THE HENCHMAN THE HENCHMAN BY MARK LEE LUTHER AUTHOR OF "THE FAVOR OF PRINCES," "THE RECKONING" "THE LIVERY OF HONOR," ETC. ff otfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. ' 1902 All rights reservtd COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped October, 1902. Reprinted November, 1902. J 8. CuBhing & Co. Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 222S382 THOSE familiar with the early history of Western New York will know the " Tuscarora Stories " of this volume for twice-told tales which the author has ven- tured to adapt from the suggestive " Pioneer History of Orleans County," by Judge Arad Thomas. BOOK I The Henchman CHAPTER I IT was the custom of the geographers of a period not remote to grapple somewhat jejune facts to the infant mind by means of fanciful comparison : thus, Italy was likened to a boot, France to a coffee-pot, and the European domain of the Sultan to a ruffling turkey. In this pleas- ant scheme the state of New York was made to figure as a couchant lion, his massy head thrust high in the North Country, his forepaws dabbled in the confluence of the Hudson and the Sound, his middle and hinder parts stretched lazily west- ward to Lake Erie and the Niagara. Roughly speaking, in this noble animal's rounding haunch, which Ontario cools, lies the Demijohn Congres- sional District whose majority party was now in convention assembled. In election returns and official utterances generally the Demijohn Dis- trict bore a number like every district in the land, but the singular shape lent it by the last gerry- 3 4 THE HENCHMAN mander had settled its popular title till another political overturn should distort its outline afresh. The spokesman of the defeated faction had been recognized by the chair, and was moving that the convention's choice of the gentleman from Tuscarora County be declared unanimous. His manner was even more perfunctory than his words. " The name of Calvin Ross Shelby," he ended colorlessly, " spells success." " Screws it out as if it hurt him," whispered the Hon. Seneca Bowers to the nominee. " I tell you, Ross, there's no argument like delegates." Bowers was a thick-set man of the later sixties, with a certain surface resemblance to General Grant of which he was vain. So far as he could he underlined the likeness, affecting a close- trimmed beard, a campaign hat, and the inevi- table cigar ; when the occasion promised publicity sufficient to outweigh the physical discomfort he even rode on horseback ; and he was a notable figure on Decoration Day and at all public cere- monies of the Grand Army of the Republic. Shelby was his protege. The present member of Congress from the Demijohn District, whose seat Shelby coveted, may be most charitably described as a man of THE HENCHMAN 5 tactless integrity. His course in Washington had been a thorn in the side of the organization by whose sufferance he rose, with the upshot that the Tartar neared the end of his stewardship backed by a faction rather than a party. The faction clamored for his renomination and pushed their spirited, if poorly generalled, fight to the floor of the convention. In debate they were eloquent, in logic unanswerable ; nor did any one attempt to answer them. With the best of possible causes they lacked but the best of possible worlds to insure success. The whole story of their fail- ure was packed into the Hon. Seneca Bowers's succinct phrase, " There's no argument like delegates." The vanquished clustered in a little group apart marked by a suggestion of tense nerves, but the gathering was noticeably of a kind. Country lawyers, bankers, merchants, stockmen, farmers, in its units, it was sealed as a whole with the seal of New England which had sent forth these men's grandfathers and great-grandfathers in their ox-carts to people and leaven the West. The transplanted New Englandism had sloughed certain traits of the pioneers who laid the axe to the forests of the Genesee Country and the Hol- land Purchase. Only the older people of the 6 THE HENCHMAN Demijohn District now computed their dealings in shillings ; mentioning one's conscience on week-days was an eccentricity ; the doctrine of Original Sin had lapsed from among burning topics of conversation ; family records were less and less scrupulously kept; and the Mayflower's claim to consideration as the Noah's Ark of the only ancestors worth reckoning had assumed a mask of comedy. Yet, all said, the Yankee blood cropped out in face and limb and speech particularly in speech ; the folk of the Demijohn District did not employ the dialect of Hosea Biglow, nor a variant of it, but the insistent drawling R to be heard on every second lip was of no doubtful lineage. The victor, who sat with folded arms as the perfunctory motion was seconded and carried, was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. Not a few there could recall his sturdy grand- father, a pioneer of Massachusetts birth, and everybody remembered his spendthrift father who had squandered the substance of three genera- tions in drink. The man's own story was an open page which needed no thumbing of the Tuscarora County history to find. Born under the administration of Buchanan, the lad's palm was callous with work by the surrender of Lee, THE HENCHMAN 7 and it knew no softening till his seventeenth year ; yet somehow he got the marrow from the common schools, and in good time won a com- petitive scholarship in a narrow little sectarian college which boastfully called itself a university. Here he acquired two wholesome things : a per- ception that the college is but the beginning of education, and a lasting disgust with bigotry of every stripe. There followed some years of school-mastering by day and law-book drudgery by night, whose end was his admission to the bar and a partnership with the man sitting by his side. Then politics drew him, and, step by step, through rough and ready service at the polls, in town caucus, county convention, what not, he secured his footing and finally a seat in the lower house of the State Legislature. In politics a hobby is often a useful piece of property, and Shelby, who had a hobby, rode it to success ; it made him a marked man in the first month of his term, it gave him a popular title, it compelled his renomination and reelection. Nowadays chair- men always introduced him as the " Champion of Canals," and even at this moment the catchword with cries of " speech " greeted him from every quarter of the dingy convention hall. He un- fleshed his strong teeth in a wide-mouthed smile, 8 THE HENCHMAN rose, squared his shoulders, and walked alertly down an aisle to the platform. Brought thus into the open, under the yellow glare of a gas- light chandelier, he showed for a simply clad, businesslike person, with a well-set head and a shaven jaw, whose firmness a cushion of super- fluous flesh could not disguise. " Thank you, -boys," he said. The offhand fashion of address provoked a fresh demonstration which the nominee acknowl- edged with a good-humored nod. His eye sauntered over the delegates, and with a shrewd twinkle halted on the dejected group which had fought his nomination. " This happy occasion reminds me of a Tusca- rora County story," he began, with a little drawl; " the story of Tired Tinkham's election as over- seer of highways at Noah's Basin a pioneer classic which some of you have doubtless heard. It happened in the early days of Noah's Basin, when that interesting village contained perhaps a score less people than walk its changeless streets to-day. Tired Tinkham was the local Rip Van Winkle the children's friend and labor's foe. No one could whittle green willow whistles in the springtime like Tired Tinkham, or fashion bows and arrows with such fascinating skill. Like THE HENCHMAN 9 Rip also he drank whenever a drink was forthcom- ing, but unlike Rip he did not hunt. Minks, coons, and squirrels were plentiful, with here and there a deer or bear, but Tired Tinkham was too weary to hunt. He fished ; fished day in and day out in the canal basin, which gives the place its name ; fished till the packet captains came to know him and point him out as a fixture in the scenery. But, lazy as he was, Tired Tinkham didn't mo- nopolize all the laziness in Noah's Basin. In one particular laziness was epidemic, even among the otherwise industrious, and it took the form of shirking the road tax. No roads were wretcheder than theirs ; nobody cared less than they. In his personal view of life Tired Tinkham was a fit exponent of the local theory of public duty, and some village humorist accordingly hit upon the idea of nominating him for overseer of highways. Tired Tinkham looked more than commonly fatigued at the suggestion, but did not put the crown away. His election was unanimous. Then Noah's Basin woke up. The jubilee bon- fires were scarcely ashes before Tired Tinkham delivered at the corner grocery what he called his inaugural address. ' I cal'late I know why I wuz 'lected,' he said. ve " Don't say anything you'll be sorry for," he interposed, turning into a side street. "You're on your nerves flat on your nerves." She promptly proved his assertion by slipping without warning from his side. They had chanced abreast of a rambling little church tucked with its trees and shrubbery and green- sward amidst buildings which dwarfed its tower to a pretty toy. Some droll giant might have plucked it out of Trollope and set it here to throw off its atmosphere like a fragrance from rectory to chantry. Its lich-gate held an image before which Mrs. Hilliard melted in a welter of devotion. " Tommyrot," fumed her guide, nonplussed at this new vagary. Ignored, Shelby braced himself patiently 220 THE HENCHMAN against a pillar in the dusky recess while the penitent knelt and pattered in deeps of contri- tion which the ministrations of her low-church rector in New Babylon had never plumbed. But patience vanished at the sound of footsteps up the street. " Quit it, that's a good girl," he begged, recon- noitring. Despite the lively devil's deputy at elbow the appeal wavered on. "It's a policeman coming. He'll think " Shelby broke off his conjecture to utter some banality about the moon, to drown her invoca- tion. Wayside prayers were no more a novelty than wayside curses in this region, and the officer rolled indifferently by. " Now go back to your hotel, and get to bed," pleaded the man, gasping like a criminal with a reprieve. " Things will look brighter in the morning. I'll be in to see you before my train leaves." Her devotions at an end, she issued docilely to the pavement, saying, "You can't know the comfort." " It's a pity it isn't contagious," commented Shelby, grimly ; but before they quitted the shadows for the lights of Fifth Avenue he added gently that he begrudged her nothing. THE HENCHMAN 221 Directly he saw the elevator whisk her to her room, the man posted back to the music hall in search of Volney Sprague. What he should say to him was not clear, but see him he must. Out of the jumble of his thoughts that idea beset him like an obsession. The audience had begun to trickle into Broadway, and as the stream broad- ened to fill the doorway he was hard put to it to scan every face, but he persisted till the last loiterer had left. Then an attendant told him that the place had yet another exit upon another street, which, beyond all doubt, the editor had used. Baffled, but not without resource, he turned again to the newspapers and rummaged the lists of hotel arrivals for Sprague's unnoteworthy name. Naturally too obscure for mention ! Yet in the same breath it started out at him from miscellaneous political gossip as one of the day's callers at the headquarters of a local revolt against the machine. Shelby construed the visit as a still hunt for funds, and, in the light of his own financial rebound, meant to have his chuckle from it, should he ever unhorse the worry by which he was hag-rid. Consulting a city direc- tory, he set forth on a fagging tramp from hotel to hotel a quest barren of result for the excellent 222 THE HENCHMAN reason that Sprague, according to his custom, had registered at the Reform Club. Late to bed, and after persistent sheep-count- ing, much later to sleep, Shelby woke with the morning far advanced and the hour of his depart- ure near. It was necessary to eke out his ward- robe with a purchase or two against the journey with the governor, and between his shopping and his breakfast, the deliberate talk he had meant to have with Mrs. Milliard bade fair to dwindle to a handshake. As the morning brought no grounds for optimism, he was not altogether sorry that the interview must be short ; indeed, by daylight his own necessity seemed the more pressing ; but he faced his obligations, and prepared himself for the role of Sturdy Oak to Mrs. Milliard's Clinging Vine. His astonish- ment, therefore, was doubly great when he learned that the Vine had developed a backbone of its own, and left the hotel, bag and baggage, upward of an hour ago. Being a practical man, Shelby promptly made friends with the baggage agent, who recalled that the " blond lady's " belongings had been for- warded to the Grand Central Station, Shelby's own destination, whose waiting-hall the per- plexed candidate was shortly scouring in pursuit. THE HENCHMAN 223 The sequel was unexpected. He did not find Mrs. Hilliard, but he did stumble fairly into the arms of Volney Sprague. Startled, but outwardly self-assured, he half offered his hand. The editor gave him a perfunctory good morn- ing, but his own right hand made no movement to free itself from the magazine whose leaves he had been turning at the news-stand. Shelby slid his extended fingers forward hap- hazard to a learned periodical, which fell open to a discussion of cuneiform inscriptions. " Are you bound for Tuscarora, too ? " he inquired. " I'm going home." "Which train?" Sprague named his train after a leisured mo- ment's study of an illustration. " That's my own or will be, rather, till Albany, where our car gets its own engine. I'm in for a day or two's campaigning with his Excellency ; rear end speeches, and that sort of thing, you know." The editor was unimpressed. " If you care to drop in, I'll introduce you to the governor." " Thanks, no. We've met." 224 THE HENCHMAN Shelby's color mounted under repeated re- buff, and his self-respect was nil ; but a sincere desire to shield the woman whose folly he had abetted, rose beside the spectre of defeat to drive him on. " See here, Sprague," he said abruptly ; " that was an awkward thing last night " " To see me ? " " The general look of it," came laboriously. "You understand I she " " Excuse me" put in the editor, dropping his magazine and backing off. Shelby anchored him by a lapel. "We've got to have this out. I want you to understand that she was unwell despondent ^- malaria, you know and resorted to " " Laughing gas is your plausible defence." Shelby went brick-red. " Be a gentleman," he said. " Gad ! " Sprague quenched a wry smile. " And from you ! What are you after ? " " Are you going to use this ? " Volney Sprague started, glared, and fell to vio- lent polishing of his eye-glasses. "After all," Shelby blundered on, "she has been your friend entertained you the club and all that and you couldn't " THE HENCHMAN 225 " Did she send you to me ? " broke in Sprague, fiercely. "She? No. I'm responsible. I thought perhaps you it's been a bitter political fight you might be tempted I admit it is a temp- tation to make capital " " Gad ! " The editor spat out his favorite ejaculation as if it were a toad. "We ought to spare her to spare a woman." " Don't, don't, don't," protested Sprague. "Can't you see can't you see that no decent man no ; you couldn't see that. Use a thing of this sort? Faugh!" He swung on his heel and plunged through a nearby doorway to the open air. The result was tangible, but he had paid for it with the most abasing quarter-hour of his life, and Shelby, too, craved another atmosphere. And he obtained it. The governor, his private secretary, one or two members of his staff, a state senator popularly known as "Handsome" Ludlow, and the newspaper correspondents who were to accompany the party, were clustered sociably in the observation compartment of the private car, and on Shelby's entrance every man jack of them got upon his legs to welcome him, as if the Boss had twitched them by unseen 226 THE HENCHMAN strings. His Excellency clapped him graciously on the shoulder, the staff officials and the secre- tary reflected and passed on the gubernatorial warmth, the senator pressed cigars, and the news- paper people, whose habit was to lump all per- sonages as frail humanity, went through their introductions like the good fellows that they were. It was unlocked for, delightful, insidi- ously flattering a plain intimation that he had become a star of greater magnitude. " We're due to pull out in three minutes," the governor told him. " I was really worried about you." In their several echoes the secretary and staff conveyed that they too had known alarm. " Fact is, we bank on you to mesmerize the rural vote," put in Handsome Ludlow, jocosely. " You'll work your passage all right, all right." The jest carried a covert truth. They