The Hermit And The Wild Woman
by
Edith Wharton
Part 4 out of 4
cigarette between his lips, while Shepson paced the dirty floor or
halted impatiently before an untouched canvas on the easel.
"I tell you vat it is, Mr. Sdanwell, I can't make you out!" he
lamented. "Last vinter you got a sdart that vould have kept most men
going for years. After making dat hit vith Mrs. Millington's picture
you could have bainted half the town. And here you are sitting on
your divan and saying you can't make up your mind to take another
order. Vell, I can only say that if you take much longer to make it
up, you'll find some other chap has cut in and got your job. Mrs.
Van Orley has been waiting since last August, and she dells me you
haven't even answered her letter."
"How could I? I didn't know if I wanted to paint her."
"My goodness! Don't you know if you vant three thousand tollars?"
Stanwell surveyed his cigarette. "No, I'm not sure I do," he said.
Shepson flung out his hands. "Ask more den--but do it quick!" he
exclaimed.
Left to himself, Stanwell stood in silent contemplation of the
canvas on which the dealer had riveted his reproachful gaze. It had
been destined to reflect the opulent image of Mrs. Alpheus Van
Orley, but some secret reluctance of Stanwell's had stayed the
execution of the task. He had painted two of Mrs. Millington's
friends in the spring, had been much praised and liberally paid for
his work, and then, declining several recent orders to be executed
at Newport, had surprised his friends by remaining quietly in town.
It was not till August that he hired a little cottage on the New
Jersey coast and invited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the
invitation, and the three had spent together six weeks of seashore
idleness, during which Stanwell's modest rafters shook with Caspar's
denunciations of his host's venality, and the brightness of Kate's
gratitude was tempered by a tinge of reproach. But her grief over
Stanwell's apostasy could not efface the fact that he had offered
her brother the means of escape from town, and Stanwell himself was
consoled by the reflection that but for Mrs. Millington's portrait
he could not have performed even this trifling service for his
friends.
When the Arrans left him in September he went to pay a few visits in
the country, and on his return, a month later, to the studio
building he found that things had not gone well with Caspar. The
little sculptor had caught cold, and the labour and expense of
converting his gigantic off- spring into marble seemed to hang
heavily upon him. He and Kate were living in a damp company of
amorphous clay monsters, unfinished witnesses to the creative frenzy
which had seized him after the sale of his group; and the doctor had
urged that his patient should be removed to warmer and drier
lodgings. But to uproot Caspar was impossible, and his sister could
only feed the stove, and swaddle him in mufflers and felt slippers.
Stanwell found that during his absence Mungold had reappeared, fresh
and rosy from a summer in Europe, and as prodigal as ever of the
only form of attention which Kate could be counted on not to resent.
The game and champagne reappeared with him, and he seemed as ready
as Stanwell to lend a patient ear to Caspar's homilies. But Stanwell
could see that, even now, Kate had not forgiven him for the Cupids.
Stanwell himself had spent the early winter months in idleness. The
sight of his tools filled him with a strange repugnance, and he
absented himself as much as possible from the studio. But Shepson's
visit roused him to the fact that he must decide on some definite
course of action. If he wished to follow up his success of the
previous spring he must refuse no more orders: he must not let Mrs.
Van Orley slip away from him. He knew there were competitors enough
ready to profit by his hesitations, and since his success was the
result of a whim, a whim might undo it. With a sudden gesture of
decision he caught up his hat and left the studio.
On the landing he met Kate Arran. She too was going out, drawn forth
by the sudden radiance of the January afternoon. She met him with a
smile which seemed the answer to his uncertainties, and he asked
abruptly if she had time to take a walk with him.
Yes; for once she had time, for Mr. Mungold was sitting with Caspar,
and had promised to remain till she came in. It mattered little to
Stanwell that Mungold was with Caspar as long as he himself was with
Kate; and he instantly soared to the suggestion that they should
prolong the painter's vigil by taking the "elevated" to the Park. In
this too his companion acquiesced after a moment of surprise: she
seemed in a consenting mood, and Stanwell augured well from the
fact.
The Park was clothed in the double glitter of snow and sunshine.
They roamed the hard white alleys to a continuous tinkle of
sleigh-bells, and Kate brightened with the exhilaration of the
scene. It was not often that she permitted herself such an escape
from routine, and in this new environment, which seemed to detach
her from her daily setting, Stanwell had his first complete vision
of her. To the girl also their unwonted isolation seemed to create a
sense of fuller communion, for she began presently, as they reached
the leafless solitude of the Ramble, to speak with sudden freedom of
her brother. It appeared that the orders against which Caspar had so
heroically steeled himself were slow in coming: he had received no
commission since the sale of his group, and he was beginning to
suffer from a reaction of discouragement. Oh, it was not the craving
for popularity--Stanwell knew how far above that he stood. But it
had been exquisite, yes, exquisite to him to find himself believed
in, understood. He had fancied that the purchase of the group was
the dawn of a tardy recognition--and now the darkness of
indifference had set in again, no one spoke of him, no one wrote of
him, no one cared.
"If he were in good health it would not matter--he would throw off
such weakness, he would live only for the joy of his work; but he is
losing ground, his strength is failing, and he is so afraid there
will not be time enough left--time enough for full recognition," she
explained.
The quiver in her voice silenced Stanwell: he was afraid of echoing
it with his own. At length he said: "Oh, more orders will come.
Success is a gradual growth."
"Yes, _real_ success," she said, with a solemn note in which he
caught--and forgave--a reflection on his own facile triumphs.
"But when the orders do come," she continued, "will he have strength
to carry them out? Last winter the doctor thought he only needed
work to set him up; now he talks of rest instead! He says we ought
to go to a warm climate--but how can Caspar leave the group?"
"Oh, hang the group--let him chuck the order!" cried Stanwell.
She looked at him tragically. "The money is spent," she said.
He coloured to the roots of his hair. "But ill-health--ill-health
excuses everything. If he goes away now he will come back good for
twice the amount of work in the spring. A sculptor is not expected
to deliver a statue on a given day, like a package of groceries! You
must do as the doctor says--you must make him chuck everything and
go."
They had reached a windless nook above the lake, and, pausing in the
stress of their talk, she let herself sink on a bench beside the
path. The movement encouraged him, and he seated himself at her
side.
"You must take him away at once," he repeated urgently. "He must be
made comfortable--you must both be free from worry. And I want you
to let me manage it for you--"
He broke off, silenced by her rising blush, her protesting murmur.
"Oh, stop, please; let me explain. I'm not talking of lending you
money; I'm talking of giving you--myself. The offer may be just as
unacceptable, but it's of a kind to which it's customary to accord
it a hearing. I should have made it a year ago--the first day I saw
you, I believe!--but that, then, it wasn't in my power to make
things easier for you. But now, you know, I've had a little luck.
