The Lieutenant-Governor Part 7

A majority of the men went directly to a hall in the neighborhood where McGrath had called a ma.s.s-meeting for half-past twelve. A minority of them crowded into the saloons of the vicinity, where they pounded on the bars, and filled the close, smoke-grayed air with heated discussion.

Several of the discharged hands were in evidence, each surrounded by an attentive group, and expounding more or less inflammatory views. The women gathered in gossiping throngs on the sidewalks, laughing, and pulling each other about by the arms. The boys played ball and leap-frog in the streets, shouting, and whistling through their fingers. In brief, the great strike was on, but, for the time being, it was masquerading in the guise of a public holiday.

At one o'clock the whistle blew again, and a thousand voices whooped a derisive accompaniment, but no one of the throng in the streets made a move toward the mills. Half an hour later, watchmen swung to and bolted the gates, and, issuing presently from a small side entrance, in company, were received with cheers, handshakes, and slaps upon the back.

Then the crowd gradually thinned,--many going to the already well-filled hall where McGrath was delivering an address, and others to their homes,--and a silence descended upon the neighborhood, broken only by the voices of the men about the saloon doorways.

At two, Peter Rathbawne, attended by his private secretary, came out of the side entrance and walked slowly away in the direction of his home.

He held his head high, and his eyes straight to the front, and paid no attention to the respectful greetings of those of the strikers who saluted him, touching their hats. There were many among them whose hearts sank at this att.i.tude in a man who had made it his boast that he knew every hand in his mills by sight, and who, in the past, had had a nod or a friendly word for each and all of them. For the first time a premonition settled upon them of what this strike, which had been welcomed princ.i.p.ally for novelty's sake, might mean. It was the first the Rathbawne Mills had ever known. Some of those who saw the face of Peter Rathbawne that afternoon were already hoping that it might be the last.

The Lieutenant-Governor returned to his apartment for lunch. Cavendish was still sleeping as he had left him, with a stalwart negro porter, summoned from the Capitol by telephone early that morning, watching in a chair. Under Barclay's orders, a carpenter had already removed the splintered door of the wine-closet, and an upholsterer had replaced it by a slender bra.s.s rod from which swung a velvet curtain. With his own hands the Lieutenant-Governor had taken away the fallen bottle, mopped up the pool of absinthe, and put the room to rights. Now he dismissed the negro, took from his pocket a little box of strychnine tablets, obtained from his physician on his way from the Capitol, and, after a brief survey of his surroundings to see that all was in order, went over to the divan and shook the sleeping man by the shoulders.

"Come, lazy-bones!" he said, with a laugh. "You've slept over twelve hours. That will do--even for a nervous wreck."

Cavendish opened his swollen eyes slowly, looked at him, and then closed them again with a murmured "Oh, G.o.d!" which was like a groan.

To this the Lieutenant-Governor paid no heed. Pa.s.sing into the bathroom, he turned on the cold water in the tub, poured a half gla.s.s of vichy from a syphon, and then returned, carrying the tumbler in his hand.

Cavendish had raised himself on one elbow, and was looking stupidly about the room.

"Here you are," said Barclay cheerfully. "Stow this pill, and here's vichy to wash it down. Your bath's running. By the time you've had it, there'll be some clothes ready for you."

Cavendish gulped down the tablet, and sat upright.

"Last night"--he faltered.

For the first time in his life, the Lieutenant-Governor called him by his first name.

"Last night, Spencer," he said, looking him fairly in the eye, "belongs to the past, and is taboo. I won't hear a word about it. This is to-day.

Get up, and we'll set about putting wrong right. You're a man again.

Don't forget that. And I'm your friend. Don't forget that, either."

His hand rested for an instant on the other's shoulder with a firm pressure, and then he pa.s.sed into his bedroom and shut the door.

They had lunch together in the dining-room of the "Rockingham," and then went up again to Barclay's rooms. At the door, Cavendish came to a halt.

"I can't stand this," he said.

"You'll have to," replied the Lieutenant-Governor, "so shut up!"

"You've made a change," said Cavendish obstinately, pointing to the curtained cupboard.

Barclay's eyes did not follow the gesture.

"So have you!" he answered. "Now, look here. There are twenty dollars in the waistcoat of that suit, and a letter to Payson of the 'Kenton City Sentinel.' Go down and see him this afternoon, and I think he'll give you a job at reporting, which will fix you up for the present. In another pocket you'll find a box, with three tablets like the one you had before lunch. Take one of them every two hours. In still another pocket there's a key to these rooms. I'm going to be busy till about ten o'clock, so you'll have to s.h.i.+ft for yourself. Make yourself at home, and if you're awake I'll see you when I come in."

Taking him suddenly by the shoulders, he twisted him about, facing the chimney piece, on which stood a photograph of Natalie Rathbawne, smiling out of a silver frame.

