18 An Old Cry Again

My return to the Capital was without event, our march over the mountains being attended throughout by good weather. Both Harrison and Connor were with the returning column. At one time I had had a malicious thought to assign Harrison to duty with the company that stayed behind, but I soon dismissed it as unworthy. However, I saw little of either him or Connor on the journey home, and, when I stopped off at Frankfort, they went on to Louisville.

I came back to the capital a different man, and what is more strange I knew of the change at the time. I suppose that a certain number of crises occur in the life of every one of us, and another had certainly arisen in mine. A large measure of the content that I had felt with myself and my career was gone. The past would come back. It had come with great vividness and force in the person of Elias Peabody who had known me, at the first glance, for what I was, and who had never taken me for anything else. Long after I was gone from the mountains his words “the longer you carry your burden, Charlie, the heavier it will grow” echoed in my ears, and I could see his burning eyes and earnest face. Absent, he was still as much the seer and prophet as he had been, present. Did he know more about me than I knew about myself? The question came to my mind again and again, and I began to feel that the answer was yes.

Alicia was gone from the Capital to her mother’s house near Carlton, but I received a note of congratulation from her over my success with the feud. She wrote briefly and simply, as if she were writing to a near relative, whose career she wished to advance.

The letter troubled me. I wished to appear well in the eyes of myself, in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of Alicia, but she, despite herself, must think less well of me, disgraced, known to everybody, to have been a convict once, and expelled from my high office. What mattered it that I had suffered innocently, and to protect her good name? The opinion of the public is a terrible thing, it acts upon us unceasingly, it molds us, despite ourselves, however strong we may be, and even the best woman in the world could not resist it always. I had too much, to lose, the Governor’s mansion, my position honored among my fellows were very dear to me. The press was filled with praise of me because I had taken the Kent and Horner feud in hand at once and with the proper mixture of stern justice and moral suasion had ended it forever. I confess that this praise was sweet in my ears and I did not like to have it turned to amazed indignation and contempt.

I had time now for leisure and for thought of my own affairs. The summer had come warm and bright and social life in Frankfort flowed in a thin and slow stream. Throughout the State an unusual quietness reigned. The mountaineers continued to smoke the pipe of peace, county treasurers kept their hands in their own pockets, the railroads attended to their own affairs, and the Governor wondered that people could be so good.

In July I ran down to Carlton to see Uncle Paul and Aunt Jane, and they received me with joy, but with the new note of deference that I did not like in them, but which I made up my mind to bear as best I could, because they clung to it obstinately, despite anything that I could say or do. Yet I saw how intensely proud they were of me, and it would be a bitter thing to me and to them to destroy this pride.

I stayed only ten days at home, but in that time I saw Alicia twice. I called at their house in a formal way and then I asked them to dinner at our house, an invitation that Alicia accepted for both her mother and herself. She seemed to me, observing her on each occasion, to be yet in a state of quiet, and if I may say it, pleasing melancholy. Her wonderful spiritual beauty was unchanged. Her eyes were those of one who had known long and bitter grief, but who at last had found peace. In her cheeks bloomed the delicate rosy tints of girlhood. My heart had yearned over her, and had longed to cherish and protect her, when she was in the power of that brute, her husband, and it yearned over her yet. Her mother, I could see, with all her cold purpose and will, was afraid of her, and rarely opposed any of her wishes. What passages had occurred between them I did not know, but I judged that henceforward Mrs. Warren would not have much to do with shaping her daughter’s life.

Ours was a dinner in the afternoon and they were to return home in the twilight. I asked leave to take them back in a two-seated rig of my own, requesting Aunt Jane to bear us company for the drive both ways. Alicia promptly accepted, despite her mother’s slight frown, and I took her upon the front seat with me while the two older women sat behind. It was not a long drive, but it was in the cool of the evening with all the pleasant odors of the woods and fields about us, and the woman whom I loved sitting close to me, her dress touching me, and her cheek not far away. But I never forgot for a moment that she was the wife of another man, forever shut from me by that invisible but impassable barrier, reared by the Law and the Church. The two elderly women sitting behind us, and watching me, as I knew both were, could see nothing in any of my actions that would indicate in the remotest degree forgetfulness of Alicia’s position and mine. But we two should have been there alone, without the two older women, and inside the fortifications of the Law and Church. I had never felt more intensely that we were intended for each other and that fate had been either blind or cruel when she decreed otherwise.

