A pleasant local custom fell this night into abeyance. Years out of
mind the adherents of the leading political parties had mingled
sociably before a non-partisan bulletin board in the courthouse, much
as hostile camps fraternize in the truce forerunning peace. But the
old, simpler order of things had suffered more wrenches than one in
this acrid congressional campaign, and the warring factions could unite
only on the hibernian proposition that union was impossible. One
party, therefore, made ready to gather in the accustomed place, the
other in the Grand Opera House, while seceding remnants from both
swelled the crowd in the street before the office of the _Whig_, which,
with unlooked-for enterprise, had prepared to announce the returns by
stereopticon.
At six o'clock Shelby broke his fast with a ravenous meal at the hotel,
which Bowers shared, and three-quarters of an hour later the two men
shouldered through the boisterous mob in the streets to Shelby's law
office, where arrangements had been perfected to receive the returns by
messenger and private wire. The _Whig_ bulletin over the way had
already massed a constituency extending to the Temple lawn, which, in
default of definite news, it was edifying with views of foreign travel
and cartoons bearing on the larger issues of the election. Within
doors the telegraph operator was already installed at the ancient table
which had graced the grand-paternal distillery, and William Irons was
making good the tedium of a dreary day in the deserted office by
goggling from the ticking instrument to a consignment of iced champagne
just arrived from the Tuscarora House.
Shelby was in rare fettle.
"William, thou abstemious youth," he addressed the clerk, "I am tempted
to empty one of these cold bottles down your scandalized neck and pack
you off with another for the Widow Weatherwax!"
He had the youth carry the wine to the rear room and set out glasses
against the coming of his friends, drinking a bumper meanwhile to
William's good health and the sentiment Confusion to Fusion. Never a
solitary winebibber, and William remaining recalcitrant, he returned to
the outer office and demanded "no heeltaps" of the operator and Bowers.
This accomplished to his taste, he crammed a greenback into the dazed
clerk's fingers and dismissed him for the night with the injunction to
buy and blow the biggest tin horn in New Babylon.
His intimates now began to drift in, and the toast of Confusion to
Fusion enjoyed a wide popularity, the telegraph operator and the county
chairman being the only ones permitted to flag in the exacting
ceremonies which the occasion required.
"I'll do my hurrahing when the returns are in," said Bowers, and
stripping to his shirt sleeves he took his station under a drop-light
and made ready to figure the local result.
But the local returns were tardy. It developed early that throughout
the Demijohn split tickets had prevailed to an unprecedented extent.
Heretofore reliable localities ran after strange socialistic and
prohibition gods, to avoid voting for either of the leading candidates;
while Graves and Shelby both gained support in quarters where it would
have been sheer fatuity to hope. The hurrying news from the country at
large shamed the dribble at the threshold. Texas and Vermont, those
stock commonplaces of election night humor, went Democratic and
Republican by the usual majorities, and all signs pointed to a sweeping
victory for Shelby's party in state and Union. And still Tuscarora and
the Demijohn aped the Sphinx.
Men elsewhere became curious. Bowers received and passed silently to
Shelby demands for a forecast from other county chairmen in the
district; from leaders prominent in the state; from great metropolitan
newspapers which were tabulating the congressional elections of the
nation and studying the complexion of the future House.
"Claim the district, of course," directed Shelby. "Say we're
deliberate, but true blue."
The drumming humble-bee [Transcriber's note: bumble-bee?] voice of the
crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly
lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby
drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the Boss in
New York City, with which the Tuscarora independents had felt
themselves peculiarly in sympathy, had made good its claim for
recognition. Shelby turned from the window with a laugh.
"Merely a little extra diplomacy for Old Silky," he said. "Within a
twelvemonth each reformer will have a foreign mission."
A tactless friend embraced the occasion to wonder where the Boss would
banish Bernard Graves should he chance to win; but even idle
speculation on such a possibility was so distasteful to the company
that the blunderer only retrieved his mistake by toasting Confusion to
Fusion anew.
The returns from the laggard Demijohn presently thickened, and Shelby
left his seat to pace the floor, while Bowers, with an unlighted cigar
between his teeth, and looking very like Grant indeed, figured,
discarded, and figured again as successive reports modified his
calculations.
"Never saw its equal--never!" he grunted. "Here's our own town hanging
fire till almost the last like some jay village in the Adirondacks.
We've always prided ourselves on being prompt." He caught a flying
sheet from the operator and groaned: "We _are_ the last! By the Great
Horn Spoon!" For Shelby's ear alone he muttered: "The last, Ross; New
Babylon's the last, and the die by which you lose or win. Figure it
yourself."
Shelby ran through his senior's calculations and nodded without speech.
No one spoke now. Not a wine-glass tinkled. The room sensed a crisis.
By telephone, special messenger, and the instrument at the table the
belated story of New Babylon's vote pieced itself together under
Bowers's pencil. The candidate hovered above him, intent on every
stroke.
"Good God!" he whispered suddenly; "it hangs on the Flats!"
"Yes; it's the last precinct. They sent word that the thick-skulled
Poles and the rest had made an awful mess of the ballots. Tom"--to one
of the onlookers--"'phone the Flats again."
But on the instant the Flats embodied itself in the doorway in the
person of a breathless messenger. Bowers's trembling fingers fumbled
the paper and cast it fluttering toward the floor, but Shelby fastened
on it in mid-air, read it, crumpled it, mechanically made it smooth
again, and laid it gently on his desk. There came a second roar from
the street, a medley of cheers, groans, hisses, and the blare of horns.
Shelby again drew a curtain. On the _Whig's_ screen was displayed a
huge rooster with the legend: IT'S GRAVES!
Shelby caught a murmuring from the group behind him: vapid expressions
of regret, scorching condolence, pitying oaths; then the voice of a
newcomer, a newspaper correspondent, asking Bowers if they conceded
their defeat.
He spun about, crying,--
"We concede nothing."
The reporter said that the returns as received indicated a slight
majority for the fusion candidate.
"We dispute the returns."
"But, Ross,--" Bowers put in.
"We dispute the returns. Should the official count be adverse, we
shall dispute that. In view of the methods employed by the allies of
the independents, it becomes nothing less than a public duty to carry
the contest to the floor of the House of Representatives."
"It will be a House of your political friends," remarked the
correspondent, impersonally. "Shall I then quote you as claiming your
election?"
"Most emphatically, yes. Quote me as confident of a verdict approving
my public course and rebuking the slanderous attack on my private
character."
"What's the use?" protested Bowers, as the reporter hurried off in
quest of Bernard Graves. "It's too late to bluff."
"Use," echoed Shelby. "I tell you, man, there's a blunder in the
returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats.
"Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you;
our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about the
Poles muddling things; those inspectors of election can give them cards
for stupidity and take every trick. Let me 'phone the Flats."
And he was right. The inspectors of the belated precinct, conscious of
unwonted delay, nervous from long weighing of defective ballots,
harassed by incessant demands for their report, had capped the climax
of their offending by announcing the result as favorable to Graves.
