faded from him, at his feet lay, open and conspicuous, a fresh, deep
hole. He looked down absent-mindedly. Some animal--a dog, a rabbit--had
scratched far into the earth. A bar of sunlight struck a golden arm
through the branches above, and as he gazed at the upturned, brown dirt
the rays that were its fingers reached into the hollow and touched a
square corner, a rusty edge of tin. In a second the young fellow was
down on his knees digging as if for his life, and in less than five
minutes he had loosened the earth which had guarded it so many years,
and staggering with it to his feet had lifted to the bench a heavy tin
box. In its lock was the key, and dangling from it a long bit of
no-colored silk, that yet, as he untwisted it, showed a scarlet thread
in the crease. He opened the box with the little key; it turned
scrapingly, and the ribbon crumbled in his fingers, its long duty done.
Then, as he tilted the heavy weight, the double eagles, packed closely,
slipped against each other with a soft clink of sliding metal. The young
man stared at the mass of gold pieces as if he could not trust his
eyesight; he half thought even then that he dreamed it. With a quick
memory of the mortgage he began to count. It was all there--ten thousand
dollars in gold! He lifted his head and gazed at the quiet woodland, the
open shadow-work of the bare branches, the fields beyond lying in the
calm sunlit rest of a Southern winter. Then he put his hand deep into
the gold pieces, and drew a long breath. It was impossible to believe,
but it was true. The lost treasure was found. It meant to him Shelby
and home; as he realized what it meant his heart felt as if it would
break with the joy of it. He would give her this for his Christmas gift,
this legacy of his people and hers, and then he would give her himself.
It was all easy now--life seemed not to hold a difficulty. And the two
would keep tenderly, always, the thought of a child who had loved his
home and his people and who had tried so hard, so long, to bring them
together. He knew the dream-child would not visit him again--the little
ghost was laid that had followed him all his life. From over the border
whence it had come with so many loving efforts it would never come
again. Slowly, with the heavy weight in his arms, he walked back to the
garden sleeping in the sunshine, and the box hedges met him with a wave
of fragrance, the sweetness of a century ago; and as he passed through
their shining door, looking beyond, he saw Shelby. The girl's figure
stood by the stone column of the garden entrance, the light shone on her
bare head, and she had stopped, surprised, as she saw him. Philip's pace
quickened with his heart-throb as he looked at her and thought of the
little ghostly hands that had brought theirs together; and as he looked
the smile that meant his welcome and his happiness broke over her face,
and with the sound of her voice all the shades of this world and the
next dissolved in light.
"'Christmas gif',' Marse Philip!" called Shelby.
THE WIFE OF THE GOVERNOR
The Governor sat at the head of the big black-oak table in his big
stately library. The large lamps on either end of the table stood in old
cloisonné vases of dull rich reds and bronzes, and their shades were of
thick yellow silk. The light they cast on the six anxious faces grouped
about them was like the light in Rembrandt's picture of The Clinic.
It was a very important meeting indeed. A city official, who had for
months been rather too playfully skating on the thin ice of bare respect
for the law, had just now, in the opinion of many, broken through. He
had followed a general order of the Governor's by a special order of his
own, contradicting the first in words not at all, but in spirit from
beginning to end. And the Governor wished to make an example of
him--now, instantly, so promptly and so thoroughly that those who ran
might read, in large type, that the attempt was not a success. He was
young for a Governor--thirty-six years old--and it may be that care for
the dignity of his office was not his only feeling on the subject.
"I won't be badgered, you know," he said to the senior Senator of the
State. "If the man wishes to see what I do when I'm ugly, I propose to
show him. Show me reason, if you can, why this chap shouldn't be
indicted."
To which they answered various things; for while they sympathized, and
agreed in the main, yet several were for temporizing, and most of them
for going a bit slowly. But the Governor was impetuous and indignant.
And here the case stood when there came a knock at the library door.
The Governor looked up in surprise, for it was against all orders that
he should be disturbed at a meeting. But he spoke a "Come in," and
Jackson, the stately colored butler, appeared, looking distressed and
alarmed.
"Oh, Lord! Gov'ner, suh!" was all he got out for a moment, fear at his
own rashness seizing him in its grip at the sight of the six
distinguished faces turned toward him.
"Jackson! What do you want?" asked the Governor, not so very gently.
