THE LABORS OF MR. ARDMORE
While he waited for Miss Jerry Dangerfield to appear Mr. Thomas Ardmore read for the first time the constitution of the United States. He had reached the governor's office early, and, seeking diversion, he had picked up a small volume that bore some outward resemblance to a novel. This proved, however, to be Johnston's American Politics, and he was amazed to find that this diminutive work contained the answers to a great many questions which had often perplexed him, but which he had imagined could not be answered except by statesmen or by men like his friend Griswold, who spent their lives in study.
He had supposed that the constitution of a great nation like the United States would fill many volumes, and be couched in terms bewildering and baffling; and it was perhaps the proudest moment in Mr. Ardmore's life when, in the cool and quiet of the May morning, in the historic chambers of the governor of North Carolina, it dawned upon him that the charter of American liberty filled hardly more space than the stipulations for a yacht race, or a set of foot-ball rules; and that, moreover, he understood the greater part of it, or thought he did. Such strange words as "attainder" and "capitation" he sought out in the dictionary, and this also gave him a new sensation and thrill of pleasure at finding the machinery of knowledge so simple. He made note of several matters he wished to ask Griswold about when they met again; then turned back into the body of the text and had read as far as Burr's conspiracy when Jerry came breezily in. He experienced for the first time in his life that obsession of guilt which sinks in shame the office-boy who is caught reading a dime novel. Jerry seemed to tower above him like an avenging angel, and though her sword was only a parasol, her words cut deep enough.
"Well, you are taking it pretty cool!"
"Taking what?" faltered Ardmore, standing up, and seeking to hide the book behind his back.
"Why, this outrageous article!" and she thrust a newspaper under his eyes. "Do you mean to say you haven't seen the morning paper?"
"To tell you the truth, Miss Dangerfield, I hardly ever read the papers."
"What's that you were reading when I came in?" she demanded severely, withholding the paper until she should be answered.
"It's a book about the government, and the powers reserved to the states and that sort of thing. I was just reading the constitution; I thought it might help us—I mean you—in your work."
"The constitution help me? Hasn't it occurred to you before this that what I'm doing is all against the constitution and the revised statutes and all those books you see on the shelf there?"
"But the constitution sounds all right. It seems remarkably reasonable. You couldn't ask anything fairer than that!"
"So are the ten commandments fair enough; but you're on the wrong track, Mr. Ardmore, if you're trying to support the present administration with stupid things in books. I don't follow precedents, Mr. Ardmore; I create them."
"But I should think you would have to be awfully careful not to mix up the business of the executive and judicial branches of the government. I think I heard Grissy speak of that once, though I'm not certain. Grissy knows more than almost any other living man."
"I don't doubt that your friend is a well-educated person, but in times like these you've got to rise above the constitution; and just now it's more convenient to forget it. There's a constitution of North Carolina, too, if you're looking for constitutions, but in good society such things are not mentioned. Papa always refers to the constitution with tears in his eyes when he's making speeches, but papa's very emotional. If I could make a speech I should tell the people what I think of them—that they're too silly and stupid for words."
"You are right, Miss Dangerfield. I have felt exactly that way about the people ever since I was defeated for alderman in New York. But let me have the paper."
She turned to the morning mail while he read, and opened the envelopes rapidly. Such of the letters as she thought interesting or important she put aside, and when Ardmore finished reading a double-leaded telegram from Columbia, in which the governor of South Carolina was quoted as declaring his intention of taking immediate steps for the apprehension of Appleweight, she was still reading and sorting letters, tapping her cheek lightly meanwhile with the official paper-knife.
"Here, Mr. Ardmore," she said, drawing a paper from her pocket, "is the answer to that telegram we sent yesterday evening. Suppose you read that next, and we can then decide what to do."
She was making the letters into little piles, humming softly meanwhile; but he felt that there was a storm brewing. He read the message from Columbia a number of times, and if the acting governor had not been so ominously quiet he would have laughed at the terse sentences.
"There must be a mistake about this. He wouldn't have used 'diverting' that way; that's insulting!"
"So you appreciate its significance, do you, Mr. Ardmore? The iron enters your soul, does it? You realize that I have been insulted, do you?"
"I shouldn't put it that way, Miss Dangerfield. Governor Osborne would never have sent a message like that to you—he thought he was sending it to your father."
"He's insulted me and every other citizen in the Old North State; that's who he's insulted, Mr. Ardmore. Let me read it again;" and she repeated the telegram aloud:
"'Your extremely diverting telegram in Appleweight case received and filed.' I think it's the extremely that's so perfectly mean. The diverting by itself would not hurt my feelings half so much. He's a good deal smarter man than I thought he was to think up a telegram like that. But what do you think of that piece in the newspaper?"
"He says he's going to catch Appleweight dead or alive. That sounds pretty serious."