We left them at their door. Alicia hospitably asked us to stay and take supper with them, but we pleaded the necessity of a quick return and drove away. Alicia stood for a few moments on the door step and waved a friendly hand to us as we disappeared in the deepening twilight. I saw her, because I looked back and beheld a white hand raised as if beckoning in the dusk. Despite myself I uttered a sigh and Aunt Jane, who was now promoted to the front seat with me, said sadly, but with the deepest human sympathy for me:

“Ah, Harry, it should have been!” Neither of us spoke again until we reached home. I felt that she yearned over me as a mother yearns over her son and wishes his happiness. It was a different kind of love from that I bore Alicia, but it had its own depth and tenderness.

I asked Aunt Jane the next day what she had heard about George Grey lately, and she told me that it was very little; he was supposed to be in New York, but she had heard rumors in Carlton that he was coming back to Kentucky in the summer.

“But he has lost his wife forever,” she said grimly.

I nodded, but the truth was only half a pleasure. What one man loses another may not always find.

I returned to Frankfort, resumed my duties and then the cloud came into the sky. Gossip about me was renewed and a scandalous story began to float itself. Naturally I did not hear of it until it had already formed a salacious tale for many others, and when it reached me at last it was of a sufficient magnitude. The ancient and seemingly stale campaign cry, “Where was Harry when the light went out?” was renewed, and a partisan, opposition newspaper soon told a story, that while I was in the mountains an old friend of mine, not forewarned, had suddenly addressed me by a name not my own. The tale was heavily embroidered with insinuation and innuendo and I judged that the man, who wrote it had information.

My mind turned to Harrison and my feeling toward him then was very bitter. I had beaten him in the political contest, it was true, but both had lost the woman we loved, and he should be fair enough to abide by the result. I never doubted that he was instigating the attack.

“You must reply to this,” said Judge Wharton to me, when he read the attack.

“I think it best not to notice it,” I said.

He shook his head a little, but did not urge me.

But the cloud grew. That fatal meeting in the mountains, when an old friend seeing me for the first time in years, suddenly called me by another name was the peg on which everything was hung. Even the name Charlie Johnson got into print and people wondered why anybody should call me Charlie Johnson. I trembled at the thought of the place where the name of Charles Johnson was enrolled, but thousands of convicts had passed through, the penitentiary since I was registered there, and after all, it was a common name.

I said nothing while the cloud continued to grow. Jimmy Warfield ran down to Frankfort to see me, pretending at first that it was a social visit, although I knew well the real cause. It was a hot mid-summer day and he lingered in the shade of the Capitol with me for some time, before he approached the subject that was in his mind. When he did come to the point it was without his usual grace and dexterity; he seemed to rush at the question with a desire to get it over in any fashion as soon as possible.

“Harry,” he said, “you’ve got to stop this fuss. Tell ’em where you were during that missing chapter in the history of your life. You’ve confessed already that you were a dissipated loafer, then, and it hasn’t hurt you, but give ’em details now and shut their dirty mouths.”

He never doubted me. What would he say if I told him the truth? Would this man, my best friend, turn his back upon me if I should do so? I scarcely dared ask myself the question.

“Jimmy,” I said, slowly, “I have a reason for waiting, and, believe me, it is a good one. I am not insensible to the clamor and the damage it does, but can’t you trust me a little longer?”

He wrung my hand in a sudden access of emotion.

“Yes, Harry, I’ll wait! We’ll all wait!” he exclaimed. “But it cuts me to the bone to hear you blackguarded so much.”

He returned on the afternoon train to Louisville, and I was left in lonely Frankfort to face my crisis, and to sustain, too, a new dread lest Alicia, hearing it all, should, in some manner, try to exculpate me by proclaiming for herself a guilt that was not her own. But later reflection convinced me that she would not do so; she would keep silent, believing that by such a course she could serve me best; she had no story to tell that would sound real to the public.

Now a genuine campaign against me began and was waged through the hot summer months, when it might well seem that all men would spare themselves unusual exertion. The opposition party developed great activity, and it appeared at this time that I was the real spring from which its active life flowed; that is, I was the provoking cause of its present vigorous existence. Its newspapers and orators demanded that the Governor of Kentucky should be a man whose life was like an open book—this was a favorite expression—with nothing to explain and nothing for which to make apologies. The administration press and speakers kept up a lukewarm defense—they could hardly make it very zealous, because they, too, were in the dark—and I saw that my good name was suffering. The attack upon me was especially active in the city of Louisville, where, so I heard, Cobbett, the rich and unworthy manufacturer, whose political ambitions I had helped to defeat, made a continual crusade against me. He urged besides my personal unworthiness the fact, so he claimed, that I was too young to have been elected Governor of the State—Cobbett himself was past fifty, and hence free from the objection. But I refused to notice him in any form or fashion, having too much contempt for the man and his methods.

