22 Two Women

One evening in January when the sharp winter twilight was just falling I left the Executive office after an exhausting day, and walked home to the Governor’s mansion. Seth, full of the pride and importance that marked him in those days, admitted me and said in a loud, mysterious whisper:

“There’s a lady waitin’ to see you in the parlor, Governor.”

“A lady?”

“Yes, sir, an’ on business. I told her you saw all people on business at the Executive office, but she said she wanted to see you here, an’ she’d wait until you came. She’s a tip-topper, too, a regular-out-and-outer?”

Mystified, I gave Seth my hat and coat and went into the parlor, where an open fire burned in the grate, and only a slight light was on. A woman, all in black, was sitting by the window, and she rose when I entered, throwing back a black veil from her face. It was Pauline Harmon.

It was Pauline Harmon, but she was much changed. Her beauty was not gone, instead it was increased, and it was there that the change lay. Into the beauty that had been hitherto only of the flesh there seemed to have entered some spiritual quality, a faint, far-away reflection of that which clothed Alicia about, but enough to be noticed, and to exert a refining influence. Upon her face were the traces of a great sadness and the grief became her.

Instinctively I felt a certain respect for her, whatever she had been once, and I spoke to her with courtesy.

“I know that you little expected to see me here,” she said gravely, “but I have come to ask you a favor.”

Another! she, too, who had caused it all would ask me for George Grey’s life. I shook my head.

“Don’t ask it,” I said. “I can’t pardon him.”

We men often misjudge women, and I misjudged her terribly now. Her dark eyes flashed and she flung up her head in the manner of a Judith.

“That is just what I ask you not to do!” she exclaimed. “I have come here for that purpose! I want him to suffer for the crime that he committed, and for which he should hang! I loved the man he killed, and I want the murderer of that man to die! Don’t be surprised! I know it seems strange, after what I have been, but I loved him! I say I loved Walter Harrison, and I do not forgive!”

Her voice was not raised, but she spoke with an intensity of passion that could not be mistaken. “I thought you loved Grey once,” I said. “That was not love,” she said scornfully, “but Walter Harrison I did learn to love. I could have loved him as Alicia Grey loves you! And now he is dead!”

She smote her hands together and a great pity for this woman came over me. Perhaps if circumstances had been favorable she might have become a good wife and mother. Certainly I was not one to judge her. Nor did I blame her now because she stood out for vengeance, which is one of our weak human emotions.

“I did not have any intention of pardoning George Grey,” I said, “I have resolved to refuse all such petitions. I might pardon him if I were responsible to myself alone, but my oath of office will not let me.”

Her lips were pressed closely together and her face was hard. The quality within her that caused her to love the dead Harrison with a love that would have been, pure under other circumstances did not leave any mercy in her for the living Grey. I was moved again by pity for her, a pity which I think was sincere and deep. She was truly a beautiful woman, with features which a good life might have made noble as well as beautiful.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, and I asked the question with no mere curiosity, but with a desire to help her if I could.

“I am going away from Kentucky,” she replied, “and I shall start anew where I am not known. You started anew and you have succeeded.”

She made the allusion to me with no desire to taunt me, but merely as a potent illustration.

“I’ll tell you good bye now,” she said, “because I don’t know that we’ll meet again.”

I went with her to the door, and I watched the tall black-robed figure passing down the street, until it was out of sight. So far her tentative prediction has come true. We have not yet met again, and where she is and what she is I do not know, but I have faith. I believe that the great tragedy in her life has been a sobering shock, and, though the struggle may be hard, that she has kept to the strait and narrow path. And if she has not I am not one to judge her.

Events often repeat themselves and kindred things happen close together. I have noticed it in my life and I presume that the lives of others are not different. The next day when I walked home for luncheon it was again Seth who admitted me at the door, and again he was mysterious and important.

“Another lady to see you, Governor,” he said, in his favorite, loud whisper, “and like the other one she wouldn’t see you anywhere but here. My, but she’s a stunner, too!”

While I had been in doubt about the identity of my first caller I knew instinctively the second. It occurred to me suddenly that I had known all the time that she would come, and that I was only waiting for her. My heart beat like that of a boy, and I felt all the acuteness of nervous tension.

“She’s in the parlor, Governor,” said Seth, “and she’s all in black, too.”

I went into the parlor, closing the door behind me and Alicia rose to meet me. As Seth truthfully said she was all in black like a widow, though widow she was none, at least not yet. Ah, how my heart leaped at the sight of her dear face, with the stamp of a great sorrow upon it, but more beautiful to me than that of any other woman ever was or ever could be! What had been my troubles to hers; and she a woman whom the decree of society makes almost defenseless! I had not seen her in months, she whom I wanted most to see every day, but the first words I said to her were these:

“Alicia, I hoped that you would not come.”