"I think it's a bluff myself. That telegram we sent him yesterday must have scared him to death. He was driven into a corner and had to do something to avoid being disgraced, and it's easy enough to talk big in the newspapers when you haven't the slightest intention of doing anything at all. I've noticed that father talks the longest and loudest about things he doesn't believe at all."
"Is it possible?" whispered Ardmore incredulously.
"Of course it's possible! Father would never have been elected if he'd expressed his real sentiments; neither would anybody else ever be elected if he said beforehand what he really believed."
"That must have been the reason I got defeated for alderman on the reform ticket. I told 'em I was for turning the rascals out."
"That was very stupid of you. You've got to get the rascals to elect you first; then if you're tired of office and don't need them any more you bounce them. But that's political practice; it's a theory we've got to work out now. Governor Osborne's telegram is much more important than his interview in the newspapers, which is just for effect and of no importance at all. He doesn't say the same things in the telegram to father that he said to the reporter. A governor who really meant to do anything wouldn't be so ready to insult another governor. The newspapers are a lot of bother. I spent all yesterday evening talking to reporters. They came to the house to ask where papa was and when he would be home!"
"What did you tell them?"
"I didn't tell them anything. I sent out for two other girls and we all just talked to them and kept talking, and gave them lemon sherbet and ginger cookies; and Eva Hungerford played the banjo—you don't know Eva? Of course you don't know anybody, and I don't want you to, for it would spoil you for private secretary. But Eva is simply killing when she gets to cutting up, and we made those reporters sing to us, and all they say in the papers, even the opposition papers, this morning is that Governor Dangerfield is in Savannah visiting an old friend. They all tell the same story, so they must have fixed it up after they left the house. But what were you doing, Mr. Ardmore, that you didn't come around to help? It seems to me you don't appreciate the responsibilities of being secretary to a governor."
"I was afraid you might scold me if I did. And besides I was glued to the long distance telephone all evening, talking to my manager at Ardsley. He read me my letters and a lot of telegrams that annoyed me very much. I wish you wouldn't be so hard on me, for I have trifling troubles of my own."
"I didn't suppose you ever had troubles; you certainly don't act as though you ever had."
"No one who has never been brother-in-law to a duke has the slightest idea of what trouble is."
"I've seen the Duke of Ballywinkle's picture in the papers and he looks very attractive."
"Well, if you'd ever seen him eat celery you'd change your mind. He's going down to Ardsley to visit me; for sheer nerve I must say my relations beat the world. I got my place over here in North Carolina just to get away from them, and now my sister—not the duchess, but Mrs. Atchison—is coming down there with a lot of girls and Ballywinkle has attached himself to the party. They'll pass through here to-day, and they'll expect to find me at Ardsley."
"If the duke's really coming to our state I suppose we ought to recognize him officially," and Jerry's eyes were large with reverie as she pondered her possible duty.
"Do something for him!" blazed Ardmore. "I hope you don't labor under the delusion that a duke's any better than anybody else? If you'd suffered what I have from being related to a duke you'd be sorry to hear he was even passing through your state, much less stopping off for a couple of weeks."
"Because you don't like him is no reason why every one else should feel the same way, is it? I've read about the Duke of Ballywinkle and he belongs to one of the oldest families in England, and I've seen pictures of Ballywinkle Castle—"
"Worse than that," grinned Ardmore with rising humor, "I had to chip in to pay for it! And the plumbing isn't yet what it ought to be. The last time I was over there I caught cold and nearly died of pneumonia. I make it a rule now never to visit dukes. You never know what you'll strike when you stay in those ancestral castles, even when they've been restored with some silly American girl's grandfather's money. Those places are all full of drafts and malaria and ghosts, and they make you drink tea in the afternoon, which is worse than being haunted."
"I suppose we might invite his Grace to inspect our militia," persisted Jerry. "It would sound well in the papers to have a real duke inspect the North Carolina troops."
"It would sound better than he would look doing it, I can tell you that. Old Wellington may have been all right, but these new dukes were never made for horseback."
"He might appear in a carriage, wearing his orders and ride the lines that way, with all the troops presenting arms."
"Or you might pin his debts on him and mount him on a goat on the rifle-range and let the sharp-shooters pepper away at him! Please let us not talk about Ballywinkle any more; the thought of him gives me that sinking feeling."
He had opened an atlas and was poring over it with a magnifying glass.
"It's positively funny," he murmured, laughing a little to himself, "but I know something about this country over here. Here's Ardsley, in the far corner of Dilwell County, and here's Kildare."
"Yes; I understand maps. Dilwell is green, and there's the state line, and that ugly watery sort of yellow is Mingo County, South Carolina, and Turner Court House is the county seat of it. Those little black marks are hills on the border, and it's right there that these Appleweight people live, and dance on the state line as though it were a skipping-rope."
