15 The Loneliness of Greatness

I was chosen the Governor of the State in November, and I spent the interval between that time and my inauguration as quietly as my new position would let me. It is not usual for people to winter in the mountains, but I passed most of November and December of that year among the peaks, and I saw beauty and majesty that the summer traveller always misses. I saw ridges, peaks and valleys all in snow, the whole world a dazzling white. Then the wilderness without only deepened the comfort within, and it was good to live.

I was there when the letter from Alicia reached me, directed to the nearest station on the railroad, but a full five days in the coming. I had expected that she would write, but I did not know how long she would wait. It was brief. She congratulated me, but she said she had never felt a doubt of my election, and she expected for me a career of unbroken success. She was going on a visit in January to relatives in New York and Philadelphia, but she might be in Frankfort in the spring; the Whartons were asking her to come and Mrs. Guthrie also might be there.

She had not intended that it should be so, but the tone of the letter was sad, and I felt a great melancholy. The world can never be so hard to men as it often is to women. I was sitting alone before the great fire when the letter came. I tore it into bits which I tossed one by one into the coals where they disappeared like my own hopes. I had achieved a great ambition, but now all things felt hollow and empty. I was alone, truly alone; friends I had, relatives I had, and the applause of the multitude, but not the woman, the one woman who could make my life complete. It has been said with wisdom that it is not good for man to live alone and in this moment of desolation I felt all its truth.

I rose, put on my overcoat, and went forth into the snow, walking furiously over the slopes and through the valleys. I did not return until twilight was coming down on the mountains, and then, my mood of despair having passed, I was able to turn a cheerful face to my comrades.

I was home for the Christmas holidays, and when the time came I was duly inaugurated at Frankfort amid a great concourse, and with much cheering and enthusiasm. Uncle Paul and Aunt Jane came for the ceremonies, but they stayed only a day, sleeping once in the Governor’s mansion.

“No,” they said with one voice, when I urged them to remain with me. “This is for you Harry, not for us. You are needed here, and we are needed back yonder.”

I went with them to the train, and when its last smoke was seen among the hills I felt more alone than ever. But Seth I kept with me as a valet and sort of friend. I must have some one who stood in a personal relation to me. The Governor’s mansion was now the home of a bachelor, but the Whartons helped me in a social way, and the old judge who was still a source of strength to me with suggestion and advice became my most intimate friend in Frankfort.

I was bound by few promises and I began my administration in accordance with the resolution, taken in the mountains and before. I determined that I would not be betrayed into anger and quarrels and I kept my own counsel. I appointed whomsoever I pleased to the appointive offices, and I let the heathen rage. I had perceived long since that honesty was the best policy. Hence I take no credit to myself when I say that the State began to call me a good Governor.

Spring gave her first faint signs and Mrs. Guthrie and Alicia arrived on a visit to the Whartons. I had remembered Harrison’s statement that she might come, but I had scarcely believed it until Judge Wharton’s announcement that she was due in two days. When the day came I heard that they had come with it, but I naturally stayed away from the Wharton home until such time as I could call without causing remark. I did not wish, to involve Alicia in any gossip. If it was well for me to be cautious before I should be doubly so now, as a Governor, however little his own personal merit may be, is watched and whatever he does is reported to all his world.

Thus it came about that I first met her elsewhere and by chance. I had kept up my habit of solitary walks on the hills both for the sake of exercise and for the mental concentration that it permitted. Nor was I often disturbed when I chose to ramble thus alone; Frankfort, with a century of tradition, considers it her duty always to let the Governor go his way unmolested. So on an afternoon when the spring was well advanced I left the Executive office and turned toward the hills. But I did not pursue any direct course, passing, as I strolled along, by the walls of the penitentiary which often had for me a sombre attraction, almost like that of an old and unforgotten, if not pleasant, home.

The slopes were deep in green and the road was deserted. A hundred yards further on it turned and a little distance ahead of me I saw a woman walking. I should have known the figure anywhere. Her slightest movement or trick of gesture was photographed on my mind, and my heart beat at boyish speed. It had been many months since I had seen Alicia, she was still separated from me by a wall that could not be climbed, but her place in my heart was as large as ever and would never be diminished.

I increased my speed and I think she heard my footsteps behind her, because she turned and the red suddenly flushed her white still face, then retreating, left it as white and calm as ever. She was in better command of herself than I—perhaps she had less to crush down, and stopping she held out her hand.

“I have been expecting that you would come to see us,” she said, “but I forgot your new dignity.”

“It was not that,” I replied eagerly, “I would have come before you were here an hour, but—but.”

I stopped, embarrassed, and she smiled a little sadly.

“I know,” she said frankly. “You dreaded the gossip—why should I not speak of it—and you were afraid that you might involve my name. Do you know, Harry, I have got well beyond that point. I care very little what they may say about me now.”