“I know it, Harry,” she replied, “and I did not want to come, but I had to do so. You have made great sacrifices for me, Harry, and now I am going to ask you to make the last and greatest one. I ask you to pardon my husband, George Grey.”

She stood before me, the earthly and the spiritual mingled in her, a beautiful woman whom I loved, pleading for a life. Another beautiful woman had stood at the same place and had pleaded for the same man’s death, but I loved one and I did not love the other.

“He was convicted,” I said, “and convicted justly. My duty to the State forbids a pardon.”

“There is another and higher duty,” she said? “It is the duty of the individual to himself. I do not admire the old Roman who condemned his own son to death, and Harry, you cannot let this man die, this man who was most in your—your—.”

She hesitated and flushed a deep red, not finishing the sentence, but I knew well that it was “in your way” and we understood each other perfectly. I could read her mind. She knew I loved her, and she would have me to make this sacrifice as much for myself as for herself or Grey—perhaps more—in a word she would save me from myself.

She came nearer to me. I faintly felt her fragrant breath on my face.

“You must do it, Harry,” she said, “oh, I know all it costs you, but if you do not, your conscience will never feel right again, not so long as you live. Spare him and you spare yourself.”

“I can’t! I can’t!” I exclaimed. “Don’t ask me, Alicia.”

“But I do ask you,” she said, “and it is because you and I and George Grey are what we are. It is because of the relation in which we stand to one another that you must do it.”

The rapt look which passed over and beyond earthly affairs was on her face, and back to me came the same look which was so often on the face of the seer, Elias Peabody. I am of the world myself—I confess it—I always see the material side of things, but I do not think that Alicia understood how the world would take this pardon that she asked or that the thought how it would take it occurred to her. Harry Clarke and George Grey, and the attitude in which they stood to one another were alone in her mind; I did not blame her for it, instead it was a deep joy to me that my responsibility not to the world but to God should concern her so much.

She came yet nearer to me and put her hand upon my arm. Tears were in her lovely eyes as she raised them to mine, but in them nevertheless shone the light of perfect confidence.

“Harry,” she said, “you will do this for me.”

“I can’t! I can’t!” I repeated helplessly.

“But you will,” she repeated firmly, “if you do not you will feel all your life that you are his murderer and I your accomplice—and for a price. Do you want to have that on your conscience every day and every night? or do you want me to have it on mine?”

“Why do you put it that way?” I exclaimed.

“Because it is the right way. We must keep ourselves white, not before the world, but before ourselves and God. I say again that I know all it costs, but you will do it, Harry.”

“And lose you forever!” I exclaimed in a sudden passion, of which I was ashamed a moment later.

“You could not win me in such a way,” she said, repeating the very thought that had come to me so often, “nor do I think, Harry, that in your best mind you would wish to win me in such a way. Our love is too pure, too noble for that.”

“But to lose you all my life!”

“There is a world beyond this, I do not know it, but I feel it, and maybe a just God, knowing all that we have suffered here, will decree that we shall belong to each other there.”

She spoke quite simply, without the faintest touch of preaching, and for the moment I could go into the far future with her. My own vision seldom passed beyond this world, but when Alicia went, she could take me too.

“You will pardon him,” she said.

“Yes, I will pardon him because you ask it.”

“You will be glad of it all your days.”

I did not know. I felt no emotion of joy then. I sank down in a chair She put her hand on my shoulder and stroked it as if I had been a little boy and she my mother.

“I knew that you would never fail, Harry,” she said. But I did not answer.

When I looked up again she was gone. She had slid from the room as noiselessly as light itself and she had taken the light with her. But I did not seek to follow her, and I was glad that she had gone thus, without the useless words of the painful parting.

I did not go back to the Capitol, but sat alone in the parlor where she had left me, all the day and far into the evening. What need to go back? I was done with the Capitol. All was finished. I could quote the words of the old French king and say all was lost save honor. But with me honor too was lost in the eyes of everybody save Alicia and myself. I do not seek to disguise the mighty effort and the mighty pain my new resolution cost me. I have never claimed to be above the vanities of the world. I am of the earth, earthy, and place and power that I had won so hardly, and that I had once come so near to losing, were very dear to me.

I railed at Fate like a weak foolish child. The gods that had made a jest of Alicia were making a jest of me too. Struggles that seemed almost superhuman in the retrospect were as nothing; I might as well have folded my hands and taken whatever chance brought me. When a man was predestined to failure, failure alike in his life and his love, it was useless to struggle, and I wondered why one man should be chosen at his birth for happiness and another for misery.

Yet in all my unhappiness I was not selfish enough to forget Alicia. I remembered always that she would suffer with me, and, perhaps more because there would be Grey, that terrible ulcer upon her life. After all, was I right, even in the eyes of Alicia and myself to pardon him! But I had given my promise and I cast aside the doubt.

Twilight came, and then sombre night. All the city was in dusk and over it rolled black wintry skies. Seth appeared once at the door, telling me dinner was ready, but I replied that I wanted none, and still sat, staring into the fire, and not seeing it.

