Part 18 (1/2)

”But, Miss Alice,” he said, slowly, ”I'm afraid you are wrong. I was unfortunate enough to make Miss Lee very angry. I am afraid she would think a message from me only an impertinence.”

”Sir,” said Alice, with decision, ”I'm right sometimes, if I'm not Governor; and it's better to be right than to be Governor, I've heard--or something. You trust me. Just try the effect of a message, and see if it isn't a success. What shall I say?”

The Governor was impetuous, and in spite of all the work he had done so fiercely, the longing the work had been meant to quiet surged up as strong as ever. ”Miss Alice,” he said, eagerly, ”if you are right, would it do--do you think I might deliver the message myself?”

”Do I think? Well, if _I_ were a man! Faint heart, you know!”

And the Governor, at that choppy eloquence, openly seized the friendly young hand and wrung it till Alice begged, laughing but bruised, for mercy. When he came up, later, to bid her good-night, his face was bright, and,

”Good-night, Angel of Peace,” he said.

Mary Mooney, who through the dark days had watched with anxious though uncomprehending eyes her boy's dejection and hard effort to live it down, and had applied partridges and sweetbreads and other forms of devotion steadily but unsuccessfully, saw at once and with, rapture the change when the Governor greeted her the next morning. Light-heartedly she packed his traps two days later--she had done it jealously for thirty-five years, though almost over the dead body of the Governor's man sometimes in these later days. And when he told her good-by she had her reward. The man's boyish heart went out in a burst of grat.i.tude to the tireless love that had sought only his happiness all his life. He put his arm around the stout little woman's neck.

”Mary,” he said, ”I'm going to see Miss Lee.”

Mary's pink cheeks were scarlet as she patted with a work-worn palm the strong hand on her shoulder. ”Then I know what will happen,” she said, ”and I'm glad. And if you don't bring her back with you, Mr. Jack, I won't let you in.”

So the stately Governor went off like a schoolboy with his nurse's blessing. And later like an arrow from a bow he swung around the corner of the snowy piazza at Paul Smith's, where Mrs. Lee had told him he would find her daughter. There was a bundle of fur in a big chair in the sunlight, dark against the white hills beyond, with their black lines of pine-trees. As the impetuous steps came nearer, it turned, and--the Governor's methods were again such that words do them no justice. But this time with happier result. Half an hour later, when some coherency was established, he said:

”You waited for me! You've been _waiting_ for me!” as if it were the most astonis.h.i.+ng fact in history. ”And since when have you been waiting for me, you--”

Lindsay laughed, not only with her eyes, but with her soft voice. ”Ever since the morning after, your Excellency. Alice told me all about it before I left, and made me see reason. And I--and I was right sorry I'd been so cross. I thought you'd come some time--but you came right slow,”

she said, and her eyes travelled over his face as if she were making sure he was really there.

”And I never dared to think you would see me!” he said. ”But now!”

And again there were circ.u.mstances that are best described by a hiatus.

The day after, when Mary Mooney, discreetly letting her soul's idol get into his library before greeting him, trotted into that stately chamber with soft, heavy footsteps, she was met with a kiss and a bear's hug that, as she told Mrs. Rudd later, ”was like the year he was nine.”

”I didn't bring her, Mary,” the Governor said, ”but you'd better let me stay, for she's coming.”

THE LITTLE REVENGE

Suddenly a gust of fresh wind caught Sally's hat, and off it flew, a wide-winged pink bird, over the old, old sea-wall of Clovelly, down among the rocks of the rough beach, tumbling and jumping from one gray stone to another, and getting so far away that, in the soft violet twilight, it seemed as lost as any s.h.i.+p of the Spanish Armada wrecked long ago on this wild Devons.h.i.+re coast.

”Oh!” cried Sally distractedly, and clapped her hands to her head with the human instinct to shut the stable door after the horse is gone.

”Oh!” she cried again; ”my pretty hat! And _oh_! it's in the water!”

But suddenly, out of somewhere in the twilight, there was a man chasing it. Sally leaned over the rugged, yellowish, grayish stone wall and excitedly called to him.

”Oh, thank you!” she cried, and ”That's so good of you!”

The hat had tacked and was sailing insh.o.r.e now, one stiff pink taffeta sail set to the breeze. And in a minute, with a reckless splash into the das.h.i.+ng waves, the man had it, and an easy, athletic figure swung up the causeway, holding it away from him, as if it might nip at him. He wore a dark blue jersey, and loose, flapping trousers of a seaman.

”He's only a sailor,” Sally said under her breath; ”I'd better tip him.”