sight more of wrong in the right! I’ve heard Broadcastle’s opinion, and I want yours. If you agree, I’ll go by what you say. As I said before, John, in this matter I’m the individual — you’re the state. I’ll go by what you say. What shall I do?”

Peter Rathbawne’s words had wrought tremendously upon the Lieutenant-Governor. He answered slowly, looking down, and with a perceptible tremor in his voice.

“Mr. Rathbawne, you and the Colonel know how high-sounding my title is, and how little, in reality, it means. There is no need to go into details. I’m Lieutenant-Governor of Alleghenia, yes! — and as helpless in the cause of right as a new-born baby! If I could by any means, in any manner, support the advice I gave you, I would give it willingly.”

“John!” said Peter Rathbawne, “I don’t mean that. I’ve put the case wrongly. Give me your counsel, not as Lieutenant-Governor, but as my friend, and the man who loves my daughter!”

The Lieutenant-Governor raised his eyes from the finger-tips with which, as the other was speaking, he had been plucking at the cloth.

“Fight them, Mr. Rathbawne,” he said, “and may God help you — because I can’t!”

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter IV


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Page:Boots and Saddles.djvu/112

Rh garrison, which had been established some time, and now belonged to our post. When we went to return the visits of the infantry ladies, the mules dragged the ambulance up the steep hill with difficulty. We found living in this bleak place—in small, shabbily built quarters, such as a day-laborer would consider hardly good enough for his family—delicate women and children, who, as usual, made no complaint about their life. Afterwards we were much indebted to one of the ladies, who, determined to conquer fate, varied our lives and gave us something to look forward to, by organizing a reading-club that met every week. She had sent to the East, before the trains ceased running, for the new books.

This little post had been built before the railroad was completed, and the houses were put together with as few materials as possible. There was no plastering, but the ceilings and partitions were of thick paper made for the purpose. When narrow mouldings of wood were tacked over the joined places, and all of it painted, the effect was very pretty. When it was torn and ragged it looked poverty-stricken enough. In one set of quarters there chanced to be so many children and so little room that the parents had invented a three-story bed, where the little ones could be all stowed at night. While we were calling there one day, I sat talking with the cheerful little mother, and wondering how she could be so bright. Everything in garrison life was, of course, new to my girl friend, and I discovered she was trying to smother a laugh. She commanded a view of the inner door. One of the children, who had been beating the wall and crying to enter, had finally made

title: Page:Boots and Saddles.djvu/112


text:
The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter V

Chapter V. A Brand From the Burning
More heartsick than he cared to confess, even to himself, the Lieutenant-Governor left the Rathbawnes’ earlier than his wont, despite the fact that his host and Colonel Broadcastle were still engaged in discussing the impending situation, and that Natalie, with a batch of new music, was waiting for him at the piano. He pleaded an unusually busy day and his consequent fatigue as an excuse, and so, at half after nine, found him self about to light a second cigar, on the steps of the Rathbawne residence, and shiver in a little in the night air, which stung the inside of his nostrils and set his eyes watering. Raw as the day had been, it had turned colder now, but the night was superbly clear. The sky seemed to have drawn nearer to the earth, and the stars twinkled so sharply and clearly against its deep blue-black that they resembled in form their conventionally five-pointed counterfeits of silver paper. A brisk wind whirled a few dried leaves in whispering eddies across the smooth asphaltum of the driveway, but beyond this and the peevish sputtering of the arc-light on the opposite corner there was no sound. It was the kind of night which, with its crystal clearness and its steely intensity, stirs the normal pulse to keen exhilaration: yet never had John Barclay felt more hopelessly dispirited, more utterly at a loss to see the way before him. That anxiety, distress, possibly actual disaster should be impending over this house where lay his heart, his happiness, and his hope, was sufficiently disturbing in itself. That he should not be able, despite his position, to raise a hand to avert the calamity was worse. But that the battle was to be a battle for the right, and yet, as it seemed, foredoomed from the start to end in disaster, since no aid could be expected from the strong arm of the law to which the partisans of principle turn naturally for support: this was worst of all. For out of dangerous surroundings he felt himself able to snatch away the littlest and most lovely woman in the world. She, at least, should not suffer. And out of this nightmare of powerless prominence, of impotent position, he himself could retire into private life, and be no less a man than he had been before. But from the reproach of corruption which had fallen upon her, and the impending slur of anarchy, who was to rescue Alleghenia? The Lieutenant-Governor set his lips and drove his nails into his palms, as he stood in the shadow of the Rathbawnes’ doorway, looking up at the sky of the February night. He was not a religious man — as the term goes — but in that moment he said a better prayer for the welfare of his state than had ever lain upon the lips of any priest in Kenton City!

He was about to strike his match when an instinct rather than an actual perception of movement arrested his hand. Bradbury Avenue, upon which stood the Rathbawne house, was situated in one of the quieter residence districts which prided itself on the turfed spaces between its dwellings, pretentious enough for the most part, and the double rows of trees which lined its thoroughfares. It was one of these trees which, at the moment, attracted Barclay’s attention. It lay in a direct line between himself and the arc-light on the corner, and its trunk, in some miraculous manner, had abruptly developed an elbow, and then an arm. The Lieutenant-Governor was still staring at this phenomenon when it was as abruptly explained by the sudden emergence from shadow of a man, who had apparently been standing on the side of the tree nearest to the house. He was crossing the avenue obliquely when something about his bearing caused the Lieutenant-Governor to lean forward and follow him intently with his eyes. It was all there, as Natalie had said — the lifted shoulders, the bent head, the unmistakable, pathetic air of the beggar. Then, as he neared the light, he gave a short upward strain to his neck and chin, the impatient movement of a man whose collar annoys him. The trick was too familiar to have been forgotten. The next moment Barclay’s heels were pounding on the asphaltum behind him, and then Barclay’s hand fell upon his shoulder and whirled him round.

In the oddly intense radiance of the arc-light above, which cut sharply across the surface of forehead, cheek, and chin, and left heavy shadows like those in a roughly blocked-out carving, under brow, nose, and lower lip, the two men faced each other briefly, in silence. Then the Lieutenant-Governor voiced the other’s name, hardly above a whisper.

