The Hermit and the Wild Woman

IT was the custodian of his own hidden treasure who at this moment broke in upon his musings.  Mrs. Mornway, fresh from her afternoon walk, entered the room with that air of ease and lightness which seemed to diffuse a social warmth about her; fine, slender, pliant, so polished and modeled by an intelligent experience of life that youth seemed clumsy in her presence.  She looked down at her husband and shook her head.

“You promised to keep the afternoon to yourself, and I hear Grace has been here.”

“Poor Grace—­she didn’t stay long, and I should have been a brute not to see her.”

He leaned back, filling his gaze to the brim with her charming image, which obliterated at a stroke the fretful ghost of Mrs. Nimick.

“She came to congratulate you, I suppose?”

“Yes, and to ask me to do something for Ashford.”

“Ah—­on account of Jack.  What does she want for him?”

The Governor laughed.  “She said you were in her confidence—­that you were backing her up.  She seemed to think your support would ensure her success.”

Mrs. Mornway smiled; her smile, always full of delicate implications, seemed to caress her husband while it gently mocked his sister.

“Poor Grace!  I suppose you undeceived her.”

“As to your influence?  I told her it was paramount where it ought to be.”

“And where is that?”

“In the choice of carpets and curtains.  It seems ours are almost too good.”

“Thanks for the compliment!  Too good for what?”

“Our station in life, I suppose.  At least they seemed to bother Grace.”

“Poor Grace!  I’ve always bothered her.”  She paused, removing her gloves reflectively and laying her long fine hands on his shoulders as she stood behind him.  “Then you don’t believe in Ashford?” Feeling his slight start, she drew away her hands and raised them to detach her veil.

“What makes you think I don’t believe in Ashford?” he asked.

“I asked out of curiosity.  I wondered whether you had decided anything.”

“No, and I don’t mean to for a week.  I’m dead beat, and I want to bring a fresh mind to the question.  There is hardly one appointment I’m sure of except, of course, Fleetwood’s.”

She turned away from him, smoothing her hair in the mirror above the mantelpiece.  “You’re sure of that?” she asked after a moment.

“Of George Fleetwood?  And poor Grace thinks you are deep in my counsels!  I am as sure of re-appointing Fleetwood as I am that I have just been re-elected myself.  I’ve never made any secret of the fact that if they wanted me back they must have him, too.”

“You are tremendously generous!” she murmured.

“Generous?  What a strange word to use!  Fleetwood is my trump card—­the one man I can count on to carry out my ideas through thick and thin.”

She mused on this, smiling a little.  “That’s why I call you generous—­when I remember how you disliked him two years ago!”

“What of that?  I was prejudiced against him, I own; or rather, I had a just distrust of a man with such a past.  But how splendidly he’s wiped it out!  What a record he has written on the new leaf he promised to turn over if I gave him the chance!  Do you know,” the Governor interrupted himself with a pleasantly reminiscent laugh, “I was rather annoyed with Grace when she hinted that you had promised to back up Ashford—­I told her you didn’t aspire to distribute patronage.  But she might have reminded me—­if she’d known—­that it wasyou who persuaded me to give Fleetwood that chance.”

Mrs. Mornway turned with a slight heightening of color.  “Grace—­how could she possibly have known?”

“She couldn’t, of course, unless she’d read my weakness in my face.  But why do you look so startled at my little joke?”

“It’s only that I so dislike Grace’s ineradicable idea that I am a wire-puller.  Why should she imagine I would help her about Ashford?”

“Oh, Grace has always been a mild and ineffectual conspirator, and she thinks every other woman is built on the same plan.  But you didget Fleetwood’s job for him, you know,” he repeated with laughing insistence.

“I had more faith than you in human nature, that’s all.”  She paused a moment, and then added:  “Personally, you know, I have always rather disliked him.”

“Oh, I never doubted your disinterestedness.  But you are not going to turn against your candidate, are you?”

She hesitated.  “I am not sure; circumstances alter cases.  When you made Fleetwood Attorney-General two years ago he was the inevitable man for the place.”

“Well—­is there a better one now?”

“I don’t say there is—­it’s not my business to look for him, at any rate.  What I mean is that at that time Fleetwood was worth risking anything for—­now I don’t know that he is.”

“But, even if he were not, what do I risk for him now?  I don’t see your point.  Since he didn’t cost me my re-election, what can he possibly cost me now I’m in?”

