THE BEST MAN
I
DUSK had fallen, and the circle of light shed by the lamp of
Governor Mornway's writing-table just rescued from the surrounding
dimness his own imposing bulk, thrown back in a deep chair in the
lounging attitude habitual to him at that hour.
When the Governor of Midsylvania rested he rested completely. Five
minutes earlier he had been bowed over his office desk, an Atlas
with the State on his shoulders; now, his working hours over, he had
the air of a man who has spent his day in desultory pleasure, and
means to end it in the enjoyment of a good dinner. This freedom from
care threw into relief the hovering fidgetiness of his sister, Mrs.
Nimick, who, just outside the circle of lamplight, haunted the warm
gloom of the hearth, from which the wood fire now and then sent up
an exploring flash into her face.
Mrs. Nimick's presence did not usually minister to repose; but the
Governor's serenity was too deep to be easily disturbed, and he felt
the calmness of a man who knows there is a mosquito in the room, but
has drawn the netting close about his head. This calmness reflected
itself in the accent with which he said, throwing himself back to
smile up at his sister: "You know I am not going to make any
appointments for a week."
It was the day after the great reform victory which had put John
Mornway for the second time at the head of his State, a triumph
compared with which even the mighty battle of his first election
sank into insignificance, and he leaned back with the sense of
unassailable placidity which follows upon successful effort.
Mrs. Nimick murmured an apology. "I didn't understand--I saw in this
morning's papers that the Attorney-General was reappointed."
"Oh, Fleetwood--his reappointment was involved in the campaign. He's
one of the principles I represent!"
Mrs. Nimick smiled a little tartly. "It seems odd to some people to
think of Mr. Fleetwood in connection with principles."
The Governor's smile had no answering acerbity; the mention of his
Attorney-General's name had set his blood humming with the thrill of
the fight, and he wondered how it was that Fleetwood had not already
been in to clasp hands with him over their triumph.
"No," he said, good-humoredly, "two years ago Fleetwood's name
didn't stand for principles of any sort; but I believed in him, and
look what he's done for me! I thought he was too big a man not to
see in time that statesmanship is a finer thing than practical
politics, and now that I've given him a chance to make the
discovery, he's on the way to becoming just such a statesman as the
country needs."
"Oh, it's a great deal easier and pleasanter to believe in people,"
replied Mrs. Nimick, in a tone full of occult allusion, "and, of
course, we all knew that Mr. Fleetwood would have a hearing before
any one else."
The Governor took this imperturbably. "Well, at any rate, he isn't
going to fill all the offices in the State; there will probably be
one or two to spare after he has helped himself, and when the time
comes I'll think over your man. I'll consider him."
Mrs. Nimick brightened. "It would make _such_a difference to
Jack--it might mean anything to the poor boy to have Mr. Ashford
appointed!"
The Governor held up a warning hand.
"Oh, I know, one mustn't say that, or at least you mustn't listen.
You're so dreadfully afraid of nepotism. But I'm not asking for
anything for Jack--I have never asked for a crust for any of us,
thank Heaven! No one can point to _me_--" Mrs. Nimick checked
herself suddenly and continued in a more impersonal tone: "But
there's no harm, surely, in my saying a word for Mr. Ashford, when I
know that he's actually under consideration, and I don't see why the
fact that Jack is in his office should prevent my speaking."
"On the contrary," said the Governor, "it implies, on your part, a
personal knowledge of Mr. Ashford's qualifications which may be of
great help to me in reaching a decision."
Mrs. Nimick never quite knew how to meet him when he took that tone,
and the flickering fire made her face for a moment the picture of
uncertainty; then at all hazards she launched out: "Well, I have
Ella's promise, at any rate."
The Governor sat upright. "Ella's promise?"
"To back me up. She thoroughly approves of him!"
The Governor smiled. "You talk as if Ella had a political _salon_and
distributed _lettres de cachet!_I'm glad she approves of Ashford;
but if you think my wife makes my appointments for me--" He broke
off with a laugh at the superfluity of such a protest.
Mrs. Nimick reddened. "One never knows how you will take the
simplest thing. What harm is there in my saying that Ella approves
of Mr. Ashford? I thought you liked her to take an interest in your
work."
"I like it immensely. But I shouldn't care to have it take that
form."
"What form?"
"That of promising to use her influence to get people appointed. But
you always talk of politics in the vocabulary of European courts.
Thank Heaven, Ella has less imagination. She has her sympathies, of
course, but she doesn't think they can affect the distribution of
offices."
Mrs. Nimick gathered up her furs with an air at once crestfallen and
resentful. "I'm sorry--I always seem to say the wrong thing. I'm
sure I came with the best intentions--it's natural that your sister
should want to be with you at such a happy moment."
"Of course it is, my dear," exclaimed the Governor genially, as he
rose to grasp the hands with which she was nervously adjusting her
wraps.
