DUTY AND THE JUG
Mr. Thomas Ardmore, one trunk, two bags, and a little brown jug reached the Guilford House, Raleigh, at eight o'clock in the morning. Ardmore had never felt better in his life, he assured himself, as he chose a room with care and intimated to the landlord his intention of remaining a week. But for the ill luck of having his baggage marked he should have registered himself falsely on the books of the inn; but feeling that this was not quite respectable he assured the landlord, in response to the usual question, that he was not Ardmore of New York and Ardsley but an entirely different person.
"Well, I don't blame you for not wanting to be taken for any of that set," remarked the landlord sympathetically.
"I should think not!" returned Ardmore in a tone of deep disgust.
The Guilford House coffee was not just what he was used to, but he was in an amiable humor and enjoyed hugely the conversation of the commercial travelers with whom he took his breakfast. He did not often escape from himself or the burden of his family reputation, and these strangers were profoundly entertaining. It had never occurred to Ardmore that man could be so amiable so early in the day and his own spirits rallied as he passed the sugar, abused the hot bread and nodded his approval of bitter flings at the inns of other southern towns of whose existence he only vaguely knew. They spoke of the president of the United States and of various old world monarchs in a familiar tone that was decidedly novel and refreshing; and he felt that it was a great privilege to sit at meat with these blithe spirits. Commercial travelers, he now realized, were more like the strolling players, the wandering knights, the cloaked riders approaching lonely inns at night, than any other beings he had met out of books. It was with the severest self-denial that he resisted an impulse to invite them all to visit him at Ardsley or to use his house in Fifth Avenue whenever they pleased. When the man nearest him, who was having a second plate of corn cakes and syrup, casually inquired his "line," Ardmore experienced a moment of real shame, but remembering the jug he had acquired in the night he replied:
"Crockery."
"Mine's drugs. Do you know Billy Gallop?—he's in your line."
"Should say I did," replied Ardmore unhesitatingly. "I took supper with him in Philadelphia Sunday night."
"How's trade?"
"Bully," replied Ardmore, reaching for the syrup, "I broke my record yesterday."
The drug man turned to listen to a discussion of the row between Governors Osborne and Dangerfield precipitated by one of the company who had fortified himself with a newspaper, and Ardmore also gave ear.
"Whatever did happen at New Orleans," declared a Maiden Lane jewelry representative, "you can be quite sure that Dangerfield won't get the hot end of the poker. I've seen him, right here at Raleigh, and he has all the marks of a fighting man. He'd strip at two hundred, and he's six in his socks."
"Pshaw! Those big fellows are all meat and no muscle," retorted the drug man. "I doubt if there's any fight in him. Now Osborne's a different product—a tall lean cuss, but active as a cat. A man to be governor of South Carolina has got to have the real stuff in him. If it comes to a show-down you'll see Dangerfield duck and run."
This discussion was continued at length, greatly to Ardmore's delight, for he felt that in this way he was being brought at once into touch with Miss Dangerfield, now domiciled somewhere in this town, and to whom he expected to be properly introduced just as soon as he could devise some means to that end. As he had not read the newspapers he did not know what the row was all about, but he instinctively aligned himself on the Dangerfield side. The Osbornes were, he felt, an inferior race, and he inwardly resented the imputations upon Governor Dangerfield's courage.
"I wonder if the governor's back yet?" asked one man.
"The morning paper says not, but he's expected to-day," replied the man with the newspaper.
"About the first thing he'll have to do will be to face the question of arresting Appleweight. I was in Columbia the other day and everybody was talking of the case. They say"—and the speaker waited for the fullest attention of his hearers—"they say Osborne ain't none too anxious to have Appleweight arrested on his side of the line."
"Why not?" demanded Ardmore.
"Well, you hear all kinds of things. It was only whispered down there, but they say Osborne was a little too thick with the Appleweight crowd before he was elected governor. He was their attorney, and they were a bad lot for any man to be attorney for. But they haven't caught Appleweight yet."
"Where's he hiding; don't the authorities know?"
"Oh, he's up there in the hills on the state line. His home is as much on one side as the other. He spends a good deal of time in Kildare."
"Kildare?" asked Ardmore, startled at the word.
"Yes, it's the county seat, what there is of it. I hope you never make that town!" and the inquirer bent a commiserating glance upon Ardmore.
"Well, they use jugs there, I know that!" declared Ardmore; whereat the table roared. The unanimity of their applause warmed his heart, though he did not know why they laughed.
"You handle crockery?" asked a man from the end of the table. "Well, I guess Dilwell County consumes a few gross of jugs all right. But you'd better be careful not to whisper jugs too loud here. There's usually a couple of revenue men around town."