Since I painted Mrs. Millington things have changed. I believe I can
get as many orders as I choose--there are two or three people
waiting now. What's the use of it all, if it doesn't bring me a
little happiness? And the only happiness I know is the kind that you
can give me."
He paused, suddenly losing the courage to look at her, so that her
pained murmur was framed for him in a glittering vision of the
frozen lake. He turned with a start and met the refusal in her eyes.
"No--really no?" he repeated.
She shook her head silently.
"I could have helped you--I could have helped you!" he sighed.
She flushed distressfully, but kept her eyes on his.
"It's just that--don't you see?" she reproached him.
"Just that--the fact that I could be of use to you?"
"The fact that, as you say, things have changed since you painted
Mrs. Millington. I haven't seen the later portraits, but they tell
me--"
"Oh, they're just as bad!" Stanwell jeered.
"You've sold your talent, and you know it: that's the dreadful part.
You did it deliberately," she cried with passion.
"Oh, deliberately," he interjected.
"And you're not ashamed--you talk of going on."
"I'm not ashamed; I talk of going on."
She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes
away from him.
"Oh, why--why--why?" she lamented.
It was on the tip of Stanwell's tongue to answer, "That I might say
to you what I am just saying now--" but he replied instead: "A man
may paint bad pictures and be a decent fellow. Look at Mungold,
after all!"
The adjuration had an unexpected effect. Kate's colour faded
suddenly, and she sat motionless, with a stricken face.
"There's a difference--" she began at length abruptly; "the
difference you've always insisted on. Mr. Mungold paints as well as
he can. He has no idea that his pictures are--less good than they
might be."
"Well--?"
"So he can't be accused of doing what he does for money--of
sacrificing anything better." She turned on him with troubled eyes.
"It was you who made me understand that, when Caspar used to make
fun of him."
Stanwell smiled. "I'm glad you still think me a better painter than
Mungold. But isn't it hard that for that very reason I should starve
in a hole? If I painted badly enough you'd see no objection to my
living at the Waldorf!"
"Ah, don't joke about it," she murmured. "Don't triumph in it."
"I see no reason to at present," said Stanwell drily. "But I won't
pretend to be ashamed when I'm not. I think there are occasions when
a man is justified in doing what I've done."
She looked at him solemnly. "What occasions?"
"Why, when he wants money, hang it!"
She drew a deep breath. "Money--money? Has Caspar's example been
nothing to you, then?"
"It hasn't proved to me that I must starve while Mungold lives on
truffles!"
Again her face changed and she stirred uneasily, and then rose to
her feet.
"There is no occasion which can justify an artist's sacrificing his
convictions!" she exclaimed.
Stanwell rose too, facing her with a mounting urgency which sent a
flush to his cheek.
"Can't you conceive such an occasion in my case? The wish, I mean,
to make things easier for Caspar--to help you in any way you might
let me?"
Her face reflected his blush, and she stood gazing at him with a
wounded wonder.
"Caspar and I--you imagine we could live on money earned in _that_
way?"
Stanwell made an impatient gesture. "You've got to live on
something--or he has, even if you don't include yourself!"
Her blush deepened miserably, but she held her head high.
"That's just it--that's what I came here to say to you." She stood a
moment gazing away from him at the lake.
He looked at her in surprise. "You came here to say something to
me?"
"Yes. That we've got to live on something, Caspar and I, as you say;
and since an artist cannot sacrifice his convictions, the sacrifice
must--I mean--I wanted you to know that I have promised to marry Mr.
Mungold."
"Mungold!" Stanwell cried with a sharp note of irony; but her white
look checked it on his lips.
"I know all you are going to say," she murmured, with a kind of
nobleness which moved him even through his sense of its
grotesqueness. "But you must see the distinction, because you first
made it clear to me. I can take money earned in good faith--I can
let Caspar live on it. I can marry Mr. Mungold; because, though his
pictures are bad, he does not prostitute his art."
She began to move away from him slowly, and he followed her in
silence along the frozen path.
When Stanwell re-entered his studio the dusk had fallen. He lit his
lamp and rummaged out some writing-materials. Having found them, he
wrote to Shepson to say that he could not paint Mrs. Van Orley, and
did not care to accept any more orders for the present. He sealed
and stamped the letter and flung it over the banisters for the
janitor to post; then he dragged out his unfinished head of Kate
Arran, replaced it on the easel, and sat down before it with a grim
smile.
THE BEST MAN
I
DUSK had fallen, and the circle of light shed by the lamp of
Governor Mornway's writing-table just rescued from the surrounding
dimness his own imposing bulk, thrown back in a deep chair in the
lounging attitude habitual to him at that hour.
When the Governor of Midsylvania rested he rested completely. Five
minutes earlier he had been bowed over his office desk, an Atlas
with the State on his shoulders; now, his working hours over, he had
the air of a man who has spent his day in desultory pleasure, and
means to end it in the enjoyment of a good dinner. This freedom from
care threw into relief the hovering fidgetiness of his sister, Mrs.
Nimick, who, just outside the circle of lamplight, haunted the warm
gloom of the hearth, from which the wood fire now and then sent up
an exploring flash into her face.
Mrs. Nimick's presence did not usually minister to repose; but the
Governor's serenity was too deep to be easily disturbed, and he felt
the calmness of a man who knows there is a mosquito in the room, but
has drawn the netting close about his head. This calmness reflected
itself in the accent with which he said, throwing himself back to
smile up at his sister: "You know I am not going to make any
appointments for a week."
It was the day after the great reform victory which had put John
Mornway for the second time at the head of his State, a triumph
compared with which even the mighty battle of his first election
sank into insignificance, and he leaned back with the sense of
unassailable placidity which follows upon successful effort.
Mrs. Nimick murmured an apology. "I didn't understand--I saw in this
morning's papers that the Attorney-General was reappointed."
"Oh, Fleetwood--his reappointment was involved in the campaign. He's
one of the principles I represent!"
Mrs. Nimick smiled a little tartly. "It seems odd to some people to
think of Mr. Fleetwood in connection with principles."
The Governor's smile had no answering acerbity; the mention of his
Attorney-General's name had set his blood humming with the thrill of
the fight, and he wondered how it was that Fleetwood had not already
been in to clasp hands with him over their triumph.
"No," he said, good-humoredly, "two years ago Fleetwood's name
didn't stand for principles of any sort; but I believed in him, and
look what he's done for me! I thought he was too big a man not to
see in time that statesmanship is a finer thing than practical
politics, and now that I've given him a chance to make the
discovery, he's on the way to becoming just such a statesman as the
country needs."
"Oh, it's a great deal easier and pleasanter to believe in people,"
replied Mrs. Nimick, in a tone full of occult allusion, "and, of
course, we all knew that Mr. Fleetwood would have a hearing before
any one else."
