TWO GENTLEMEN SAY GOOD-BY
"If anything really interesting should happen to me I think I should drop dead," declared Ardmore as he stood talking to Griswold in the railway station at Atlanta. "I entered upon this life under false pretenses, thinking that money would make the game easy, but here I am, twenty-seven years old, stalled at the end of a blind alley, with no light ahead; and to be quite frank, old man, I don't believe you have the advantage of me. What's the matter with us, anyhow?"
"The mistake we make," replied Griswold, "is in failing to seize opportunities when they offer. You and I have talked ourselves hoarse a thousand times planning schemes we never pull off. We are cursed with indecision, that's the trouble with us. We never see the handwriting on the wall, or if we do, it's just a streak of hieroglyphics, and we don't know what it means until we read about it in the newspapers. But I thought you were satisfied with the thrills you got running as a reform candidate for alderman in New York last year. It was a large stage and the lime-light struck you pretty often. Didn't you get enough? No doubt they'd be glad to run you again."
Ardmore glanced hastily about and laid his hand heavily on his friend's shoulder.
"Don't mention it—don't think of it! No more politics in mine. The world may go hang if it waits for me to set it right. What I want is something different, a real adventure—something with spice in it. I have bought everything money can buy, and now I'm looking for something that can't be tagged with a price."
"There's your yacht and the open sea," suggested Griswold.
"Sick of it! Sick to death of it!"
"You're difficult, old man, and mighty hard to please. Why don't you turn explorer and go in for the North Pole?"
"Perfectly bully! I've thought of it a lot, but I want to be sure I've cleaned up everything else first. It's always up there waiting—on ice, so to speak—but when it's done once there will be nothing left. I want to save that for the last call."
"You said about the same thing when we talked of Thibet that first evening we met at the University Club, and now the Grand Lama sings in all the phonographs, and for a penny you can see him in a kinetoscope, eating his luncheon. I remember very well that night. We were facing each other at a writing-table, and you looked up timidly from your letter and asked me whether there were two g's in aggravate, and I answered that it depended on the meaning—one g for a mild case, two for a severe one—and you laughed, and we began talking. Then we found out how lonesome we both were, and you asked me to dinner, and then took me to that big house of yours up there in Fifth Avenue and showed me the pictures in your art gallery, and we found out that we needed each other."
"Yes, I had needed you all right!" And Ardmore sniffed dolefully, and complained of the smoke that was drifting in upon them from the train sheds. "I wish you wouldn't always be leaving me. You ought to give up your job and amuse me. You're the only chap I know who doesn't talk horse or automobile or yacht, or who doesn't want to spend whole evenings discussing champagne vintages; but you're too good a man to be wasted on a college professorship. Better let me endow an institution that will make you president—there might be something in that."
"It would make me too prominent, so that when we really make up our minds to go in for adventures I should be embarrassed by my high position. As a mere lecturer on The Libeling of Sunken Ships in a law school, I'm the most obscure person in the world. And for another thing, we couldn't risk the scandal of tainted money. It would be nasty to have your great-grandfather's whisky deals with the Mohawk Indians chanted in a college yell."
The crowd surged past them to the Washington express, and a waiting porter picked up Griswold's bags.
"Wish you wouldn't go. I have three hours to wait," said Ardmore, looking at his watch, "and the only Atlanta man I know is out of town."
"What did you say you were going to New Orleans for?" demanded Griswold, taking out his ticket and moving toward the gate. "I thought you exhausted the Creole restaurants long ago."
"The fact is," faltered Ardmore, coloring, "I'm looking for some one."
"Out with it—out with it!" commanded his friend.
"I'm looking for a girl I saw from a car window day before yesterday. I had started north, and my train stopped to let a south-bound train pass somewhere in North Carolina. The girl was on the south-bound sleeper, and her window was opposite mine. She put aside the magazine she was reading and looked me over rather coolly."
"And you glanced carelessly in the opposite direction and pulled down your shade, of course, like the well-bred man you are—" interrupted Griswold, holding fast to Ardmore's arm as they walked down the platform.
"I did no such thing. I looked at her and she looked at me. And then my train started—"
"Well, trains have a way of starting. Does the romance end here?"
