through the window of the Executive carriage as it bowled across toward
the Capitol, shook his head. "He works too hard," he said to himself. "A
fine fellow, and young and strong, but the pace is telling. He looks
anxious to-day. I wonder what scheme is revolving in his brain at this
moment."
And at that moment the Governor growled softly to himself. "I've
overdone it," he said. "She's sure to be offended. No one likes to be
taken in. I ought not to have showed her Mrs. Rudd's conservatory; that
was a mistake. She won't let them ask me down; I shan't see her. Hanged
if I won't telephone Mrs. McNaughton to keep the secret till I've been
down." And he did, before Lindsay could get there, amid much laughter at
both ends of the wire, and no small embarrassment at his own.
And he was asked down, and having enjoyed himself, was asked again. And
again. So that during the three weeks of Lindsay's visit Bristol saw
more of the Chief Executive officer of the State than Bristol had seen
before, and everybody but Lindsay had an inkling of the reason. But the
time never came to tell her of the shadowy personality of Mrs. Rudd, and
between the McNaughton girls and the Governor, whom they forced into
unexpected statements, to their great though secret glee, Lindsay was
informed of many details in regard to the missing first lady of the
commonwealth. Such a dialogue as the following would occur at the lunch
table:
_Alice McNaughton_ (speaking with ceremonious politeness from one end of
the table to the Governor at the other end). "When is Mrs. Rudd coming,
Governor?"
_The Governor_ (with a certain restraint). "Before very long, I hope,
Miss Alice. Mrs. McNaughton, may I have more lobster? I've never in my
life had as much lobster as I wanted."
_Alice_ (refusing to be side-tracked). "And when did you last hear from
her, Governor?"
_Chuck McNaughton_ (ornament of the Sophomore class at Harvard. In love
with Lindsay, but more so with the joke. Gifted with a sledgehammer
style of wit). "I've been hoping for a letter from her myself, Governor,
but it doesn't come."
_The Governor_ (with slight hauteur). "Ah, indeed!"
_Lindsay_ (at whose first small peep the Governor's eyes turn to hers
and rest there shamelessly). "Why haven't you any pictures of Mrs. Rudd
in the house, Mrs. McNaughton? The Governor's is everywhere and you all
tell me how fascinating she is, and yet don't have her about. It looks
like you don't love her as much as the Governor." (At the mention of
being loved, in that voice, cold shivers seize the Executive nerves.)
_Mrs. McNaughton_ (entranced with the airy persiflage, but knowing her
own to be no light hand at repartee). "Ask the others, my dear."
_Alice_ (jumping at the chance). "Oh, the reason of that is very
interesting! Mrs. Rudd has never given even the Governor her picture.
She--she has principles against it. She belongs, you see, to an ancient
Hebrew family--in fact, she is a Jewess" ("A wandering Jewess," the
Governor interjected, _sotto voce_, his glance veering again to
Lindsay's face), "and you know that Jewish families have religious
scruples about portraits of any sort" (pauses, exhausted).
_Chuck_ (with heavy artillery). "Alice, _taisez-vous_. You're doing
poorly. You can't converse. Your best parlor trick is your red hair.
Miss Lee, I'll show you a picture of Mrs. Rudd some day, and I'll tell
you now what she looks like. She has exquisite melancholy gray eyes, a
mouth like a ripe tomato" (shouts from the table _en masse_, but Chuck
ploughs along cheerily), "hair like the braided midnight" (cries of
"What's that?" and "Hear! Hear!"), "a figure slim and willowy as a
vaulting-pole" (a protest of "No track athletics at meals; that's
forbidden!"), "and a voice--well, if you ever tasted New Orleans
molasses on maple sugar, with 'that tired feeling' thrown in, perhaps
you'll have a glimpse, a mile off, of what that voice is like." (Eager
exclamations of "That's near enough," "Don't do it any more, Chuck," and
"For Heaven's sake, Charlie, stop." Lindsay looks hard with the gray
eyes at the Governor.)
_Lindsay_, "Why don't you pull your bowie-knife out of your boot,
Governor? It looks like he's making fun of your wife, to me. Isn't
anybody going to fight anybody?"