Jackson advanced, with conspicuous lack of his usual style and
sang-froid, a tray in his hand, and a quite second-class-looking
envelope upon it. "Beg pardon, suh. Shouldn't 'a' interrupted, Gov'nor;
please scuse me, suh; but they boys was so pussistent, and it comed fum
the deepo, and I was mos' feared the railways was done gone on a strike,
and I thought maybe you'd oughter know, suh--Gov'ner."
And in the meantime, while the scared Jackson rambled on thus in an
undertone, the Governor had the cheap, bluish-white envelope in his
hand, and with a muttered "Excuse me" to his guests, had cut it across
and was reading, with a face of astonishment, the paper that was
enclosed. He crumpled it in his hand and threw it on the table.
"Absurd!" he said, half aloud; and then, "No answer, Jackson," and the
man retired.
"Now, then, gentlemen, as we were saying before this interruption"--and
in clear, eager sentences he returned to the charge. But a change had
come over him. The Attorney-General, elucidating a point of importance,
caught his chief's eye wandering, and followed it, surprised, to that
ball of paper on the table. The Secretary of State could not understand
why the Governor agreed in so half-hearted a way when he urged with
eloquence the victim's speedy sacrifice. Finally, the august master of
the house growing more and more distrait, he suddenly rose, and picking
up the crumpled paper--
"Gentlemen, will you have the goodness to excuse me for five minutes?"
he said. "It is most annoying, but I cannot give my mind to business
until I attend to the matter on which Jackson interrupted us. I beg a
thousand pardons--I shall only keep you a moment."
The dignitaries left cooling their heels looked at each other blankly,
but the Lieutenant-Governor smiled cheerfully.
"One of the reasons he is Governor at thirty-six is that he always does
attend to the matters that interrupt him."
Meanwhile the Governor, rushing out with his usual impulsive energy, had
sent two or three servants flying over the house. "Where's Mrs. Mooney?
Send Mrs. Mooney to me here instantly--and be quick;" and he waited,
impatient, although it was for only three minutes, in a little room
across the hall, where appeared to him in that time a square-shaped,
gray-haired woman with a fresh face and blue eyes full of intelligence
and kindliness.
"Mary, look here;" and the big Governor put his hand on the stout little
woman's arm and drew her to the light. Mary and his Excellency were
friends of very old standing indeed, their intimacy having begun
thirty-five years before, when the future great man was a rampant baby,
and Mary his nurse and his adorer, which last she was still. "I want to
read you this, and then I want you to telephone to Bristol at once." He
smoothed out the wrinkled single sheet of paper.
"My dear Governor Rudd," he read,--"My friends the McNaughtons of
Bristol are friends of yours too, I think, and that is my reason for
troubling you with this note. I am on my way to visit them now, and
expected to take the train for Bristol at twenty minutes after eight
to-night, but when I reached here at eight o'clock I found the
time-table had been changed, and the train had gone out twenty minutes
before. And there is no other till to-morrow. I don't know what to do or
where to go, and you are the only person in the city whose name I know.
Would it trouble you to advise me where to go for the night--what hotel,
if it is right for me to go to a hotel? With regret that I should have
to ask this of you when you must be busy with great affairs all the
time, I am,
"Very sincerely,
"LINDSAY LEE."
Mary listened, attentive but dazed, and was about to burst out at once
with voluble exclamations and questions when the Governor stopped her.
"Now, Mary, don't do a lot of talking. Just listen to me. I thought at
first this note was from a man, because it is signed by a man's name.
But it looks and sounds like a woman, and I think it should be attended
to. I want you to telephone to Mr. George McNaughton, at Bristol, and
ask if Mr. or Miss Lindsay Lee is a friend of theirs, and say that, if
so, he--or she--is all right, and is spending the night here. Then, in
that case, send Harper to the station with the brougham, and say that I
beg to have the honor of looking after Mrs. McNaughton's friend for the
night. And you'll see that whoever it is is made very comfortable."
"Indeed I will, the poor young thing," said Mary, jumping at a
picturesque view of the case. "But, Mr. Jack, do you want me to
telephone to Mr. McNaughton's and ask if a friend of theirs--"
The Governor cut her short. "Exactly. You know just what I said, Mary
Mooney; you only want to talk it over. I'm much too busy. Tell Jackson
not to come to the library again unless the State freezes over.
Good-night.--I don't think the McNaughtons can complain that I haven't
done their friend brown," said the Governor to himself as he went back
across the hall.
