THE DISTURBANCE OF JUNE SEVENTH
After Mr. Speaker Doby had got his gold watch from an admiring and
apparently reunited House, and had wept over it, the Legislature
adjourned. This was about the first of April, that sloppiest and windiest
of months in a northern climate, and Mr. Crewe had intended, as usual, to
make a little trip southward to a club of which he was a member. A sense
of duty, instead, took him to Leith, where he sat through the days in his
study, dictating letters, poring over a great map of the State which he
had hung on the wall, and scanning long printed lists. If we could stand
behind him, we should see that these are what are known as check-lists,
or rosters of the voters in various towns.
Mr. Crewe also has an unusual number of visitors for this muddy weather,
when the snow-water is making brooks of the roads. Interested observers
--if there were any--might have remarked that his friendship with Mr.
Hamilton Tooting had increased, that gentleman coming up from Ripton at
least twice a week, and aiding Mr. Crewe to multiply his acquaintances by
bringing numerous strangers to see him. Mr. Tooting, as we know, had
abandoned the law office of the Honourable Hilary Vane and was now
engaged in travelling over the State, apparently in search of health.
These were signs, surely, which the wise might have read with profit: in
the offices, for instance, of the Honourable Hilary Vane in Ripton
Square, where seismic disturbances were registered; but the movement of
the needle (to the Honourable Hilary's eye) was almost imperceptible.
What observer, however experienced, would have believed that such
delicate tracings could herald a volcanic eruption?
Throughout the month of April the needle kept up its persistent
registering, and the Honourable Hilary continued to smile. The Honourable
Jacob Botcher, who had made a trip to Ripton and had cited that very
decided earthquake shock of the Pingsquit bill, had been ridiculed for
his pains, and had gone away again comforted by communion with a strong
man. The Honourable Jacob had felt little shocks in his fief: Mr. Tooting
had visited it, sitting with his feet on the tables of hotel
waiting-rooms, holding private intercourse with gentlemen who had been
disappointed in office. Mr. Tooting had likewise been a sojourner in the
domain of the Duke of Putnam. But the Honourable Brush was not troubled,
and had presented Mr. Tooting with a cigar.
In spite of the strange omission of the State Tribune to print his speech
and to give his victory in the matter of the Pingsquit bill proper
recognition, Mr. Crewe was too big a man to stop his subscription to the
paper. Conscious that he had done his duty in that matter, neither
praise nor blame could affect him; and although he had not been mentioned
since, he read it assiduously every afternoon upon its arrival at Leith,
feeling confident that Mr. Peter Pardriff (who had always in private
conversation proclaimed himself emphatically for reform) would not
eventually refuse--to a prophet--public recognition. One afternoon
towards the end of that month of April, when the sun had made the last
snow-drift into a pool, Mr. Crewe settled himself on his south porch and
opened the State Tribune, and his heart gave a bound as his eye fell upon
the following heading to the leading editorial:--
A WORTHY PUBLIC SERVANT FOR GOVERNOR
Had his reward come at last? Had Mr. Peter Pardriff seen the error of his
way? Mr. Crewe leisurely folded back the sheet, and called to his
secretary, who was never far distant.
"Look here," he said, "I guess Pardriff's recovered his senses. Look
here!"
The tired secretary, ready with his pencil and notebook to order fifty
copies, responded, staring over his employer's shoulder. It has been said
of men in battle that they have been shot and have run forward some
hundred feet without knowing what has happened to them. And so Mr. Crewe
got five or six lines into that editorial before he realized in full the
baseness of Mr. Pardriff's treachery.
"These are times" (so ran Mr. Pardriff's composition) "when the sure and
steadying hand of a strong man is needed at the helm of State. A man of
conservative, business habits of mind; a man who weighs the value of
traditions equally with the just demands of a new era; a man with a
knowledge of public affairs derived from long experience;" (!!!) "a man
who has never sought office, but has held it by the will of the people,
and who himself is a proof that the conduct of State institutions in the
past has been just and equitable. One who has served with distinction
upon such boards as the Railroad Commission, the Board of Equalization,
etc., etc." (!!!) "A stanch Republican, one who puts party before--" here
the newspaper began to shake a little, and Mr. Crewe could not for the
moment see whether the next word were place or principle. He skipped a
few lines. The Tribune, it appeared, had a scintillating idea, which
surely must have occurred to others in the State. "Why not the Honourable
Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton for the next governor?"
