Chapter X: Book IV: The Man and the Times (2)

He ascended the steep flight of stone steps, and paused for an instant in the lobby which divided the Senate Chamber from the House of Delegates. The legislature had convened some six weeks before, and the building was humming like a vast beehive.

In the centre of the tesselated floor of the lobby, which was fitted out with rows of earthenware spittoons, stood Houdon's statue of Washington, and upon the railing surrounding it groups of men were leaning as they talked. Occasionally a speaker would pause to send a mouthful of tobacco juice in aimless pursuit of a spittoon, or to slice off a fresh quid from the plug he carried in his pocket.

Galt, stopping behind a stout man with sandy hair, tapped him carelessly on the shoulder.

"Eh, Major?" he exclaimed.

The major turned, presenting a florid, hairy face, with small, shrewd eyes and an unpleasant mouth. His name was Rann, and he was the most important figure in the Senate. It was said of him that he had never made a speech in his life, but that he was continually speaking through the mouths of others. He could command more votes in both branches than any member of the Assembly, but his ambition was confined to the leadership of the men about him; he had been in the State Senate fifteen years, and he had never tried to climb higher, though it was reported that he had sent a United States senator to Washington.

"Ah, we'll see you oftener among us now," he said as he wheeled round, holding out a huge red hand, "since your friend sits above." He laughed, with a motion towards the ceiling, signifying the direction of the governor's office. "By the way, I was sorry about that bill you were interested in," he went on; "upon my word I was--but we're skittish just now on the subject of corporations. Charters are dangerous things--you can't tell where they're leading you, eh?--but, on my word, I was sorry."

"So was I," responded Galt with peculiar dryness--adding, with the frankness for which he was liked and hated, "I'd been dining that committee for weeks. Seven of them swore to back me through, and the eighth man said he'd go as the others went. My mind was so easy I lost sight of them for six hours, and every man John of them voted against the bill. I believe you got in a little work in those six hours."

Rann laughed and lowered one puffy eyelid in a blandly unembarrassed wink. "Oh, we don't like corporations," he replied, "I think I remarked as much. How-de-do, Colonel? Where'd you dine last night? Missed you at table."

The colonel was Diggs, and, after a curt nod in his direction, Galt pushed his way through the lobbyists and glanced into the House of Delegates, where an animated discussion of an oyster bill was in progress.

Owing to the absolute supremacy of the Democrats, the body presented the effect of a party caucus rather than a legislative branch of opposing elements. The few Republicans and Populists were lost in the ruling faction.

Galt was nodding here and there to members who recognised him, when his arm was touched by a lank countryman who was standing near.

"Eh?" he inquired absently.

"I jest axed you if you reckoned we paid that gentleman over yonder for talking that gosh about oyschers?"

Galt bowed. "Why, I suppose so," he responded gravely. "It's a good day's work. Am I to presume that you are not interested in oysters?"

"An' he gits fo' dollars a day for saying them things," commented the other shortly. "I tell you 'tain't wo'th fo' cents, suh."

He lifted his bony hand and gave a tug at his scraggy beard. In a moment he spoke again.

"Can you p'int out the young fellow from Goochland?" he inquired. "That's whar I come from."

Galt pointed out the representative in question, and smiled because it was a man who had dined with him the evening before.

"That he?" exclaimed the countryman contemptuously. "Why, I've been down here sence Saturday, an' that young spark ain't opened his mouth. I ain't heerd him mention Goochland sence I come."

"Oh, there's time enough," ventured Galt good-humouredly. "He's young yet, and Goochland is immortal!"

"An' I reckon he gits fo' dollars same as the rest," went on the stranger reflectively, "jest for settin' thar an' whittlin' at that desk. I used to study a good deal about politics fo' I come here, but they air jest a blamed swindle, that's what they air."

He turned on his heel, and in a moment Galt entered the elevator and ascended to the office of the chief executive.

Reaching the landing he crossed a small gallery, where hung portraits of historic Virginians--governors in periwigs and lace ruffles and statesmen of a later age in high neckcloths. At the end of a short passage he opened the door of the anteroom and faced the private secretary, who was busy with his typewriter.

The secretary glanced up, recognised Galt, and gave a cordial nod.

"The governor's got a gentleman in just now who called about the boundary line between Virginia and Maryland," he said as Galt sat down. "He wants to see you, though, so you'd better wait. For a wonder there's nobody else here. Two-thirds of the legislature were up a while ago."

He spoke with an easy intimacy of tone, while the click of the typewriter went on rapidly.

Galt nodded in response and, as he did so, the door opened and the caller came out.

"You're the very man!" exclaimed a hearty voice, and Nicholas Burr was holding out his hand. "Come in. You're the only human being I know who is always the right man in the right place. How do you manage it?"

He sat down before his desk, pushing aside the litter of letters and pamphlets. "I should like you to glance over this list of appointments," he went on.

"It is what I dropped in about," responded Galt.

He flung himself into an easy chair and stretched his long legs comfortably before him. He did not take the list at once, but sat staring abstractedly at the freshly papered green walls above the large Latrobe stove whose isinglass doors shone like bloodshot eyes.

