11 The Great Snow

In the capital, there was much talk of both Guthrie and the Senator. Guthrie in his world was a personage, and held an established position in public affairs; when he went away, one always felt that something was gone. It was known that he had departed on a moment’s notice with Mr. Pike, to watch the course of a mountain feud that might involve larger interests, and the people were curious to hear the result.

Then a telegraphic message came to the Governor from Guthrie, dated at Sayville and saying, “The leader of the Dilgers is in jail here, and will be lynched unless the militia come at once.” Then the Times came down from the metropolis with a full account of the sensational events at Briarton, and the little capital was stirred by the news.

The Governor was at his house when the despatch was handed to him. After he read it, his face was very grave, as he had the utmost confidence in Guthrie, and knew that he would not send such a message unless there was full need of it. Guthrie was the last man to assume the responsibilities of an official when he was only a private person.

He went into the room where his wife sat with Clarice Ransome and Mary Pelham before a great fire of hickory logs, and, when he saw them, a smile lighted up the young Governor’s somewhat worn face—there had been much to worry him that winter, and his hours of sleep were short and troubled. But he was not blind, and the presence, in his house, of three young and beautiful women, one of whom was his wife, was always a source of cheerfulness.

“You have a telegram,” said Lucy, when she saw the slip of yellow paper in his hands. “Who wants an appointment?”

“Nobody; it’s a request for something bigger this time.”

“And can you give it?” asked Clarice.

“Oh! yes, because in this case I can be an Indian-giver, and take the gift back before long. It’s from Mr. William Guthrie, and he wants a whole company of militia.”

Clarice had been paying only vague attention before, but now she looked up with keen interest. Then she flushed slightly, and looked into the fire again. In what way did William Guthrie and his deeds concern her? But she thought it necessary to say something.

“Then they have been fighting again up there in the mountains?” she asked.

“I fancy so,” replied the Governor. “At least this despatch from Guthrie says that the leader of the Dilgers is in jail at Briarton, and will certainly be lynched unless I send a company of militia to hold the place.”

“There must have been fighting,” said Clarice. She felt a thrill of mingled excitement and apprehension. She had been reading a letter from Raoul that morning—a letter full of pretty phrases and the lighter gossip of Old World capitals, and again she made the involuntary contrast. She could not conceive of Raoul up there among the peaks with those wild mountaineers, risking his life perhaps. Raoul always dressed beautifully, and his manners were irreproachable, which facts appealed to her, but—she liked masculinity in men. She was troubled by her thoughts, and again she feared that she was unjust to Raoul, the man whom she was to marry.

“Why so solemn, Miss Ransome?” asked the Governor, noticing her grave face.

She shook her head, as if she would not answer that question, and smiled.

“I think you are trying to get advice as to what to do,” she said, “and I refuse to give it. You are Governor, and you must carry the burdens of the office.”

“Oh, I don’t need any advice in this matter!” said Paul in the same vein, and then changing to an earnest manner: “I have complete confidence in Guthrie; as a matter of fact, the county officials should apply for the militia company, but, within half an hour, I shall order the company at Waterford, which is just at the edge of the mountains, to proceed in all haste to Briarton and hold the jail there. I sincerely hope that nothing will happen to Guthrie.”

He looked obliquely but keenly at Clarice when he spoke of Guthrie, but she, gazing into the fire again, seemed not to notice, and the faint deepening of the red in her cheeks might easily be the reflection of its blaze.

But Lucy spoke.

“I do not believe that anything will happen to Mr. Guthrie,” she said. “If anybody can take care of himself, it is he.”

The Governor went to the window, and looked anxiously at the sweep of hills about the capital.

“I fear ugly weather,” he said. “Look at those dirty brown clouds—they are stuffed so full of snow that they seem ready to burst this very minute!”

It had been snowing lightly that morning, and afterward the sun shone for a while; but, as the Governor spoke the clouds opened again, and the great heavy flakes began to fall. In a few moments, the air was filled with the dropping shower.