About this time the militia company—it was from Lex-ington—which had been left on guard at Elverson returned, its work done, and several of the officers reported to me at Frankfort. They talked a great deal about the Reverend Elias Peabody and the wonderful help he had been to them and the extraordinary influence, both mental and emotional, that he had secured over the mountaineers.

“He seemed to have formed a strong attachment for you,” said one of the officers, Lieutenant Cuthbert, “and he asked me to say to you that he was sure you would always do right.”

There was nothing unusual to Cuthbert in the sound of the message, but there was to me. Elias had a particular thing in mind and he and I alone knew what he meant. I was sure of it, all the more so, because I saw that what he predicted was rapidly coming to pass; my burden in good truth was growing heavier, perhaps much faster than he had ever expected. My life had become miserable and my faculties which should now be exerted for the State seemed to be paralyzed. I could not come to the study of a difficult question with as clear a mind as before, and the power of initiative was gone for the time.

In August a letter arrived from Alicia, and it was now she who undertook to comfort and encourage. She wrote me to stand firm, that I had done no wrong, that the attack would pass and I would stand forth more completely the favorite of the State than ever before. My secret would be preserved, it must be, but if by any chance it should become known she would tell the truth to everybody, how she, not I, was to blame.

I read the letter with mingled emotions. Alicia did not yet know the world as I believed myself to know it, and I felt that she could do nothing, even had I been cowardly and selfish enough to let her make the trial.

My mind went back from Alicia’s letter to the message of Elias. Its words were few and simple, but I could not get rid of them, they were continually before me and their import was heavy. The rapt mountaineer was yet a seer and a prophet to me, and all the attacks upon me did not have as much weight as his simple words.

It was the effect of my position to make me seek solitude. I wished to be alone, the faces of people annoyed me, and although I strove to overcome this desire I could not always do so. I do not think that the recluse is a happy man, nor that it is desirable on any account to be secluded, but the wish to shun observation was, at times, exceedingly strong and I fear that, by it, I incurred deserved wrath more than once. On self-examination I attributed this feeling in myself to cowardice, I hesitated to face critical or censorious looks, and the inference was not pleasing to my pride. The conclusion was confirmed by a talk that I had with Judge Wharton, whom I met as I strolled in a solitary path by the side of the river.

I had not been to his house in some time, and I had taken care to avoid him as I walked about the city. But on the river path we came suddenly face to face, and there was no chance to evade him. He stopped at once and held out, his hand.

“I’ve not seen you in such a while, Mr. Clarke,” he said in a hurt tone, “that I had began to fear I had given you offense, though unwilling on my part.”

“If there were any offense,” I said, “it is I who would give it to you, though it would be unwilling on my part too. There is no man whose friendship I value more highly.”

“Come, let’s walk on together,” he said and he changed his course to mine. Having met him I was glad now that he had chosen to go with me. Despite my avoidance of him I had missed his mental strength and the help of his keen, clear vision. Neither of us spoke for some time. By the side of us, almost at our feet, flowed a deep river, its surface flashing now in blue and green, then in gold and silver in the intense sunlight. Over us towered the cliffs, the rocks often hidden by the trees and bushes that clung to the steep face.

“Mr. Clarke,” said the Judge at last, “you are troubled by these attacks, it is natural that you should be. Speaking as an old politician, they seem to me to have a concerted origin. You are young and you have risen rapidly. You have made enemies and they are working against you.”

“I think you are right in all that you say,” I replied, “and I will admit to you that these attacks have hurt me very deeply.”

“Then why not reply to them,” he said earnestly. “Let me repeat the suggestion that I made to you some time ago. Don’t be offended. I’m an old man, and I’m a good friend of yours.”

I was far from being offended, and I knew moreover that the advice he gave me was good—I only wished that he knew I could not take it, and I wished somehow that he knew, too, why I could not take it.

“It seemed to me,” I replied, “that I said enough in the campaign, when I told them what I had been.”

“I know, I know; it was only a general charge they made then, but now they are explicit, and they specify a certain period. I’d answer them at once and shut their mouths forever.”

