“Who cares how abominable it is if it isn’t true?”
Fleetwood shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Shackwell, from a distant seat, uttered a faint protesting sound, but no one heeded him. The Governor stood squarely before Fleetwood, his hands in his pockets. “It is true, then?” he demanded.
“What is true?”
“What the ‘Spy’ means to say—that you bought my wife’s influence to get your first appointment.”
In the silence Shackwell started suddenly to his feet. A sound of carriage-wheels had disturbed the quiet street. They paused and then rolled up the semicircle to the door of the Executive Mansion.
“John!” Shackwell warned him.
The Governor turned impatiently; there was the sound of a servant’s steps in the hall, followed by the opening and closing of the outer door.
“Your wife—Mrs. Mornway!” Shackwell cried.
Another step, accompanied by a soft rustle of skirts, was advancing toward the library.
“My wife? Let her come!” said the Governor.
V
She stood before them in her bright evening dress, with an arrested brilliancy of aspect like the sparkle of a fountain suddenly caught in ice. Her look moved rapidly from one to the other; then she came forward, while Shackwell slipped behind her to close the door.
“What has happened?” she said.
Shackwell began to speak, but the Governor interposed calmly:
“Fleetwood has come to tell me that he does not wish to remain in office.”
“Ah!” she murmured.
There was another silence. Fleetwood broke it by saying: “It is getting late. If you want to see me to-morrow—”
The Governor looked from his face to Ella’s. “Yes; go now,” he said.
Shackwell moved in Fleetwood’s wake to the door. Mrs. Mornway stood with her head high, smiling slightly. She shook hands with each of the men in turn; then she moved toward the sofa and laid aside her shining cloak. All her gestures were calm and noble, but as she raised her hand to unclasp the cloak her husband uttered a sudden exclamation.
“Where did you get that bracelet? I don’t remember it.”
“This?” She looked at him with astonishment. “It belonged to my mother. I don’t often wear it.”
“Ah—I shall suspect everything now,” he groaned.
He turned away and flung himself with bowed head in the chair behind his writing-table. He wanted to collect himself, to question her, to get to the bottom of the hideous abyss over which his imagination hung. But what was the use? What did the facts matter? He had only to put his memories together—they led him straight to the truth. Every incident of the day seemed to point a leering finger in the same direction, from Mrs. Nimick’s allusion to the imported damask curtains to Gregg’s confident appeal for rehabilitation.
“If you imagine that my wife distributes patronage—” he heard himself repeating inanely, and the walls seemed to reverberate with the laughter which his sister and Gregg had suppressed. He heard Ella rise from the sofa and lifted his head sharply.
“Sit still!” he commanded. She sank back without speaking, and he hid his face again. The past months, the past years, were dancing a witches’ dance about him. He remembered a hundred significant things…. Oh, God, he cried to himself, if only she does not lie about it! Suddenly he recalled having pitied Mrs. Nimick because she could not penetrate to the essence of his happiness. Those were the very words he had used! He heard himself laugh aloud. The clock struck—it went on striking interminably. At length he heard his wife rise again and say with sudden authority: “John, you must speak.”
Authority—she spoke to him with authority! He laughed again, and through his laugh he heard the senseless rattle of the words, “If you imagine that my wife distributes patronage …”
He looked up haggardly and saw her standing before him. If only she would not lie about it! He said: “You see what has happened.”
“I suppose some one has told you about the ‘Spy.’”
“Who told you? Gregg?” he interposed.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“That was why you wanted—?”
“Why I wanted you to help him? Yes.”
“Oh, God! … He wouldn’t take money?”
“No, he wouldn’t take money.”
He sat silent, looking at her, noting with a morbid minuteness the exquisite finish of her dress, that finish which seemed so much a part of herself that it had never before struck him as a merely purchasable accessory. He knew so little what a woman’s dresses cost! For a moment he lost himself in vague calculations; finally, he said: “What did you do it for?”
“Do what?”
“Take money from Fleetwood.”
She paused a moment and then said: “If you will let me explain—”
And then he saw that, all along, he had thought she would be able to disprove it! A smothering blackness closed in on him, and he had a physical struggle for breath. Then he forced himself to his feet and said: “He was your lover?”
“Oh, no, no, no!“ she cried with conviction. He hardly knew whether the shadow lifted or deepened; the fact that he instantly believed her seemed only to increase his bewilderment. Presently he found that she was still speaking, and he began to listen to her, catching a phrase now and then through the deafening clamor of his thoughts.