"That's exactly it. Now what we want to do is to arrest Appleweight and put him in jail in South Carolina, which relieves the governor of North Carolina, your honored father, of all embarrassment."
She snatched the paper-cutter and took possession of the map for a moment, then pointed, with a happy little laugh.
"Why, that will be only too easy. You see there's Azbell County, where the militia is encamped, just three counties away from Dilwell, and if we needed the soldiers it wouldn't hurt the troops to march that far, would it?"
"Hurt them, nothing!" exclaimed Ardmore. "It will be good for them. You have to give orders to the adjutant-general, and, being engaged to him, he would be afraid not to obey your orders, even if you told him to go in balloons."
"Well, of course, I'd send him an official order; and if he was disobedient I could break our engagement. When I broke my engagement with Arthur Treadmeasure, it was only because he was five minutes late coming to take me to a dance."
"You were perfectly right, Miss Dangerfield. No gentleman would keep you waiting."
"But he didn't keep me waiting! I was sick in bed with a sore throat, and mama wouldn't let me go; but I thought it was very careless and taking too much for granted for him to think he could come poking along any time he pleased, so I ended everything."
It would have interested Ardmore to know the total of Miss Dangerfield's engagements, but the time did not seem propitious for such inquiries; and, moreover, his awe of her as a young person of great determination and force of character increased. She spoke of employing the armed forces of the state as though playing with the militia were a cheerful pastime, like horseback riding or tennis. His heart sank as he foresaw the possibility of the gallant Gillingwater coming out of the Appleweight affair with flying colors, a hero knighted on the field for valor. The remembrance of Gillingwater receiving the salutes of the militia and riding off to the wars to the beat of drums had deprived Ardmore of sleep all night.
"Well, there's the map, and there's that insulting telegram; what are you going to do about it?" asked Jerry.
She seemed to be honestly inviting suggestions, and the very thought of this affected him like wine. He deliberated for several minutes, while she watched him. A delicious country quiet lay upon the old state house; in the tranquil park outside the birds whistled their high disdain of law and precedent. It was no small thing to be identified with a great undertaking like this, with the finest girl in the world; and he could not help thinking of the joy of telling Griswold, the sober professor and sedate lawyer, of this adventure when it should be happily concluded. Never again should Grissy taunt him with his supineness before the open door of opportunity!
"A governor," he began, "is always a dignified person who doesn't bother his head about little things like this unless everybody else has gone to sleep. Now, who's the chief of police in a county like Dilwell—what do you call him?"
"Do you mean the sheriff, Mr. Ardmore?"
"Certainly. Now, give me those telegraph blanks, and I'll drop him a few lines to let him know that the government at Raleigh still lives."
It is in the telegram alone that we Americans approach style. Our great commanders did much to form it; our business strategists took the key from them. "I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer" is not more admirable than "Cancel order our number six hundred and eighteen," or "Have drawn at sight." Through the most familiar and commonplace apparatus clicks and ticks the great American epic in phrases concise, unequivocal and apt. Von Moltke, roused at night with news of war, merely waved his hand to the long-prepared orders in his chiffonier and went to sleep again; but the great Prussian has his counterpart in the American magnate who ties up a railroad by telegraph over his after-dinner coffee. Telegrams were, however, with Mr. Thomas Ardmore, something more than a form of communication or a mere literary exercise. Letter-writing seemed to him the most formidable of human undertakings, but with a pad of telegraph blanks under his hand his spirit soared free. All untrammeled by the horror of the day tariff, whose steep slopes have wrought so much confusion and error among the economical, he gave to the wires and the wireless what he never would have confided to a stamp. He wrote and submitted to Miss Jerry Dangerfield the following:
To the Sheriff of Dilwell County,
Kildare, N. C.:
What is this I hear about your inability to catch Appleweight and the rest of his bunch? Your inattention to your duties is a matter of common scandal, and if you don't get anxious pretty soon I shall remove you from your job and then some. I shall be down soon to see whether you are pitching quoits at the blacksmith shop or fishing for lobsters in Raccoon Creek, instead of attending to your knitting. Your conduct has annoyed me until I am something more than vexed by your behavior. The eyes of the great North State are upon you. Wire me at length just what you propose doing or not doing in this matter.
WILLIAM DANGERFIELD,
Governor of North Carolina.
"What do you think of that?" he asked, his pride falling as she scanned the paper carefully.
"Isn't it pretty expensive?" Jerry inquired, counting the words to ten and then roughly computing the rest.
"I'll take care of that, Miss Dangerfield. What I want to know is whether you think that will make the sheriff sit up."
"Well, here's what father sent him only about a week ago. I found it in his private letter book, and it's marked confidential in red ink."
She read:
"'Act cautiously in Appleweight case. Indictment by grand jury is undoubtedly faulty and Foster threatens trouble in case parties are arrested.'
