Ladies and Gentlemen

“I – I feel as though I were giving her up forever,” faltered Mrs. Gatling, following with brimming eyes her daughter’s departing form.

“Romola,” commanded Mr. Gatling, “don’t be foolish in the head. You’re going to be separated from her exactly nine hours – unless the evening train’s late, in which event it may be as long as nine hours and a half.”

“You know what I mean, Hector.”

“Don’t I? Mmph!”

“But she tripped away so gaily – so gladly. It was exactly as though she wanted to leave us. And yet, Heaven knows I’ve tried and tried ever since that – that terrible night to show her what she means to me… Have you got a handkerchief to spare? Mine’s sopping.”

“You’ve done more than try, Romola – you’ve succeeded, if that’s any consolation to you. You’ve succeeded darned well.” He stared almost regretfully down the line at the rear of an observation-car swiftly diminishing into a small square dot where the rails came together. “Since you mention it, she did look powerfully chipper and cheerful a minute ago, hustling to climb aboard that Pullman – cheerfuller than she’s looked since we quit the trail last Wednesday. Lord, how I wish I could guarantee that kid was never going to have a minute’s unhappiness the rest of her life!” Something remotely akin to remorse was beginning to gnaw at Mr. Gatling’s heart-cockles.

Indeed, something strongly resembling remorse beset him toward the close of this day. At the station when they detrained, no Shirley was on hand to greet them; nor was there sign of Shirley’s affianced. Up the slope from the tracks at the hotel a clerk wrenched himself from an importuning cluster of newly arrived tourists for long enough to tell them the numbers of their rooms and to say Miss Gatling had left word she would be awaiting them there.

So they went up under escort of two college students serving as bell-hops. Collegians as a class make indifferent bell-hops. These two deposited the hand-baggage in the living-room of the suite, accepted the customary rewards and departed. As they vanished, a bedroom door opened and out came Shirley – a crumpled, wobegone Shirley with a streaky swollen face and on her cheek the wrinkle marks where she had ground it into a wadded pillow.

“It’s all right, mater,” she said with a flickering trace of her usual jauntiness. “The alliance between the house of Gatling and the house of Tripler is off. So you can liven up. I’ll be your substitute for such crying as is done in this family during the next day or two. I’ve – I’ve been practicing all afternoon.”

She eluded the lady’s outstretched arms and clung temporarily at her father’s breast.

“Dad,” she confessed brokenly, “I think I must have been a little bit loony these last two weeks. But, dad, I’ve taken the cure. It’s not nice medicine and it makes you feel miserable at first but I guess it’s good for what ails me… Dad, have you seen – him?”

“Not yet.” Compassion for her was mixed in with his own secret exultation, as though he tasted a sweet cake that was iced with a most bitter icing.

“Well, when you do, you’ll understand. Even if he doesn’t!”

“Have you told him?”

“Of course I have. Did you think I’d try to wish that little job off on you? I didn’t tell him the real reason – I couldn’t wound him that much. I told him I’d changed. But he – he’s really the one that’s changed. That’s what makes it harder for me now. That’s what makes it hurt so.”

“Here, Romola,” he said, kissing the girl and relinquishing her into her mother’s grasp. “You swap tears awhile – you’ll enjoy that anyhow, Romola. I’ve got business down-stairs – got to make some sleeper reservations for getting out of here in the morning. And as soon as we hit Pittsburgh I figure you two had better be booking up for a little swing around Europe.”

The lobby below was seething – seething is the word commonly used in this connection so we might as well do so, too – was seething with Easterners who mainly had dressed as they imagined Westerners would dress, and with Westerners who mainly had dressed as they imagined Easterners would dress, the resultant effect being that nobody was fooled but everybody was pleased. Working his way through the jam on the search for a certain one, Mr. Gatling’s eye almost immediately was caught by a startling color combination or rather a series of startling color combinations appertaining to an individual who stood half hidden in the protection of a column, leaning against it head down with his back to Mr. Gatling.

To begin at the top, there was, surmounting all, a smug undersized object of head-gear – at least, it would pass for head-gear – of a poisonous mustard shade. It perched high and, as it were, aloof upon the crest of its wearer’s skull. Below it, where the neck had been shaved, and a good portion of the close-clipped scalp as well, a sort of crescent of pink skin blazed forth in strong contrast to an abnormally long expanse of sun-burnt surface rising above the cross-line of an exceedingly low, exceedingly shiny blue linen collar.