It was a long cheerful room with three windows which overlooked the grassy square. There was a bright red carpet on the floor, and before the desk lay a gaudy rug enriched with stiff garlands. In one corner a walnut bookcase was filled with papers filed for reference, and the shelves across from it were lined with calf-bound "Codes of Virginia." Among the pictures on the pale-green walls there were several of historic subjects--Washington among his generals and Lee mounted upon Traveller. Over the mantel hung an engraving of the United States Senate with Clay for the central figure. Beside the desk a cracker box was filled with unanswered letters.

"Yes, I dropped in about that," repeated Galt, his gaze returning to the rugged features of the man at the desk. "You're not looking well, by the way."

The other laughed. "The office seekers have been at me," he replied; "but I'm all right. What were you going to say?"

His large, muscular hand lay upon the desk, and as he spoke he fingered an open pamphlet. His penetrating eyes were on Galt's face.

Galt lifted the list of names and read it in silence.

"A-ahem!" he said at last and laid it down; then he took it up again.

"I have given a good deal of attention to the educational boards," continued the governor slowly.

"I do not think it is sufficiently realised that only men of the highest ability should be placed in control of institutions of learning."

"Ah, I see," was Galt's comment. In a moment he spoke abruptly:

"I say, Nick, has it occurred to you to ascertain the direction in which the influence of these men will go in the next senatorial election?"

The other hesitated an instant. "Frankly, I have done my best to put such questions aside," he answered.

Galt squared round suddenly and faced him; there was a decisive ring in his voice.

"The next election comes in two years," he said quietly. "I have it on excellent authority that Withers will not seek to succeed himself. His health has given out and he is going to the country. Now, remove Withers, and there are two men who might take his place in the Senate. You know whom I mean?"

"Yes, I know."

Galt went on quickly:

"You want the senatorship?"

"Yes, I want it."

"Very good. Now, Webb and yourself will run that race, and one of you will lose it. It's going to be a hot race and a hard winning. There'll be some pretty unpleasant work to be done by somebody. You've been in the business long enough to know that the methods aren't exactly such as you can see your face in."

"All the more need for clean men," broke in Nicholas shortly.

"Just so. But the man who spends his days in the bathtub doesn't walk about where mud is flinging. I'm an honest man, please God. You're an honest man, and that's why a lot of us are running you with might and main and money. But there's an honesty that verges on imbecility, and that's the kind that talks itself hoarse when it ought to keep silent. Save your talking until you get to the Senate, and then let fly as much morality as you please; it won't hurt anybody there, heaven knows. You are the man we need, and a few of us know it, though the majority may not. But for the next two years give up trying to purify the Democratic Party. The party's all right, and it's going to stay so."

"It has been my habit to express my convictions," returned the other quickly.

"Then drop the habit," replied Galt with an affectionate glance that softened the shrewd alertness of his look. "My dear and valued friend, a successful politician does not have convictions; he has emotions. Convictions were all right when Madison was President, but that gentleman has been in heaven these many years, and they don't thrive under the present administration. A party man has got to be a party mouthpiece. He may laugh and weep with the people, but he has got to vote with the party--and it's the party man who comes out on top. Why, look at Withers! Hunt about in his senatorial record and you'll find that he has voted against himself time out of number. You and I may call that cowardliness, but the party calls it honour and applauds every time. That applause has kept him the exponent of the machine and the idol of the people, who hear the fuss and imagine it means something. Now Webb is like Withers, only smarter. He is just the man to become a sounding brass reflector, and there's the danger."

"And yet I defeated him!" suggested the governor.

Galt laughed, with a wave of his thin, nervous hand.

"My dear governor, you are the one great man in State politics, but that unimportant fact would not have landed you into your present seat had not the little revivalistic episode befuddled the brains of the convention."

Nicholas shook his head impatiently. "You make too much of that," he said.

"Perhaps. I want to impress upon you that you have a hard fight before you. The Webb men are already putting in a little quiet work in the legislature--and they have even been after the guards at the penitentiary. Major Rann is your man, and he tells me the Webb leaders are the quietest, most insidious workers he has ever met. As it is, he is your great card, and his influence is immense. Webb would give his right hand for him."

The governor tossed the hair from his brow with a quick movement.

"I have the confidence of the people," he said.

"The people! How long does it take a clever politician to befuddle them? You aren't new to the business, and you know these things as well as I do--or better. I tell you, when Dudley Webb begins to stump the State the people will begin to howl for him. He'll win over the women and the old Confederates when he gets on the Civil War, and the rest will come easy. There won't be need of bogus ballots and disappearing election books when the members of the Democratic caucus are sent up next session."

"What do you want?" demanded the governor abruptly. He leaned forward, his arms on the desk.

Galt tapped the list of appointments significantly.

"As a beginning, I want you to scratch out a good two-thirds of these names. The others will go all right. The men I have cross marked are not all Webb men to-day, but they will throw their influence on Webb's side when the pull comes."

Nicholas took up the list and reread it carefully. "The men I have named I believe to be best suited to the positions," he returned. "One, you may observe, is a Republican--that will call for hostile criticism--but he was beyond doubt the best man. I regret the fact that the majority of these men are Webb partisans, but I wish to make these appointments for reasons entirely apart from politics."

Galt had risen, and he now stood looking down upon the governor with a smile in his eyes.

"So it goes?" he asked, pointing to the sheet of paper.

The other nodded.