"Then, just at the last moment, she winked at me!"
"It was a cinder, Ardy. The use of soft coal on railways is one of the saddest facts of American transportation. I need hardly remind you, Mr. Ardmore, that nice girls don't wink at strange young men. It isn't done!"
"I would have you know, Professor, that this girl is a lady."
"Don't be so irritable, and let me summarize briefly on your own hypothesis: You stared at a strange girl and she winked at you, safe in the consciousness that she would never see you again. And now you are going to New Orleans to look for her. She will probably meet you at the station, with her bridesmaids and wedding cake all ready for you. And you think this will lead to an adventure—you defer finding the North Pole for this—for this? Poor Ardy! But did she toss her card from the window? Why New Orleans? Why not Minneapolis, or Bangor, Maine?"
"I'm not an ass, Grissy. I caught the name of the sleeper—you know they're all named, like yachts and tall buildings—the name of her car was the Alexandra. I asked our conductor where it was bound for, and he said it was the New Orleans car. So I took the first train back, ran into you here, and that's the whole story to date."
"I admire your spirit. New Orleans is much pleasanter than the polar ice, and a girl with a winking eye isn't to be overlooked in this vale of tears. What did this alleviating balm for tired eyes look like, if you remember anything besides the wicked wink?"
"She was bareheaded, and her hair was wonderfully light and fluffy, and it was parted in the middle and tied behind with a black ribbon in a great bow. She rested her cheek on her hand—her elbow on the window-sill, you know—and she smiled a little as the car moved off, and winked—do you understand? Her eyes were blue, Grissy, big and blue—and she was perfectly stunning."
"There are winks and winks, Ardy," observed Griswold with a judicial air. "There is the wink inadvertent, to which no meaning can be attached. There is the wink deceptive, usually given behind the back of a third person, and a vulgar thing which we will not associate with your girl of the Alexandra. And then, to be brief, there is the wink of mischief, which is observed occasionally in persons of exceptional bringing up. There are moments in the lives of all of us when we lose our grip on conventions—on morality, even. The psychology of this matter is very subtle. Here you are, a gentleman of austerely correct life; here is a delightful girl, on whom you flash in an out-of-the-way corner of the world. And she, not wholly displeased by the frank admiration in your eyes—for you may as well concede that you stared at her—"
"Well, I suppose I did look at her," admitted Ardmore reluctantly.
"Pardonably, no doubt, just as you would look at a portrait in a picture gallery, of course. This boarding-school miss, who had never before lapsed from absolute propriety, felt the conventional world crumble beneath her as the train started. She could no more have resisted the temptation to wink than she could have refused a caramel or an invitation to appear as best girl at a church wedding. Thus wireless communication is established between soul and soul for an instant only, and then you are cut off forever. Perhaps, in the next world, Ardy—"
Griswold and Ardmore had often idealized themselves as hopeless pursuers of the elusive, the unattainable, the impossible; or at least Ardmore had, and Griswold had entered into the spirit of this sort of thing for the joy it gave Ardmore. They had discussed frequently the call of soul to soul—the quick glance passing between perfect strangers in crowded thoroughfares, and had fruitlessly speculated as to their proper course in the event the call seemed imperative. A glance of the eye is one thing, but it is quite another to address a stranger and offer eternal friendship. The two had agreed that, while, soul-call or no soul-call, a gentleman must keep clear of steamer flirtations, and avoid even the most casual remarks to strange young women in any circumstances, a gentleman of breeding and character may nevertheless follow the world's long trails in search of a never-to-be-forgotten face.
The fact is that Ardmore was exceedingly shy, and a considerable experience of fashionable society had not diminished this shortcoming. Griswold, on the other hand, had the Virginian's natural social instinct, but he suffered from a widely-diffused impression that much learning had made him either indifferent or extremely critical where women are concerned.
Ardmore shrugged his shoulders and fumbled in his coat pockets as though searching for ideas. An austere composure marked his countenance at all times, and emphasized the real distinction of his clean-cut features. His way of tilting back his head and staring dreamily into vacancy had established for him a reputation for stupidity that was wholly undeserved.