did count on Shelby, and Shelby did work his passage in sober earnest. The governor who sought reelection was a mediocrity of means a barrel, as the phrase goes whose function in campaign- ing was to draw checks, shed radiance on cheering crowds, and make way for speakers who had something to utter besides hems and haws. No one could be less fitted for the five-minute give- THE HENCHMAN 227 and-take talks from the rear platform than this amiable figurehead, and no one of his company was so much at home in it as Shelby, on whom the brunt swiftly fell. The senator, the staff offi- cials, and even the poor governor were passable in the deliberate evening meetings for which they were billed in this town and that though here, too, Shelby frequently snatched the honors ; but the heady victory over the chaffing, brawling, even missile-throwing packs surging round the car wheels and up the steps, was always his and his alone. Suggested to fill an unexpected vacancy, he was quick to appreciate that chance, and the Boss had given him the opportunity of his life ; and with an eye on another campaign two years hence, and with the heartening thought that by now the State Committee's dollars were implant- ing convictions throughout the Demijohn Dis- trict's fertile soil, he put forth the impetuous best that was in him. Nor was Shelby's best contemptible. The charge up the canal counties had not measured half its course before the increasing crowds, the space given his doings by the correspondents whose good graces he seduously cultivated, the deference of his Excellency and . his chameleon staff, all told him that the glory of what the 228 THE HENCHMAN party organs courteously styled the " governor's brilliant dash" was his and not the governor's. " What we didn't count on," observed Hand- some Ludlow, with a touch of envy, " was cam- paigning with a whirlwind." CHAPTER XI So Shelby came in triumph to his own people, the governor at his chariot wheel, and fought the last stubborn week of his campaign. His mail was now burdened with invitations to speak, but he made few speeches. "The voter a speech will influence has made up his mind," he said to Bowers. " The heart- to-heart talk is the trump card of the eleventh hour." To play this card required a prodigious amount of travelling about the district; and between these activities and the speaking engagements he was in promise bound to fulfil, Shelby saw little or noth- ing of New Babylon till midnight of Saturday, which was the virtual end of the canvass. Seen again, as he viewed it now, the town would look raw and provincial despite patriotic throes of self- deception. On moonlit nights the New Babylon Electric Light and Power Company hoarded its energies, and an inky pall accordingly lay over the muddy streets which the pale melon rind in the 229 230 THE HENCHMAN clouded zenith did nothing to dissipate. The con- trast between this niggardliness and the midnight brilliance of up-town Broadway was inevitable, and the jolting Tuscarora House free 'bus came readily into unflattering comparison with a certain rubber-tired hansom cab. Naturally midnight, a jaded body, and the Tuscarora House free 'bus might well jaundice any scene ; but the returning native recognized these as accidents merely in the phenomenon of his changed vision. The hotel bar-room was boisterous with the usual Saturday night gathering of the set which in its innocence supposed itself fast, and the ma- turer poker crowd, Shelby's own cronies, was in protracted session elsewhere in the building ; but he managed to evade them all and lock himself in his ugly room. For some sophisticated weeks he had suspected the household gods here assembled to have feet of clay. Now he knew it ; but with the feeling that the place was a temporary husk at best, he avoided a too particular inventory of the pseudo-marble clock, the vases of pampas grass, the album, and the garish pictures against their background of pink roses blushing in a terra- cotta field, and ran drowsily over the little pile of accumulated mail. With one exception he found a politician's THE HENCHMAN 231 budget, and the exception brushed its fellows imperiously aside. It was a tinted intriguing thing, faintly odorous of patchouli ; its contents without date, superscription, or signature, though for the reader the scent was Mrs. Milliard writ large ; a single straggling line of characterless script. " Why," it inquired, " have you forsaken me ? " The man yawned. He awoke refreshed and lay in snug indolence listening to the rival sextons pealing first bell for Sunday service. Whatever their doctrinal dis- putes, the churches of New Babylon made a shift for concord when it came to bell-ringing, whose stately performance was regarded by no less a theological expert than the Widow Weatherwax as " spiritoolly edifyin' and condoocive to grace." Drifting between cat-naps Shelby usually found it a fillip to the fancy. He would detect infant damnation and argument for sprinkling in the deep boom of the Presbyterian bell, and instant dissent in the querulous note of the Baptist, whose echo droned " i-m-m-e-r-s-i-o-n " to infinity. This was the cue for a jaunty flaunting of apos- tolic succession on the part of the Episcopalian sexton, only to be himself reminded by the First Methodist that there were bishops and bishops. 232 THE HENCHMAN So on, assertion, rejoinder, surrejoinder, and rebut- tal, till the dispassionate philosopher in the pillows wearied of his conceit and directed his thoughts toward breakfast. From breakfast Shelby ordinarily turned to the sporting columns of the Sunday papers, but to- day he found his thoughts reverting to church- going as a not unpleasant sedative after the storm and stress of his campaign. Reasons multiplied : it would be a sop to the prejudices of no small body of the voting population ; an act of tolerance worthy of a mind open to broad horizons ; a lightning-rod for supernatural approval of his cause ; and a simple means of falling in with Ruth Temple, since by a happy coincidence Ruth Tem- ple and a large block of the church-going vote worshipped under the same spire. Some little time later, therefore, Shelby was ushered to a prominent seat in the midst of a decorous flurry of excitement which stirred the Presbyterian con- gregation from choir-loft to rearmost pew. Un- known to the visitor, the Rev. Mr. Hewett was scheduled to preach on the ethical issues involved in the present election. The minister entered the pulpit almost imme- diately and laid eyes upon Shelby as he announced the opening hymn, coloring at the discovery. THE HENCHMAN 233 His voice wavered perceptibly in the earlier parts of the service as the absorbed congregation noted ; but by sermon time he had conquered his ner- vousness, and with set jaw thundered out his text from Jeremiah : " Why trimmest thou thy way ? " With this entering wedge the parson clove into an analysis of practical politics which did not st'ck at instancing corruption near at hand, and whose climax was a bitter denunciation of ignoble leader- ship and the doubly ignoble laxity of the indiffer- ent led. It was as pointed an attack on local conditions as he could frame without complica- tions with his deacons, who were politically of divers minds, and the fusion managers might have used its final exhortation to " vote your con- science " as their own ammunition, without alter- ing a word. Shelby sat under it all like a graven image, careless of the raking fire of eyes from every point, sang "America" with unction at the close, and advancing with the benediction to the pulpit stair, congratulated the bewildered clergyman on his " effort," and before he could conceive, much less deliver, a coherent reply, slipped down a side aisle and greeted Ruth. "Vigorous, but intemperate," said he, "and typi- cally ministerial. The right road and the wrong 234 THE HENCHMAN road in politics don't abound in sign-posts, and pretty frequently both carry grist to the same mill." The riddle of his character piqued Ruth at that moment as it never had, and before they separated he obtained permission to call upon her after tea a privilege which he interpreted as license to present himself betimes and stay to an unconscion- able hour. Yet he talked fluently and well, and went out at length into the night tingling with the consciousness of having touched ringers with the higher life of his cherished aspirations. By the token of Ruth's interest, moreover, he took hope that he had not been found wanting where he was most ambitious to excel. It was a thing to lay to heart, an epochal page in his history which sleep alone could fitly round. Neverthe- less, a disturbing impression of something essen- tial left undone haunted the borderland of dreams to remain formless till morning, when his pocket handkerchief jerked a note odorous of patchouli to his bedroom floor. It was annoying. Of course Mrs. Hilliard had a certain claim, and had he been less occupied on his return from stumping the state with the gov- ernor he would have gone to her. By rights he should have made the effort to see her after re- ceiving this message yesterday, in fact ; yester- THE HENCHMAN 235 day the golden. He would have gone, too, if frankly, if the stature of the man he had become had less exacting ideals of womanly perfection. To the grown man of broadened horizon Mrs. Hilliard had come indubitably to seem a bore. Still, she had her claim. " I'll drop in after election," he decided, and laid his hand to the day's work. It proved a long, hard pull, made up of details petty enough in themselves, but considerable in their relation to the whole scheme of his defence. However, he reached its end cheery in the belief that the sun of Tuesday would light no Waterloo. " I'll win," he said to Bowers. " By no walk- over, I admit ; but I'll win." " M-yes ; I guess, but by the narrowest margin the Demijohn ever gave. The slightest flurry might snow us under." " I'd stake my head on it." " Some who have betted less than that have hedged." " Who ? " exclaimed the candidate, quickly. "Tuscarora House sports I won't mention names but poker friends of yours." " Sandy lot, they are," broke out Shelby, con- temptuously. " I hope you counteracted the effect." 236 THE HENCHMAN " I instructed some of our people to cover everything they would put up," Bowers answered dryly. " You know I don't bet myself." Shelby guffawed and clapped him on the shoulder. " Same way you don't stoop to buy the pur- chasable ? Lord ! If the Tuscarora floaters only knew their Santa Claus ! " But Bowers merely coughed. Tickled with his joke at the expense of his associate whose handling of the State Committee's saving aid had been masterly, Shelby went to his evening meal in a humor which even a second note from Mrs. Hilliard could not damp. In scent, brevity, and chirography it was the counter- part of the first, telling him that the nameless writer was wretched, and begging him to come to her. The appeal found him in a softened mood. Viewed at the close of an irksome day, Mrs. Hil- liard's society had attractions which his hypercriti- cal mind of the morning hours slighted ; and while her message in itself left his withers unwrung, he concluded that it was perhaps as well to break gently with " poor Cora " now, as later, when pos- sibly greater growth and broader horizons might create barriers yet more awkward. Under a show of letter-writing, accordingly, he lingered in the THE HENCHMAN 237 hotel office till he was certain that Joe Hilliard had joined his boon companions of the billiard room, when he let himself quietly out of doors and made his way to the quarry owner's home. " I was afraid you might come, and then that you mightn't," the woman whispered, in the obscurity of the hall. " Joe had a headache, and said at first that he wouldn't go out to-night; but he went." "Yes; I know. Servants out ?" " Oh, yes." "And Milicent? " he pursued, scorning hypoc- risy. " I let her go away for the night. The poor child needed a change." As they left the hall he discovered that she was in evening dress the black gown glittering with jet beads and bugles which she had intro- duced at the first autumn meeting of the Culture Club. He held her hand high, and turned her slowly round after the manner of the dance. " Did you do that for me ? " he asked, his face lighting. She nodded. " I wore it the night of your nomination, and I put it on to-night to bring you luck at the polls. Was it silly of me ? " 238 THE HENCHMAN " Not if somebody else doesn't see." "Joe'll not see. I shall have gone to my room before he comes. I'll not keep you long. It's enough that you've proved you cared to come. It's a crumb of comfort in my wretched- ness. cc You know I've been on the jump," he re- turned, adding dryly, " You don't look as wretched as your note led me to expect." " You can't know." " Not till I'm told." " The scene there's been, I mean." " Scene ? Wfiat scene ? " " With Joe about you New York every- thing." " There wasn't need for a word. Nobody's blabbed. I saw to that. I went to Sprague in New York." " I told Joe," she confessed. " You didn't come that morning and I was frightened. I thought if stories were to get to him, I'd best be the one to tell them. So I left at once." " If you had only waited." " If you had only got word to me." They fell into explanation of their several movements, from which Shelby, white-faced, sud- denly cut loose, saying : THE HENCHMAN 2 39 " What does he know ? For God's sake, what does he know ? What did you tell ? " " Oh, that I met you, had dinner, went to the theatre " "Then why " " I'm coming to that. While we were away somebody Mrs. Weatherwax, I suppose filled Joe full of malicious town gossip about our our friendship and he was terrible. Oh, you can't know, you can't know ! " "But me me!" cried Shelby, clutching her by the arms. " What about me ? Is he down on me? His votes, his two hundred votes, you know, they could defeat me ruin me! Tell me tell me " " No, no ; it's not you he blames ; not you, Ross. It's I. He thinks I'm a fool the brute ! He calls me a fool ! " " Thank God ! Thank God ! " ejaculated the man, laughing wildly in his revulsion of relief. " But I I am miserable," sobbed the woman, and clung to him when he would have released her. " You will go to your triumph and your future, what have I left now?" Shelby swayed unsteadily with his burden, his eyes on the perfect shoulders whose curves played and quivered with the labored breath. He re- 240 THE HENCHMAN called a fragment of poetry something about " morbid . . . faultless shoulder-blades," which he had overheard Bernard Graves quote to Vol- ney Sprague as Mrs. Hilliard passed at the club. Morbid had seemed an inept word then, but he began to spy out a certain fitness. The house was too still by far dangerously still; the stillness of espionage. With a flash of intuition he lifted his eyes, and in the doorway met Joe Hilliard. Almost at the same instant the woman in her trumpery saw him too. "Joe ! " she called, in an incredulous, husky whisper. " Joe ! " He loomed there in the dusk like a rock, and with a frightened whimper she tottered and clung to him as she had clung to Shelby. " I'm not a bad woman, Joe," she babbled. " I'm not a bad woman." " No one has accused you," replied her hus- band, putting her gently away. " Nor am I what you doubtless think," stam- mered Shelby. " It's all a mistake, Joe ; a big mistake. It can be explained it can be ex- plained " Hilliard doubled and relaxed a mighty fist. " No ; not under this roof," he said quietly. " Go ! " CHAPTER XII THE scandal derived its impetus from the vulgar circumstance that the Milliard washing went to line on Tuesday (Monday having dawned lowering and ended stormy), thereby exposing more family linen than could possibly have been foreseen, since the day laundress and Mrs. Mill- iard's housemaid were bound in friendship by a common appetite for gossip and for tea. Mon- day's unfinished labors despatched, these familiars laid their heads together over a pannikin of their favorite brew, and the laundress, poising her saucer with the elegance which was the envy of her circle, ventured the opinion that the housemaid was holding in reserve a palate-tickling morsel con- cerning the missus ; whereupon the housemaid cloaked herself afresh with mystery and " suspi- cioned" that she could tell things if she were one of those odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not. Blowing and sipping with the calm which is the handmaiden of true elegance, the laundress con- ceded both propositions, and edged forward the R 241 242 THE HENCHMAN suggestion that tale-bearing and confidence be- tween intimates were horses of dissimilar color. This was readily admitted by the housemaid with its corollary that anything intrusted in confidence to the bosom of the laundress was as good as locked in the mute confines of the tomb. With these time-honored preliminaries the crisis above stairs as seen from below stairs was promptly bared to the scalpel. " Whin he come home lasht night He was here," the housemaid imparted in a whisper. The laundress hurdled the ambiguous pronouns like a thoroughbred. " Is it th' trut' ye're tellin' me ? " she demanded, forgetting her graces, and grounding her saucer with a clatter. " Cross me hear-rt," said the housemaid, enjoy- ing her sensation. " Ye'll excuse me intherruptin' " "Ye're no intherruptin'. 