“But I care, and I care greatly,” I said. “I could not bear it for you to be attacked and that I should be the cause of it.”

I had held her hand so long that the red came back to her cheeks, and then, seeing it, I dropped the hand in a way that was almost brusque. But in the manner of woman she became quite composed and said:

“You are going for your walk. I have heard how you tread the hills. I am walking for pleasure. We will go together.”

Had she not spoken so I should have turned into another path and left her, perhaps I ought to have done so even then, but I did not have the courage. I noticed moreover a change in Alicia, spiritual rather than mental; she was clothed about with a wonderful new faith and sweetness, almost virginal, that turned blows like armor, and I believe it was her freedom from the presence of Grey. Her husband he was and would be, but only in name now, and she was a girl, a girl to me in her tender curves and the maidenly purity of her face.

It was the Alicia of my childhood, the Alicia who was my playmate, and I drew a sudden deep breath of joy at the knowledge.

She heard me and turned her calm glance upon me.

“What makes you look so pleased?” she asked.

“You,” I replied.

“No, it is not I.”

“But it is something about you. It is because you are a new Alicia, or rather the early one come back again, the little Alicia Warren with whom the little Harry Clarke played at school.”

My reply gave her pleasure. I saw it in the brightening of her eyes, and the sudden proud uplift of her head.

“I wonder if you have not told the truth,” she said thoughtfully, “I do feel as if I were a young girl again, and the past winter has been the least unhappy that I have had in five or six years. I think, too, Harry, that your success has helped. I feel as if you were finding repayment.”

“I have been overpaid already,” I said, “and I want to tell you, Alicia, that a little while ago I was afraid to see you, but I have no such fear now.”

“You were afraid because I am another man’s wife and shall remain so,” she said quite calmly. “I do not hesitate to speak to you of him. I bear his name now, and that is all. I have not seen him in three months, and he will not dare to come here and annoy me.”

I saw clearly that she no longer had the slightest fear of Grey, and it gave me a keen sensation of pleasure. We walked on in silence and together up the slope. No one met us. We had the shady road to ourselves, and the foliage was now so deep that all the little city was shut from our view. We were just we two in a world of the deepest green, with a sky, low, dim and tender, overhanging us. The feeling of early youth came back again, but all a man’s emotions remained with me.

In the wilderness forms and artificialities are brushed away, the wild free air will not allow them and the primitive man and woman stand forth. I began now to feel as if Alicia were almost free and as if she were intended for me. I think she noticed my silence, but she did not interrupt it and walked on by my side, slender, white and virginal.

When she reached the crest of the hill she stopped and looked eastward, where the lovely Bluegrass region rolls away under a dim horizon.

“It is pleasant to be here,” she said.

“It is for me!” I exclaimed, “Oh, Alicia, if you were only here always with me!”

I think I was carried away by the intoxication of the moment—I plead no other excuse—and I seized her hand. She drew it away, but she did not reproach me by either word or look.

“We must not forget, either of us, that I am another man’s wife, and that I bear, another man’s name,” she said. “You love me, I know that, I am proud of it and the knowledge of it is the greatest thing I have. I love you too, I do not seek to hide it from you now. Often I think that in the beginning it was intended we should be man and wife, but some unlucky chance, some slip in the wheel of fate, changed it. It is past mending now, but, Harry, you and I can show the world that we are superior to it. It can be a meeting of the souls, but nothing else.”

It was the spiritual quality in her that spoke, and I was humbled, although as I have said there was nothing of reproach in word or tone. Women alone I believe—and but few of them—can feel a love that needs not marriage; perhaps it is higher and purer, but man cannot live upon it always.

“You are the Governor, and you must watch well your way,” she said in the utter calm of one who has now a complete victory over herself. “You would not drive me away from Frankfort I know, but I should have to go, if there were anything, even the slightest, which your enemies could use to assail your name.”

“I forgot myself, but it was for a moment only,” I said, “and always remember, Alicia, that while I have had repayment, and far more, you have had none. The world is hard on women.”

“I am not unhappy now,” she said. “Perhaps I should say that I am happy. I feel almost as if I were beginning life over again. I am, in a sense, free, as I never was before in my life.”

“Would that you were wholly free!” I exclaimed.

She passed it over without notice, and then we talked of lighter things. I could not fully share her spiritual exaltation, but I was uplifted. I have always felt that my love for Alicia Grey was the best part of me, and it was pure enough to make sacrifice, if not easy, at least possible.