“Spencer Cavendish!”

And the other, echoing the tone, if not the words, replied: —

“Bar-clay!”

A square away, the lights of a hansom winked into the avenue, and the hoof-beats of the horse clonked on the pavement, unaccompanied by any sound from the smoothly trundling, rubber-tired wheels. Barclay stepped to the kerb, and hailed the driver with his stick. The cab drew in, stopped, and threw the divisions of its apron wide, like two black hands extended in cordial welcome.

The Lieutenant-Governor turned to his companion.

“Get in,” he said. “I want to have a talk with you.”

The drive of a mile and more from Bradbury Avenue to Barclay’s quarters in the new bachelor apartment-house “Rockingham” was accomplished without the exchange of a word. Once, he felt his companion shiver, and dragging a rug from under them, he spread it across their knees. That was the only movement on the part of either. They sat, side by side, looking straight before them over the horse’s bobbing crupper, until the hansom pulled up sharply before the broad and brilliantly illuminated entrance of the “Rockingham.” As they passed in, Cavendish had a passing impression of tiled floors, columns of green marble, and attendants in tightly fitting green uniforms with brass buttons. Then an elevator whirled them up to the eighth floor, deposited them in a square hallway, and vanished again, with the little page in charge wrinkling his nose and biting the thumb of his cotton glove.

“Wot’s the Loot’nt-Guvnor up to now, Sawed-Off?” inquired the doorkeeper genially, as the elevator returned to the ground floor.

“Ide’no!” replied the little page with equal affability. “Goin’ in fer pol’tics, I guest. Jeest! Wot a slob it wuz — wot?”

The Lieutenant-Governor unlocked the door of his apartment, touched an electric button which flooded the little hall and the drawing-room beyond with light, and, entering the latter, went directly to a closet in the wall. Unlocking this, he took out a jar of biscuits and a decanter, and setting them upon the table, turned once more to his companion.

“Put away a couple of those biscuits and a glass of sherry,” he said, “and then we’ll talk.”

“I’m past biscuits,” said the other, almost sullenly.

“I’ll see to that,” replied Barclay. “They are only by way of a starter.”

He passed into the hall as he spoke, and presently Cavendish heard the click of a telephone receiver slipping from its crotch, and Barclay’s voice speaking, to some one below, of a steak, vegetables, salad, and coffee. He stepped to the table, devoured two or three of the biscuits ravenously, poured himself a glass of sherry, sipped, and then swallowed it, and flung himself down upon a wide divan.

“Have you a cigarette?” he asked, as Barclay reëntered. “I haven’t smoked in three days. That’s worse than mere hunger, you know.”

“I believe you!”

Barclay pushed a silver box across the table, and seating himself opposite, touched a match to the cigar which he had been about to light at the Rathbawnes’ door, and which he still held between his lips.

“Help yourself,” he added. “Your supper will be up presently. Meanwhile, shall I fire away, or will you?”

Cavendish let the first smoke from his cigarette curl slowly up his cheek before replying. In the full light now first resting upon it, his face showed as that of a man approximately Barclay’s age, but pinched by want, and deeply lined by dissipation. His under lids were puffy and discolored, and a dozen heavy creases ran, fan-like, from the corners of his eyes. Hair already turning white and an unkempt mustache and beard completed the picture. His clothes were faded and frayed, no linen was visible, and his boots were cracked and soggy. There was nothing about him to suggest the former estate of gentleman save his hands, which, while thin and tremulous, were clean and well-kept, in singular contrast to the slovenliness of his attire.

“Age before respectability,” he said in reply to Barclay’s question, with a shrug. “I’ll go first. It will save your asking questions. We parted in anger, Barclay.”

“Let that pass,” put in the Lieutenant-Governor, briefly. “Two years wipe out all scores as petty as was the cause of our quarrel.”

“Well, then,” continued Cavendish more easily, “when I left Kenton City, it was with the best intention in the world of making a fresh start in some place where my story wasn’t known. I went to New York. I had a little money, but only a very little, and not the most remote idea of how difficult it is for a man to make his way in a place where he is unknown, particularly if he has no credentials and is too proud to ask for any from his old associates. Moreover, I’d been drinking hard for six months and there was no such thing as clipping it short all at once. I had an idea of tapering off, and perhaps, if I had found a job, I might have done so. As it was I climbed up one step and fell down two, and that went on indefinitely. It wasn’t as if I’d had a distinct aim or anything in my life which made it seem worth living. I didn’t half care. I’d set my heart on something which I couldn’t get, and — well, never mind that. It is all as long ago as the Flood! I got work now and again, tried reporting, and teaching, and copying. But each time it was a grade lower, and I stuck to nothing but the whiskey — except when I had a little more money than usual, and then it was absinthe.”

He touched his eyes, and then raised his hand to the level of his chin, with the fingers held wide apart and rigid, and watched it tremble for an instant in silence.

“I haven’t seen a mirror in weeks,” he went on, “but I know the signs are all there. That’s the story. I could string it out for an hour, but it would all be in the same key. I’ve simply been going down, down, down. I’m what the old judge called me — do you remember it came out in the ‘Record?’ — I’m a common drunk, Barclay. And I don’t care! I’ve been on the point of putting an end to it many a time — but I always held out for another drink! Now, even my pride’s gone. It stuck to me longer than anything else, but it’s taken itself off at last. I’ve been feeling lately that I’m pretty near the end, and I wanted to see Kenton City again before it came. That’s the reason I walked all the way from Pittsburg, and I’ve been begging on the streets since I got in. I thought no body would recognize me.”

“But I did,” said Barclay.

“Yes, and — and” —

“Yes, and she did! She saw you this morning, but before she took in fully that it was you, you were gone in the crowd. She was half heart-broken over it, and made me promise to look you up. I was going to do so, when I tumbled against you by chance to night. You were watching the house?”

“Yes, for the last time. I saw she had recognized me and that Kenton City was no place for me. So I was off again to-night. Is she” —

“She is well, and, I am glad to say, happy. We are to be married in the autumn.”

A smile hovered for an instant on Cavendish’s lips.

“God bless her!” he said slowly. “I’m glad of it. But don’t let’s talk of that. She’s as far above me as the stars!”