Straying on downward, Mr. Gatling’s wondering eye was aware of a high-waisted Norfolk jacket belted well up beneath the armpits, a jacket of a tone which might not be called mauve nor yet lavender nor yet magenta but which partook subtly of all three shades – with a plaid overlay in chocolate superimposed thereon. Yet nearer the floor was revealed a pair of trousers extensively bell-bottomed and apparently designed with the intent to bring out and impress upon the casual observer the fact that their present owner had two of the most widely bowed legs on the North American continent; and finally, a brace of cloth-top shoes. Tan shoes, these were, with buttoned uppers of a pale fawn cloth, and bulldog toes. They were very new shoes, that was plain, and of an exceedingly bright and pristine glossiness.

This striking person now moved out of his shelter, his shoulders being set at a despondent hunch, and as he turned about, bringing his profile into view, Mr. Gatling recognized that the stranger was no stranger and he gave a gasp which became a choked gurgle.

“Perfect!” he muttered to himself; “absolutely perfect! Couldn’t be better if I’d done it myself. And, oh Lordy, that necktie – that’s the finishing stroke! Still, at that, it’s a rotten shame – the poor kid!”

He hurried across, overtaking the slumping figure, and as his hand fell in a friendly slap upon one drooped shoulder the transformed cowboy flinched and turned and looked on him with two sad eyes.

“Howdy-do, sir,” he said wanly. Then he braced himself and squared his back, and Mr. Gatling perceived – and was glad to note – that the youngster strove to take his heartache in a manly fashion.

“Son,” said Mr. Gatling, “from what I’m able to gather I’m not going to have you for a son-in-law after all. But that’s no reason why we shouldn’t hook up along another line. I’ve been watching you off and on ever since we got acquainted and more closely since – well, since about a week ago, and it strikes me you’ve got some pretty good stuff in you. I’ve been thinking of trying a little flier in the cattle game out here – had the notion in the back of my mind for quite a while but didn’t spring it until I found the party that I figure could maybe run it right. Well, I think I’ve found him. You’re him. If you think you’d like a chance to start in as foreman or boss or superintendent or whatever you call it and maybe work up into a partnership if you showed me you had the goods, why, we’ll talk it over together at dinner. The womenfolks won’t be down and we can sit and powwow and I’ll give you my ideas and you can give me yours.”

“I’d like that fine, sir,” said young Tripler.

“Good boy! I’ll keep you so busy you won’t have time to brood on any little disappointment that you may be suffering from now… Say, son, don’t mind my suggesting something, do you? If I was you I’d skin out of these duds you’ve got on and climb back into your regular working clothes – somehow, you don’t seem to match the picture the way you are now.”

“Why, you advised me to get ’em your own self, sir!” exclaimed the youth.

“That’s right, I did, didn’t I? Well, maybe you had better keep on wearing ’em.” A shrewd and crafty gleam flickered under his eyelids. “You see – yes – on second thoughts, I think I want a chance to get used to you in your stylish new outfit. Promise me you’ll wear ’em until noon tomorrow anyhow?”

“Yes, sir,” said his victim obediently.

Mr. Gatling winked a concealed deadly wink.

A Close Shave

On a certain day the young governor – Gov. G. W. Blankenship – left the Executive Mansion and motored up to the State Penitentiary.

As the car spun him north over good roads through the crisp morning air, he took stock of himself and of his past life and of his future prospects, nor had cause for disappointment or doubt regarding any one of these three. This was a fine large world – large yet cozy – and he gave it his unqualified indorsement while he rode along.

He took the penitentiary unawares. The warden was not expecting him. Nobody was – not even the warden’s pretty, amorous little wife. Of this, his first visit to the institution since his inauguration six months before, the governor meant to make a surprise visit. An announcement sent on ahead would have meant preparations for his arrival – an official reception and a speeding-up of the machinery. His design was to see how the place looked in, as you might say, its week-day clothes.

