CHAPTER II
THE ABSENCE OF GOVERNOR OSBORNE
Griswold spent the night at the Saluda House, Columbia, and rose in themorning with every intention of seeing Governor Osborne, or some one inauthority at his office, as soon as possible and proceeding to Richmondwithout further delay. As he scanned the morning newspaper at breakfasthe read with chagrin this item, prominently head-lined:
Governor Osborne, who was expected home from the Cotton Planters' Convention yesterday morning has been unavoidably detained in Atlanta by important personal business. Miss Barbara Osborne arrived last night and proceeded at once to the governor's mansion.
Several matters of considerable importance await the governor's return. Among these is the matter of dealing with the notorious Bill Appleweight. It is understood that the North Carolina officials are unwilling to arrest Appleweight, though his hiding-place in the hills on the border near Kildare is well known. Although he runs back and forth across the state line at pleasure, he is a North Carolinian beyond question, and it's about time Governor Dangerfield took note of the fact. However, the governor of South Carolina may be relied on to act with his usual high sense of public duty in this matter.
Professor Griswold was not pleased to learn that the governor was stillabsent from the capital. He felt that he deserved better luck after thetrouble he had taken to warn the governor. His conscience had got thebetter of his comfort--he knew that, and he wrote a telegram to the lawfirm at Richmond with which he was consultant, asking that a meetingwith certain clients arranged for to-day be deferred twenty-four hours.It was now Tuesday; he had no further lectures at the university untilthe following Monday, and after he had taken his bearings of Columbia,where it occurred to him he had not an acquaintance, he walked towardthe capitol with a well-formed idea of seeing the governor's privatesecretary--and, if that person appeared to be worthy of confidence,apprising him of the governor's danger.
Standing in the many-pillared portico of the capitol, Griswold turned tolook down upon Columbia, a city distinguished to the most casual eye bystreets an acre wide! And having an historical imagination and areverence for the past, Griswold gave himself for a moment to Memory,hearing the tramp of armed hosts, and the thunder of cannon, and seeingflames leap again in the wake of battle. It was a glorious day, and thegreen of late May lay like a soft scarf upon the city. The sky held thewistful blue of spring. Griswold bared his head to the faint breeze, orperhaps unconsciously he saluted the bronze figure of Hampton, who ridesforever there at the head of his stubborn legion. He turned into thecapitol with a little sigh, for he was a son of Virginia, and here, inthis unfamiliar scene, the Past was revivified, and he felt the spell ofthings that were already old when he was born.
It was not yet nine o'clock when he entered the governor's office. Hewaited in the reception-room, adjoining the official chamber, but theseveral desks of the clerical staff remained unoccupied. He chafed a bitas time passed and no one appeared, for his north-bound train left ateleven, and he could not fairly be asked to waste the entire day here.He was pacing the floor, expecting one of the clerks to appear at anymoment, when a man entered hurriedly, walked to the closed inner door,shook it impatiently, and kicked it angrily as he turned away. He was ashort, thick-set man of thirty-five, dressed in blue serge, and hismovements were quick and nervous. He growled under his breath and swunground upon Griswold as though to tax him with responsibility for theclosed door.
"Has no one been here this morning?" he demanded, glaring at the closeddesks.
"If you don't count me I should answer no," replied Griswold quietly.
"Oh!"
The two gentlemen regarded each other for a moment, contemptuous dislikeclearly written on the smaller man's face, Griswold half-smiling andindifferent.
"I am waiting for the governor," remarked Griswold, thinking to gaininformation.
"Then you're likely to wait some time," jerked the other. "The wholeplace seems to be abandoned. I never saw such a lot of people."
"Not having seen them myself, I must reserve judgment," Griswoldremarked, and the blue serge suit flung out of the room.
Presently another figure darkened the entrance, and the colored servantwhom Griswold had seen attending Miss Osborne on the train from Atlantaswept into the reception-room and, grandly ignoring his presence, satdown in a chair nearest the closed door of the inner chamber. Griswoldfelt that this was encouraging, as implying some link between thegovernor and his domestic household and he was about to ask the coloredwoman if she knew the business hours of the office when the closed dooropened and Miss Osborne appeared on the threshold. The colored womanrose, and Griswold, who happened to be facing the door when it swungopen with such startling suddenness, stared an instant and bowedprofoundly.
"I beg your pardon, but I wish very much to see Governor Osborne or hissecretary."
Miss Osborne, in white, trailing a white parasol in her hand, and withwhite roses in her belt, still stood half withdrawn inside the privateoffice.
"I am very sorry that Governor Osborne and his secretary are bothabsent," she answered, and the two eyed each other gravely. Griswoldfelt that the brown eyes into which he looked had lately known tears;but she held her head high, with a certain defiance, even.
"That is unfortunate. I stopped here last night on purpose to see him,and now I fear that I must leave--" and he smiled the Griswold smile,which was one of the secrets of his popularity at the university--"Imust leave Columbia in a very few minutes."
"The office does not keep very early hours," remarked the girl, "butsome one will certainly be here in a moment. I am sorry you have had towait."