This State is called southern by those in the North, but it is to be remembered that it is called northern by those farther south, and it knows long and cold winters. This was famous as the “winter of the great snow.” It fell throughout the whole length of the State from east to west nearly four hundred miles, and, even in the low and level country, three feet of it lay, while, in the mountains, it was heaped to incredible depths.

At eleven o’clock that night, the Governor received from the captain of the Waterford militia which had reached Sayville, a telegram stating the inability of his men to penetrate even a mile from the railroad station among the peaks and ridges. “All the mountains are wrapped in a vast mass of whirling snow,” the telegram said. In fact, at that moment, the captain, who was brave from head to toe, was standing at the door of the lonely little railroad station, trying to pierce the darkness with his eyes. Gusts of snow drove into his face, and the whirlwinds enveloped him.

“I’m afraid we can’t start for Briarton now,” he said.

“No, nor to-morrow, nor the next day, nor next week!” the station-master said, and he was right. When another week had passed, the Waterford company was still in Sayville, vainly seeking to pierce a way through the gigantic snow-drifts. And out of Briarton, now as good as a thousand miles away, not a word came. Guthrie’s messenger was there in Sayville with the militia company, and he, too, trained mountaineer though he was, could not break a path to his home. After the second day, the capital itself was isolated for a while. The snow-drifts heaped up on the railroad tracks and the trains from either East or West were unable to come. Then the telegraph wires broke under the gathering weight, and the great world slipped away from them. The capital, rimmed in by its white hills, was their own little world now, disconnected from all else; they were as ignorant of what was passing in the metropolis of the State as they were of the domestic affairs of the Siberians!

To Clarice, it had all the charm of novelty and isolation, without danger or discomfort. They were as snug there in the little capital as they could be in New York or Paris; they had all the comforts and the luxuries, too, save the single one of knowing what the rest of the world was doing, and, for the time, Clarice even enjoyed that lack.

The great fires still blazed in the wide fireplaces of the Governor’s house, and the brightness within was merely accentuated by the ramparts of snow without. Senators and members of the House still went to the Capitol at the regular hours, and made, or tried to make, laws for a people shut out from them by a snowy wall. Jimmy Warfield said it was the most glorious bit of freedom that he had enjoyed in all his public career; he did not hear a single complaint from his constituents.

But the trial of Carton moved on to its crisis. Mr. Harlow was ever in the background, active but shadowy and evasive, and no man could put his hand on him. Carton’s friends sought in every way to delay action, but their efforts were unavailing, for the hidden hand was pushing on the majority. The chairman of the prosecuting committee in the appointed five days laid the charge before the Senate, which, according to the Constitution, resolved itself into a trial court, and set a time for the beginning of the evidence.

Jimmy Warfield made a quiet but most dexterous canvass of the Senate, and, to his grief, he found that a majority of the Democrats were certainly against Carton. What the Republicans would do was a mystery—a mystery even to themselves, and all the deeper because of the absence of their leader, Senator Pike. They floundered about, headless; and the eyes of both sides strained vainly toward that tiny hamlet now buried in the depths of the snow-clad mountains.

But Guthrie was missed most of all by Carton and his friends. They had not appreciated until now what a power he was on their side, nor realised the full extent of his quiet strength, his unfailing tact, and the calm optimism which made others unconsciously rely upon him. He was, so Jimmy Warfield now openly said, the real leader of the Carton defence, and it went lamely without him. But Clarice felt a sudden resentment against Guthrie because she heard so much about him even in his absence. It seemed to her that people might find some other subject; there were other attractive young men in the world, and again she enumerated to herself Raoul’s good qualities.

The trains began to run again, the telegraph wires were restored, and the capital resumed its connection with the outside world, fresher and more piquant now because of the lost days. But there was no word from Briarton, as the snow yet lay impassable in the mountains.

An important arrival in the capital just after the trains resumed running was that of Mrs. Ransome, the imperious mother of Clarice. Mrs. Ransome, with an inborn pride, always asserted herself, and she had good cause for her sense of importance. John Ransome, her husband, was a great merchant and a millionaire in the metropolis of a State that has few millionaires, and consequently he was a figure in his home city. His big white stone house on the “Avenue” with the wide, green lawns about it was pointed out to all visitors, and so was Mrs. Ransome, if she happened at the moment to be alighting importantly from her carriage or entering it.