Mrs. Nimick, who lived a little way out of town, and whose visits to
her brother were apparently achieved at the cost of immense effort
and mysterious complications, had come to congratulate him on his
victory, and to sound him regarding the nomination to a coveted post
of the lawyer in whose firm her eldest son was a clerk. In the
urgency of the latter errand she had rather lost sight of the
former, but her face softened as the Governor, keeping both her
hands in his, said in the voice which always seemed to put the most
generous interpretation on her motives: "I was sure you would be one
of the first to give me your blessing."
"Oh, your success--no one feels it more than I do!" sighed Mrs.
Nimick, always at home in the emotional key. "I keep in the
background. I make no noise, I claim no credit, but whatever
happens, no one shall ever prevent my rejoicing in my brother's
success!"
Mrs. Nimick's felicitations were always couched in the conditional,
with a side-glance at dark contingencies, and the Governor, smiling
at the familiar construction, returned cheerfully: "I don't see why
any one should want to deprive you of that privilege."
"They couldn't--they couldn't--" Mrs. Nimick heroically affirmed.
"Well, I'm in the saddle for another two years at any rate, so you
had better put in all the rejoicing you can."
"Whatever happens--whatever happens!" cried Mrs. Nimick, melting on
his bosom.
"The only thing likely to happen at present is that you will miss
your train if I let you go on saying nice things to me much longer."
Mrs. Nimick at this dried her eyes, renewed her clutch on her
draperies, and stood glancing sentimentally about the room while her
brother rang for the carriage.
"I take away a lovely picture of you," she murmured. "It's wonderful
what you've made of this hideous house."
"Ah, not I, but Ella--there she _does_reign undisputed," he
acknowledged, following her glance about the library, which wore an
air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed intimacy with its
inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual
executive apartment.
"Oh, she's wonderful, quite wonderful. I see she has got those
imported damask curtains she was looking at the other day at
Fielding's. When I am asked how she does it all, I always say it's
beyond me!" Mrs. Nimick murmured.
"It's an art like another," smiled the Governor. "Ella has been used
to living in tents and she has the knack of giving them a wonderful
look of permanence."
"She certainly makes the most extraordinary bargains--all the knack
in the world won't take the place of such curtains and carpets."
"Are they good? I'm glad to hear it. But all the good curtains and
carpets won't make a house comfortable to live in. There's where the
knack comes in, you see."
He recalled with a shudder the lean Congressional years--the years
before his marriage--when Mrs. Nimick had lived with him in
Washington, and the daily struggle in the House had been combined
with domestic conflicts almost equally recurrent. The offer of a
foreign mission, though disconnecting him from active politics, had
the advantage of freeing him from his sister's tutelage, and in
Europe, where he remained for two years, he had met the lady who was
to become his wife. Mrs. Renfield was the widow of one of the
diplomatists who languish in perpetual first secretary-ship at our
various embassies. Her life had given her ease without triviality,
and a sense of the importance of politics seldom found in ladies of
her nationality. She regarded a public life as the noblest and most
engrossing of careers, and combined with great social versatility an
equal gift for reading blue-books and studying debates. So sincere
was the latter taste that she passed without regret from the
amenities of a European life well stocked with picturesque
intimacies to the rawness of the Midsylvanian capital. She helped
Mornway in his fight for the Governorship as a man likes to be
helped by a woman--by her tact, her good looks, her memory for
faces, her knack of saying the right thing to the right person, and
her capacity for obscure hard work in the background of his public
activity. But, above all, she helped him by making his private life
smooth and harmonious. For a man careless of personal ease, Mornway
was singularly alive to the domestic amenities. Attentive service,
well-ordered dinners, brightly burning fires, and a scent of flowers
in the house--these material details, which had come to seem the
extension of his wife's personality, the inevitable result of her
nearness, were as agreeable to him after five years of marriage as
in the first surprise of his introduction to them. Mrs. Nimick had
kept house jerkily and vociferously; Ella performed the same task
silently and imperceptibly, and the results were all in favor of the
latter method. Though neither the Governor nor his wife had large
means, the household, under Mrs. Mornway's guidance, took on an air
of sober luxury as agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating
to her sister-in-law. The domestic machinery ran without a jar.
There were no upheavals, no debts, no squalid cookless hiatuses
between intervals of showy hospitality; the household moved along on
lines of quiet elegance and comfort, behind which only the eye of
the housekeeping sex could have detected a gradually increasing
scale of expense.
Such an eye was now projected on the Governor's surroundings, and
its explorations were summed up in the tone in which Mrs. Nimick
repeated from the threshold: "I always say I don't see how she does
it!"
The tone did not escape the Governor, but it disturbed him no more
than the buzz of a baffled insect. Poor Grace! It was not his fault
if her husband was given to chimerical investments, if her sons were
"unsatisfactory," and her cooks would not stay with her; but it was
natural that these facts should throw into irritating contrast the
ease and harmony of his own domestic life. It made him all the
sorrier for his sister to know that her envy did not penetrate to
the essence of his happiness, but lingered on those external signs
of well-being which counted for so little in the sum total of his
advantages. Poor Mrs. Nimick's life seemed doubly thin and mean when
one remembered that, beneath its shabby surface, there were no
compensating riches of the spirit.