I did not reply just then, but I repeated over and over to myself the phrase “shut their mouths forever.” How I would like to “shut their mouths” forever, but, look and think as I would, I could see or think of only one way and that was out of the question. Yes, out of the question! I could not tell the world the truth; it would ruin me, it might drag Alicia down with me and it would serve the good purpose of nobody. The one way was quixotic, foolish to the last degree, and I shut my teeth down upon each other with hard resolve. The good Judge saw my face and he misread it.

“I don’t wonder that you’re angry at them,” he said with sympathy. “It’s a misfortune of our politics that too many of us descend to low and vulgar attacks. We are too ready to believe evil about public men, but sometimes these things must be met.”

His tone was quietly paternal and I said nothing to correct him in his error, while he seemed to feel that he had given sufficient hint, and turned the conversation. We walked on together for two or three miles and then turned, coming back at the same slow gait toward the town. As we reached the first fringe of houses he said:

“You’ll dine with us this evening, won’t you Governor? Come, we’ve missed you, and Mrs. Wharton is asking continually why you are ignoring us.”

I could not decline such an invitation from people whom I liked so much, and at the appointed time I went to his house. Only we three were present, the Judge, Mrs. Wharton and myself, and to an outsider it would have seemed a family group. Here, at least, was no one to question me, or to suspect me, or to intimate in any manner that I was not what I should be. I breathed an air of friendship, confidence and faith, and it was inexpressibly grateful to me. I could not destroy such trust as this and make myself an outcast from such people as these. I had for the time a wonderful lightness of spirit, a revulsion from my former depression, and it lasted until I came away. The judge followed me to his gate, and urged me to come again and often.

“You are a bachelor,” he said smiling, “and you need company, Mrs. Wharton and I are old and we need the young, so you see each can help the other.”

“I thank you and I shall do so,” I replied, although not knowing whether I meant it.

But when I was back at the Executive Mansion my loneliness and depression settled down upon me, thicker and blacker than ever. I had been a fool to think I ever could escape the consequences of my original sin; it is said that all matter is eternal, and I suppose, too, that every act has its logical sequence which goes on forever. Seth came in on some little errand and he saw me sitting in my chair in an attitude of drooping despondency. He had never ceased to show me a doglike devotion which often touched me.

“You ain’t happy, Mr. Clarke,” he said, and he spoke in such deep sympathy that I could not resent his words.

“No, Seth, I’m not,” I replied.

“An’ you a big man, the Governor o’ the State. I reckon its ’cause there’s too many flies in the molasses here. Sometimes I wish we was both back on the farm, Mr. Clarke, with nobody to bother us.”

I could not help smiling at Seth’s assumption of a share in a heavy responsibility, but I felt through it his strong sense of personal attachment. Even if he were to know the full truth he would never swerve a hair’s breadth in his loyalty and affection. I had no doubts at all of him and the knowledge made my heart warm to him.

“Place brings worry, Seth,” I said with an attempt at cheerfulness. “You have a harder time here than you had at Carlton.”

“That’s so,” he replied gravely. “I’ve got to keep all sorts of people from you here, and there wasn’t no such trouble at Carlton. It’s a hard world for us public men, Mr. Clarke.”

I did not laugh, I did not even have any temptation to do so; on the contrary I felt keenly the support of his sympathy, and I said:

“We’ll bear it the best we can, Seth.”

“Yes, sir, we will,” he replied cheerfully, and went on with his task. His trouble slipped from his mind like water over a dam, and I envied him. He, too, had been in the penitentiary, but he never made any secret of it; on the contrary if the evil-minded introduced the subject to him he would boast of it in order to show the depths from which he had come and the heights on which he now stood. I can truly say that, at that moment, I envied poor Seth.

August days passed, and the attacks upon me thickened. My very silence now was an encouragement to my enemies, and I did not doubt that Harrison, Connor, Grey and Cobbett were using every means to incite them. Grey I heard was back again in Louisville and was full of malice against me both on personal and political grounds. He even dared, or sank so low as to make personal insinuations against his own wife, indirect and vague, it is true, but to the initiated clear enough. But the fat Cobbett was the most vociferous of the lot. Oh, he knew things about me, I was a fine specimen, I was, to be at the head of the government of a great State, coming suddenly from nobody knows where and pushing myself forward in the most shameless and unscrupulous manner! The truth would come out, it must come out at last, and when it did come out, people would realize how they had been tricked. Such were the reports that reached me, but whether he knew anything positive about me I was uncertain, but I did know that, if he learned the truth, it would make a luscious morsel for such a man as he.