"Yes, it goes. I am not a fool, Ben. I wish things were different--but it goes."

"And so do I," laughed Galt easily. "You won't mind my remarking, by the way, that you are a brick, but a brick in the wrong road. However, you hold on to Rann, and the rest of us will hold on to you. Oh, we'll see you to-night at Carrie's coming-out affair, of course. The child wouldn't have you absent for worlds. If my wife and daughter represented the community you might become Dictator of Richmond. Good morning!"

As he crossed the little gallery where the portraits hung there was an abstracted smile about the corners of his shrewd mouth.

V

"Juliet!" called Galt as he swung open his house door.

It was his habit to call for his wife as soon as he crossed the threshold, and she was accustomed to respond from the drawing-room, the pantry, or the nursery, as the case might be. This evening her voice floated from the dining-room, and following the sound he stumbled over a shadowy palm and came upon Juliet as she put the last touches to a long white table, radiant with cut glass and roses.

She wore a faded blue dressing-gown, caught loosely together, and her curling hair, untouched by gray, fell carelessly from its coil across her full, fair cheek. She had developed from a fragile girl into a rounded matron without losing the peculiar charm of her beauty. The abundant curve of her white throat was still angelic in its outline. As she leaned over to settle the silver candelabra on the table, the light deepened the flush in her face and imparted a shifting radiance to her full-blown loveliness.

"How is it, little woman?" asked Galt as he put his arm about the blue dressing-gown. "Working yourself to death, are you?"

Since entering his home he had lost entirely the air of business-like severity which he had worn all day. He looked young and credulous. Juliet laughed with the pettish protest of a half-spoiled wife and drew back from the table.

"It is almost time to dress Carrie," she said, "and the ice-cream hasn't come. Everything else is here. Did you get dinner downtown?"

"Such as it was--a miserable pretence. For heaven's sake, let's have this over and settle down. I only wish it were Carrie's wedding; then we might hope for a rest."

"Until Julie comes out--she's nearly fourteen. But you ought to be ashamed, when we've been working like Turks. Eugenia cut up every bit of the chicken salad and Emma Carr made the mayonnaise--she makes the most delicious you ever tasted. Aren't those candelabra visions? Emma lent them to me, and Mrs. Randolph sent her oriental lamps. There's the bell now! It must be Eugie's extra forks; she said she'd send them as soon as she got home."

"Good Lord!" ejaculated Galt feebly. "You are as great at borrowing as the children of Israel."

His comments were cut short by the entrance of Eugenia's silver basket, accompanied by an enormous punch bowl, which she sent word she had remembered at the last moment.

"Bless her heart!" exclaimed Juliet. "She forgets nothing; but I hope that bowl won't get broken, it is one somebody brought the general from China fifty years ago. Eugie is so careless. She invited the children to tea the other afternoon and I found her giving them jam on those old Tucker Royal Worcester plates."

She broke off an instant to draw Galt into the reception rooms, where her eyes roved sharply over the decorations.

"They look lovely, don't they?" she inquired, rearranging a bowl of American Beauty roses. "I got that new man to do them Mrs. Carrington told me about--Yes, Carrie, I'm coming! Why, I declare, I haven't seen the baby since breakfast. Unnatural mother!"

And she rushed off to the nursery, followed by Galt.

An hour later she was in the drawing-room again, her fair hair caught back from her plump cheeks, her white bosom shining through soft falls of lace.

"I wonder how a man feels who isn't married to a beauty," remarked Galt, watching her matronly vanity dimple beneath his gaze. He was as much her lover as he had been more than twenty years ago when pretty Juliet Burwell had put back her wedding veil to meet his kiss. The very exactions of her petted nature had served to keep alive the passion of his youth; she demanded service as her right, and he yielded it as her due. The unflinching shrewdness of his professional character, the hardness of his business beliefs, had never entered into the atmosphere of his home. Juliet possessed to a degree that pervasive womanliness which vanquishes mankind. After twenty years of married life in which Galt had learned her limitations and her minor sins of temperament, he was not able to face her stainless bosom or to meet her pure eyes without believing her to be a saint. In his heart he knew Sally Burwell to be a nobler woman than Juliet, and yet he never found himself regarding Sally through an outward and visible veil of her virtues. Even Tom Bassett, who was married to her, had lost the lover in the husband, as his emotions had matured into domestic sentiment. Galt had seen Sally wrestle for a day with one of her father's headaches, to be rewarded by less gratitude than Juliet would receive for the mere laying of a white finger on his temple--Sally's services were looked upon by those who loved her best as one of the daily facts of life; Juliet's came always as an additional bounty.

To Galt himself, the different developments of the two women had become a source of almost humorous surprise. After her marriage Sally had sunk her future into Tom's; Galt had submerged his own in Juliet's. Behind Tom's not too remarkable success Galt had seen always Sally's quicker wit and more active nature; to his own ambitions, his love for Juliet had been the retarding influence. He had been called "insanely aspiring" in his profession, and yet he had sacrificed his career without a murmur for the sake of his wife's health. He had sundered his professional interests in New York that he might see the colour rebloom in her cheek, and neither he nor she had questioned that the loss was justified. In return she had rendered him a jealous loyalty and an absorbing wifehood, and he had found his happiness apart from his ambition.