We spoke no more of love, but in a way we were boy and girl together. I know an old line, I do not know who wrote it, “I’d rather be a shepherd boy upon the Grecian hills than reign a king in Hades,” and I felt that way the afternoon I met Alicia on the hills above Frankfort. We stood a long time on the crest, looking at the river, the ridges, and the rolling green country to the dim eastward. There was nothing in our manner but that of two comrades, or of two people who had met by chance in a walk. Yet I had never before felt quite so near to her or that she was quite so approachable. This new relationship of the spirit was not without its gain, it bred a quieter mind, we were united in the spirit, and strength came.

Fleecy white clouds sailed past us in a sky of silky blue, a lizard rattled the bark of a tree as he scuttled upward, a stray horseman passed, paying us little attention, and at last the red fire of the sun began to burn over the dim valley to the eastward. The breeze blew colder and Alicia shivered a little in her cloak.

“It is time for me to return,” she said. “You’ll see me to Judge Wharton’s, won’t you?”

“Gladly,” I replied, and we walked slowly down the hill, side by side. I had begun to share her feeling that criticism, any arrows of gossip levelled at her because we were seen together, must rebound harmless from the armor of her purity. It seemed to me that she had dismissed from her mind all question of earthly love, and while I remained a poor mortal who would have been glad to take her in my arms had I the right, I could regard her only with reverence, and borrow from her of her spiritual strength.

We reached the edge of the town, passing only an occasional person, some of whom knew me and some of whom did not. Those who knew me bowed and then looked curiously at the beautiful pale woman who walked beside me, but Alicia took no notice. In the town, of course, we met many acquaintances, but we continued together to the house of Judge Wharton.

The Judge himself, after the homely fashion of our little cities, answered the bell and when he beheld the two of us together, I saw him give us both a quick inquiring glance.

“Won’t you come in Governor,” he said. “The chill of the twilight is here and I’ve the finest fire in Frankfort. I want you to enjoy it for a few minutes.”

I saw through the open door the glow of the fire from the sitting room, as it fell across the floor of the hall, and I yielded. I accompanied the Judge to the sitting room while Alicia went upstairs. It was indeed a place redolent of comfort and peace, half sitting room, half library. A great bed of coals glowed in the wide fireplace and cast a warm, ruddy glow over the floor and the walls.

The Judge would not let me go in the few minutes only that I had expected to take. He was a good deal of a bibliophile and he had just secured a quaint old edition of Horace that he wished to show me. After that he must recite to me one or two of the odes in his sonorous Latin, and then Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Guthrie and Alicia came into the room.

They made no fuss over me, because I happened to be the chief official of the State, but treated me merely as a comrade who had come in at the usual time. There was no constraint, no excessive politeness, but an ease, a lightness like that of a well-ordered home, where everything moves with peace and harmony. It was like a broad band of light suddenly shooting across the darkness of my lonely life—and I basked in the glow.

“You must stay to dinner, Governor,” said Mrs. Wharton, and she did not need to ask a second time.

The French have a phrase en famille which we cannot adequately render, but it was thus that I dined at Judge Wharton’s and I felt how deeply pleasant it is to be in a house on terms of ease with cultivated women who are all that is implied in the old-fashioned use of the word “ladies.” I shed the cloak of officialdom. I was not embarrassed in the presence of Alicia, fearing that the world would misconstrue us both, but I was just one of the family, an older brother perhaps who had returned from a brief absence.

The Whartons and Mrs. Guthrie carried most of the table talk, Alicia and I joining in now and then with an occasional word, but my ease and lightness of spirits continued. After dinner we adjourned to the great library or sitting room where the ruddy light from the huge bed of coals still glowed over floors and walls, and continued our desultory conversation. I lingered two or three hours filled with the sense of home, and loath to give it up. It was past 11 o’clock when at last I forced myself to leave, and all Frankfort seemed to be in bed, when I walked through the lonely streets to the Governor’s mansion, which was my house, but scarcely my home. A sleepy servant admitted me and another equally sleepy turned up the lights in the little parlor where I often sat.

I too had an open fire and it too threw ruddy shadows on the floors and the walls, but the place seemed cold nevertheless. I drew up a chair before the fire and sat down. Then despite the fire I shivered. All about me reigned a deadly silence. The sleepy servants, the master home, had gone hastily to bed. Not the sound of a footstep, not the sound of a voice anywhere. I looked out of the window, and saw only a cold moonlight falling on cold walls, cold roofs and a cold earth. I turned back to the silence and desolation of my room. I was the Governor of the State, but I verily believe that at that moment I was the loneliest man in it.

I knew what I wanted. I wanted a wife, and I knew also that Alicia was not free and that I could never marry any other woman. The old thought of a divorce came to my mind, but it quickly passed, when I remembered the Alicia of the hills I had met that afternoon. I could not, even indirectly make any such suggestion to her, and with a sigh, I felt how empty at times was my life, although Governor of a great State before I was thirty.

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