And then Mr. McNaughton would reprove her as a bloodthirsty Kentuckian,
and the whole laughing tableful would empty out on the broad porch. At
such a time the Governor, laughing too, amused, yet uncomfortable, and
feeling himself in a false and undignified position, would vow solemnly
that a stop must be put to all this. It would get about, into the papers
even, by horrid possibility; even now a few intimates of the McNaughton
family had been warned "not to kill the Governor's wife." He would
surely tell the girl the next time he could find her alone, and then the
absurdity would collapse. But the words would not come, or if he
carefully framed them beforehand, this bold, aggressive leader of men,
whose nickname was "Jack the Giant-killer," made a giant of Lindsay's
displeasure, and was afraid of it. He had never been afraid of anything
before. He would screw his courage up to the notch, and then, one look
at the childlike face, and down it would go, and he would ask her to go
rowing with him. They were such good friends; it was so dangerous to
change at a blow existing relations, to tell her that he had been
deceiving her all these weeks. These exquisite June weeks that had flown
past to music such us no June had made before; days snowed under with
roses, nights that seemed, as he remembered them, moonlit for a solid
month. The Governor sighed a lingering sigh, and quoted,
"Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!"
Yes, he must really wait--say two days longer. Then he might be sure
enough of her--regard--to tell her the truth. And then, a little later,
if he could control himself so long, another truth. Beyond that he did
not allow himself to think.
"Governor Rudd," asked Lindsay suddenly as they walked their horses the
last mile home from a ride on which they had gotten separated--the
Governor knew how--from the rest of the party, "why do they bother you
so about your wife, and why do you let them?"
"Can't help it, Miss Lindsay. They have no respect for me. I'm that sort
of man. Hard luck, isn't it?"
Lindsay turned her sad, infantile gray eyes on him searchingly. "I
reckon you're not," she said. "I reckon you're the sort of man people
don't say things to unless they're right sure you will stand it. They
don't trifle with you." She nodded her head with conviction. "Oh, I've
heard them talk about you! I like that; that's like our men down South.
You're right Southern, anyhow, in some ways. You see, I can pay you
compliments because you're a safe old married man," and her eyes smiled
up at him: she rarely laughed or smiled except with those lovely eyes.
"There's some joke about your wife," she went on, "that you-all won't
tell me. There certainly is. I _know_ it, sure enough I do, Governor
Rudd."
There is a common belief that the Southern accent can be faithfully
rendered in writing if only one spells badly enough. No amount of bad
spelling could tell how softly Lindsay Lee said those last two words.
"I love to hear you say that--'Guv'na Rudd.' I do, 'sho 'nuff,'" mused
the Governor out loud and irrelevantly. "Would you say it again?"
"I wouldn't," said Lindsay, with asperity. "Ridiculous! If you are a
Governor! But I was talking about your wife. Isn't she coming home
before I go? Sometimes I don't believe you have a wife."
That was his chance, and he saw it. He must tell her now or never, and
he drew a long breath. "Suppose I told you that I had not," he said,
"that she was a myth, what would you say?"
"Oh, I'd just never speak to you again," said Lindsay, carelessly. "I
wouldn't like to be fooled like that. Look, there are the others!" and
off she flew at a canter.
It is easy to see that the Governor was not hurried headlong into
confession by that speech. But the crash came. It was the night before
Lindsay was to go back home to far-off Kentucky, and with infinite
expenditure of highly trained intellect, for which the State was paying
a generous salary, the Governor had managed to find himself floating on
a moonlit flood through the Forest of Arden with the Blessed Damozel.
That, at least, is the rendering of a walk in the McNaughtons' wood with
Lindsay Lee as it appeared that night to the intellect mentioned. But
the language of such thoughts is idiomatic and incapable of exact
translation. A flame of eagerness to speak, quenched every moment by a
shower-bath of fear, burned in his soul, when suddenly Lindsay tripped
on a root and fell, with an exclamation. Then fear dried beneath the
flames. It is unnecessary to tell what the Governor did, or what he
said. The language, as language, was unoriginal and of striking
monotony, and as to what happened, most people have had experience which
will obviate the necessity of going into brutal facts. But when,
trembling and shaken, he realized a material world again, Lindsay was
fighting him, pushing him away, her eyes blazing fiercely.
"What do you mean? What _do_ you mean?" she was saying.
"Mean--mean? That I love you--that I want you to love me, to be my
wife!" She stood up like a white ghost in the silver light and shadow of
the wood.
"Governor Rudd, are you crazy?" she cried. "You have a wife already."
The tall Governor threw back his head and laughed a laugh like a child.