The mistake was discovered and rectified within fifteen minutes of its
commission. Shelby had carried the precinct, and with it the election
by something less than two hundred votes.
Giddy with the reaction, the Hon. Seneca Bowers gulped glass after
glass of champagne, toasting Confusion to Fusion like the veriest
roisterer.
"And we abused the Poles," he said in self-reproach. "Ross, it was the
Poles who saved the day."
Shelby was the one self-contained being in the room.
"Yes," he answered soberly, "it was the Poles."
With stern straightforwardness the _Whig_ bulletin over the way had
promptly set forth the corrected result, and the crowd, now swollen by
more deserters from the tame gatherings in the little theatre and the
court-house, was clamoring for a sight of the victor whom everybody
knew was within hearing. Shelby's jubilant companions were puzzled at
his reluctance to comply with the popular demand. He declined to show
himself, however, till the arrival of a serenading brass band compelled
an acknowledgment, when he stepped from a window to a little balcony
and spoke a few grave words: he had never doubted their support, they
had repaid his trust, he was grateful; as he had championed their
lesser interests in the smaller field, so should he strive to further
their greater concerns in the national lists to which he was to pass
their chosen knight.
Within the law office preparations were rife for adjourning to the
Tuscarora House as a less restricted arena for the celebration which
the fitness of things demanded. Shelby begged them to go before him,
promising to follow.
"I need a few minutes to myself, boys," he said. "It's been a strain,
you know."
They caroused away. Bowers the most jocund bacchanal of all; the
operator boxed over his instrument against harm and slipped out; and
Shelby was left solitary with the litter and the lees. One by one he
extinguished the lights, and in darkness, at length, halted at the
window from which he had so often marked the goings and comings of Ruth
Temple. The old house was brilliantly alight in its lower rooms; lit,
he dared hope, in honor of his triumph and his anticipated return. He
turned and left his office with elastic step.
Fumbling with the lock in the dim light of the hall, he was spied from
below by a newsboy who came bounding up the stairs.
"Extry! Extry 'dition of th' _Whig_, Mr. Shelby," he called. "Read
all about yer 'lection an' th' drowndin' accident!"
"Drowning accident!" Shelby started and seized a paper. "Who is
drowned?"
The lad did not know. He had not read beyond the headline which seemed
to promise salability. But in the obscurity of the landing Shelby came
upon the particulars swiftly enough. Skimming the brief despatch, here
a sentence, there a sentence seared itself into his memory.
"Missed his train at Centreport--conscientious citizen, valuing his
vote--hired a naphtha launch--collision--hampered by clothing--leaves a
sorrowing widow--"
"Th' extry 'dition is two cents," reminded the urchin.
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
The executive mansion was strewn with the wreckage of the inaugural
reception. A musky odor blent of plant life and massed humanity hung
thickly throughout the spacious rooms and corridors; the bower of palms
and flowery brightness at the foot of the great staircase, which had
fended the orchestra, and incidentally barred an intrusive if sovereign
people from the private apartments, was jostled and awry, its blossoms
half despoiled; here lay a trampled glove, there a shining shred of
braid, beyond an embarrassed cigar stump--dumb emblems of social
Albany, gold-laced officialdom, and the unaristocratic unofficial ruck,
whose mingled tide had beat upon the new governor's threshold in the
late hours of the afternoon. A clock somewhere about the scene of
devastation chimed midnight, and a man with attractive black eyes, who
had been monopolizing his hostess upward of two hours, outstaying all
other guests save one, now took his belated leave.
"Yes; I prophesy a brilliant season, Mrs. Shelby," he said. "With a
woman of your talents in this house, Albany must at last awake."
Cora Shelby returned to one of the smaller reception rooms, where an
open fire wrought changing shadows in the face of the Hon. Seneca
Bowers.
"I think ex-Senator Ludlow is perfectly fascinating," she exclaimed.
"Have you known him long?"
"All of ten years," returned Bowers, with a little tightening of the
lips. "Most everybody in politics knows Handsome Ludlow."
"Ah, he is handsome. And so polished, too."
Bowers found the topic difficult, and changed it.
"What's your opinion of Ross's inauguration?" he asked. "I call it an
A-1 success."
"It would have been a success," discriminated Cora, "a pronounced
success, if Ross had approached it with a tithe of the spirit I urged.
But no; simplicity, simplicity! You would have thought the affair a
transfer of Methodist parsons. No military escort to the capitol, no
decorations in the Assembly Chamber to speak of, no music, no anything
that the occasion demanded."
"Fuss and feathers never did appeal to Ross," said the guest.
"Besides, I guess he thought the last administration had splurged
enough for two."
"Their fine plumage covered as slovenly housekeeping as I ever saw,"
interjected Mrs. Shelby, momentarily diverted from her husband's
shortcomings. "I wish you might have seen what I have seen in
out-of-the-way corners of this establishment. What the servants did
for their wages I can't conceive. But, after all, those people had the
right idea of upholding the dignity of the position. The ex-governor
didn't decline an escort to the capitol when he took office. That puts
me out of patience with Ross every time I think of it. Then, to cap
the climax, he didn't even take a carriage; he walked!"
"Walked down with me," Bowers chuckled.
"And, by Jove, nobody knew him. One of the orderlies wanted to keep
him out of the executive chamber."
Cora shuddered, and the old man bestirred his wits to soothe her
outraged sensibilities.
"You must remember that he made his run on an economy platform," he
reminded. "He believed it, too, every word. After all, you can't say
that you've not had things your own way here at the mansion."
"It's a mercy I did. He would have had the house reception and the
staff dinner equally prim if I hadn't put my foot down. I said no; be
as puritanic as you please at the capitol, but the executive mansion
concerns me; I'm governor here."
"Tolerably big commonwealth, too," commented Bowers, dryly. "Somehow
it puts me in mind of what I thought palaces were like when I was a
boy."
"Oh, yes; it's well enough, though the decorations aren't to my taste;
but the location is very unfashionable--orphan asylums, hovels,
saloons, and all that under one's very nose."
"I hadn't noticed the saloons."
"Well, there's a saloon at any rate. I saw it to-day from one of the
south windows. The state was stupidly short-sighted to buy a house in
this quarter. The executive mansion ought to stand in Quality Row."
"What's that?" asked Bowers.
"Not much to look at--just a block or two of houses near the capitol,
not one of which could have cost more than my own place in New Babylon,
for all that famous people have lived in them; but it's the cream of
Albany."
"Everything else is skim milk, I suppose?"
Mrs. Shelby eluded the classification.
"Nearly all that's socially significant is grouped thereabouts," she
pursued; "the cathedral, the Beverwyck Club, Canon North, and Mrs.
Teunis Van Dam. The canon and Mrs. Van Dam are the keys to the social
citadel, I assure you. Probably you noticed them on the platform at
the Inauguration. Then, she helped me receive this afternoon, thanks
to a bit of diplomacy."
Bowers absorbed these esoteric deliverances in meekness.