The Governor took this imperturbably. "Well, at any rate, he isn't
going to fill all the offices in the State; there will probably be
one or two to spare after he has helped himself, and when the time
comes I'll think over your man. I'll consider him."
Mrs. Nimick brightened. "It would make _such_a difference to
Jack--it might mean anything to the poor boy to have Mr. Ashford
appointed!"
The Governor held up a warning hand.
"Oh, I know, one mustn't say that, or at least you mustn't listen.
You're so dreadfully afraid of nepotism. But I'm not asking for
anything for Jack--I have never asked for a crust for any of us,
thank Heaven! No one can point to _me_--" Mrs. Nimick checked
herself suddenly and continued in a more impersonal tone: "But
there's no harm, surely, in my saying a word for Mr. Ashford, when I
know that he's actually under consideration, and I don't see why the
fact that Jack is in his office should prevent my speaking."
"On the contrary," said the Governor, "it implies, on your part, a
personal knowledge of Mr. Ashford's qualifications which may be of
great help to me in reaching a decision."
Mrs. Nimick never quite knew how to meet him when he took that tone,
and the flickering fire made her face for a moment the picture of
uncertainty; then at all hazards she launched out: "Well, I have
Ella's promise, at any rate."
The Governor sat upright. "Ella's promise?"
"To back me up. She thoroughly approves of him!"
The Governor smiled. "You talk as if Ella had a political _salon_and
distributed _lettres de cachet!_I'm glad she approves of Ashford;
but if you think my wife makes my appointments for me--" He broke
off with a laugh at the superfluity of such a protest.
Mrs. Nimick reddened. "One never knows how you will take the
simplest thing. What harm is there in my saying that Ella approves
of Mr. Ashford? I thought you liked her to take an interest in your
work."
"I like it immensely. But I shouldn't care to have it take that
form."
"What form?"
"That of promising to use her influence to get people appointed. But
you always talk of politics in the vocabulary of European courts.
Thank Heaven, Ella has less imagination. She has her sympathies, of
course, but she doesn't think they can affect the distribution of
offices."
Mrs. Nimick gathered up her furs with an air at once crestfallen and
resentful. "I'm sorry--I always seem to say the wrong thing. I'm
sure I came with the best intentions--it's natural that your sister
should want to be with you at such a happy moment."
"Of course it is, my dear," exclaimed the Governor genially, as he
rose to grasp the hands with which she was nervously adjusting her
wraps.
Mrs. Nimick, who lived a little way out of town, and whose visits to
her brother were apparently achieved at the cost of immense effort
and mysterious complications, had come to congratulate him on his
victory, and to sound him regarding the nomination to a coveted post
of the lawyer in whose firm her eldest son was a clerk. In the
urgency of the latter errand she had rather lost sight of the
former, but her face softened as the Governor, keeping both her
hands in his, said in the voice which always seemed to put the most
generous interpretation on her motives: "I was sure you would be one
of the first to give me your blessing."
"Oh, your success--no one feels it more than I do!" sighed Mrs.
Nimick, always at home in the emotional key. "I keep in the
background. I make no noise, I claim no credit, but whatever
happens, no one shall ever prevent my rejoicing in my brother's
success!"
Mrs. Nimick's felicitations were always couched in the conditional,
with a side-glance at dark contingencies, and the Governor, smiling
at the familiar construction, returned cheerfully: "I don't see why
any one should want to deprive you of that privilege."
"They couldn't--they couldn't--" Mrs. Nimick heroically affirmed.
"Well, I'm in the saddle for another two years at any rate, so you
had better put in all the rejoicing you can."
"Whatever happens--whatever happens!" cried Mrs. Nimick, melting on
his bosom.
"The only thing likely to happen at present is that you will miss
your train if I let you go on saying nice things to me much longer."
Mrs. Nimick at this dried her eyes, renewed her clutch on her
draperies, and stood glancing sentimentally about the room while her
brother rang for the carriage.
"I take away a lovely picture of you," she murmured. "It's wonderful
what you've made of this hideous house."
"Ah, not I, but Ella--there she _does_reign undisputed," he
acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an
air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its
inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual
executive apartment.
"Oh, she's wonderful, quite wonderful. I see she has got those
imported damask curtains she was looking at the other day at
Fielding's. When I am asked how she does it all, I always say it's
beyond me!" Mrs. Nimick murmured.
"It's an art like another," smiled the Governor. "Ella has been used
to living in tents and she has the knack of giving them a wonderful
look of permanence."
"She certainly makes the most extraordinary bargains--all the knack
in the world won't take the place of such curtains and carpets."
"Are they good? I'm glad to hear it. But all the good curtains and
carpets won't make a house comfortable to live in. There's where the
knack comes in, you see."
He recalled with a shudder the lean Congressional years--the years
before his marriage--when Mrs. Nimick had lived with him in
Washington, and the daily struggle in the House had been combined
with domestic conflicts almost equally recurrent. The offer of a
foreign mission, though disconnecting him from active politics, had
the advantage of freeing him from his sister's tutelage, and in
Europe, where he remained for two years, he had met the lady who was
to become his wife. Mrs. Renfield was the widow of one of the
diplomatists who languish in perpetual first secretary-ship at our
various embassies. Her life had given her ease without triviality,
and a sense of the importance of politics seldom found in ladies of
her nationality. She regarded a public life as the noblest and most
engrossing of careers, and combined with great social versatility an
equal gift for reading blue-books and studying debates. So sincere
was the latter taste that she passed without regret from the
amenities of a European life well stocked with picturesque
intimacies to the rawness of the Midsylvanian capital. She helped
Mornway in his fight for the Governorship as a man likes to be
helped by a woman--by her tact, her good looks, her memory for
faces, her knack of saying the right thing to the right person, and
her capacity for obscure hard work in the background of his public
activity. But, above all, she helped him by making his private life
smooth and harmonious. For a man careless of personal ease, Mornway
was singularly alive to the domestic amenities. Attentive service,
well-ordered dinners, brightly burning fires, and a scent of flowers
in the house--these material details, which had come to seem the
extension of his wife's personality, the inevitable result of her
nearness, were as agreeable to him after five years of marriage as
in the first surprise of his introduction to them. Mrs. Nimick had
kept house jerkily and vociferously; Ella performed the same task
silently and imperceptibly, and the results were all in favor of the
latter method. Though neither the Governor nor his wife had large
means, the household, under Mrs. Mornway's guidance, took on an air
of sober luxury as agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating
to her sister-in-law. The domestic machinery ran without a jar.
There were no upheavals, no debts, no squalid cookless hiatuses
between intervals of showy hospitality; the household moved along on
lines of quiet elegance and comfort, behind which only the eye of
the housekeeping sex could have detected a gradually increasing
scale of expense.
