that however much the girl might care for these wayside rambles with
him, her youth must still crave youth, and in this strait he turned to
Mrs. Van Dam, who forthwith became Milicent's captive, too, and a fairy
godmother into the bargain. So Shelby came much to frequent a
vine-screened upper veranda off Mrs. Van Dam's library, where she was
fond of serving coffee after dinner, and one could dip down over the
red roofs and tree-tops to the stripling Hudson changing its coat of
many colors in the sunset. As this corner was a haunt of Canon
North's, also, it fell out that a friendship sprang up between the men
which strengthened into intimacy. Shelby had never dreamed of making
friends with a clergyman. The sectarian college had put him out of
joint with priestery. But North was in a class by himself. He had no
sacerdotal air or jargon--that negative virtue was his earliest
passport; and he was from crown to sole a robust manly man. The
governor took to dropping into the canon's book-lined study near the
cathedral after office hours, and North would come to the executive
mansion and smoke half the night away; for the canon was a judge of
tobacco no less than men. Not once in their intercourse did he mention
church-going or creeds; he did not "talk religion." Yet, whatever the
canon's religion was, Shelby was aware that he lived it. The air was
full of little stories of his helpfulness of the sort people told of a
man North once alluded to as "Saint" Phillips Brooks.
Milicent went to the Catskills late in August as the guest of a school
friend, and after a day or two of novel loneliness, the governor
decided to carry out a recently formed plan for supplementing the work
of his committee with a personal inspection of a part of the canal
system. As it seemed to him that he could get at the best results by
quiet means, his journey was presented to the press in the light of a
business trip to his old home. For forty-eight hours his leisurely
progress with his private secretary escaped remark. Then the
newspapers upset his apple-cart. Shelby had become too interesting a
figure for the role of Haroun-al-Raschid, and the paragraphers rang
astonishing changes on his adventures at the few points where he had
succeeded in making observations unrecognized. What he saw thereafter
was accompanied by the click of cameras and the fatuity of local
bigwigs brimming with eagerness to tie their fortunes to the car of the
coming man.
At New Babylon, where he became the guest of the Hon. Seneca Bowers,
the minute espionage upon his doings ceased, and Shelby felt less a
personage than at any time since his inauguration. The town was proud
of him, but too faithful to its ancestral reserve to tell him so.
People who had called him "Ross" all his days addressed him in this
fashion still; and the Widow Weatherwax calmly imposed an audience in
the matter of her last will and testament, which the new-fledged
lawyer, William Irons, had bungled, and spiced the renewal of their
relations with her old-time candor and a full chronicle of the past,
present, and probable scandal of the county. In little ways, however,
the governor perceived what close-mouthed Tuscarora really felt. They
had hung a crayon portrait of him in the court-house, and the Pioneer
Association, which was about to hold its annual picnic beside Ontario,
asked him to deliver the address.
Shelby accepted the invitation, and, saturated as he was with the
homespun history of his county, excelled himself. But he did something
more than retell a familiar tale. A product of this life, he
nevertheless saw it from the outside and in its wide relations, and the
canal-begotten civilization, which was his immediate theme, led
irresistibly to the vast economic problem that lay near his heart, and
to a suddenly formulated plan for its solution. By one of those
inspirations of the moment which public speakers know, yet dare not
count upon, the vexing details of his summer's drudgery shifted and
rearranged themselves into a coherent pattern and policy whose
fulfilment should place the historic waterway, not merely abreast of
the age, but bulwarked for the future. It was a significant utterance
which carried far. Shelby could give no copies of his speech to the
press, since the speech had largely shaped itself in the making; but
the correspondents who covered what had promised to be a purely bucolic
assignment, were not slow in seeing their error and retrieving it.
What the Tuscarora pioneers and their descendants heard, the whole
state read; and the discerning perceived that, wherever the party, the
party machine, or the party boss might stand, the governor had scaled
the high plateau of statesmanship, where public opinion is less catered
to than led.
Late in the afternoon Shelby shook the last brown hand in the
serpentine line of country people which coiled in and out the stuffy
parlor of the Lakeview Inn, and cutting loose from the reception
committee under cover of a headache, slipped away into the trees. The
fringe of the wood was defaced with the litter of picnickers, and smelt
of lunch; the din of the agents for new-fangled reapers and ploughs,
whose gaudy paint was doubly garish against the sober background, had
routed the squirrels and birds; but the remoter paths held only silent
lovers, and the camp-ground, where the Widow Weatherwax had mouthed and
played the prophet, stripped of its tents, its zealots, its wavering
torchlights, was full of wholesome sunlight and forest peace.
The spot stirred ghosts, and the governor turned to the murmuring shore
with its gentle mimicry of ocean. Half sheltered by a clump of sumach
sat a woman upon a bit of driftwood and flung pebbles in the lake. He
stared, and then went slowly down to her.
"Ruth," he said, "you here!"
"Your Excellency startled me."
Her banter puzzled him, but the handclasp was warm.
"Forget my office," he petitioned.
"After your tremendous speech to-day? You were his Excellency the
governor of New York with that, and I was properly impressed. It
struck me that you would make a benevolent czar."
"Are you mocking me?"
"God forbid, your Excellency!"
"I'd rather be plain Shelby," he said, studying her profile. "I'm glad
you heard me--glad that you liked it. It was sincere, and you value
sincerity. But I had no notion that you were listening. I supposed
you somewhere with the fashionables."
"I reached home yesterday, and came at once to my lake cottage. I
heard that you were to speak, and braved the picnic to hear you. I
trust you appreciate the sacrifice."
"And--your husband? Is he here too?"
Ruth flung a pebble.
"I believe he's addressing a woman suffrage convention in Chicago
to-day." She gave him a lazy glance. "And Mrs. Shelby--is she here?"
"She's in Saratoga, I believe."
"Belief again? We really ought to read the papers."
He tried to search her face, but the pebble-throwing prevented. The
Widow Weatherwax had expatiated on the topic of Mrs. Bernard Graves's
unhappiness, with tedious variations on the saw about marrying in haste
to repent at leisure. He wondered--he scarce knew what. She drew him
with all the old attraction, but an elusive something had vanished. He
guessed that it was the essence of youth, though the form lingered.
"Are you happy, Ruth?" he asked abruptly.
She looked him in the eyes, and laughed.