They all went together to the office, where they picked up their sample cases and sallied forth for a descent upon the Raleigh merchants; and Ardmore, thus reminded that he was in the crockery business, and that he had a sample in his room, sat down under a tree on the sidewalk at the inn door to consider what he should do with his little brown jug. It had undoubtedly been intended for Governor Dangerfield, who was supposed to be on the train he had himself taken from Atlanta to Raleigh. There had been, in fact, two jugs, but one of them he had tossed back into the hands of the man who had pursued the train at Kildare. Ardmore smoked his pipe and meditated, trying to determine which jug he had tossed back; and after long deliberation, he slapped his knee, and said aloud:
"I gave him the wrong one, by jing!"
The boy had said that his offering contained buttermilk, a beverage which Ardmore knew was affected by eccentric people for their stomach's sake. He had sniffed the other jug and it contained, undeniably, an alcoholic liquid of some sort.
Jugs had not figured prominently in Ardmore's domestic experiences; but as he sat under the tree on the curb before the Guilford House he wondered, as many other philosophers have wondered, why a jug is so incapable of innocency! A bottle, while suggestive, is not inherently wicked; but a jug is the symbol of joyous sin. Even the soberest souls, who frown at the mention of a bottle, smile tolerantly when a jug is suggested. Jugs of many centuries are assembled in museums, and round them the ethnologist reconstructs extinct races of men; and yet, even science and history, strive they never so sadly, can not wholly relieve the jug of its cheery insouciance. A bottle of inferior liquor may be dressed forth enticingly, and alluringly named; but there's no disguising the jug; its genial shame can not be hidden. There are pleasant places in America where, if one deposit a half-dollar and a little brown jug behind a certain stone, or on the shady side of a blackberry bush, jug and coin will together disappear between sunset and sunrise; but lo! the jug, filled and plugged with a corn-cob, will return alone mysteriously, in contravention of the statutes in such cases made and provided. Too rare for glass, this fluid, which bubbles out of the southern hills with as little guilt in its soul as the brooks beside which it comes into being! But, lest he be accused of aiding and abetting crime against the majesty of the law, this chronicler hastens to say that on a hot day in the harvest field, honest water, hidden away in a little brown jug in the fence corner, acquires a quality and imparts a delight that no mug of crystal or of gold can yield.
As Mr. Ardmore pondered duty and the jug a tall man in shabby corduroy halted near by and inspected him carefully. Mr. Ardmore, hard upon his pipe, had not noticed him, somewhat, it seemed, to the stranger's vexation. He patrolled the sidewalk before the inn, hoping to attract Ardmore's attention, but finding that the young man's absorption continued he presently dropped into a neighboring chair under the maple tree.
"Good morning," said Ardmore pleasantly.
The man nodded, but did not speak. He was examining Ardmore with a pair of small, shrewd, gray eyes. In his hands he held a crumpled bit of brown paper that looked like a telegram.
"Well, I reckon you jest got to town this mornin', young fella."
"Yes, certainly;" Ardmore replied promptly. He had never been addressed in quite this fashion before, but it was all in keeping with his new destiny and he was immediately interested in the stranger, who was well on in middle age, with a rough grizzled beard, and a soft hat, once black, that now struggled for a compromise tint between yellow and green.
"Ever been hyeh befo'?"
"Never; but I'm crazy about the place and I'll be seen here a good deal hereafter."
Ardmore produced his cigar-case and extended it to the stranger. The man, awed by the splendor of the case, accepted a cigar a little gingerly.
"Drummer, I reckon?"
"Commercial traveler, we prefer to be designated," replied Ardmore with dignity.
"I guess drummer's good enough down hyeh. What y'u carry?"
"Jugs. I'm in the jug business. Never had any business but jugs."
The man paused in lighting his cigar, stared at Ardmore over the flaming match, drew the fire into the cigar several times, then settled back with his hands in his pockets.
"Full 'r empty?"
"The jugs? Oh, empty jugs; but it's no affair of mine what becomes of the jugs afterwards."
"Y'u likely got samples with y'u?"
"Well, not many. You see my line is so well known I don't have to carry samples any more. The trade knows our goods."
"Stop at Kildare on the way up?" and the stranger looked about guardedly.
"Certainly, my friend, I always 'make' Kildare," replied Ardmore, using a phrase he had acquired at breakfast.
"Train runs through the' pretty late at night?"
"Beastly. But I hardly ever sleep, anyhow. A man in my splendid health doesn't need sleep. It's a rotten waste of time."