The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton!
It is a pleasure to record, at this crisis, that Mr. Crewe fixed upon his
secretary as steady an eye as though Mr. Pardriff's bullet had missed its
mark.
"Get me," he said coolly, "the 'State Encyclopaedia of Prominent Men.'"
(Just printed. Fogarty and Co., Newcastle, publishers.)
The secretary fetched it, open at the handsome and lifelike
steel-engraving of the Honourable Adam, with his broad forehead and
kindly, twinkling eyes, and the tuft of beard on his chin; with his ample
statesman's coat in natural creases, and his white shirt-front and little
black tie. Mr. Crewe gazed at this work of art long and earnestly. The
Honourable Adam B. Hunt did not in the least have the appearance of a
bolt from the blue. And then Mr. Crewe read his biography.
Two things he shrewdly noted about that biography; it was placed, out of
alphabetical order, fourth in the book, and it was longer than any other
with one exception that of Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer. Mr. Ridout's
place was second in this invaluable volume, he being preceded only by a
harmless patriarch. These facts were laid before Mr. Tooting, who was
directed by telephone to come to Leith as soon as he should arrive in
Ripton from his latest excursion. It was nine o'clock at night when that
long-suffering and mud-bespattered individual put in an appearance at the
door of his friend's study.
"Because I didn't get on to it," answered Mr. Tooting, in response to a
reproach for not having registered a warning--for he was Mr. Crewe's
seismograph. "I knew old Adam was on the Railroads' governor's bench, but
I hadn't any notion he'd been moved up to the top of the batting list. I
told you right. Ridout was going to be their next governor if you hadn't
singed him with the Pingsquit bill. This was done pretty slick, wasn't
it? Hilary got back from New York day before yesterday, and Pardriff has
the editorial to-day. Say, I always told you Pardriff wasn't a reformer,
didn't I?"
Mr. Crewe looked pained.
"I prefer to believe the best of people until I know the worst," he said.
"I did not think Mr. Pardriff capable of ingratitude."
What Mr. Crewe meant by this remark is enigmatical.
"He ain't," replied Mr. Tooting, "he's grateful for that red ticket he
carries around with him when he travels, and he's grateful to the
Honourable Adam B. Hunt for favours to come. Peter Pardriff's a grateful
cuss, all-right, all right."
Mr. Crewe tapped his fingers on the desk thoughtfully.
"The need of a reform campaign is more apparent than ever," he remarked.
Mr. Tooting put his tongue in his cheek; and, seeing a dreamy expression
on his friend's face, accidentally helped himself to a cigar out of the
wrong box.
"It's up to a man with a sense of duty and money to make it," Mr. Tooting
agreed, taking a long pull at the Havana.
"As for the money," replied Mr. Crewe, "the good citizens of the State
should be willing to contribute largely. I have had a list of men of
means prepared, who will receive notices at the proper time."
Mr. Hamilton Tooting spread out his feet, and appeared to be studying
them carefully.
"It's funny you should have mentioned cash," he said, after a moment's
silence, "and it's tough on you to have to be the public-spirited man to
put it up at the start. I've got a little memorandum here," he added,
fumbling apologetically in his pocket; "it certainly costs something to
move the boys around and keep 'em indignant."
Mr. Tooting put the paper on the edge of the desk, and Mr. Crewe, without
looking, reached out his hand for it, the pained expression returning to
his face.
"Tooting," he said, "you've got a very flippant way of speaking of
serious things. It strikes me that these expenses are out of all
proportion to the simplicity of the task involved. It strikes me--ahem
that you might find, in some quarters at least, a freer response to a
movement founded on principle."
"That's right," declared Mr. Tooting, "I've thought so myself. I've got
mad, and told 'em so to their faces. But you've said yourself, Mr. Crewe,
that we've got to deal with this thing practically."