It amounted to this—that just after her husband’s first election, when Fleetwood’s claims for the Attorney-Generalship were being vainly pressed by a group of his political backers, Mrs. Mornway had chanced to sit next to him once or twice at dinner. One day, on the strength of these meetings, he had called and asked her frankly if she would not help him with her husband. He had made a clean breast of his past, but had said that, under a man like Mornway, he felt he could wipe out his political sins and purify himself while he served the party. She knew the party needed his brains, and she believed in him—she was sure he would keep his word. She would have spoken in his favor in any case—she would have used all her influence to overcome her husband’s prejudice—and it was by a mere accident that, in the course of one of their talks, he happened to give her a “tip” (his past connections were still useful for such purposes), a “tip” which, in the first invading pressure of debt after Mornway’s election, she had not had the courage to refuse. Fleetwood had made some money for her—yes, about thirty thousand dollars. She had repaid what he had lent her, and there had been no further transactions of the kind between them. But it appeared that Gregg, before his dismissal, had got hold of an old check-book which gave a hint of the story, and had pieced the rest together with the help of a clerk in Fleetwood’s office. The “Spy” was in possession of the facts, but did not mean to use them if Fleetwood was not reappointed, the Lead Trust having no personal grudge against Mornway.
Her story ended there, and she sat silent while he continued to look at her. So much had perished in the wreck of his faith that he did not attach much value to what remained. It scarcely mattered that he believed her when the truth was so sordid. There had been, after all, nothing to envy him for but what Mrs. Nimick had seen; the core of his life was as mean and miserable as his sister’s….
His wife rose at length, pale but still calm. She had a kind of external dignity which she wore like one of her rich dresses. It seemed as little a part of her now as the finery of which his gaze contemptuously reckoned the cost.
“John—” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up wearily. “You had better go to bed,” he interjected.
“Don’t look at me in that way. I am prepared for your being angry with me—I made a dreadful mistake and must bear my punishment: any punishment you choose to inflict. But you must think of yourself first—you must spare yourself. Why should you be so horribly unhappy? Don’t you see that since Mr. Fleetwood has behaved so well we are quite safe? And I swear to you I have paid back every penny of the money.”
VI
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THREE days later Shackwell was summoned by telephone to the Governor’s office in the Capitol. There had been, in the interval, no communication between the two men, and the papers had been silent or non-committal.
In the lobby Shackwell met Fleetwood leaving the building. For a moment the Attorney-General seemed about to speak; then he nodded and passed on, leaving to Shackwell the impression of a face more than ever thrust forward like a weapon.
The Governor sat behind his desk in the clear autumn sunlight. In contrast to Fleetwood he seemed relaxed and unwieldy, and the face he turned to his friend had a gray look of convalescence. Shackwell wondered, with a start of apprehension, if he and Fleetwood had been together.
He relieved himself of his overcoat without speaking, and when he turned again toward Mornway he was surprised to find the latter watching him with a smile.
“It’s good to see you, Hadley,” the Governor said.
“I waited to be sent for; I knew you’d let me know when you wanted me,” Shackwell replied.
“I didn’t send for you on purpose. If I had, I might have asked your advice, and I didn’t want to ask anybody’s advice but my own.” The Governor spoke steadily, but in a voice a trifle too well disciplined to be natural. “I’ve had a three days’ conference with myself,” he continued, “and now that everything is settled I want you to do me a favor.”
“Yes?” Shackwell assented. The private issues of the affair were still wrapped in mystery to him, but he had never had a moment’s doubt as to its public solution, and he had no difficulty in conjecturing the nature of the service he was to render. His heart ached for Mornway, but he was glad the inevitable step was to be taken without further delay.
“Everything is settled,” the Governor repeated, “and I want you to notify the press that I have decided to reappoint Fleetwood.”
Shackwell bounded from his seat. “Good heavens!” he ejaculated.
“To reappoint Fleetwood,” the Governor repeated, “because at the present juncture of affairs he is the only man for the place. The work we began together is not finished, and I can’t finish it without him. Remember the vistas opened by the Lead Trust investigation—he knows where they lead and no one else does. We must put that inquiry through, no matter what it costs us, and that is why I have sent for you to take this letter to the ‘Spy.’”
Shackwell’s hand drew back from the proffered envelope.
“You say you don’t want my advice, but you can’t expect me to go on such an errand with my eyes shut. What on earth are you driving at? Of course Fleetwood will persist in refusing.”
Mornway smiled. “He did persist—for three hours. But when he left here just now he had given me his word to accept.”
Shackwell groaned. “Then I am dealing with two madmen instead of one.”
The Governor laughed. “My poor Hadley, you’re worse than I expected. I thought you would understand me.”
“Understand you? How can I, in heaven’s name, when I don’t understand the situation?
“The situation—the situation?” Mornway repeated slowly. “Whose? His or mine? I don’t either—I haven’t had time to think of them.”
“What on earth have you been thinking of then?”
The Governor rose, with a gesture toward the window, through which, below the slope of the Capitol grounds, the roofs and steeples of the city spread their smoky mass to the mild air.