“And as far above me, too, for that matter!” answered Barclay. “Here’s your supper. While you’re eating, I’ll take my turn at the talk.”

A bell-boy arranged the tray on the table, removed the covers, and in a moment the two men were again alone. With a deep sigh of satisfaction Cavendish drew a chair to the table and set to work on the steaming dishes before him.

“Jupiter!” he said, with the first mouthful poised on his fork, “you don’t know what this means, Barclay, and you can thank God you don’t. I won’t attempt to thank you. Go on, and tell me about yourself.”

“I’ve no intention of doing that just at present,” replied the Lieutenant-Governor, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. “I want to talk about you. Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to preach! But I am going to say that while I understand a good deal of what you’ve said, the last part is pure rot! You’re a bit of a wreck, of course, but it isn’t your pride or your self-respect or what ever you choose to call it, that’s gone. It’s only your nerve. Now you’ve had your experience, and you’re back where you belong, and you’ve friends who like you, and who can help you, and who will. I’m in a position to do so myself, and I don’t expect you to make any bones about accepting my assistance, and whatever money you need for the moment. It will be a loan, of course, to be repaid when you’re on your feet again. We’ll have you there in no time. When you’ve made way with the grub, you can bunk down on that divan for the night, and in the morning I’ll tog you out in one of my outfits, and you can set about getting back on terra firma. You’ll have to shake the drink, that goes without saying.”

Cavendish straightened himself suddenly, laid down his knife and fork, and laughed shortly.

“It sounds well,” he said bitterly, “but you don’t understand, Barclay. It’s too late! I don’t care, and if I did, I couldn’t shake the drink to save my immortal soul. I’m steady enough for the time being, because I’m hungry and because I’m being fed. But I’ve tried the other game too often. I know what it means. I wouldn’t promise you to quit, because I don’t want to lie to you, and that’s all it would be. When the craving comes back, I’ll go down before it like a row of tenpins. No, Barclay, it won’t do.”

“Nonsense, man! Do you want to tell me you’re as weak as that?”

“Every bit!” said Cavendish, attacking the steak again.

“Well, I don’t believe it, that’s all. In the morning you’ll be a different man. I’ll give you a bromide when you’re ready for bed. You’re shaky, as it is, but that’s all a matter of nerves. Now we’ll drop the subject, and talk of other things.”

It was midnight when they separated. Barclay brought out sheets and blankets for the divan, produced pajamas for his guest, put the bath at his disposal, and mixed a strong dose of bromide for him to take upon retiring.

Half an hour later, when he reëntered the drawing-room to see whether Cavendish was in need of anything further, he found him standing by the table in his pajamas, trembling, wide-eyed, and very pale.

“What is it?” he asked. “Are you ill?”

“No,” answered Cavendish, striving in vain to control the trembling of his lips, “only damnably nervous. Could you could you give me a drop of brandy, Barclay?”

“Certainly not!” said the Lieutenant-Governor. “Pull yourself together, man! There’s your bromide. Take that. It’s better than a thousand brandies.”

Cavendish turned, lifted the glass, spilling a little as he did so, and swallowed the sedative at a gulp. Then he stretched himself upon the divan and drew the covers close up about his chin. Presently, from the bedroom, Barclay heard him breathing deeply and regularly, and turning on his side, fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

He awoke with a start, as the dawn was showing gray through the chinks of his window curtains, with a vague, uneasy sense of something wrong, and lay listening, every nerve strained taut. From the adjoining room came the sound of Cavendish’s breathing, but now it was more raucous, more like groan following groan. The Lieutenant-Governor strove in vain to put off the foreboding which lay heavy upon him, until, finally, unable to resist the impulse, he rose, slid his feet into his slippers, and going noiselessly into the drawing-room, stepped to the windows and put the curtains softly aside. What first met his eye as he turned was the door of his little wine-closet in the wall. It was standing wide open, and about the lock the wood was hacked and hewed away in great splinters. On a chair near by lay a rough knife with the blade open and a sliver of wood yet sticking to the point. Then he looked toward the divan. Cavendish was lying face down upon it, outside the blankets, with his head lolling sharply over the edge. His left arm was extended full length toward the ground, where his fingers just touched a bottle of French absinthe, overturned upon its side, and uncorked, with the thick, gummy liquid spread from its mouth in a circular pool on the waxed floor.

title: The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter V


text:
The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter VI

Chapter VI. McGrath Laughs
The clock on the huge central tower of the Capitol marked nine, as the Lieutenant-Governor passed rapidly through the lofty entrance hall toward the corridor leading to his office and that of Governor Abbott. Already his promptness was proverbial, and there were those in the great, grim building who looked forward to the moment of his arrival, each morning, with a kind of eagerness. These were the simpler folk of the official world with which circumstance housed him for eight hours daily, — bootblacks, elevator-boys, porters, doormen. For to the big, clean, wholesome personality which appeals irresistibly to these humbler people, Barclay added an astonishing memory for faces, and for the names and circumstances connected with them. It was a gift which counted as an unspeakably important factor in the establishment and maintenance of unusually cordial relations with all those with whom he came in contact. No one brought within the radius of his personal magnetism long resisted it. It was only those who judged him from a distance, as did the press and the rank and file of his party, or those who deliberately misinterpreted him, as did his political enemies, who permitted themselves anything short of enthusiasm for John Barclay. And this faculty for attracting admiration and commanding respect, this infallible kindness and this inherent dignity, were never made manifest to so great advantage as in his attitude toward his inferiors. These adored him. He accumulated, bit by bit, a remarkable store of intimate information relating to them, and employed it in his intercourse with them, with a tact and a frank sincerity of interest which never failed of their effect. The response thus elicited was strongest of the minor pleasures in his life. He was aware — none better — of the shrewdness native to those who have no claim upon one’s recognition, their appreciation of notice that is unfeignedly interested, their sensitiveness to open indifference, their resentment of the simulated consideration which is mere impertinence; and he was conscious of a little inward thrill of satisfaction at the difference of attitude in the employees at the Capitol as toward Governor Abbott and himself. Where the former’s suavity elicited only formal respect, manifestly obligatory, his own whole-heartedness lined his way with smiles and kindly greetings. His official existence, beset with annoyance, mortification, and disappointment, was, as he often reflected, made tolerable only by this friendliness which he, almost unconsciously, inspired. Dogs, children, and his subordinates — the three most intuitively critical classes of beings — were all his friends. The pathway to and from the daily routine, which he was coming to regard as moral martyrdom, was a pathway illumined with sunlight and strewn with flowers!