"That reminds me of your unofficial self," she said. "You never could
invent small talk for the feminine mind."
"You were never the kind of woman who wanted it."
"I better appreciate its uses nowadays. It conceals either the absence
or presence of thought. Bless me! there's an epigram. But I'm afraid
it's merely an echo of Voltaire."
He was not listening. A midsummer madness rioted in his brain.
"But are you happy?"
"Small talk, small talk," she insisted. "See how that yacht's sails
take the sun. Isn't the water a splendid sapphire? Do you like to
fish? Do you prefer Tennyson or Browning? Meredith or Hardy? Isn't
it warm? Isn't it cool?"
"But are you?"
She rose and faced him with strange eyes.
"What do you want?"
"Want," he repeated mechanically, rising too.
"Why have you come here in your pomp of governorship and promise of
greater things to harass me?"
"Harass you, Ruth! If you knew--"
"Know? I know too much. I'm unlearning things now. That's the key to
happiness--forgetting. And here come you, as you used to come, an
untamed, masterful force--that's what you are, a force!--and instead of
forgetting you ask me to remember. What is it you're really seeking in
this probing of my happiness? What must you be told?"
"Nothing." With the revelation of the flaw in her armor he conquered
self. "I know--God help me!--I know."
CHAPTER VI
The Boss questioned the wisdom of the Tuscarora speech, and the fall
widened the unacknowledged breach between him and the governor. The
September primaries had assured the leader a firmer control of the
state convention than he had ever exercised, and it was well understood
to be his, and his alone, made to his order, and the docile register of
his will. That this victory clinched his ownership of the delegation
to the national convention of next year was self-evident; and that a
presidential candidate with New York's backing would attract allies
from several eastern and at least two southern boss-ruled states, was
well warranted by the tale of the great politician's excursions into
national affairs in the recent past. By implication of the April
banquet the leader's personal choice, Shelby, had therefore no trivial
chance of capturing the nomination; and in the Boss's opinion the
favored pawn owed a decent deference to the master chess-player. So
Shelby thought, too; but they split over definition of terms in the
same old way.
"You juggled millions like a Napoleon of Finance," complained the Boss
at a breakfast for two shortly after the state convention. "Is that
the kind of talk for people just recovering from hard times?"
His tone chafed the governor.
"It's the kind of talk for a proper handling of the canal problem," he
retorted crisply. "The canal has been the prey of peanut politics too
long."
"The speech was ill-advised--ill-advised," persisted the Boss,
irritably. "You should have consulted somebody."
Shelby provoked him with a smile.
"That was my idea, precisely," he returned. "I thought I'd consult the
people."
A difference springing from the November elections strained their
relations farther, and goaded Shelby's patience to its utmost reach.
Although they favored the organization as a whole, the elections
wrought certain damaging changes in detail, one of which involved the
fortunes of Handsome Ludlow. Early in his term the governor had
appointed the man to a temporary commission, at the urgent plea of the
Boss, who painted the ex-senator in the light of a faithful soldier
haply fallen outside the breastworks by reason of the ingratitude of a
fickle city constituency. Ludlow had regularly drawn a salary, which
his subordinates earned, and divided his abundant leisure between the
diversions peculiar to Mrs. Tommy Kidder's coterie and schemes for the
recovery of his senatorial seat. In the latter business he met with a
defeat more telling than he had yet experienced. But Ludlow was an
office-seeker of resource. Through a channel which he did not
disclose, he got wind of a judgeship whose forthcoming vacancy was
known to the governor and those in his confidence, and promptly
undertook a still-hunt for the place. Presently his name came to
Shelby with the strong recommendation of the Boss.
The governor was angry to the core. As a lawyer alone he recoiled from
raising even temporarily to the bench a man whose activities had been
notoriously political, and his law practice innocent of a single case
in a court of record; as a husband whose ears tingled with gossip of
this same Ludlow's summer attentions to his wife, which the Boss, whom
nothing escaped, must have heard too, his hurt was shrewder. His
refusal was curt.
The Boss met the governor's move with silence, but under his own roof
Shelby had crossed a politician less self-contained. Ludlow owed his
fore-knowledge of the judicial vacancy to Cora, who flew in high
dudgeon to her husband to demand why he had refused this favor to her
valued friend.
Shelby was dumfounded.
"These affairs don't concern you," he said, after a moment's
incredulous scrutiny of her face.
"Why did you refuse to make him a judge?" she repeated hotly.
"Ludlow is a discredited political hack. I had no alternative."
"It's jealousy."
Shelby whitened.
"If you mean to press the thing into that region," he answered sternly,
"I'll own that there is an element of jealousy. I've had to open my
eyes lately to many things which concern you and Ludlow. Bar Harbor
stories, Saratoga stories, Albany stories, too, of things you've kept
from me--God knows what hasn't filtered my way. I am jealous--jealous
for your good name, and mine, and Milicent's."
She wept at that, saying that he misconstrued her warm sympathy with
the unfortunate; and he, proof against anything but the feminine
tear-gland, as she knew, protested his faith. It was near his lips at
this moment to beg her to treat Ludlow henceforth with mere civility,
but he refrained. When he broached it afterward her pliant mood had
vanished.
"You would have Albany saying that you believe its tittle-tattle," she
argued; and he deferred for the hundredth time to her superior
perception of the mental processes of the social world.
Till the Legislature met in January, the governor was absorbed in the
writing of his annual message, whose recommendations he proposed to
devote almost exclusively to the canals. His committee had completed
its work, and his great plan was muscular and vertebrate in all its
structure, for he contemplated a far-reaching system of legislation
rather than a simple makeshift appropriation of the out-worn type; and
the ultimate goal of it all was to lift the politics-ridden waterway
out of politics altogether. Before he gave his final revision to the
printers, he submitted a proof to the Boss, who returned it with the
comment that his intellect was of an order quite too everyday to
criticise a project obviously framed for the millennium. From the man
reputed to own the Legislature, whose committees, certainly, were cut
and dried in his office weeks before it met, this sarcasm was gloomily
prophetic; but since his Tuscarora speech, Shelby had personally
sounded many senators, assemblymen, and representatives of the several
canal interests, and he was not dismayed.