"It takes a woman to bottom such things," he said admiringly. "I guess
you'll pass."
Cora herself harbored no doubts, but she disclaimed a single-handed
victory.
"I shouldn't know all these things yet if it were not for the
governor's military secretary, Colonel Schuyler Smith. Do you know
him?"
"I'm not sure that I can place the colonel," ruminated Bowers. "Is he
that blond young dandy whose sword got tangled in his legs?"
"Yes, poor dear! He's not used to wearing it yet. But he's a
treasure. He's Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's grandson, you know, and like her
is descended from all those delightful old Dutchmen who make such
enviable ancestors, and have stained glass windows in the cathedral.
He knows who is who, I assure you. Ex-Senator Ludlow does too, for
that matter; though he doesn't care for Mrs. Van Dam's circle. He
thinks it too stately and old regime. He goes with the younger
set--Mrs. Tommy Kidder's--and he says Mrs. Tommy is quite my own style."
The governor entered the room in the midst of these matters and
listened soberly. Shelby had taken on more years than his
congressional service spanned. His dark hair had grayed at the
temples; his old puffiness of jowl and dewlap had vanished; and the
strong bone framework of his head showed for what it truly was.
Tuscarora ancients, who remembered the pioneer, said that Shelby
favored his grandfather.
Bowers turned to him with a laugh.
"It's a mighty good thing you've got a skilled pilot in these waters,"
he said.
"Yes, Cora knows her way around," returned her husband. "I dare say
the world's a brighter place for this varnish, though I've noticed that
when you scrape through it people average much alike. It's meant more
to me to-day to have you here, old friend, than the notables. You gave
me my start." He hesitated, glanced at his wife, and added: "But they
were all welcome. Cora has come into her kingdom, and I wouldn't abate
a single courtier."
"I've waited for my kingdom," she declared; "waited for it in sackcloth
and ashes. You can't call Washington anything else for a congressman's
wife. Her husband may get glory; she gets snubs. Now my turn has
come, and I've plans galore. Milicent's debut is one of them. I'll
bring her out with a ball when she has had enough of her finishing
school. Ex-Senator Ludlow thinks it an inspiration."
The men exchanged a look.
"Handsome Ludlow isn't an ideal adviser for young girls," dropped
Shelby, quietly.
"He's a victim of gossip; he told me so. You and I know too well what
that means to countenance it. Besides, you're going to appoint him
commissioner of something or other--I read it in yesterday's papers;
but that's politics, I suppose."
Shelby gloomed in his corner, but made no answer.
Bowers essayed a diversion.
"I saw Bernard Graves's wife in the assembly chamber this morning," he
remarked. "Seems to me she's looking rather peaked since her marriage."
"Ruth Graves here!" exclaimed Cora.
"I saw her too," said Shelby. "She congratulated me later in the
executive chamber. She has been living in New York this winter.
Graves is still lecturing around the country, telling how he wrote his
poem and what it's all about."
"I presume she couldn't resist coming up to see how we would behave,"
Cora reflected, aloud.
"She is visiting Mrs. Van Dam," added the governor.
"Of all people!" Mrs. Shelby's wonder was unrestrained. "I do
remember, though," she continued presently, "that she made friends here
when she was in Vassar College. It's plain enough why Mrs. Van Dam has
taken her up again. She wants to know all about us."
It was an easy step now to the conclusion that perhaps such an old
friend really merited an invitation to the executive mansion.
The governor brushed his forehead with a weary gesture, drew a chair to
Bowers's side, and unfolded a bundle of manuscript.
"I know it's late," he said apologetically, "but there's a bit of my
message I'd like to read to you. There'll be no time in the morning if
you're still bent on taking the early train to Tuscarora. I'd like
your opinion whether it's what the plain people want."
Mrs. Shelby found the reading unspeakably juiceless and went yawning to
bed. Nor did the governor detain Bowers long. A servant entering
presently discovered Shelby before the grate alone.
"Don't wait up for me," he directed kindly. "I'll see to this fire,
and remember not to blow out the gas."
The relic of the old regime restrained his surprise at these democratic
doings, smiled decorously, and withdrew. Jocosity slipped out at his
dignified heels. The man before the fire drank deep in self-communion,
and his face was grave. For the first time that crowded day he could
look his future in the face. Yet, evoked by a woman's handclasp in the
long line which had filed by him as he stood in the executive chamber
surrounded by his glittering staff, it was the past which most absorbed
him. It struck him as a wanton caprice of fate that they should have
been flung together that day. Ruth, whom he had promised a share in
these honors; Ruth, whom he had boasted that he would return and claim;
Ruth, whom he had put away because he must, because of a loftier
standard which--grimmest irony of all!--she herself had unwittingly set
up. He wondered--as he had wondered often in the years which had
witnessed her marriage, his own, and his rise to power--whether she
_had_ waited that night; whether she _had_ cared as he, apart from the
red passion of the struggle, could perceive that he had cared.
A vagrant memory of the morning's inauguration intruded. The moment of
his oath had been a time of solemn consecration for him, a laying on of
hands unseen; the shades of his greatest predecessors stood round
about; the genius of the state was in presence. Then came Cora and
kissed him. Emotional souls in the gallery applauded the act, but the
husband divined its prompting egoism and was cold.
CHAPTER II
Neither the public nor the honorable body to which it was directly
addressed took the new governor's message stressing general
retrenchment and the pruning of useless offices seriously. Nothing in
the recent course of the party wooed faith in its promises to purge and
live cleanly, and the accident of a huge majority in the late
elections, owing to national issues, had set not a few mouths watering
for fruits of victory which had lately dangled out of reach. The
machine was perfected to its utmost, and the young year was held to
signalize the full flowering of the Boss's topping supremacy. The
great man was now master of the county committees of the metropolis and
the greater cities; of the State Committee; of the Legislature, of the
lieutenant-governor, and apparently of Shelby. The cartoons depicted
the chief executive as a craven monarch yielding his sceptre to the
leering power behind the throne; as a marionette twitched by obvious
wires; as a muzzled dog, ticketed with the Boss's name.
Whereupon Shelby, in a quiet way, did an audacious thing. By an odd
chance the first enactment of the Legislature which reached his desk
affected Tuscarora County. It was a general measure concerning marsh
lands, philanthropically worded and fathered by an assemblyman from an
eastern county; but its special purpose, as Shelby fathomed, was to
give certain Tuscarora people a selfish advantage in a locality as
familiar to him as his hand. The Swamp, as Tuscarora called it,
embodied his boyhood notion of primeval nature, the one spot untamed
amidst tilled and retilled commonplaceness, the last fastness and
abiding-place of the unknown. Rude corduroy roads threaded the
wilderness in parts, and from this Red-Sea sort of passage the lad had
peered and questioned in delicious fear. Even now the man had but to
shut his eyes to recall it with the senses of the boy. Cowslip, wood
violet, and Jack-in-the-pulpit bloomed again, the scent of mint was in
his nostrils, fairy lakes lured amidst the ferns, and the way wound
through lofty halls whose wonderful pillars set foot in emerald pools
and sprang in vaulting hung high with wild grape. Once in those tender
years he had skirted the spot by night when owls hooted, unnatural
frogs boomed, will-o'-the-wisp stalked abroad, and Old Mystery held
carnival; that breathless experience almost outdid the delights by day.