* * * * *
Down at the station, beneath the spirited illumination of one whistling
gas-jet, the station-master and Lindsay Lee waited wearily for an answer
from the Governor. It was long in coming, for the station-master's boys,
the Messrs. O'Milligan, seizing the occasion for foreign travel offered
by a sight of the Executive grounds, had made a détour by the Executive
stables, and held deep converse with the grooms. Just as the thought of
duty undone began to prick the leathery conscience of the older one, the
order came for Harper and the brougham. Half an hour later, at the
station, Harper drew up with a sonorous clatter of hoofs. The
station-master hurried forward to interview the coachman. In a moment he
turned with a beaming face.
"It's good news for ye, miss. The Governor's sent his own kerridge for
ye, then. Blessed Mary, but it's him that's condescendin'. Get right
in, miss."
Such a sudden safe harbor seemed almost too good to be true. Lindsay was
nearly asleep as the rubber-tired wheels rolled softly along through the
city. The carriage turned at length from the lights and swung up a long
avenue between trees, and then stopped. The door flew open, and Lindsay
looked up steps and into a wide, lighted doorway, where stood a stout
woman, who hastened to seize her bag and umbrella and take voluble
possession of her. The sleepy, dazed girl was vaguely conscious of large
halls and a wide stair and a kind voice by her side that flowed ever on
in a gentle river of words. Then she found herself in a big, pleasant
bed-room, and beyond was the open door of a tiled bath-room.
"Oh--oh!" she said, and dropped down sideways on the whiteness of the
brass bed, and put her arms around the pillow and her head, hat and all,
on it.
"Poor child!" said pink-checked, motherly Mrs. Mooney. "You're more than
tired, that I can see without trying, and no wonder, too! I shan't say
another word to you, but just leave you to get to bed and to sleep, and
I'm sure it's the best medicine ever made, is a good comfortable bed and
a night's rest. So I shan't stop to speak another word. But is there
anything at all you'd like, Miss Lee? And there, now, what am I thinking
about? I haven't asked if you wouldn't have a bit of supper! I'll bring
it up myself--just a bit of cold bird and a glass of wine? It will do
you good. But it will," as Lindsay shook her head, smiling. "There's
nothing so bad as going to sleep on an empty stomach when you're tired."
"But I had dinner on the train, and I'm not hungry; sure enough, I'm
not; thank you a thousand times."
Mrs. Mooney reluctantly took two steps toward the door, the room shaking
under her soft-footed, heavy tread.
"You're sure you wouldn't like--" She stopped, embarrassed, and the blue
eyes shone like kindly sapphires above the always-blushing cheeks. "I'm
mortified to ask you for fear you'd laugh at me, but you seem like such
a child, and--would you let me bring you--just a slice of bread and
butter with some brown sugar on it?"
Lindsay had a gracious way of knowing when people really wished to do
something for her. She flapped her hands, like the child she looked.
"Oh, how did you think of it? I used to have that for a treat at home.
Yes, I'd _love_ it!" And Mrs. Mooney beamed.
"There! I thought you would! You see, Miss Lee, that's what I used
sometimes to give my boy--that's the Governor--when he was little and
got hungry at bedtime."
Lindsay, left alone, took off her hat, and with a pull and screw at her
necktie and collar-button, dropped into a chair that seemed to hold its
fat arms up for her. She smiled sleepily and comfortably. "I'm having a
right good time," she said to herself, "but it's funny. I feel as if I
lived here, and I love that old housekeeper-nurse of the Governor's. I
wonder what the Governor is like? I wonder--" And at this point she
became aware, with only slight surprise, of a little boy with a crown
on his head who offered her a slice of bread and butter and sugar a yard
square, and told her he had kept it for her twenty-five years. She was
about to reason with him that it could not possibly be good to eat in
that case, when something jarred the brain that was slipping so easily
down into oblivion, and as her eyes opened again she saw Mrs. Mooney's
solid shape bending over the tub in the bath-room, and a noise of
running water sounded pleasant and refreshing.
"Oh, did I go to sleep?" she asked, sitting up straight and blinking
wide-open eyes.
"There! I knew it would wake you, and I couldn't a-bear to do it, my
dear, but it would never do for you to sleep like that in your clothes,
and I drew your bath warm, thinking it would rest you better, but I can
just change it hot or cold as it suits you. And here's the little lunch
for you, and I feel as if it was my own little boy I was taking care of
again; the year he was ten it was he ate so much at night. I saw him
just now, and he's that tired from his meeting--it's a shame how hard he
has to work for this State, time and time again. He said 'Good-night,
Mary,' he said, just the way he did years ago--such a little gentleman
he always was. The dearest and the handsomest thing he was; they used to
call him 'the young prince,' he was that handsome and full of spirit. He
told me to say he hoped for the pleasure of seeing Miss Lee at breakfast
to-morrow at nine; but if you should be tired, Miss Lee, or prefer your
breakfast up here, which you can have it just as well as not, you know.