"I'll leave you to talk it out with her," he added simply.

In the hall, as he pa.s.sed out, he caught a reflection of Cavendish in a mirror. His hands were resting on the mantel-edge, and he was leaning forward with his haggard face close to the photograph. Barclay looked at his watch.

"Two o'clock," he said to himself, "and all's well!"

VII

THE MIRAGE OF POWER

Barclay was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration such as he had not known for many weeks, as he swung into Bradbury Avenue late that afternoon on his way to the Rathbawne residence. The duties of the day had been inordinately petty and vexatious, but he had dispatched them one and all with something approaching enthusiasm,--a touch of the old Quixotic energy with which he had taken office. The morning conversation in Governor Abbott's room had braced and toned him. He forgot its inauspicious opening, and even his distress at the attempt to force him into the position of mediator between Peter Rathbawne and the Union, in the solid satisfaction of having been able to speak his mind to McGrath, and call that worthy a blackguard to his face. He was a man who despised a quarrel, but, for its own sake, loved a square, hard fight.

Back, however, of this somewhat inadequate excuse for cheerfulness lay the Governor's a.s.surance that in the matter of the strike his lieutenant was to have free rein. It was the first time since the beginning of their official a.s.sociation that Elijah Abbott had placed an actual responsibility in Barclay's hands. A corner-stone laying, a banquet here and there, the opening of a trolley line, or a library, or a sewer,--these were the major calls upon the Lieutenant-Governor's time.

The main current of routine was a hopeless monotony of official correspondence, investigations, statistics, reading and reporting on the interminable and flatulent maunderings of the Legislature,--duties heart-breaking in their desperate tedium and maddening inutility.

But at last here was responsibility, actual and deeply significant, calling for the exercise of tact, courage, and immutable firmness. The particular task was not one which he would have coveted, and yet he welcomed it. Anything,--anything to a.s.suage in him that sense of inept.i.tude, of being ignored, a t.i.tled nonent.i.ty!

With this vast lightening of spirit came, not only grat.i.tude, but a sense of lenity toward Governor Abbott. He encouraged himself to believe that the note between them had been one of misunderstanding merely. It might not be too late, after all! Gradually, he began to form a mental picture of a growing sympathy and affiliation between them, large with possibilities of improvement for Alleghenia. As he turned into the Rathbawnes' gateway, he could have laughed aloud for very lightness of heart. His optimism was not even impaired by running, in the hall, full against Mrs. Rathbawne.

"_Good_ gracious! Lieutenant-Governor, is that you?"

Repeated and earnest endeavor on Barclay's part had never dissuaded her from this form of address.

"What _is_ the use of _having_ such a t.i.tle, if one can't _call_ you by it?" she would say, when he remonstrated. "Do _you_ suppose that, if Natalie were engaged to a _prince_, I should be going around, calling him Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry, instead of 'Your Royal _Highness_'? You ought to be _proud_ of your t.i.tle. _I_ am!"

"But, Mrs. Rathbawne"--

"Now, _please_ not, Lieutenant-Governor, _please_ not! I like it best that way."

The north wind was attentive and amenable to the voice of persuasion, in comparison with Josephine Rathbawne.

"Of _course_ you know the _strike_ is on!" she continued now, without waiting for an a.s.surance from Barclay that he was indeed none other than himself. "Isn't it _awful_? I expect to hear the roar of the mob at _any_ moment! Come into the drawing-room. Natalie _was_ there, only _half_ an hour ago."

And she swept through the doorway, Barclay following.

"Natalie," she began, "here's the Lieu--why, _Dorothy_! I took you for Natalie. And--er--oh! Why, Mr.--er--how de do? I didn't see you at first. Oh, _do_ turn on the switch, my dear. The place is as black as pitch."

The electric light, flooding the room, revealed young Nisbet, one vast, consuming blush, and Dorothy, with a dangerous light in her eyes, and her lips tightly compressed. It was plain that Mrs. Rathbawne had fallen foul of Dan Cupid's machinery once more!

"Why, Mr. _Nisbet_! I thought you were in New York."

"I had a telegram this morning, calling the date off," said young Nisbet in pitiable confusion; "that is, I didn't have to go, you know. So I just fell in here to explain. I thought some of you might spot me on the street, and after I'd said"--

He began to flounder hopelessly, and cast a glance of mute appeal at Dorothy. That facile young lady marched directly into the breach.

"If you and John are looking for Natalie," she said, "you'll find her in the library with Dad. How do you do, John?"

"Pretty well, I thank you, Flibbertigibbet. It is really your husband whom I came to see, Mrs. Rathbawne. I've a little business with him, so, for the moment, I'll have to give Natalie the cold shoulder."