Such an eye was now projected on the Governor's surroundings, and
its explorations were summed up in the tone in which Mrs. Nimick
repeated from the threshold: "I always say I don't see how she does
it!"
The tone did not escape the Governor, but it disturbed him no more
than the buzz of a baffled insect. Poor Grace! It was not his fault
if her husband was given to chimerical investments, if her sons were
"unsatisfactory," and her cooks would not stay with her; but it was
natural that these facts should throw into irritating contrast the
ease and harmony of his own domestic life. It made him all the
sorrier for his sister to know that her envy did not penetrate to
the essence of his happiness, but lingered on those external signs
of well-being which counted for so little in the sum total of his
advantages. Poor Mrs. Nimick's life seemed doubly thin and mean when
one remembered that, beneath its shabby surface, there were no
compensating riches of the spirit.
II
IT was the custodian of his own hidden treasure who at this moment
broke in upon his musings. Mrs. Mornway, fresh from her afternoon
walk, entered the room with that air of ease and lightness which
seemed to diffuse a social warmth about her; fine, slender, pliant,
so polished and modeled by an intelligent experience of life that
youth seemed clumsy in her presence. She looked down at her husband
and shook her head.
"You promised to keep the afternoon to yourself, and I hear Grace
has been here."
"Poor Grace--she didn't stay long, and I should have been a brute
not to see her."
He leaned back, filling his gaze to the brim with her charming
image, which obliterated at a stroke the fretful ghost of Mrs.
Nimick.
"She came to congratulate you, I suppose?"
"Yes, and to ask me to do something for Ashford."
"Ah--on account of Jack. What does she want for him?"
The Governor laughed. "She said you were in her confidence--that you
were backing her up. She seemed to think your support would ensure
her success."
Mrs. Mornway smiled; her smile, always full of delicate
implications, seemed to caress her husband while it gently mocked
his sister.
"Poor Grace! I suppose you undeceived her."
"As to your influence? I told her it was paramount where it ought to
be."
"And where is that?"
"In the choice of carpets and curtains. It seems ours are almost too
good."
"Thanks for the compliment! Too good for what?"
"Our station in life, I suppose. At least they seemed to bother
Grace."
"Poor Grace! I've always bothered her." She paused, removing her
gloves reflectively and laying her long fine hands on his shoulders
as she stood behind him. "Then you don't believe in Ashford?"
Feeling his slight start, she drew away her hands and raised them to
detach her veil.
"What makes you think I don't believe in Ashford?" he asked.
"I asked out of curiosity. I wondered whether you had decided
anything."
"No, and I don't mean to for a week. I'm dead beat, and I want to
bring a fresh mind to the question. There is hardly one appointment
I'm sure of except, of course, Fleetwood's."
She turned away from him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above the
mantelpiece. "You're sure of that?" she asked after a moment.
"Of George Fleetwood? And poor Grace thinks you are deep in my
counsels! I am as sure of re-appointing Fleetwood as I am that I
have just been re-elected myself. I've never made any secret of the
fact that if they wanted me back they must have him, too."
"You are tremendously generous!" she murmured.
"Generous? What a strange word to use! Fleetwood is my trump
card--the one man I can count on to carry out my ideas through thick
and thin."
She mused on this, smiling a little. "That's why I call you
generous--when I remember how you disliked him two years ago!"
"What of that? I was prejudiced against him, I own; or rather, I had
a just distrust of a man with such a past. But how splendidly he's
wiped it out! What a record he has written on the new leaf he
promised to turn over if I gave him the chance! Do you know," the
Governor interrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, "I
was rather annoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised
to back up Ashford--I told her you didn't aspire to distribute
patronage. But she might have reminded me--if she'd known--that it
_was_you who persuaded me to give Fleetwood that chance."
Mrs. Mornway turned with a slight heightening of color. "Grace--how
could she possibly have known?"
"She couldn't, of course, unless she'd read my weakness in my face.
But why do you look so startled at my little joke?"
"It's only that I so dislike Grace's ineradicable idea that I am a
wire-puller. Why should she imagine I would help her about Ashford?"
"Oh, Grace has always been a mild and ineffectual conspirator, and
she thinks every other woman is built on the same plan. But you
_did_get Fleetwood's job for him, you know," he repeated with
laughing insistence.
"I had more faith than you in human nature, that's all." She paused
a moment, and then added: "Personally, you know, I have always
rather disliked him."
"Oh, I never doubted your disinterestedness. But you are not going
to turn against your candidate, are you?"
She hesitated. "I am not sure; circumstances alter cases. When you
made Fleetwood Attorney-General two years ago he was the inevitable
man for the place."
"Well--is there a better one now?"
"I don't say there is--it's not my business to look for him, at any
rate. What I mean is that at that time Fleetwood was worth risking
anything for--now I don't know that he is."
"But, even if he were not, what do I risk for him now? I don't see
your point. Since he didn't cost me my re-election, what can he
possibly cost me now I'm in?"
"He's immensely unpopular. He will cost you a great deal of
popularity, and you have never pretended to despise that."
"No, nor ever sacrificed anything essential to it. Are you really
asking me to offer up Fleetwood to it now?"
"I don't ask you to do anything--except to consider if he
_is_essential. You said you were over-tired and wanted to bring a
fresh mind to bear on the other appointments. Why not delay this one
too?"
Mornway turned in his chair and looked at her searchingly. "This
means something, Ella. What have you heard?"
"Just what you have, probably, but with more attentive ears. The
very record you are so proud of has made George Fleetwood
innumerable enemies in the last two years. The Lead Trust people are
determined to ruin him, and if his reappointment is attacked you
will not be spared."
"Attacked? In the papers, you mean?"
She paused. "You know the 'Spy' has always threatened a campaign.
And he has a past, as you say."
"Which was public property long before I first appointed him.
Nothing could be gained by raking up his old political history.
Everybody knows he didn't come to me with clean hands, but to hurt
him now the 'Spy' would have to fasten a new scandal on him, and
that would not be easy."
"It would be easy to invent one!"
"Unproved accusations don't count much against a man of such proved
capacity. The best answer is his record of the last two years. That
is what the public looks at."
"The public looks wherever the press points. And besides, you have
your own future to consider. It would be a pity to sacrifice such a
career as yours for the sake of backing up even as useful a man as
George Fleetwood." She paused, as if checked by his gathering frown,
but went on with fresh decision: "Oh, I'm not speaking of personal
ambition; I'm thinking of the good you can do. Will Fleetwood's
reappointment secure the greatest good of the greatest number, if
his unpopularity reacts on you to the extent of hindering your
career?"