Mr. and Mrs. Ransome early arrived at a satisfactory division of work: Mr. Ransome made the money, and Mrs. Ransome spent it in the proper manner. It was said that, at their first grand reception, when they began their great rise in the world and moved into their big house, now more than fifteen years ago, some one in the course of the evening asked for Mr. Ransome, and he could be found nowhere in the crowded rooms. Discreet servants quietly sent by the capable Mrs. Ransome to seek him at last discovered him in the cellar, enjoying a quiet game of poker with three cronies who had crossed the plains with him in the early sixties when they were all boys. All four were in their shirt-sleeves, and occasionally they took a modest drink of beer when there was champagne to waste above stairs. He stubbornly refused, too, to put on his coat again and reappear in the parlours until the game was finished and the stakes had been disposed of in a satisfactory manner.

Mr. Ransome, though in the main tractable, had some other obstinate and disagreeable qualities. He would not cast off the friends of his youth who had not prospered as much as he. Occasionally, he brought them to dinner or to evening receptions to meet society for which, as Mrs. Ransome truly said, they were obviously unfit. He had been known to commit the hideous solecism of looking bored in the presence of brilliant social stars, and once or twice, in unguarded moments, he had spoken contemptuously of young men who were known to be brilliant makers of amusement in society. As Mrs. Ransome once said, when moved beyond endurance by such a faux pas of her husband, he had not risen in some respects to his station, Yet he was, on the whole, a good man and highly esteemed in commercial circles and the business life of the city. Nor did Mr. Ransome interfere greatly with the training of their daughter and only child. He made some mild objections when Clarice was sent to Paris to get a real education—he always had a healthy indifference for foreign countries, the United States being good enough for him—but they were soon overruled by his more forcible spouse. When, the education being finished, Mrs. Ransome went over for her daughter, and remained to spend a season in the “world’s capital,” Mr. Ransome bore her absence with Christian resignation. He exhibited a childish joy when his daughter came home again, but he was strangely silent when his wife informed him of Clarice’s brilliant engagement to Count Raoul d’Estournelle, whose lineage dated to the Crusades and beyond; and when she intimated with pride that it was more than half due to her own adroit management, Mr. Ransome’s sole and somewhat disconcerting comment was, “I wonder if he will ever learn to play poker with me.” But he was very tender to his daughter.

Mrs. Ransome, with some misgivings, had allowed Clarice to visit the Governor’s wife; it seemed to her that it would be a period of eclipse, for the capital she knew from accounts to be a stuffy little place, almost out of the world, and she had proudly told her friends in Paris that she had never visited it, although she had lived all her life only a hundred miles away. But the Governor’s wife was quite a personage, and undeniably, the name sounded well. She could speak of it, and so, yielding to Clarice’s urgent entreaty, she let her go.

Now Mrs. Ransome was becoming dissatisfied, and, if the truth must be told, she felt a faint alarm. Certain reports in regard to Clarice were coming from the capital; she was showing a remarkable interest in the people by whom she was surrounded and in the events occurring about her. She rarely spoke of Raoul, it was said, and she had shown an undue partiality for the society of an obscure young man, a mere writer for the newspapers. This in itself had no very formidable sound, but Mrs. Ransome was a careful and far-seeing woman, and she took action. She would have recalled Clarice, but the set term of her visit was not reached, and such a course would have been too awkward for a skilful diplomatist like Mrs. Ransome; so she came in person to the capital in order to survey the field.

Mrs. Ransome did not advise Clarice of her coming, but took apartments at the big hotel where everybody stopped, and in the afternoon drove to the Governor’s house. Clarice saw the carriage at the door, and glancing out recognised the portly form of her mother who had just alighted. She was surprised—pleased, yet not wholly pleased, but she greeted Mrs. Ransome warmly, and the introductions were duly made.

Mrs. Ransome put on her most important manner. Clarice’s friends were young women, but little older than Clarice herself, and her own great knowledge of the world gave her a conscious superiority. She was surprised, too, to find the Governor’s wife so very youthful and so gentle in manner—scarcely adequate to her place, it seemed to Mrs. Ransome, and her manner toward Mrs. Hastings became somewhat patronising. Clarice felt a growing irritation as the call proceeded, an annoyance not decreased when her mother brought Raoul into the talk in a rather obtrusive manner.