It looked pretty good. After a painstaking inspection he was bound to conclude that, for a prison, this prison came very near to being a model prison. The management was efficient, that was plain to be seen. The discipline, so far as he might judge, was strict without being cruel.

The climax to a very satisfactory forenoon came, when the warden at the end of the tour invited him to stay for luncheon.

“It’ll just be a simple meal, Governor,” said Warden Riddle, “with nobody else there except Mrs. Riddle. But I’d mightily like to have you take pot-luck with us.”

“Well, I believe I will do just that very thing,” said Governor Blankenship, heartily. Privately he was much pleased. “That is, if I’m not putting your household out on my account?”

“Of course not,” stated Riddle. “I’ll just chase a trusty across the road to tell the missis to put a third plate on the table – that’s all that’s necessary.” He spoke with the pride of a contented husband in a well-ordered home.

“Then I’ll get in my car and go find a barber shop,” said the governor, sliding the palm of his hand across his chin. “I started up country so soon after breakfast this morning that I forgot to shave.”

“No need for you to do that,” Riddle told him. “Don’t you remember seeing the little shop over back of the main building – not the big shop where the inmates are trimmed up, the little one where the staff have their barbering done? We’ve got a lifer over there who’s a wiz’ at his trade. I’ll guarantee you’ll get as good a shave from him as you ever had in your life, Governor.”

So, escorted by the warden, Governor Blankenship recrossed the enclosure to a wing behind the infirmary. From the doorway of a small, neat shop, properly equipped and spotlessly clean, the warden addressed the lone occupant, a young man in convict gray.

“Shave this gentleman right away,” he ordered. “A good quick job.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the prisoner.

“You needn’t wait, Warden,” said the governor. “I’ll rejoin you in your office in a few minutes.”

The warden accordingly departed, the barber closing the door behind him. The governor climbed into the chair and was tilted back. A crisp cloth was tucked about his collar, warm, soft suds were applied to his face and deft fingers kneaded the soap and rubbed it in among the hair roots, then the razor began mowing with smooth, even strokes over the governor’s jowls – first one jowl, then the other. This much was done in a silence broken only by the gentle scraping sound of the steel against the bristles.

It was the convict who spoke first, thereby violating a prison rule. He had finished with his subject’s jaws; the razor hovered above the Adam’s apple.

“I know you,” he said coldly; “you’re the governor.”

“Yes,” said his Excellency, “I am.”

“Then you ought to recognize me, too,” continued the barber. “Take a look!”

Slightly startled, Governor Blankenship blinked and peered upward into a face that was bent just above his own face.

“No,” he said, “I don’t believe I remember you. Where did we ever meet before?”

“In a courtroom,” said the prisoner, “in a courtroom at – ,” he named the principal city of the state, which also was the city where the governor held his citizenship. “You prosecuted me – you sent me here.”

All at once his voice grew shaky with passion; his features, which until now he had held in a composed blank, became distorted – a twisted mask of hatred.

Sudden apprehension stirred inside the young governor. He made as though to straighten up. A strong hand pressing on his breast kept him down, though.

“Stay still!” commanded the convict. “You haven’t got a chance. I locked the door there when the head-screw left. And don’t try to yell for help, either – I can take that head of yours off your shoulders at one swipe. Stay still and listen to me.”

As white under the patchings of lather as the lather was – yes, whiter – Governor Blankenship lay there, rigid with a great fear, and hearkened as his tormentor went on:

“Probably you wouldn’t remember me. Why should you? I was just one of the poor stiffs you persecuted when you were district attorney, building up the record that landed you in the governor’s chair. ‘Blood Hound’ Blankenship – that’s what they called you. And how you worked to put me away! Well, you had your wish. Here I am, in for keeps. And here you are, helpless as a baby, and a sharp razor right against your neck. Feel it, don’t you? I’ll make you feel it!”

The stricken man felt it, pressing at his throat, fraying the skin, ready to slice downward into his crawling flesh. The mere touch of it seemed to paralyze his vocal cords. He strove to speak, but for the life of him – and his life was the stake, he realized that – he couldn’t get the words out.

In a terrible relentless monotone the torturer went on:

“I don’t so much blame the judge – he seemed almost sorry for me when he was hanging the sentence on me. And I don’t blame the jury, either. But you – what you said about me, the way you went at me on cross-examination, the names you called me when you were summing up! I swore then that if ever I got a chance at you I’d fix you. And now I’ve got my chance – and I’ve got you right where I want you!”