As the Lieutenant-Governor passed through his ante-room, with a wink at the boy, a nod to the stenographer, and a word of greeting to his private secretary, and entered his office, he was surprised to find the communicating door open, and to hear the sound of a vaguely familiar voice in the Governor’s room beyond. In an effort to place the speaker, he hesitated briefly before advancing to a point which would bring him within range of the Governor’s eye. Almost immediately, the memory of the convention rushed over him, and he recognized the voice as that of Michael McGrath.

“And it won’t be a strike like other strikes,” he was saying, “not so long as I’m running it, that is. It’s going to mean business from the word go! There’s been too much shilly-shallying in the strikes I’ve known anything about, too much talk, and too much wasting of Union funds. You know what I mean. It isn’t enough to tie up a mill, and then hang around on street-corners for two months, waiting for the other side to give in. The only place to hit a man like Rathbawne is in his pocket, and by that I don’t mean simply cutting off his income, but chopping into his capital as well. He’s got to understand” —

The Lieutenant-Governor walked over to his desk, laid his hat and stick on a chair, and, before removing his overcoat, began turning over the pile of letters which awaited his attention. As he did so, Governor Abbott’s voice broke in suavely upon the other’s.

“I deprecate any resort to violence,” he said. “You must proceed with discretion if you expect the state to maintain an attitude of neutrality. Otherwise, the police or the militia” —

“Oh, to hell with the police and the militia!” broke in McGrath impatiently. “What’s the use” —

“There is the Lieutenant-Governor now,” interrupted the other. “Perhaps he has some news for us. Mr. Barclay, will you kindly step in here for a moment?”

McGrath was standing on the opposite side of the Governor’s table as Barclay entered the room. He acknowledged the latter’s curt nod with an ironical bow, slipped his hands into the pockets of his checked trousers, and stood waiting, with his square head thrust forward, for what was to follow.

“Mr. McGrath has called,” continued the Governor, “to explain the attitude of the Union in the impending strike at the Rathbawne Mills. I’ve been telling him of our conversation of yesterday afternoon, and that, as you were to see Mr. Rathbawne last night, you would probably have something to tell us in regard to his position. Were you able to persuade him to a more reasonable view of the situation?”

“I have nothing to add, sir, to what I said yesterday,” replied Barclay. “I told you then that I had no intention of endeavoring to influence Mr. Rathbawne’s judgment.”

“He spoke to you about it?”

“Yes.”

“And asked your advice?”

“He did.”

“And you replied?”

The Lieutenant-Governor flushed.

“I beg to suggest, sir,” he answered, “that this is hardly the time for me to commit myself as to that. I conceive it to be a matter of official privacy. Mr. McGrath” —

“You have my authority to speak, Mr. Barclay,” said the Governor. “Indeed, I desire it. Since one side knows your views, there is no reason why the other should not be in formed as well. Mr. McGrath is the president of the Union. It is best that he should know the attitude of the state authorities in this controversy.”

“I am not in a position to question your wishes, sir. You should know best.”

“One cannot pretend to be infallible, Mr. Barclay,” answered the Governor, rubbing his hands. “One can only do what seems to be right and proper under the circumstances. By our conversation of yesterday, I in a measure put the negotiations with Mr. Rathbawne into your hands.”

“It is a task I did not seek, sir. Pardon me if I say that it is also one which I should hardly have accepted, had I been aware that in speaking as you did you were actually asking me to assume it. Mr. Rathbawne is my friend, and, moreover, my personal convictions” —

The Governor held up his hand.

“There can be no question of friendship or of personal conviction, Mr. Barclay, in the case of a duty imposed upon a state official. I realize that what you — or I, for that matter — must do in the performance of our obligations, is oftentimes disagreeable, oftentimes at variance with our wishes. But that is unavoidable.”

Barclay moved uneasily. The intrusion of this pedantry, so conspicuously insincere, with its implied rebuke, chafed him unspeakably, in view of the presence of McGrath. The Governor had adopted the tone, half authoritative, half reproachful, of a teacher reproving a refractory child.

“My time, as you must know, is inadequate to the demands made upon it. I am forced, on occasions, to turn more or less important matters over to others. To whom more naturally than to you, Mr. Barclay?”

“May I suggest, sir, that there can be no profit in prolonging this discussion? I appreciate the position perfectly, and I am quite prepared to state what I know of Mr. Rathbawne’s attitude toward the demands of the Union.”

“Ah,” said the Governor, “that is as it should be, and as satisfactory as possible. Let me remind you, Mr. Barclay, that it was not I, but yourself, who introduced this digression.”

He turned to the president of the Union.

“You will understand from what I have said, Mr. McGrath,” he added, “both to the Lieutenant-Governor and to you, that in the matter of the proposed strike, he is, to all intents and purposes, acting in my stead. He was in a position to approach Mr. Rathbawne, and I was not. Now, Mr. Barclay, if you please” —

The Lieutenant-Governor straightened himself instinctively, as, for the first time, he addressed himself to the agitator.

“Mr. McGrath,” he said, “my confidence in Mr. Rathbawne’s fairness and integrity would have led me to approve any course which he might have seen fit to take. As you have already heard me say, I had absolutely no intention of endeavoring to influence his judgment. Greatly to my surprise, Mr. Rathbawne himself consulted me in the matter, without any suggestion on my part, and asked for my advice.”

“That’s fortunate,” put in McGrath, “very fortunate. You’ve been able to sidetrack a lot of trouble.”

Barclay’s eyes hardened at the hypocrisy of the sneer.

“I have pleasure in informing you,” he continued, “that, in reply, I advised him to fight the Union in the present dispute to the utmost of his means and ability. I should have counseled him further to hold out until he had spent his last cent and shed his last drop of blood, except that, knowing him as I do, I conceived such a recommendation to be wholly superfluous. Mr. Rathbawne has his character and his record behind him. There is about as much chance of his yielding you an inch of ground as if he were standing with his back against the Capitol!”