'Tis th' ind iv th' shtory." " But phat did th' good ma-an say ? " As the faithful soul did not know, she remarked that there were some things which a lady in her delicate position could not confide even to a bosom friend. She hinted, however, that in the light of what she had told the laundress a week THE HENCHMAN 243 ago of the family jar occasioned by Her meeting Him in New York, the present state of things was easy to conjecture. But the laundress thirsted for details. " Was his dayparture suddin like ? " she asked. Feeling that the force of her narrative might suffer from the admission that she had only en- tered the house by a side door after she had met Him walking rapidly away from the front, the housemaid answered merely by moving sighs. The laundress reasoned from past experience that the font had gone dry, and suddenly remembered that she was promised to help with the Bowers's heavy ironing. This was at a quarter before nine o'clock. At ten minutes past nine o'clock the laundress remarked across the ironing-board to Mrs. Bowers that if she were one of those odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not, she could expose the carryings-on of somebody living not a hundred miles away to a tune which would bring the blush to New Babylon's outraged cheek. Mrs. Bowers made haste to answer that she was of principle firmly opposed to gossip ; but as an intelligent woman, she recognized that certain things require ventilation for the good of the community, and was accustomed in such emergen- 244 THE HENCHMAN cies to send personal reluctance to the rear. The tale of how He coming unexpectedly home found Him with Her was then put through its paces with such skilful jockeying that not one in ten would know it for the same dobbin so lately brought limping to the light. As now set forth, He had fathomed Her and Him with more shrewdness than the world had given him credit for possessing poor man! and had been hoodwinked by their transparent devices for meeting at the golf links and on lonely country roads no more than had Mrs. Bowers or any other person of equal virtue and capacity. He had seen, and he had warned. Then, stolen sweets becoming perilous near home, the culprits had taken their several ways to New York, most fit choice for such a pilgrimage ! This too was fathomed and forgiven. O unwise clemency ! O base requital ! Violence upon discovery ? No doubt. Loaded pistol constantly in the house since the last burglar scare. At this Mrs. Bowers recollected shots in the night ; Seneca had said " Campaign fireworks " ; but she knew better ; shots, of course. Dreadful thing to happen at one's very door. An immediate separation natu- rally. By all the laws of righteousness she should not be given the custody of the child. THE HENCHMAN 245 In affairs requiring ventilation for the common good Mrs. Bowers could conceive of no instru- ment so sure as the Widow Weatherwax, who providentially dropped in to borrow flour at the precise moment Mrs. Bowers had decided that if she ever meant to run over and copy the widow's unequalled recipe for floating island, this was the time to do it. Quite in the same breath with her greetings, therefore, Mrs. Bowers intimated that were she one of those odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not, she could astonish the widow with a chronicle of happenings not remote in time or scene. But when told, the widow was not astonished. " I've knowed she wuz a Scarlet Woman since the last night ov the camp-meetin' at Eden Centre," she explained. " It come to me when I see her a-standin' outside the circle, and it was borne in on me to testify b'fore the brethren." In this, its third edition, the tale gained pictu- resqueness and circumstantial weight. To the New York episode the widow contributed the imaginative touch of a baffled detective, while Mrs. Bowers's shots in the stilly night passed into the province of undisputed fact. The cir- cumstance that the widow had only that morning seen the destroyer of homes walking abroad un- 246 THE HENCHMAN maimed, was but touching evidence that the hus- band had been too grief-crazed to send a bullet to the mark. The widow almost remembered that the destroyer had limped ; therefore the injured man must have resorted to natural weapons. Doubtless the beginning of proceedings for an absolute divorce hung fire only because this was a legal holiday. As the clock in the town hall struck ten the good women parted company, and the now able-bodied scandal careered bravely into the world. Tinctured by personal equation, the respective variants of Mrs. Bowers and Mrs. Weatherwax had minor differences in the dra- matic grouping of detail, but they were variants, nevertheless, and adhered in all essentials to the notable fabric these ladies had joined forces to erect. Early in the morning the Hon. Seneca Bowers returned to his home for a warmer overcoat, and met the petrifying version of his wife. His first thought was of its bearing on the election. " True or untrue, Eliza," he declared, energeti- cally, " this servant's chatter must go no farther." " But if he's a bad man " began Mrs. Bowers, uneasily. " I'm not concerned with his morals ; it's the THE HENCHMAN 247 party I'm thinking of. Not one soul must you tell understand that clearly not one soul." "I I did tell one just one." " In God's name, who ? " cried her husband. " Don't swear, Seneca. And you a church member." "Who? Who?" "Mrs. W W " It was impossible to articulate that tongue- worry ing name with her lord glaring at her so dreadfully. The man blenched. " Not old Weatherwax ! " " Y-yes." Bowers's jaw hung flaccid. This phenomenon continuing, Mrs. Bowers took alarm. "You've not gone and had a stroke, have you ? " she wavered timidly, feeling for his pulse. Bowers revived with a grunt, and bolted for the door. His buggy wheel protested stridently as he cramped the vehicle at the horse-block, reassuring Mrs. Bowers that his natural force was not abated ; and his flight down town af- fronted the ordinance against reckless driving which he himself had framed. Shelby, unnaturally pale, but composed, was issuing from his office staircase, and joined him directly at the curb. 248 THE HENCHMAN " Jump in," said Bowers, making room. " No time now." "But this is important critical, in fact." Observing no sign of compliance, Bowers lowered head and voice, murmuring, "You know I'm no hand at carrying tales, Ross, but " " You won't have to," cut in Shelby. " I know." " You know ? " "Baffled sleuth discovery by husband shots kicked down steps divorce case sum- mons in the morning you see the whole roorback has come my way." " Roorback ! " Bowers caught at the straw. "We can make a sweeping denial, then?" " Whole hog or none." He smiled sarcasti- cally into the face which had so suddenly gone bright. " The truth has been so far outstripped that you can't see it with a telescope. Get hand- bills printed denying the story, denounce it as a partisan trick, and sign the statement yourself as chairman of the County Committee. Have them distributed all over town, and station men men, mind you, not boys with a supply just outside electioneering limits at each polling place. If the yarn spreads elsewhere in the dis- trict, wire our people to take similar measures." THE HENCHMAN 249 " Ross ! " Bowers called him back. " I don't need to tell you how glad I am. I never be- lieved it of you." " Thanks for the vote of confidence," laughed Shelby ; " but I'd rather you'd hurry the hand- bills." He had a more urgent reason yet, for wishing Bowers to take himself off. A block or two up the street, where the trees began to interlace their denuded branches and the court-house common sparkled with frosty rime, he had seen the Widow Weatherwax accost Ruth Temple. The girl had stopped when addressed, but al- most immediately walked on, as if to escape the little busybody who, nothing daunted, trotted at elbow for a rod or more. Then Ruth came down the slope alone, and was intercepted by Shelby at her gate. " I must speak with you," he said abruptly. " My good name is being dragged in the dirt, and I must assure you " " No, no," Ruth interposed. " I tell you I must. You have heard this calumny. I saw her stop you the woman who is peddling it from door to door. I must speak it's no time for mincing words speak to you personally Bowers will answer to my 250 THE HENCHMAN constituency speak to you personally, I say, appeal to you to believe in me. You don't know what your belief in me has been my inspiration, my safeguard. Don't take it away it's vital ; don't deprive me of all this on hearsay. Say you'll not. Give me a sign " " Go win in spite of it." In a single wave of generous impulse she had spoken, put out her hand, and slipped past him, flushing, through the gate. " I can't fail now," he exulted, detaining her an instant. " And victory means so much. It means listen :-I'll tell you a thing I've breathed to no one else ; success to-day means the governor- ship two years hence ! It's been fairly promised me the governorship ! That's the great stake part of it, rather; you're the rest; you who believe in me and bid me win. I've not changed my mind since the day we rode together. I told you to think over what I said, and I've given you time. I meant then to come to you on the night of my election a victor and so I shall. I couldn't know that I should have the executive mansion to offer you, but it's none too good. I'll come ! I'll come ! " CHAPTER XIII THERE was more solid ground than mere con- fidence in his destiny behind Shelby's bold front. The earliest mail delivery had shed a glimmer of hope in the shape of a midnight note from Mrs. Hilliard. He did not require her reminder that the voting strength of Little Poland was no longer to be counted in his column he had thought and fought that out in the small hours ; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, toward which he now bent his steps on leaving Ruth. Mrs. Hilliard had named a cemetery on the immediate outskirts as the rendezvous a choice on whose evil omen Shelby wasted no thought. In the heyday of their flirtation he and Mrs. Hilliard had made frequent use of it as a Plat- onic trysting-place, and he climbed the silent paths toward the summit of the mount, as it was styled 251 252 THE HENCHMAN in that level land, with no sentiment save ap- proval of her wisdom in seizing upon the one spot in all New Babylon whose privacy was certain. Mrs. Milliard, shivering in the lee of a preten- tious granite shaft which bore her family name, was more susceptible. "Bleak desolate," she chattered. "What an end for our Fools' Paradise. But where else could we escape their prying eyes ? " " You've heard what they're saying ? " She nodded listlessly. " Who has not heard ? " As they huddled in the shelter of the monument she brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet un- frozen still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a light spiral into the nipping air. " Under every one a wagging tongue," she said. " It's known to every soul except one." " You mean he's still in the dark ? " " He can't know yet. He took an early train to Centreport. It's some quarry business that could not wait. I remembered it last night after after you had gone; so I wrote. It was past two o'clock before I dared steal out to post the letter." THE HENCHMAN 253 Shelby shrugged into the collar of his ulster. " I don't deserve all this," he muttered. " Don't say that. You've done things, too. You've stood for things; something to pin faith to. You are " " I'm your good friend remember that." " Friend ! " He drew her farther into shelter, and tucked her furs about her throat. " Now concentrate your mind," he enjoined, " and tell me exactly the lay of the land. Did he communicate with the foreman at the quarry before he left ? " "Yes. I overheard him telephone Kiska be- fore breakfast. He said he'd return at half-past three. There's no train to-day from Centreport till then." " And there is no other till the polls close. He said nothing, then, about voting the hands before afternoon ? " " They're at work this morning." " On election day ! You're sure ? " " They're working half a day on full day's pay. Joe's hurrying some contract through. I don't understand it very well, but the stone has to be shipped before the canal freezes on account of something freight rates " 254 THE HENCHMAN " Never mind that. What did he say to Kiska about voting that the men should be ready at such and such a time ? " " No, no; I know about that. Before anything happened it was arranged that the men should vote about four o'clock. He merely told Kiska he'd return at three-thirty." " Good, good ! " exclaimed Shelby, making ready for action. " Every naturalized mother's son in Little Poland shall vote for me before the train can even whistle. Now, you go home, Cora," he charged, " and drink something hot against this graveyard chill. Keep a stiff upper lip that's my creed. Everything blows over in time. The scandal is so tall that it will topple of itself. Nobody will believe it after election." " But Joe ? Think of him when he learns what they're saying, and that you've outwitted him." Shelby grinned. " That's the situation's one humorous phase," said he. " The two things will neutralize one another's effect, like Kilkenny cats, you know. He'll not dare raise a row about the votes for fear of lending color to the scandal." But Mrs. Hilliard, whose sense of humor was sluggish this morning, rejoined bitterly : THE HENCHMAN 255 " The row will fall to me." "He needn't know your part in this the matter of the votes; and as for the other thing well, after all, he is your husband, hard and fast, and you'd best try and patch things up." She straightened, flashing him a stony look, and he braced himself for a hurricane ; but to his equal discomfiture she went down beside the shaft in a passionate fit of weeping. " I should be under here," she sobbed ; " I should be under here." Shelby, tingling to be gone, shifted from foot to foot, and offered some blundering solace which she put away. " You've ceased to care," she accused. He protested, adding indiscreetly that she had done too much for him for that. "You've filled the place he should have filled!" Shelby was silent, goaded to torture by the lapse of precious minutes. " There's only blackness ahead ! " " Don't take the dark view," entreated Shelby, groping desperately for a bright one. " The man can't live always so much older than you and then your life's your own " The bowed figure shuddered. "It's a dreadful thing to do but I've 256 THE HENCHMAN thought that, too. I can't help it. You you are the real one the real one " She waited. " Yes." It was screwed from him. "The real one and if I know I don't need your promise but if " " Yes, yes ; of course if " Neither of them would name the contingency. Shelby contrived a leave-taking, and bounded down the terraced slopes. It was quite noon when he reached the Tuscarora House, but with- out a thought of food, he got his horse and buggy from the livery, "speeding the harnessing with his own hands, and whipped away for Little Poland. On reaching the Hilliard quarries he con- fronted unexpected obstacles. The men had quitted work and scattered to their homes, and Kiska was to be discovered neither in nor around the little office. However, the Polish lad in temporary charge, Kiska's own son, was not slow to recognize the original of the campaign litho- graph which in his home enjoyed honors second only to a highly-colored Madonna, and went fly- ing in search of his father. Shelby took instant advantage of his absence to telephone Bowers, whom he luckily located at his midday meal. He learned that the handbills had been sown broad- THE HENCHMAN 257 cast with encouraging effect, and that the general opinion of the voting public leaned toward unbe- lief. Shelby told his whereabouts, and requested the prompt services of Jasper Hinchey and three or four kindred spirits, ringing off after certain mysterious, though concise, directions regarding a concert hall in the Flats, which he meant shortly to utilize. He had barely hung up the receiver when a telegraph messenger from town brought a de- spatch for Kiska. Shelby's breath shortened at sight of the yellow envelope, but he mustered a specious unconcern, telling the boy that the fore- man's return, though certain, was not within immediate prospect, and volunteered to receipt for the message himself an offer readily em- braced by the lad, who, without a glance, pock- eted the book in which Shelby scrawled Kiska's own name, and fared away with a head aflame from the bonfires of the coming night. The envelope was loosely gummed, and gave under gentle persuasion. Shelby threw a glance from either window of the narrow room, and drew the paper from its cover. It was from Hilliard at Centreport, and announced that he had missed his train. The reader's delight was qualified by the succeeding statement that he 258 THE HENCHMAN should come by the canal, and