The reception given by the newspapers to what they styled "The
Governor's Splendid Dream" heartened Shelby, though he deprecated its
form. He insisted that the scheme was no more his than the
committee's, whose elaborate report he submitted with his message, and
that it was no dream at all, but the businesslike remedy for an
admitted ill. As in De Witt Clinton's case, however, the public
brushed aside the idle question of genesis, and honored the untiring
advocate.
There were plenty who agreed with the governor. Famous economic
experts and civil service reformers wrote their approval, great
financiers wired congratulations, and the public hearings on the bills
embodying his ideas, which friendly legislators shortly introduced,
were attended by representatives from the exchanges, boards of trade,
merchants' associations, and chambers of commerce of every city
directly concerned.
A reporter remarked upon this striking showing to the Boss.
"Yes," said the great man, "the governor seems to have the unanimous
support of the college professors and the New Yorkers who claim
residence in Newport, Rhode Island; but I wonder what the taxpayer
thinks."
This figurative taxpayer personified for him the rural vote whose
strength was his strength, and whose thought he made his own. He was
hearkening to the murmur of the counties which the canal did not touch,
but whose memory of its flagrant abuses was long, and the conclusion
that he reached the country newspapers of his system began speedily to
express. One editor bewailed the "Hundred-Million-Dollar-Millstone"
which the governor proposed to hang about the people's neck; another
attacked the consistency of the man who would to-day scatter like a
prodigal what he had scrimped yesterday to save; while a third
pertinently inquired whether such a spendthrift were fit timber to put
in Washington as a check upon the waxing extravagance of Congress? By
dint of repetition these things attained wide currency.
Shelby was untroubled.
"Millions, to be sure," he replied to a query of his wife's. "The
commercial supremacy of a state is perforce a question of millions."
"But they're saying you risk your presidential chances," she lamented.
"Do take every care to strengthen yourself. It's the fondest dream of
my life to see you President. You must let nothing stand between you
and the nomination."
"Thank heaven I'm not stung that badly!" the governor ejaculated.
"But for my sake! If I should ask you--beg you on my knees?"
"I'd say you should be in better business."
He answered her lightly, and playfully pinched her ear, but she saw
that no word of hers could sway his purpose, and hated him. For the
hour, however, even this teasing vision of herself as first lady of the
land paled before the very present topic of Milicent's debut. Despite
Shelby's advice and her own pleadings, the girl had not been allowed to
return to her school in the autumn; for when they met at the summer's
end, the revelation of her daughter's good looks and unconscious
girlish charm, by her mother called manner, revived a shadowy project
of Cora's for an elaborate coming-out ball which had enticed her in the
early days of life in Albany. Neither Milicent's reluctance nor her
stepfather's protest against the launching of so young a girl availed.
"Only last week I saw her playing with a doll," said Shelby, routed at
every turn.
"What an argument! I played with dolls after I was married to Joe. If
you postponed a woman's debut till she tired of dolls, you would
conflict with her funeral."
This sally displayed such unexpected humor that Shelby laughed, and his
wife seized the favoring moment to end discussion.
"It's my duty to my child," she declared; "and of that, a mother is the
best judge."
Although the event was to be deferred till late February, as the
crowning glory of the season which Lent would close, Cora's plans were
on foot by Thanksgiving Day. Among her earliest preliminaries was the
enlisting of Mrs. Van Dam, whose friendship for Milicent she had
determined to exploit as soon as she learned of its existence. This
was not difficult. Of the wisdom of the thing Mrs. Van Dam said
nothing,--she had had her fill of advising Mrs. Shelby,--but her
sympathy for Milicent was keen, and it drew her into a rather
distasteful share in Cora's programme, in the hope of lessening the
girl's ordeal. Where Mrs. Teunis Van Dam led, Albany naturally
followed; and with Albany subdued, Cora directed her conquering march
toward other worlds. In the year of her publicity she had, through
Mrs. Tommy Kidder and other agencies, brushed here and there at the rim
of the magic inner circle of metropolitan society, for every inch of
which she now encroached an ell. Shelby gained his first knowledge of
the astonishing extent of his wife's acquaintance when he scanned the
invitation list of a thousand names, and was told by the military
secretary that New York's quota was coming by special train.
About five o'clock on the evening of the ball, the governor came home
fagged and depressed. Aside from canal reform, still drifting through
seas of talk, the legislative session presented several insistent
public questions which seemed to have imposed their cumulative worry on
his morning hours; later had come an acrimonious hearing over the
removal of an incompetent district attorney; then a quarter-hour's
fencing with the press correspondents, who wanted to know things which
it was inexpedient to tell; and, finally, a rasping conference with the
Boss, who, using the ball as a cover for one of his rare pilgrimages to
Albany, had, throughout the day, held levee in his hotel parlors with
such vogue that at moments both Senate and Assembly all but lacked a
quorum.
Mrs. Tommy Kidder's brougham blocked the porte-cochere as Shelby
mounted the steps of the executive mansion, and at the door he met the
volatile lady herself.
"I've been watching the workmen give the finishing touch, governor,"
she gushed. "You are about to set foot in fairyland."
Shelby put her in her carriage, and entered the house. It did not seem
fairylike. Only a dim light shone here and there through the dusk, and
the floors were not yet clear of the rubbish of the decorators. From
one of the smaller rooms came the sound of Handsome Ludlow's voice. He
too, apparently, had been watching the finishing touch. The governor
passed on to his own apartments in quest of peace. It was a vain
search. His quarters had been invaded and curtailed for the event, and
the corner left him was confused and forlorn. He lit a cigar, smoked a
brief moment, heard a feminine cough on the farther side of a door
leading to one of the rooms from which some guest had dispossessed him,
and desisted.
He went downstairs presently, and left the house for the conservatory,
a favorite haunt of his, usually troubled by no one else save Milicent.
He scarcely knew one flower from another, but he delighted to potter
about, smelling here and there, and the Scotch gardener idolized him as
heartily as he detested the wife, who cared nothing for these treasures
in themselves, and openly avowed that she preferred the odor of
patchouli.
The greenhouses proved rather forlorn too, denuded as they were of so
many potted things for the glory of the mansion; but their quiet
obscurity ministered to Shelby's jaded mood. Then he perceived that he
was not alone. Low voices drifted from another aisle--Ludlow's and
Cora's--doubtless still absorbed in the finishing touch. After an
instant's hesitation the governor moved toward them, till a vivid
little picture framed by the fronds of a drooping fern brought him to a
standstill. He beheld a deliberate kiss.
