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The Voice of the People, a novel by Ellen Glasgow |
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Book 4. The Man And The Times - Chapter 6 |
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_ BOOK IV. THE MAN AND THE TIMES CHAPTER VI It was one o'clock when the governor left Galt's house, and turning into Grace Street strolled leisurely in the direction of the Capitol Square. The night was sharp with frost and a rising wind drove the shadows on the pavement against darkened house-fronts, while behind a far-off church spire, a wizened moon shivered through a thin cloud. On the silence came the sound of fire bells ringing in the distance. The bronze Washington in the deserted square shone silver beneath the moonlight, and down the frozen slopes the trees stretched out stiffened limbs. From the governor's house a broad light streamed, and quickening his pace he entered the iron gate, which closed after him with a rheumatic cough, and briskly ascended the stone steps. As he drew the latch-key from his pocket he was thinking of his library, where the firelight fell on cheerful walls and red leathern chairs, and with the closing of the door he crossed the hall and entered the first room on the left. A red fire burned in the grate, and the furniture reflected the colour until the place seemed pervaded by a visible warmth. The desk in the centre of the room, the shining backs of law books, the crimson rugs, the engravings on the walls, the easy chair drawn up before the hearth, presented to him as he entered now the security of individual isolation. He had felt the same sense of restfulness when he had ascended, after the day's work, to the little whitewashed attic of his father's house. To-night he liked the glow because it suggested warmth, but he could not have told off-hand the colour of the carpet or the subjects of the engravings on the wall; and had he found a white pine chair in place of the red leathern one, he would have used it without an admission of discomfort. In the midnight hours he liked the empty house about him--the silence and the safeguard of his loneliness. The deserted reception-rooms at the end of the hall pleased him by their stillness and the cold of their fireless grates. Even the stiff, unyielding furniture, in its fancy dress of satin brocade, soothed him by its remoteness when he passed it wrapped in thought. He flung himself into the easy chair, raised the light by which he read, and unfolded a newspaper lying upon his desk. As he did so an article which concerned himself caught his eye, and he read it with curious intentness. REFUSES TO RECOMMEND THE PROPOSED ATTACHES HIS SIGNATURE TO SEVERAL BILLS.--TO
"The Man with the Conscience!" He had been in office less than a month, and three times within the last week he had been called "The Man with the Conscience." Once a member of the Senate had declared on the floor that the "two strongest factors in present State politics are found to be in the will of the people and the conscience of the governor." The morning papers had reported it, and when, several days later, he had vetoed a bill providing to place certain powers in the hands of a corporation that was backed by large capital, he had been hailed again as "The Man with the Conscience!" Now he wondered as he read what the verdict would be to-morrow, when his refusal to sign a document which lay at that moment upon his desk must become widely known. He had refused, not because the bill granted too great rights to a corporation, but because it needlessly restricted the growth of a railroad. Would his refusal in this instance be dubbed "conscience" or "inconsistency"? At the moment he was the people's man--this he knew. His name was cheered by the general voice. As he passed along the street bootblacks hurrahed! him. He had determined that the governorship should cease to represent a figurehead, and for right or wrong, he was the man of the hour. He laid the paper aside, and lifting a pipe from his desk, slowly lighted it. As the smoke curled up, it circled in gray rings upon the air, filling the room with the aroma of the Virginia leaf. He watched it idly, his mind upon the pile of unopened letters awaiting his attention. Above the mantel hung a small oil painting of a Confederate soldier after Appomattox, and it reminded him vaguely of some one whom he had half forgotten. He followed the trail for a moment and gave it up. Higher still was an engraving of Mr. Jefferson Davis, with the well-remembered Puritan cast of feature and the severe chin beard. Beneath the pictures a trivial ornament stood on the mantel and beside it a white rose in water breathed a fading fragrance. A child who had come to feed the squirrels in the square had put the rose in his coat, and he had transferred it to the glass of water. He turned towards his desk and took up several cards that he had not seen. So Rann had called in his absence--and Vaden and Diggs. As he pushed the cards aside, he summoned mentally the men before him and weighed the possible values of each. Why had Rann called, he wondered--he had an object, of course, for he did not pay