Читать книгу The Little Brown Jug at Kildare - Meredith Nicholson - Страница 5

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Griswold spent the night at the Saluda House, Columbia, and rose in the morning with every intention of seeing Governor Osborne, or some one in authority at his office, as soon as possible and proceeding to Richmond without further delay. As he scanned the morning newspaper at breakfast he read with chagrin this item, prominently head-lined:

Governor Osborne, who was expected home from the Cotton Planters' Convention yesterday morning has been unavoidably detained in Atlanta by important personal business. Miss Barbara Osborne arrived last night and proceeded at once to the governor's mansion.

Several matters of considerable importance await the governor's return. Among these is the matter of dealing with the notorious Bill Appleweight. It is understood that the North Carolina officials are unwilling to arrest Appleweight, though his hiding-place in the hills on the border near Kildare is well known. Although he runs back and forth across the state line at pleasure, he is a North Carolinian beyond question, and it's about time Governor Dangerfield took note of the fact. However, the governor of South Carolina may be relied on to act with his usual high sense of public duty in this matter.

Professor Griswold was not pleased to learn that the governor was still absent from the capital. He felt that he deserved better luck after the trouble he had taken to warn the governor. His conscience had got the better of his comfort—he knew that, and he wrote a telegram to the law firm at Richmond with which he was consultant, asking that a meeting with certain clients arranged for to-day be deferred twenty-four hours. It was now Tuesday; he had no further lectures at the university until the following Monday, and after he had taken his bearings of Columbia, where it occurred to him he had not an acquaintance, he walked toward the capitol with a well-formed idea of seeing the governor's private secretary—and, if that person appeared to be worthy of confidence, apprising him of the governor's danger.

Standing in the many-pillared portico of the capitol, Griswold turned to look down upon Columbia, a city distinguished to the most casual eye by streets an acre wide! And having an historical imagination and a reverence for the past, Griswold gave himself for a moment to Memory, hearing the tramp of armed hosts, and the thunder of cannon, and seeing flames leap again in the wake of battle. It was a glorious day, and the green of late May lay like a soft scarf upon the city. The sky held the wistful blue of spring. Griswold bared his head to the faint breeze, or perhaps unconsciously he saluted the bronze figure of Hampton, who rides forever there at the head of his stubborn legion. He turned into the capitol with a little sigh, for he was a son of Virginia, and here, in this unfamiliar scene, the Past was revivified, and he felt the spell of things that were already old when he was born.

It was not yet nine o'clock when he entered the governor's office. He waited in the reception-room, adjoining the official chamber, but the several desks of the clerical staff remained unoccupied. He chafed a bit as time passed and no one appeared, for his north-bound train left at eleven, and he could not fairly be asked to waste the entire day here. He was pacing the floor, expecting one of the clerks to appear at any moment, when a man entered hurriedly, walked to the closed inner door, shook it impatiently, and kicked it angrily as he turned away. He was a short, thick-set man of thirty-five, dressed in blue serge, and his movements were quick and nervous. He growled under his breath and swung round upon Griswold as though to tax him with responsibility for the closed door.

"Has no one been here this morning?" he demanded, glaring at the closed desks.

"If you don't count me I should answer no," replied Griswold quietly.

"Oh!"

The two gentlemen regarded each other for a moment, contemptuous dislike clearly written on the smaller man's face, Griswold half-smiling and indifferent.

"I am waiting for the governor," remarked Griswold, thinking to gain information.

"Then you're likely to wait some time," jerked the other. "The whole place seems to be abandoned. I never saw such a lot of people."

"Not having seen them myself, I must reserve judgment," Griswold remarked, and the blue serge suit flung out of the room.

Presently another figure darkened the entrance, and the colored servant whom Griswold had seen attending Miss Osborne on the train from Atlanta swept into the reception-room and, grandly ignoring his presence, sat down in a chair nearest the closed door of the inner chamber. Griswold felt that this was encouraging, as implying some link between the governor and his domestic household and he was about to ask the colored woman if she knew the business hours of the office when the closed door opened and Miss Osborne appeared on the threshold. The colored woman rose, and Griswold, who happened to be facing the door when it swung open with such startling suddenness, stared an instant and bowed profoundly.

"I beg your pardon, but I wish very much to see Governor Osborne or his secretary."

Miss Osborne, in white, trailing a white parasol in her hand, and with white roses in her belt, still stood half withdrawn inside the private office.

"I am very sorry that Governor Osborne and his secretary are both absent," she answered, and the two eyed each other gravely. Griswold felt that the brown eyes into which he looked had lately known tears; but she held her head high, with a certain defiance, even.

"That is unfortunate. I stopped here last night on purpose to see him, and now I fear that I must leave—" and he smiled the Griswold smile, which was one of the secrets of his popularity at the university—"I must leave Columbia in a very few minutes."

"The office does not keep very early hours," remarked the girl, "but some one will certainly be here in a moment. I am sorry you have had to wait."