I had but one course to choose, and I do not think Alicia had ever foreseen that I must take it. I went at last to the little private office that I kept at the house, and taking down a reluctant pen wrote George Grey’s pardon, the pardon of an atrocious murderer, convicted by an honest jury and condemned to die by the rope. I gave no reason for the act, but the document bore my signature, the signature of the Governor, and not all the laws of the State could nullify it.

I put the pardon in the official envelope, and then I rested a while. After a half hour I took up the no less reluctant pen and, for the second time, wrote-out my resignation. But now the Legislature would accept it, I had no illusions upon the subject, not a single doubt. It was bound to do so, my best friends could not overlook such an act as the pardoning of George Grey; and Alicia and my career were gone together—and forever!

My pen travelled heavily to the end and heavily I signed my name. Then I put it, too, in an official envelope and laid it on top of the other. Seth came in a little later and asked me in a sympathetic tone if I would not eat something.

“No, thank you, Seth,” I replied.

“This thing of runnin’ a State is a pretty hard job on us ain’t it, Mr. Clarke?” he said.

“Yes, Seth, it is,” I replied from the bottom of my soul.

I did not have the heart to tell him that we were going to leave the Capitol and never return to it.

He went quietly out, and I was left alone, more alone than I had ever been before in my life. I did not sleep at all that night, nor did I seek to do so, but I sat fully dressed and, from my window, saw the sun come up in a flood of rosy light over the wintry eastern hills.

After breakfast and before the meeting of the House Jimmy Warfield called. He had heard somehow that I had been away from the Capitol all the afternoon before, and he may have suspected something unusual. I received him in the same parlor in which I had promised Pauline Harmon not to pardon George Grey and Alicia to pardon him.

“Are you coming over presently to your office at the Capitol?” asked Warfield.

“No,” I replied.

“Then this afternoon. Some bills will be laid before you for signature.”

“No, nor this afternoon.”

He gave me a sudden, startled look—my tone I knew was peculiar.

“Why, what’s the matter, Harry?” he asked.

I took from my pocket the sealed envelopes, bearing the official stamp, and handed them to him.

“The first is the pardon of George Grey, and the second is my resignation,” I said.

He looked at my pale face and he was silent for a few moments. But I have known nobody of quicker perception than Jimmy Warfield, and presently he said:

“You have done this because Alicia Grey asked you to do it.”

“Yes. But you will not tell it.”

“No. But some may guess it.”

Warfield was very quiet. He showed no surprise and he said not a single word in protest. I think he must have guessed much.

“Jimmy,” I said, “you have been the best friend to me that, a man ever had. Take these envelopes away from me, I don’t want to see either of them again. Send the pardon to the penitentiary and lay the resignation before the House.”

“Very well,” he said quietly, and then, turning suddenly, he gripped my hand in his.

“Harry,” he exclaimed, “you are a stronger man than I could ever be!”

Then he released my hand and hurried out. Once again I say that the true friendship of men is a great thing.

I did not go to my office, but remained in the parlor before the smouldering fire, and my thoughts often went with Warfield. He would first send the pardon to the warden of the penitentiary and then he would read my resignation to the House, and, though I considered all things finished, I waited nervously for the news of the event. What would they say? How would they take it? But the hours passed and nobody came. Seth expressed his wonder that I should remain so long at the Mansion, but asked no questions.

It was well past noon, when I heard a firm step in the hall, and Jimmy Warfield came again into the parlor. I knew at once from his countenance that he had news to tell, and I presumed that it was the story of the pardon and resignation, but he came briskly up to me, and held out two sealed envelopes.

“Take them back,” he said, “I refuse to deliver them.”

“Forgive me, Jimmy,” I said, “I was wrong to ask you to do it. I must send them in some other way.”

“Nor in any other way,” he said, and his voice rose. “A strange thing has happened, Harry. Chance, which has always been against you hitherto, has now turned in your favor.”

Startled, I looked at him, and saw that his eyes were alight.

“We have just heard from Louisville,” he said gravely, “that George Grey, overwhelmed by fear, committed suicide in his cell last night. It was the only gracious act of his life, and I mean no sacrilege when I say it.”

I think I lost consciousness for the only time in my life—because Jimmy’s arm was suddenly under my shoulder, and I heard him from afar off, saying: “Steady, old man, steady!” But in a moment I was sane and strong again.

It seems a wicked thing to rejoice over the death of anybody, but those who know the misery George Grey caused in the lives of others never regretted the passing of his own. So, I will not play the hypocrite, and shed false tears. His death was life to me, a tremendous surge from the pits of despair to the peaks of hope. All things that lately seemed to have finished seemed now merely to have begun, and, in a rush of joyous emotion, I seized Jimmy Warfield’s hand, and squeezed it until he cried aloud.

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