All this issued from the phraseology of a bill--this, and something
more. He held the measure a day or two and invited its sponsors,
ostensible and real, to a conference. They were trained legislators,
with whom he had served and fraternized, and in this matter furthered
the interests of men in his native county who had backed him from the
beginning of his career.
"Gentlemen," he said, regarding them quizzically, "this bill reminds me
of a Tuscarora story." They laughed at the familiar beginning, and the
governor laughed with them. "It's about a man who ran a grist-mill on
a creek fed by a certain swamp, which I guess you know about. He was
easy-going, the water was often too low for grinding, and the little
mill had business for six, since there wasn't a rival within thirty
miles. The pioneers came prepared to camp when they brought grist, and
I suppose loafed around pitching quoits and cursing the mill trust by
whatever name they called a monopoly then. One day along came a cute
boy astride a mule with two bags of grain. He sized up the crowd ahead
of him as he carried in his grist, and decided that if he waited his
turn the country would grow up without him. The miller happened to be
tinkering his water-wheel, so the boy got his bags into a dark corner
unobserved, and with a handful of mill dust gave his work the finishing
touch of ripe old age. I dare say you think he took the man in, but he
didn't. 'Bub,' said the miller, 'I used to do that trick myself.'"
Shelby's old associates in log-rolling took the unmasking
good-naturedly, but declined the amendment he suggested. He dismissed
them with charming civility, jotted a laconic memorandum that the bill
meditated a raid on public property for private gain, and with the calm
of a gardener lopping a weed, withheld his signature.
It were hard to say whose smart was shrewder, the spoilsmen's who
mourned the backsliding of a pal, or the professional reformers' who
chewed the galling fact that not one of the elect, but a practical
politician, had done this creditable thing. Both joined forces to
fling clods. In the greater world, however, Shelby's simple act won
swift approval. In the cartoonists' fancy the wires of the puppet-show
had gone awry, the dog bit the heel at which it slunk, the usurper's
knuckles were rapped by the sceptre he would have seized. The press
teemed with anecdotes and personal gossip of the governor. Everything
he did or said became of interest: his dress, his habits of work, his
Tuscarora stories, his domestic life. An admirer on Long Island who
bred bulldogs sent him a white pup trained to answer to the name of
"Veto." Triplets in the valley of the Susquehanna were christened
"Calvin," "Ross," and "Shelby," respectively.
During this time no word passed between Shelby and the Boss. The
leader had not witnessed the inaugural ceremonies. Indeed, he had not
attended the inauguration of a governor since his party regained
control of the state. He and the governor-elect had lunched together
frequently, however, and in concord discussed the forthcoming message
and the party policy of the incoming Legislature. With two years of
common work and intimacy behind them, they felt slight need of
explanations. The machine as it stood was of their joint perfecting.
Accordingly, the Boss viewed the cartoons with his habitual serenity,
noted that a fund of good will was accruing to the party through the
personal popularity of the new executive, and smilingly assured the
reporters, who scented a quarrel, that Shelby was the right man in the
right place. He found no thorn in a special message reminding the
fortnight-old Legislature that, with the chief financial measures yet
untouched, the bills already introduced called for the outlay of
millions; nor did the speedy pruning of several sinecures, one of which
was held by that tried veteran, Jacob Krantz, dash his cheery
confidence. Krantz and the ousted were quietly found corporate
business openings of glittering promise, and the campaign slogans were
proved no mere catch-vote generalities.
Meanwhile the ancient city of Albany privily assorted its impressions
of Shelby's wife, and awaited the dictum of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam.
Although it was by deeds, rather than speech, that she made her
judgments public, Mrs. Van Dam among her intimates did not deny herself
the luxury of a stout opinion vigorously expressed.
"Mrs. Shelby's a fool," asserted the old lady in her positive way to
Canon North, "but, after all, one of our own church people and the
governor's wife."
"Either claim is weighty," smiled North; "tenderness for the family
skeleton, respect for the state. United they're irresistible." For a
social autocrat the canon took his position simply. Indeed he would
have been rather astonished to learn that he was anything of the kind.
"But the governor--he's genuine," he continued musingly; "I'm drawn to
the man. He seems to me a power to be reckoned with--presidential
timber, perhaps. Of course all our governors are heirs apparent by
virtue of their office; but unlike so many of them, he isn't of a
stature to be dwarfed by the suggestion. I think him rather
Lincolnesque in a way, though I don't press the comparison. Perhaps
it's merely his smile--have you noticed it?--the 'sad and melancholy
smile on the lips of great men' that Amiel tells us is the badge of the
misunderstood."
"Pshaw!" returned Mrs. Van Dam. "I've known two or three great men who
wore sad smiles. When a disordered liver wasn't at the bottom of it
'twas the wife."
North gave over the argument.
"Nobody would impeach Shelby's liver," he laughed. "He's as robust as
a patent medicine witness after taking."
"Oh, I don't accuse Mrs. Shelby," rejoined Mrs. Van Dam, quickly. "The
governor's smile isn't the issue. One and one don't make one in the
state of matrimony any more than elsewhere on the globe, and whether he
and his wife agree or disagree doesn't interest me in the slightest.
What does concern me is the important fact that the mistress of the
executive mansion of the great state of New York appears not to know
certain things she ought, chief among them the true character of
ex-Senator Ludlow."
"I'm afraid it's true," owned the canon.
"Before Ruth Graves left I suggested that she intercede. She has tact,
knows the Shelbys well, and had received an invitation to visit them.
But she declined visit, intercession, and all. I'm sorry. Somebody
must speak to Mrs. Shelby, and an old acquaintance could carry off such
a mission with better grace."
"Why didn't Graves come on with his wife?" inquired the canon,
irrelevantly.
"Don't mention the simpleton! I've no patience with him--or with Ruth
for marrying him. We never can see the reason for other people's
marriages, but that one above all others was incomprehensible. If ever
a woman needed to marry a dynamo to bring out her best it was Ruth
Temple. And she married Bernard Graves--a man who has degenerated into
a _poseur_ before women's clubs. Marriages made in heaven indeed!
Give me Darwin and natural selection."
"You really have something of the kind," laughed North. "She was a
free agent, his plumage evidently attracted in the old, old way, and so
she made her choice."
"Fiddlesticks! Don't tell me that she made a fool of herself of her
own free will. That man isn't capable of stirring the emotions of a
poster girl with orange skin and purple hair, let alone a flesh and
blood woman. Something outside herself--don't laugh; I'm a woman and I
know--somebody, not Graves himself, bred that folly. If she were
another sort of nature, I'd say she married for spite; but she--"
"For respite, perhaps--respite from herself. I've known cases. But
we're far afield from the Shelbys. Shall I approach the governor?"