CHAPTER VII
The scene so nearly paralleled that crucial moment in his own life,
under Joe Hilliard's roof, that the quarry owner seemed fairly to
twitch his sleeve. Then, as the dead man had done before him, Shelby
stayed his hand. Hilliard had respected his hearthstone because it
held the ashes of a burned-out love; the governor respected his office.
Unseen by the rapt pair, he left the conservatory, and regained his
disordered room.
How should he act? There was scant opportunity for reflection. The
dinner hour was presently upon him, with a chattering tableful of
Cora's friends who were staying in the house. Shelby seldom shone in
these mixed companies, and to-night he seemed to himself to stand off
in wondering detachment, while somebody clothed in his likeness said
and did many things. He made clear a bit of political slang for the
woman in yellow on his right; he smiled appreciation of the quip of a
young thing in pink three places distant down the left; he explained to
a foreign gentleman, whose English was irreparably broken, that Albany
was not the capital of the United States; and all this time he watched
his vivacious wife at the table's end, and marvelled at her hypocrisy.
So Joe Hilliard had probably wondered. Hilliard was very real to him.
He seemed to have incased himself in Hilliard's personality. A little
later, when Milicent, all exhilaration now that the bursting of the
cocoon was instant, came in her bravery for his approval, he kissed her
like one who knows no care, and extravagantly admired the roses he
forgot that he had sent. The same mechanical self stood beside his
wife and stepdaughter at the coming of the guests, spoke its automatic
greetings, and extended its automatic hand.
For one brief instant the opiate lifted. The endless smirking
procession had cast Ludlow to the front. The man was lingering with
easy assurance between mother and daughter.
"Which is the debutante?" he asked.
Shelby could have felled him for taking the girl's hand--Cora's
mattered nothing. But what of his own hand? Milicent's fan suddenly
escaped its fastening, and as suddenly he caught at the pretext for
which he groped. Again in his place, Ludlow had drifted by with no
word spoken between them. He sighed with relief, and in the same
breath cursed himself and the conventions which compelled such cunning.
In a rational world he could have knocked him down.
Once again that evening they came face to face. It was late--past one
o'clock--and the governor issuing from the smoking-room met Ludlow at
the threshold. No one was within earshot; fate itself seemed to have
ordered the meeting, and till that moment Shelby had desired to
confront Ludlow with a fierce desire. Yet they passed with a nod.
Long uncertain before many offering courses, Shelby on the instant made
his choice.
The orchestra hushed, the last good night spoken, Milicent gone to her
dreams, the house half in darkness, he intercepted Cora in the corridor
leading to her apartments.
"Ten minutes of your time," he requested.
She stared, yawned, and stared again.
"At this hour?"
"Now."
She led the way into her dressing-room and sent away her maid. Shelby
waited silently by the open grate till they should be alone.
"You're rather pale," observed his wife, languidly, in passing to a
chair; and with finger tip lightly brushed his cheek.
He shrank involuntarily.
"Pale and nervous," she added, "and a fit subject for bed. Was Old
Silky disagreeable to-day? I thought him as sweet as peaches tonight.
Did you notice Mrs. Van Dam's famous diamonds? It's not often she
wears them all. Milicent got her to do it."
"I was in the greenhouse before dinner, Cora," said Shelby, speaking
with slow emphasis. "I saw you and Ludlow."
"Oh, yes," returned the woman, glibly, "we were wondering whether the
large drawing-room needed a few more palms."
"I saw you and Ludlow in one another's arms," pursued her husband in
the same hard staccato. "I saw him kiss you."
She half rose, eying him fearfully; then, reassured by what she saw,
sank back in her seat, fingering the long glove she had partly drawn
from one white arm. As on that other night, her faultless shoulders
rose from a black setting of laces and shining jet, and, manlike,
Shelby took the garment for the same which had helped to warp the
fabric of his life from its design. The remembrance maddened him.
"Speak, you devil," he charged.
"I love him," she returned defiantly. "I love him."
"And my wife!"
"I was Joe's wife--before."
"You've the right to say it," he owned.
"Well, then, meet me halfway. Since you know the truth, what do you
advise me to do?"
"Advise you?" he echoed.
"Precisely. Put yourself in my place. Suppose that you were in love
with somebody."
He started.
"I--"
"So hard, is it? Suppose it, anyhow. Suppose yourself a human being
instead of--well, say a personified canal; a human being married to
another human being--the wrong one--with your love for the right one
growing stronger every day. What would you do?"
"Master my passion. Preserve my self-respect."
She laughed at the trumpet note of his answer.
"You've the cocksure remedy of one who has never tried."
He strangled a retort.
"Try to comprehend my feelings," she pursued. "If you were in love
with me, I shouldn't ask it. But you're not in love with me. Frankly
now, are you?"
"I am your husband."
"And I'm your wife. Does that prove a love affair? No, no. The naked
fact is that neither cares, and because of that I ask you plainly how
we can best arrange the matter."
"This is nonsense."
"It isn't. It's common sense. A New York woman I know--I met her at
Narragansett--was in the same position. Her husband was broad-minded,
and they settled everything without an unkind word. She lived
somewhere in the Dakotas for a few months, married again as soon as the
judge signed the decree, and made a roundabout journey home her wedding
trip."
"And you would imitate this programme?"
"In some respects--yes. I've not thought it out in detail. Your
practical mind ought to shed abundant light. If you weren't my
husband, I'd retain you as my lawyer."
"By Heaven, I've stood enough of this!" flashed Shelby. "Are you
destitute of even the moral rags and tatters a Hottentot may boast?
You ask my advice. Have it you shall, and follow it you must. I have
forfeited the right to reproach you as man to wife--granted that I
never had it; as a man I waive my personal affront. But as the
governor of this state to the mistress of this, the state's house, I
warn you that this brazen mockery of decency must end. When I am
governor no longer you may go your way in such fashion as you will.
Till then you must take no step which shall discredit my office or the
position to which my office raises you. You will tell Ludlow this, and
when you have told him, you will hold no private speech with him until
my successor takes his oath. Promise."
His volcanic outburst cowed her flippancy.
"I promise," she said.
Before the week elapsed the newspapers announced that Ludlow had
decided to resume the practice of law in New York. Cora made no
comment; but Shelby read into the retreat her purpose to keep their
sorry truce inviolate, and strove to shut his mind to every thought
alien to his work.