“Wait – for God’s sake, wait!” In a strangled frenzied gurgle the helpless man pumped forth the entreaty.

“Why should I wait? They don’t have capital punishment any more in this state. All they can do is pile another life term on the one I’m already doing.”

“But wait – oh, please wait! I do seem to remember you now. Maybe – maybe I was too severe. If I took your case under advisement – if I pardoned you – if-if – ” He was begging so hard that he babbled.

The pressure of that deadly thing at his throat was relaxed the least bit.

“Now you’re getting reasonable,” said the lifer. “I thought the thing I wanted most in the world was to kill you. But after four years here, liberty would be pretty sweet too. There’s one thing they’ve always said about you – that you keep your word. Swear you’ll keep your trap shut about what’s happened in this shop today, and on top of that swear to me you’ll turn me out of here, and you can go!”

On these terms then the bargain was struck. The governor, having given his promise, had a good shave, twice over, with witch-hazel for a lotion, and having somewhat mastered his jumping nerves and regained his customary dignity, went home with the warden for luncheon.

From the foot of the table, little Mrs. Riddle shot covert smiles at him – and soft languishing glances. There was meaningness in her manner, in her caressing voice. Her husband talked along, suspecting nothing. He thought – if he gave it a thought – that she was flattered at having the governor at her board. As for the governor, even in his shaken state he had a secret glowing within.

As he was leaving, he remarked in a casual tone to his host:

“That pet barber of yours – Wyeth, I believe his name is. He interested me – aroused my sympathy, in fact.”

“My wife feels the same way about him,” said the warden. “But then, you know how women are. He’s young and well-mannered and she’s full of kindness for every human being.”

“Then probably she’d be pleased in case —h’m– in case I should grant him a pardon?”

Warden Riddle gave a start.

“She might,” he said, “but nobody else would. Governor, take it from me, that fellow’s bad all the way through. And the crime that landed him here – a cold-blooded, brutal murder – it was an atrocious thing, utterly unprovoked. No mitigating circumstances whatsoever, just plain butchery. Governor, as your friend I beg you, don’t be swept off your feet by any rush of misguided sentimentality for such a wretch. To turn him loose would kill you politically. You’re in line to be our next United States Senator. Already they’re saying over the country that you’re Presidential timber. There’s no telling how high or how far you’ll go if only you don’t make some fatal mistake. And this – this would be fatal. It would rouse the whole state against you. It would destroy you, not only with the party but with the people. You know what ruined your predecessor – he made too free a use of the pardoning power. Governor, if you let that man loose on society, you’re wrecked.”

That night, back at the Executive Mansion, the bachelor governor slept not a wink.

Was ever a man strung between the horns of a worse dilemma? Warden Riddle had been right. To open the prison doors for so infamous a creature as Wyeth was, would be damnation for all his ambitions. And Governor Blankenship was as ambitious as he was godly. And probably no more godly man ever lived. On the other hand, he had given his pledge to Wyeth.

There was this about Governor Blankenship: he had been named for the father of his country – that man who could not tell a lie. And, wittingly, Governor Blankenship had never in all his blameless life told a lie either. To keep the faith with himself and the world, to wear truth like a badge shining upon his breast, had from boyhood been his dearest ideal. Off that course he never intentionally had departed. With him it was more than a code of ethics and more than a creed of personal conduct – it was the holiest of religions. He unreservedly believed that one guilty falsehood – just one – would consign his soul to the bottommost pit of perdition forever. Here was a real Sir Galahad, a perfect knight of perfect honor.

Through days and weeks he walked between two invisible but ever-present mentors. One of them, whose name was Expediency, constantly tempted him.

“You passed your word under duress and in mortal fear,” Expediency whispered in his ear. “Let that man rot in his cell. ’Tis his just desert.”

But the other counselor, called Conscience, as repeatedly said to him: “You never told a lie. Can you tell one now?”

In such grievous plight, he received a secret message, sent by underground from Wyeth.

“I’m getting impatient,” was Wyeth’s word. “Are you, or are you not, going to come clean?”