so much as a call without a purpose. The name evoked the man--he saw him plainly in the circles of gray smoke--a stout, square figure, with short legs, his plaid socks showing beneath light trousers; a red, hairy face, with a wart in his left eyebrow, which was heavier than his right one; a large head, prematurely bald, and beneath an almost intellectual forehead, a pair of shrewd, intelligent eyes. Rann was a match for any man in politics, he knew--the great, silent voice, some one had said--the man who was clever enough to let others do his talking for him. Yes, he was glad that Rann would back him up. The remaining callers appeared together in his reverie--Vaden and Diggs. They were never mentioned apart, and they never worked singly. They were honest men, whose honesty was dangerous because it went with dull credulity. In appearance they were so unlike as to make the connection ludicrous. Vaden was long, emaciated, with a shrunken chest in which a consumptive cough rattled. His face was scholarly, pallid, pleasant to look at, and there was a sympathetic quality in his voice which carried with it a reminder of past bereavements. Beside the sentimental languor which enveloped him, Diggs loomed grotesquely fair and florid, with eyes bulging with joviality, and red, repellent, almost gluttonous lips. He was a teller of stories and a maker of puns. They were both honest men and ardent Democrats, but they were in the leading strings of sharper politicians. Perhaps, after all, the fools were more to be feared than the villains. Somewhere in the city a clock rang the hour, and, as his pipe died out, he rose and went to his desk. The next morning Vaden and Diggs dropped in to breakfast, and before it was over he had ascertained that they were seeking to sound him upon his attitude towards the recent National Party Platform. As he dodged their laboured cross-examination he laughed at the overdone assumption of indifference. Before they had risen from the table, Rann joined them, and the conversation branched at once into impersonal topics. Diggs told a story or two, at which Rann roared appreciatively, while Vaden fingered his coffee spoon in pensive abstraction. As they left the dining-room, which was in the basement, and ascended to the hall, Diggs glanced into the reception-rooms and nodded respectfully at the brocaded chairs. "I like the looks of that, governor," he said, "but it's a pity you can't find a wife. A woman gives an air to things, you know." Then he cocked an eye at the ceiling. "This old house ain't much more than a fire trap, anyway," he added. "The trouble is it's gotten old-fashioned just like the Capitol building over there. My constituents are all in favour of doing the proud thing by Virginia and giving her a real up-to-date State House. Bless my life, the old Commonwealth deserves a brownstone front--now don't she?" He appealed to Rann, who dissented in his broad, if blunt, intelligence. "I wouldn't trade that old building for all the brownstone between here and New York harbour," he declared. The governor laughed abstractedly, but a week later he recalled the proposition as he sat in Juliet Galt's drawing-room, and repeated it for the sake of her frank disgust. "I shall tell Eugie," she exclaimed. "Eugie finds everything so new that she suffers a perpetual homesickness for Kingsborough." "There's nobody left down there except the judge and Mrs. Webb," broke in Carrie; "and you know she gets on dreadfully with Mrs. Webb--now doesn't she, Aunt Sally?" "She never told me so," laughed Sally, "but I strongly suspect it. I don't disguise the fact that I consider Mrs. Webb to be a terror, and Eugie's a long way off from saintship." "I hardly think that Mrs. Webb would consent to join our colony," observed Nicholas indifferently. "May Kingsborough long enjoy her rule," added Juliet. "I hear that she has grown quite amiable towards the judge since she prophesied that he would have chronic gout and he had it." "It would be so nice of them to marry each other," suggested Carrie with an eye for matrimonial interests. "You needn't shake your head, mamma. Aunt Sally said the same thing to Uncle Tom." She was standing on the hearth rug in her walking gown, slowly fastening her gloves. Sally looked at her and laughed in her nervous way. "Well, I confess that it did cross my mind," she admitted. "Tom, like all men, believed Mrs. Webb to be a martyr until I convinced him that she martyred others." "Oh, he still believes it behind your back," said Nicholas. Juliet turned upon him frankly. "It's a shame to destroy wifely confidence," she protested. "Sally hasn't been married long enough to know that the only way to convince a husband is to argue against oneself." Her head rested upon the cushions of her chair, and her pretty foot was on the brass fender. There was a cordial warmth about her which turned the simple room into home for even the casual caller. The matronly grace of her movements evoked the memory of infancy and motherhood; to Nicholas Burr she seemed, in her beauty and her abundance, the supreme expression of a type--of the joyous racial mother of all men. Her youngest child, a girl of three, that