And here I'm talking you to death again, and you ought to stop me, for
when I begin about the Governor I never know when to stop myself. Just
put up your foot, please, and I'll take your shoes off," And while she
unlaced Lindsay's small boots with capable fingers she apologized
profusely for talking--talking as much again.
"There's nothing to excuse. It's mighty interesting to hear about him,"
said Lindsay. "I shall enjoy meeting him that much more. Is there a
picture of him anywhere around?" looking about the room.
That was a lucky stroke. Mary Mooney parted the black ribbon that was
tied beneath her neat white collar and turned her face up, all pleased
smiles, to the girl, who leaned down to examine an ivory miniature set
as a brooch. It was a sunny-faced little boy, with thick straight golden
hair and fearless brown eyes--a sweet childish face very easy to admire,
and Lindsay admired it enough to satisfy even Mrs. Mooney.
"I had it for a Christmas gift the year he was nine," she said. Mary's
calendar ran from The Year of the Governor, 1. "He had whooping-cough
just after that, and was ill seven weeks. Dear me, what teeny little
feet you have!" as she put on them the dressing-slippers from the bag,
and struggled up to her own, heavily but cheerfully.
Lindsay looked at her thoughtfully. "You haven't mentioned the
Governor's wife," she said. "Isn't she at home?" and she leaned over to
pull up the furry heel of the little slipper. So that she missed seeing
Mary Mooney's face. Expression chased expression over that smiling
landscape--astonishment, perplexity, anxiety, the gleam of a new-born
idea, hesitation, and at last a glow of unselfish kindliness which often
before had transfigured it.
"No, Miss Lee," said Mary. "She's away from home just now." And then,
unblushingly, "But she's a lovely lady, and she'll be very disappointed
not to see you."
Almost the next thing Lindsay knew she was watching dreamily spots of
sunlight that danced on a pale pink wall. Then a bird began to sing at
the edge of the window; there was a delicate rustle of skirts, and she
turned her head and saw a maid--not Mary Mooney this time--moving softly
about, opening part way the outside shutters, drawing lip the shades a
bit, letting the light and shadow from tossing trees outside and the air
and the morning in with gentle slowness. She dressed with deliberation,
and, lo! it was a quarter after nine o'clock.
So that the Governor waited for his breakfast. For ten minutes, while
the paper lasted, waiting was unimportant; and then, being impatient by
nature, and not used to it, he suddenly was cross.
"Confound the girl!" soliloquized the Governor. "I'll have her indicted
too! First she breaks up a meeting, then she gets the horses out at all
hours, and now, to cap it, she makes me wait for breakfast. Why should I
wait for my breakfast? Why the devil can't she--Now, Mary, what is it? I
warn you I'm cross, and I shan't listen well till I've had breakfast.
I'm waiting for that young lady you're coddling. Where's that young
lady? Why doesn't she--What?"
For the flood-gates were open, and the soft verbal oceans of Mary were
upon him. He listened two minutes, mute with astonishment, and then he
rose up in his wrath and was verbal also.
"What! You told her I was _married_? What the dev--And you're
actually asking _me_ to tell her so _too_? Mary, are you insane?
Embarrassed? What if she is embarrassed? And what do I care if--What?
Sweet and pretty? Mary, don't be an idiot. Am I to improvise a wife, in
my own house, because a stray girl may object to visiting a bachelor?
Not if I know it. Not much." The Governor bristled with indignation.
"Confound the girl, I'll--" At this point Mary, though portly, vanished
like a vision of the night, and there stood in the doorway a smiling
embodiment of the morning, crisp in a clean shirt-waist, and free from
consciousness of crime.
"Is it Governor Rudd?" asked Lindsay; and the Governor was, somehow,
shaking hands like a kind and cordial host, and the bitterness was gone
from his soul. "I certainly don't know how to thank you," she said.
"You-all have been very good to me, and I've been awfully comfortable. I
was so lost and unhappy last night; I felt like a wandering Jewess. I
hope I haven't kept you waiting for breakfast?"
