THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR
BY GUY WETMORE CARRYL



  THE

  LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR


  A NOVEL

  BY

  GUY WETMORE CARRYL


  [Illustration: Publishers symbol]


  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
  1903


  Copyright, 1902
  BY THE ESS ESS PUBLISHING CO.


  Copyright, 1903
  BY GUY WETMORE CARRYL


  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


  _Published March, 1903_




  TO

  M. R. B.

  IN MEMORY OF THE RESCUE OF A MAN AT SEA




                      CONTENTS


   CHAPTER                                      PAGE

     I. THE FLY ON THE WHEEL                      1

    II. THE ODDS AGAINST YOUNG NISBET            21

   III. A FACE IN THE CROWD                      40

    IV. AS BETWEEN FRIENDS                       60

     V. A BRAND FROM THE BURNING                 80

    VI. MCGRATH LAUGHS                           98

   VII. THE MIRAGE OF POWER                     117

  VIII. THE GOVERNOR UNMASKS                    137

    IX. THE NINTH PASSES IN REVIEW              156

     X. A QUESTION AND AN ANSWER                177

    XI. YOUNG NISBET FINDS HIS TONGUE           196

   XII. DIOGENES                                215

  XIII. THE INSTRUMENT OF FATE                  234

   XIV. THE VOICE OF ALLEGHENIA                 252




THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR




I

THE FLY ON THE WHEEL


The offices of the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor adjoined. Each
had its ante-room, in which a private secretary wrote eternally at a
roll-top desk, an excessively plain-featured stenographer rattled the
keys of his typewriter, and a smug-faced page yawned over a newspaper,
or scanned the cards of visitors with the air of an official censor. At
intervals, an electric bell whirred once, twice, or three times; and,
according to the signal, one of the trio disappeared into the presence
of the august personage within.

A door connected the office of the chief executive with that of his
lieutenant, but this was rarely opened by either, and then only after a
formal tap and permission to enter had been given. It was a matter of
general knowledge that the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor were not
in sympathy; but few, even among the intimates of either, were aware how
deep, and wide, and hopelessly impassable was the gulf which lay between
them. This was due not alone to disparity in age, though twenty-eight
years separated the white-haired Governor from his handsome subordinate,
who had been nominated to this, his first public office, on his
thirtieth birthday; nor was it wholly a difference between the
experience of the one and the inexperience of the other. The point of
view of the veteran is, naturally, not that of the novice, particularly
in politics. That the enthusiasms of Lieutenant-Governor Barclay should
have been the disillusions of Governor Abbott, and his pitfalls his
senior's stepping-stones,--this was to be expected. The root of their
dissimilarity lay deeper. It was nothing less than mutual distrust which
kept the connecting door closed day after day, and clogged the channel
of coцperation with the sharp-pointed boulders of antagonism.

The convention which nominated the successful ticket of the preceding
year had been a veritable chaos of contending factions. The labor
delegates, encouraged by the unexpected strength of their
representation, were not content with such nominal plums as had fallen
to their share in former conventions. Led by Michael McGrath, an
agitator whose native Irish eloquence, made keener and more persuasive
by practice in bar-room forensics, brought him naturally to the fore,
they threatened, at one stage of the proceedings, to carry all before
them. The more conservative faction, its strength sapped by the
formation, in its very ranks, of a reform party determined upon the fall
of the "machine," was forced to yield ground. The reformers themselves,
young men for the most part, distinguished by great ideals but small
ability, were too few to impose their individual will upon their
opponents, yet sufficiently numerous to make their support necessary to
the success of either party. The usual smooth course of the convention,
upset by this unlooked-for resistance from two quarters, staggered
helplessly, and was on the point of coming to a deadlock. It was Michael
McGrath's shrewd perception of the situation which solved the problem.
In a brief, impassioned speech he laid the claims of his faction before
the delegates, winding up with a stirring picture of the coцperation of
labor and reform, now possible, which held the convention in spellbound
silence for ten seconds after he had closed, and then set the hall
ringing to cheers and vigorously plied hands and feet. For an instant he
paused, with his arms folded, and his keen blue eyes sliding over the
faces before him, and then played his trump card. At his signal, a
banner, hastily prepared, was borne, slowly revolving, down the central
aisle, and on this were boldly lettered the words which at the same
moment McGrath was thundering from the platform:--

                        LABOR AND REFORM!

                         FOR GOVERNOR,
                        ELIJAH ABBOTT.

                    FOR LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR,
                     JOHN HAMILTON BARCLAY.