This enhanced his desperation. From sleeplessness, from gnawing worry he lost flesh. People about him said the noble young governor was not like himself any more. They predicted a breakdown unless he was cured of what hidden cause it was which distressed him.

One morning he rose, haggard and red-eyed, from the bed upon which since midnight he had tossed and rolled. He had made his decision. Selfishness had won. He would break his promise to Wyeth. But since he must go to eternal Hell for a lie, he would go there for another and a sweeter reason.

Until now, his romantic dealings with little Mrs. Riddle had been mild and harmless, if clandestinely conducted. He had not philandered with her; he merely had flirted. On his side it had been an innocent flirtation – an agreeable diversion. But he knew the lady’s mind – knew she was weak and willing, where he had been strong and straightforward.

So be it then. For a crown to his other and lesser iniquity he would corrupt the wife of his devoted friend.

For the first time in a month he had zest for his breakfast. Conscience was so thoroughly drugged she seemed as though dead.

From the table he went to the long-distance telephone. He would call her up and arrange for an assignation. There was considerable delay in establishing the connection – a buzzing over the wire, a confusion of vague sounds. Finally his ringing was answered by a strange voice.

“I wish to speak with Mrs. Riddle,” he said.

There was a little pause. Then, in a fumbling, evasive fashion the voice made reply.

“She’s not here. She’s – she’s out.”

It occurred to the governor that he might as well tell the warden he had abandoned the idea of pardoning the barber.

“Then I’d like to talk with Mr. Riddle,” he said.

“He’s – he’s not here either. Who is this, please?”

In his double disappointment the governor forgot the possible need for caution. “This,” he said, “is Governor Blankenship.”

“Oh!” The voice became warmer. “Is that you, Governor? I’ve been trying for an hour to get you on your private line. This is Warden Riddle’s brother at the ’phone – you know, Henry Riddle? They got me up at daylight when this – this terrible thing was discovered, and I’ve been here ever since, doing what I could.”

“What terrible thing do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard the news? Why, sir, the worst man in the penitentiary got away last night – Wyeth, the desperado. He – he had help. That’s why the warden’s away, why I’m in charge. My poor brother’s out with the posse trying to get trace of the scoundrel. I guess he’ll shoot him if he finds him.”

“But why is Mrs. Riddle absent at such a time?”

“Governor, that’s the worst part of it. She was the one that helped that devil to escape. And she – she went with him!”

To the end of his days Governor G. W. Blankenship was known as the man who never told a lie. When he died they carved something to that general effect upon his tombstone.

Good Sam

From the foot of the lake where most of the camps were, everybody had been driven out by the forest-fire. Among those who fled up to our end and took temporary quarters on the hotel reservation was my friend, the Native Genius.

My friend, the Native Genius, was a cowboy before he became a painter. He became a great man and was regarded in our Eastern art circles, but in his feelings and his language he remained a cowboy. He also was an historian of the folk-lore of the Old West that has ridden over the ultimate hill of the last free grazing and vanished forever and ever, alas! With none of the conscious effort which so often marks such an undertaking, he could twine a fragrant fictional boscage upon the solid trellis of remembered fact and make you like it. To my way of thinking, this was not the least of his gifts. Indeed not.

He joined us the evening before, bringing the tools of his trade and various finished or unfinished canvases. During the night my slumber was at intervals distracted by the far-off wails of a wind-instrument in travail. It was as though someone, enraged by its stubborn defiance, had put the thing to the torture. Distance muffled those moaning outcries but in them, piercing through the curtains of my sleepiness, were torment and anguish.

In the morning early, when I walked past the row of log houses at the farther side of the grounds, I came upon the author of this outrage. A male of the refugees sat at an open window and contended with a haunted saxophone for the lost soul of a ghostly tune.

He was young enough to have optimism. On the other hand, he was old enough to know better. He had the look about him – a wearied and red-eyed and a wannish look it was – of one who never knows when he is licked. Except among amateur musicians I would regard this as an admirable trait.

My friend was squatted on the top step of his cabin, two numbers on beyond. He greeted me and the new-born day with a wide yawn.

“Would you maybe like to buy a horn?” he asked, and flirted with his thumb toward the place next-door-but-one.