"Please limit the discussion to the present world, Professor."
When Ardmore was displeased with Griswold he called him Professor, in a withering tone that disposed of the academic life.
"We shall limit it to New Orleans or the universe, as you like."
"I'm disappointed in you, Grissy. You don't take this matter in the proper spirit. I'm going to find that girl, I tell you."
"I want you to find her, Ardy, and throw yourself at her feet. Be it far from me to deprive you of the joy of search. I thoroughly admire your resolute spirit. It smacks of the old heroic times. Nor can I conceal from you my consuming envy. If a girl should flatter me with a wink I should follow her thrice round the world. She should not elude me anywhere in the Copernican system. If it were not the nobler part for you to pursue alone, I should forsake my professorship and buckle on my armor and follow your standard—
With the winking eye
For my battle-cry."
And Griswold hummed the words, beating time with his stick, much to Ardmore's annoyance.
"In my ignorance," Griswold continued, "I recall but one allusion to the wink in immortal song. If my memory serves me, it is no less a soul than Browning who sings:
'All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye
Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.'
You seem worried, Ardy. Does the wink press so heavily, or what's the matter?"
"The fact is, I'm in trouble. My sister says I've got to marry."
"Which sister?"
"Mrs. Atchison. You know Nellie? She's a nice girl and she's a good sister to me, but she's running me too hard on this marrying business. She's going to bring a bunch of girls down to Ardsley in a few days, and she says she'll stay until I make a choice."
Griswold whistled.
"Then, as we say in literary circles, you're up against it. No wonder you're beginning to take notice of the frolicsome boarding-school girl who winks at the world. I believe I'd rather take chances myself with that amiable sort than marry into your Newport transatlantic set."
"Well, one thing's certain, Grissy. You've got to come to Ardsley and help me out while those people are there. Nellie likes you; she thinks you're terribly intellectual and all that, and if you'll throw in a word now and then, why—"
"Why, I may be able to protect you from the crafts and assaults of your sister. You seem to forget, Ardy, that I'm not one of your American leisure class. I'm always delighted to meet Mrs. Atchison, but I'm a person of occupations. I have a consultation in Richmond to-morrow, then me for Charlottesville. We have examinations coming on, and, while I like to play with you, I've positively got to work."
"Not if I endow all the chairs in the university! You've not only got to come, but you're going to be there the day they arrive."
Thomas Ardmore, of New York and Ardsley, struck his heavy stick—he always carried a heavy stick—smartly on the cement platform in the stress of his feeling. He was much shorter than Griswold, to whom he was deeply attached—for whom he had, indeed, the frank admiration of a small boy for a big brother. He sometimes wondered how fully Griswold entered into the projects of adventure which he, in his supreme idleness, planned and proposed; but he himself had never been quite ready to mount horse or shake out sail, and what Griswold had said about indecision rankled in his heart. He was sorry now that he had told of this new enterprise to which he had pledged himself, but he grew lenient toward Griswold's lack of sympathy as he reflected that the quest of a winking girl was rather beneath the dignity of a gentleman wedded not merely to the law, but to the austere teaching profession as well. In his heart he forgave Griswold, but he was all the more resolved to address himself stubbornly to his pursuit of the deity of the car Alexandra, for only by finding her could he establish himself in Griswold's eyes as a man of action, capable of carrying through a scheme requiring cleverness and tact.
Ardmore was almost painfully rich, but the usual diversions of the wealthy did not appeal to him, and, having exhausted foreign travel, he spent much time on his estate in the North Carolina hills, where he could ride all day on his own land, and where he read prodigiously in a huge library that he had assembled with special reference to works on piracy, a subject that had attracted him from early youth.