Now she dimpled as he looked at her and he pinched her cheek.

"The mother of six children!" he exclaimed; "they're changelings." He looked at Carrie, who was flitting nervously from room to room.

"It's a shame she didn't take after you," he added. "She carries the curse of my chin."

"She's splendid!" protested Juliet. "I never had such a figure in my life; Sally says so. Carrie is a new woman, that's the difference."

"But the old lady's good enough for me," finished Galt triumphantly; then he melted towards his daughter. "I dare say she's stunning," he observed. "Come here, Carrie, and bear witness that you're as handsome as your parents."

Carrie floated up, a straight, fine figure in white organdie, her smooth hair shining like satin as it rolled from her brow. Her mouth and chin were too strong for beauty, but she was frank and clean and fresh to look at.

"Oh, I am just like you," she declared, "and I'm not half so pretty as mamma. There's the bell. Somebody's coming!"

There was a rustle of women's skirts on the way upstairs, and in a moment several light-coloured gowns were fringed by the palms in the doorway.

When the governor entered, several hours later, the rooms were filled with warmth and laughter and the vague perfume of women's dresses mingled with the odour of American Beauty roses. An old-fashioned polka was in the air, and beyond the furthest doorway he saw young people dancing. The red candles were burning down, and drops of wax lay like flecks of blood upon the floor. Near the entrance, a small, dark woman was leaning upon a marble table, and as she saw him she held out a cordial hand. She was plain and thin, with pale, startled eyes and a mouth that slanted upward at one corner, like a crooked seam. She spoke in an abrupt, skipping manner that possessed a surprising fascination.

"Behold the conquering hero!" she exclaimed, her pale eyes roving from side to side. "I suppose if you were never late, you would never be longed for."

"My dear Miss Preston," protested pretty little Mrs. Carrington, who was soft and drowsy, with eyes that reminded one of a ruminating heifer's.

"I assure you, I have been positively longing to have you gratify my curiosity," declared Miss Preston. "You know you do such dear, eccentric things that we couldn't exist without you--at least I couldn't because I should perish of boredom. No, you shan't escape just yet, so stop looking at that beautiful Mrs. Galt. You must tell me first if it is really true that you once carried a woman out of a burning building in your right hand. It is so delightful to be strong, don't you think?"

The governor regarded her gravely. Before her animated chatter his gravity became almost grotesque. "The only burning building I was ever in was a burning smoke-house," he returned quietly. "I never carried a woman out of anything in either hand."

There was a bored expression in his eyes, and he glanced beyond the group to where Juliet stood surrounded.

"Pardon me," he said in a moment, and passed on.

In the crowd about him, where pretty women were as plentiful as pinks in a garden bed, he moved awkwardly, with the hesitating steps of a man who is uncertain of his pathway. His powerful frame and the splendid vigour in his daring strides seemed out of place amid a profusion of exotics that trembled as he passed. His appearance suggested the battlegrounds of nature--high places, or the breadth of the open fields; at the plough he would have been grandly picturesque, in the centre of a throng of graceful men and women he loomed merely large and ill at ease. Above his evening clothes his face showed rough, rather than refined, and his stubborn jaw gave an impression of heaviness.

As he reached Juliet she uttered an exclamation of pleasure and held out her hand. "Emma, you have heard of my Sunday-school scholar," she said to a girl beside her. "My prize scholar, I mean. Sally, have you seen the governor?"

Emma Carr, a pink-and-white girl who bore herself with the air of an acknowledged belle, bowed, with a platitude that sounded original on her lovely lips, and Sally Bassett turned with a hearty handshake.

"And he is our Nick Burr!" she exclaimed. "Tom, where are you?"

She spoke with an impulsive flutter which he had remembered as the sparkle of mere girlish liveliness. Now he saw that it had degenerated into a restlessness that appeared to result from a continued waste of nervous energy. She looked older than Juliet, though she was in fact much younger, and her face was drawn and heavily lined as if by years of ill-health. Her physical strength was prodigious; one perceived it with the suddenness of surprise. Much the same impression was produced by her youthful manner in connection with her worn features; yet, in spite of her faded prettiness, there was a singular charm in her unabated vivacity.

She darted off in pursuit of Tom, to be arrested by the first newcomer she encountered, and Nicholas was responding gravely to Juliet's banter when his eyes fell full upon Eugenia Battle as she stood at a little distance.

He had not seen her for fifteen years, and he started quickly as if from an unsuspected shock. She was talking rapidly in her fervent voice, the old illumination in her look. Her noble figure, in a straight flaxen gown, was drawn against a background of green, her head was bent forward on her long white neck, her kindly hands were outstretched. She had developed from a girl into a woman, but to him she was unchanged. Her face was, perhaps, older, her bosom fuller, but he did not see it--to him she appeared as the resurrected spirit of his youth. Miss Carr was speaking and he made some brief rejoinder. Eugenia had turned and was looking at him; in a moment he heard her voice.

"Are old friends too far beneath the eyes of your excellency?" she asked, and he heard the soft laugh pulse in her throat.

Her hand was outstretched, and he took it for an instant in his own.

"I am very glad to see you," he remarked lamely as he let it fall--so lamely that he bit his lip at the remembrance. "You are looking well," he added.