that the men were to be in readiness. " He's hired a launch or tug," commented Shelby. " Horses aren't to be had to-day for rubies or fine gold." He replaced the message, sealed the envelope, and flung it on the table, catching sight of Kiska, as he did so, striding along the canal bank toward the office. The big Pole burst into the room a moment later, his simple face aglow at the meet- ing, and sputtered broken excuses for keeping his preserver waiting. Shelby shook both his grimy hands, and smilingly supposed that Kiska had made up his mind how he should vote. Kiska's English was uncertain, but there was no misread- ing his gesticulation. " And Little Poland ? " insinuated the candi- date, blandly. " Leetle Poland ees ein beeg vote," Kiska eagerly assured him ; " joost ein beeg vote for Meester Shelby. Whan you save me, Meester Heelyard he say eef anybody no want to vote for you, he can joost valk aus de qvarry." " Very kind of him," said Shelby. " Now, since you all know your own minds, I'd take it as a favor if you would get to the polls at the earliest possible moment. The voting promises THE HENCHMAN 259 to be heavy toward the close, and I don't care to have my friends inconvenienced. By the way, Kiska," he broke off carelessly "there's a tele- gram for you over there. It came not ten minutes ago." By dint of facial contortion Kiska puzzled out the meaning, and handed the message to Shelby, who gave it grave perusal. " Ah," said he. " You see he's anxious about it, too. If there was any way of reaching him by wire, we could relieve his mind ; as there is not, the wise course is to go ahead. His coming by boat is uncertain. It will be a nice little sur- prise for him to find that you've got the votes all in." So it seemed to Kiska, and the business of rallying Little Poland to its civic duties was instantly got under way. Here, too, were obsta- cles. Having been told to present themselves at a later hour, the villagers were in all states of unreadiness ; but by impressing this helper and that, doing the work of three men himself, and with the reenforcement of Jap Hinchey and his co-workers, whom Bowers hurried to the scene in a hired carriage whose bravery of varnish made mock of their rags, Kiska at last collected his compatriots. The rented vehicle was urged 260 THE HENCHMAN back at a gallop to Bowers and continued pub- lic usefulness, and the whole body of enfran- chised Poles, under the escort of Kiska, Jap Hinchey, and his fellows, trudged off in groups of five and ten to New Babylon. Little Poland lay within the same voting pre- cinct as the Flats, and when Shelby had assured himself that the straggling column was finally in motion, he rode on in advance toward this quar- ter and the concert hall to which he had made mysterious reference in his telephoned directions to the Hon. Seneca Bowers. From the elevation of a canal bridge he searched the waterway for a sign of Milliard's coming, pondering anxiously whether a pillar of smoke at the horizon's rim were his herald ; but a glance at his watch re- assured. The train which Milliard had missed was barely due, and to cover the distance by boat meant an additional hour at least. Employing a street urchin to lead his horse to its stable, he struck out on foot for the Flats. At the tawdry concert hall everything was as it should be, and in the brief interval before the arrival of the Poles he received inspiriting news from one of his workers. Money was flowing, buckets of it, but beyond doubt they held the longer purse. Their policy of offering high THE HENCHMAN 261 prices to the floaters at the outset had drained the disciples of the late Chuck O'Rourke before twelve o'clock, and patriots were now to be had at bargain rates. Some few conscientious souls who could not see their way to a Shelby vote had been induced to stay away from the polls alto- gether; and at least a dozen irreconcilables had been laid by the heels with bad whiskey before they had done protesting that not all the powers of darkness could deter them from casting an unsullied ballot under the emblem of the Square. The Poles came hulking in, Shelby himself keeping tally at the door, and when Kiska had urged the last loiterer over the threshold, the key was turned. Drinks were sparingly circulated, and Kiska harangued the crowd briefly in Polish, hammering in Shelby's instructions for their con- duct in the voting booths, and impressing them with the fact that good cheer in plenty would await them here on their return. Under the efficient supervision of Jasper Hinchey and his lieutenants they were now guided to the polling- place in squads of three or four, returning pres- ently to unlimited refreshment and a surreptitious two-dollar bill shining examples and incentives to such as had not yet voted to speed their going. Yet with all their willingness, the affair con- 262 THE HENCHMAN sumed time, and twice Shelby went into the dusty wings of the stage to a window overlooking the canal, and strained to detect the panting of a laboring launch or tug. But the last quarryman voted, the polls closed, darkness fell, and Joe Milliard was not yet come. CHAPTER XIV A PLEASANT local custom fell this night into abeyance. Years out of mind the adherents of the leading political parties had mingled sociably before a non-partisan bulletin board in the court- house, much as hostile camps fraternize in the truce forerunning peace. But the old, simpler order of things had suffered more wrenches than one in this acrid congressional campaign, and the warring factions could unite only on the hibernian proposition that union was impossible. One party, therefore, made ready to gather in the accustomed place, the other in the Grand Opera House, while seceding remnants from both swelled the crowd in the street before the office of the Whig, which, with unlooked-for enterprise, had prepared to announce the returns by stereopticon. At six o'clock Shelby broke his fast with a ravenous meal at the hotel, which Bowers shared, and three-quarters of an hour later the two men shouldered through the boisterous mob in the streets to Shelby's law office, where arrangements 263 264 THE HENCHMAN had been perfected to receive the returns by mes- senger and private wire. The Whig bulletin over the way had already massed a constituency extending to the Temple lawn, which, in default of definite news, it was edifying with views of foreign travel and cartoons bearing on the larger issues of the election. Within doors the tele- graph operator was already installed at the ancient table which had graced the grand-paternal distil- lery, and William Irons was making good the tedium of a dreary day in the deserted office by goggling from the ticking instrument to a con- signment of iced champagne just arrived from the Tuscarora House. Shelby was in rare fettle. " William, thou abstemious youth," he ad- dressed the clerk, " I am tempted to empty one of these cold bottles down your scandalized neck and pack you off with another for the Widow Weatherwax ! " He had the youth carry the wine to the rear room and set out glasses against the coming of his friends, drinking a bumper meanwhile to Will- iam's good health and the sentiment Confusion to Fusion. Never a solitary winebibber, and William remaining recalcitrant, he returned to the outer office and demanded " no heeltaps " of THE HENCHMAN 265 the operator and Bowers. This accomplished to his taste, he crammed a greenback into the dazed clerk's fingers and dismissed him for the night with the injunction to buy and blow the biggest tin horn in New Babylon. His intimates now began to drift in, and the toast of Confusion to Fusion enjoyed a wide popularity, the telegraph operator and the county chairman being the only ones permitted to flag in the exacting ceremonies which the occasion required. " I'll do my hurrahing when the returns are in," said Bowers, and stripping to his shirt sleeves he took his station under a drop-light and made ready to figure the local result. But the local returns were tardy. It developed early that throughout the Demijohn split tickets had prevailed to an unprecedented extent. Here- tofore reliable localities ran after strange socialistic and prohibition gods, to avoid voting for either of the leading candidates ; while Graves and Shelby both gained support in quarters where it would have been sheer fatuity to hope. The hurrying news from the country at large shamed the dribble at the threshold. Texas and Ver- mont, those stock commonplaces of election night humor, went Democratic and Republican 266 THE HENCHMAN by the usual majorities, and all signs pointed to a sweeping victory for Shelby's party in state and Union. And still Tuscarora and the Demi- john aped the Sphinx. Men elsewhere became curious. Bowers re- ceived and passed silently to Shelby demands for a forecast from other county chairmen in the dis- trict ; from leaders prominent in the state ; from great metropolitan newspapers which were tabu- lating the congressional elections of the nation and studying the complexion of the future House. " Claim the district, of course," directed Shelby. " Say we're deliberate, but true blue." The drumming humble-bee voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the Boss in New York City, with which the Tus- carora independents had felt themselves pecul- iarly in sympathy, had made good its claim for recognition. Shelby turned from the window with a laugh. " Merely a little extra diplomacy for Old Silky," he said. " Within a twelvemonth each reformer will have a foreign mission." THE HENCHMAN 267 A tactless friend embraced the occasion to wonder where the Boss would banish Bernard Graves should he chance to win ; but even idle speculation on such a possibility was so distasteful to the company that the blunderer only retrieved his mistake by toasting Confusion to Fusion anew. The returns from the laggard Demijohn pres- ently thickened, and Shelby left his seat to pace the floor, while Bowers, with an unlighted cigar between his teeth, and looking very like Grant indeed, figured, discarded, and figured again as successive reports modified his calculations. " Never saw it's equal never ! " he grunted. " Here's our own town hanging fire till almost the last like some jay village in the Adirondacks. We've always prided ourselves on being prompt." He caught a flying sheet from the operator and groaned : " We are the last ! By the Great Horn Spoon ! " For Shelby's ear alone he mut- tered : " The last, Ross ; New Babylon's the last, and the die by which you lose or win. Figure it yourself." Shelby ran through his senior's calculations and nodded without speech. No one spoke now. Not a wine-glass tinkled. The room sensed a crisis. By telephone, special messenger, and the 268 THE HENCHMAN instrument at the table the belated story of New Babylon's vote pieced itself together under Bowers's pencil. The candidate hovered above him, intent on every stroke. " Good God ! " he whispered suddenly ; " it hangs on the Flats ! " " Yes ; it's the last precinct. They sent word that the thick-skulled Poles and the rest had made an awful mess of the ballots. Tom" to one of the onlookers " 'phone the Flats again." But on the instant the Flats embodied itself in the doorway in the person of a breathless messen- ger. Bowers's * trembling fingers fumbled the paper and cast it fluttering toward the floor, but Shelby fastened on it in mid-air, read it, crumpled it, mechanically made it smooth again, and laid it gently on his desk. There came a second roar from the street, a medley of cheers, groans, hisses, and the blare of horns. Shelby again drew a cur- tain. On the Whig s screen was displayed a huge rooster with the legend : IT'S GRAVES ! Shelby caught a murmuring from the group behind him : vapid expressions of regret, scorch- ing condolence, pitying oaths ; then the voice of a newcomer, a newspaper correspondent, asking Bowers if they conceded their defeat. He spun about, crying, THE HENCHMAN 269 " We concede nothing." The reporter said that the returns as received indicated a slight majority for the fusion candi- date. "We dispute the returns." " But, Ross, " Bowers put in. " We dispute the returns. Should the official count be adverse, we shall dispute that. In view of the methods employed by the allies of the in- dependents, it becomes nothing less than a public duty to carry the contest to the floor of the House of Representatives." " It will be a House of your political friends," remarked the correspondent, impersonally. " Shall I then quote you as claiming your election ? " " Most emphatically, yes. Quote me as confi- dent of a verdict approving my public course and rebuking the slanderous attack on my private character." " What's the use ? " protested Bowers, as the reporter hurried off in quest of Bernard Graves. "It's too late to bluff." "Use," echoed Shelby. "I tell you, man, there's a blunder in the returns. Look, man, look ! " snatching up the report from the Flats. " Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it ? The Flats, mind you ; our own little pocket bor- 270 THE HENCHMAN ough of the Flats ! Don't talk to me about the Poles muddling things ; those inspectors of elec- tio.n can give them cards for stupidity and take every trick. Let me 'phone the Flats." And he was right. The inspectors of the belated precinct, conscious of unwonted delay, nervous from long weighing of defective ballots, harassed by incessant demands for their report, had capped the climax of their offending by an- nouncing the result as favorable to Graves. The mistake was discovered and rectified within fifteen minutes of its commission. Shelby had carried the precinct, and with it the election by something less than two hundred votes. Giddy with the reaction, the Hon. Seneca Bowers gulped glass after glass of champagne, toasting Confusion to Fusion like the veriest roisterer. "And we abused the Poles," he said in self- reproach. " Ross, it was the Poles who saved the day." Shelby was the one self-contained being in the room. " Yes," he answered soberly, "it was the Poles." With stern straightforwardness the Whig bul- letin over the way had promptly set forth the corrected result, and the crowd, now swollen by THE HENCHMAN 271 more deserters from the tame gatherings in the little theatre and the court-house, was clamoring for a sight of the victor whom everybody knew was within hearing. Shelby's jubilant companions were puzzled at his reluctance to comply with the popular demand. He declined to show himself, however, till the arrival of a serenading brass band compelled an acknowledgment, when he stepped from a window to a little balcony and spoke a few grave words : he had never doubted their support, they had repaid his trust, he was grate- ful ; as he had championed their lesser interests in the smaller field, so should he strive to further their greater concerns in the national lists to which he was to pass their chosen knight. Within the law office preparations were rife for adjourning to the Tuscarora House as a less re- stricted arena for the celebration which the fitness of things demanded. Shelby begged them to go before him, promising to follow. " I need a few minutes to myself, boys," he said. " It's been a strain, you know." They caroused away, Bowers the most jocund bacchanal of all ; the operator boxed over his instrument against harm and slipped out; and Shelby was left solitary with the litter and the lees. One by one he extinguished the lights, and 272 THE HENCHMAN in darkness, at length, halted at the window from which he had so often marked the goings and comings of Ruth Temple. The old house was brilliantly alight in its lower rooms ; lit, he dared hope, in honor of his triumph and his anticipated return. He turned and left his office with elastic step. Fumbling with the lock in the dim light of the hall, he was spied from below by a newsboy who came bounding up the stairs. " Extry ! Extry 'dition of th' Whig, Mr. Shelby," he called. " Read all about yer 'lection an' th' drowndin' accident ! " " Drowning accident ! " Shelby started and seized a paper. " Who is drowned ? " The lad did not know. He had not read beyond the headline which seemed to promise salability. But in the obscurity of the landing Shelby came upon the particulars swiftly enough. Skimming the brief despatch, here a sentence, there a sentence seared itself into his memory. "Missed his train at Centreport conscientious citizen, valuing his vote hired a naphtha launch collision ham- pered by clothing leaves a sorrowing widow " "Th' extry 'dition is two cents," reminded the urchin. BOOK III CHAPTER I THE executive mansion was strewn with the wreckage of the inaugural reception. A musky odor blent of plant life and massed humanity hung thickly throughout the spacious rooms and corridors ; the bower of palms and flowery brightness at the foot of the great staircase, which had fended the orchestra, and incidentally barred an intrusive if sovereign people from the private apartments, was jostled and awry, its blossoms half despoiled ; here lay a trampled glove, there a shining shred of braid, beyond an embarrassed cigar stump dumb emblems of social Albany, gold-laced officialdom, and the unaristocratic un- official ruck, whose mingled tide had beat upon the new governor's threshold in the late hours of the afternoon. A clock somewhere about the scene of devastation chimed midnight, and a man with attractive black eyes, who had been monopolizing his hostess upward of two hours, outstaying all other guests save one, now took his belated leave. 