Part 10

Porter produced it; and the Governor read it through, while the lines in his face deepened and his look became again severe and judicial. "I guess that is sufficiently strong," he said, when he had finished reading—"but no more so than the man deserves; isn't that so?" he burst out heartily.

"No," said Porter.

"You don't think that I'm taking any unfair advantage of him?" Clinton asked, in a thoughtful manner. "Of course, his getting drunk may have been more in the nature of an accident than anything else and doesn't necessarily mean that a man is unfit," he said half to himself. "It's a rather small issue, isn't it, to make against a man?"

"_You_ didn't make it; he did," answered Porter.

"You're right," said the Governor, suddenly, and he began to study the speech carefully in order to get it clearly in his head. "Let me have those copies of the court record," he said. Porter handed them over. "I don't want to use these against a man if it wouldn't be a square thing to do," again argued the Governor, "I don't want to take unfair advantage of a weakness on his part."

"As I said before," replied the private secretary, "I consider it your duty to the party."

"Of course," said the Governor, "that makes the difference; if only I personally were the gainer, I might hesitate, but the party welfare demands it."

At half-past seven the train drew into the station in Dunster; and a delegation of the city committee met the Governor with a barouche and four horses and a band playing "Hail to the Chief," to the Governor's great weariness. At the city hall, where the rally was to be held, a large crowd of representative men of the party were assembled in one of the ante-rooms behind the stage. As the party leaders filed up, Clinton addressed a few happy words to each, calling most of them by name, for he had spoken in Dunster before.

Then the signal was given and the chairman of the meeting, looking worried and overweighted by the responsibilities of the occasion, marched up on the stage with the Governor, the rest shambling on behind in a shamefaced manner and with a certain want of confidence, like a flock of sheep. While the chairman was making his speech of introduction, which occupied thirty-five minutes, and during which he carefully anticipated every point which the real speakers of the evening might make, the Governor took out the pages of his speech, together with the court documents, and again carefully read them through. At last the chairman finished and the Governor walked slowly forward on the platform. The audience cheered wildly and the band hurriedly played "Hail to the Chief." The Governor took his manuscript and the other papers out of his breast-pocket, laid them on the reading-desk, opened them, gave a last glance at them, and then stood waiting for the uproar to subside.

As he stood there looking at the excited audience, a man's face in the row next to the front caught his eye, and he looked hard at him. It seemed familiar. He gazed still harder; and then saw that it was no one whom he knew, but that the face was the very image of "Skipper" Cunningham's. Like a flash Clinton's mind reverted to the scene at Copley School. He heard the frank, manly, ringing tones of Cunningham as he replied to the Governor's remarks.... Then Clinton perceived that the audience was waiting for him, and he began,

"My friends of Dunster, not alone my party mates, I thank you for this warm welcome. I have tried my best while your Governor to earn it...."

Those who were there said that Governor Clinton had never before in his life made so strong and so ringing a speech. The argument was searching, filled with sarcasm, and unanswerable. It stirred his audience from the bottom of their souls, for the Governor's words seemed instinct with truth and sincerity. As he sat patiently waiting for the local candidate for the Legislature, who was speaking on painfully uninteresting local issues, to finish, Clinton felt, himself, that his speech had distinctly been a success. He also felt that he had done right.

After the Governor and his private secretary, Mr. Porter, rode back to the hotel, he said, "Porter, I wish you'd take down a note which I want to dictate to-night to Bellingham. Enclose with it the manuscript of my speech and the copies of those court records. Take a copy of it and send it to-night."

On reaching the hotel the note was written and mailed with the enclosures that night; and the Bellingham episode in the campaign appeared to be closed so far as Clinton was concerned.

* * * * *

The Governor reached the State House the next day about noon; and at three o'clock it was announced to him that Mr. Bellingham was outside and desired to see him.

"This is a nuisance," muttered the Governor as Bellingham entered. The latter walked up to the Governor and held out his hand.

"Governor," he said, "I am here to apologize to you most sincerely for what I said in my speech the other night. I want to tell you that I will make full explanation of it in the newspapers and to my audience to-night. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate and how much I thank you for your note and for your forbearance in not delivering that speech which you sent me. For I admit you had the greatest provocation to return the attack."