It was this hobby that had sealed his friendship with Griswold, who had relinquished the practice of law, after a brilliant start in his native city of Richmond, to accept the associate professorship of admiralty in the law department of the University of Virginia. Marine law had a particular fascination for Griswold from its essentially romantic character. As a law student he had read all the decisions in admiralty that the libraries afforded, and, though faithfully serving the university, he still occasionally accepted retainers in admiralty cases of unusual importance. His lectures were constantly attended by students in other departments of the university for sheer pleasure in Griswold's racy and entertaining exposition of the laws touching the libeling of schooners and the recovery of jettisoned cargoes. Henry Maine Griswold was tall, slender and dark, and he hovered recklessly, as he might have put it, on the brink of thirty. He stroked his thin brown mustache habitually, as though to hide the smile that played about his humorous mouth—a smile that lay even more obscurely in his fine brown eyes. He did violence to the academic traditions by dressing with metropolitan care, gray being his prevailing note, though his scarfs ventured upon bold color schemes that interested his students almost as much as his lectures. The darkest fact of his life—and one shared with none—was his experiments in verse. From his undergraduate days he had written occasionally a little song, quite for his own pleasure in versifying, and to a little sheaf of these things in manuscript he still added a few verses now and then.
"Don't worry, Ardy," he was saying to his friend as "all aboard" was called, "and don't be reckless. When you get through looking for the winking eye, come up to Charlottesville and we'll plan The True Life of Captain Kidd that is some day going to make us famous."
"I'll wire you later," replied Ardmore, clinging to his friend's hand a moment after the train began to move. Griswold leaned out of the vestibule to wave a last farewell to Ardmore, and something very kind and gentle and good to see shone in the lawyer's eyes. He went into the car smiling, for he called Ardmore his best friend, and he was amused by his last words, which were always Ardmore's last in their partings, and were followed usually by telegrams about the most preposterous things, or suggestions for romantic adventures, or some new hypothesis touching Captain Kidd and his buried treasure. Ardmore never wrote letters; he always telegraphed, and he enjoyed filing long, mysterious and expensive messages with telegraph operators in obscure places where a scrupulous ten words was the frugal limit.
Griswold lighted a cigar and opened the afternoon Atlanta papers in the smoking compartment. His eye was caught at once by imperative head-lines. It is not too much to say that the eye of the continent was arrested that evening by the amazing disclosure, now tardily reaching the public, that something unusual had occurred at the annual meeting of the Cotton Planters' Association at New Orleans on the previous day. Every copy-reader and editor, every paragrapher on every newspaper in the land had smiled and reached for a fresh pencil as a preliminary bulletin announced the passing of harsh words between the Governor of North Carolina and the Governor of South Carolina. It may as well be acknowledged here that just what really happened at the Cotton Planters' convention will never be known, for this particular meeting was held behind closed doors, and as the two governors were honored guests of the association, no member has ever breathed a word touching an incident that all most sincerely deplored. Indeed, no hint of it would ever have reached the public had it not been that both gentlemen hurriedly left the convention hall, refused to keep their appointments to speak at the banquet that followed the business meetings, and were reported to have taken the first trains for their respective capitals. It was whispered by a few persons that the Governor of South Carolina had taken a fling at the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence; it was rumored in other quarters that the Governor of North Carolina was the aggressor, he having—it was said—declared that a people (meaning the freemen of the commonwealth of South Carolina) who were not intelligent enough to raise their own hay, and who, moreover, bought that article in Ohio, were not worth the ground necessary for their decent interment. It is not the purpose of this chronicle either to seek the truth of what passed between the two governors at New Orleans, or to discuss the points of history and agriculture raised in the statements just indicated. As every one knows, the twentieth of May (or was it the thirty-first!), 1775, is solemnly observed in North Carolina as the day on which the patriots of Mecklenburg County severed the relations theretofore existing between them and his Majesty, King George the Third. Equally well known is the fact that in South Carolina it is an article of religious faith that on that twentieth day of May, 1775, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, cheered the English flag and adopted resolutions reaffirming their ancient allegiance to the British crown. This controversy and the inadequacy of the South Carolina hay crop must be passed on to the pamphleteers, with such other vexed questions as Andrew Jackson's birthplace—more debated than Homer's and not to be carelessly conceded to the strutting sons of Waxhaw.
Griswold read of the New Orleans incident with a smile, while several fellow-passengers discussed it in a tone of banter. One of them, a gentleman from Mississippi, presently produced a flask, which he offered to the others, remarking, "As the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina," which was, to be sure, pertinent to the hour and the discussion, and bristling with fresh significance.