The public business was absorbing enough in truth. His great canal
project, which during a month of hearings, conferences, committee
enmeshments, and the like, had hung in jeopardy, was wrecked beyond
repair. Nor was this the worst. The governor's forcing of the issue
had convinced the Boss that a popular demand for canal legislation of
some sort really existed, and he prepared to respond with a measure
after his own heart. A vicious substitute, which it was given out that
the organization fully indorsed, glided facilely to its final reading
after the manner of bills bearing the mystic sign manual of the Boss.
Foreseeing disaster, Shelby sought at least to rescue the wise
provision of his plan which looked to the administration of the canals
along business lines, and to this end used his personal influence with
various members of the Legislature. Achieving little here, he even
appealed to the leader himself.
The Boss wrote him in his ironic mood.
"Naturally I cannot forecast the action of the Legislature," he said,
following his modest custom of disclaiming foreknowledge of the events
he shaped; "but in my opinion any measure which ignores the legitimate
expectation of patronage on the part of the party in power is too
idyllic for this workday world."
Shelby was at no loss to give this dictum its true interpretation. His
own scheme had secured the party's legitimate rights sufficiently--he
was too clear-sighted to overlook that. It was the party's illicit
greed for spoils which he had failed to satisfy--the greed which the
Boss had framed his makeshift to meet. The opportunity for jobbery was
left as wide as before, perhaps wider; for while under color of economy
the appropriation cut the reasonable sum Shelby had suggested as a
beginning, it was a vast amount still. So conceived, and at the
eleventh hour saddled with an amendment directing the building of a
costly feeder which the engineers had declared needless, the travesty
of all the governor's good intentions passed both Houses by a narrow
vote, and reached Shelby himself.
Jacob Krantz, whose interest in this particular bit of legislation was
keen, in his own vernacular hit off the situation.
"It's time for a show-down," said this observer of things as they are.
"The Boss has put it up to the Champion of Canals to make good his
bluff."
Shelby realized this truth clearly enough in the ten days given him by
the constitution for his decision; but he took no one into his
confidence, and fought his dreary battle alone. It was a hard choice
that destiny had offered him in the end--total shipwreck of his brave
dreamings, or a salvage of what perhaps might better sink. Had his
duty by the people been absolutely plain, he would have acted
instantly, for he had striven to be the people's governor; but in the
ten days of his ordeal the people seemed to speak with a hundred
differing tongues, whose single coherent message proclaimed what he
already knew--that for him there could be no middle way. The bill was
in the form of a concurrent resolution to submit the appropriation to
popular vote; but Shelby had no mind to dodge his responsibility. With
his record, with his conception of his trust, he must confront the
issue squarely--sign or reject.
One of the most clamorous of the newspapers favoring the bill phrased
his choice yet more narrowly, quoting copiously from his speeches and
bidding him "sign or stultify." But appeals to his consistency found
him deaf. The man who never changed his mind and the man who never
changed his coat were to him equally ridiculous; time had its sport
with each of them. Another attack, made when he had held the bill for
upward of a week and a rumor of a veto was rife, drew blood. Volney
Sprague's _Whig_ which, without ever thinking good of Shelby, had long
since returned to the party fold, embraced the occasion to revive the
old scandals linking Shelby's name to unsavory canal contracts, with
the insinuation that the governor's real quarrel with the bill which
had passed lay in the fact that it exposed too few millions to
thievery. The erratic editor's virtual allegiance to the Boss whom he
once had flayed, might have caused Shelby a smile, had he not been
saddened by the thought that any human being could misunderstand him so
completely. To him it was a transparent truth that because he had
known the canal's abuses as a politician, so surely must he wish to end
them as governor of the state.
The veto rumor, which Shelby neither fathered nor encouraged,
precipitated two things: the Boss sent word through his nephew, a not
infrequent messenger, that the party's interests plainly required that
the party's governor waive his personal disappointment and sign the
bill at once; while Cora, for some days past of a repentent mind,
requested the same small favor as a reward of virtue.
"Show in this way that you forgive my folly," she cajoled. "You'll
never be President without the Boss's aid--everybody says so. Do as he
wishes and as I wish too."
"And give you a chance to intrigue with the Handsome Ludlows of
Washington?"
By and by, as he sat writing in his study, he would have unsaid the
taunt, and resolved that he would talk rationally with her of his
dilemma and of the course he was prepared to take; but no opportunity
befell that evening, and on the morrow, the last day left him but one,
he breakfasted alone. Partly with the intention of speaking to her,
partly for freedom from the button-holing of the grillroom where he
usually lunched, he left the executive chamber shortly before one
o'clock and set out on foot for his home.
As he turned from the capitol park into his own street, Mrs. Van Dam's
carriage halted abruptly at the curb, and the old lady beckoned him.
"I'll not ask you to get in," she said, "for I'm sure you need the
walk, but I've news to tell you of a friend of ours. Ruth Graves's
husband died in Los Angeles yesterday after an operation for
appendicitis."
Time had softened the rougher memories of his brief rivalry with the
dead man, and the circumstance that each had in some degree given
distinction to their common birthplace threw Bernard Graves into a
light which made his early taking off mildly pathetic, but in this
moment Shelby's mind could compass only the one great fact--Ruth was
free!
Canal, governorship, presidency forgotten, he stared into the muddy
street as the carriage whipped away, till a knot of school children
gathered at his heels with round eyes centred on the cobbles which
apparently engrossed him. Shelby recalled himself, and hurried on to
his own door.
"I shall lunch at home to-day," he said to a servant in the hall.
"Please tell my wife."
The man handed him a sealed note explaining:--
"Mrs. Shelby went out about an hour ago. She asked me to give you
this."
Shelby carried the note to his room before he opened it.
"I can't keep my promise," it ran. "I saw him to-day. He wants me.
Good-by."
CHAPTER VIII
He, no less than Ruth, was free! There was no dissociating the two
facts. They shouted their message together. He was rid of his
incubus--why mince the word now!--rid of her gadfly vulgarity, her
shallow emotions, her pinch-beck ideals, her hideous selfishness. By
her own rash act she had freed him to marry the woman he loved with all
his rugged strength--the woman who that memorable September day had
proved loved him. What was the transient chatter of the world beside
this verity! What might he not achieve in the new life! What station
could he not now find confidence to fill!