Late in August, as I strolled across the deserted lawn of the Capitol I saw Jimmy Warfield coming over the brown grass and I hailed him gladly.

“Got to look up the records of a case in the office of the Clerk of the Court of Appeals,” he said briskly. “Doesn’t Frankfort look deserted? Why do you stay here in August? Why don’t you come down to Louisville, and have a good time with your friends, one of whom I am?”

He spoke lightly, jestingly even, but his manner was unlike his words, and I noticed that he shook my hand with unusual fervor. Jimmy Warfield was seldom a demonstrative man, and I felt deeply grateful for this sign that he had rallied again to my defense—I could not interpret it otherwise.

“How long do you expect to be here?” I asked.

“Until to-morrow,” he replied.

“Then come over and spend the night at the mansion with me. Come, it’s a favor; I’m lonesome.”

He accepted promptly and about five o’clock in the afternoon joined me at the Governor’s residence. I had left the Executive office early, it being a slack day, and was there before him. His coming was like a fresh breath of wind, and he brought a new spirit into the old house. Even Seth who waited on us brightened up and cast off the load of public life. Warfield was in one of his rarest and finest moods, finding humor in everything and showing the gayest of spirits. In his presence and under his influence I felt young again; life seemed to be well worth the living.

I did not understand why Warfield was in such spirits; he and I had been almost as brothers and I knew that he felt intensely the bitter attacks upon me, now long unanswered. Apparently he was doing it all to please me and to make me forget. “Old fellow,” I said to myself, “you are a true friend, if ever man had one, and I wish I knew how to repay you.”

We ate dinner together and then we sat in my smoking room and talked over our cigars. The weather had turned somewhat cooler and a fire was lighted in the grate, not much, but just enough to throw out a mellow glow that both took away the chill and made the electric lights unnecessary.

I did little talking, but Jimmy gossiped long and agreeably, and from time to time he spoke of the people with whose fate my own was so inextricably woven.

“Harrison is in Louisville,” he said, “and he is devoting himself to pleasure. I doubt whether he goes back to the Legislature—he could if he wanted to do so—but he seems to have become suddenly tired of politics, he is not a man who can take defeat. And, oh, by the way, the beautiful Pauline Harmon is there too, and he is in frequent attendance upon her. An odd man! I’d have sworn that he was in love with George Grey’s wife and is yet for that matter.”

Warfield relapsed into silence and smoked a reflective cigar, and I, saying nothing, did the same. It is God’s truth that even then and in the full belief that he had raised the clamor against me I did not hate Harrison, and I should rather have seen Alicia his wife than George Grey’s. Alicia was in Warfield’s thoughts as well as mine as he said:

“I saw Mrs. Grey in Louisville a few days ago with the Guthries. A noble woman, Harry, and she seems to me to have acquired a new strength. I’m clumsy at telling my meaning, but I don’t think, Harry, I ever before saw a woman so completely clothed in a spiritual atmosphere; I don’t mean any sanctimonious air, but the genuine moral greatness that belongs alike to great Pagans and great Christians.”

Then he, too, had noticed the change in Alicia. But I had seen it also in a man, the Reverend Elias Peabody, and I would have given worlds to have learned it from either for myself.

“I think she could get a divorce from George Grey,” said Warfield.

“No doubt,” I replied, “but she will never seek it. She has certain beliefs that forbid her.”

“They are in accord with the spiritual atmosphere that envelopes her,” said he.

I was surprised that he should speak so of Alicia, knowing how I felt toward her, because Warfield was a man of great delicacy and of equal discernment, but I judged that he had some purpose, though what it was I could not surmise. Then the talk shifted away to other people and other things. The night grew cooler and the glow of the fire became deeper and more mellow. We sat long like two gossips and at a late hour Jimmy said:

“You’ll speak at the Reunion won’t you? It’s your duty as Governor of the State and they want you anyhow. It’s going to be my duty to ask you officially, and I want to prepare the way beforehand.”

“Oh, yes, I’ll come,” I said.

“And do your best?”

“Why certainly,” I laughed.

“That’s good,” he said with satisfaction. I noticed that he no longer said anything about the necessity of my answering the charges against me, and I judged that he had come over to my way of thinking, or at least to the way I seemed to think.

When we separated and sought our bedrooms it was past midnight, but I felt that I had been cheered and uplifted by his companionship.

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