275 276 THE HENCHMAN "Yes; I prophesy a brilliant season, Mrs. Shelby," he said. "With a woman of your talents in this house, Albany must at last awake." Cora Shelby returned to one of the smaller reception rooms, where an open fire wrought changing shadows in the face of the Hon. Seneca Bowers. " I think ex-Senator Ludlow is perfectly fascinating," she exclaimed. " Have you known him long ? " " All of ten years," returned Bowers, with a little tightening 'of the lips. " Most everybody in politics knows Handsome Ludlow." " Ah, he is handsome. And so polished, too." Bowers found the topic difficult, and changed it. " What's your opinion of Ross's inaugura- tion ? " he asked. " I call it an A-i success." " It would have been a success," discriminated Cora, " a pronounced success, if Ross had ap- proached it with a tithe of the spirit I urged. But no ; simplicity, simplicity ! You would have thought the affair a transfer of Methodist parsons. No military escort to the capitol, no decorations in the Assembly Chamber to speak THE HENCHMAN 277 of, no music, no anything that the occasion demanded." " Fuss and feathers never did appeal to Ross," said the guest. " Besides, I guess he thought the last administration had splurged enough for two." " Their fine plumage covered as slovenly housekeeping as I ever saw," interjected Mrs. Shelby, momentarily diverted from her husband's shortcomings. " I wish you might have seen what I have seen in out-of-the-way corners of this establishment. What the servants did for their wages I can't conceive. But, after all, those people had the right idea of upholding the dignity of the position. The ex-governor didn't decline an escort to the capitol when he took office. That puts me out of patience with Ross every time I think of it. Then, to cap the climax, he didn't even take a carriage ; he walked ! " " Walked down with me," Bowers chuckled. "And, by Jove, nobody knew him. One of the orderlies wanted to keep him out of the executive chamber." Cora shuddered, and the old man bestirred his wits to soothe her outraged sensibilities. "You must remember that he made his run 278 THE HENCHMAN on an economy platform," he reminded. " He believed it, too, every word. After all, you can't say that you've not had things your own way here at the mansion." " It's a mercy I did. He would have had the house reception and the staff dinner equally prim if I hadn't put my foot down. I said no ; be as puritanic as you please at the capitol, but the executive mansion concerns me ; I'm governor here." " Tolerably big commonwealth, too," com- mented Bowers, dryly. " Somehow it puts me in mind of what I thought palaces were like when I was a boy." " Oh, yes ; it's well enough, though the deco- rations aren't to my taste ; but the location is very unfashionable orphan asylums, hovels, saloons, and all that under one's very nose." " I hadn't noticed the saloons." "Well, there's a saloon at any rate. I saw it to-day from one of the south windows. The state was stupidly short-sighted to buy a house in this quarter. The executive mansion ought to stand in Quality Row." " What's that ? " asked Bowers. "Not much to look at just a block or two of houses near the capitol, not one of which THE HENCHMAN 279 could have cost more than my own place in New Babylon, for all that famous people have lived in them ; but it's the cream of Albany." " Everything else is skim milk, I suppose ? " Mrs. Shelby eluded the classification. " Nearly all that's socially significant is grouped thereabouts," she pursued ; " the cathedral, the Beverwyck Club, Canon North, and Mrs. Teunis Van Dam. The canon and Mrs. Van Dam are the keys to the social citadel, I assure you. Probably you noticed them on the platform at the inauguration. Then, she helped me receive this afternoon, thanks to a bit of diplomacy." Bowers absorbed these esoteric deliverances in meekness. " It takes a woman to bottom such things," he said admiringly. " I guess you'll pass." Cora herself harbored no doubts, but she disclaimed a single-handed victory. " I shouldn't know all these things yet if it were not for the governor's military secretary, Colonel Schuyler Smith. Do you know him ? " " I'm not sure that I can place the colonel," ruminated Bowers. "Is he that blond young dandy whose sword got tangled in his legs ? " " Yes, poor dear ! He's not used to wearing it 280 THE HENCHMAN yet. But he's a treasure. He's Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's grandson, you know, and like her is descended from all those delightful old Dutchmen who make such enviable ancestors, and have stained glass windows in the cathedral. He knows who is who, I assure you. Ex-Senator Ludlow does too, for that matter ; though he doesn't care for Mrs. Van Dam's circle. He thinks it too stately and old regime. He goes with the younger set Mrs. Tommy Kidder's and he says Mrs. Tommy is quite my own style." The governor "entered the room in the midst of these matters and listened soberly. Shelby had taken on more years than his congressional service spanned. His dark hair had grayed at the temples ; his old puffiness of jowl and dewlap had vanished ; and the strong bone framework of his head showed for what it truly was. Tuscarora ancients, who remembered the pioneer, said that Shelby favored his grandfather. Bowers turned to him with a laugh. " It's a mighty good thing you've got a skilled pilot in these waters," he said. " Yes, Cora knows her way around," returned her husband. " I dare say the world's a brighter place for this varnish, though I've noticed that THE HENCHMAN 281 when you scrape through it people average much alike. It's meant more to me to-day to have you here, old friend, than the notables. You gave me my start." He hesitated, glanced at his wife, and added : " But they were all welcome. Cora has come into her kingdom, and I wouldn't abate a single courtier." " I've waited for my kingdom," she declared ; " waited for it in sackcloth and ashes. You can't call Washington anything else for a congressman's wife. Her husband may get glory ; she gets snubs. Now my turn has come, and I've plans galore. Milicent's debut is one of them. I'll bring her out with a ball when she has had enough of her finishing school. Ex-Senator Ludlow thinks it an inspiration." The men exchanged a look. " Handsome Ludlow isn't an ideal adviser for young girls," dropped Shelby, quietly. " He's a victim of gossip ; he told me so. You and I know too well what that means to countenance it. Besides, you're going to appoint him commissioner of something or other I read it in yesterday's papers ; but that's politics, I sup- pose." Shelby gloomed in his corner, but made no answer. 282 THE HENCHMAN Bowers essayed a diversion. " I saw Bernard Graves's wife in the assembly chamber this morning," he remarked. " Seems to me she's looking rather peaked since her marriage." " Ruth Graves here ! " exclaimed Cora. " I saw her too," said Shelby. " She congrat- ulated me later in the executive chamber. She has been living in New York this winter. Graves is still lecturing around the country, telling how he wrote his poem and what it's all about." " I presume she couldn't resist coming up to see how we wotild behave," Cora reflected, aloud. " She is visiting Mrs. Van Dam," added the governor. " Of all people ! " Mrs. Shelby's wonder was unrestrained. " I do remember, though," she continued presently, " that she made friends here when she was in Vassar College. It's plain enough why Mrs. Van Dam has taken her up again. She wants to know all about us." It was an easy step now to the conclusion that perhaps such an old friend really merited an invi- tation to the executive mansion. The governor brushed his forehead with a weary gesture, drew a chair to Bowers's side, and unfolded a bundle of manuscript. THE HENCHMAN 283 " I know it's late," he said apologetically, " but there's a bit of my message I'd like to read to you. There'll be no time in the morning if you're still bent on taking the early train to Tus- carora. I'd like your opinion whether it's what the plain people want." Mrs. Shelby found the reading unspeakably juiceless and went yawning to bed. Nor did the governor detain Bowers long. A servant entering presently discovered Shelby before the grate alone. " Don't wait up for me," he directed kindly. " I'll see to this fire, and remember not to blow out the gas." The relic of the old regime restrained his sur- prise at these democratic doings, smiled deco- rously, and withdrew. Jocosity slipped out at his dignified heels. The man before the fire drank deep in self-communion, and his face was grave. For the first time that crowded day he could look his future in the face. Yet, evoked by a woman's handclasp in the long line which had filed by him as he stood in the executive cham- ber surrounded by his glittering staff, it was the past which most absorbed him. It struck him as a wanton caprice of fate that they should have been flung together that day. Ruth, whom he had promised a share in these honors ; Ruth, 284 THE HENCHMAN whom he had boasted that he would return and claim ; Ruth, whom he had put away because he must, because of a loftier standard which grim- mest irony of all ! she herself had unwittingly set up. He wondered as he had wondered often in the years which had witnessed her mar- riage, his own, and his rise to power whether she had waited that night ; whether she had cared as he, apart from the red passion of the struggle, could perceive that he had cared. A vagrant memory of the morning's inaugura- tion intruded. The moment of his oath had been a time of solemn consecration for him, a laying on of hands unseen ; the shades of his greatest predecessors stood round about ; the genius of the state was in presence. Then came Cora and kissed him. Emotional souls in the gallery applauded the act, but the husband divined its prompting egoism and was cold. CHAPTER II NEITHER the public nor the honorable body to which it was directly addressed took the new gov- ernor's message stressing general retrenchment and the pruning of useless offices seriously. Nothing in the recent course of the party wooed faith in its promises to purge and live cleanly, and the accident of a huge majority in the late elec- tions, owing to national issues, had set not a few mouths watering for fruits of victory which had lately dangled out of reach. The machine was perfected to its utmost, and the young year was held to signalize the full flowering of the Boss's topping supremacy. The great man was now master of the county committees of the metropolis and the greater cities ; of the State Committee ; of the Legislature, of the lieutenant- governor, and apparently of Shelby. The car- toons depicted the chief executive as a craven monarch yielding his sceptre to the leering power behind the throne ; as a marionette twitched by obvious wires ; as a muzzled dog, ticketed with the Boss's name. 285 286 THE HENCHMAN Whereupon Shelby, in a quiet way, did an audacious thing. By an odd chance the first en- actment of the Legislature which reached his desk affected Tuscarora County. It was a general measure concerning marsh lands, philanthropically worded and fathered by an assemblyman from an eastern county ; but its special purpose, as Shelby fathomed, was to give certain Tuscarora people a selfish advantage in a locality as familiar to him as his hand. The Swamp, as Tuscarora called it, embodied his boyhood notion of primeval nature, the one spot untamed amidst tilled and retilled commonplaceness, the last fastness and abiding- place of the unknown. Rude corduroy roads threaded the wilderness in parts, and from this Red-Sea sort of passage the lad had peered and questioned in delicious fear. Even now the man had but to shut his eyes to recall it with the senses of the boy. Cowslip, wood violet, and Jack-in-the-pulpit bloomed again, the scent of mint was in his nostrils, fairy lakes lured amidst the ferns, and the way wound through lofty halls whose wonderful pillars set foot in emerald pools and sprang in vaulting hung high with wild grape. Once in those tender years he had skirted the spot by night when owls hooted, unnatural frogs boomed, will-o'-the-wisp stalked abroad, and THE HENCHMAN 287 Old Mystery held carnival ; that breathless expe- rience almost outdid the delights by day. All this issued from the phraseology of a bill this, and something more. He held the measure a day or two and invited its sponsors, ostensible and real, to a conference: They were trained legislators, with whom he had served and frater- nized, and in this matter furthered the interests of men in his native county who had backed him from the beginning of his career. " Gentlemen," he said, regarding them quizzi- cally, " this bill reminds me of a Tuscarora story." They laughed at the familiar beginning, and the governor laughed with them. " It's about a man who ran a grist-mill on a creek fed by a certain swamp, which I guess you know about. He was easy-going, the water was often too low for grind- ing, and the little mill had business for six, since there wasn't a rival within thirty miles. The pioneers came prepared to camp when they brought grist, and I suppose loafed around pitch- ing quoits and cursing the mill trust by whatever name they called a monopoly then. One day along came a cute boy astride a mule with two bags of grain. He sized up the crowd ahead of him as he carried in his grist, and decided that if he waited his turn the country would grow up 288 THE HENCHMAN without him. The miller happened to be tinker- ing his water-wheel, so the boy got his bags into a dark corner unobserved, and with a handful of mill dust gave his work the finishing touch of ripe old age. I dare say you think he took the man in, but he didn't. t Bub,' said the miller, * I used to do that trick myself.' ' Shelby's old associates in log-rolling took the unmasking good-naturedly, but declined the amendment he suggested. He dismissed them with charming civility, jotted a laconic memoran- dum that the bill meditated a raid on public property for private gain, and with the calm of a gardener lopping a weed, withheld his signature. It were hard to say whose smart was shrewder, the spoilsmen's who mourned the backsliding of a pal, or the professional reformers' who chewed the galling fact that not one of the elect, but a practical politician, had done this creditable thing. Both joined forces to fling clods. In the greater world, however, Shelby's simple act won swift approval. In the cartoonists' fancy the wires of the puppet-show had gone awry, the dog bit the heel at which it slunk, the usurper's knuckles were rapped by the sceptre he would have seized. The press teemed with anecdotes and personal gossip of the governor. Everything he did or THE HENCHMAN 289 said became of interest : his dress, his habits of work, his Tuscarora stories, his domestic life. An admirer on Long Island who bred bulldogs sent him a white pup trained to answer to the name of "Veto." Triplets in the valley of the Susquehanna were christened " Calvin," " Ross," and " Shelby," respectively. During this time no word passed between Shelby and the Boss. The leader had not witnessed the inaugural ceremonies. Indeed, he had not attended the inauguration of a governor since his party regained control of the state. He and the governor-elect had lunched together frequently, however, and in concord discussed the forthcom- ing message and the party policy of the incoming Legislature. With two years of common work and intimacy behind them, they felt slight need of explanations. The machine as it stood was of their joint perfecting. Accordingly, the Boss viewed the cartoons with his habitual serenity, noted that a fund of good will was accruing to the party through the personal popularity of the new executive, and smilingly assured the reporters, who scented a quarrel, that Shelby was the right man in the right place. He found no thorn in a special message reminding the fortnight-old Legis- lature that, with the chief financial measures yet 290 THE HENCHMAN untouched, the bills already introduced called for the outlay of millions ; nor did the speedy pruning of several sinecures, one of which was held by that tried veteran, Jacob Krantz, dash his cheery con- fidence. Krantz and the ousted were quietly found corporate business openings of glittering promise, and the campaign slogans were proved no mere catch-vote generalities. Meanwhile the ancient city of Albany privily assorted its impressions of Shelby's wife, and awaited the dictum of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam. Although it was by deeds, rather than speech, that she made her judgments public, Mrs. Van Dam among her intimates did not deny herself the luxury of a stout opinion vigorously expressed. " Mrs. Shelby's a fool," asserted the old lady in her positive