A knock distracted, without wholly rousing him. Milicent entered.
"I hear you're to lunch at home, father," she said. "The gong has
sounded twice."
He stared vacantly into her young eyes; her very existence had been
blotted from his recollection.
"Aren't you well?" She came to him. "I shall be glad when the
Legislature stops worrying you and goes home."
He crushed his wife's note into a pocket.
"Yes; I'm well," he answered slowly. "Just worried--as you say.
That's all. I thought an hour at home would help--home quiet, you
know--home--"
There was a frightened widening of her gray eyes, and Shelby pulled
himself together.
"But I can't lunch with you after all, little girl," he told her
hurriedly. "I find I must go back. It seems your mother is--is out.
Perhaps you know--"
He stopped. What did she know?
"I'm just in from a turn about Washington Park," explained the girl.
"The maple buds are all bursting. And you should see the crocuses."
"Your mother has been called out of town. She will be gone all night,
probably--perhaps longer. You had best ask some friends in to stay
with you. It will cheer us up. Now go down to your luncheon. You
mustn't let me spoil it for you."
"But you're _not_ well," she insisted.
"I am--I am indeed." Out of a window he caught sight of his wife's
coupe. "I'll take that down town," he said.
They descended together. In the hall he warned again, "Don't let your
luncheon spoil."
His foot on the carriage step, he questioned the coachman:--
"Did Mrs. Shelby catch her train?"
"Yes, sir," the man replied cheerfully. "I saw to that. A close
shave, though. I heard it pull out as we drove away."
"That was at what time?"
"One twenty-five, sir."
"No baggage?"
"Just hand satchels," put in the footman. "Mrs. Shelby said her trunks
weren't ready."
"Drive to Canon North's," directed the governor, jumping in. "He's
near the cathedral, you know."
The carriage jolted from cobbles to asphalt, rounded the looming
capitol with its chateau-like red roofs cut sharply against the pure
spring sky, grated the stones again, and halted at the canon's door.
The governor had the carriage door open before the footman could leap
down, and told the man that he would make his own inquiries.
The maid said that he had missed the clergyman by five minutes.
Possibly he could be found at the cathedral; perhaps at the Beverwyck
Club.
Shelby bade the coupe follow, and hurried on foot to the church, which
lifted its temporary wooden roof above the clustering episcopal
buildings near at hand. Two or three cabs waited at the curb, from one
of which fluttered a facetious knot of white ribbon tied to an
axletree. A smell of stale incense pervaded the vestibule. The
murmured words of a liturgy drifted down the long nave as he passed
within. North was reading the marriage service. Shelby bided
restively in the shadow of a column till the ceremony should end.
It was a small wedding party, merely a handful of onlookers, chiefly
teary women, grouped around the courageous pair, whose stanch "I will"
woke derisive echoes aloft.
"For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health
. . . till death do us part."
The youngsters pattered the awful words so glibly! Then North's prayer
went forth over their kneeling figures, they rose, took his hand an
instant, and turned to face an applauding world. The watcher pitied
them with a great pity.
Shelby followed North from chancel to vestry. The priest had laid
aside stole and surplice, and stood meditatively in his cassock as the
caller entered. Some men the cassock effeminates; not so North, whose
virile shape it emphasized, modelling his muscles like an antique
drapery. He seemed to radiate strength.
The canon remarked his friend's strained face, greeted him as if
governors made a practice of popping into his vestry unannounced, and
bade a negro, who was folding vestments, to finish his task later.
"What has happened to you?" he asked, directly they were alone.
"My wife has eloped."
North started at the bald announcement, but asked quietly:--
"Did she leave by the one twenty-five train?"
"You saw her?"
"I saw him." Ludlow needed no naming. "I came in from the west at
that time for this wedding."
Shelby jerked out his watch.
"That train is an accommodation, making nearly all stops. They were
probably too excited to consider the fact, or care. Any one taking the
Southwestern Limited twenty minutes from now would make New York half
an hour before them--provided they're bound for New York. Of course,
there's the chance that they will change at some point to the express,
which left a quarter of an hour ago. Somebody must intercept them."
"And it's your present misfortune to be governor of New York," added
the canon, ripping at the buttons of his cassock. "Permit me to fill
your place."
"It's a hateful thing to ask of you. I could ask it of no other man."
North nodded, and caught up his hat and coat.
"You did right to come to me, my friend."
"Say to her"--they passed again into the silent nave on the way to the
carriage--"say that one of the best little girls who ever lived is
waiting for her mother to return from--from shopping, what you please.
Say that I--" He broke off, and fronted North in the stillness. "By
God! no," he burst out suddenly. "No message from me yet. I can't do
it yet--"
The governor went back to the executive chamber, and heard, one by one,
the stories of the callers who had massed the antechamber during his
prolonged absence. From all sections, of all degrees, of all political
types, their importunities were variants of a single theme--the thing
he could give. Him they gave nothing, not even encouragement. Five
o'clock came at last, and he left the plain little work-cell behind the
sumptuous panelling of the executive chamber for a ten-minute bout with
the press correspondents. Was it true that he had decided to sign the
canal bill? Was a veto imminent? Did he propose to let it become a
law without his signature? Had he and the great leader severed their
relations? Was a breach in the party machine a possibility? What was
his position with regard to the presidential nomination? Did he
approve of an out-and-out indorsement of the gold standard?
He was through with them finally, and the office-seeking, news-hungry
world, supposing him gone to his home, left him alone in his cell to
complete his interrupted work. Half-past five o'clock! His thoughts
strayed to follow the course of two trains. By now the fugitives were
below the Highlands; North must already be entering the city. Fort
George and the bridges of the Harlem were above his head, the long,
straight streets reeled away like the spokes of a giant wheel.
Presently he would pace the platform at Forty-second Street. In an
hour they would meet.
Shelby forced his mind back to his desk. The closely written sheets of
manuscript which had filled his evening yesterday lay before him. He
called his private secretary from the adjoining room.
"Have the stenographers all gone?"
"All but one, governor," said the secretary. "He is working past hours
on a personal matter for me."
"Let me borrow him."
For an hour the governor slowly dictated from his sheets.
"You will miss your regular dinner over this," he said to the man, at
the end, and pressed a bank-note upon him. "We'll need several copies,
of course."