"Oh, that's all right," replied Clinton. "It's all over with now. Sit down."

Just at that moment Jim Blakely and Dawson, the _Standard_ reporter, were waiting outside in the private secretary's office for a chance to see Clinton, and conversing excitedly with Mr. Porter.

"What in Heaven's name made the Governor give up his idea of attacking Bellingham in his speech last night?" asked Blakely. "I thought we had it all decided on that he was to produce those convictions and make a rousing assault on that blackguardly politician," he continued; "and now he goes up to Dunster and makes a speech with not a word in it on Bellingham's personal record, and confines himself to political issues. He's a damned fool, that's what he is. He's throwing away his election."

"I don't know," said Porter, "how it happened. All I know is, that he had his speech all prepared and was studying it all the way to Dunster. He had it on his desk before him, and I was never so surprised in all my life as I was when I heard him go on without a word regarding Bellingham's career or in reply to his disreputable assaults. And you could have knocked me down with a feather when the Governor told me last night to write to Bellingham and enclose the legal papers. Wait a minute and I'll show you what he wrote. I know I can rely on you two not to make it public."

Both men nodded, and Porter took up some paper on his desk and read:

"ALFRED P. BELLINGHAM, ESQ.,

"Dear Sir:—I have read your remarks of last night and I enclose you the speech which I intended to deliver in reply to them. It will never be delivered, however. I also enclose you certain documents which may be of interest to you. Upon careful consideration of these and of your recent course in this campaign, I feel sure that you will be of the opinion, as a gentleman, that the way to your election or to mine in this State does not lie along such a road.

"Yours truly, "ROBERT CLINTON."

"Well, I call the Governor, with all due respect, a tenderfoot," said the reporter, whistling loudly as he heard the letter. "Did the Governor give you any explanation of his change of heart?"

"Nothing very intelligible," answered Porter. "He said something about Copley School that I couldn't make out."

* * * * *

"And now," said Bellingham, inside the Executive Chamber, to Clinton, "I want to explain to you the other night's speech. I admit that I was drunk. I admit also that many years ago I was indicted for fraud at an election, and I was convicted and fined for drunkenness; but, God help me, I believe that during the past twenty years I have lived down these things. I hadn't touched a drop of liquor for five years up to the other night. It was, you remember, a very biting cold night, and I had driven six miles from the railroad station and was thoroughly chilled through. I felt it in my lungs, and my host over-persuaded me to take some whiskey. It went straight to my head, and you unfortunately know the result. But as I said before, Governor, I cannot sufficiently apologize to you and thank you for your forbearance."

The Governor paused a moment. "You needn't thank me," he said. "You should thank 'Skipper' Cunningham."

Bellingham looked confused and waited for the Governor to explain his remark. The Governor, however, offered no explanation. Instead, he said, abruptly, "Bellingham, I'm going to tell you, as man to man, that I think you've done a very square thing by coming here to me to-day and saying what you've said. I think it was a mighty frank and honorable thing in you to do. I'm proud to be fighting you as my opponent."

He paused again, and then suddenly asked, "You never were a Copley School boy, were you?"

"No," said Bellingham.

"You ought to have been," answered the Governor.

THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Edited by Sidney Colvin

SARANAC LAKE:—WINTER, 1887-1888

During the two years and nine months of Stevenson's residence at Bournemouth preceding the date of his father's death, he had made no apparent progress toward recovery. Every period of respite had been quickly followed by a relapse, and all his work, brilliant and varied as it was, had been done under conditions which would have reduced almost any other man to inactivity. The close and frequently recurring struggles against the danger of death from hemorrhage and exhaustion, which he had been used, when they first occurred, to find exciting, grew in the long run merely irksome, and even his persistent high courage and gayety, sustained as they were by the devoted affection of his family and many friends, began occasionally, for the first time, to fail him. Accordingly when in May, 1887, the death of his father severed the strongest of the ties which bound him to the old country, he was very ready to listen to the advice of his physicians, who were unanimous in thinking his case not hopeless, but urged him to try some complete change of climate, surroundings, and mode of life. His wife's connections pointing to the West, he thought of the mountain health-resorts of Colorado, and of their growing reputation for the cure of lung patients. Having let his house at Bournemouth, he accordingly took passage on board the steamship Ludgate Hill, sailing for New York from London on August 17, 1887, with his whole party, consisting of his wife, his widowed mother, whom they had persuaded to join them, his young stepson, and a trusted servant, Valentine.