she called "baby," had come in from a walk and was standing at her knee in white cap and cloak and mittens, her hand clutching Juliet's dress, her solemn eyes on the governor. He had tried to induce her to approach, but she held off and regarded him without a smile. "Now, now, baby," pleaded Juliet, "who fed the bunnies with you the other day?" "Man," responded the baby gravely. "Who gave you nice nuts for the dear bunnies?" "Man." "Who carried you all round the pretty square?" "Man." "Who gave you that lovely picture book full of animals?" "Man." "Then don't you love the kind man?" "Noth." "Yes, you do--you've forgotten. Go and speak to him." The child approached gravely to make a grab at his watch-chain; he lifted her to his knee, and friendship was established. They were at peace a moment later when a voice was heard in the hall, and the curtains were swung back as Eugenia Webb entered, tall and glowing, her head rising from a collar of fur. She brought with her the breath of frost, and the winter red was in her cheeks, fading slowly as she sat down and threw off her wraps. He saw then that she looked older than he thought and that her elastic figure had settled into matronly lines. She raised her spotted veil and drew off her gloves. "I mustn't talk myself out," she was saying lightly, "because Dudley means to make me bring him to call this evening. I can't induce him to come by himself--he simply won't. He considers, my mission in life to be the combined duties of paying his calls and entertaining his legislators. We had six senators to dinner last night, and we pay six visits this evening. Come here, Tweedle-dee," to the baby. "Come to your own Aunt Eugie and give her a kiss." The child looked at her thoughtfully and shook her head. "Kith man," she responded shortly. The swift red rose to Eugenia's face. Nicholas was looking at her, and her eyes flashed with the old anger at a senseless blush. "That's right, old lady," said the governor to the child. "Tell her you'd rather kiss a man every time." "Of course she had," replied Eugenia half angrily. "She's going to be her mother all over again." Juliet laughed her full, soft laugh. "Now, Eugie," she protested gaily, "my sins are many, but spare me a public confession of them." "She takes after her aunt," put in Sally frankly. "I always liked men better, and I think it's unwomanly not to--don't you, governor?" Nicholas put the child down and rose. "I'm afraid my womanliness is only skin deep," he returned, "but I wouldn't give one honest man for all the women since Eve." "Behold our far-famed gallantry!" exclaimed Sally. Eugenia looked up, laughing. She had seized upon the child, and he saw her dark eyes above the solemn blue ones. "I'm afraid you aren't much of a politician, Governor Burr, if you tell the truth so roundly," she said. "The first lesson in politics is to lie and love it; the second lesson is to lie and live it. Oh, we've been in Congress, Dudley and I." She moved restlessly, and her colour came and went like a flame that flickers and revives. He wondered vaguely at her nervous animation--she had not possessed a nerve in her girlhood--nor had he seen this shifting restlessness the other night. It did not occur to him that the meeting with himself was the cause--he knew her too well--but had his presence, or some greater thing, aroused within, her painful memories of the past? As he walked down Franklin Street a little later he contrasted boldly the two Eugenias he had known--the Eugenia who was his and the Eugenia who was Dudley Webb's. After fifteen years the rapture and the agony of his youth showed grotesque to his later vision; men did not love like that at forty years. He could see Eugenia now without the quiver of a pulse; he could sit across from her, knowing that she was the wife of another, and could eat his dinner. His passion was dead, but where it had bloomed something else drew life and helped him to live. He had loved one woman and he loved her still, though with a love which in his youth he would have held to be as ashes beside his flame. There were months--even years--when he did not think of her; when he thought profoundly of other things; but in these years the thrill of no woman's skirts had disturbed his calm. And again, there were winter evenings--evenings when he sat beside the hearth, and there came to him the thought of a home and children--of a woman's presence and a child's laugh. He could have loved the woman well had she been Eugenia, and he could have loved the child had it been hers; but beyond her went neither his vision nor his desire. Now he swung on, large, forceful, a man young enough to feel, yet old enough to know. He entered his door quickly, as was his custom, impatient for his work and his fireside. On his desk lay the papers that had been brought over by his secretary, and he ran his fingers carelessly through them, gleaning indifferently the drift of their contents. As he did so a light flashed suddenly upon him, and the meaning of Eugenia's restlessness was made clear, for upon his desk was an application for the pardon of Bernard Battle. _ |
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