"No," said Mrs. Van Dam, with decision. "The wife is the one to see,
if I know anything of women, and this is a woman's task; I, clearly, am
the instrument, and shall not shirk."
"You would have made an eminent surgeon," remarked North, with his slow
smile.
The unflinching Good Samaritan selected an hour two days later when the
governor's wife was likely to be alone, and sent up her card. Not a
few women had sighed for a sight of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's calling card,
and sighed in vain; but Cora Shelby, who had heard of these yearnings,
thanked her God that she was not as other women are, and glanced at the
pasteboard with indifference.
"Yes; I suppose I'm at home," she said languidly, posturing for the
maid, and for a full half-hour left the august visitor waiting below
stairs while she turned the pages of a novel.
The influence of Mrs. Tommy Kidder had determined this petty course.
This sprightly young person, being herself a real social force, shared
little of the awe in which Mrs. Teunis Van Dam was held by most of her
townsfolk and by all newcomers, and Cora, with her own ideas of the
part which she, as the governor's wife, should play, had taken Mrs.
Tommy's frothy nonsense at rather more than its surface value. She was
more than ever alive to Mrs. Van Dam's importance--her grandson, the
military secretary, was an ever present reminder; but she cherished a
quickened sense of her own importance, too, and was vigilantly alert to
withstand any sign or symptom of what Mrs. Tommy called "Knickerbocker
domination."
Her first shaft, however, fell wide of the mark. Mrs. Van Dam serenely
assumed that her tardy hostess meant to pay her the compliment of a
more elaborate toilet, and employed the interval in an interested
survey of the changes wrought in the reception room's arrangement by
its new mistress. So absorbing did she find this occupation, that she
utterly missed the glacial temperature of Cora's greeting.
"I must congratulate you on resurrecting that bit of mahogany,"
declared the old lady, indicating a table. "I've missed that piece for
three administrations. Wherever did you find it?"
"Really, I can't remember," fibbed Cora, resolving straightway to
banish it.
The military secretary had suggested its restoration, and she jumped to
the conclusion that he had been inspired by his grandmother.
"It's a real link with the past," added Mrs. Van Dam, with a far-away
look in her eyes. "I can recall it as long ago as Governor Tilden's
time."
The great Mrs. Van Dam's cordiality thawed Cora in spite of herself,
and she was well in the way of unconditional surrender to her charm
when the caller cut straight into the pith of her errand.
"Without beating about the bush, my dear," she began, "I'm here on a
meddlesome business which you mustn't take amiss. As an old woman who
has seen something of the world in general, and much of this queer
little Albany corner of it in particular, you must permit me to tell
you that you have been too generously lenient with a person who has
forfeited the right to darken decent people's doors. I mean ex-Senator
Ludlow; and I presume I needn't specify his misdeeds."
"No. You need not," rejoined Cora, stiffening. "I'm not interested in
scandal."
Mrs. Teunis Van Dam straightened rigidly in her chair.
"I fear that, after all, I must particularize," she replied.
"Obviously you can't know the truth of things."
"I know that his wife divorced him, and I have heard a dozen or more
malicious tales about his present life. I doubt if you can add to the
collection."
"You put me in a false position."
"And you reflect on mine in assuming to dictate whom I shall receive.
This house belongs to the state. Every citizen is welcome."
Mrs. Van Dam had gathered her furs and risen, but at this she paused.
"There," she exclaimed, with a little laugh, "what women we are! I've
been talking of one thing, you of another. You have the right view of
your official obligations precisely. Of course the man is free to come
to your public receptions. The state can't establish a moral
quarantine, more's the pity."
"Ex-Senator Ludlow is free to come to my house at all times," cut in
Cora, with a brilliant crimson dot in either cheek. "I do not sit in
pharisaical judgment on the unfortunate. I've had his story as well as
that of you who are against him. I believe him a misjudged man who
deserves a courageous friend."
"Oh, if it is a question of friendship--" and Mrs. Van Dam terminated
sentence and interview with a shrug.
Yet Cora had not seen the last of her visitor's stately back before she
repented her open championship of Handsome Ludlow. Knickerbocker
domination, not conviction, had forced her hand. Since she had hung
her banner on the walls, however, she resolved to stand fast, and the
following Sunday morning issued an unmistakable declaration of war. On
her way to service she saw Ludlow crossing the park before the capitol,
and stopped her carriage.
"'Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd,'" quoted the man,
his handsome, impudent eyes on hers.
"I propose that you'll do that for yourself," Cora retorted archly.
"Get in."
She had intended going to the cathedral, but withal sudden resolve she
ordered the carriage driven to an older church just at hand, which time
out of mind had made special provision for the head of the state, down
whose central aisle she marshalled Ludlow, and installed him in the
governor's pew.
CHAPTER III
Had the protest against Knickerbocker arrogance languished at this
pass, history would be the poorer, but Cora Shelby found it impossible
to stop with this show of independence. Her ambition was whetted for
an exercise of actual power, and the outcome was the famous battle of
Beverwyck, whose story still lacks its balladist.
Early in her survey of Albany society, Cora had met with the Beverwyck
Club.
"It is the local academy of immortals," instructed the military
secretary. "Its judgments may not be infallible, but they're beyond
appeal. It is the pink of exclusiveness; it worships etiquette above
all other gods; and its receptions to incoming governors demand the
reddest lettering in the calendar."
When Shelby's turn for this signal honor drew near, and the military
secretary, to whom Fortune, not content with sending him into the world
a grandson of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, had added membership in the
Beverwyck Club, approached him to discuss preliminaries, the governor
cheerfully referred him to his wife in whose social knowingness he
placed an abounding trust. Of Albany other than as a legislative
workshop he knew next to nothing. His social progress in the salad
days of his first term in the Assembly had begun in a saloon behind the
capitol much frequented by departmental clerks, whence through hotel
corridor intercourse he evolved by his second session to a grillroom,
patronized by public servants of higher cast who gave stag dinners and
occasional theatre parties, which called for evening dress. Up to this
period Shelby had never found evening clothes essential to his
happiness. His little sectarian college had rather frowned on such
garments, and he, too, for a time had vaguely considered them
un-American. Yet, taught by the grillroom, he assumed this livery,
wore off its shyness, and grew to like it for the best it signified.
Here evolution paused. Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, Canon North, and the
Beverwyck Club, so far as they stood for anything, peopled a frigid
zone of inconsequence which he had no wish to penetrate. Washington,
influence in his party, and intimacy with its leaders sophisticated him
before his return; behind every mask he now discerned a human being;
and no social ordeal terrified. Nevertheless, something of his
old-time diffidence toward the unknown country beyond the grillroom
lingered, and it made for peace that his wife seemed so competent to
guide.