She had not changed her position, and Griswold rather hoped she wouldnot, for the door framed her perfectly, and the sunlight from the innerwindows emphasized the whiteness of the snowy gown she wore. Her strawhat was shaped like a soldier's campaign hat, with sides pinned up, thetop dented, and a single feather thrust into the side.
"It was not I," said Griswold, "who so rudely shook the door. I beg thatyou will acquit me of that violence."
The girl did not, however, respond to his smile. She poked the floorwith her parasol a moment, then raised her head and asked:
"Who was it, if you please?"
"A gentleman with a brown beard, a red necktie, and a bad disposition."
"I thought as much," she said, half to herself, and her eyes were bentagain upon the point of her parasol, with which she was tracing a designin the rug. She lifted her head with the abruptness of quick decision,and looked straight at Griswold. The negress had withdrawn to the outerdoor, by which she sat with sphinx-like immovability.
"I am Miss Osborne. Governor Osborne is my father. Would you mindtelling me whether your business with my father is--"
She hesitated, and her eyes met Griswold's.
"Miss Osborne, as I have no acquaintances here, let me introduce myself.My name is Griswold. My home is Charlottesville. Pardon me, but you andI were fellow-passengers from Atlanta yesterday evening. I amunacquainted with your father, and I have no business with him except--"
He was not yet clear in his mind whether to tell her that her father'slife was threatened; it did not seem fair to alarm her when he waspowerless to help; but as he weighed the question the girl came out intothe reception-room and sat down near the window.
"Won't you have a seat, Mr. Griswold? May I ask you again whether youknow the gentleman who came in here and beat the door a while ago?"
"I never saw him before in my life."
"That is very well. And now, Mr. Griswold, I am going to ask you to tellme, if you will, just what it is you wish to say to my father."
She was very earnest, and the request she made rang the least bitimperiously. She now held the white parasol across her lap in the tightclasp of her white-gloved hands.
"I should not hesitate--" began Griswold, still uncertain what to do.
"You need not hesitate in the fe
ar that you may alarm me. I think Iknow"--and she half-smiled now--"I think perhaps I know what it is."
"My reason for wishing to see your father is, then, to warn him that ifa criminal named Appleweight is brought back from his hiding-place onthe North Carolina frontier, and tried for his crimes in South Carolina,the governor of that state, your father, will be made to suffer byAppleweight's friends."
"That is what I thought," said the girl, slowly nodding her head.
"And now, to be quite honest about it, Miss Osborne, I must confess thatI received this warning last night from a man who believed me to be thegovernor. To tell the truth, I told him I was the governor!"
The girl's eyes made a fresh inventory of Griswold, then she laughed forthe first time--a light laugh of honest mirth that would not begainsaid. The beautiful color deepened in her cheeks; her eyes lightedmerrily, as though at the drollery of Griswold standing, so to speak,_in loco parentis_.
"I have my own confession to make. I heard what you said to that man. Ihad gone to the rear platform to see what was the matter. The stop therein that preposterous place seemed interminable. You must have known thatI listened."
"I didn't suppose you heard what that man said to me or what I said tohim. I don't know how I came to palm myself off as the governor--I amnot in the habit of doing such things, but it was due, I think, to thefact that I had just been saying to a friend of mine at Atlanta--"
He ceased speaking, realizing that what he might have said to Ardmorewas not germane to the point at issue. His responsibility for the lifeand security of Governor Osborne of the sovereign state of SouthCarolina was at an end, and he was entering upon a social chat withGovernor Osborne's daughter. Some such thought must have passed throughher mind, too, for she straightened herself in her chair and dropped thepoint of her parasol to the floor. But she was the least bit curious, inspite of herself. The young man before her, who held his hat and glovesso quietly and who spoke with so nice a deference in a voice somusical, was beyond question a gentleman, and he had stopped at Columbiato render her father a service. There was no reason why she should nothear what he had said to his friend at Atlanta.
"What had you been saying, Mr. Griswold?"
"Oh, really nothing after all! I'm ashamed of it now! But he's the mostamusing person, with nothing to do but to keep himself amused. Wediscuss many daring projects, but we are never equal to them. I had justbeen telling him that we were incapable of action; that while we planour battles the foe is already breaking down the outer defenses andbeating in the gates. You see, we are both very ridiculous at times, andwe talk that sort of idiocy to keep up our spirits. And having beratedmy friend for his irresolution, I seized the first opportunity to provemy own capacity for meeting emergencies. The man flattered me with theassumption that I was the governor of South Carolina, and I weaklyfell."
Distress was again written in Miss Osborne's face. She had paid littleheed to the latter half of Griswold's recital, though she kept her eyesfixed gravely upon him. In a moment the gentleman in blue serge who hadmanifested so much feeling over the governor's absence strode again intothe room.
"Ah, Miss Osborne, so you are back!"
He bowed over the girl's hand with a great deal of manner, then glancedat once toward the door of the private office.
"Hasn't your father come in yet? I have been looking for him since eighto'clock."
"My father is not home yet, Mr. Bosworth."
"Not home! Do you mean to say that he won't be here to-day?"
"I hardly expect him," replied the girl calmly. "Very likely he will beat home to-night or in the morning."