McGrath shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s a damned funny way you have of not influencing people’s judgment,” he said.

“I mis-stated my attitude in saying that,” retorted the Lieutenant-Governor coolly. “I should have said, what, after all, is self-evident, that I had no intention of trying to influence Mr. Rathbawne in favor of the Union, at least so long as it is acting under your dictation. Its present character is well known — almost as well known as yours, in fact — and I believe its position in this matter to be entirely untenable, unjustifiable, and iniquitous. I may add that if it is, indeed, Governor Abbott’s resolve that I am to deal, in his stead, with the question of your proposed strike, you may confidently rely upon having to put the entire state force of Alleghenia out of business before you can even so much as begin to bully Peter Rathbawne into submission!”

“I that’s your opinion of the Union,” said McGrath sullenly, “it might be interesting to hear your opinion of me.”

“You are perfectly welcome to it,” replied the Lieutenant-Governor easily. “I consider you an unmitigated blackguard!”

Governor Abbott tipped back his chair and looked at McGrath.

“That’s pretty plain talk,” he said. “You see how it is, Mr. McGrath. You’ll have to go ahead on your own responsibility, and you mustn’t be surprised if the State steps in at the first evidence of disorder.”

McGrath rose, flecked some specks of dust from his waistcoat, and walked toward the door without a word. On the threshold he turned, looked from the Governor to the Lieutenant-Governor, and back again, and laughed. Then he went out, closing the door softly behind him.

At the Rathbawne Mills it was usual for a huge whistle to give one long blast at noon as a signal for the lunch hour. On that day, however, following McGrath’s instructions, the single blast was replaced by five short ones in rapid succession, and three minutes later the employees were pouring through half a dozen gates into the streets surrounding the mills, in laughing, chattering, excited streams.

A majority of the men went directly to a hall in the neighborhood where McGrath had called a mass-meeting for half-past twelve. A minority of them crowded into the saloons of the vicinity, where they pounded on the bars, and filled the close, smoke-grayed air with heated discussion. Several of the discharged hands were in evidence, each surrounded by an attentive group, and expounding more or less inflammatory views. The women gathered in gossiping throngs on the sidewalks, laughing, and pulling each other about by the arms. The boys played ball and leap-frog in the streets, shouting, and whistling through their fingers. In brief, the great strike was on, but, for the time being, it was masquerading in the guise of a public holiday.

At one o’clock the whistle blew again, and a thousand voices whooped a derisive accompaniment, but no one of the throng in the streets made a move toward the mills. Half an hour later, watchmen swung to and bolted the gates, and, issuing presently from a small side entrance, in company, were received with cheers, handshakes, and slaps upon the back. Then the crowd gradually thinned, — many going to the already well-filled hall where McGrath was delivering an address, and others to their homes, — and a silence descended upon the neighborhood, broken only by the voices of the men about the saloon doorways.

At two, Peter Rathbawne, attended by his private secretary, came out of the side entrance and walked slowly away in the direction of his home. He held his head high, and his eyes straight to the front, and paid no attention to the respectful greetings of those of the strikers who saluted him, touching their hats. There were many among them whose hearts sank at this attitude in a man who had made it his boast that he knew every hand in his mills by sight, and who, in the past, had had a nod or a friendly word for each and all of them. For the first time a premonition settled upon them of what this strike, which had been welcomed principally for novelty’s sake, might mean. It was the first the Rathbawne Mills had ever known. Some of those who saw the face of Peter Rathbawne that afternoon were already hoping that it might be the last.

The Lieutenant-Governor returned to his apartment for lunch. Cavendish was still sleeping as he had left him, with a stalwart negro porter, summoned from the Capitol by telephone early that morning, watching in a chair. Under Barclay’s orders, a carpenter had already removed the splintered door of the wine-closet, and an upholsterer had replaced it by a slender brass rod from which swung a velvet curtain. With his own hands the Lieutenant-Governor had taken away the fallen bottle, mopped up the pool of absinthe, and put the room to rights. Now he dismissed the negro, took from his pocket a little box of strychnine tablets, obtained from his physician on his way from the Capitol, and, after a brief survey of his surroundings to see that all was in order, went over to the divan and shook the sleeping man by the shoulders.

“Come, lazy-bones!” he said, with a laugh. “You’ve slept over twelve hours. That will do — even for a nervous wreck.”

Cavendish opened his swollen eyes slowly, looked at him, and then closed them again with a murmured “Oh, God!” which was like a groan.

To this the Lieutenant-Governor paid no heed. Passing into the bathroom, he turned on the cold water in the tub, poured a half glass of vichy from a syphon, and then returned, carrying the tumbler in his hand. Cavendish had raised himself on one elbow, and was looking stupidly about the room.

“Here you are,” said Barclay cheerfully. “Stow this pill, and here’s vichy to wash it down. Your bath’s running. By the time you’ve had it, there’ll be some clothes ready for you.”

Cavendish gulped down the tablet, and sat upright.

“Last night” — he faltered.

For the first time in his life, the Lieutenant-Governor called him by his first name.

“Last night, Spencer,” he said, looking him fairly in the eye, “belongs to the past, and is taboo. I won’t hear a word about it. This is to-day. Get up, and we’ll set about putting wrong right. You’re a man again. Don’t forget that. And I’m your friend. Don’t forget that, either.”

His hand rested for an instant on the other’s shoulder with a firm pressure, and then he passed into his bedroom and shut the door.

They had lunch together in the dining-room of the “Rockingham,” and then went up again to Barclay’s rooms. At the door, Cavendish came to a halt.

“I can’t stand this,” he said.

“You’ll have to,” replied the Lieutenant-Governor, “so shut up!”

“You’ve made a change,” said Cavendish obstinately, pointing to the curtained cupboard.

Barclay’s eyes did not follow the gesture.

“So have you!” he answered. “Now, look here. There are twenty dollars in the waistcoat of that suit, and a letter to Payson of the ‘Kenton City Sentinel.’ Go down and see him this afternoon, and I think he’ll give you a job at reporting, which will fix you up for the present. In another pocket you’ll find a box, with three tablets like the one you had before lunch. Take one of them every two hours. In still another pocket there’s a key to these rooms. I’m going to be busy till about ten o’clock, so you’ll have to shift for yourself. Make yourself at home, and if you’re awake I’ll see you when I come in.”