On the score of her competency, Cora entertained no misgivings, and the
day following Handsome Ludlow's public elevation to sanctity she met
the club's representatives, the military secretary, and an august judge
of the Court of Appeals, with a self-possession she felt would grace
the daughter of a belted earl. The judge, after some ponderous
compliments, told her that the committee in charge, having assured
itself through the secretary that the governor and herself had no
conflicting engagement, had agreed upon a near date for the reception,
which he named. Cora promptly decided that in not consulting her the
military secretary had been wanting in respect, and to punish him
invented a previous engagement out of hand. Withered by his senior's
Jove-like frown, the young man apologized in hot-skinned contrition for
his ignorance of the unknowable.
"It's barely possible I didn't mention it," dropped Cora, scrupulously
fair.
This gracious intercession for the culprit had no weight with the
judge, who continued to regard the secretary with severity, and left
him wholly out of the discussion of a date which should meet her
wishes. This matter settled without further affront to her dignity,
the judge expanded under her flattering attention, and gossiped of the
reception itself.
"Between ourselves," he confessed, "the invitation list is bothering us
unconscionably. You see, it has expanded beyond our space. At the
last governor's reception the club-house was invaded by a mob--a mob,
madame,--there is no other expression,---which I need not add is out of
keeping with our traditions. But how draw the line without offence?"
With the dregs of her wrath against Mrs. Van Dam stirred afresh by the
disciplining of the grandson, Cora perceived and seized the opportunity
for a swingeing blow.
"There's an absurdly simple remedy," she returned thoughtfully; "but of
course it would hardly become me to offer suggestions."
"My dear madame," the judge protested, "it would be an act of charity."
After a politic interval of coaxing, Cora explained:--
"The reception is meant to be official in spirit, isn't it? Then why
not make it so in fact? Limit your invitations to the official circle.
If all the townspeople unconnected with the government are excluded, no
one need take offence."
A few days afterward the invitations went forth, restricted according
to Cora's plan, and the heart-burnings which were kindled scorched the
club's self-esteem like nothing in its staid career. But while others
merely bewailed the amazing fact of their exclusion, Mrs. Teunis Van
Dam, with characteristic energy, determined to probe the indignity to
its author, and summoned her grandson to an absorbing interview.
"Schuyler Livingston Smith," she inquired, "what is Mrs. Tommy Kidder's
relation to public affairs that she should receive an invitation to the
Beverwyck Club?"
The secretary named an insignificant board of which Mr. Kidder was a
member. His grandmother rapidly instanced a dozen other names, and
repeated her question. In most cases the young man had to confess his
ignorance of their claims.
"So," she commented in the end; "so. And I, whose people have helped
govern this community since there was a colony to govern, am beyond the
pale! But who was Peter Stuyvesant beside Mrs. Tommy Kidder's husband?
Nobody. Who was Abraham de Peyster? who was Gerardus Beekman? who was
Rip Van Dam? And the Schuylers, Livingstons, and Van Rensselaers? All
nobodies. My dear child, what lunatic in the Beverwyck Club suggested
this official classification, which even the Archangel Michael could
not carry out?"
Her grandson, with no friendly recollections, named the judge.
"The silly old man!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Dam. "And who inspired him?"
He cheerfully told her, with the added detail that Mrs. Shelby and the
judge had subsequently gone over the invitation list together. She was
silent for a time, and then dismissed him. Alone with her thoughts,
she elaborated a countermine, whose energy was specially directed
against the Beverwyck Club, though she had no objection to hoisting the
governor's wife in the explosion, albeit she refused to consider her
the real antagonist. The true offender was the exclusive organization
which had prostituted itself to such ignoble influence.
Within an hour of her grandson's departure Mrs. Teunis Van Dam
despatched an invitation of her own. The Beverwyck Club reception was
scheduled to run its formal course from nine to eleven o'clock; Mrs.
Van Dam asked the governor and his lady to dine with her on the same
evening at the hour of eight.
All hinged now on the personal equation of Cora Shelby, whose vagaries
the old lady owned herself quite unable to forecast. Nor in this
respect was Cora herself a much wiser prophet. Her first instinct,
mixed with wonder, was to decline, and she held to this opinion the
better part of an hour. Yet before the impulse could stiffen into
resolution, it met the neutralizing influence of the old town, which,
partly through the military secretary, partly through the scoffing
Ludlow, she had unwittingly assimilated. By these teachings she had
learned the flattering, almost royal, significance of Mrs. Teunis Van
Dam's dinner invitations. She was seized afresh by a curiosity to
observe how they did things in Quality Row, and became of two minds
forthwith. Appointed for the same evening as the club reception, the
dinner had, moreover, the look of a peace overture, a concession to her
power, even an admission of defeat, which was soothing. She could
hardly present the matter to Shelby in this light, as she had withheld
all mention of the Ludlow business from his ear; but with a generosity
which astonished herself, she dwelt on Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's undoubted
prestige, and ended by advising acceptance.
Shelby, preoccupied with an appeal for the pardon of a consumptive
forger, mechanically agreed.
"Sooner or later we'd have had to endure both functions," he said. "It
is time saved to pack them into one evening."
Cora bridled. It was a prodigious affair for her that he took so
indifferently.
"Time, time," she reprimanded; "the state doesn't expect its governor
to grub like a clerk."
Shelby promised to mend his ways; but the dinner and reception occupied
his thoughts so little that he worked beyond his usual hour at the
capitol on the afternoon of the appointed day, and, coming tardy home,
was late in dressing and late in setting forth. Cora was indignant to
the boiling-point. She meant to be behind-hand at the reception, as a
display of what she deemed good form; but a dinner was a dinner, as her
husband, in the privacy of the carriage, was taught past all
forgetting. Yet his fault lost its gravity before Mrs. Van Dam's
welcome.
"If you're really late, I'm delighted," she returned to Cora's
embarrassed excuses; "for you see, I've just found that I must
apologize for a delay myself. What a boon servants run by clockwork
would be! But it won't be very long."
It was long, though neither of the guests suspected it. Shelby was
diverted by Mrs. Van Dam's unimagined vivacity; while his wife had no
immediate room for any impression save satisfaction that this autocrat,
who held that punctuality should be the politeness of democracy no less
than princes, had been caught napping. It was clear that she meant to
bury the hatchet, and Cora, with her own point carried, saw no reason
why she should not add a shovelful of symbolic earth herself. Thus,
beginning with a trickle, the flow of her good humor presently
broadened to the width of the sluice-gate, as she entered upon an
absorbing scrutiny of the quaint old house which by tradition had
served one of the earlier governors. It was a rambling structure of
unexpected turns and endless alcoves stored with curios, art treasures,
and trophies of travel.
Perceiving their interest in their surroundings, Mrs. Van Dam gladly
played the cicerone.
"That chair and desk came from the Senate Chamber of the old State
House," she said, following Shelby's eyes. "They were used by my
grandfather, and I luckily got them at the demolition. His wooden
inkstand and pounce-box are there too. That Stuart over the
mantelpiece is his portrait."
"I've heard of him," answered Shelby, warmly. "He upheld De Witt
Clinton's hands in the fight for the canal."