Griswold had walked away out of hearing; but he felt that the girlpurposely raised her voice so that he might hear what she said.
"I must know where he is; there's an important matter waiting--a veryserious matter it may prove for him if he isn't here to-day to pass onit. I must wire him at once."
"Very good. You had better do so, Mr. Bosworth. He's at the Peach TreeClub, Atlanta."
"Atlanta! Do you mean to say that he isn't even in this state to-day?"
"No, Mr. Bosworth, and I advise you to telegraph him immediately ifyour business is so urgent."
"It isn't my business, Barbara; it's the state's business; it's yourfather's business, and if he isn't here to attend to it by to-morrow atthe latest, it will go hard with him. He has enemies who will construehis absence as meaning--"
He spoke rapidly, with rising anger, but some gesture from the girlarrested him, and he turned frowningly to see Griswold calmly intentupon an engraving at the further end of the room. The colored woman wasdozing in her chair. Before Bosworth could resume, the girl spoke, hervoice again raised so that every word reached Griswold.
"If you refer to the Appleweight case, I must tell you, Mr. Bosworth,that I have all confidence that my father will act whenever he seesfit."
"But the people--"
"My father is not afraid of the people," said the girl quietly.
"But you don't understand, Barbara, how much is at stake here. If someaction isn't taken in that matter within twenty-four hours your fatherwill be branded as a coward by every newspaper in the state. You seemto take it pretty coolly, but it won't be a trifling matter for him."
"I believe," replied the girl, rising, "that you have said all that Icare to hear from you now or at any further time, Mr. Bosworth, aboutthis or any other matter."
"But, Barbara--"
Miss Osborne turned her back and walked to the window. Bosworth stared amoment, then rushed angrily from the room. Griswold abandoned his studyof the picture, and gravely inclined his head as Bosworth passed. Thenhe waited a minute. The girl still stood at the window, and there was,Griswold felt, something a little forlorn in her figure. It was quitetime that he was off if he caught his train for Richmond. He crossed theroom, and as he approached the window Miss Osborne turned quickly.
"It was kind of you to wait. That man is the state's attorney-general.You doubtless heard what he said to me."
"Yes, Miss Osborne, I could not help hearing. I did not leave, because Iwished to say--"
The associate professor of admiralty in the department of law of theUniversity of Virginia hesitated and was lost. Miss Osborne's eyes werebrown, with that hint of bronze, in certain lights, that is thedistinctive possession of the blessed. Health and spirit spoke in herbright color. She was tall and straight, and there was somethingmilitant in her figure as she faced Griswold.
"I beg to say, Miss Osborne, that if there is any way in which I canserve you, my time is wholly at your disposal."
"I thank you. I fear that you have already given yourself too muchtrouble in stopping here. My father will wish to thank you on hisreturn."
Her lips trembled, and tears were bright in her eyes. Then she regainedcontrol of herself.
"Mr. Griswold, I have no claim whatever on your kindness, but I am invery great distress. I don't see just where I can turn for aid to anyone I know. But you as a stranger may be able to help me--if it isn'tasking too much--but then I know it is asking too much!"
"Anything, anything whatever," urged Griswold kindly.
"Mr. Bosworth, the attorney-general, warns me that if my father does notuse the power of the state to capture this outlaw Appleweight, theresults will be disastrous. He says my father must act immediately. Hedemanded his address, and, and--I gave it to him."
"But you must remember, Miss Osborne, that the attorney-general probablyknows the intricacies of this case. He must have every reason forupholding your father; in fact, it's his sworn duty to advise him insuch matters as this."
"There's another side to that, Mr. Griswold," and the girl's colordeepened; but she smiled and went on. It was quite evident that she wasanimated now by some purpose, and that she was resolved to avail herselfof Griswold's proffered aid. "I have my own reasons for doubting Mr.Bosworth's motives; and I resent his assumption that my father is notdoing his full duty. No one can speak to me of my father in that way--noone!"<
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"Certainly not, Miss Osborne!"
"This whole matter must be kept as quiet as possible. I can appeal to noone here without the risk of newspaper publicity which would do myfather very great injury. But if it is not altogether too great a favor,Mr. Griswold, may I ask that you remain here until to-night--until myfather returns? His secretary has been ill and is away from town. Theother clerks I sent away on purpose this morning. Father had left hisoffice keys at home, and I came in to see if I could find the papers inthe Appleweight case. They are there, and on the top of the packet is arequisition on the governor of North Carolina for Appleweight's return."
"Signed?"
"Signed. I'm sure he had only deferred acting in the case until hisreturn, and he should have been back to-day."
"But of course he will be back; it is inconceivable that he shouldignore, much less evade, a duty as plain as this--the governor of astate--it is preposterous! His business in Atlanta accounts for hisabsence. Governor Osborne undoubtedly knows what he is about."
"My father is not in Atlanta, Mr. Griswold. He is not at the Peach TreeClub, and has not been. I have not the slightest idea where my fatheris!"
The echoing whistle of the departing Virginia express reached themfaintly as they stood facing each other before the open window in thegovernor's reception-room.