Silence for several minutes; then the stranger leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, and said in a low tone:
"I got a telegram hyeh says y'u got a jug thet y'u ain't no right t' last night at Kildare. I want thet jug, young fella."
"Now that's very unfortunate. Ordinarily I should be delighted, but I really couldn't give away my Kildare jug. Now if it was one of my other jugs—even my Omaha jug, or my dear old Louisville jug—I shouldn't hesitate a minute, but that old Kildare jug! My dear man, you don't know what you ask!"
"Y'll give me thet jug or it'll be the worse for y'u. Y'u ain't in thet game, young fella."
"Not in it! You don't know whom you are addressing. I'm not only in the game, but I'm in to the finish," declared Ardmore, sitting upright in his chair. "You've got the wrong idea, my friend, if you think you can intimidate me. That jug was given me by a friend, a very old and dear friend—"
"A friend of yourn!"
The keen little gray eyes were blinking rapidly.
"One of the best friends I ever had in this world," and Ardmore's face showed feeling. "He and I charged side by side through the bloodiest battles of our Civil War. I will cheerfully give you my watch, or money in any sum, but the jug—I will part with my life first! And now," concluded Ardmore, "while I should be glad to continue this conversation, my duties call me elsewhere."
As he rose, the man stood quickly at his side, menacingly.
"Give me thet jug or I'll shoot y'u right hyeh in the street."
"No, you wouldn't do that, Old Corduroy. I can see that you are kind and good and you wouldn't shoot down an unarmed man. Besides it would muss up the street."
"Y'u took thet jug from my brother by lyin' to 'im. He's telegraphed me to git it, and I'm a-goin' to do it."
"Your brother sent you? It was nice of him to ask you to call on me. Why, I've known your brother intimately for years."
"Knowed my brother?" and for the first time the man really seemed to doubt himself. "Wheh did y'u know Bill?"
"We roomed together at Harvard, that's how I know him, if you force me to it! We're both Hasty Pudding men. Now if you try to bulldoze me further, I'll slap your wrists. So there!"
Ardmore entered the hotel deliberately, climbed to his room and locked the door. Then he seized the little brown jug, drew the stopper and poured out a tumblerful of clear white fluid. He took a swallow and shuddered as the fiery liquid seemed instantly to cause every part of his being to tingle. He wiped the tears from his eyes and sat down. The corn-cob stopper had fallen to the floor, and he picked it up and examined it carefully. It had been fitted tightly into the mouth of the jug by the addition of a bit of calico, and he fingered it for a moment with a grin on his face. He was, considering his tranquil past, making history rapidly, and he wished that Griswold, whom he imagined safely away on his law business at Richmond, could see him now, embarked upon a serious adventure, that had already brought him into collision with a seemingly sane man who had threatened him with death. Griswold had been quite right about their woeful incapacity for rising to emergencies, but the episode of the jugs at Kildare was exactly the sort of thing they had discussed time and time again, and it promised well. His throat was raw, as though burned with acid, and it occurred to him for an anxious moment that perhaps he had imbibed a poison intended for the governor.
He was about to replace the cob stopper when, to his astonishment, it broke in his fingers, and out fell a carefully folded slip of paper. He carried it to the window and opened it, finding that it was an ordinary telegraph blank on which was written in clear round characters these words:
The Appleweight crowd never done you harm. If you have any of them arrested you will be shot down on your own doorstep.
When Mr. Thomas Ardmore had read this message half a dozen times with increasing satisfaction he folded it carefully and put it away in his pocket-book.
Taking half a sheet of note paper he wrote as follows:
Appleweight and his gang are cowards. Within ten days those that have not been hanged will be in jail at Kildare.
He studied the phraseology critically and then placed the paper in the cob stopper whose halves he tied together with a bit of twine. As the jug stood on the table it was, to all appearances, exactly as it had been when delivered to Ardmore on the rear of the train at Kildare, and he was thoroughly well pleased with himself. He changed the blue scarf with which he had begun the day for one of purple with gold bars, and walked up the street toward the state house.
This venerable edifice, meekly reposing amid noble trees, struck agreeably upon Ardmore's fancy. Here was government enthroned in quiet dignity, as becomes a venerable commonwealth, wearing its years like a veteran who has known war and tumult, but finds at last tranquillity and peace. He experienced a feeling of awe, without quite knowing it, as he strolled up the walk, climbed the steps to the portico and turned to look back from the shadow of the pillars. He had never but once before visited an American public building—the New York city hall—and he felt that now, indeed, he had turned a corner and entered upon a new and strange world. He had watched army maneuvers abroad with about the same attention that he gave to a ballet, and with a like feeling of beholding a show contrived for the amusement of spectators; but there was not even a policeman here to represent arsenals and bayonets. The only minion of government in sight was the languid operator of a lawn-mower, which rattled and hummed cheerily in the shadow of the soldiers' monument. There was something fine about a people, who, as he learned from the custodian, would not shake down these historic walls obedient to the demands of prosperity and growth, but sent increased business to find lodgment elsewhere. He ascended to the toy-like legislative chambers, where flags of nation and state hung side by side, and where the very seats and desks of the law-makers spoke of other times and manners.