Mrs. Ransome not only introduced the subject of Raoul, but also dwelt upon it. The young nobleman was such a model, all the gifts were his! He was so graceful, so gallant, and of such an old family! The d’Estournelles were in the Crusades, and they were related to half the great people of Europe. And Raoul was coming over in May! They should see him then. Oh, such a presence and such manners!

Clarice listened with reddening cheeks, but she did not have anything to say. She was glad when her mother declined the invitation to stay at the Governor’s house during her visit to the capital.

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Ransome; “I could not break in upon this circle of young people! Like likes like, you know, and I am here for only two or three days.”

Clarice drove back with her mother to the hotel. Mrs. Ransome settled herself comfortably on the carriage cushion, and said to her daughter,

“Nice people, my dear, but provincial very provincial!”

Clarice flushed indignantly.

“Mother,” she said, “they are not provincial, I like them very much, and—and—”

She hesitated.

“Well, what is it?”

“I wish you would not try to patronise them, mother. They saw it as I did—and mother, they cannot be patronised!”

Clarice was flushed and embarrassed, but she was glad that she had spoken. Mrs. Ransome fixed her daughter with a cold eye.

“Clarice,” she said, “you have inherited some of your father’s traits. John Ransome is a good man—none knows it better than I, his wife, and none is readier to proclaim it; but he has never been fully conscious of his large position in the world. I have tried my best to awaken in him this sense of responsibility, but I have failed. I thought that I had educated you better, and I was proud of my work, but I begin to fear that I have failed in part.”

Clarice rarely said anything when her mother adopted her majestic manner, but she hid a smile. Her father was very dear to her, and, if she had inherited any of his traits, it was cause for gladness and pride. Mrs. Ransome resented the silence of her daughter, and came to the point rather abruptly.

“Clarice,” she said, “I have heard of a certain young man named Guthrie, a newspaper writer, I believe, who, I am told, is a somewhat conspicuous figure in the set in which you move here. Where is he now?”

The colour deepened in Clarice’s cheeks, and then she was angry, but, in a moment, the feeling was gone. A slight sense of amusement took its place. She had plenty of courage.

“Yes,” she replied, “Mr. Guthrie is a favourite among the people whom I know here, but nothing has been heard of him for a week.”

“Why, what do you mean? Has the man absconded?”

“Oh, no! He is merely lost.”

“Lost?”

“Yes, lost under the snow.”

“Please explain your meaning,” said Mrs. Ransome with some haughtiness.

“Just before the great snow, mother, he went up into the fastnesses of the mountains with Mr. Pike, a State senator, to help fight in a feud.”

“To help fight in a feud? What a shocking thing! Is the man a desperado?”

“Oh, no, not at all! Mr. Guthrie merely went along to see and to report the news. Mr. Pike is to do the fighting. But the snow came, and they cannot get out of the mountains or send any word. So we do not know what has happened, and they tell me it may be another week before we can hear.”

Mrs. Ransome felt relief. Providence had kindly taken this objectionable Guthrie out of the way for a while at least, but she did not relax her sternness.

“Clarice,” she said, “I am sorry that I ever let you come here. You seem to have become acquainted with such queer people. Do you know this creature, this savage—the Senator who has gone up in the mountains to fight?”

“Oh, yes, mother, I know Mr. Pike well, and he is such a noble man! You could not help liking him. So earnest, so honest, and so open.”

Mrs. Ransome gazed at her daughter in astonishment.

“Clarice,” she said, “I am amazed at you! Do you tell me that you like a rude, wild mountaineer, that you have been meeting him in society here? What a singular condition of affairs!”

“But, mother, it is your State as well as mine—mountaineers and all.”

Mrs. Ransome did not reply to this shaft, as they had conveniently reached the hotel, but she took her daughter with her to her rooms, and gave her much good advice, to which Clarice listened dutifully.