"They were both in Atlanta this morning," said the man with the flask, "and they would have been traveling together on this train if they hadn't met in the ticket office and nearly exploded with rage."
The speaker was suddenly overcome with his own humor, and slapped his knee and laughed; then they all laughed, including Griswold.
"One ought to have taken the lower berth and one the upper to make it perfect," observed an Alabama man. "I wonder when they'll get home."
"They'll probably both walk to be sure they don't take the same train," suggested a commercial traveler from Cincinnati, who had just come from New Orleans. "Their friends are doing their best to keep them apart. They both have a reputation for being quick on the trigger."
"Bosh!" exclaimed Griswold. "I dare say it's all a newspaper story. There's no knife-and-pistol nonsense in the South any more. They'll both go home and attend to their business, and that will be the last of it. The people of North Carolina ought to be proud of Dangerfield; he's one of the best governors they ever had. And Osborne is a first-class man, too, one of the old Palmetto families."
"I guess they're both all right," drawled the Mississippian, settling his big black hat more firmly on his head. "Dangerfield spoke in our town at the state fair last year, and he's one of the best talkers I ever heard."
Therefore, as no one appeared to speak for the governor of South Carolina, the drummer volunteered to vouch for his oratorical gifts, on the strength of an address lately delivered by Governor Osborne in a lecture course at Cincinnati. Being pressed by the Mississippian, he admitted that he had not himself attended the lecture, but he had heard it warmly praised by competent critics.
The Mississippian had resented Griswold's rejection of the possibility of personal violence between the governors, and wished to return to the subject.
"It's not only themselves," he declared, "but each man has got the honor of his state to defend. Suppose, when they met in the railway office at Atlanta this morning, Dangerfield had drawed his gun. Do you suppose, gentlemen, that if North Carolina had drawed South Carolina wouldn't have followed suit? I declare, young man, you don't know what you're talking about. If Bill Dangerfield won't fight, I don't know fightin' blood when I see it."
"Well, sir," began the Alabama man, "my brother-in-law in Charleston went to college with Osborne, and many's the time I've heard him say that he was sorry for the man who woke up Charlie Osborne. Charlie—I mean the governor, you understand—is one of these fellows who never says much, but when you get him going he's terrible to witness. Bill Dangerfield may be Governor of North Car'line, and I reckon he is, but he ain't Governor of South Car'line, not by a damned good deal."
The discussion had begun to bore Griswold, and he went back to his own section, having it in mind to revise a lecture he was preparing on The Right of Search on the High Seas. It had grown dark, and the car was brilliantly lighted. There were not more than half a dozen other persons in his sleeper, and these were widely scattered. Having taken an inventory of his belongings to be sure they were all at hand, he became conscious of the presence of a young lady in the opposite section. In the seat behind her sat an old colored woman in snowy cap and apron, who was evidently the young lady's servant. Griswold was aware that this dusky duenna bristled and frowned and pursed her lips in the way of her picturesque kind as he glanced at her, as though his presence were an intrusion upon her mistress, who sat withdrawn to the extreme corner of her section, seeking its fullest seclusion, with her head against a pillow, and the tips of her suède shoes showing under her gray traveling skirt on the further half of the section. She twirled idly in her fingers a half-opened white rosebud—a fact unimportant in itself, but destined to linger long in Griswold's memory. The pillow afforded the happiest possible background for her brown head, her cheek bright with color, and a profile clear-cut, and just now—an impression due, perhaps, to the slight quiver of her nostrils and the compression of her lips—seemingly disdainful of the world. Griswold hung up his hat and opened his portfolio; but the presence of the girl suggested Ardmore and his ridiculous quest of the alluring blue eye, and it was refreshing to recall Ardmore and his ways. Here was one man, at least, in this twentieth century, at whose door the Time Spirit might thump and thunder in vain.
The black woman rose and ministered to her mistress, muttering in kind monotone consolatory phrases from which "chile" and "honey" occasionally reached Griswold's ears. The old mammy produced from a bag several toilet bottles, a fresh handkerchief, a hand mirror and a brush, which she arranged in the empty seat. The silver trinkets glowed brightly against the blue upholstery.