The Governor's brow cleared and he rose with a smile. "My dear, your
reasoning is admirable, but we must leave my career to take care of
itself. Whatever I may be to-morrow, I am Governor of Midsylvania
to-day, and my business as Governor is to appoint as
Attorney-General the best man I can find for the place--and that man
is George Fleetwood, unless you have a better one to propose." She
met this with perfect good-humor. "No, I have told you already that
that is not my business. But I _have_a candidate of my own for
another office, so Grace was not quite wrong, after all."
"Well, who is your candidate, and for what office? I only hope you
don't want to change cooks!"
"Oh, I do that without your authority, and you never even know it
has been done." She hesitated, and then said with a bright
directness: "I want you to do something for poor Gregg."
"Gregg? Rufus Gregg?" He stared. "What an extraordinary request!
What can I do for a man I've had to kick out for dishonesty?"
"Not much, perhaps; I know it's difficult. But, after all, it was
your kicking him out that ruined him."
"It was his dishonesty that ruined him. He was getting a good salary
as my stenographer, and if he hadn't sold those letters to the 'Spy'
he would have been getting it still."
She wavered. "After all, nothing was proved--he always denied it."
"Good heavens, Ella! Have you ever doubted his guilt?"
"No--no; I don't mean that. But, of course, his wife and children
believe in him, and think you were cruel, and he has been out of
work so long that they are starving."
"Send them some money, then; I wonder you thought it necessary to
ask."
"I shouldn't have thought it so, but money is not what I want. Mrs.
Gregg is proud, and it is hard to help her in that way. Couldn't you
give him work of some kind--just a little post in a corner?"
"My dear child, the little posts in the corner are just the ones
where honesty is essential. A footpad doesn't wait under a
street-lamp! Besides, how can I recommend a man whom I have
dismissed for theft? I won't say a word to hinder his getting a
place, but on my conscience I can't give him one."
She paused and turned toward the door silently, though without any
show of resentment; but on the threshold she lingered long enough to
say: "Yet you gave Fleetwood his chance!"
"Fleetwood? You class Fleetwood with Gregg? The best man in the
State with a little beggarly thieving nonentity? It's evident enough
you're new at wire-pulling, or you would show more skill at it!"
She met this with a laugh. "I'm not likely to have much practice if
my first attempt is such a failure. Well, I will see if Mrs. Gregg
will let me help her a little--I suppose there is nothing else to be
done."
"Nothing that we can do. If Gregg wants a place he had better get
one on the staff of the 'Spy.' He served them better than he did
me."
III
THE Governor stared at the card with a frown. Half an hour had
elapsed since his wife had gone upstairs to dress for the big dinner
from which official duties excused him, and he was still lingering
over the fire before preparing for his own solitary meal. He
expected no one that evening but his old friend Hadley Shackwell,
with whom it was his long-established habit to talk over his defeats
and victories in the first lull after the conflict; and Shackwell
was not likely to turn up till nine o'clock. The unwonted stillness
of the room, and the knowledge that he had a quiet evening before
him, filled the Governor with a luxurious sense of repose. The world
seemed to him a good place to be in, and his complacency was
shadowed only by the fear that he had perhaps been a trifle
over-harsh in refusing his wife's plea for the stenographer. There
seemed, therefore, a certain fitness in the appearance of the man's
card, and the Governor with a sigh gave orders that Gregg should be
shown in.
Gregg was still the soft-stepping scoundrel who invited the toe of
honesty, and Mornway, as he entered, was conscious of a sharp
revulsion of feeling. But it was impossible to evade the interview,
and he sat silent while the man stated his case.
Mrs. Mornway had represented the stenographer as being in desperate
straits, and ready to accept any job that could be found, but though
his appearance might have seemed to corroborate her account, he
evidently took a less hopeless view of his case, and the Governor
found with surprise that he had fixed his eye on a clerkship in one
of the Government offices, a post which had been half promised him
before the incident of the letters. His plea was that the Governor's
charge, though unproved, had so injured his reputation that he could
only hope to clear himself by getting some sort of small job under
the Administration. After that, it would be easy for him to obtain
any employment he wanted.
He met Mornway's refusal with civility, but remarked after a moment:
"I hadn't expected this, Governor. Mrs. Mornway led me to think that
something might be arranged."
The Governor's tone was brief. "Mrs. Mornway is sorry for your wife
and children, and for their sake would be glad to find work for you,
but she could not have led you to think that there was any chance of
your getting a clerkship."
"Well, that's just it; she said she thought she could manage it."
"You have misinterpreted my wife's interest in your family. Mrs.
Mornway has nothing to do with the distribution of Government
offices." The Governor broke off, annoyed to find himself
asseverating for the second time so obvious a fact.
There was a moment's silence; then Gregg said, still in a perfectly
equable tone: "You've always been hard on me, Governor, but I don't
bear malice. You accused me of selling those letters to the 'Spy'--"
The Governor made an impatient gesture.
"You couldn't prove your case," Gregg went on imperturbably, "but
you were right in one respect. I _was_on confidential terms with the
'Spy.'" He paused and glanced at Mornway, whose face remained
immovable. "I'm on the same terms with them still, and I'm ready to
let you have the benefit of it if you'll give _me_the chance to
retrieve my good name."
In spite of his irritation the Governor could not repress a smile.
"In other words, you will do a dirty trick for me if I undertake to
convince people that you are the soul of honor."
Gregg smiled also.
"There are always two ways of putting a thing. Why not call it a
plain case of give and take? I want something and can pay for it."
"Not in any coin I have a use for," said Mornway, pushing back his
chair.
Gregg hesitated; then he said: "Perhaps you don't mean to reappoint
Fleetwood." The Governor was silent, and he continued: "If you do,
don't kick me out a second time. I'm not threatening you--I'm
speaking as a friend. Mrs. Mornway has been kind to my wife, and I'd
like to help her."
The Governor rose, gripping his chair-back sternly. "You will be
kind enough to leave my wife's name out of the discussion. I
supposed you knew me well enough to know that I don't buy newspaper
secrets at any price, least of all at that of the public money!"
Gregg, who had risen also, stood a few feet off, looking at him
inscrutably.
"Is that final, Governor?"
"Quite final."
"Well, good evening, then."
IV
SHACKWELL and the Governor sat over the evening embers. It was after
ten o'clock, and the servant had carried away the coffee and
liqueurs, leaving the two men to their cigars. Mornway had once more
lapsed into his arm-chair, and sat with out-stretched feet, gazing
comfortably at his friend.
Shackwell was a small dry man of fifty, with a face as sallow and
freckled as a winter pear, a limp mustache, and shrewd, melancholy
eyes.
"I am glad you have given yourself a day's rest," he said, looking
at the Governor.
"Well, I don't know that I needed it. There's such exhilaration in
victory that I never felt fresher."
"Ah, but the fight's just beginning."