“Of all that is left,” he said. “Of everything except Fleetwood and myself.”
“Ah—” Shackwell murmured.
Mornway turned back and sank into his seat. “Don’t you see that was all I had to turn to? The State—the country—it’s big enough, in all conscience, to fill a good deal of a void! My own walls had grown too cramped for me, so I just stepped outside. You have no idea how it simplified matters at once. All I had to do was to say to myself: ‘Go ahead, and do the best you can for the country.’ The personal issue simply didn’t exist.”
“Yes—and then?”
“Then I turned over for three days this question of the Attorney-Generalship. I couldn’t see that it was changed—how should my feelings have affected it? Fleetwood hasn’t betrayed the State. There isn’t a scar on his public record—he is still the best man for the place. My business is to appoint the best man I can find, and I can’t find any one as good as Fleetwood.”
“But—but—your wife?” Shackwell stammered.
The Governor looked up with surprise. Shackwell could almost have sworn that he had indeed forgotten the private issue.
“My wife is ready to face the consequences,” he said.
Shackwell returned to his former attitude of incredulity.
“But Fleetwood? Fleetwood has no right to sacrifice—”
“To sacrifice my wife to the State? Oh, let us beware of big words. Fleetwood was inclined to use them at first, but I managed to restore his sense of proportion. I showed him that our private lives are only a few feet square anyhow, and that really, to breathe freely, one must get out of them into the open.” He paused and broke out with sudden violence, “My God, Hadley, didn’t you see that Fleetwood had to obey me?”
“Yes—I see that,” said Shackwell, with reviving obstinacy. “But if you’ve reached such a height and pulled him up to your side it seems to me that from that standpoint you ought to get an even clearer view of the madness of your position. You say you have decided to sacrifice your own feelings and your wife’s—though I’m not so sure of your right to dispose of her voice in the matter; but what if you sacrifice the party and the State as well, in this transcendental attempt to distinguish between private and public honor? You’ll have to answer that before you can get me to carry this letter.”
The Governor did not blanch under the attack.
“I think the letter will answer you,” he said calmly.
“The letter?”
“Yes. It’s something more than a notification of Fleetwood’s reappointment.” Mornway paused and looked steadily at his friend. “You’re afraid of an investigation—an impeachment? Well, the letter anticipates that.”
“How, in heaven’s name?”
“By a plain statement of the facts. My wife has told me that she did borrow of Fleetwood. He speculated for her and made a considerable sum, out of which she repaid his loan. The ‘Spy’s’ accusation is true. If it can be proved that my wife induced me to appoint Fleetwood, it may be argued that she sold him the appointment. But it can’t be proved, and the ‘Spy’ won’t waste its breath in trying to, because my statement will take the sting out of its innuendoes. I propose to anticipate its attack by setting forth the facts in its columns, and asking the public to decide between us. On one side is the private fact that my wife, without my knowledge, borrowed money from Fleetwood just before I appointed him to an important post; on the other side is his public record and mine. I want people to see both sides and judge between them, not in the red glare of a newspaper denunciation, but in the plain daylight of common-sense. Charges against the private morality of a public man are usually made in such a blare of headlines and cloud of mud-throwing that the voice he lifts up in his defence can not make itself heard. In this case I want the public to hear what I have to say before the yelping begins. My letter will take the wind out of the ‘Spy’s’ sails, and if the verdict goes against me, the case will have been decided on its own merits, and not at the dictation of the writers of scare heads. Even if I don’t gain my end, it will be a good thing, for once, for the public to consider dispassionately how far a private calamity should be allowed to affect a career of public usefulness, and the next man who goes through what I am undergoing may have cause to thank me if no one else does.”
Shackwell sat silent for a moment, with the ring of the last words in his ears.
Suddenly he rose and held out his hand. “Give me the letter,” he said.
The Governor caught him up with a kindling eye. “It’s all right, then? You see, and you’ll take it?”
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Shackwell met his glance with one of melancholy interrogation. “I think I see a magnificent suicide, but it’s the kind of way I shouldn’t mind dying myself.”
He pulled himself silently into his coat and put the letter into one of its pockets, but as he was turning to the door the Governor called after him cheerfully: “By the way, Hadley, aren’t you and Mrs. Shackwell giving a big dinner to-morrow?”
Shackwell paused with a start. “I believe we are—why?”
“Because, if there is room for two more, my wife and I would like to be invited.”
Shackwell nodded his assent and turned away without answering. As he came out of the lobby into the clear sunset radiance he saw a victoria drive up the long sweep to the Capitol and pause before the central portion. He descended the steps, and Mrs. Mornway leaned from her furs to greet him.
“I have called for my husband,” she said, smiling. “He promised to get away in time for a little turn in the Park before dinner.”
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