It was the moment when his reputation had first reached its height in the United States, owing especially to the immense impression made by the _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. He experienced consequently—for the first time—the pleasures, such as they were, of celebrity, and also its inconveniences; found the most hospitable of refuges in the house of his kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild, of Newport; and quickly made many other friends, including the owner and the editor of this Magazine, from whom he immediately received and accepted very advantageous offers of work. Having been dissuaded from braving, for the present, the fatigue of the long journey to Colorado and the extreme rigors of its winter climate, he determined to try instead a season at the mountain station of Saranac Lake, in the Adirondack Mountains, New York State, which had lately been coming into reputation as a place of cure. There, under the care of the well-known resident physician, Dr. Trudeau, he spent nearly seven months, from the end of September, 1887, to the end of April, 1888, with results on the whole favorable to his own health, though not to that of his wife, who at these high altitudes was never well. His work during the winter consisted of the twelve papers published in the course of 1888 in SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, including, perhaps, the most striking of all his essays, _A Chapter on Dreams_, _Pulvis et Umbra_, _Beggars_, _The Lantern Bearers_, _Random Memories_, etc.; as well as the greater part of the _Master of Ballantrae_ and _The Wrong Box_—the last originally conceived and drafted by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne—and the ballad of _Ticonderoga_.

The following letters are extracted from those which tell of his voyage to New York and his reception there at this date, and of his winter's life and work at Saranac:

NEWPORT, R. I., U. S. A. [September, 1887].

MY DEAR COLVIN,—So long it went excellent well, and I had a time I am glad to have had; really enjoying my life. There is nothing like being at sea, after all. And O why have I allowed myself to rot so long on land? But on the Banks I caught a cold, and I have not yet got over it. My reception here was idiotic to the last degree.... It is very silly, and not pleasant, except where humor enters; and I confess the poor interviewer lads pleased me. They are too good for their trade; avoided anything I asked them to avoid, and were no more vulgar in their reports than they could help. I liked the lads.

O, it was lovely on our stable-ship, chock full of stallions. She rolled heartily, rolled some of the fittings out of our state-room, and I think a more dangerous cruise (except that it was summer) it would be hard to imagine. But we enjoyed it to the masthead, all but Fanny; and even she perhaps a little. When we got in, we had run out of beer, stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit. But it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a great big Birmingham liner like a new hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the quartermasters, and I (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a coat. The passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with no drunkard, no gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting than one would have asked of poor human nature. Apes, stallions, cows, matches, hay, and poor men-folk all or almost all came successfully to land—Yours ever,

R. L. S.

[NEWPORT, U. S. A., September, 1887.]

MY DEAR JAMES,—Here we are at Newport in the house of the good Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders. I have been in bed practically ever since I came. I caught a cold on the Banks after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the ports at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my clothing; and the man of the stallions made a bower of the black tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a picture on a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our stateroom, and you have the voyage of the _Ludgate Hill_. She arrived in the port of New York, without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret her.

My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.

America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great place for kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity; I envy the cool obscurity of Skerryvore. If it even paid, said Meanness! and was abashed at himself.—Yours most sincerely,

R. L. S.

[NEW YORK; end of September, 1887.]

MY DEAR S. C.,—Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a New York Hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St. Gaudens) who is making a medallion of yours truly and who is (to boot) one of the handsomest and nicest fellows I have often seen. I caught a cold on the Banks; fog is not for me; nearly died of interviewers and visitors, during twenty-four hours in New York; cut for Newport with Lloyd and Valentine, a journey like a fairy-land for the most engaging beauties, one little rocky and pine-shaded cove after another, each with a house and a boat at anchor, so that I left my heart in each and marvelled why American authors had been so unjust to their country; caught another cold on the train; arrived at Newport to go to bed and grow worse, and to stay in bed until I left again; the Fairchilds proving during this time kindness itself; Mr. Fairchild simply one of the most engaging men in the world, and one of the children, Blair, _aet._ ten, a great joy and amusement in his solemn adoring attitude to the author of _Treasure Island_.