"I know--but I'm ready for it. You mean the campaign against
Fleetwood. I understand there is to be a big row. Well, he and I are
used to rows."
Shackwell paused, surveying his cigar. "You knew the 'Spy' meant to
lead the attack?"
"Yes. I was offered a glimpse of the documents this afternoon."
Shackwell started up. "You didn't refuse?"
Mornway related the incident of Gregg's visit. "I could hardly buy
my information at that price," he said, "and, besides, it is really
Fleetwood's business this time. I suppose he has heard the report,
but it doesn't seem to bother him. I rather thought he would have
looked in to-day to talk things over, but I haven't seen him."
Shackwell continued to twist his cigar through his sallow fingers
without remembering to light it. "You're determined to reappoint
Fleetwood?" he asked at length.
The Governor caught him up. "You're the fourth person who has asked
me that to-day! You haven't lost faith in him, have you, Hadley?"
"Not an atom!" said the other with emphasis.
"Well, then, what are you all thinking of, to suppose I can be
frightened by a little newspaper talk? Besides, if Fleetwood is not
afraid, why should I be?"
"Because you'll be involved in it with him."
The Governor laughed. "What have they got against me now?"
Shackwell, standing up, confronted his friend solemnly. "This--that
Fleetwood bought his appointment two years ago."
"Ah--bought it of me? Why didn't it come out at the time?"
"Because it wasn't known then. It has only been found out lately."
"Known--found out? This is magnificent! What was my price, and what
did I do with the money?"
Shackwell glanced about the room, and his eyes returned to Mornway's
face.
"Look here, John, Fleetwood is not the only man in the world."
"The only man?"
"The only Attorney-General. "The 'Spy' has the Lead Trust behind it
and means to put up a savage fight. Mud sticks, and--"
"Hadley, is this a conspiracy? You're saying to me just what Ella
said this afternoon."
At the mention of Mrs. Mornway's name a silence fell between the two
men and the Governor moved uneasily in his chair.
"You are not advising me to chuck Fleetwood because the 'Spy' is
going to accuse me of having sold him his first appointment?" he
said at length.
Shackwell drew a deep breath. "You say yourself that Mrs. Mornway
gave you the same advice this afternoon."
"Well, what of that? Do you imagine that my wife distrib--" The
Governor broke off with an exasperated laugh.
Shackwell, leaning against the mantelpiece, looked down into the
embers. "I didn't say the 'Spy' meant to accuse _you_of having sold
the office."
Mornway stood up slowly, his eyes on his friend's averted face. The
ashes dropped from his cigar, scattering a white trail across the
carpet which had excited Mrs. Nimick's envy.
"The office is in my gift. If I didn't sell it, who did?" he
demanded.
Shackwell laid a hand on his arm. "For heaven's sake, John--"
"Who did, who did?" the Governor violently repeated.
The two men faced each other in the closely curtained silence of the
dim luxurious room. Shackwell's eyes again wandered, as if summoning
the walls to reply. Then he said, "I have positive information that
the 'Spy' will say nothing if you don't appoint Fleetwood."
"And what will it say if I do appoint him?"
"That he bought his first appointment from your wife."
The Governor stood silent, immovable, while the blood crept slowly
from his strong neck to his lowering brows. Once he laughed, then he
set his lips and continued to gaze into the fire. After a while he
looked at his cigar and shook the freshly formed cone of ashes
carefully upon the hearth. He had just turned again to Shackwell
when the door opened and the butler announced: "Mr. Fleetwood."
The room swam about Shackwell, and when he recovered himself,
Mornway, with outstretched hand, was advancing quietly to meet his
guest.
Fleetwood was a smaller man than the Governor. He was erect and
compact, with a face full of dry energy, which seemed to press
forward with the spring of his prominent features, as though it were
the weapon with which he cleared his way through the world. He was
in evening dress, scrupulously appointed, but pale and nervous. Of
the two men, it was Mornway who was the more composed.
"I thought I should have seen you before this," he said.
Fleetwood returned his grasp and shook hands with Shackwell.
"I knew you needed to be let alone. I didn't mean to come to-night,
but I wanted to say a word to you."
At this, Shackwell, who had fallen into the background, made a
motion of leave-taking, but the Governor arrested it.
"We haven't any secrets from Hadley, have we, Fleetwood?"
"Certainly not. I am glad to have him stay. I have simply come to
say that I have been thinking over my future arrangements, and that
I find it will not be possible for me to continue in office."
There was a long pause, during which Shackwell kept his eyes on
Mornway. The Governor had turned pale, but when he spoke his voice
was full and firm.
"This is sudden," he said.
Fleetwood stood leaning against a high chair-back, fretting its
carved ornaments with restless fingers. "It is sudden--yes. I--there
are a variety of reasons."
"Is one of them the fact that you are afraid of what the 'Spy' is
going to say?"
The Attorney-General flushed deeply and moved away a few steps. "I'm
sick of mud-throwing," he muttered.
"George Fleetwood!" Mornway exclaimed. He had advanced toward his
friend, and the two stood confronting each other, already oblivious
of Shackwell's presence.
"It's not only that, of course. I've been frightfully hard-worked.
My health has given way--"
"Since yesterday?"
Fleetwood forced a smile. "My dear fellow, what a slave-driver you
are! Hasn't a man the right to take a rest?"
"Not a soldier on the eve of battle. You have never failed me
before."
"I don't want to fail you now. But it isn't the eve of
battle--you're in, and that's the main thing."
"The main thing at present is that you promised to stay in with me,
and that I must have your real reason for breaking your word."
Fleetwood made a deprecatory movement. "My dear Governor, if you
only knew it, I'm doing you a service in backing out."
"A service--why?"
"Because I'm hated--because the Lead Trust wants my blood, and will
have yours too if you appoint me."
"Ah, that's the real reason, then--you're afraid of the 'Spy'?"
"Afraid--?"
The Governor continued to speak with dry deliberation. "Evidently,
then, you know what they mean to say."
Fleetwood laughed. "One needn't do that to be sure it will be
abominable!"
"Who cares how abominable it is if it isn't true?"
Fleetwood shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Shackwell, from a
distant seat, uttered a faint protesting sound, but no one heeded
him. The Governor stood squarely before Fleetwood, his hands in his
pockets. "It _is_true, then?" he demanded.
"What is true?"
"What the 'Spy' means to say--that you bought my wife's influence to
get your first appointment."
In the silence Shackwell started suddenly to his feet. A sound of
carriage-wheels had disturbed the quiet street. They paused and then
rolled up the semicircle to the door of the Executive Mansion.
"John!" Shackwell warned him.
The Governor turned impatiently; there was the sound of a servant's
steps in the hall, followed by the opening and closing of the outer
door.
"Your wife--Mrs. Mornway!" Shackwell cried.
Another step, accompanied by a soft rustle of skirts, was advancing
toward the library.