Mrs. Ransome speedily made the acquaintance of the Pelhams, who were at the same hotel, and she liked the General better than anybody else whom she met in the capital. He had a fine, large manner that impressed her, and in a life, the most of which had been spent in this State of her birth, she could not help having heard of the Pelhams. Moreover, they had many feelings in common concerning the state of certain affairs in the little city, and this was another tie to bind them. Of Mrs. Pelham herself she took little notice, considering her an insignificant little thing not worthy of much attention.

Mrs. Ransome had the habit of writing letters to her husband about the current affairs in which she was interested. She knew that Mr. Ransome often failed to appreciate these vital issues, and she mourned the fact, but habit was strong, and she must have some one to whom to pour out her soul. On the second day after her arrival in the capital, she wrote to him, and again on the day following.

Mr. Ransome, as she had truly foreseen, was not deeply impressed by her news, but his attention was fixed when he came to the name of his daughter Clarice. Mrs. Ransome seemed to be having trouble with Clarice; the girl, for some singular reason, had developed a streak of quiet stubbornness. Apparently, she had been influenced by surroundings of which her mother did not approve; there were many queer people at the capital—government at best was a hodgepodge anywhere—and, the place itself being so small, one could not well avoid them. Clarice, she feared, was developing tastes that were not progressive. She would bring her daughter away at once, but she did not wish to be abrupt, nor did she care to increase the spirit of stubbornness that Clarice was developing in the most unexpected and unpleasant manner.

John Ransome smiled when he came to the end of this letter, and then he read it all over again. He was pleased—why, he was hardly able to tell himself. He loved his wife, and he loved his daughter, and, apparently, there was nothing in a prospective conflict between the two to rejoice the heart of a husband and father; but such were his feelings nevertheless. He wrote to his wife a rather longer letter than usual, suggesting that Clarice be allowed to stay the set time of her visit.

Events now began to move more rapidly at the capital. It was noticed that Caius Marcellus Harlow never left the place. Formerly, he would disappear for brief seasons, but now he was constant in his attendance. Coincidently, the case against Carton made swift progress; the Senate was already taking evidence, and Mr. Pursley was a leading prosecutor; he disclaimed all personal hostility; he professed rather to like Carton, and his attitude was that of a man, astonished and grieved by a friend’s dereliction—a manner very potent with the weaker members of the Legislature, and also with that larger body of the public which is ready to believe any evil of those in office.

Templeton, too, suddenly began to appear as an enemy of Carton and a defender of the public virtue. His defalcation having been paid back to the Government by others, nothing more was heard about it, and he bloomed anew—or rather, he had never ceased to bloom. He could tell things, if he would, it was said, and there was talk of his taking the witness stand, but, so far, he had not been called by the Senate.

Carton grew colder and haughtier than ever. All questions put by the Senate he answered readily, but in the most indifferent manner; his attitude seemed to imply that the opinion of the Senate was not worth anything, and Jimmy Warfield, who knew human nature, believed in his heart that two or three senators would vote against him solely on that account.

Warfield began now to lament the absence of Senator Pike. The snow was a great misfortune. He did not know how Mr. Pike would have voted; he might be against Carton, but it was quite certain that without him Carton was lost. The headless Republican body in the Senate showed signs of drifting with the majority.

The only rock that the prosecution struck was the unexpected action of Senator Cobb, who, it was well known, was much opposed to Carton. He arose in the Senate one cold morning, and announced that he was opposed to such rapid action. A most influential member of the Senate was not present, he said, and could not attend for some days. A verdict in his absence would be snap judgment. The people should always be for fair play; if the presence of Senator Pike meant help for an accused man, then the accused man should have it. As for himself, he would fight any movement to bring the matter to a vote until the missing senator had returned.

There was a sudden burst of applause from the gallery when Senator Cobb sat down, but the prosecution, nevertheless, pushed the matter with the utmost vigour. But Senator Cobb was true to his word, and, with a parliamentary skill and persistence that aroused the admiration of everybody, he began to fight for delay. In the Senate was the curious spectacle of an influential member who opposed Carton fighting for him—that is, to give him more time.

Thus affairs stood at the capital, and the snow still lay in the mountains.

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