She had not changed her position, and Griswold rather hoped she would not, for the door framed her perfectly, and the sunlight from the inner windows emphasized the whiteness of the snowy gown she wore. Her straw hat was shaped like a soldier's campaign hat, with sides pinned up, the top dented, and a single feather thrust into the side.

"It was not I," said Griswold, "who so rudely shook the door. I beg that you will acquit me of that violence."

The girl did not, however, respond to his smile. She poked the floor with her parasol a moment, then raised her head and asked:

"Who was it, if you please?"

"A gentleman with a brown beard, a red necktie, and a bad disposition."

"I thought as much," she said, half to herself, and her eyes were bent again upon the point of her parasol, with which she was tracing a design in the rug. She lifted her head with the abruptness of quick decision, and looked straight at Griswold. The negress had withdrawn to the outer door, by which she sat with sphinx-like immovability.

"I am Miss Osborne. Governor Osborne is my father. Would you mind telling me whether your business with my father is—"

She hesitated, and her eyes met Griswold's.

"Miss Osborne, as I have no acquaintances here, let me introduce myself. My name is Griswold. My home is Charlottesville. Pardon me, but you and I were fellow-passengers from Atlanta yesterday evening. I am unacquainted with your father, and I have no business with him except—"

He was not yet clear in his mind whether to tell her that her father's life was threatened; it did not seem fair to alarm her when he was powerless to help; but as he weighed the question the girl came out into the reception-room and sat down near the window.

"Won't you have a seat, Mr. Griswold? May I ask you again whether you know the gentleman who came in here and beat the door a while ago?"

"I never saw him before in my life."

"That is very well. And now, Mr. Griswold, I am going to ask you to tell me, if you will, just what it is you wish to say to my father."

She was very earnest, and the request she made rang the least bit imperiously. She now held the white parasol across her lap in the tight clasp of her white-gloved hands.

"I should not hesitate—" began Griswold, still uncertain what to do.

"You need not hesitate in the fear that you may alarm me. I think I know"—and she half-smiled now—"I think perhaps I know what it is."

"My reason for wishing to see your father is, then, to warn him that if a criminal named Appleweight is brought back from his hiding-place on the North Carolina frontier, and tried for his crimes in South Carolina, the governor of that state, your father, will be made to suffer by Appleweight's friends."

"That is what I thought," said the girl, slowly nodding her head.

"And now, to be quite honest about it, Miss Osborne, I must confess that I received this warning last night from a man who believed me to be the governor. To tell the truth, I told him I was the governor!"

The girl's eyes made a fresh inventory of Griswold, then she laughed for the first time—a light laugh of honest mirth that would not be gainsaid. The beautiful color deepened in her cheeks; her eyes lighted merrily, as though at the drollery of Griswold standing, so to speak, in loco parentis.

"I have my own confession to make. I heard what you said to that man. I had gone to the rear platform to see what was the matter. The stop there in that preposterous place seemed interminable. You must have known that I listened."

"I didn't suppose you heard what that man said to me or what I said to him. I don't know how I came to palm myself off as the governor—I am not in the habit of doing such things, but it was due, I think, to the fact that I had just been saying to a friend of mine at Atlanta—"

He ceased speaking, realizing that what he might have said to Ardmore was not germane to the point at issue. His responsibility for the life and security of Governor Osborne of the sovereign state of South Carolina was at an end, and he was entering upon a social chat with Governor Osborne's daughter. Some such thought must have passed through her mind, too, for she straightened herself in her chair and dropped the point of her parasol to the floor. But she was the least bit curious, in spite of herself. The young man before her, who held his hat and gloves so quietly and who spoke with so nice a deference in a voice so musical, was beyond question a gentleman, and he had stopped at Columbia to render her father a service. There was no reason why she should not hear what he had said to his friend at Atlanta.

"What had you been saying, Mr. Griswold?"

"Oh, really nothing after all! I'm ashamed of it now! But he's the most amusing person, with nothing to do but to keep himself amused. We discuss many daring projects, but we are never equal to them. I had just been telling him that we were incapable of action; that while we plan our battles the foe is already breaking down the outer defenses and beating in the gates. You see, we are both very ridiculous at times, and we talk that sort of idiocy to keep up our spirits. And having berated my friend for his irresolution, I seized the first opportunity to prove my own capacity for meeting emergencies. The man flattered me with the assumption that I was the governor of South Carolina, and I weakly fell."

Distress was again written in Miss Osborne's face. She had paid little heed to the latter half of Griswold's recital, though she kept her eyes fixed gravely upon him. In a moment the gentleman in blue serge who had manifested so much feeling over the governor's absence strode again into the room.

"Ah, Miss Osborne, so you are back!"

He bowed over the girl's hand with a great deal of manner, then glanced at once toward the door of the private office.

"Hasn't your father come in yet? I have been looking for him since eight o'clock."

"My father is not home yet, Mr. Bosworth."

"Not home! Do you mean to say that he won't be here to-day?"