way to Canon North, "but, after all, one of our own church people and the governor's wife." " Either claim is weighty," smiled North ; " ten- derness for the family skeleton, respect for the state. United they're irresistible." For a social autocrat the canon took his position simply. In- deed he would have been rather astonished to learn that he was anything of the kind. " But the governor he's genuine," he continued musingly ; THE HENCHMAN 291 " I'm drawn to the man. He seems to me a power to be reckoned with presidential timber, perhaps. Of course all our governors are heirs apparent by virtue of their office ; but unlike so many of them, he isn't of a stature to be dwarfed by the suggestion. I think him rather Lincoln- esque in a way, though I don't press the compari- son. Perhaps it's merely his smile have you noticed it ? the ' sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men ' that Amiel tells us is the badge of the misunderstood." "Pshaw!" returned Mrs. Van Dam. "I've known two or three great men who wore sad smiles. When a disordered liver wasn't at the bottom of it 'twas the wife." North gave over the argument. " Nobody would impeach Shelby's liver," he laughed. " He's as robust as a patent medicine witness after taking." " Oh, I don't accuse Mrs. Shelby," rejoined Mrs. Van Dam, quickly. " The governor's smile isn't the issue. One and one don't make one in the state of matrimony any more than elsewhere on the globe, and whether he and his wife agree or disagree doesn't interest me in the slightest. What does concern me is the important fact that the mistress of the executive mansion of the great 292 THE HENCHMAN state of New York appears not to know certain things she ought, chief among them the true char- acter of ex-Senator Ludlow." " I'm afraid it's true," owned the canon. " Before Ruth Graves left I suggested that she intercede. She has tact, knows the Shelbys well, and had received an invitation to visit them. But she declined visit, intercession, and all. I'm sorry. Somebody must speak to Mrs. Shelby, and an old acquaintance could carry off such a mission with better grace." " Why didn't Graves come on with his wife ? " inquired the canon, irrelevantly. " Don't mention the simpleton ! I've no pa- tience with him or with Ruth for marrying him. We never can see the reason for other people's marriages, but that one above all others was incomprehensible. If ever a woman needed to marry a dynamo to bring out her best it was Ruth Temple. And she married Bernard Graves a man who has degenerated into a poseur before women's clubs. Marriages made in heaven indeed ! Give me Darwin and natural selection." " You really have something of the kind," laughed North. " She was a free agent, his plu- mage evidently attracted in the old, old way, and so she made her choice." THE HENCHMAN 293 " Fiddlesticks ! Don't tell me that she made a fool of herself of her own free will. That man isn't capable of stirring the emotions of a poster girl with orange skin and purple hair, let alone a flesh and blood woman. Something outside herself don't laugh; I'm a woman and I know some- body, not Graves himself, bred that folly. If she were another sort of nature, I'd say she married for spite ; but she " " For respite, perhaps respite from herself. I've known cases. But we're far afield from the Shelbys. Shall I approach the governor ? " " No," said Mrs. Van Dam, with decision. " The wife is the one to see, if I know anything of women, and this is a woman's task ; I, clearly, am the instrument, and shall not shirk." " You would have made an eminent surgeon," remarked North, with his slow smile. The unflinching Good Samaritan selected an hour two days later when the governor's wife was likely to be alone, and sent up her card. Not a few women had sighed for a sight of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's calling card, and sighed in vain ; but Cora Shelby, who had heard of these yearnings, thanked her God that she was not as other women are, and glanced at the pasteboard with indiffer- ence. 294 THE HENCHMAN "Yes; I suppose I'm at home," she said lan- guidly, posturing for the maid, and for a full half- hour left the august visitor waiting below stairs while she turned the pages of a novel. The influence of Mrs. Tommy Kidder had determined this petty course. This sprightly young person, being herself a real social force, shared little of the awe in which Mrs. Teunis Van Dam was held by most of her townsfolk and by all newcomers, and Cora, with her own ideas of the part which she, as the governor's wife, should play, had taken Mrs. Tommy's frothy non- sense at rather more than its surface value. She was more than ever alive to Mrs. Van Dam's importance her grandson, the military secretary, was an ever present reminder ; but she cherished a quickened sense of her own importance, too, and was vigilantly alert to withstand any sign or symptom of what Mrs. Tommy called " Knicker- bocker domination." Her first shaft, however, fell wide of the mark. Mrs. Van Dam serenely assumed that her tardy hostess meant to pay her the compliment of 'a more elaborate toilet, and employed the interval in an interested survey of the changes wrought in the reception room's arrangement by its new mis- tress. So absorbing did she find this occupation, THE HENCHMAN 295 that she utterly missed the glacial temperature of Cora's greeting. " I must congratulate you on resurrecting that bit of mahogany," declared the old lady, indicating a table. " I've missed that piece for three adminis- trations. Wherever did you find it ? " " Really, I can't remember," fibbed Cora, resolv- ing straightway to banish it. The military secretary had suggested its restor- ation, and she jumped to the conclusion that he had been inspired by his grandmother. " It's a real link with the past," added Mrs. Van Dam, with a far-away look in her eyes. " I can recall it as long ago as Governor Tilden's time." The great Mrs. Van Dam's cordiality thawed Cora in spite of herself, and she was well in the way of unconditional surrender to her charm when the caller cut straight into the pith of her errand. " Without beating about the bush, my dear," she began, " I'm here on a meddlesome business which you mustn't take amiss. As an old woman who has seen something of the world in general, and much of this queer little Albany corner of it in particular, you must permit me to tell you that you have been too generously lenient with a per- 296 THE HENCHMAN son who has forfeited the right to darken decent people's doors. I mean ex-Senator Ludlow ; and I presume I needn't specify his misdeeds." " No. You need not," rejoined Cora, stiffen- ing. " I'm not interested in scandal." Mrs. Teunis Van Dam straightened rigidly in her chair. " I fear that, after all, I must particularize," she replied. " Obviously you can't know the truth of things." " I know that his wife divorced him, and I have heard a dozen or more malicious tales about his present life. I doubt if you can add to the col- lection." " You put me in a false position." " And you reflect on mine in assuming to dic- tate whom I shall receive. This house belongs to the state. Every citizen is welcome." Mrs. Van Dam had gathered her furs and risen, but at this she paused. " There," she exclaimed, with a little laugh, "what women we are ! I've been talking of one thing, you of another. You have the right view of your official obligations precisely. Of course the man is free to come to your public receptions. The state can't establish a moral quarantine, more's the pity." THE HENCHMAN 297 " Ex-Senator Ludlow is free to come to my house at all times," cut in Cora, with a brilliant crimson dot in either cheek. " I do not sit in pharisaical judgment on the unfortunate. I've had his story as well as that of you who are against him. I believe him a misjudged man who deserves a courageous friend." " Oh, if it is a question of friendship " and Mrs. Van Dam terminated sentence and inter- view with a shrug. Yet Cora had not seen the last of her visitor's stately back before she repented her open cham- pionship of Handsome Ludlow. Knickerbocker domination, not conviction, had forced her hand. Since she had hung her banner on the walls, how- ever, she resolved to stand fast, and the following Sunday morning issued an unmistakable declara- tion of war. On her way to service she saw Ludlow crossing the park before the capitol, and stopped her carriage. " c Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins re- member' d,' " quoted the man, his handsome, im- pudent eyes on hers. " I propose that you'll do that for yourself," Cora retorted archly. " Get in." She had intended going to the cathedral, but with a sudden resolve she ordered the carriage 298 THE HENCHMAN driven to an older church just at hand, which time out of mind had made special provision for the head of the state, down whose central aisle she marshalled Ludlow, and installed him in the governor's pew. CHAPTER III HAD the protest against Knickerbocker arro- gance languished at this pass, history would be the poorer ; but Cora Shelby found it impossible to stop with this show of independence. Her ambition was whetted for an exercise of actual power, and the outcome was the famous battle of Beverwyck, whose story still lacks its balladist. Early in her survey of Albany society, Cora had met with the Beverwyck Club. " It is the local academy of immortals," in- structed the military secretary. " Its judgments may not be infallible, but they're beyond appeal. It is the pink of exclusiveness ; it worships eti- quette above all other gods ; and its receptions to incoming governors demand the reddest letter- ing in the calendar." When Shelby's turn for this signal honor drew near, and the military secretary, to whom Fortune, not content with sending him into the world a grandson of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, had added membership in the Beverwyck Club, approached 299 3 oo THE HENCHMAN him to discuss preliminaries, the governor cheer- fully referred him to his wife in whose social knowingness he placed an abounding trust. Of Albany other than as a legislative workshop he knew next to nothing. His social progress in the salad days of his first term in the Assembly had begun in a saloon behind the capitol much frequented by departmental clerks, whence through hotel corridor intercourse he evolved by his sec- ond session to a grillroom, patronized by public servants of higher cast who gave stag dinners and occasional theatre parties, which called for evening dress. Up to this period Shelby had never found evening clothes essential to his happiness. His little sectarian college had rather frowned on such garments, and he, too, for a time had vaguely considered them un-American. Yet, taught by the grillroom, he assumed this livery, wore off its shyness, and grew to like it for the best it sig- nified. Here evolution paused. Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, Canon North, and the Beverwyck Club, so far as they stood for anything, peopled a frigid zone of inconsequence which he had no wish to penetrate. Washington, influence in his party, and intimacy with its leaders sophisticated him before his return ; behind every mask he now discerned a human being ; and no social THE HENCHMAN 301 ordeal terrified. Nevertheless, something of his old-time diffidence toward the unknown country beyond the grillroom lingered, and it made for peace that his wife seemed so competent to guide. On the score of her competency, Cora enter- tained no misgivings, and the day following Hand- some Ludlow's public elevation to sanctity she met the club's representatives, the military secre- tary, and an august judge of the Court of Appeals, with a self-possession she felt would grace the daughter of a belted earl. The judge, after some ponderous compliments, told her that the com- mittee in charge, having assured itself through the secretary that the governor and herself had no conflicting engagement, had agreed upon a near date for the reception, which he named. Cora promptly decided that in not consulting her the military secretary had been wanting in respect, and to punish him invented a previous engagement out of hand. Withered by his sen- ior's Jove-like frown, the young man apologized in hot-skinned contrition for his ignorance of the unknowable. " It's barely possible I didn't mention it," dropped Cora, scrupulously fair. This gracious intercession for the culprit had no weight with the judge, who continued to 302 THE HENCHMAN regard the secretary with severity, and left him wholly out of the discussion of a date which should meet her wishes. This matter settled without further affront to her dignity, the judge expanded under her flattering attention, and gos- siped of the reception itself. " Between ourselves," he confessed, " the invi- tation list is bothering us unconscionably. You see, it has expanded beyond our space. At the last governor's reception the club-house was in- vaded by a mob a mob, madame, there is no other expression, which I need -not add is out of keeping with " our traditions. But how draw the line without offence ? " With the dregs of her wrath against Mrs. Van Dam stirred afresh by the disciplining of the grandson, Cora perceived and seized the oppor- tunity for a swingeing blow. " There's an absurdly simple remedy," she returned thoughtfully ; " but of course it would hardly become me to offer suggestions." " My dear madame," the judge protested, " it would be an act of charity." After a politic interval of coaxing, Cora explained : , " The reception is meant to be official in spirit, isn't it ? Then why not make it so in fact ? THE HENCHMAN 303 Limit your invitations to the official circle. If all the townspeople unconnected with the gov- ernment are excluded, no one need take offence." A few days afterward the invitations went forth, restricted according to Cora's plan, and the heart- burnings which were kindled scorched the 'club's self-esteem like nothing in its staid career. But while others merely bewailed the amazing fact of their exclusion, Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, with characteristic energy, determined to probe the indignity to its author, and summoned her grand- son to an absorbing interview. " Schuyler Livingston Smith," she inquired, " what is Mrs. Tommy Kidder's relation to pub- lic affairs that she should receive an invitation to the Beverwyck Club ? " The secretary named an insignificant board of which Mr. Kidder was a member. His grand- mother rapidly instanced a dozen other names, and repeated her question. In most cases the young man had to confess his ignorance of their claims. " So," she commented in the end ; " so. And I, whose people have helped govern this com- munity since there was a colony to govern, am beyond the pale ! But who was Peter Stuy- vesant beside Mrs. Tommy Kidder's husband? 