The people away off on the porch heard him and smiled. "They are having
a good time, those two," Mrs. McNaughton said.
"Lindsay--Lindsay," and he bent over and caught her hands and kissed
them. "There isn't any wife--there never will be any but you. It was all
a joke. It happened because--Oh, never mind! I can't tell you now; it's
a long story. But you must forgive that; that's all in the past now. The
question is, will you love me--will you love me, Lindsay? Tell me,
Lindsay!" He could not say her name often enough. But there came no
answering light in Lindsay's face. She looked at him as if he were a
striped convict.
"I'll never forgive you," she said, slowly. "You've treated me like a
child; you've made a fool of me, all of you. It was insulting. All a
joke, you call it? And I was the joke; you've been laughing at me all
these weeks. Why was it funny, I'd like to know?"
"Great heavens, Lindsay--you're not going to take it that way? I insult
you--laugh at you! I'd give my life; I'd shoot down any one--Lindsay!"
he broke out appealingly, and made a step toward her.
"Don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't touch me! I hate you!" And as he
still came closer she turned and ran up the path, into the moonlight of
the driveway, and so, a dim white blotch on the fragrant night,
disappeared.
When the Governor, walking with dignity, came up the steps of the porch,
three minutes later, he was greeted with questions.
"What have you done to Lindsay Lee, I'd like to know?" asked Alice
McNaughton. "She said she had fallen and hurt her foot, but she wouldn't
let me go up with her, and she was dignified, which is awfully trying.
Why did you quarrel with her, this last night?"
"Governor," said Chuck, with more discernment than delicacy, "if you
will accept the sympathies of one not unacquainted with grief--" But at
this point his voice faded away as he looked at the Governor.
The Governor never remembered just how he got away from the friendly
hatefulness of that porchful. An early train the next morning was
inevitable, for there was a meeting of real importance this time, and at
all events everything looked about the same shade of gray to him; it
mattered very little what he did. Only he must be doing something every
moment. He devoured work as if it were bread and meat and he were
famished. People said all that autumn and winter that anything like the
Governor's energy had never been seen. He evidently wanted a second
term, and really he ought to have it. He was working hard enough to get
it. About New-Year's he went down to Bristol for the first time since
June, for a dinner at the McNaughtons'. Alice McNaughton's friendly
face, under its red-gold hair, beamed at him from far away down the
table, but after dinner, when the men came in from the dining-room, she
took possession of him boldly.
"Governor, I want to tell you about Lindsay Lee. I know you'll be
interested, though you did have some mysterious fight before she left.
She's been awfully ill with pleurisy, a painful attack, and she's
getting well very slowly. They have just taken her to Paul Smith's. I'm
writing her to-morrow, and I want you to send a good message; it would
please her."
It was hard to stand with eighteen people grouped about him, all more or
less with an eye on his motions, and be the Governor, calm and
dignified, while hot irons were being applied to his heart by this
smiling girl.
"But, Miss Alice," he said, slowly, "I'm afraid you are wrong. I was
unfortunate enough to make Miss Lee very angry. I am afraid she would
think a message from me only an impertinence."
"Sir," said Alice, with decision, "I'm right sometimes, if I'm not
Governor; and it's better to be right than to be Governor, I've
heard--or something. You trust me. Just try the effect of a message, and
see if it isn't a success. What shall I say?"
The Governor was impetuous, and in spite of all the work he had done so
fiercely, the longing the work had been meant to quiet surged up as
strong as ever. "Miss Alice," he said, eagerly, "if you are right,
would it do--do you think I might deliver the message myself?"
"Do I think? Well, if _I_ were a man! Faint heart, you know!"
And the Governor, at that choppy eloquence, openly seized the friendly
young hand and wrung it till Alice begged, laughing but bruised, for
mercy. When he came up, later, to bid her good-night, his face was
bright, and,
"Good-night, Angel of Peace," he said.
* * * * *
Mary Mooney, who through the dark days had watched with anxious though
uncomprehending eyes her boy's dejection and hard effort to live it
down, and had applied partridges and sweetbreads and other forms of
devotion steadily but unsuccessfully, saw at once and with, rapture the
change when the Governor greeted her the next morning. Light-heartedly
she packed his traps two days later--she had done it jealously for
thirty-five years, though almost over the dead body of the Governor's
man sometimes in these later days. And when he told her good-by she had
her reward. The man's boyish heart went out in a burst of gratitude to
the tireless love that had sought only his happiness all his life. He
put his arm around the stout little woman's neck.