McGrath had no need to look toward the labor faction for support. He
knew what the name of Elijah Abbott meant in that quarter. His shifting
glance was fixed upon the seats of the reform delegates, and a little
smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, as he saw them rise with a
cheer. Barclay was the chief spirit of their movement. They had not
expected this recognition. But if, in the enthusiasm of unlooked-for
victory, they did not perceive how little, in reality, was their gain,
McGrath was far from being unaware how great was his own. Before the
cheering of the now allied forces of labor and reform had fairly died
away, he had moved that nominations were in order, and, ten minutes
later, while the partisans of the "machine" were still endeavoring to
collect their wits, the main business of the convention was an
accomplished fact, and Abbott and Barclay were declared the regular
Democratic nominees for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the state.
In six weeks followed their election by a small plurality, and on the
first of January the two men moved into their adjoining rooms, in the
inexcusably unlovely state capitol, on the main hill of Kenton City,
wherein they were, thenceforward, separated, one from the other, by two
inches of Georgia pine and a practically infinite diversity of principle
and prejudice.

From the first their relationship had been no better than an armed
truce. Both were courteous men, the one because such was his policy, the
other because he was to this manner born. There was no need for them to
discuss their individual creeds. They tacitly accepted the fact that
there was not a parallel between the two. From the moment when his
election was assured by the returns, Abbott was candidly the man of the
Labor--nay, more--of the Socialist party. McGrath and his associates
manipulated him as readily as a marionette. The promises and pledges of
the campaign were ruthlessly jettisoned. If Governor Abbott did not
stand for anarchy, it was only because, for the moment, anarchy was not
the demand of his party. Withal, he was dignified and self-possessed,
robed in an agreeable suavity which became him at functions and
ceremonials, and assured his popularity with those--and they were, as
always, in the majority--who did not look below the surface.

Lieutenant-Governor Barclay had not been ten days in office before he
realized the futility of resistance to the established order, as
represented in his superior. He had accepted his nomination, and
welcomed his election, with an almost Quixotic elation in the
opportunity thus opened to him. He would accomplish--oh, there was no
telling what Lieutenant-Governor Barclay would _not_ accomplish!

He was standing at his office window now, staring out disconsolately
over the sloping lawns of the capitol grounds, mottled with thin
patches of snow, which had contrived to withstand the recent thaw, and
he was telling himself, for the thousandth time, the dispiriting fact
that, as a force for good or evil in the destiny of his state, he was no
more significant than his stenographer's Remington or his secretary's
roll-top desk. With all his ideals, with all those pledges which are
infinitely more vital when made in private to one's conscience than when
made in public to one's party, he found himself merely a cog in the
state machinery--a cog, too, that, seemingly, might be skipped at any or
every time, without in the least degree disturbing the progress of
routine. On the few occasions, in the early days of their official
relation, when he had ventured to set his will in opposition to that of
the Governor, there had not been manifest in the latter's attitude even
that spirit of resistance which spurs men to more active and resolute
endeavor. Governor Abbott had smiled pleasantly upon him, and then
quietly shifted the conversation into other channels, with an air of
selecting a topic more suited to his companion's comprehension.
Finally, on one occasion, when Barclay had voiced his opinion with an
energy which savored of rebuke, the Governor had gone further, and had
asked calmly--"And what were you proposing to do about it?" After that
Barclay had relinquished the unequal struggle, and resigned himself to
the unavoidable conclusion of his impotency.

It is a situation which tries men's souls, this of utter helplessness in
the face of plain duty. He could have no hope of making his position
clear to the constituency to which he was responsible. Debarred on the
one side from taking an active part in the administration of state
affairs, and bitterly arraigned on the other on the grounds of
inefficiency, laxity, and indifference to duty, the second month of
office found John Barclay in a fair way to be ground to powder between
the millstones of impuissance and hostile criticism. The men of his
party who had, both in private conviction and public statement, based
their hopes of political reform upon the frankly avowed platform of his
principles, now passed him coldly, with a bare nod, sometimes with none
whatever; the labor element jeered joyously at his attitude; the
"machine" pointed to him as proof of the fallacy of the reform creed. It
is easy to expect great performances from great promises, easier still
to outline the duties and condemn the delinquencies of another, and not
even Barclay's knowledge of his own good faith was sufficient
compensation for the sneers of press and public which fell to his share.
As he surveyed the dispiriting prospect from his office window, on that
late February afternoon, he was near to resigning his position, and with
it all further pretension to political prominence.

In the opinion of those competent to judge, the state of Alleghenia was
going to the dogs. A press distinguished alike for the amplitude of its
headlines and the pitiable paucity of its principles; a legislature of
which practically every member had, not only a price, but such a price
as the advertisements describe as being "within the reach of all;" a
Governor who avowedly stood ready to sanction the most extreme
pretensions of the notoriously corrupt party which had secured him his
election,--here, surely, were good and sufficient reasons for the
generously bestowed disapproval of Alleghenia's sister states. In all
the _personnel_ of her government there was but one man sincerely
devoted to her advancement on the lines of integrity and
non-partisanship. And that man was Lieutenant-Governor Barclay, whose
influence on the trend of affairs was approximately that of the
proverbial fly on the hub of the revolving wheel.

The Lieutenant-Governor had turned back to his desk, and was arranging
his papers, preparatory to departing for the day, when his ears