"Of course--a woman always looks well at night," she answered lightly. "And you," she laughed again, her kindly, unconscious laugh; "you are looking--large."

He did not smile. "I have no doubt of it," he responded, and was silent.

Juliet Galt broke in with an affectionate protest. "Eugie is as great a tease as ever," she said. "She will be the death of my baby yet. I tell her to choose one of her own size, but she never does. She always plagues those smaller than herself--or larger."

But Eugenia had turned away to greet a stranger, and in a moment Nicholas drew back into a windowed embrasure where the lights were dim.

Suddenly a voice broke upon his ear addressing Juliet Galt--the vibrant tones of Dudley Webb. He had come in late and was standing in mock helplessness before Juliet and Carrie, his plump white hand vacillating between the two.

"I am at a loss!" he exclaimed with an appealing shrug of his shoulders. "Which is the débutante?"

Juliet laughed, her cheeks mantling with a pleased blush.

"You're a sad flatterer, Dudley! Isn't he, Eugie?"

Eugenia turned with a questioning glance.

"Oh, it's just his way," she returned good-humouredly. "A kindly Providence has decreed that he should cover over my deficiencies."

Dudley protested affably, and ended by giving a hand to each. In the crowded rooms he had become at once the picturesque and popular figure. His magnetism was immediately felt, and men and women surrounded him in small circles, while his pleasant words ran on smoothly, accompanied by the ring of his infectious laugh. The luminous pallor of his clear-cut, yet fleshy face, was accentuated by the sweep of his dark hair that clung closely to his forehead. He seemed to have brought with him into the heated rooms the spirit of humour and the zest of life.

From the deep embrasure Nicholas Burr watched curiously the flutter of women's skirts and the flicker of candle light on shining heads. Eugenia moved easily from group to group, the straight fall of her flaxen gown giving her an added height, the dark coil of hair on the nape of her long neck seeming to rise above the shoulders of other women. She was never silent--for one and all she had some ready words, and her manner was cordial, almost affectionate. It was as if she were in the midst of a great family party, held together by the ties of blood.

In a far corner Juliet Galt and Emma Carr, the prettiest women in the room, sat together upon a corn-coloured divan, and in front of them a file of men passed and repassed slowly on their way to and from the dining-room, pausing to exchange brief remarks and drifting on aimlessly. Near them a fair, pale gentleman, robust and slightly bald, with protruding eyes and anæmic lips, had flung himself upon a gilded chair, a glass of punch in his hand. He had danced incessantly for hours in the adjoining room, and at last, wearied, winded, with a palpitating heart, he had found a punch bowl and a gilded chair.

Through the doorway floated music and the laughter of young girls intoxicated with the dance. In the hall, some had sought rest upon the stairway, and sat in radiant clusters, fanning themselves briskly as they talked. There was about them an absence of coquetry as of self-consciousness; they were frank, cordial-voiced, almost boyish.

The governor stepped suddenly from the embrasure and ran against Ben Galt, who caught his arm.

"I've been searching the house for you," he exclaimed, "after landing my twelfth matron in the dining-room." Then catching sight of the other's face, he inquired blandly:

"Bored?"

"I am."

Galt gave a comprehending wink.

"So am I. These things are death. I say, don't go! Come into the library and we'll lock the door and have supper shoved in through the window, while we talk business. I've a decanter of the finest Madeira you ever tasted behind the bookcase. Juliet will never know, and I don't care a continental if she does. I'm a desperate man!"

"I was just going," replied the governor. "I'm not up to parties; but lead off, if it's out of this."

VI

It was one o'clock when the governor left Galt's house, and turning into Grace Street strolled leisurely in the direction of the Capitol Square. The night was sharp with frost and a rising wind drove the shadows on the pavement against darkened house-fronts, while behind a far-off church spire, a wizened moon shivered through a thin cloud. On the silence came the sound of fire bells ringing in the distance.

The bronze Washington in the deserted square shone silver beneath the moonlight, and down the frozen slopes the trees stretched out stiffened limbs. From the governor's house a broad light streamed, and quickening his pace he entered the iron gate, which closed after him with a rheumatic cough, and briskly ascended the stone steps. As he drew the latch-key from his pocket he was thinking of his library, where the firelight fell on cheerful walls and red leathern chairs, and with the closing of the door he crossed the hall and entered the first room on the left.

A red fire burned in the grate, and the furniture reflected the colour until the place seemed pervaded by a visible warmth. The desk in the centre of the room, the shining backs of law books, the crimson rugs, the engravings on the walls, the easy chair drawn up before the hearth, presented to him as he entered now the security of individual isolation. He had felt the same sense of restfulness when he had ascended, after the day's work, to the little whitewashed attic of his father's house. To-night he liked the glow because it suggested warmth, but he could not have told off-hand the colour of the carpet or the subjects of the engravings on the wall; and had he found a white pine chair in place of the red leathern one, he would have used it without an admission of discomfort. In the midnight hours he liked the empty house about him--the silence and the safeguard of his loneliness. The deserted reception-rooms at the end of the hall pleased him by their stillness and the cold of their fireless grates. Even the stiff, unyielding furniture, in its fancy dress of satin brocade, soothed him by its remoteness when he passed it wrapped in thought.