"Mary," he said, "I'm going to see Miss Lee."
Mary's pink cheeks were scarlet as she patted with a work-worn palm the
strong hand on her shoulder. "Then I know what will happen," she said,
"and I'm glad. And if you don't bring her back with you, Mr. Jack, I
won't let you in."
So the stately Governor went off like a schoolboy with his nurse's
blessing. And later like an arrow from a bow he swung around the corner
of the snowy piazza at Paul Smith's, where Mrs. Lee had told him he
would find her daughter. There was a bundle of fur in a big chair in the
sunlight, dark against the white hills beyond, with their black lines of
pine-trees. As the impetuous steps came nearer, it turned, and--the
Governor's methods were again such that words do them no justice. But
this time with happier result. Half an hour later, when some coherency
was established, he said:
"You waited for me! You've been _waiting_ for me!" as if it were the
most astonishing fact in history. "And since when have you been waiting
for me, you--"
Lindsay laughed, not only with her eyes, but with her soft voice. "Ever
since the morning after, your Excellency. Alice told me all about it
before I left, and made me see reason. And I--and I was right sorry I'd
been so cross. I thought you'd come some time--but you came right slow,"
she said, and her eyes travelled over his face as if she were making
sure he was really there.
"And I never dared to think you would see me!" he said. "But now!"
And again there were circumstances that are best described by a hiatus.
The day after, when Mary Mooney, discreetly letting her soul's idol get
into his library before greeting him, trotted into that stately chamber
with soft, heavy footsteps, she was met with a kiss and a bear's hug
that, as she told Mrs. Rudd later, "was like the year he was nine."
"I didn't bring her, Mary," the Governor said, "but you'd better let me
stay, for she's coming."
THE LITTLE REVENGE
Suddenly a gust of fresh wind caught Sally's hat, and off it flew, a
wide-winged pink bird, over the old, old sea-wall of Clovelly, down
among the rocks of the rough beach, tumbling and jumping from one gray
stone to another, and getting so far away that, in the soft violet
twilight, it seemed as lost as any ship of the Spanish Armada wrecked
long ago on this wild Devonshire coast.
"Oh!" cried Sally distractedly, and clapped her hands to her head with
the human instinct to shut the stable door after the horse is gone.
"Oh!" she cried again; "my pretty hat! And _oh_! it's in the water!"
But suddenly, out of somewhere in the twilight, there was a man chasing
it. Sally leaned over the rugged, yellowish, grayish stone wall and
excitedly called to him.
"Oh, thank you!" she cried, and "That's so good of you!"
The hat had tacked and was sailing inshore now, one stiff pink taffeta
sail set to the breeze. And in a minute, with a reckless splash into the
dashing waves, the man had it, and an easy, athletic figure swung up the
causeway, holding it away from him, as if it might nip at him. He wore a
dark blue jersey, and loose, flapping trousers of a seaman.
"He's only a sailor," Sally said under her breath; "I'd better tip him."
Her hand slipped into her pocket and I heard the click of her purse.
He looked from one to the other of us in the dim light inquiringly, as
he came up, and then off went his cap, and his face broke into the
gentlest, most charming smile as he delivered the hat into Sally's
outstretched hands.
"I'm afraid it's a bit damp," he said.
All dark-eyed, stalwart young fellows are attractive to me for the sake
of one like that who died forty years ago, but this sailor had a charm
of manner that is a gift of the gods, let it fall to prince or peasant;
the pretty deference of his few words, and the quick, radiant smile,
were enough to win friendliness from me. More than that, something in
the set of his head, in the straight gaze of his eyes, held a likeness
that made my memory ache. I smiled back at him instantly. But Sally's
heart was on her hat; hats from good shops did not grow on trees for
Sally Meade.
"I hope it isn't hurt," she said, anxiously, and shook it carefully, and
hardly glanced at the rescuer, who was watching with something that
looked like amusement in his face. Then her good manners came back.
"Thank you a thousand times," she said, and turned to him brightly. "You
were so quick--but, oh! I'm afraid you're wet." She looked at him, and I
saw a little shock of surprise in her face. Beauty so striking will be
admired, even in a common sailor.
"It's nothing," he said, looking down at his sopping, wide trousers;
"I'm used to it," and as Sally's hand went forward I caught the flash of
silver, and at the same moment another flash, from the man's eyes.