She left him momentarily to give Cora the history of a faded Flemish
tapestry that lay in a cabinet, and then included them both in the
romantic tale of a Murillo, unearthed in a Mexican pawnshop, which she
assumed would interest so steadfast a champion of art as the governor
had shown himself in his congressional career. Cora basked in the
exquisite flattery of being treated as a person of greater cultivation
than she was, and strained on tiptoe to merit her reputation. Had her
mind been free to register its ordinary impressions, two things might
have struck her as singular; the absence of other guests, and, stranger
still, in a temple of punctuality, the lack of clocks.
The same happy atmosphere enveloped the dinner itself, whose perfection
of service and cookery betrayed no hint of delay. Mrs. Shelby found
her views of life and the sphere of woman sought for and appreciated,
and the governor was enticed into political by-paths illustrated by
Tuscarora stories told in his happiest vein. He was frankly charmed.
Many women had attracted him in many ways, ranging from the earthy
fascination of the sometime Mrs. Hilliard to that commingling of
girlish impulse, mature good sense, and an indefinite something else in
Ruth which swayed him still; but none of them had met him on quite the
serene plane of this delightful old woman of the world. By her
birthright she seemed to bridge the present and the past, and under her
spell the quaint-gabled Albany of another century rose again. Once
more Arcadian youth picnicked in the "bush" and coasted down Pinkster
Hill past the squat Dutch church; the Tontine Coffee House sprang from
dust, and through its doors walked Hamilton and Burr, Jerome Bonaparte,
and a comic-pathetic _emigre_ marquis, who in poverty awaited the
greater Bonaparte's downfall, cherishing his order of Saint Louis and
powdering his poll with Indian meal; the Livingstons and Clintons
divided the land between them; Van Buren and the Regency came to power.
There was more of this when the dinner had ended, and they lingered in
the library over their coffee and Mrs. Van Dam's priceless collection
of relics of the time of the royal province and the yet earlier New
Netherland.
"A plague on the reception!" exclaimed the governor in the carriage,
when the good nights had finally been said. "I could have talked with
her till morning."
There was a lively stir and bustle about the entrance of the Beverwyck
Club as they approached, which Cora took to be that of late-comers like
themselves. She would have preferred that she be conspicuously the
last,--the climax. Seen nearer, the flurry was peculiar. If the idea
were not preposterous, she could believe that people were actually
leaving the club--leaving before they met the governor in whose honor
they assembled--leaving before _she_ came!
"Your watch, Ross, your watch," she exclaimed suddenly.
"I did not wear it."
She bethought her of a recently acquired carriage clock whose face the
lights of a passing trolley made plain. She looked, gasped, and looked
again in horrid fascination. The punctilious Beverwyck Club had
decreed that its reception should end at eleven, and the decrees of the
Beverwyck Club were rigidly enforced. The carriage clock pointed its
inexorable hands to a quarter past.
CHAPTER IV
Thenceforth Cora Shelby's respect for the fearless strategist in
Quality Row verged upon awe. If Mrs. Teunis Van Dam now deigned to
assist at one of the weekly house-openings, the occasion savored of an
aroma which the united patronage of Mrs. Tommy Kidder and the ladies of
the lieutenant-governor, the secretary of state, the controller, the
treasurer, and the entire bench of the Court of Appeals could not
exhale. Cora made sure of her good offices for the legislative
reception weeks in advance, and in all matters, save only Handsome
Ludlow, deferred anxiously to the great exemplar's code.
No one who thought twice about Mrs. Van Dam escaped the reflection that
she was a descendant, and Cora with her mind running continually on
this shoot of a peculiarly sightly family tree, was as fired by this
truism of natural law as if it had lain all the centuries awaiting her
discovery. Those delightful magicians of figures, who as easy as
asking prove William the Conqueror the mathematical begetter of us all,
had hitherto contented her; but such sweets cloyed before Mrs. Van
Dam's august line of Dutch and English forebears, who had considerately
made history and bequeathed portraits and plate. But the path of
Japhet in search of a father was primrose beside the American's in
search of an ancestor, and Cora's researches were long barren of
result. The labyrinth of Brown, her maiden name, she speedily forsook,
though at the outset it seemed to run promisingly to knighthood,
literature, and art; Huggins, her mother's name, was impossible, and
Hilliard, more sounding, clearly out of the question; while the
Shelbys, to whom she turned in last resort, seemed hopelessly
commonplace. Ross's father, to her own knowledge, had done little but
drink; and the grandfather, though of sterner stuff, as became a
pioneer, was handicapped by his unlucky distillery. The governor's own
notions about his family were the vaguest. Like many Americans, he had
the impression that its beginnings traced to two brothers who
immigrated to this country prior to the Revolution in which they served.
"The Revolution seems to be the Norman Conquest of American genealogy,"
he remarked in the course of his wife's cross-examination.
"But don't you know their names, or what they did in the war?" she
queried anxiously.
Shelby shook his head.
"Perhaps they were teamsters," he laughed.
Cora was too pained to jest. Mrs. Van Dam was a "daughter" of this and
that society by virtue of descent from generals.
For a time the chase now circled teasingly round a southern branch
whose achievements were notable, but the unconcern of the distiller
with regard to vital statistics balked a happy union of North and
South, and goaded Cora to that last desperate ditch of the
ancestor-hunter--a blind leap over seas. In the fortunate isles where
choice forefathers flourish thick as buttercups, Cora made her foray
with hunger's lawless haste, enlisted the aid of an indigent person
skilled in blazonry, and in good season brought her spoils to the
governor.
"I've had bother enough getting this," she said, exhibiting a coat of
arms; "but I must say it's far prettier than the one we saw in Mrs. Van
Dam's library."
"Runs mainly to red, doesn't it?" Shelby ventured, gravely considering
the work.
"That's gules," explained Cora, learnedly; "the color of the field.
Books of heraldry describe the arms as: 'Gules, two boars' heads
displayed in chief and a mullet in base, sable; crest, a dexter arm,
embowed, grasping a cimeter--'"
"I took that for a crumb-scraper," put in the governor, jocularly.
"The motto," went on Cora, soberly, "is, 'I achieve.' I think the
purple of the mantling highly effective--purpure, that's called--which,
taken with the red and black, would give a most romantic light to our
hall in New Babylon if we put a window at the turn of the stair.
Tomorrow morning I shall order a die made for my stationery."
"So this is ours," said Shelby. "Did the original owner acquire it in
the Holy Wars, or was he a rich brewer who endowed a hospital?"
Cora reddened.
"He was Owen Shelby, a Welsh soldier of the Commonwealth."
"A near relation of mine?"
"You are undoubtedly his descendant. Of course I can't supply every
trifling link--your people were so careless of their records; but there
is no question in my mind that you are entitled to his arms, and you
ought to be grateful to me for my pains."
"I am, I am," protested Shelby, with a chuckle. "But before the
engraver begins work on the crumb-scraper and the prize pigs let me
suggest that you add a detail which has been overlooked. I mean a bar
sinister."
"Ross!"
He slipped his arm round her waist with a laugh.