Mr. Ardmore, feeling that he should now be about his business, sought the governor's office, where a secretary, who seemed harassed by the cares of his position, confirmed Ardmore's knowledge of the governor's absence.
"I didn't wish to see the governor on business," explained Ardmore pleasantly, leaning upon his stick with an air of leisure. "He and my father were old friends, and I always promised my father that I would never pass through Raleigh without calling on Governor Dangerfield."
"That is too bad," remarked the young man sympathetically, though with a preoccupation that was eloquent of larger affairs.
"Could you tell me whether any members of the governor's family are at home?"
"Oh, yes; Mrs. Dangerfield and Miss Jerry are at the mansion."
"Miss Jerry?"
"Miss Geraldine. We all call her Miss Jerry in North Carolina."
"Oh, yes; to be sure. Let me see; it's over this way to the mansion, isn't it?" inquired Ardmore.
"No; out the other end of the building—and turn to your right. You can't miss it."
The room was quiet, the secretary a young man of address and intelligence. Here, without question, was the place for Ardmore to discharge his business and be quit of it; but having at last snatched a commission from fleeting opportunity it was not for him to throw it to another man. As he opened the door to leave, the secretary arrested him.
"Oh, Mr.—pardon me, but did you come in from the south this morning?"
"Yes; I came up on the Tar Heel Express from Atlanta."
"To be sure. Of course you didn't sit up all night? There's some trouble brewing around Kildare. I thought you might have heard something, but of course you couldn't have been awake at two o'clock in the morning?"
The secretary was so anxious to acquit him of any knowledge of the situation at Kildare that it seemed kindest to tell him nothing. The secretary's face lost its anxiety for a moment, and he smiled.
"The governor has an old friend and admirer up there who always puts a jug of fresh buttermilk on board when he passes through. The governor was expected home this morning, and I thought maybe—"
"You're positive it's always buttermilk, are you?" asked Ardmore with a grin.
"Certainly," replied the secretary with dignity. "Governor Dangerfield's sentiments as to the liquor traffic are well known."
"Of course, all the world knows that. But I'm afraid all jugs look alike to me; but then, the fact is I'm in the jug business myself. Good morning."
The governor's mansion was easily found, and having walked about the neighborhood until his watch marked eleven Ardmore entered the grounds and rang the bell at the front door.
Once within, the air of domestic peace, the pictures on the walls, a whip and a felt hat with a blue band, on the hall table, and a book on a chair in the drawing-room, turned down to mark the absent reader's place, rebuked him for his impudence. If he had known just how to escape he would have done so; but the maid who admitted him had said that Miss Dangerfield was at home, and had gone in search of her with Ardmore's card. He deserved to be sent to jail for entering a gentleman's house in this way. He realized now, when it was too late, that he ought to have brought letters to one of the banks and been introduced to the Dangerfields by some gentleman of standing, if he wished to know them. The very portraits on the walls, the photographs on the mantel and table frowned coldly upon him. The foundations of his character were set in sand; he knew that, because he had found it so easy to lie, and he had been told in his youth that one sin paved the way for another. He would take the earliest train for Ardsley and bury himself there for the remainder of his days. He had hardly formed this resolution when a light step sounded in the hall, and Miss Geraldine Dangerfield stood at the threshold. His good resolutions went down like a house of cards.
"Miss Dangerfield," he began, "I had the pleasure of meeting your father in New Orleans the other day, and as I was passing through town unexpectedly, I thought I should give myself the pleasure of calling on him. He said that in case I found him absent I might call upon you. In fact, he wrote a line on a card for me to present, but I stupidly left it at my hotel."
They faced each other in the dim, cool room for what seemed to him endless centuries. She was much younger than he had imagined; but her eyes were blue, just as he remembered them, and her abundant light hair curled away from her forehead in pretty waves, and was tied to-day with a large bow of blue ribbon. For an instant she seemed puzzled or mystified, but her blue eyes regarded him steadily. The very helplessness of her youth, the simplicity of her blue linen gown, the girlish ribbon in her hair, proclaimed him blackguard.
"Won't you please sit down, Mr. Ardmore?"
And when they were seated there was another pause, during which the blue eyes continued to take account of him, and he fingered his tie, feeling sure that there was something wrong with it.