It was enough to startle me for the fraction of a second, but, as I
looked again, his expression held only a serious respect, and I was sure
I had been mistaken. He took the money and touched his cap and said,
"Thank you, miss," with perfect dignity. Yet my imagination must have
been lively, for as he slipped it in his pocket, his look turned toward
me, and for another breath of time a gleam of mischief--certainly
mischief--flashed from his dark eyes to mine.
Then Sally, quite unconscious of this, perhaps imaginary, by-play, had
an idea. "Are you a sailor?" she asked.
The man looked at her. "Yes--miss," he answered, a little slowly.
"We want to engage a boat and a man to take us out. Do you know of one?
Have you a boat?"
The young fellow glanced down across the wall where a hull and mast
gleamed indistinctly through the falling night, swinging at the side of
the quay. "That's mine, yonder," he said, nodding toward it. And then,
with the graceful, engaging frankness that I already knew as his, "I
shall be very glad to take you out"--including us both in his glance.
"Sally," I said, five minutes later, as we trudged up the one steep,
rocky street of Clovelly,--the picturesque old street that once led
English smugglers to their caves, and that is more of a staircase than a
street, with rows of stone steps across its narrow width--"Sally, you
are a very unexpected girl. You took my breath away, engaging that man
so suddenly to take us sailing to-morrow. How do you know he is
reliable? It would have been safer to try one of the men they
recommended from the Inn. And certainly it would have been more
dignified to let me make the arrangements. You seem to forget that I am
older than you."
"You aren't," said Sully, giving a squeeze to my arm that she held in
the angle of hers, pushing me with her young strength up the hill.
"You're not as old, cousin Mary. I'm twenty-two, and you're only
eighteen, and I believe you will never be any older."
I think perhaps I like flattery. I am a foolish old woman, and I have
noticed that it is not the young girls who treat me with great deference
and rise as soon as I come who seem to me the most charming, but the
ones who, with proper manners, of course, yet have a touch of
comradeship, as if they recognized in me something more than a fossil
exhibit. I like to have them go on talking about their beaux and their
work and play, and let me talk about it, too. Sally Meade makes me feel
always that there is in me an undying young girl who has outlived all of
my years and is her friend and equal.
"I'm sorry if I was forward, cousin Mary, but the sailing is to be my
party, you know, and then I thought you liked him. He had a pretty
manner for a common sailor, didn't he? And his voice--these low-class
English people have wonderfully well-bred, soft voices. I suppose it's
particularly so here in the South. Cousin Mary, did you see the look he
gave you with those delicious dark eyes? It's always the way--gentleman
or hod-carrier--no one has a chance with men when you are about."
It is pleasant to me, old woman as I am, to be told that people like
me--more pleasant, I think, every year. I never take it for truth, of
course, but I believe it means good feeling, and it makes an atmosphere
easy to breathe. I purred like a contented cat under Sally's talking,
yet, to save my dignity, kept up a protest.
"Sally, my dear! Delicious dark eyes! I'm ashamed of you--a common
sailor!"
"I didn't smile at him," said Sally, reflectively.
So, struggling up the steep street of Clovelly, we went home to the "New
Inn," to cold broiled lobster, to strawberries and clotted Devonshire
cream, and dreamless sleep in the white beds of the quiet rooms whose
windows looked toward the woods and cliffs of Hobby Drive on one side,
and on the other toward the dark, sparkling jewel of the moon-lighted
ocean, and the shadowy line of Lundy Island far in the distance.
That I, an inland woman, an old maid of sixty, should tell a story of
sailing and of love seems a little ridiculous. My nephews at college
beguile me to talk about boats, and then laugh to hear me, for I think
I get the names of things twisted. And as for what I know of the
other--the only love-making to which I ever listened was ended forty
years ago by one of the northern balls that fell in fiery rain on
Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. Yet, if I but tell the tale as it came
to me, others may feel as I did the thrill of the rushing of the keel
through dashing salt water, the swing of the great white sail above, the
flapping of the fresh wind in the slack of it, the exhilaration of
moving with power like the angels, with the great forces of nature for
muscles, the joy of it all expanding, pulsing through you, till it seems
as if the sky might crack if once you let your delight go free. And some
may catch, too, that other thrill, of the hidden feeling that glorified
those days. Few lives are so poor that the like of it has not brightened
them, and no one quite forgets.