"Not a moment," said the Governor, heartily, placing her chair, and it
was five minutes before he suddenly remembered that he was cross. Then
he made an effort to live up to his convictions. "This is a mistake," he
said to himself. "I had no intention of being particularly friendly with
this young person. Rudd, I can't allow you to be impulsive in this way.
You're irritated by the delay and by last night: you're bored to be
obliged to entertain a girl when you wish to read the paper; you're
anxious to get down to the Capitol to see those men; all you feel is a
perfunctory politeness for the McNaughtons' friend. Kindly remember
these facts, Rudd, and don't make a fool of yourself gambolling on the
green, instead of sustaining the high dignity of your office." So
reasoned the Governor secretly, and made futile attempts at high
dignity, while his heart became as wax, and he questioned of his soul at
intervals to see if it knew what was going on.
So the Governor sat before Lindsay Lee at his own table, momentarily
more surprised and helpless. And Lindsay, eating her grape-fruit with
satisfaction, thought him delightful, and wondered what his wife was
like, and how many children he had, and where they all were. It was at
least safe to speak of the wife, for the old house-keeper-nurse had
given her an unqualified recommendation. So she spoke.
"I'm sorry to hear that Mrs. Rudd is not at home," she began. "It must
be rather lonely in this big house without her."
The Governor looked at her and laughed. "Not that I've noticed," he
said, and was suddenly seized with a sickness of pity that was the
inevitable effect of Lindsay Lee. She needed no pity, being healthy,
happy, and well-to-do, but she had, for the punishment of men's sins,
sad gray eyes and a mouth whose full lips curved sorrowfully down. Her
complexion was the colorless, magnolia-leaf sort that is typically
Southern; her dark hair lay in thick locks on her forehead as if always
damp with emotion; her swaying, slender figure seemed to appeal to
masculine strength; and the voice that drawled a syllable to twice its
length here, to slide over mouthfuls of words there, had an upward
inflection at the end of sentences that brought tears to one's eyes.
There was no pose about her, but the whole effect of her was
pathetic--illogically, for she caught the glint of humor from every side
light of life, which means pleasure that other people miss. The old
warning against vice says that we "first endure, then pity, then
embrace"; but Lindsay differed from vice so far that people never had to
endure her, but began with pity, finding it often a very short step to
the wish, at least, to embrace her. The Governor after fifteen minutes'
acquaintance had arrived at pitying her, intensely and with his whole
soul, as he did most things. He held another interview with himself.
"Lord! what an innocent face it is!" he said. "Mary said she would be
embarrassed--the brute that would embarrass her! Hanged if I'll do it!
If she would rather have me married, married I'll be." He raised candid
eyes to Lindsay's face.
"I'm afraid I've shocked you. You mustn't think I shall not be glad
when--Mrs. Rudd--is here. But, you see, I've been very busy lately. I've
hardly had time to breathe--haven't had time to miss--her--at all,
really. All the same--" Now what was the queer feeling in his throat and
lungs--yes, it must be the lungs--as the Governor framed this sentence?
He went on: "All the same, I shall be a happy man when--my wife--comes
home."
Lindsay's face cleared. This was satisfactory and proper; there was no
more to be said about it. She looked up with a smile to where the old
butler beamed upon her for her youth and beauty and her accent and her
name.
A handful of busy men left the Capitol in some annoyance that morning
because the Governor had telephoned that he could not be there before
half past eleven. They would have been more annoyed, perhaps, if they
had seen him dashing about the station light-heartedly just before the
eleven-o'clock train for Bristol left. They said to each other: "It must
be a matter of importance that keeps him. Governor Rudd almost never
throws over an appointment. He has been working like the devil over that
street-railway franchise case; probably it's that."
And the Governor stood by a chair in a parlor-car, his world cleared of
street railways and indictments and their class as if they had never
been, and in his hand was a small white oblong box tied with a tinsel
cord.
"Good-by," he said, "but remember I'm to be asked down for the garden
party next week, and I'm coming."
"I certainly won't forget. And I reckon I'd better not try to thank you
for--Oh, thank you! I thought that looked like candy. And bring Mrs.
Rudd with you next week. I want to see her. And--Oh, get off, please;
it's moving. Good-by, good-by."
And to the mighty music of a slow-clanging bell and the treble of
escaping steam and the deep-rolling accompaniment of powerful wheels the
Governor escaped to the platform, and the capital city of that sovereign
State was empty--practically empty. He noticed it the moment he turned
his eyes from the disappearing train and moved toward Harper and the
brougham. He also noticed that he had never noticed it before.