"Certainly," Mr. Crewe interrupted. He loved the word.
"And we've got to get workers, haven't we? And it costs money to move 'em
round, don't it? We haven't got a bushel basket of passes. Look here,"
and he pushed another paper at Mr. Crewe, "here's ten new ones who've
made up their minds that you're the finest man in the State. That makes
twenty."
Mr. Crewe took that paper deprecatingly, but nevertheless began a fire of
cross-questions on Mr. Tooting as to the personality, habits, and
occupations of the discerning ten in question, making certain little
marks of his own against each name. Thus it will be seen that Mr. Crewe
knew perfectly what he was about--although no one else did except Mr.
Tooting, who merely looked mysterious when questioned on the streets of
Ripton or Newcastle or Kingston. It was generally supposed, however, that
the gentleman from Leith was going to run for the State Senate, and was
attempting to get a following in other counties, in order to push through
his measures next time. Hence the tiny fluctuations of Hilary Vane's
seismograph an instrument, as will be shown, utterly out-of-date. Not so
the motto toujours l'audace. Geniuses continue (at long intervals) to be
born, and to live up to that motto.
That seismograph of the Honourable Hilary's persisted in tracing only a
slightly ragged line throughout the beautiful month of May, in which
favourable season the campaign of the Honourable Adam B. Hunt took root
and flourished--apparently from the seed planted by the State Tribune.
The ground, as usual, had been carefully prepared, and trained gardeners
raked, and watered, and weeded the patch. It had been decreed and
countersigned that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt was the flower that was to
grow this year.
There must be something vitally wrong with an instrument which failed to
register the great earthquake shock of June the seventh!
Now that we have come to the point where this shock is to be recorded on
these pages, we begin to doubt whether our own pen will be able
adequately to register it, and whether the sheet is long enough and broad
enough upon which to portray the relative importance of the disturbance
created. The trouble is, that there is nothing to measure it by. What
other event in the history of the State produced the vexation of spirit,
the anger, the tears, the profanity; the derision, the laughter of fools,
the contempt; the hope, the glee, the prayers, the awe, the dumb
amazement at the superb courage of this act? No, for a just comparison we
shall have to reach back to history and fable: David and Goliath; Theseus
and the Minotaur; or, better still, Cadmus and the Dragon! It was Cadmus
(if we remember rightly) who wasted no time whatever, but actually jumped
down the dragon's throat and cut him up from the inside! And it was
Cadmus, likewise, who afterwards sowed the dragon's teeth.
That wondrous clear and fresh summer morning of June the seventh will not
be forgotten for many years. The trees were in their early leaf in Ripton
Square, and the dark pine patches on Sawanec looked (from Austen's little
office) like cloud shadows against the shimmer of the tender green. He
sat at his table, which was covered with open law-books and papers, but
his eyes were on the distant mountain, and every scent-laden breeze
wafted in at his open window seemed the bearer of a tremulous, wistful,
yet imperious message--"Come!" Throughout the changing seasons Sawanec
called to him in words of love: sometimes her face was hidden by cloud
and fog and yet he heard her voice! Sometimes her perfume as to-day--made
him dream; sometimes, when the western heavens were flooded with the
golden light of the infinite, she veiled herself in magic purple, when to
gaze at her was an exquisite agony, and she became as one forbidden to
man. Though his soul cried out to her across the spaces, she was not for
him. She was not for him!
With a sigh he turned to his law-books again, and sat for a while staring
steadfastly at a section of the 'Act of Consolidation of the Northeastern
Railroads' which he had stumbled on that morning. The section, if he read
its meaning aright, was fraught with the gravest consequences for the
Northeastern Railroads; if he read its meaning aright, the Northeastern
Railroads had been violating it persistently for many years and were
liable for unknown sums in damages. The discovery of it had dazed him,
and the consequences resulting from a successful suit under the section
would be so great that he had searched diligently, though in vain, for
some modification of it since its enactment. Why had not some one
discovered it before? This query appeared to be unanswerable, until the
simple--though none the less remarkable--solution came to him, that
perhaps no definite occasion had hitherto arisen for seeking it.