The stenographer went to his typewriter, and Shelby walked out to his
secretary's desk.
"He's working on this," he explained, showing him a page of the
manuscript. "I suppose he doesn't leak news?"
The secretary flushed a little over the hasty reading.
"He is wholly trustworthy," he replied.
"There is nothing of the Star Chamber order about the matter, but I
always prefer to be the source of information. I should have put this
through to-day if a personal affair hadn't prevented. Have the
formalities in readiness for the morning. Good night."
He again consulted his watch. They had met! Without seeing him he
walked past an orderly with a telegram. The man overtook him at the
elevator.
"So soon?" said the governor, absently.
The orderly exchanged glances with the elevator boy.
Shelby tore open North's message. It said "Come," and named a
Forty-second Street hotel. One of the fastest trains in the world was
due in less than a half-hour. In fifteen minutes he gained the
station. With the time which remained he wired North of his coming,
and telephoned Milicent a cheery message that he should not return till
late. She told him that she had her friends with her, and he even
caught a gay little echo of their chatter.
It occurred to him that he had eaten nothing since morning, and as the
train cleared the river and raced southward on its long flight, he
ordered food. But he scarcely tasted it. No food could appease the
hunger of his mind, the starvation of a lifetime, which the canon's
message prefigured. His ugly thoughts kept pace with the roaring
monster which bore him; but, unlike the monster, he made no real
progress; spun vainly, rather, like a top. After all, what was he,
what was human striving everywhere, but a vainly spinning top. He
dozed over his drear philosophy, and from dozing slept.
He woke as the train swung at Spuyten Duyvil from the valley of the
Hudson to the valley of the Harlem, freshened his face with cold water,
and stepped from the car at his journey's end clear-eyed and alert.
Beyond the iron barrier of the train shed stood North.
Shelby caught his hand.
"Well?"
"It is well."
"Where is she?"
"Waiting at the hotel--waiting for the word you could not send."
They made an intensely quiet islet amidst the buffeting human tide.
The governor's face was drawn, and in the electric glare looked pasty
white.
"That is why you sent for me?" he asked.
"That is why. Believe me, it was necessary."
"I believe you," Shelby answered slowly. "Tell me what you have done."
"It's a short story. About five o'clock I passed them. Their train
was at a standstill, mine was running slowly because of a washout. I
saw your wife at a window. Then we made an unexpected stop near a
station, and I left my train for theirs."
"Then?"
"That's all. I think neither was sorry to see me. I came at the
reaction--the psychological moment."
Shelby thought North wished to spare him the recital, which was true in
a measure. Yet the canon's reticence had its taproot in the natural
man who perforce did his strong deeds simply.
"Good night," he added cheerily, putting out his hand. "I find that I
can get a train back soon."
CHAPTER IX
A few minutes before eleven o'clock Shelby and his wife got out of a
carriage at a west-side ferry. With North's assurance that her husband
was surely coming, Cora's thoughts turned to the conventions which in the
morning she had blithely whistled down the wind. It happened that a
friend in the Jersey suburbs had within the week suggested that they
visit Lakewood together, and the invitation no sooner recurred to her
than she sent a message saying that she had found it possible immediately
to join her at her home. Shelby had assented to this plan, and directly
set about escorting her to her destination. No dread of Ludlow prompted
this vigilance. He discerned that that glamour had forever waned. The
woman's jerking nerves made him fear a collapse. Stripped of shams for
once, she had his pity.
As he paid the cabman at the ferry-house entrance an incoming boat
discharged its passengers, who from habit scurried forth as if it were
morning, and the day's work lay all before. Two men issued with the
foremost, one of whom spied Shelby as he followed his wife through the
dingy swinging doors.
"Great guns!" he said; "the governor!"
The Boss wheeled.
"What's that, Krantz?" he demanded sharply.
Without replying Jacob Krantz darted into the ferry-house, slipped into
the waiting line before the ticket-office, and watched Shelby make his
purchase. The governor left the window without noticing him, and joining
his wife at the wicket passed on to the boat.
Krantz shot out of doors with his heavy lids propped wide.
"He bought tickets for Orange, and there's no return train before
daylight--I heard him inquire. Do you see what he has done for us? He's
out of the state--_out of the state_! See? The lieutenant-governor can
sign the bill!"
The Boss drew him quietly aside.
"No, no," he returned. "This is New York--not Montana."
Staring out at the clamoring cabbies, the leader reflected. If this
secretive governor intended either to veto or to sign the canal bill, he
would scarcely leave Albany the evening before the last day given him to
act. Did his absence not argue that he meant to let the measure become a
law without his signature? Despite his representations to Shelby, this
was the course the Boss actually expected the governor to take. It was
the course which he, given the man's difficulties, would himself follow
were he in Shelby's place. But he had found it unsafe to forecast this
man's actions by his own, and by temperament he counted nothing certain
till he knew it as a fact accomplished. The governor would undoubtedly
return to Albany sometime to-morrow; it therefore behooved him to delay
that return until the time for hostile action should expire. Searching
out a telegraph office, he ascertained the point at which a message would
intercept the train, and wired Shelby a peremptory request for a meeting
in New York on the morrow at ten o'clock.
"I'm making a morning appointment with the governor," he told Krantz.
The satellite slanted his head knowingly. Past midnight the answer
reached the club where the Boss made his bachelor home. If Shelby was
amazed at Old Silky's intimate knowledge of his movements, his message
did not betray it. Nor did the Boss betray his own amazement at his too
apt pupil's prompt evasion of a snare. What he read was this:--
"The governor's office hours are nine to five."
Krantz in his eagerness would have laid profane hands on the missive, but
the Boss permitted him neither to touch nor see.
"It seems that he intends returning to Albany to-night," he said calmly.
"It occurs to me, after all, that he can reach New York by trolley.
Probably he'll take the paper train which leaves about three. Energetic
man--very."
"Then you'll see him to-night?"
"No; not to-night," rejoined the Boss, dryly. "I'm going to bed."
Krantz watched the reverend figure out of the smoking-room with his
narrow eyes, and for a time sat as motionless as a dozing crocodile.
Finally he roused and lounged toward the door, where he received a
revelation. Bag in hand, the Boss, whom he imaged above stairs between
sheets, was unostentatiously letting himself out into the night.