Taking him suddenly by the shoulders, he twisted him about, facing the chimney piece, on which stood a photograph of Natalie Rathbawne, smiling out of a silver frame.

“I’ll leave you to talk it out with her,” he added simply.

In the hall, as he passed out, he caught a reflection of Cavendish in a mirror. His hands were resting on the mantel-edge, and he was leaning forward with his haggard face close to the photograph. Barclay looked at his watch.

“Two o’clock,” he said to himself, “and all’s well!”

title: The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter VI


text:
The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter VII

Chapter VII. The Mirage of Power
Barclay was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration such as he had not known for many weeks, as he swung into Bradbury Avenue late that afternoon on his way to the Rathbawne residence. The duties of the day had been inordinately petty and vexatious, but he had dispatched them one and all with something approaching enthusiasm, — a touch of the old Quixotic energy with which he had taken office. The morning conversation in Governor Abbott’s room had braced and toned him. He forgot its inauspicious opening, and even his distress at the attempt to force him into the position of mediator between Peter Rathbawne and the Union, in the solid satisfaction of having been able to speak his mind to McGrath, and call that worthy a blackguard to his face. He was a man who despised a quarrel, but, for its own sake, loved a square, hard fight.

Back, however, of this somewhat inadequate excuse for cheerfulness lay the Governor’s assurance that in the matter of the strike his lieutenant was to have free rein. It was the first time since the beginning of their official association that Elijah Abbott had placed an actual responsibility in Barclay’s hands. A corner-stone laying, a banquet here and there, the opening of a trolley line, or a library, or a sewer, — these were the major calls upon the Lieutenant-Governor’s time. The main current of routine was a hopeless monotony of official correspondence, investigations, statistics, reading and reporting on the interminable and flatulent maunderings of the Legislature, — duties heart-breaking in their desperate tedium and maddening inutility.

But at last here was responsibility, actual and deeply significant, calling for the exercise of tact, courage, and immutable firmness. The particular task was not one which he would have coveted, and yet he welcomed it. Anything, — anything to assuage in him that sense of ineptitude, of being ignored, a titled nonentity!

With this vast lightening of spirit came, not only gratitude, but a sense of lenity toward Governor Abbott. He encouraged himself to believe that the note between them had been one of misunderstanding merely. It might not be too late, after all! Gradually, he began to form a mental picture of a growing sympathy and affiliation between them, large with possibilities of improvement for Alleghenia. As he turned into the Rathbawnes’ gateway, he could have laughed aloud for very lightness of heart. His optimism was not even impaired by running, in the hall, full against Mrs. Rathbawne.

“Good gracious! Lieutenant-Governor, is that you?”

Repeated and earnest endeavor on Barclay’s part had never dissuaded her from this form of address.

“What is the use of having such a title, if one can’t call you by it?” she would say, when he remonstrated. “Do you suppose that, if Natalie were engaged to a prince, I should be going around, calling him Tom, Dick, or Harry, instead of ‘Your Royal Highness’? You ought to be proud of your title. I am!”

“But, Mrs. Rathbawne” —

“Now, please not, Lieutenant-Governor, please not! I like it best that way.”

The north wind was attentive and amenable to the voice of persuasion, in comparison with Josephine Rathbawne.

“Of course you know the strike is on!” she continued now, without waiting for an assurance from Barclay that he was indeed none other than himself. “Isn’t it awful? I expect to hear the roar of the mob at any moment! Come into the drawing-room. Natalie was there, only half an hour ago.”

And she swept through the doorway, Barclay following.

“Natalie,” she began, “here’s the Lieu — why, Dorothy! I took you for Natalie. And — er — oh! Why, Mr. — er — how de do? I didn’t see you at first. Oh, do turn on the switch, my dear. The place is as black as pitch.”

The electric light, flooding the room, revealed young Nisbet, one vast, consuming blush, and Dorothy, with a dangerous light in her eyes, and her lips tightly compressed. It was plain that Mrs. Rathbawne had fallen foul of Dan Cupid’s machinery once more!

“Why, Mr. Nisbet! I thought you were in New York.”

“I had a telegram this morning, calling the date off,” said young Nisbet in pitiable confusion; “that is, I didn’t have to go, you know. So I just fell in here to explain. I thought some of you might spot me on the street, and after I’d said” —

He began to flounder hopelessly, and cast a glance of mute appeal at Dorothy. That facile young lady marched directly into the breach.

“If you and John are looking for Natalie,” she said, “you’ll find her in the library with Dad. How do you do, John?”

“Pretty well, I thank you, Flibbertigibbet. It is really your husband whom I came to see, Mrs. Rathbawne. I’ve a little business with him, so, for the moment, I’ll have to give Natalie the cold shoulder.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Rathbawne, lifting her fat hands. “Of course, Lieutenant-Governor! I understand perfectly. Business before pleasure, always. Go right in, won’t you, and send Natalie here to me. I’ll stay here. Aren’t we going to have tea, Dorothy? Oh, do try to sit up straight, my dear!”

Natalie and her father were bending low over a great portfolio, their heads close together in the yellow glow of the table-lamp, which was the only light in the room. Rathbawne looked up with a grim smile, as the Lieutenant-Governor entered.

“Pottering over my autographs, again, you see,” he remarked. “I’ve been neglecting them shamefully, of late — eh, Natalie? Didn’t have the time. It looks just now as if I wouldn’t have to complain again of lack of leisure for quite a while!”

“It was that I dropped in to see you about,” said Barclay, striving, with only partial success, to keep the exultation out of his voice. “You may not be in for so much leisure as you imagine, Mr. Rathbawne. You may not get much of a holiday, after all.”

Without for an instant losing the Lieutenant-Governor’s eye, Rathbawne reached out and touched his daughter on the arm.

“Oh, Dad!” she said reproachfully.

“There’s no need for her to go, sir,” added Barclay, “unless you wish it. I bring only good news.”