"My wife? Let her come!" said the Governor.
V
She stood before them in her bright evening dress, with an arrested
brilliancy of aspect like the sparkle of a fountain suddenly caught
in ice. Her look moved rapidly from one to the other; then she came
forward, while Shackwell slipped behind her to close the door.
"What has happened?" she said.
Shackwell began to speak, but the Governor interposed calmly:
"Fleetwood has come to tell me that he does not wish to remain in
office."
"Ah!" she murmured.
There was another silence. Fleetwood broke it by saying: "It is
getting late. If you want to see me to-morrow--"
The Governor looked from his face to Ella's. "Yes; go now," he said.
Shackwell moved in Fleetwood's wake to the door. Mrs. Mornway stood
with her head high, smiling slightly. She shook hands with each of
the men in turn; then she moved toward the sofa and laid aside her
shining cloak. All her gestures were calm and noble, but as she
raised her hand to unclasp the cloak her husband uttered a sudden
exclamation.
"Where did you get that bracelet? I don't remember it."
"This?" She looked at him with astonishment. "It belonged to my
mother. I don't often wear it."
"Ah--I shall suspect everything now," he groaned.
He turned away and flung himself with bowed head in the chair behind
his writing-table. He wanted to collect himself, to question her, to
get to the bottom of the hideous abyss over which his imagination
hung. But what was the use? What did the facts matter? He had only
to put his memories together--they led him straight to the truth.
Every incident of the day seemed to point a leering finger in the
same direction, from Mrs. Nimick's allusion to the imported damask
curtains to Gregg's confident appeal for rehabilitation.
"If you imagine that my wife distributes patronage--" he heard
himself repeating inanely, and the walls seemed to reverberate with
the laughter which his sister and Gregg had suppressed. He heard
Ella rise from the sofa and lifted his head sharply.
"Sit still!" he commanded. She sank back without speaking, and he
hid his face again. The past months, the past years, were dancing a
witches' dance about him. He remembered a hundred significant
things. . . . _Oh, God_, he cried to himself, _if only she does not
lie about it!_Suddenly he recalled having pitied Mrs. Nimick because
she could not penetrate to the essence of his happiness. Those were
the very words he had used! He heard himself laugh aloud. The clock
struck--it went on striking interminably. At length he heard his
wife rise again and say with sudden authority: "John, you must
speak."
Authority--she spoke to him with authority! He laughed again, and
through his laugh he heard the senseless rattle of the words, "If
you imagine that my wife distributes patronage . . ."
He looked up haggardly and saw her standing before him. If only she
would not lie about it! He said: "You see what has happened."
"I suppose some one has told you about the 'Spy.'"
"Who told you? Gregg?" he interposed.
"Yes," she said quietly.
"That was why you wanted--?"
"Why I wanted you to help him? Yes."
"Oh, God! . . . He wouldn't take money?"
"No, he wouldn't take money."
He sat silent, looking at her, noting with a morbid minuteness the
exquisite finish of her dress, that finish which seemed so much a
part of herself that it had never before struck him as a merely
purchasable accessory. He knew so little what a woman's dresses
cost! For a moment he lost himself in vague calculations; finally,
he said: "What did you do it for?"
"Do what?"
"Take money from Fleetwood."
She paused a moment and then said: "If you will let me explain--"
And then he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to
disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a
physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and
said: "He was your lover?"
"Oh, no, no, _no!_" she cried with conviction. He hardly knew
whether the shadow lifted or deepened; the fact that he instantly
believed her seemed only to increase his bewilderment. Presently he
found that she was still speaking, and he began to listen to her,
catching a phrase now and then through the deafening clamor of his
thoughts.
It amounted to this--that just after her husband's first election,
when Fleetwood's claims for the Attorney-Generalship were being
vainly pressed by a group of his political backers, Mrs. Mornway had
chanced to sit next to him once or twice at dinner. One day, on the
strength of these meetings, he had called and asked her frankly if
she would not help him with her husband. He had made a clean breast
of his past, but had said that, under a man like Mornway, he felt he
could wipe out his political sins and purify himself while he served
the party. She knew the party needed his brains, and she believed in
him--she was sure he would keep his word. She would have spoken in
his favor in any case--she would have used all her influence to
overcome her husband's prejudice--and it was by a mere accident
that, in the course of one of their talks, he happened to give her a
"tip" (his past connections were still useful for such purposes), a
"tip" which, in the first invading pressure of debt after Mornway's
election, she had not had the courage to refuse. Fleetwood had made
some money for her--yes, about thirty thousand dollars. She had
repaid what he had lent her, and there had been no further
transactions of the kind between them. But it appeared that Gregg,
before his dismissal, had got hold of an old check-book which gave a
hint of the story, and had pieced the rest together with the help of
a clerk in Fleetwood's office. The "Spy" was in possession of the
facts, but did not mean to use them if Fleetwood was not
reappointed, the Lead Trust having no personal grudge against
Mornway.
Her story ended there, and she sat silent while he continued to look
at her. So much had perished in the wreck of his faith that he did
not attach much value to what remained. It scarcely mattered that he
believed her when the truth was so sordid. There had been, after
all, nothing to envy him for but what Mrs. Nimick had seen; the core
of his life was as mean and miserable as his sister's. . . .
His wife rose at length, pale but still calm. She had a kind of
external dignity which she wore like one of her rich dresses. It
seemed as little a part of her now as the finery of which his gaze
contemptuously reckoned the cost.
"John--" she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up wearily. "You had better go to bed," he interjected.
"Don't look at me in that way. I am prepared for your being angry
with me--I made a dreadful mistake and must bear my punishment: any
punishment you choose to inflict. But you must think of yourself
first--you must spare yourself. Why should you be so horribly
unhappy? Don't you see that since Mr. Fleetwood has behaved so well
we are quite safe? And I swear to you I have paid back every penny
of the money."
VI
THREE days later Shackwell was summoned by telephone to the
Governor's office in the Capitol. There had been, in the interval,
no communication between the two men, and the papers had been silent
or non-committal.
In the lobby Shackwell met Fleetwood leaving the building. For a
moment the Attorney-General seemed about to speak; then he nodded
and passed on, leaving to Shackwell the impression of a face more
than ever thrust forward like a weapon.
The Governor sat behind his desk in the clear autumn sunlight. In
contrast to Fleetwood he seemed relaxed and unwieldy, and the face
he turned to his friend had a gray look of convalescence. Shackwell
wondered, with a start of apprehension, if he and Fleetwood had been
together.
He relieved himself of his overcoat without speaking, and when he
turned again toward Mornway he was surprised to find the latter
watching him with a smile.
"It's good to see you, Hadley," the Governor said.
"I waited to be sent for; I knew you'd let me know when you wanted
me," Shackwell replied.