"One of the state library people said that you were trailing the
foreign Shelbys, and I glanced at your references. The fact I remember
best is that Owen Shelby, late of Cromwell's Ironsides, died a
bachelor."
She flung from him in stormy anger.
"I've twice been fool enough," she flashed, "to marry a man unable to
appreciate me."
He winced. The reproach, more wanton than any she had ever framed,
lashed him on the raw. The manner of his succession to Joe Hilliard's
shoes had fostered an almost morbid solicitude for her well being which
had not seldom over-topped his better judgment. If he had failed of
his duty, it was not for lack of striving.
"I've tried, Cora," he answered bitterly.
Neither broached a formal reconciliation--such crude devices fell into
disuse early in their marriage; but the man gave her social hours he
could ill afford in the press of the closing session, and presently a
tremendous event from the outside patched, if it could not heal, the
breach. This was nothing less than the launching of Shelby's
presidential boom.
Three factors contributed to this movement: the return of prosperity,
the governor's personality, and the Boss. Shelby won his election in a
midnight of universal hard times; his inauguration saw the dawn; the
legislative session closed amidst a sunrise of splendid promise. By
the deathless fallacy which credits or blames the ruling powers for
everything, natural or supernatural, Shelby's party reaped abundantly
where it had sown with niggard hand. The governor's personal deserts
were more solid, the public recognizing his retarding ratchet as the
cause of the machine's continence and the lowered tax-rate. Apparently
the Legislature bore him no ill will for his curbing hand. A quiet
word had issued from the Boss that the governor's vetoes must stand,
and Shelby's one pet measure, the appointment of a commission to deal
with the improvement of the canals, had passed both Houses by a vote
which was almost non-partisan. A spontaneous demand seemed to well
from the people that this faithful steward be sent higher.
But Shelby knew something of the rearing of that tenderest of plants in
the political garden--the spontaneous demand. In the voice of the
people he had so often read the will of the Boss. The inspired
laudations of country editors, the resulting echoes in the city press,
the interviews with the knowing ones who withheld their names, the
genuine momentum lent by the easily impressed--all the covert workings
of spontaneity were known to him from the days of apprenticeship at the
Boss's feet. The method was transparent, the motive only was hazy; yet
he divined the motive itself with sufficient accuracy. The Boss
thought he knew too much. It is well to make your own governor, but to
make him too well is ill. It was this one's drawback that he had
passed the No Admittance sign of the workshop and got the trade secrets
of the boss business at his finger ends. The pupil smiled sometimes
when he recalled the first great rencounter with the master. The birch
and frown no longer terrified. Evidently the Boss knew this, and
failing the birch, dangled a prize.
What Shelby did not divine was the incentive force of pique. While the
leader gave his smiling interviews to the reporters on the subject of
the governor's vetoes, he had too often had to dissemble that his
earliest information came from them. He did not resent the vetoes, if
they made party capital; nor did he resent Shelby's popularity, for he
liked him. The bitterness of the cup was that the ingrate took no
pains to inquire whether he cared or not. It is true that in large
questions Shelby had uniformly sought his counsel, and the session had
been fairly prolific in legislation redounding to the party credit; but
the governor's independence in the lesser matters attainted his
loyalty. What the one man considered upholding the dignity of his
office, the other interpreted as leze-majesty.
Shelby's attitude toward the presidential chit-chat was frankly human.
Too modest to measure himself beside the greater successors of
Washington, he yet knew himself to be as well equipped as many who had
held the office; and, without troubling his sleep, determined that
should the boss-made boom attain genuine popularity, it might drift
where it would without hindrance from him. Precisely this occurred.
The governor's practicality smoothed the way to his indorsement by men
whose foremost interest was business rather than politics, and a
banquet given him late in April by a great commercial organization of
New York, which approved his policy of letting the city mind its own
affairs, set him definitely in the race.
Throned in a gallery above the diners; courted by heroines of by-gone
horse shows, the hem of whose garments she had never dreamed to touch;
with the White House looming mistily through the sheen of silver and
crystal and napery under tinted lights, Cora viewed the taking
spectacle as a personal apotheosis. A silly periodical for "ladies"
had recently printed an article about her which ascribed Shelby's
making to herself, and she, in this rosy hour believing, looked upon
her handiwork, and saw that it was tolerably good. Statesmen,
diplomats, captains of industry, the smiling Boss--a very parliament of
brains--did the governor honor, and the most famous after-dinner
speaker in the land proclaimed him New York's favorite son.
To most of his listeners Shelby's reply seemed admirable. A morning
paper called it "a little classic of straightforwardness"; but his
king-maker aloft thought his bearing too simple by far. If he listened
to her, he would tip his presidential lightning-rod more showily.
CHAPTER V
Summer leaped a hotbed growth from spring, and Cora Shelby, tiring of
golf, the country club, and Albany's now mild pastimes, took herself
off for a round of fashionable resorts with Mrs. Tommy Kidder. The
governor had other occupations. So far as a man could do such a thing,
he put his presidential chances out of mind and bent his energies upon
a study of the canal problem, whose solving he was ambitious to make
the monument of his administration. As a legislator he had been
recognized as an authority upon this his hobby; but the knowledge of
the assemblyman was shallow beside that of the governor, who asked no
fairer laurel than to link his name with the regenerated Erie Canal as
the second Clinton had associated his name with its beginnings.
Throughout the languid heated term whose official calm only the
occasional request of a fellow governor for requisition papers
disturbed, Shelby plodded over the bewildered mass of estimates, maps,
and mazy statistics which his special committee was accumulating. A
more brilliant man doubtless would have left much of this arid drudgery
to subordinates, contenting himself with the sum of things, without a
close scrutiny of detail; but this was never Shelby's way. When he
mastered a subject it was his blood and bones, and his passion for the
Ditch transmuted its story, howsoever told, into stuff that splendid
dreams are made on and modern empires built.
Those arduous months were the happiest he had known. He toiled
mightily, but he wrought at a labor of love, while his leisure hours
fostered friendships as novel as they were attractive. Cora Shelby's
campaign of the watering-places had not embraced Milicent, and the girl
returned from school in June to find her mother already gone. She
dutifully made known her arrival in Albany, and in time deciphered from
a patchouli-scented scrawl postmarked "Bar Harbor" that Albany was an
excellent spot for her to remain.
"She says that summer hotels are no places for young girls," Milicent
told her stepfather. "Why then does mamma care about them?"
The governor was nonplussed: but he quietly set himself to make Albany
tolerable for this astonishing young person, yet scant of seventeen,
who had suddenly flowered into the outward semblance of a woman. He
devised excursions on the river and pilgrimages to historic spots about
the city and the countryside, acquiring strange antiquarian lore of the
Schuyler house, the Van Rensselaer mansion, and the Vanderheyden
Palace, and, more curious still, a perception of his deep capacity for
affection. This child of the Hilliards' better selves, with her
father's frankness, her mother's earlier beauty, and with a winsomeness
all her own, awoke his slumbering instinct of fatherhood.