Shelby went directly to his berth on reaching the station, and while the
car remained in the train shed, slept. The departure wakened him, and
after useless striving he resigned himself to his insomnia, raised his
window curtain, and lay watching the staid procession of Dutch-named
towns picketting the river banks. A mimic tempest fretted the Tappan
Sea, whose bravado dwindled to mere guerilla marauding in the Highlands,
and vanished altogether where the Storm King held the pass and heralded
the dawn. Presently the purple Catskills marched and countermarched into
line with cloud banners streaming rose-red in the sunrise. Yesterday was
blotted in to-day. The watcher also put yesterday away, dressed, and
left his train all in a tranquillity which even the knowledge that a
stateroom door neighboring his berth had just emitted the Boss could not
have ruffled.
At his accustomed hour the governor entered the executive chamber. Like
the steaming earth and the park elms without in their tender green, this
stately room seemed swept by the breath of spring. The warm tones of the
hangings, the Spanish leather, the lavish mahogany, glowed responsive to
the fingering sunlight, and the painted simulacra of his predecessors
looked down almost benignantly from their gilded frames. The little cell
behind the wainscoting, into which the increasing complexity of affairs
had forced the recent executives, claimed him during most of his working
hours; but it was as rightful tenant of this vast chamber that he felt
most the governor of New York. It epitomized for him not merely the
commonwealth of the present, huge as it was, but the whole historic past
since the September day when Hendrik Hudson's _Half Moon_ dropped anchor
down yonder in the stream. He felt himself no more the successor of
these frock-coated moderns whose oil presentments covered panelling and
frieze than of the periwigs who ruled before them. He was the heir of
Stuyvesant, Dongan, and Lord Lovelace no less than of Cleveland, Van
Buren, and John Jay. There had been sturdy souls among that company; men
who had hoped mightily, striven mightily, sometimes achieved mightily.
Some few had attained the presidency of the United States; some barely
missed the prize; some pursued it to their bitter graves. Where would he
rank? According to a newspaper he carried in his hand, it lay with him
this day to determine. Yet for one so omniscient, the editor was chary
of counsel.
Shelby went on to his little inner room and took up the day's routine
with his secretary, who casually dropped the news that the Boss had that
morning arrived in Albany and begun to receive the faithful at an early
hour. Whether owing to this cause or not, Shelby's own quota of
legislative callers was small. At ten o'clock he met briefly the
delegates of a labor organization, who in an embarrassed fashion had much
to say of plutocrats and trusts; and with their departure came a
fluttering invasion from a young ladies' boarding-school, headed by a
chaperone laboriously intent on improving the girlish mind. All
requested autographs, which were readily supplied from the stock in hand,
and a round half-dozen asked the private secretary in strictest
confidence if the governor were a married man.
He had but just returned to his desk when an orderly handed him the card
of the Boss.
"You'll see him here?" asked the man.
"No. In the executive chamber," answered Shelby.
The Boss stood beside the massive fireplace, gazing pensively up at a
portrait of Washington.
"Ah, good morning, governor," he called, turning slowly. "I trust I'm
well within the official hours."
"Quite."
"Mahomet is somewhat stricken in years, and night travel impairs his
digestion, but if need be, he can come to the mountain still."
"It was the governor of the state your message offended," said Shelby,
quietly. "Personally I'm not thin-skinned, as you know."
"Yet, in my poor way--" the Boss included the chamber in a comprehensive
gesture.
"Yes; in last analysis you put me here. I don't forget that."
The leader shrugged.
"You were always so devilishly direct, Ross," he let fall good-humoredly.
"It's your besetting sin, and spoiled the making of a clever politician.
You lack the diplomatic instinct."
Shelby proved him in the right immediately.
"You've come about the canal bill," he said. "Sit down."
"Yes; the canal bill--and other matters."
He laid his hat and stick upon a desk, and drawing a chair beside
Shelby's near a window embrasure, leaned to him, chin in hand, as in the
days of their hand-in-glove intimacy. "Between us two plain speech after
all is best," he went on. "You've no mistaken notions about me. You
recognize the newspaper bogy which goes by my name as a caricature. You
know that I am as proud of this state in my way as you are in your way.
You know also the manner and method of my ascendency in state affairs,
and by the same insight you know its scope."
"Yes. I know its scope."
"So far as knowledge of method goes, you are as capable of party
leadership as I. Indeed, if that were all, you might set up a rival
shop, as some of the editors kindly suggest, and attempt to put me out of
business. Naturally you don't share that delusion."
"No."
"No; you're too sane. My tenure doesn't rest on mere control of the
purse-strings. My great asset is forty years' dealing with all sorts and
conditions of men. Nobody else has quite my equipment."
"Why tell me what I know? All talk of my setting up a machine of my own
is idle. I am aware of the extent of your influence. You have tacitly
offered me the state delegation to the national convention in June, and
it is within your power to deliver it--probably to name the candidate.
Have you come to withdraw the offer?"
The Boss straightened.
"I have come in a spirit of compromise," he returned. "We've differed
widely on this question of a greater canal. You have evolved a plan best
suited to Utopia; my own is aimed to meet the human nature I know
best--the human nature De Witt Clinton, in whose steps you evidently
aspire to tread, comprehended and took into the reckoning. Be practical
as he was practical--as you were in the early days of our acquaintance.
I no longer ask you to sign the bill; I respect your punctilio. I only
beg that you will permit this measure which your party has espoused to
become a law without your signature. Everybody will understand your
position. You will occupy an honorable middle ground."
"For me there is no honorable middle ground. It lies with me to approve
or reject."
The Boss got upon his feet.
"I dislike coercion," he said.
The governor rose.
"You need use none. No amount of it could hypnotize me into seeing a bad
bill as a good bill."
"Do you count the presidency so lightly?"
"No American can count it lightly."
"You face political suicide. Do you fancy your renomination for this
office possible?"
"No. I have weighed that, too."
"And your virtue is unshaken?"
The governor smiled at the sneer.
"Oh, I'm past all that," he said. "I took the precaution to veto the
bill before you came to tempt."
With uncertain step the old leader turned and made his way to the door,
where he paused to vent his bewildered, yet sincere judgment.
"I've never met anybody quite like you in politics, Shelby," he owned,
almost kindly. "You are a paradox--a sort of admirable fool."