"I hardly expect him," replied the girl calmly. "Very likely he will be at home to-night or in the morning."

Griswold had walked away out of hearing; but he felt that the girl purposely raised her voice so that he might hear what she said.

"I must know where he is; there's an important matter waiting—a very serious matter it may prove for him if he isn't here to-day to pass on it. I must wire him at once."

"Very good. You had better do so, Mr. Bosworth. He's at the Peach Tree Club, Atlanta."

"Atlanta! Do you mean to say that he isn't even in this state to-day?"

"No, Mr. Bosworth, and I advise you to telegraph him immediately if your business is so urgent."

"It isn't my business, Barbara; it's the state's business; it's your father's business, and if he isn't here to attend to it by to-morrow at the latest, it will go hard with him. He has enemies who will construe his absence as meaning—"

He spoke rapidly, with rising anger, but some gesture from the girl arrested him, and he turned frowningly to see Griswold calmly intent upon an engraving at the further end of the room. The colored woman was dozing in her chair. Before Bosworth could resume, the girl spoke, her voice again raised so that every word reached Griswold.

"If you refer to the Appleweight case, I must tell you, Mr. Bosworth, that I have all confidence that my father will act whenever he sees fit."

"But the people—"

"My father is not afraid of the people," said the girl quietly.

"But you don't understand, Barbara, how much is at stake here. If some action isn't taken in that matter within twenty-four hours your father will be branded as a coward by every newspaper in the state. You seem to take it pretty coolly, but it won't be a trifling matter for him."

"I believe," replied the girl, rising, "that you have said all that I care to hear from you now or at any further time, Mr. Bosworth, about this or any other matter."

"But, Barbara—"

Miss Osborne turned her back and walked to the window. Bosworth stared a moment, then rushed angrily from the room. Griswold abandoned his study of the picture, and gravely inclined his head as Bosworth passed. Then he waited a minute. The girl still stood at the window, and there was, Griswold felt, something a little forlorn in her figure. It was quite time that he was off if he caught his train for Richmond. He crossed the room, and as he approached the window Miss Osborne turned quickly.

"It was kind of you to wait. That man is the state's attorney-general. You doubtless heard what he said to me."

"Yes, Miss Osborne, I could not help hearing. I did not leave, because I wished to say—"

The associate professor of admiralty in the department of law of the University of Virginia hesitated and was lost. Miss Osborne's eyes were brown, with that hint of bronze, in certain lights, that is the distinctive possession of the blessed. Health and spirit spoke in her bright color. She was tall and straight, and there was something militant in her figure as she faced Griswold.

"I beg to say, Miss Osborne, that if there is any way in which I can serve you, my time is wholly at your disposal."

"I thank you. I fear that you have already given yourself too much trouble in stopping here. My father will wish to thank you on his return."

Her lips trembled, and tears were bright in her eyes. Then she regained control of herself.

"Mr. Griswold, I have no claim whatever on your kindness, but I am in very great distress. I don't see just where I can turn for aid to any one I know. But you as a stranger may be able to help me—if it isn't asking too much—but then I know it is asking too much!"

"Anything, anything whatever," urged Griswold kindly.

"Mr. Bosworth, the attorney-general, warns me that if my father does not use the power of the state to capture this outlaw Appleweight, the results will be disastrous. He says my father must act immediately. He demanded his address, and, and—I gave it to him."

"But you must remember, Miss Osborne, that the attorney-general probably knows the intricacies of this case. He must have every reason for upholding your father; in fact, it's his sworn duty to advise him in such matters as this."

"There's another side to that, Mr. Griswold," and the girl's color deepened; but she smiled and went on. It was quite evident that she was animated now by some purpose, and that she was resolved to avail herself of Griswold's proffered aid. "I have my own reasons for doubting Mr. Bosworth's motives; and I resent his assumption that my father is not doing his full duty. No one can speak to me of my father in that way—no one!"

"Certainly not, Miss Osborne!"

"This whole matter must be kept as quiet as possible. I can appeal to no one here without the risk of newspaper publicity which would do my father very great injury. But if it is not altogether too great a favor, Mr. Griswold, may I ask that you remain here until to-night—until my father returns? His secretary has been ill and is away from town. The other clerks I sent away on purpose this morning. Father had left his office keys at home, and I came in to see if I could find the papers in the Appleweight case. They are there, and on the top of the packet is a requisition on the governor of North Carolina for Appleweight's return."

"Signed?"

"Signed. I'm sure he had only deferred acting in the case until his return, and he should have been back to-day."

"But of course he will be back; it is inconceivable that he should ignore, much less evade, a duty as plain as this—the governor of a state—it is preposterous! His business in Atlanta accounts for his absence. Governor Osborne undoubtedly knows what he is about."

"My father is not in Atlanta, Mr. Griswold. He is not at the Peach Tree Club, and has not been. I have not the slightest idea where my father is!"

The echoing whistle of the departing Virginia express reached them faintly as they stood facing each other before the open window in the governor's reception-room.