Acquiescing, Rathbawne drew Natalie close to him, passing one arm across her shoulders, so that his gnarled hand rested firmly on the delicate fabric of her sleeve. Between these two there had always lain a sympathy, an affection, a mutuality of comprehension, more like the relation of husband and wife than that of child and parent.

“Nothing but good news?” answered Rathbawne. Go on. What is it?”

“News not so much of actual happenings as of potentialities,” said the Lieutenant-Governor. “Last night I had to say to you that in the cause of right I was as powerless to aid you as a baby. To-night, I have come to tell you that I am in a position to see justice done, and that I will.”

In detail, his voice ringing with enthusiasm and confidence, he described the interview of that morning, his statement of Rathbawne’s position, his passage at arms with McGrath, finally, the Governor’s announcement that the strike was to be supervised by his lieutenant in his stead.

“I had almost lost hope,” he concluded. “I thought my opportunity would never come, and here it is, after all — the chance to act! And, somehow, I feel that it is only the beginning — that, as he gets to understand me better” —

Rathbawne suddenly left his daughter’s side, and in three steps was directly before the Lieutenant-Governor. As he interrupted him, his fingers closed upon the lapels of the other’s coat, and he punctuated his words with little tugs at these, his knuckles coming together with tiny muffled thuds. He spoke with a gravity that was vibrant with suppressed anger and slow with sincere regret.

“My boy,” he said, “it’s not a gracious thing to do to spoil an enthusiasm like yours, but don’t deceive yourself. Elijah Abbott as a trickster is alone in his class. You were never more powerless to act for the right than you are at this moment.”

“But I have his assurance” —

“Oh, his assurance! It isn’t worth the ash off your cigar. What, give you a chance to interfere with the will of the Union which made him, and owns him, body and soul? Never in God’s world! Listen to me. I spent an hour in his office this very afternoon, discussing the strike — and he never so much as mentioned your name!”

The Lieutenant-Governor winced as if the words had been the touch of a lancet. Then he closed his eyes.

“And I was in the next room,” he said, almost as if to himself, — “planning — my — control — of the situation! Good God!”

“I went directly to him,” continued Rathbawne, “because I knew that it would be purely and simply a waste of time to parley with the lesser officials who are either helpless or frankly his tools. I knew, too, that no satisfactory result would come of appealing to him, but I wanted to give him the chance. All I asked of him was an assurance that the mills would have proper police protection, and that, if necessary, the militia would be called out in support of order. The outcome was exactly what I expected. Governor Abbott rubbed his hands, and smiled, and said: ‘All in good time, Mr. Rathbawne, all in good time. When the conditions seem to warrant it, we can discuss these measures.’ That means that they are free to blow the mills to kingdom come, before a finger will be raised by the authorities to prevent them. And what’s more, they’ll do it! Do you think I don’t know McGrath?”

As he had intended it should, this speech had given the other a chance to recover himself. The Lieutenant-Governor’s habitual poise was already restored, and his voice, as he answered, was quite steady, but eloquent of his desperate discouragement and weariness.

“I hope it’s not as bad as all that, Mr. Rathbawne. It’s not necessary to tell you, that for me there can never again be such a thing as trusting the word of Governor Abbott; but, at the same time, I can hardly bring myself to believe that he would openly countenance the practical existence of anarchy in the capital city of Alleghenia.”

“Well, I can, then!” declared Rathbawne. “I can believe anything of him! Mark my words, John, he’s as sleek a scoundrel as you’ll find outside of the State’s Prison. He cares less for Alleghenia and her capital city than you do for one of the hairs on his rascally head. I tell you, the Union has bought him, body and soul, and unless a miracle comes down from heaven, I’m a beaten man!”

Barclay bit his lips without replying. In his heart of hearts, he knew that Peter Rathbawne’s words were true.

“He’ll be impeached, sooner or later,” continued the old man, “if there’s a speck of decency left in the Legislature — which I doubt. But long before that, John, long before that, I’ll be down and out. I would to God you were Governor of Alleghenia, my boy. You’re the only ray of hope I can see for her.”

The Lieutenant-Governor fell back a step, and covered his face with his hands. For a full minute there was absolute silence. Rathbawne had returned to the table, and, with his fore-arms across the back of a chair, and one foot on the lower cross-bar, was staring vacantly at his autographs, his hands moulding and remoulding each other into an infinity of forms. Natalie was at the window, her face in the crevice between the curtains. The same impulse had prompted both father and daughter. There are some things which it is better not to watch.

They turned at the sound of his voice, to find him with his head flung back, his hands clenched at his sides, his right foot planted firmly in advance of his left, his whole bearing one of passionate earnestness. And, though he was seemingly addressing Rathbawne, there was that in his voice and in his words which was meant for every ear in the state!

“Governor of Alleghenia!” he said, “I would to God I were! Sometimes I almost — yes, sometimes I wholly despair. I love this state, Mr. Rathbawne, as I love nothing else on earth — not even my girl there, not even Natalie. You two are the only ones in the world who can understand what it means when I say that. It has always been so, ever since I was big enough to know what Alleghenia meant, and more than ever since I have come to understand her shame, and her vital peril, and her dire need. I’ve never tried to explain the feeling; I’ve never found any one who seemed to share it with me. I hear other men talk of national patriotism, and the flag, and all that, and I understand it, and honor them for it. But — while it may be only a fancy of mine — for me Kenton City comes even before Washington, and even before these United States of America the sovereign state of Alleghenia! I would have her courts incorruptibility itself, her government the perfect commingling of equity and mercy; her press the vehicle of verity, intelligence, and watchfulness; her public servants the faithful exponents of loyalty and diligence; her people, one and all, whatever is best in our interpretation of the word American — and then, something more! — Alleghenians! — citizens, not only of the Republic, but of the state which I would have shine brightest in the field of stars, and be quoted, from Maine to California, and from Florida to Washington, as the synonym for law and order, truth, integrity, and justice. You know how far the dream is from the reality. We are held up to ridicule and contempt as law breakers, time-servers, and bribe-takers — and we deserve it! I can’t see help on any hand. I don’t believe our people, as a class, are actually vicious and corrupt — only callous and indifferent, accustomed so long to the spectacle of political chicanery and depravity that they have lost their ability to appreciate its significance. But, so far as results are concerned, it all amounts to the same thing. Once, I hoped I should be able to do something. But now — I’m a nonentity, Mr. Rathbawne, as you know, and not only that, but a man who has taken a false step, from which he can never recover. I’m dead, politically speaking — as dead as Benjamin Butler!”