304 THE HENCHMAN Nobody. Who was Abraham de Peyster? who was Gerardus Beekman ? who was Rip Van Dam ? And the Schuylers, Livingstons, and Van Rensselaers ? All nobodies. My dear child, what lunatic in the Beverwyck Club sug- gested this official classification, which even the Archangel Michael could not carry out ? " Her grandson, with no friendly recollections, named the judge. "The silly old man!" exclaimed Mrs. Van Dam. " And who inspired him ? " He cheerfully told her, with the added detail that Mrs. Shelby and the judge had subsequently gone over the invitation list together. She was silent for a time, and then dismissed him. Alone with her thoughts, she elaborated a countermine, whose energy was specially directed against the Beverwyck Club, though she had no objection to hoisting the governor's wife in the explosion, albeit she refused to consider her the real antag- onist. The true offender was the exclusive organization which had prostituted itself to such ignoble influence. Within an hour of her grandson's departure Mrs. Teunis Van Dam despatched an invitation of her own. The Beverwyck Club reception was scheduled to run its formal course from nine to THE HENCHMAN 305 eleven o'clock ; Mrs. Van Dam asked the gov- ernor and his lady to dine with her on the same evening at the hour of eight. All hinged now on the personal equation of Cora Shelby, whose vagaries the old lady owned herself quite unable to forecast. Nor in this respect was Cora herself a much wiser prophet. Her first instinct, mixed with wonder, was to decline, and she held to this opinion the better part of an hour. Yet before the impulse could stiffen into resolution, it met the neutralizing influence of the old town, which, partly through the military secretary, partly through the scoffing Ludlow, she had unwittingly assimilated. By these teachings she had learned the flattering, almost royal, significance of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's dinner invitations. She was seized afresh by a curiosity to observe how they did things in Quality Row, and became of two minds forth- with. Appointed for the same evening as the club reception, the dinner had, moreover, the look of a peace overture, a concession to her power, even an admission of defeat, which was soothing. She could hardly present the matter to Shelby in this light, as she had withheld all mention of the Ludlow business from his ear ; but with a generosity which astonished herself, 3 o6 THE HENCHMAN she dwelt on Mrs. Teunis Van Dam's undoubted prestige, and ended by advising acceptance. Shelby, preoccupied with an appeal for the pardon of a consumptive forger, mechanically agreed. " Sooner or later we'd have had to endure both functions," he said. " It is time saved to pack them into one evening." Cora bridled. It was a prodigious affair for her that he took so indifferently. " Time, time," she reprimanded ; " the state doesn't expect its governor to grub like a clerk." Shelby promised to mend his ways; but the dinner and reception occupied his thoughts so little that he worked beyond his usual hour at the capitol on the afternoon of the appointed day, and, coming tardy home, was late in dress- ing and late in setting forth. Cora was indignant to the boiling-point. She meant to be behind- hand at the reception, as a display of what she deemed good form ; but a dinner was a dinner, as her husband, in the privacy of the carriage, was taught past all forgetting. Yet his fault lost its gravity before Mrs. Van Dam's welcome. " If you're really late, I'm delighted," she returned to Cora's embarrassed excuses ; " for you see, I've just found that I must apologize for a THE HENCHMAN 307 delay myself. What a boon servants run by clockwork would be ! But it won't be very long." It was long, though neither of the guests sus- pected it. Shelby was diverted by Mrs. Van Dam's unimagined vivacity ; while his wife had no immediate room for any impression save satisfac- tion that this autocrat, who held that punctuality should be the politeness of democracy no less than princes, had been caught napping. It was clear that she meant to bury the hatchet, and Cora, with her own point carried, saw no reason why she should not add a shovelful of symbolic earth herself. Thus, beginning with a trickle, the flow of her good humor presently broadened to the width of the sluice-gate, as she entered upon an absorbing scrutiny of the quaint old house which by tradition had served one of the earlier governors. It was a rambling structure of unexpected turns and endless alcoves stored with curios, art treasures, and trophies of travel. Perceiving their interest in their surroundings, Mrs. Van Dam gladly played the cicerone. " That chair and desk came from the Senate Chamber of the old State House," she said, fol- lowing Shelby's eyes. " They were used by my grandfather, and I luckily got them at the demoli- tion. His wooden inkstand and pounce-box are 3 o8 THE HENCHMAN there too. That Stuart over the mantelpiece is his portrait." " I've heard of him," answered Shelby, warmly. " He upheld De Witt Clinton's hands in the fight for the canal." She left him momentarily to give Cora the history of a faded Flemish tapestry that lay in a cabinet, and then included them both in the romantic tale of a Murillo, unearthed in a Mexi- can pawnshop, which she assumed would interest so steadfast a champion of art as the governor had shown himself in his congressional career. Cora basked in the exquisite flattery of being treated as a person of greater cultivation than she was, and strained on tiptoe to merit her reputa- tion. Had her mind been free to register its ordinary impressions, two things might have struck her as singular ; the absence of other guests, and, stranger still, in a temple of punctu- ality, the lack of clocks. The same happy atmosphere enveloped the dinner itself, whose perfection of service and cookery betrayed no hint of delay. Mrs. Shelby found her views of life and the sphere of woman sought for and appreciated, and the governor was enticed into political by-paths illustrated by Tuscarora stories told in his happiest vein. He THE HENCHMAN 309 was frankly charmed. Many women had at- tracted him in many ways, ranging from the earthy fascination of the sometime Mrs. Milliard to that commingling of girlish impulse, mature good sense, and an indefinite something else in Ruth which swayed him still ; but none of them had met him on quite the serene plane of this delightful old woman of the world. By her birthright she seemed to bridge the present and the past, and under her spell the quaint-gabled Albany of another century rose again. Once more Arcadian youth picnicked in the "bush'' and coasted down Pinkster Hill past the squat Dutch church ; the Tontine Coffee House sprang from dust, and through its doors walked Hamil- ton and Burr, Jerome Bonaparte, and a comic- pathetic emigre marquis, who in poverty awaited the greater Bonaparte's downfall, cherishing his order of Saint Louis and powdering his poll with Indian meal ; the Livingstons and Clintons divided the land between them ; Van Buren and the Regency came to power. There was more of this when the dinner had ended, and they lingered in the library over their coffee and Mrs. Van Dam's priceless collection of relics of the time of the royal province and the yet earlier New Netherland. 3 io THE HENCHMAN " A plague on the reception ! " exclaimed the governor in the carriage, when the good nights had finally been said. " I could have talked with her till morning." There was a lively stir and bustle about the entrance of the Beverwyck Club as they ap- proached, which Cora took to be that of late- comers like themselves. She would have preferred that she be conspicuously the last, the climax. Seen nearer, the flurry was peculiar. If the idea were not preposterous, she could believe that people were actually leaving the club leaving before they met the governor in whose honor they assembled leaving before she came ! " Your watch, Ross, your watch," she exclaimed suddenly. " I did not wear it." She bethought her of a recently acquired car- riage clock whose face the lights of a passing trolley made plain. She looked, gasped, and looked again in horrid fascination. The punctili- ous Beverwyck Club had decreed that its recep- tion should end at eleven, and the decrees of the Beverwyck Ciub were rigidly enforced. The carriage clock pointed its inexorable hands to a quarter past. CHAPTER IV THENCEFORTH Cora Shelby's respect for the fearless strategist in Quality Row verged upon awe. If Mrs. Teunis Van Dam now deigned to assist at one of the weekly house-openings, the occasion savored of an aroma which the united patronage of Mrs. Tommy Kidder and the ladies of the lieutenant-governor, the secre- tary of state, the controller, the treasurer, and the entire bench of the Court of Appeals could not exhale. Cora made sure of her good offices for the legislative reception weeks in advance, and in all matters, save only Handsome Ludlow, deferred anxiously to the great exemplar's code. No one who thought twice about Mrs. Van Dam escaped the reflection that she was a de- scendant, and Cora with her mind running con- tinually on this shoot of a peculiarly sightly family tree, was as fired by this truism of natural law as if it had lain all the centuries awaiting her discovery. Those delightful magicians of figures, who as easy as asking prove William the Con- 3" 3 i2 THE HENCHMAN queror the mathematical begetter of us all, had hitherto contented her ; but such sweets cloyed before Mrs. Van Dam's august line of Dutch and English forebears, who had considerately made history and bequeathed portraits and plate. But the path of Japhet in search of a father was prim- rose beside the American's in search of an ances- tor, and Cora's researches were long barren of result. The labyrinth of Brown, her maiden name, she speedily forsook, though at the outset it seemed to run promisingly to knighthood, literature, and art ; Huggins, her mother's name, was impossible, and Milliard, more sounding, clearly out of the question ; while the Shelbys, to whom she turned in last resort, seemed hope- lessly commonplace. Ross's father, to her own knowledge, had done little but drink ; and the grandfather, though of sterner stuff, as became a pioneer, was handicapped by his unlucky dis- tillery. The governor's own notions about his family were the vaguest. Like many Americans, he had the impression that its beginnings traced to two brothers who immigrated to this country prior to the Revolution in which they served. " The Revolution seems to be the Norman Conquest of American genealogy," he remarked in the course of his wife's cross-examination. THE HENCHMAN 313 " But don't you know their names, or what they did in the war ? " she queried anxiously. Shelby shook his head. " Perhaps they were teamsters," he laughed. Cora was too pained to jest. Mrs. Van Dam was a " daughter " of this and that society by virtue of descent from generals. For a time the chase now circled teasingly round a southern branch whose achievements were notable, but the unconcern of the distiller with regard to vital statistics balked a happy union of North and South, and goaded Cora to that last desperate ditch of the ancestor-hunter a blind leap over seas. In the fortunate isles where choice forefathers flourish thick as butter- cups, Cora made her foray with hunger's law- less haste, enlisted the aid of an indigent person skilled in blazonry, and in good season brought her spoils to the governor. " I've had bother enough getting this," she said, exhibiting a coat of arms ; " but I must say it's far prettier than the one we saw in Mrs. Van Dam's library." "Runs mainly to red, doesn't it?" Shelby ventured, gravely considering the work. " That's gules," explained Cora, learnedly ; " the color of the field. Books of heraldry 3 14 THE HENCHMAN describe the arms as : f Gules, two boars' heads displayed in chief and a mullet in base, sable ; crest, a dexter arm, embowed, grasping a cimeter " I took that for a crumb-scraper," put in the governor, jocularly. " The motto," went on Cora, soberly, " is, l I achieve.' I think the purple of the mantling highly effective purpure, that's called which, taken with the red and black, would give a most romantic light to our hall in New Babylon if we put a window at the turn of the stair. To- morrow morning I shall order a die made for my stationery." " So this is ours," said Shelby. " Did the original owner acquire it in the Holy Wars, or was he a rich brewer who endowed a hospital ? " Cora reddened. " He was Owen Shelby, a Welsh soldier of the Commonwealth." " A near relation of mine ? " "You are undoubtedly his descendant. Of course I can't supply every trifling link your people were so careless of their records ; but there is no question in my mind that you are entitled to his arms, and you ought to be grateful to me for my pains." THE HENCHMAN 315 " I am, I am," protested Shelby, with a chuckle. " But before the engraver begins work on the crumb-scraper and the prize pigs let me suggest that you add a detail which has been overlooked. I mean a bar sinister." " Ross ! " He slipped his arm round her waist with a laugh. " One of the state library people said that you were trailing the foreign Shelbys, and I glanced at your references. The fact I remember best is that Owen Shelby, late of Cromwell's Iron- sides, died a bachelor." She flung from him in stormy anger. " I've twice been fool enough," she flashed, " to marry a man unable to appreciate me." He winced. The reproach, more wanton than any she had ever framed, lashed him on the raw. The manner of his succession to Joe Milliard's shoes had fostered an almost morbid solicitude for her well being which had not seldom over- topped his better judgment. If he had failed of his duty, it was not for lack of striving. " I've tried, Cora," he answered bitterly. Neither broached a formal reconciliation such crude devices fell into disuse early in their marriage ; but the man gave her social hours 316 THE HENCHMAN he could ill afford in the press of the closing session, and presently a tremendous event from the outside patched, if it could not heal, the breach. This was nothing less than the launch- ing of Shelby's presidential boom. Three factors contributed to this movement : the return of prosperity, the governor's person- ality, and the Boss. Shelby won his election in a midnight of universal hard times ; his in- auguration saw the dawn ; the legislative session closed amidst a sunrise of splendid promise. By the deathless fallacy which credits or blames the ruling powers for everything, natural or super- natural, Shelby's party reaped abundantly where it had sown with niggard hand. The governor's personal deserts were more solid, the public recognizing his retarding ratchet as the cause of the machine's continence and the lowered tax- rate. Apparently the Legislature bore him no ill will for his curbing hand. A quiet word had issued from the Boss that the governor's vetoes must stand, and Shelby's one pet measure, the appointment of a commission to deal with the improvement of the canals, had passed both Houses by a vote which was almost non-partisan. A spontaneous demand seemed to well from the people that this faithful steward be sent higher. THE HENCHMAN 317 But Shelby knew something of the rearing of that tenderest of plants in the political garden the spontaneous demand. In the voice of the people he had so often read the will of the Boss. The inspired laudations of country editors, the resulting echoes in the city press, the inter- views with the knowing ones who withheld their names, the genuine momentum lent by the easily impressed all the covert workings of spon- taneity were known to him from the days of apprenticeship at the Boss's feet. The method was transparent, the motive only was hazy ; yet he divined the motive itself with sufficient ac- curacy. The Boss thought he knew too much. It is well to make your own governor, but to make him too well is ill. It was this one's drawback that he had passed the No Admittance sign of the workshop and got the trade secrets of the boss business at his finger ends. The pupil smiled sometimes when he recalled the first great rencounter with the master. The birch and frown no longer terrified. Evidently the Boss knew this, and failing the birch, dangled a prize. What Shelby did not divine was the incentive force of pique. While the leader gave his smiling interviews to the reporters on the subject of the 3 i8 THE HENCHMAN governor's vetoes, he had too often had to dis- semble that his earliest information came from them. He did not resent the vetoes, if they made party capital ; nor did he resent Shelby's popularity, for he liked him. The bitterness of the cup was that the ingrate took, no pains to inquire whether he cared or not. It is true that in large questions Shelby had uniformly sought his coun- sel, and the session had been fairly prolific in legis- lation redounding to the party credit ; but the governor's independence in the lesser matters attainted his loyalty. What the one man con- sidered upholding the dignity of his office, the other interpreted as leze-majesty. Shelby's attitude toward the presidential chit- chat was frankly human. Too modest to measure himself beside the greater successors of Washing- ton, he yet knew himself to be as well equipped as many who had held the office ; and, without troubling his sleep, determined that should the boss-made boom attain genuine popularity, it might drift where it would without hindrance from him. Precisely this occurred. The gov- ernor's practicality smoothed the way to his indorsement by men whose foremost interest was business rather than politics, and a banquet given him late in April by a great commercial THE HENCHMAN 319 organization of New York, which approved his policy of letting the city mind its own affairs, set him definitely in the race. Throned in a gallery above the diners ; courted by heroines of by-gone horse shows, the hem of whose garments she had never dreamed to touch ; with the White House looming mistily through the sheen of silver and crystal and napery under tinted lights, Cora viewed the taking spectacle as a personal apotheosis. A silly periodical for " ladies " had recently printed an article about her which ascribed Shelby's making to herself, and she, in this rosy hour believing, looked upon her handiwork, and saw that it was tolerably good. Statesmen, diplomats, captains of industry, the smiling Boss a very parliament of brains did the governor honor, and the most famous after- dinner speaker in the land proclaimed him New York's favorite son. To most of his listeners Shelby's reply seemed admirable. A morning paper called it " a little classic of straightforwardness " ; but his king- maker aloft thought his bearing too simple by far. If he listened to her, he would tip his presi- dential lightning-rod more showily. CHAPTER V SUMMER leaped a hotbed growth from spring, and Cora Shelby, tiring of golf, the country club, and Albany's now mild pastimes, took herself off for a round of fashionable resorts with Mrs. Tommy Kidder. The governor had other occu- pations. So far as a man could do such a thing, he put his presidential chances out of mind and bent his energies upon a study of the canal prob- lem, whose solving he was ambitious to make the monument of his administration. As a legislator he had been recognized as an authority upon this his hobby ; but the knowledge of the assemblyman was shallow beside that of the governor, who asked no fairer laurel than to link his name with the regenerated Erie Canal as the second Clinton had associated his name with its beginnings. Throughout the languid heated term whose official calm only the occasional request of a fellow governor for requisition papers disturbed, Shelby plodded over the bewildered mass of estimates, maps, and mazy statistics which his special com- 320 THE HENCHMAN 321 mittee was accumulating. A more brilliant man doubtless would have left much of this arid drudgery to subordinates, contenting himself with the sum of things, without a close scrutiny of detail ; but this was never Shelby's way. When he mastered a subject it was his blood and bones, and his passion for the Ditch transmuted its story, howsoever told, into stuff that splendid dreams are made on and modern empires built. Those arduous months were the happiest he had known. He toiled mightily, but he wrought at a labor of love, while his leisure hours fostered friendships as novel as they were attractive. Cora Shelby's campaign of the watering-places had not embraced Milicent, and the girl returned from school in June to find her mother already gone. She dutifully made known her arrival in Albany, and in time deciphered from a patchouli-scented scrawl postmarked " Bar Harbor " that Albany was an excellent spot for her to remain. " She says that summer hotels are no places for young girls," Milicent told her stepfather. " Why then does mamma care about them ? " The governor was nonplussed : but he quietly set himself to make Albany tolerable for this astonishing young person, yet scant of seventeen, who had suddenly flowered into the outward 322 THE HENCHMAN semblance of a woman. He devised excursions on the river and pilgrimages to historic spots about the city and the countryside, acquiring strange antiquarian lore of the Schuyler house, the Van Rensselaer mansion, and the Vanderhey- den Palace, and, more curious still, a perception of his deep capacity for affection. This child of the Milliards' better selves, with her father's frank- ness, her mother's earlier beauty, and with a win- someness all her own, awoke his slumbering instinct of fatherhood. The wholesome new relation quickened his insight amazingly. He divined that however much the girl might care for these wayside ram- bles 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 THE HENCHMAN 323 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 in- tercourse 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 supplement- ing 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 324 THE HENCHMAN 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 observa- tions 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 Weather- wax 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 THE HENCHMAN 325 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 sum- mer's drudgery shifted and rearranged themselves into a coherent pattern and policy whose fulfil- ment should place the historic waterway, not merely abreast of the age, but bulwarked for the future. It was a significant utterance which car- ried far. Shelby could give no copies of his speech to the press, since the speech had largely shaped itself in the making ; but the correspond- ents who covered what had promised to be a purely bucolic assignment, were not slow in seeing 326 THE HENCHMAN 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 THE HENCHMAN 327 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 sin- cerity. But I had no notion that you were listen- ing. 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 328 THE HENCHMAN 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 lei- sure. He wondered he scarce knew what. She drew him with all the old attraction, but an elu- sive 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." THE HENCHMAN 329 He was not listening. A midsummer mad- ness 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 ? Mere- dith 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 for- getting. 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 Tus- carora speech, and the fall widened the unacknowl- edged 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. 33 THE HENCHMAN 331 " 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 gov- ernor 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 332 THE HENCHMAN reason of the ingratitude of a fickle city constitu- ency. 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 judge- ship 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 recom- mendation of the Boss. The governor was angry to the core. As a lawyer alone he recoiled from raising even tempo- rarily to the bench a man whose activities had been notoriously political, and his law practice in- nocent 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 re- fusal was curt. The Boss met the governor's move with silence, but under his own roof Shelby had crossed a poli- THE HENCHMAN 333 tician 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 con- cern you and Ludlow. Bar Harbor stories, Sara- toga 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 334 THE HENCHMAN near his lips at this moment to beg her to treat Ludlow henceforth with mere civility, but he re- frained. When he broached it afterward her pli- ant mood had vanished. " You would have Albany saying that you believe its tittle-tattle," she argued ; and he de- ferred for the hundredth time to her superior perception of the mental processes of the social world. Till the Legislature met in January, the gov- ernor 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 struc- ture, for he contemplated a far-reaching system of legislation rather than a simple makeshift appropriation of the out-worn type ; and the ulti- mate 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 sub- mitted 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 re- puted to own the Legislature, whose committees, certainly, were cut and dried in his office weeks THE HENCHMAN 335 before it met, this sarcasm was gloomily prophetic ; but since his Tuscarora speech, Shelby had per- sonally 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 gov- ernor. Famous economic experts and civil ser- vice reformers wrote their approval, great financiers wired congratulations, and the public hearings on the bills embodying his ideas, which friendly leg- islators shortly introduced, were attended by rep- resentatives from the exchanges, boards of trade, merchants' associations, and chambers of com- merce of every city directly concerned. A reporter remarked upon this striking show- ing to the Boss. 336 THE HENCHMAN " Yes," said the great man, " the governor seems to have the unanimous support of the col- lege professors and the New Yorkers who claim residence in Newport, Rhode Island ; but I won- der 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-Mill- stone " 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." THE HENCHMAN 337 " 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 pres- ent 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 pro- test against the launching of so young a girl availed. 338 THE HENCHMAN " 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 sym- pathy 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 HENCHMAN 339 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 mili- tary 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 sev- eral 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 dis- trict 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 pil- grimages 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. 340 THE HENCHMAN 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 cur- tailed 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 Mili- cent. He scarcely knew one flower from another, THE HENCHMAN 341 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 gov- ernor moved toward them, till a vivid little pic- ture 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 mo- ment in his own life, under Joe Milliard'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. Milliard had re- spected 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 con- servatory, and regained his disordered room. How should he act? There was scant oppor- tunity for reflection. The dinner hour was pres- ently 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 342 THE HENCHMAN 343 gentleman, whose English was irreparably broken, that Albany was not the capital of the United States ; and all this time he watched his viva- cious wife at the table's end, and marvelled at her hypocrisy. So Joe Milliard had probably wondered. Milliard was very real to him. He seemed to have incased himself in Milliard's per- sonality. A little later, when Milicent, all exhil- aration 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 ex- tended 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 es- caped 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 344 TH E HENCHMAN 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 corri- dor 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, Ian- THE HENCHMAN 345 guidly, 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 to- night. 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, re- assured 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. 346 THE HENCHMAN " 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. Sup- pose that you were in love with somebody." He started. (( T " " So hard, is it ? Suppose it, anyhow. Sup- pose 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-re- spect." 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 pur- sued. " If you were in love with me, I shouldn't THE HENCHMAN 347 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 with- out 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 fol- low it you must. I have forfeited the right to re- proach you as man to wife granted that I never 348 THE HENCHMAN 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 an- nounced 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 en- meshments, 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 THE HENCHMAN 349 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 Legisla- ture. 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 se- cured 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 350 THE HENCHMAN had framed his makeshift to meet. The oppor- tunity 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 vernac- ular hit off the situation. " It's time for a show-down," said this ob- server 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 confi- dence, and fought his dreary battle alone. It was a hard choice that destiny had offered him in the end total shipwreck of his brave dream- ings, or a salvage of what perhaps might better sink. Had his duty by the people been abso- lutely plain, he would have acted instantly, for THE HENCHMAN 351 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 appropria- tion 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, em- braced the occasion to revive the old scandals linking Shelby's name to unsavory canal con- tracts, with the insinuation that the governor's 352 THE HENCHMAN 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 mis- understand 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 in- frequent 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 re- pentent 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 with- out 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 THE HENCHMAN 353 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 break- fasted alone. Partly with the intention of speak- ing 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 hus- band 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 2 A 354 THE HENCHMAN 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 explain- ing: " 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 incu- bus 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 recollec- tion. 355 356 THE HENCHMAN " 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. Per- haps 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 cro- cuses." "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 THE HENCHMAN 357 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 aw.ay." " 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 gov- ernor, 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 clergy- man by five minutes. Possibly he could be THE HENCHMAN 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 build- ings 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 rest- ively 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 THE HENCHMAN 359 stood meditatively in his cassock as the caller entered. Some men the cassock effeminates ; not so North, whose virile shape it emphasized, mod- elling 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 ex- cited to consider the fact, or care. Any one taking the Southwestern Limited twenty min- utes from now would make New York half an hour before them provided they're bound for 360 THE HENCHMAN 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 gov- ernor 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 sec- tions, of all degrees, of all political types, their importunities were variants of a single theme the thing he could give. Him they gave noth- 361 ing, not even encouragement. Five o'clock came at last, and he left the plain little work- cell behind the sumptuous panelling of the execu- tive 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 nomina- tion? Did he approve of an out-and-out in- dorsement 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 plat- form at Forty-second Street. In an hour they would meet. Shelby forced his mind back to his desk. 362 THE HENCHMAN The closely written sheets of manuscript which had filled his evening yesterday lay before him. He called his private secretary from the adjoin- ing 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, show- ing 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 pre- THE HENCHMAN 363 vented. 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 ele- vator 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 re- mained he wired North of his coming, and tele- phoned 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 mon- 364 THE HENCHMAN ster, 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 philoso- phy, and from dozing slept. He woke as the train swung at Spuyten Duy- vil 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, THE HENCHMAN 365 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 pos- sible 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 en- trance an incoming boat discharged its passengers, who from habit scurried forth as if it were morn- 366 THE HENCHMAN 367 ing, 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 with- out 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 368 THE HENCHMAN 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 representa- tions 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 un- doubtedly return to Albany sometime to-mor- row ; it therefore behooved him to delay that return until the time for hostile action should expire. Searching out a telegraph office, he ascer- tained the point at which a message would inter- cept the train, and wired Shelby a peremptory request for a meeting in New York on the mor- row 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 THE HENCHMAN 369 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 pro- fane 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. Prob- ably 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 370 THE HENCHMAN his insomnia, raised his window curtain, and lay watching the staid procession of Dutch-named towns picketting the river banks. A mimic tem- pest fretted the Tappan Sea, whose bravado dwin- dled 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 THE HENCHMAN 371 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 him- self 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 372 THE HENCHMAN to this cause or not, Shelby's own quota of legis- lative 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 pluto- crats 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 gov- ernor 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 THE HENCHMAN 373 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 draw- ing a chair beside Shelby's near a window embra- sure, 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." 374 THE HENCHMAN "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 candi- date. 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 ques- tion 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 evi- THE HENCHMAN 375 dently aspire to tread, comprehended and took into the reckoning. Be practical as he was prac- tical as you were in the early days of our ac- quaintance. 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 sig- nature. Everybody will understand your posi- tion. 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." 376 THE HENCHMAN With uncertain step the old leader turned and made his way to the door, where he paused to vent his bewildered, yet sincere judgment. 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