"It's warm, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is. It's a way summer has, of being mostly warm."
He was quite sure that she was laughing at him; there was a tinge of irony in the very way in which she pronounced "wa'm," lingeringly, as though to prolong her contempt for his stupidity in not finding anything better to say.
She had taken the largest chair in the room, and it seemed to hide her away in its shadows, so that she could examine him at her leisure as he sat under a window in the full glare of its light.
"I enjoyed meeting your father so much, Miss Dangerfield. I think we are always likely to be afraid of great men, but your father made me feel at home at once. And he tells such capital stories—I've been laughing over them ever since I left New Orleans."
"Father has quite a reputation for his stories. When did you leave New Orleans, Mr. Ardmore?"
"Sunday night. I stopped in Atlanta a few hours and came on through. What a fine old town Atlanta is; don't you think so?"
"I certainly do not, Mr. Ardmore. It's so dreadfully northernized."
When she said "no'thenized" her intonation gave the word a fine cutting edge.
"I suppose, Mr. Ardmore, that you saw papa at the luncheon at the Pharos Club in New Orleans?"
"Why, yes, Miss Dangerfield. It was there I met the governor!"
"Are you sure it was there, Mr. Ardmore?"
"Why, I think that was the place. I don't know my New Orleans as I should, but—"
Ardmore was suddenly conscious that Miss Dangerfield had risen and that she stood before him, with her fair face the least bit flushed, her blue eyes alight with anger, and that the hands at her sides were clenched nervously.
"My father was not at luncheon at the Pharos Club, Mr. Ardmore. You never saw my father in your life. I know why it is you came here, and if you are not out of that door in one second I shall call the servants and have them throw you out."
She ceased abruptly and turned to look into the hall where steps sounded.
"Is that you, Jerry?"
"Yes, mama; I'll be up in just a minute. Please don't wait for me. It's only the man to see about the plumbing."
The lady who had appeared for an instant at the door went on slowly up the stairs, and the girl held Ardmore silent with her steady eyes until the step died away above.
"I know what you want my father for. Mr. Billings and you are both pursuing him—it's infamous, outrageous! And it isn't his fault. I would have you know that my father is an honorable man!"
The bayonets were at his breast: he would ask for mercy.
"Miss Dangerfield, you are quite mistaken about me. I shall leave Raleigh at once, but I don't want you to think I came here on any errand to injure or annoy your father."
"You are one of those Ardmores, and Mr. Billings represents you. You thought you could come here and trick me into telling where my father is. But I am not so easily caught. My mother is ill because of all this trouble, and I must go to her. But first I want to see that you leave this house!"
"Oh, I'm sorry you are in trouble. On my honor, Miss Dangerfield, I know nothing of Billings and his business with your father."
"I suppose you will deny that you saw Mr. Billings in Atlanta yesterday?"
"Why, no. I can't exactly—"
"You'd better not! I saw you there talking to him; and I suppose he sent you here to see what you could find out."
The room whirled a moment as she dealt this staggering blow. Billings, of the Bronx Loan and Trust Company, had said that Miss Dangerfield was peppery, but his employment of this trifling term only illustrated his weak command of the English language. It is not pleasant to be pilloried for undreamed-of crimes, and Ardmore's ears tingled. He must plunge deeper and trust to the gods of chance to save him. He brought himself together with an effort, and spoke so earnestly that the words rang oddly in his own ears.
"Miss Dangerfield, you may call me anything you please, but I am not quite the scoundrel you think me. It's true that I was not in New Orleans, and I never saw your father in my life. I came to Raleigh on a mission that has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Billings; he did not know I was coming. On the way here a message intended for your father came into my hands. It was thrown on the train at Kildare last night. I had gone out on the platform because the sleeper was hot, and a warning to your father to keep his hands off of Appleweight was given to me. Here it is. It seems to me that there is immediate danger in this, and I want to help you. I want to do anything I can for you. I didn't come here to pry into your family secrets, Miss Dangerfield, honestly I didn't!"
She took the piece of paper into her slim little hands and read it, slowly nodding her head, as if the words only confirmed some earlier knowledge of the threat they contained. Then she lifted her head, and her eyes were bright with mirth as Ardmore's wondering gaze met them.
"Did you get the jug?"
"I got two jugs, to tell the truth; but when they seemed dissatisfied and howled for me to give one back, I threw off the buttermilk."
"You threw back father's buttermilk to the man who gave you the applejack? Oh! Oh!"
Miss Jerry Dangerfield sat down and laughed; and Ardmore, glad of an opportunity to escape, found his hat and rushed from the house.