Here I was interrupted by the arrival of my sculptor. I have begged him to make a medallion of himself and give me a copy. I will not take up the sentence in which I was wandering so long, but begin fresh. I was ten or twelve days at Newport; then came back convalescent to New York. Fanny and Lloyd are off to the Adirondacks to see if that will suit; and the rest of us leave Monday (this is Saturday) to follow them up. I hope we may manage to stay there all winter. I have a splendid appetite and have on the whole recovered well after a mighty sharp attack. I am now on a salary of £500 a year for twelve articles in _Scribner's Magazine_ on what I like; it is more than £500 but I cannot calculate more precisely [it was £700]. You have no idea how much is made of me here; I was offered £2000 for a weekly article—eh heh! how is that? but I refused that lucrative job. They would drive even an honest man into being a mere lucre-hunter in three weeks; to make _me gober_ is I think more difficult; I have my own views on that point and stick to them. The success of _Underwoods_ is gratifying. You see, the verses are sane, that is their strong point, and it seems is strong enough to carry them.

A thousand thanks for your grand letter, ever yours,

R. L. S.

SARANAC LAKE, ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK, U. S. A. [October, 1887.]

MY DEAR BOB,

The cold [of Colorado] was too rigorous for me; I could not risk the long railway voyage, and the season was too late to risk the Eastern, Cape Hatteras side of the steamer one; so here we stuck and stick. We have a wooden house on a hill top, overlooking a river, and a village about a quarter of a mile away, and very wooded hills; the whole scene is very Highland, bar want of heather and wooden houses.

I have got one good thing of my sea voyage; it is proved the sea agrees heartily with me, and my mother likes it; so if I get any better, or no worse, my mother will likely hire a yacht for a month or so in summer. Good Lord! what fun! Wealth is only useful for two things; a yacht and a string quartette. For these two I will sell my soul. Except for these I hold that £700 a year is as much as anybody can possibly want; and I have had more, so I know, for the extry coins were of no use excepting for illness, which damns everything.

I was so happy on board that ship, I could not have believed it possible; we had the beastliest weather, and many discomforts; but the mere fact of its being a tramp-ship gave us many comforts; we could cut about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, discuss all manner of things, and really be a little at sea. And truly there is nothing else. I had literally forgotten what happiness was, and the full mind—full of external and physical things, not full of cares and labours and rot about a fellow's behaviour. My heart literally sang; I truly care for nothing so much as for that. We took so North a course that we saw Newfoundland; no-one in the ship had ever seen it before.

It was beyond belief to me how she rolled; in seemingly smooth water, the bell striking, the fittings bounding out of our stateroom. It is worth having lived these last years, partly because I have written some better books, which is always pleasant, but chiefly to have had the joy of this voyage. I have been made a lot of here, and it is sometimes pleasant, sometimes the reverse; but I could give it all up, and agree that — was the author of my works, for a good seventy ton schooner and the coins to keep her on. And to think there are parties with yachts who would make the exchange! I know a little about fame now; it is no good compared to a yacht; and anyway there is more fame in a yacht, more genuine fame; to cross the Atlantic and come to anchor in Newport (say) with the Union Jack, and go ashore for your letters and hang about the pier, among the holiday yachtsmen—that's fame, that's glory—and nobody can take it away; they can't say your book is bad; you _have_ crossed the Atlantic. I should do it South by the West Indies, to avoid the damned banks; and probably come home by steamer, and leave the skipper to bring the yacht home.

Well, if all goes well, we shall maybe sail out of Southampton water some of these days and take a run to Havre, and try the Baltic, or somewhere.

Love to you all Ever your afft. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Low was delightful as always. St. Gaudens, a very nice fellow too, has done a medallion of me.

[The following refers to a review by Mr. Gosse of Stevenson's volume of verse called "Underwoods." The book had been published a few weeks previously, and is dedicated, as readers will remember, to a number of physicians who had attended him at sundry times and places.]

SARANAC LAKE, Oct. 8th, 1887.