CHAPTER VIII.
A DEBT OF HONOR.
The governor of West Virginia sat at his desk in the State House, with a bored and weary air. Although inaugurated barely nine months before, the cares of state seemed to rest heavily on his mind, for it was becoming worse than a Chinese puzzle to fill all the official places to the entire satisfaction of the people.
He had just dashed off a letter making an appointment over which there had been a fierce political squabble, and he sighed as he thought how the battle would be fought over again by the opposing sides of the press as soon as his decision became known.
At that moment Private Secretary Boggs came quietly into the room.
“A caller, your excellency!”
“Ah, Boggs, I was just thinking of going over to the mansion. His card?”
“He had none, and he refused me his name.”
“Rather curious.”
“He said you would remember him as a young man to whom you had promised a favor.”
The private secretary’s lips twitched with mirth that he coughed to hide, but Governor Atkinson frankly laughed outright.
“He must be a wit,” he remarked dryly.
“It sounds like it, yet I don’t think it was intentional, your excellency. He seemed to be in earnest.”
“And yet his message makes him very difficult to identify. Have I not promised places to more men than I can remember?” groaned the governor.
“A sight of the young man might refresh your memory,” suggested the secretary respectfully.
“I will try the experiment. Send him in.”
Boggs retired, smiling.
A tall, slight young man, thin to emaciation, with a pallid, handsome, close-shaven face, lighted by hollow, dark-blue eyes, curling brown hair falling down upon his coat collar, well-dressed, well-mannered, entered the chamber.
“Ah, my friend, I am glad to meet you,” began the affable governor. “But somehow your name has escaped my memory.”
“Then my face does not suggest it, your excellency?”
“I beg pardon. It looks familiar, but really I cannot place you.”
“I am very sorry, for that is the object of my call,” smiled the mysterious stranger. “Permit me to refresh your memory, my dear governor. Two years ago I was a student at the West Virginia University, and I had the pleasure of saving your son from injury in a football game. Prompt medical aid rescued him from a very precarious state, and he was pleased to insist that I saved his life. Afterward, when I metyou, you were very grateful, and promised to do me, if it ever lay in your power, a favor. I may add that my vote helped to make you governor—although I am not claiming a reward for what was my pleasure, and for the good of my State.”
The governor thanked him for the delicate compliment, and, gazing at him keenly, said:
“It was Ludington that saved George—I recall it distinctly. But he is dead, poor fellow! You are perhaps a relative. I notice now a strong resemblance. If you wore short hair and a mustache, the likeness would be striking.”
“I should then be Rupert Ludington himself,” grimly.
The governor grew slightly pale and grave at so unseemly a jest. The young man added earnestly:
“Your time is precious, I know, but you have a kind, true face. Can you keep a secret for me?”
“Sit down and unbosom yourself, my friend,” returned the executive cordially, as he resumed his own seat and gazed curiously at his strange visitor, who blurted out with strong agitation:
“I am Rupert Ludington himself!”
It was no wonder that Governor Atkinson half started from his chair and grew slightly pale, as he exclaimed, fancying this a madman:
“But the grave cannot give up its dead!”
“The grave has never claimed me!” returned Doctor Ludington, and, seeing the governor too astonished to reply, he continued:
“As you seem to have heard of my tragic death, perhaps you know also of the strange tragedy of my funeral journey?”
“Yes, yes! It created a great sensation, and all the newspapers printed it. The hearse went over the precipice in the blinding snowstorm, and your casket was shattered into fragments. It was supposed that the corpse fell into the river,” exclaimed the governor.
Doctor Ludington smiled, and replied:
“The corpse did not go into the river, but instead bounded down the hill, into the back yard of an old ferryman, who, with his deaf-and-dumb sister, lived in a hut below the hill, close to the river. And it was no corpse, for I was alive, and had been in a strange trancelike state ever since my seeming death, in which I was conscious of everything transpiring, but unable to move or speak.
“I spare you the recital of the horrors I endured. Your time is too valuable to waste on the story, and the tale too harrowing for your ears. Suffice it that the mere fact of the casket lid being but loosely screwed down saved me from suffocation, and the accident to the hearse must have been God-sent, as it kept me from being buried alive. The shock of my fall restored my faculties, and the old ferryman presently found me in the snow and carried me into his wretched hut, little thinking I had fallen out of a hearse on my way to the grave. I took care that he should not find it out, either, for I decided it was best to remain dead to the world.”