He flung himself into the easy chair, raised the light by which he read, and unfolded a newspaper lying upon his desk. As he did so an article which concerned himself caught his eye, and he read it with curious intentness.

"THE MAN WITH THE CONSCIENCE.

REFUSES TO RECOMMEND THE PROPOSED
RESTRICTION OF THE SUFFRAGE.

ATTACHES HIS SIGNATURE TO SEVERAL BILLS.--TO
AMEND AND RE-ENACT THE CHARTER OF THE
TOWN OF CULPEPER--TO ESTABLISH A
FERRY ACROSS THE PIANKITANK."

He reread it abstractedly, pondering not the future of Culpeper or of the Piankitank River, but the title by which he was beginning to be known:

"The Man with the Conscience!" He had been in office less than a month, and three times within the last week he had been called "The Man with the Conscience." Once a member of the Senate had declared on the floor that the "two strongest factors in present State politics are found to be in the will of the people and the conscience of the governor." The morning papers had reported it, and when, several days later, he had vetoed a bill providing to place certain powers in the hands of a corporation that was backed by large capital, he had been hailed again as "The Man with the Conscience!" Now he wondered as he read what the verdict would be to-morrow, when his refusal to sign a document which lay at that moment upon his desk must become widely known. He had refused, not because the bill granted too great rights to a corporation, but because it needlessly restricted the growth of a railroad. Would his refusal in this instance be dubbed "conscience" or "inconsistency"?

At the moment he was the people's man--this he knew. His name was cheered by the general voice. As he passed along the street bootblacks hurrahed! him. He had determined that the governorship should cease to represent a figurehead, and for right or wrong, he was the man of the hour.

He laid the paper aside, and lifting a pipe from his desk, slowly lighted it. As the smoke curled up, it circled in gray rings upon the air, filling the room with the aroma of the Virginia leaf. He watched it idly, his mind upon the pile of unopened letters awaiting his attention. Above the mantel hung a small oil painting of a Confederate soldier after Appomattox, and it reminded him vaguely of some one whom he had half forgotten. He followed the trail for a moment and gave it up. Higher still was an engraving of Mr. Jefferson Davis, with the well-remembered Puritan cast of feature and the severe chin beard. Beneath the pictures a trivial ornament stood on the mantel and beside it a white rose in water breathed a fading fragrance. A child who had come to feed the squirrels in the square had put the rose in his coat, and he had transferred it to the glass of water.

He turned towards his desk and took up several cards that he had not seen. So Rann had called in his absence--and Vaden and Diggs. As he pushed the cards aside, he summoned mentally the men before him and weighed the possible values of each. Why had Rann called, he wondered--he had an object, of course, for he did not pay so much as a call without a purpose. The name evoked the man--he saw him plainly in the circles of gray smoke--a stout, square figure, with short legs, his plaid socks showing beneath light trousers; a red, hairy face, with a wart in his left eyebrow, which was heavier than his right one; a large head, prematurely bald, and beneath an almost intellectual forehead, a pair of shrewd, intelligent eyes. Rann was a match for any man in politics, he knew--the great, silent voice, some one had said--the man who was clever enough to let others do his talking for him. Yes, he was glad that Rann would back him up.

The remaining callers appeared together in his reverie--Vaden and Diggs. They were never mentioned apart, and they never worked singly. They were honest men, whose honesty was dangerous because it went with dull credulity. In appearance they were so unlike as to make the connection ludicrous. Vaden was long, emaciated, with a shrunken chest in which a consumptive cough rattled. His face was scholarly, pallid, pleasant to look at, and there was a sympathetic quality in his voice which carried with it a reminder of past bereavements. Beside the sentimental languor which enveloped him, Diggs loomed grotesquely fair and florid, with eyes bulging with joviality, and red, repellent, almost gluttonous lips. He was a teller of stories and a maker of puns.

They were both honest men and ardent Democrats, but they were in the leading strings of sharper politicians. Perhaps, after all, the fools were more to be feared than the villains.

Somewhere in the city a clock rang the hour, and, as his pipe died out, he rose and went to his desk.

The next morning Vaden and Diggs dropped in to breakfast, and before it was over he had ascertained that they were seeking to sound him upon his attitude towards the recent National Party Platform. As he dodged their laboured cross-examination he laughed at the overdone assumption of indifference. Before they had risen from the table, Rann joined them, and the conversation branched at once into impersonal topics. Diggs told a story or two, at which Rann roared appreciatively, while Vaden fingered his coffee spoon in pensive abstraction.

As they left the dining-room, which was in the basement, and ascended to the hall, Diggs glanced into the reception-rooms and nodded respectfully at the brocaded chairs.

"I like the looks of that, governor," he said, "but it's a pity you can't find a wife. A woman gives an air to things, you know." Then he cocked an eye at the ceiling. "This old house ain't much more than a fire trap, anyway," he added. "The trouble is it's gotten old-fashioned just like the Capitol building over there. My constituents are all in favour of doing the proud thing by Virginia and giving her a real up-to-date State House. Bless my life, the old Commonwealth deserves a brownstone front--now don't she?"

He appealed to Rann, who dissented in his broad, if blunt, intelligence.

"I wouldn't trade that old building for all the brownstone between here and New York harbour," he declared.