"And there's more like that! Papa never intended to do anything, that's as plain as daylight. Mr. Foster, the treasurer, comes from that county. He thought papa was going to have to do something, so he's holding back the payment of the state bonds just to frighten papa. You see, the state owes the Bronx Loan and Trust Company that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and if it isn't paid June first the state will be everlastingly disgraced."
"Oh, yes; I'd forgotten about that."
"I don't see how you could forget about it. That must be almost as much money as there is in the world, Mr. Ardmore."
"We've got to raise it, anyhow, even if we go to the pawn-shop. I pawned my watch once when I was in college and Billings—he was my guardian—had shut me off. Grissy—he's my friend—Grissy says pawnbroking is only a more vulgar form of banking. There was a fellow in my class at college who pawned his pawn ticket to get money to pay his laundress, and then gave the new ticket to a poor blind man. He's a big man in Wall Street—has a real genius for finance, they say. But please don't worry about this rascal Foster. We'll put some digitalis into the state's credit when the time comes."
"I think your telegram to the sheriff is all right," said Jerry, reading it again. "If you'll go to the door and whistle for the messenger we'll get it off. I'll sign it with the rubber stamp. Papa hardly ever signs anything himself; he says if you don't sign documents yourself you can always repudiate them afterward, and papa's given prayerful thought to all such things."
Ardmore addressed himself once more to the map. It was clear that the Appleweight gang was powerful enough to topple great states upon their foundations. It had, to Ardmore's own knowledge, driven a governor into exile, and through the wretched Foster, who was their friend, the credit of the state was gravely menaced. The possibilities of the game fascinated Ardmore. He was eager for action on the scene of this usurpation and defiance. Responsibility, for the first time, had placed a warrant of trust in his hands, and, thus commissioned, the spurs of duty pricked his sides.
"I'll wait for the sheriff's answer, and if he shows no signs of life I'll go down there this afternoon."
"Then you will undoubtedly be shot!" Jerry declared, as though announcing a prospect not wholly deplorable.
"That has its disagreeable side, but a great many people have to be shot every year to keep up the average, and if the statistics need me I won't duck. I'll call up my man on the telephone this forenoon and tell him to put my forester at Ardsley to work. He's a big fellow who served in the German army, and if he's afraid of anything I haven't heard of it. If we can drive the gang into South Carolina, right along here, you see"—and Miss Dangerfield bent her pretty head over the map and saw—"if we can pass the chief outlaw on to Governor Osborne, then so much the better, and that's what we will try to do."
"But you're only the private secretary, and you can't assume too much authority. I shall have to go to Kildare to visit my aunt, who is a nice old lady that lives there. The fried corn mush and syrup at her house is the best I ever tasted, and if papa should come when he sees that something is being done quite different from what he intended, then I should be there to explain. If you should be killed, Mr. Ardmore, no one would be there to identify you, and I have always thought it the saddest thing in the world for any one to die away from home—"
"It would be sad; but I hope you would be sorry."
"I should regret your death, and I'd make them give you a perfectly beautiful military funeral, with Chopin's funeral march, and your boots tied to the saddle of your horse."
"But don't let them fuss about pulling off the boots, Miss Dangerfield, if I die with them on. It would be all right for you to visit your aunt, but I shouldn't do it if I were you. I once visited my aunt, Mrs. Covington-Burns, at Newport for a week. It was a deep game to get me to marry my aunt's husband's niece, whose father had lost his money, and the girl was beginning to bore my aunt."
"Was she a pretty girl?" asked Jerry.
"She was a whole basket of peaches, and I might have married her to get away from my aunt if it were not that I have made it a life-long rule never to marry the orphaned nieces of the husbands of my aunts. It's been a good rule to me, and has saved me no end of trouble. But if my sister doesn't change her mind, and if she really comes through Raleigh to-day in her car with those friends of hers, she will be delighted to have you join her for a visit at Ardsley. And then you would be near at hand in case some special edict from the governor seemed necessary."
"But wouldn't your sister think it strange—"
"Not in the least, Miss Dangerfield. Nothing is strange to my sister. Nobody ever sprang a surprise on Nellie yet. And besides, you are the daughter of the governor of a great state. She refuses to meet senators, because you can never be sure they are respectable, but she rather prides herself on knowing governors. Governors are very different. Since I read the constitution I can see very plainly that governors are much nearer the people, but I guess the senators are nearer the banks."
"Well, I have some shopping to do, and it's ten o'clock. It would be hospitable to ask you to luncheon, but mama cries so much because she doesn't know where papa is that our meals at the executive mansion are not exactly cheerful functions. And besides"—and she eyed Ardmore severely as she rose and accepted her parasol from him—"and besides, you know our relations are purely official. You have never been introduced to me, and socially you are not known to us."