“He’s immensely unpopular.  He will cost you a great deal of popularity, and you have never pretended to despise that.”

“No, nor ever sacrificed anything essential to it.  Are you really asking me to offer up Fleetwood to it now?”

“I don’t ask you to do anything—­except to consider if he isessential.  You said you were over-tired and wanted to bring a fresh mind to bear on the other appointments.  Why not delay this one too?”

Mornway turned in his chair and looked at her searchingly.  “This means something, Ella.  What have you heard?”

“Just what you have, probably, but with more attentive ears.  The very record you are so proud of has made George Fleetwood innumerable enemies in the last two years.  The Lead Trust people are determined to ruin him, and if his reappointment is attacked you will not be spared.”

“Attacked?  In the papers, you mean?”

She paused.  “You know the ‘Spy’ has always threatened a campaign.  And he has a past, as you say.”

“Which was public property long before I first appointed him.  Nothing could be gained by raking up his old political history.  Everybody knows he didn’t come to me with clean hands, but to hurt him now the ‘Spy’ would have to fasten a new scandal on him, and that would not be easy.”

“It would be easy to invent one!”

“Unproved accusations don’t count much against a man of such proved capacity.  The best answer is his record of the last two years.  That is what the public looks at.”

“The public looks wherever the press points.  And besides, you have your own future to consider.  It would be a pity to sacrifice such a career as yours for the sake of backing up even as useful a man as George Fleetwood.”  She paused, as if checked by his gathering frown, but went on with fresh decision:  “Oh, I’m not speaking of personal ambition; I’m thinking of the good you can do.  Will Fleetwood’s reappointment secure the greatest good of the greatest number, if his unpopularity reacts on you to the extent of hindering your career?”

The Governor’s brow cleared and he rose with a smile.  “My dear, your reasoning is admirable, but we must leave my career to take care of itself.  Whatever I may be to-morrow, I am Governor of Midsylvania to-day, and my business as Governor is to appoint as Attorney-General the best man I can find for the place—­and that man is George Fleetwood, unless you have a better one to propose.”  She met this with perfect good-humor.  “No, I have told you already that that is not my business.  But I havea candidate of my own for another office, so Grace was not quite wrong, after all.”

“Well, who is your candidate, and for what office?  I only hope you don’t want to change cooks!”

“Oh, I do that without your authority, and you never even know it has been done.”  She hesitated, and then said with a bright directness:  “I want you to do something for poor Gregg.”

“Gregg?  Rufus Gregg?” He stared.  “What an extraordinary request!  What can I do for a man I’ve had to kick out for dishonesty?”

“Not much, perhaps; I know it’s difficult.  But, after all, it was your kicking him out that ruined him.”

“It was his dishonesty that ruined him.  He was getting a good salary as my stenographer, and if he hadn’t sold those letters to the ‘Spy’ he would have been getting it still.”

She wavered.  “After all, nothing was proved—­he always denied it.”

“Good heavens, Ella!  Have you ever doubted his guilt?”

“No—­no; I don’t mean that.  But, of course, his wife and children believe in him, and think you were cruel, and he has been out of work so long that they are starving.”

“Send them some money, then; I wonder you thought it necessary to ask.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it so, but money is not what I want.  Mrs. Gregg is proud, and it is hard to help her in that way.  Couldn’t you give him work of some kind—­just a little post in a corner?”

“My dear child, the little posts in the corner are just the ones where honesty is essential.  A footpad doesn’t wait under a street-lamp!  Besides, how can I recommend a man whom I have dismissed for theft?  I won’t say a word to hinder his getting a place, but on my conscience I can’t give him one.”

She paused and turned toward the door silently, though without any show of resentment; but on the threshold she lingered long enough to say:  “Yet you gave Fleetwood his chance!”

“Fleetwood?  You class Fleetwood with Gregg?  The best man in the State with a little beggarly thieving nonentity?  It’s evident enough you’re new at wire-pulling, or you would show more skill at it!”

She met this with a laugh.  “I’m not likely to have much practice if my first attempt is such a failure.  Well, I will see if Mrs. Gregg will let me help her a little—­I suppose there is nothing else to be done.”

“Nothing that we can do.  If Gregg wants a place he had better get one on the staff of the ‘Spy.’  He served them better than he did me.”