The governor laughed abstractedly, but a week later he recalled the proposition as he sat in Juliet Galt's drawing-room, and repeated it for the sake of her frank disgust.

"I shall tell Eugie," she exclaimed. "Eugie finds everything so new that she suffers a perpetual homesickness for Kingsborough."

"There's nobody left down there except the judge and Mrs. Webb," broke in Carrie; "and you know she gets on dreadfully with Mrs. Webb--now doesn't she, Aunt Sally?"

"She never told me so," laughed Sally, "but I strongly suspect it. I don't disguise the fact that I consider Mrs. Webb to be a terror, and Eugie's a long way off from saintship."

"I hardly think that Mrs. Webb would consent to join our colony," observed Nicholas indifferently.

"May Kingsborough long enjoy her rule," added Juliet. "I hear that she has grown quite amiable towards the judge since she prophesied that he would have chronic gout and he had it."

"It would be so nice of them to marry each other," suggested Carrie with an eye for matrimonial interests. "You needn't shake your head, mamma. Aunt Sally said the same thing to Uncle Tom."

She was standing on the hearth rug in her walking gown, slowly fastening her gloves. Sally looked at her and laughed in her nervous way.

"Well, I confess that it did cross my mind," she admitted. "Tom, like all men, believed Mrs. Webb to be a martyr until I convinced him that she martyred others."

"Oh, he still believes it behind your back," said Nicholas.

Juliet turned upon him frankly. "It's a shame to destroy wifely confidence," she protested. "Sally hasn't been married long enough to know that the only way to convince a husband is to argue against oneself."

Her head rested upon the cushions of her chair, and her pretty foot was on the brass fender. There was a cordial warmth about her which turned the simple room into home for even the casual caller. The matronly grace of her movements evoked the memory of infancy and motherhood; to Nicholas Burr she seemed, in her beauty and her abundance, the supreme expression of a type--of the joyous racial mother of all men.

Her youngest child, a girl of three, that she called "baby," had come in from a walk and was standing at her knee in white cap and cloak and mittens, her hand clutching Juliet's dress, her solemn eyes on the governor. He had tried to induce her to approach, but she held off and regarded him without a smile.

"Now, now, baby," pleaded Juliet, "who fed the bunnies with you the other day?"

"Man," responded the baby gravely.

"Who gave you nice nuts for the dear bunnies?"

"Man."

"Who carried you all round the pretty square?"

"Man."

"Who gave you that lovely picture book full of animals?"

"Man."

"Then don't you love the kind man?"

"Noth."

"Yes, you do--you've forgotten. Go and speak to him."

The child approached gravely to make a grab at his watch-chain; he lifted her to his knee, and friendship was established. They were at peace a moment later when a voice was heard in the hall, and the curtains were swung back as Eugenia Webb entered, tall and glowing, her head rising from a collar of fur. She brought with her the breath of frost, and the winter red was in her cheeks, fading slowly as she sat down and threw off her wraps. He saw then that she looked older than he thought and that her elastic figure had settled into matronly lines.

She raised her spotted veil and drew off her gloves.

"I mustn't talk myself out," she was saying lightly, "because Dudley means to make me bring him to call this evening. I can't induce him to come by himself--he simply won't. He considers, my mission in life to be the combined duties of paying his calls and entertaining his legislators. We had six senators to dinner last night, and we pay six visits this evening. Come here, Tweedle-dee," to the baby. "Come to your own Aunt Eugie and give her a kiss."

The child looked at her thoughtfully and shook her head.

"Kith man," she responded shortly.

The swift red rose to Eugenia's face. Nicholas was looking at her, and her eyes flashed with the old anger at a senseless blush.

"That's right, old lady," said the governor to the child. "Tell her you'd rather kiss a man every time."

"Of course she had," replied Eugenia half angrily. "She's going to be her mother all over again."

Juliet laughed her full, soft laugh. "Now, Eugie," she protested gaily, "my sins are many, but spare me a public confession of them."

"She takes after her aunt," put in Sally frankly. "I always liked men better, and I think it's unwomanly not to--don't you, governor?"

Nicholas put the child down and rose.

"I'm afraid my womanliness is only skin deep," he returned, "but I wouldn't give one honest man for all the women since Eve."

"Behold our far-famed gallantry!" exclaimed Sally.

Eugenia looked up, laughing. She had seized upon the child, and he saw her dark eyes above the solemn blue ones.

"I'm afraid you aren't much of a politician, Governor Burr, if you tell the truth so roundly," she said. "The first lesson in politics is to lie and love it; the second lesson is to lie and live it. Oh, we've been in Congress, Dudley and I."

She moved restlessly, and her colour came and went like a flame that flickers and revives. He wondered vaguely at her nervous animation--she had not possessed a nerve in her girlhood--nor had he seen this shifting restlessness the other night. It did not occur to him that the meeting with himself was the cause--he knew her too well--but had his presence, or some greater thing, aroused within, her painful memories of the past?