Undoubtedly the Railroads' attorneys must know of its existence--his own
father, Hilary Vane, having been instrumental in drawing up the Act. And
a long period had elapsed under which the Northeastern Railroads had been
a law unto themselves.
The discovery was of grave import to Austen. A month before, chiefly
through the efforts of his friend, Tom, who was gradually taking his
father's place in the Gaylord Lumber Company, Austen had been appointed
junior counsel for that corporation. The Honourable Galusha Hammer still
remained the senior counsel, but was now confined in his house at
Newcastle by an illness which made the probability of his return to
active life extremely doubtful; and Tom had repeatedly declared that in
the event of his non-recovery Austen should have Mr. Hammer's place. As
counsel for the Gaylord Lumber Company, it was clearly his duty to call
the attention of young Mr. Gaylord to the section; and in case Mr. Hammer
did not resume his law practice, it would fall upon Austen himself to
bring the suit. His opponent in this matter would be his own father.
The consequences of this culminating conflict between them, the coming of
which he had long dreaded--although he had not foreseen its specific
cause--weighed heavily upon Austen. It was Tom Gaylord himself who
abruptly aroused him from his revery by bursting in at the door.
"Have you heard what's up?" he cried, flinging down a newspaper before
Austen's eyes. "Have you seen the Guardian?"
"What's the matter now, Tom?"
"Matter!" exclaimed Tom; "read that. Your friend and client, the
Honourable Humphrey Crewe, is out for governor."
"Humphrey Crewe for governor!"
"On an anti-railroad platform. I might have known something of the kind
was up when he began to associate with Tooting, and from the way he spoke
to me in March. But who'd have thought he'd have the cheek to come out
for governor? Did you ever hear of such tommyrot?"
Austen looked grave.
"I'm not sure it's such tommyrot," he said.
"Not tommyrot?" Tom ejaculated. "Everybody's laughing. When I passed the
Honourable Hilary's door just now, Brush Bascom and some of the old
liners were there, reciting parts of the proclamation, and the boys down
in the Ripton House are having the time of their lives."
Austen took the Guardian, and there, sure enough, filling a leading
column, and in a little coarser type than the rest of the page, he read:
DOWN WITH RAILROAD RULE!
The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith, at the request
of twenty prominent citizens, consents to become a candidate
for the Republican Nomination for Governor.
Ringing letter of acceptance, in which he denounces the
political power of the Northeastern Railroads, and declares
that the State is governed from a gilded suite of offices in
New Pork.
"The following letter, evincing as it does a public opinion thoroughly
aroused in all parts of the State against the present disgraceful
political conditions, speaks for itself. The standing and character of
its signers give it a status which Republican voters cannot ignore."
The letter followed. It prayed Mr. Crewe, in the name of decency and good
government, to carry the standard of honest men to victory. Too long had
a proud and sovereign State writhed under the heel of an all-devouring
corporation! Too long had the Northeastern Railroads elected, for their
own selfish ends, governors and legislatures and controlled railroad
commissions The spirit of 1776 was abroad in the land. It was eminently
fitting that the Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith, who had dared to
fling down the gauntlet in the face of an arrogant power, should be the
leader of the plain people, to recover the rights which had been wrested
from them. Had he not given the highest proof that he had the people's
interests at heart? He was clearly a man who "did things."
At this point Austen looked up and smiled.
"Tom," he asked, "has it struck you that this is written in the same
inimitable style as a part of the message of the Honourable Asa Gray?"
Tom slapped his knee.
"That's exactly what I said I!" he cried. "Tooting wrote it. I'll swear
to it."
"And the twenty prominent citizens--do you know any of 'em, Tom?"
"Well," said Tom, in delighted appreciation, "I've heard of three of 'em,
and that's more than any man I've met can boast of. Ed Dubois cuts my
hair when I go to Kingston. He certainly is a prominent citizen in the
fourth ward. Jim Kendall runs the weekly newspaper in Grantley--I
understood it was for sale. Bill Clements is prominent enough up at
Groveton. He wanted a trolley franchise some years ago, you remember."