“But, my dear Doctor Ludington, why should you do so?”
“Do you not remember that my antagonist, Terry Groves, died by my hand in an accidental discharge of the revolver I was trying to wrest from him? Well, if I had lived I should have been tried for his murder, and, being in the house of my enemy, to which I had been falsely lured, I should have had no witness in my favor, and the Groves clan, that hated me, would have hounded me to my death. Public sentiment would have been so dead against me I might have been mobbed and lynched.”
“Quite true. But then the young lady? Would she not have testified in your favor?”
“I could scarcely have expected it, your excellency. She had always been my enemy, like the rest.”
“Indeed? Then how explain your presence in her room at midnight?”
“By no connivance of hers, and by no fault of mine, for Eva Somerville is pure as snow. Here are the simple facts: Old Doctor Binks, who is the family physician, employed me often to attend to his patients when he was under the weather. That night, while he was on one of his sprees, I went his rounds for him, and, calling in at his office, while returning home, was entreated to go to Stony Ledge, where he represented Miss Somerville was ill, dying. Duty led me to her room, where I found we had both been made the victim of a practical joke.
“She was asleep, with the bloom of health on her lovely cheeks, and as I stood gazing in bewilderment, she awoke and upbraided me with angry words. A spirit of mischief entered into me, and I lingered, chaffing her over the table of refreshments she had spread for a phantom lover, expected at midnight by all the Hallowe’en traditions. In a moment Terry Groves rushed in, purple with anger, heaped on her terms of disgrace, and, ignoring my attempted explanations, fired a bullet into my breast. You know the rest.”
“He was too hasty, and his terrible mistake cost him his life.”
“Yes, but not by my wish. I was only trying to knock the weapon out of his hand when it was discharged, perhaps by himself, and the ball went into his brain. Poor fellow, how I pity him in his premature grave to-day, and would gladly restore his life to him if I could,” exclaimed Doctor Ludington, with strong emotion, realizing the terrible provocation Terry had had for his fatal haste. Then he added:
“I hope you understand my motives in remaining incognito until public opinion calms down enough to hear reason; then I may disclose my identity. At present my secret must remain locked in your breast alone, and I am here to claim the promised favor.”
“Name it, my dear friend,” replied the governor, with a slight sinking of the heart as he reflected that all of the “fattest jobs” had already been given out. He had such a big heart for his friends that he wishedto do something splendid for this young man whom he esteemed so highly.
Doctor Ludington replied quickly:
“I have heard that one of the three assistant physicians at the Weston Insane Asylum is going to resign because of ill health. Will you give me the position?”
“My dear doctor, those appointments are made by a hospital board of nine directors.”
“There is a power behind the throne,” returned Ludington, with a slightly significant smile.
“You mean that I may be able to influence them in your favor?” returned the governor, with an uneasy conviction that he had been interviewed on this subject before by several aspiring young physicians. Secretly he thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t written to the directors in their favor yet. So he said cordially:
“I will write to the directors and recommend you for the place. I will also see the member from Alderson personally when he passes through Charleston next week, en route to the next board meeting at Weston. I will certainly secure the place for you if I can!”
“A thousand thanks, your excellency. You make me your debtor forever. I would rather have that position at Weston than sit in a senator’s seat at Washington.”
“I do not understand your enthusiasm.”
“Will you understand it better when I tell you that Eva Somerville is a patient at Weston?”
“Insane? Poor girl!”
“Yes, driven mad by the scandal that smirched her name, and the awful tragedy for which that cruel old man Groves banished her from home.”
“It was cruel. But you—can you take such an interest in the girl, your enemy?”
“Through my innocent fault she suffered. I long to be near her, to aid if possible in her restoration. And with my altered looks she will never recognize me.”
“But how will you get over your name?”
“Will you please recommend me to your friends, the hospital directors, as Doctor Rupert, of Ohio?”
“We shall all be scorched by our political foes for appointing an Ohio man at Weston,” lugubriously.
Doctor Rupert, rising to take leave, smiled admiringly at the handsome executive, and answered:
“You are celebrated all over the country for sticking to your friends through thick and thin.”
“Yes, yes. I can never turn my back on a friend. It’s not in my nature. Let the enemy rage. My shoulders are broad enough to bear it,” genially answered the governor, with a cordial parting handshake.