As he walked down Franklin Street a little later he contrasted boldly the two Eugenias he had known--the Eugenia who was his and the Eugenia who was Dudley Webb's. After fifteen years the rapture and the agony of his youth showed grotesque to his later vision; men did not love like that at forty years. He could see Eugenia now without the quiver of a pulse; he could sit across from her, knowing that she was the wife of another, and could eat his dinner. His passion was dead, but where it had bloomed something else drew life and helped him to live. He had loved one woman and he loved her still, though with a love which in his youth he would have held to be as ashes beside his flame. There were months--even years--when he did not think of her; when he thought profoundly of other things; but in these years the thrill of no woman's skirts had disturbed his calm. And again, there were winter evenings--evenings when he sat beside the hearth, and there came to him the thought of a home and children--of a woman's presence and a child's laugh. He could have loved the woman well had she been Eugenia, and he could have loved the child had it been hers; but beyond her went neither his vision nor his desire.

Now he swung on, large, forceful, a man young enough to feel, yet old enough to know. He entered his door quickly, as was his custom, impatient for his work and his fireside. On his desk lay the papers that had been brought over by his secretary, and he ran his fingers carelessly through them, gleaning indifferently the drift of their contents. As he did so a light flashed suddenly upon him, and the meaning of Eugenia's restlessness was made clear, for upon his desk was an application for the pardon of Bernard Battle.

VII

The paper was still in his hand when the door behind him opened.

"A lady to see you, suh."

"A lady?" He turned impatiently to find himself facing Eugenia Webb. She had come so swiftly, with a silence so apparitional, that he fell back as from a blow between the eyes. For a moment he doubted her reality, and then the glow in her face, the mist on her furs, the fog of her breath, proclaimed that she had followed closely upon his footsteps. She must have been almost beside him when he hurried through the frost.

"You wish to speak to me?" he asked blankly, as he drew a chair to the hearth rug. "Will you not sit down?"

There was an unfriendly question in his eyes, and she met it boldly with the old dash of impulse.

"They told me that to-morrow would be too late," she said. "I went to Ben Galt's to ask him to come to you in my place, but he is out of town. I found you there instead. It is a matter of life and death to me, so I came."

She sat down in the chair he had drawn up for her, her muff fell to the floor, and he placed it upon the desk where the petition lay unrolled. As he did so he saw the list of names that presented the appeal--judge, jury, prosecuting attorney, all were there.

She followed his gaze and moved slightly towards him. "It can't be true that you--that you will not--" she said.

He was stirring the fire into flame, but as she broke off he turned squarely upon her.

"I have not looked into the case," he answered harshly.

He was standing beside his own hearthstone and he was at ease. There was no awkwardness about him now; his height endowed him with majesty, and in his inflexible face there was no suggestion of heaviness. He looked a man with a sublime self-confidence.

Her colour beat quickly back, warming her eyes.

"Oh, I am so glad," she said. "When you know all you will do as we ask you, because it is right and just. If he did not serve that two years' sentence he has served six years of poverty and sickness. He is a wreck--we should not know him, they say--and he has not seen his wife and children for--"

He raised his hand and stopped her. A rising anger clouded his face, and, as she met his eyes, she slowly whitened.

"And you ask me--me of all men--to show mercy to Bernard Battle? Was there not a governor of Virginia before me?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, it was different then--he did not know, and we did not know, everything. For years we had not heard from him--"

"So my predecessor refused?" he asked.

She bowed her head. "But it is so different now--every one is with us."

He was looking her over grimly in an anger that seemed an emotional reversion to the past--as he felt himself reverting with all his strength to the original savage of the race. The hour for which he had starved sixteen years ago was unfolding for him at last. He gloated over it with a passion that would sicken him when it was done.

"When you came to me," he said slowly, "did you remember--"

She had risen and was standing before him, her hands hidden in the fur upon her bosom. She was pleading now with startled eyes and cold lips--she who had turned from him when the first lie was spoken--she was pleading for the man who had blackened his friend's honour that he might shield his own--she was pleading though she knew his baseness. The very nobility of her posture--the nobility that he had found outwardly in no other woman--hardened the man before her. The cold brow, the fervent mouth, the fearless eyes, the lines with which Time had chastened into womanliness her girlish figure--these had become the expression of an invincible regret. As he faced her the iron of his nature held him as in a vise, for life, which had made him a just man, had not made him a gentle one.

But her spirit had risen to match with his. "He wronged you once," she said; "let it pass--we have all been young and very ignorant; but we do not make our lives, thank God."

He looked at her in silence.

Then, as he stood there, the walls of the room passed from before his eyes, and the gray light from the western window was falling upon the white road beyond the cedars. The vague pasture swept to the far-off horizon where hung the solitary star above the sunset. From the west a light wind blew, and into their faces dead leaves whirled from denuded trees far distant. But surest of all was this--he hated now as he hated then. "As for him--may God, in His mercy, damn him," he had said.

"Because he wronged you do not wrong yourself," she spoke fearlessly, but she fell back with an upward movement of her hands. The man was before her as the memory had been for years--she knew the distorted features, the convulsed, closed mouth, the furrow that cleft the forehead like a scar. She saw the savage as she had seen it once before, and she braved it now as she had braved it then.

"You are hard--as hard as life," she said.

"Life is as we make it," he retorted. He lifted her muff from the desk and she took it from him, turning towards the door. As he followed her into the hall he spoke slowly: "I shall read the papers that relate to the case," he said. "I shall do my duty. You were mistaken if you supposed that your coming to me would influence my decision. Personal appeal rarely avails and is often painful."

He unlatched the outer door and she passed out and descended the steps.