"What the devil does he want?" growled Wilkinson, taking the letter
from Morehead, and tossing it to Leslie. "Is it money or political
preferment? Haven't I given him enough?" his anger increasing as he
went on. "I made him----"
"Stop!" cried Morehead, alarmed lest he should betray to her their
political secret.
"I mean I gave him my daughter," corrected the father, "everything I
had."
Morehead stared at them a moment from under knitted brows. Presently he
said:
"Peter, I'd send Leslie to him. This letter is only tentative."
"It's a refusal," gasped Wilkinson, hopelessly.
"It's a denial to me," explained Colonel Morehead. "But wait until he
sees her! He'll have something different to say to her, I know."
And so it happened that the following day Leslie Wilkinson arrived at
Albany to interview her betrothed on her father's behalf.
"I came to talk to you, Eliot, about my father," she began.
Beekman swayed in his chair. His eyes seemed sunken in his head, and
his head ached from weariness and lack of sleep.
"Yes, Leslie," he said.
"Colonel Morehead didn't--couldn't understand what your letter meant,
so I came to see."
"It means that I can't pardon your father, Leslie," he told her with
great difficulty.
"Why not?"
"Because your father is guilty----"
"Eliot!" she cried, leaping back with flashing eyes.
"But I must speak the truth, Leslie," said the Governor, "and that's
the truth."
There was a silence that lapsed into minutes. Beekman was the first to
break it.
"Unfortunately for us all," he said, "I'm sworn to do my duty--I don't
know that it makes much difference about my being sworn--I'd have to do
it anyway."
"You defended him," she said with sudden spirit. "You believed him
innocent then--you said so a thousand times."
"I defended him below," he returned, "because it was my duty to defend
him. I had never seen any other side of the case then; but now I know I
was wrong. He's guilty, deliberately guilty, wofully guilty...."
"Eliot, must I remind you that you are speaking of my father! Have I
no right, no influence, no claim upon you?" she rattled on breathlessly.
"Yes, you have a claim upon me," he said, eyeing her sternly. "Your
influence is of the best, Leslie, and it is your right, your duty
to claim, to demand of me that I shall do my duty in this as in all
things. If I were false in this, I would be false to you."
But Leslie could not see things in his light, bent as she was on
obtaining her father's pardon.
"You pardoned Giles Ilingsworth?" she went on; "and now you won't...."
"Yes, I pardoned Giles Ilingsworth," he admitted.
"A murderer!" she blazed forth.
"I pardoned him because he was innocent," he insisted.
"And you can't pardon my father?"
Eliot Beekman did not answer at once, but hung his head under the
girl's scrutinising gaze. She looked very beautiful, irresistibly
beautiful to him pleading there, and for a moment he came perilously
near to wavering in his purpose. He would have liked to have taken her
in his arms, to have uttered the one word of all others that she wished
to hear and to have sent her home happy. But, hard as it was to deny
her, he knew from the first that it was impossible to grant her request.
"No, Leslie, I can't," he told her at last.
"Look at me!" she cried, now changing her tactics. "I haven't slept, I
haven't eaten! Have you no pity for me--if not for him?"
"But, Leslie, you're asking me to commit a crime!"
"Just a stroke of the pen, dear, and my father will be free," she
went on, half sobbing, half smiling. "It's his last chance--my last
chance--surely you can't, you won't refuse me this."
Then followed a scene that lived in Beekman's memory for ever
after--the memory of a woman, the woman he loved, crawling after him on
her knees, pleading, almost writhing in agony, imploring him to do this
impossible thing--a thing that, were it not for his conscience, was so
ridiculously easy: merely the exercising of the authority vested in
him, and solely in him, and thus save the father of the woman he loved
from serving a term of ten years at hard labour in the State's Prison.
"Why was I ever Governor!" burst out Beekman.
"I'll tell you why," said Wilkinson, striding suddenly into the room.
"It's because I made you Governor, that's why! I--I bought you the
job--I----"
"You?" ejaculated Beekman.
"Yes, it is true," said Flomerfelt, gliding also into the scene. "You
owe it all to Peter V."
"Now you've got to do it!" exclaimed Leslie, staggering to her feet.
Beekman eyed them all with growing determination. He was beginning to
see things clearly now.
"I even gave you my daughter, confound you!" went on Wilkinson.
Beekman turned back to his desk and stood there, calm now, desperately
calm.
"So you made me Governor just to get this pardon?"
Flomerfelt started to speak, but Wilkinson was before him.
"Yes," snarled Wilkinson, "just to get this pardon. Do you think for an
instant that you were put here for any other reason? Or that you had
any qualifications for the office?"
Leslie laughed a discordant laugh, and Flomerfelt, seeing at once that
the girl was in complete sympathy with her father, stepped back behind
them.
"There are many good reasons, Mr. Wilkinson," said the Governor,
grimly, "Why you should not be pardoned. Needless to say you know
what they are. But," he added fiercely, for he knew that he had been
tricked, "if there were no other reason, the fact that you had put me
here to secure your pardon would make it impossible for me to act." He
stopped and stared at Leslie, his eyes unconsciously seeking hers for
sympathy, but something there shocked him beyond measure, and before he
was aware of what he was saying, he blurted out:
"Did you give me your daughter for the same season? Did you, Leslie----"
There was a deep silence in which the attention of all was focussed on
the girl.
"Mr. Beekman," she said, in a cold, hard voice, though her eyes were
softly eager, "will you tell me once for all whether you're going to
pardon my father?"
"I certainly am not going to pardon him," declared Beekman.
Leslie favoured him with a little stinging laugh.
"Then you'd better know the rest. Yes, it is true that my father gave
me to you--I gave myself to you for that very reason, and no other....
I made a big mistake; so did he. We should have made our bargain before
we took that step. It would have been better." She paused to take
breath, and presently went on in a voice that rankled: "You talked once
to me of equals--and when you got this office you thought, at last,
that you were my equal. I know better; you're my inferior. And I want
you to know and to understand--and understand it clearly--that the
Wilkinsons do not mate with cowards." And with that she drew off her
ring and placed it before him, crying: "There!"
An instant later, Leslie, strangling a sob that threatened to escape,
hurriedly fled from the room, her father and Flomerfelt following
closely on her heels.