"I didn't send for you on purpose. If I had, I might have asked your
advice, and I didn't want to ask anybody's advice but my own." The
Governor spoke steadily, but in a voice a trifle too well
disciplined to be natural. "I've had a three days' conference with
myself," he continued, "and now that everything is settled I want
you to do me a favor."
"Yes?" Shackwell assented. The private issues of the affair were
still wrapped in mystery to him, but he had never had a moment's
doubt as to its public solution, and he had no difficulty in
conjecturing the nature of the service he was to render. His heart
ached for Mornway, but he was glad the inevitable step was to be
taken without further delay.
"Everything is settled," the Governor repeated, "and I want you to
notify the press that I have decided to reappoint Fleetwood."
Shackwell bounded from his seat. "Good heavens!" he ejaculated.
"To reappoint Fleetwood," the Governor repeated, "because at the
present juncture of affairs he is the only man for the place. The
work we began together is not finished, and I can't finish it
without him. Remember the vistas opened by the Lead Trust
investigation--he knows where they lead and no one else does. We
must put that inquiry through, no matter what it costs us, and that
is why I have sent for you to take this letter to the 'Spy.'"
Shackwell's hand drew back from the proffered envelope.
"You say you don't want my advice, but you can't expect me to go on
such an errand with my eyes shut. What on earth are you driving at?
Of course Fleetwood will persist in refusing."
Mornway smiled. "He did persist--for three hours. But when he left
here just now he had given me his word to accept."
Shackwell groaned. "Then I am dealing with two madmen instead of
one."
The Governor laughed. "My poor Hadley, you're worse than I expected.
I thought you would understand me."
"Understand you? How can I, in heaven's name, when I don't
understand the situation?
"The situation--the situation?" Mornway repeated slowly. "Whose? His
or mine? I don't either--I haven't had time to think of them."
"What on earth have you been thinking of then?"
The Governor rose, with a gesture toward the window, through which,
below the slope of the Capitol grounds, the roofs and steeples of
the city spread their smoky mass to the mild air.
"Of all that is left," he said. "Of everything except Fleetwood and
myself."
"Ah--" Shackwell murmured.
Mornway turned back and sank into his seat. "Don't you see that was
all I had to turn to? The State--the country--it's big enough, in
all conscience, to fill a good deal of a void! My own walls had
grown too cramped for me, so I just stepped outside. You have no
idea how it simplified matters at once. All I had to do was to say
to myself: 'Go ahead, and do the best you can for the country.' The
personal issue simply didn't exist."
"Yes--and then?"
"Then I turned over for three days this question of the
Attorney-Generalship. I couldn't see that it was changed--how should
_my_feelings have affected it? Fleetwood hasn't betrayed the State.
There isn't a scar on his public record--he is still the best man
for the place. My business is to appoint the best man I can find,
and I can't find any one as good as Fleetwood."
"But--but--your wife?" Shackwell stammered.
The Governor looked up with surprise. Shackwell could almost have
sworn that he had indeed forgotten the private issue.
"My wife is ready to face the consequences," he said.
Shackwell returned to his former attitude of incredulity.
"But Fleetwood? Fleetwood has no right to sacrifice--"
"To sacrifice my wife to the State? Oh, let us beware of big words.
Fleetwood was inclined to use them at first, but I managed to
restore his sense of proportion. I showed him that our private lives
are only a few feet square anyhow, and that really, to breathe
freely, one must get out of them into the open." He paused and broke
out with sudden violence, "My God, Hadley, didn't you see that
Fleetwood had to obey me?"
"Yes--I see that," said Shackwell, with reviving obstinacy. "But if
you've reached such a height and pulled him up to your side it seems
to me that from that standpoint you ought to get an even clearer
view of the madness of your position. You say you have decided to
sacrifice your own feelings and your wife's--though I'm not so sure
of your right to dispose of _her_voice in the matter; but what if
you sacrifice the party and the State as well, in this
transcendental attempt to distinguish between private and public
honor? You'll have to answer that before you can get me to carry
this letter."
The Governor did not blanch under the attack.
"I think the letter will answer you," he said calmly.
"The letter?"
"Yes. It's something more than a notification of Fleetwood's
reappointment." Mornway paused and looked steadily at his friend.
"You're afraid of an investigation--an impeachment? Well, the letter
anticipates that."
"How, in heaven's name?"
"By a plain statement of the facts. My wife has told me that she did
borrow of Fleetwood. He speculated for her and made a considerable
sum, out of which she repaid his loan. The 'Spy's' accusation is
true. If it can be proved that my wife induced me to appoint
Fleetwood, it may be argued that she sold him the appointment. But
it can't be proved, and the 'Spy' won't waste its breath in trying
to, because my statement will take the sting out of its innuendoes.
I propose to anticipate its attack by setting forth the facts in its
columns, and asking the public to decide between us. On one side is
the private fact that my wife, without my knowledge, borrowed money
from Fleetwood just before I appointed him to an important post; on
the other side is his public record and mine. I want people to see
both sides and judge between them, not in the red glare of a
newspaper denunciation, but in the plain daylight of common-sense.
Charges against the private morality of a public man are usually
made in such a blare of headlines and cloud of mud-throwing that the
voice he lifts up in his defence can not make itself heard. In this
case I want the public to hear what I have to say before the yelping
begins. My letter will take the wind out of the 'Spy's' sails, and
if the verdict goes against me, the case will have been decided on
its own merits, and not at the dictation of the writers of scare
heads. Even if I don't gain my end, it will be a good thing, for
once, for the public to consider dispassionately how far a private
calamity should be allowed to affect a career of public usefulness,
and the next man who goes through what I am undergoing may have
cause to thank me if no one else does."
Shackwell sat silent for a moment, with the ring of the last words
in his ears.
Suddenly he rose and held out his hand. "Give me the letter," he
said.
The Governor caught him up with a kindling eye. "It's all right,
then? You see, and you'll take it?"
Shackwell met his glance with one of melancholy interrogation. "I
think I see a magnificent suicide, but it's the kind of way I
shouldn't mind dying myself."
He pulled himself silently into his coat and put the letter into one
of its pockets, but as he was turning to the door the Governor
called after him cheerfully: "By the way, Hadley, aren't you and
Mrs. Shackwell giving a big dinner to-morrow?"
Shackwell paused with a start. "I believe we are--why?"
"Because, if there is room for two more, my wife and I would like to
be invited."
Shackwell nodded his assent and turned away without answering. As he
came out of the lobby into the clear sunset radiance he saw a
victoria drive up the long sweep to the Capitol and pause before the
central portion. He descended the steps, and Mrs. Mornway leaned
from her furs to greet him.
"I have called for my husband," she said, smiling. "He promised to
get away in time for a little turn in the Park before dinner."
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