"Thank you, Aunt Phœbe, I'm feeling much better. Just let me alone now, please."
The girl put aside the white rose for a moment and breathed deeply of the vinaigrette, whose keen, pungent odor stole across the aisle to Griswold. She bent forward, took up the hand mirror, and brushed the hair away from her forehead with half a dozen light strokes. She touched her handkerchief to the cologne flask, passed it across her eyes, and then took up the rose again and settled back with a little sigh of relief. In her new upright position her gaze rested upon Griswold's newspapers, which he had flung down on the empty half of his section. One of them had fallen open and lay with its outer page staring with the bold grin of display type.
TWO GOVERNORS AT WAR!
WHAT DID THE GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA SAY
TO THE GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA?
The color deepened in the girl's face; a slight frown gathered in her smooth forehead; then she called the colored woman and a brief colloquy followed between them. In a moment Griswold was addressed in a tone and manner at once condescending and deferential.
"If yo' please, suh, would yo' all 'low my mistus t' look at yo' newspapahs?"
"Certainly. Take them along."
And Griswold, recalled from a passage in his lecture that dealt with contraband munitions of war, handed over the newspapers, and saw them pass into the hands of his fellow-passenger. He had read the newspapers pretty thoroughly, and knew the distribution of their contents, so that he noted with surprise the girl's immediate absorption in the telegrams from New Orleans relating to the difficulty between the two governors.
As she read she lost, he thought, something of her splendid color, and at one point in her reading her face went white for a moment, and Griswold saw the paper wrinkle under the tightening grasp of her hands. The tidings from New Orleans had undoubtedly aroused her indignation, which expressed itself further in the rigid lines of her figure as she read, and in the gradual lifting of her head, as though with some new resolution. She seemed to lose account of her surroundings, and several times Griswold was quite sure that he heard her half exclaim, "Preposterous! Infamous!"
When she had finished the New Orleans telegrams she cast the offending newspapers from her, then, recalling herself, summoned the black woman, and returned them to Griswold, the dusky agent expressing the elaborate thanks of her race for his courtesy. The girl had utterly ignored Griswold, and she now pulled down the curtain at her elbow with a snap and turned her face away from him.
Professor Griswold's eyes wandered repeatedly from his manuscript to the car ceiling, then furtively to the uncompromisingly averted shoulder and head of the young lady, then back to his lecture notes, until he was weary of the process. He wished Ardmore were at hand, for his friend would find here a case that promised much better than the pursuit to which he had addressed himself. The girl in this instance was at least a self-respecting lady, not given to flirtations with chance travelers, and the brown eyes, of which Griswold had caught one or two fleeting glimpses, were clearly not of the winking sort. The attendance of the black mammy distinguished the girl as a person of quality, whose travels were stamped with an austere propriety.
Her silver toilet articles testified to an acquaintance with the comforts if not the luxuries of life. The alligator-hide suit-case thrust under the seat bore the familiar label of a Swiss hotel where Griswold had once spent a week, and spoke of the girl's acquaintance with an ampler world. When Phœbe had brought it forth the initials "B. O." in small black letters suggested Baltimore and Ohio to Griswold's lazy speculations, whereupon he reflected that while Baltimore was plausible, the black servant eliminated Ohio; and as every Virginian knows every other Virginian, he tried to identify her with Old Dominion family names beginning with O, but without result. He finally concluded that, while her name might be Beatrice or Barbara, it could not be Bessie, and he decided that very likely the suit-case belonged to her brother Benjamin, in whom he felt no interest whatever.
He went out to supper, secured the only remaining table for two, and was giving his order when the young lady appeared. She had donned her hat, and as she stood a moment in the entrance, surveying the line of tables, her distinction was undeniable. There were but two vacant places in the car, one facing Griswold, the other across the aisle at a larger table where three men were engaged in animated discussion. The girl viewed the prospect with evident disappointment as the waiter drew out the vacant chair at Griswold's table. She carried herself bravely, but wore still a triste air that touched Griswold's sympathy. He rose, told the waiter that he would sit at the other table, and the girl murmured her thanks with a forlorn little smile as she took his s