He paused, drawing a deep breath.

“We were speaking of your interview,” he added, more evenly. “What was the result?”

“Nothing, beyond what I’ve told you,” answered Rathbawne, shaking his head. “All I can do is to keep my mouth shut, await developments, and trust in a Providence which it takes a good bit of obstinacy to believe hasn’t deserted the state of Alleghenia for good and all. It isn’t for my own sake alone, John, that I pray the Union will give in before my people begin to think of violence. You remember ’94 in Chicago? Well, we don’t want anything like that in Kenton City. It would be the last straw! Alleghenia has a big enough burden of disgrace to carry, as it is.”

A servant entered, even as he was speaking, to summon him to the telephone, and with an exclamation of impatience he left the room. Immediately, Natalie stepped from her post at the window, and came toward Barclay with outstretched hands.

“Oh, Johnny boy,” she said, “I’m so sorry. How you’ve been hurt, dear, and disappointed, and cruelly wronged!”

The Lieutenant-Governor’s hands clenched again at the sound of sorrow in her voice, and he strove in vain to control the tremor of his lip. Tenderly he put his arms about her.

“I’m sorry, too, little girl — sorry you were here to see me make a fool of myself and then squeal when I got hurt as I deserved. I shouldn’t have done that. But I was so proud — so grateful — I thought I was going to be able” —

“Johnny — Johnny!”

They held to each other rigidly for an instant, her face against his sleeve, in an agony which no tears came to soothe.

“There!” said Barclay presently. “I’m better already. It does one good to blow off steam, now and again.”

His tone lightened perceptibly.

“And look here,” he added, “what’s most important, after all, is that I have news for you, and ought to be delivering it.”

As yet, they did not dare to meet each other’s eyes, but Natalie took the cue.

“You can spare yourself the trouble, my lord,” she retorted, sweeping him a curtsy. “I can guess what it is, without your aid. You’ve found him!”

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t. But you will remember that I asked you to find him. The inference is as plain as a pikestaff.”

“Arrogance! But you’re right. I have. He has been at my rooms since last night. He was frightfully shaky, and utterly despondent, but he’s taking something to settle his nerves, and I’ve no doubt a week or so of good food and straight living will bring him around into something like his old form.”

“Boy dear! And you’re taking care of him?”

“Oh, just directing the cure, that’s all! I’ll tell you more when I can report definite progress. Do you suppose there is a single secluded corner in all this mansion which has not already been preëmpted by Dorothy and Nisbet?”

He slipped his arm about her again, and together they went out, across the wide hall, toward the drawing-room. Rathbawne was standing at the telephone under the stairway, but, as they approached him, he replaced the receiver, and stepped forth under the light of the chandelier. They both halted, shocked into speechlessness by the look on his face. The past ten minutes seemed to have added a decade to his age. His cheeks were white and drawn, and with his hands he groped before him, as if he had been stricken blind. As he came close to them, he lifted his head, and peered first at his daughter, and then at Barclay, seeming barely to recognize them.

“Dad! What is it?” said the girl, in a voice just above a whisper.

Rathbawne raised his hand, and pushed back the hair from his forehead.

“A message — from Payson — of the ‘Sentinel,’” he mumbled. “It seems there’s a fire — a fire on Charles Street — near the mills — one of my buildings — a shop — a shop. Some one in the crowd — threw a torch in at the window — there is a great crowd — a throng of strikers — watching — cheering the flames — hissing the firemen. They’ve begun early — and this is only the beginning! My people — my people” —

He stumbled forward, and would have fallen, but that his daughter caught him. To his dying day Barclay remembered how, as he sprang to aid her, her hands gleamed, white and slender, against the black of Peter Rathbawne’s coat.

The hush that followed was broken presently by the sound of the old man’s choking sobs, and the low, soothing tones of Natalie, murmuring against his ear. From the drawing-room came indeterminate scraps of Mrs. Wynyard’s gay chatter, as she regaled Mrs. Rathbawne with the gossip gleaned in a round of calls. She herself was partly visible, drawing off her gloves before the fire. From the music-room beyond issued the chords of Dorothy’s none-too-sure accompaniment, and young Nisbet’s superb, full tenor:—

“‘Ah, love, could you and I with fate conspire To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire’”—

But, in the Lieutenant-Governor’s imagination, another sound mingled with and dominated these, — the voice of Michael McGrath, as he had heard it that morning, through the open door of Governor Abbott’s room:—

“It won’t be a strike like other strikes, not so long as I’m running it, that is. It’s going to mean business from the word go!”

title: The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter VII


text:
Page:Boots and Saddles.djvu/113

100 preparations. She had thrust through a hole in the paper partition each article of her little wardrobe, even to her shoes, and was putting the first rosy foot through after them. When the mother discovered this she laughed heartily, and gave us thus an opportunity to join her.

Our own post was somewhat sheltered by the bluffs behind; but though our quarters were plastered, the unseasoned lumber warped, and it was a struggle to keep warm. The wood with which we were provided was far from dry, and much of it of that kind that burns quickly but sends out little heat. It seemed to require the entire time of one man to keep up the fires. It was thus a blessed thing for the poor fellow whose duty it was, for he had never been able to remain long with his company at a time. He had an uncontrollable habit of drinking. Most of the time he belonged to the band of prisoners who are taken out of the guard-house every day, under a sentinel, to police the garrison and cut the wood. Mary gave them the coffee and whatever else was left from the table every day. This seemingly worthless fellow told Mary that he believed he could "keep straight" if Mrs. Custer would get the general to remit his sentence and let him come to us to keep the fires. So he came, and was occasionally sober for some time. He learned to go through the house with his arms full of wood when he was quite drunk. He really had too much heart to cause me trouble, and used to say, "Mary, I am pretty full, but don't let Mrs. Custer know it, for I told her I would not do so again, and I don't like to make her feel bad." So Mary spied out the land before

title: Page:Boots and Saddles.djvu/113