"And didn't get it."
Mr. Crewe's answer was characteristically terse and businesslike. The
overwhelming compliment of a request from such gentlemen must be treated
in the nature of a command--and yet he had hesitated for several weeks,
during which period he had cast about for another more worthy of the
honour. Then followed a somewhat technical and (to the lay mind) obscure
recapitulation of the iniquities the Northeastern was committing, which
proved beyond peradventure that Mr. Crewe knew what he was talking about;
such phrases as "rolling stock," "milking the road"--an imposing array of
facts and figures. Mr. Crewe made it plain that he was a man who "did
things." And if it were the will of Heaven that he became governor,
certain material benefits would as inevitably ensue as the day follows
the night. The list of the material benefits, for which there was a
crying need, bore a strong resemblance to a summary of the worthy
measures upon which Mr. Crewe had spent so much time and labour in the
last Legislature.
Austen laid down the paper, leaned back in his chair, and thrust his
hands in his pockets, and with a little vertical pucker in his forehead,
regarded his friend.
"What do you think of that?" Tom demanded. "Now, what do you think of
it?"
"I think," said Austen, "that he'll scare the life out of the
Northeastern before he gets through with them."
"What!" exclaimed Tom, incredulously. He had always been willing to
accept Austen's judgment on men and affairs, but this was pretty stiff.
"What makes you think so?"
"Well, people don't know Mr. Crewe, for one thing. And they are beginning
to have a glimmer of light upon the Railroad."
"Do you mean to say he has a chance for the nomination?"
"I don't know. It depends upon how much the voters find out about him
before the convention."
Tom sat down rather heavily.
"You could have been governor," he complained reproachfully, "by raising
your hand. You've got more ability than any man in the State, and you sit
here gazin' at that mountain and lettin' a darned fool millionaire walk
in ahead of you."
Austen rose and crossed over to Mr. Gaylord's chair, and, his hands still
in his pockets, looked down thoughtfully into that gentleman's square and
rugged face.
"Tom," he said, "there's no use discussing this delusion of yours, which
seems to be the only flaw in an otherwise sane character. We must try to
keep it from the world."
Tom laughed in spite of himself.
"I'm hanged if I understand you," he declared, "but I never did. You
think Crewe and Tooting may carry off the governorship, and you don't
seem to care."
"I do care," said Austen, briefly. He went to the window and stood for a
moment with his back to his friend, staring across at Sawanec. Tom had
learned by long experience to respect these moods, although they were to
him inexplicable. At length Austen turned.
"Tom," he said, "can you come in to-morrow about this time? If you can't,
I'll go to your office if you will let me know when you'll be in. There's
a matter of business I want to talk to you about."
Tom pulled out his watch.
"I've got to catch a train for Mercer," he replied, "but I will come in
in the morning and see you."
A quarter of an hour later Austen went down the narrow wooden flight of
stairs into the street, and as he emerged from the entry almost bumped
into the figure of a young man that was hurrying by. He reached out and
grasped the young man by the collar, pulling him up so short as almost to
choke him.
"Hully gee!" cried the young man whose progress had been so rudely
arrested. "Great snakes!" (A cough.) "What're you tryin' to do? Oh,"
(apologetically) "it's you, Aust. Let me go. This day ain't long enough
for me. Let me go."
Austen kept his grip and regarded Mr. Tooting thoughtfully.
"I want to speak to you, Ham," he said; "better come upstairs."
"Say, Aust, on the dead, I haven't time. Pardriff's waitin' for some copy
now."
"Just for a minute, Ham," said Austen; "I won't keep you long."
"Leggo my collar, then, if you don't want to choke me. Say, I don't
believe you know how strong you are."
"I didn't know you wore a collar any more, Ham," said Austen.
Mr. Tooting grinned in appreciation of this joke.
"You must think you've got one of your Wild West necktie parties on," he
gasped. "I'll come. But if you love me, don't let the boys in Hilary's
office see me."
"They use the other entry," answered Austen, indicating that Mr. Tooting
should go up first--which he did. When they reached the office Austen
shut the door, and stood with his back against it, regarding Mr. Tooting
thoughtfully.
At first Mr. Tooting returned the look with interest swagger--aggression
would be too emphatic, and defiance would not do. His was the air,
perhaps, of Talleyrand when he said, "There seems to be an inexplicable
something in me that brings bad luck to governments that neglect me:" the
air of a man who has made a brilliant coup d'etat. All day he had worn
that air--since five o'clock in the morning, when he had sprung from his
pallet. The world might now behold the stuff that was in Hamilton
Tooting. Power flowed out of his right hand from an inexhaustible
reservoir which he had had the sagacity to tap, and men leaped into
action at his touch. He, the once, neglected, had the destiny of a State
in his keeping.
Gradually, however, it became for some strange reason difficult to
maintain that aggressive stare upon Austen Vane, who shook his head
slowly.
"Ham, why did you do it?" he asked.
"Why?" cried Mr. Tooting, fiercely biting back a treasonable smile. "Why
not? Ain't he the best man in the State to make a winner? Hasn't he got
the money, and the brains, and the get-up-and-git? Why, it's a sure
thing. I've been around the State, and I know the sentiment. We've got
'em licked, right now. What have you got against it? You're on our side,
Aust."
"Ham," said Austen, "are you sure you have the names and addresses of
those twenty prominent citizens right, so that any voter may go out and
find 'em?"
"What are you kidding about, Aust?" retorted Mr. Tooting, biting back the
smile again. "Say, you never get down to business with me. You don't
blame Crewe for comin' out, do you?"
"I don't see how Mr. Crewe could have resisted such an overwhelming
demand," said Austen. "He couldn't shirk such a duty. He says so himself,
doesn't he?"
"Oh, go on!" exclaimed Mr. Tooting, who was not able to repress a grin.
"The letter of the twenty must have been a great surprise to Mr. Crewe.
He says he was astonished. Did the whole delegation go up to Leith, or
only a committee?"
Mr. Tooting's grin had by this time spread all over his face--a flood
beyond his control.
"Well, there's no use puffin' it on with you, Aust. That was done pretty
slick, that twenty-prominent-citizen business, if I do say it myself. But
you don't know that feller Crewe--he's a full-size cyclone when he gets
started, and nothin' but a range of mountains could stop him."
"It must be fairly exciting to--ride him, Ham."
"Say, but it just is. Kind of breathless, though. He ain't very well
known around the State, and he was bound to run--and I just couldn't let
him come out without any clothes on."
"I quite appreciate your delicacy, Ham."
Mr. Tooting's face took on once more a sheepish look, which changed
almost immediately to one of disquietude.
"Say, I'll come back again some day and kid with you. I've got to go,
Aust--that's straight. This is my busy day."
"Wouldn't you gain some time if you left by the window?" Austen asked.
At this suggestion Mr. Tooting's expressive countenance showed genuine
alarm.
"Say, you ain't going to put up any Wild West tricks on me, are you? I
heard you nearly flung Tom Gaylord out of the one in the other room."
"If this were a less civilized place, Ham, I'd initiate you into what is
known as the bullet dance. As it is, I have a great mind to speed you on
your way by assisting you downstairs."
Mr. Hamilton Tooting became ashy pale.
"I haven't done anything to you, Aust. Say--you didn't--?" He did not
finish.
Terrified by something in Austen's eye, which may or may not have been
there at the time of the Blodgett incident, Mr. Tooting fled without
completing his inquiry. And, his imagination being great, he reproduced
for himself such a vivid sensation of a bullet-hole in his spine that he
missed his footing near the bottom, and measured his length in the entry.
Such are the humiliating experiences which sometimes befall the
Talleyrands--but rarely creep into their biographies.
Austen, from the top of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not
smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner
of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the
open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street
windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom
and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated from the Honourable Nat
Billings.
"Howdy, Austen?" said Brush, genially, lookin' for the Honourable Hilary?
Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a couple of
hours ago. He'll be back at two."
"Have you read the pronunciamento?" inquired Mr. Billings. "Say, Austen,
knowin' your sentiments, I wonder you weren't one of the twenty prominent
citizens."
"All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together," Mr. Bascom
suggested; "you've got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned
the light of publicity on us this morning. I hear Ham Tooting's been in
and made you an offer."
News travels fast in Ripton.
"Austen kicked him downstairs," said Jimmy Towle, the office boy, who had
made a breathless entrance during the conversation, and felt it to be the
psychological moment to give vent to the news with which he was bursting.
"Is that straight?" Mr. Billings demanded. He wished he had done it
himself. "Is that straight?" he repeated, but Austen had gone.
"Of course it's straight," said Jimmy Towle, vigorously. A shrewd
observer of human nature, he had little respect for Senator Billings.
"Ned Johnson saw him pick himself up at the foot of Austen's stairway."
The Honourable Brush's agate eyes caught the light, and he addressed Mr.
Billings in a voice which, by dint of long training, only carried a few
feet.
"There's the man the Northeastern's got to look out for," he said. "The
Humphrey Crewes don't count. But if Austen Vane ever gets started,
there'll be trouble. Old man Flint's got some such idea as that, too. I
overheard him givin' it to old Hilary once, up at Fairview, and Hilary
said he couldn't control him. I guess nobody else can control him. I wish
I'd seen him kick Ham downstairs."
"I'd like to kick him downstairs," said Mr. Billings, savagely biting off
another cigar.
"I guess you hadn't better try it, Nat," said Mr. Bascom.
Meanwhile Austen had returned to his own office, and shut the door. His
luncheon hour came and went, and still he sat by the open window gazing
out across the teeming plain, and up the green valley whence the Blue
came singing from the highlands. In spirit he followed the water to
Leith, and beyond, where it swung in a wide circle and hurried between
wondrous hills like those in the backgrounds of the old Italians: hills
of close-cropped pastures, dotted with shapely sentinel oaks and maples
which cast sharp, rounded shadows on the slopes at noonday; with thin
fantastic elms on the gentle sky-lines, and forests massed here and
there--silent, impenetrable hills from a story-book of a land of mystery.
The river coursed between them on its rocky bed, flinging its myriad gems
to the sun. This was the Vale of the Blue, and she had touched it with
meaning for him, and gone.
He drew from his coat a worn pocket-book, and from the pocket-book a
letter. It was dated in New York in February, and though he knew it by
heart he found a strange solace in the pain which it gave him to reread
it. He stared at the monogram on the paper, which seemed so emblematic of
her; for he had often reflected that her things--even such minute
insignia as this--belonged to her. She impressed them not only with her
taste, but with her character. The entwined letters, Y. F., of the design
were not, he thought, of a meaningless, frivolous daintiness, but stood
for something. Then he read the note again. It was only a note.
"MY DEAR MR. VANE: I have come back to find my mother ill, and I am
taking her to France. We are sailing, unexpectedly, to-morrow,
there being a difficulty about a passage later. I cannot refrain
from sending you a line before I go to tell you that I did you an
injustice. You will no doubt think it strange that I should write
to you, but I shall be troubled until it is off my mind. I am
ashamed to have been so stupid. I think I know now why you would
not consent to be a candidate, and I respect you for it.
"Sincerely your friend,
"VICTORIA FLINT."
What did she know? What had she found out? Had she seen her father and
talked to him? That was scarcely possible, since her mother had been ill
and she had left at once. Austen had asked himself these questions many
times, and was no nearer the solution. He had heard nothing of her since,
and he told himself that perhaps it was better, after all, that she was
still away. To know that she was at Fairview, and not to be able to see
her, were torture indeed.
The note was formal enough, and at times he pretended to be glad that it
was. How could it be otherwise? And why should he interpret her interest
in him in other terms than those in which it was written? She had a warm
heart--that he knew; and he felt for her sake that he had no right to
wish for more than the note expressed. After several unsuccessful
attempts; he had answered it in a line, "I thank you, and I understand."