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The Best Man: Part I · The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and other Stories

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  Section twenty nine of The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories by Edith
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  Wharton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Best Man Part
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  one. Dusk had fallen, and the circle of light shed by the lamp
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  of Governor Mornway's writing table just rescued from the surrounding dimness, his own imposing
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  bulk thrown back in a deep chair in the lounging attitude habitual to him at
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  that hour. When the Governor of Midsylvania rested, he rested completely. Five
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  minutes earlier he had been bowed over his office desk and atlas, with the
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  state on his shoulders. Now his working hours over, he had the air
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  of a man who has spent his day in desultory pleasure, a means to
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  end it in the enjoyment of a good dinner. This freedom from care threw
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  into relief the hovering fidgettiness of his sister, Missus Nimmick, who, just
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  outside the circle of lamplight, haunted the warm gloom of the hearth from which
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  the wood fire now, and then sent up an exploring flash into her face.
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  Missus Nimmicks's presence did not usually minister to repose but the governor's serenity was
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  too deep to be easily disturbed, and he felt the calmness of a man
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  who knows there is a mosquito in the room, but has drawn the netting
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  close about his head. This calmness reflected itself in the accent with which he
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  said, throwing himself back to smile up at his sister. You know,
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  I am not going to make any appointments for a week. It was the
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  day after the great Reform victory which had put John Mornway for the second time
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  at the head of his state, a triumph compared with which even the mighty
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  battle of his first election sank into insignificance. And he leaned back with a
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  sense of unassailable placidity which follows upon successful effort. Missus Nimmick murmured an apology.
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  I didn't understand. I saw in this morning's papers that the Attorney General
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  was reappointed. Oh Fleetwood, his reappointment was involved in the campaign. He's
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  one of the principles I represent. Missus Nimmick smiled a little tartly. It
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  seems odd to some people to think of mister Fleetwood in connection with principles.
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  The Governor's smile had no answering acerbity. The mention of his attorney general's name
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  had set his blood humming with the thrill of the fight, and he wondered
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  how it was that Fleetwood had not already been in to clasp hands with him
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  over their triumph. No, he said, good humoredly. Two years ago
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  Fleetwood's name didn't stand for principles of any sort. But I believed in him,
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  and look what he's done for me. I thought he was too big
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  a man not to see in time that statesmanship is a finer thing than practical
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  politics. And now that I've given him a chance to make the discovery,
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  he's on the way to becoming just such a statesman as the country needs.
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  Oh, it's a great deal easier and pleasanter to believe in people, replied
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  missus Nimmock, in a tone full of occult allusion. And of course we
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  all knew that mister Fleetwood would have a hearing before any one else. The
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  governor took this imperturbably well. At any rate, he isn't going to fill
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  all the offices in the state. There will probably be one or two to
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  spare. After he has helped himself, and when the time comes, I'll
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  think over your man, I'll consider him. Missus Nimmock brightened. It would
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  make such a difference to Jack. It might mean anything to the poor boy
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  to have mister Ashford appointed. The Governor held up a warning hand. Oh,
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  I know one mustn't say that, or at least you mustn't listen.
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  You're so dreadfully afraid of nepotism. But I'm not asking for anything for Jack.
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  I have never asked for a crust for any of us, Thank Heaven,
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  no one can point to me. Missus Nimmick checked herself suddenly and continued
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  in a more impersonal tone. But there's no harm, surely in my saying
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  a word from mister Ashford when I know that he's actually under consideration. And
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  I don't see why the fact that Jack is in his office should prevent my
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  speaking. On the contrary, said the Governor, it implies on your part
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  a personal knowledge of mister Ashford's qualifications, which may be of great help to
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  me in reaching a decision. Missus Nimmock never quite knew how to meet him
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  when he took that tone, and the flickering fire made her face for a
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  moment, the picture of uncertainty. Then at all hazards. She launched out,
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  well, I have Ella's promise at any rate. The governor sat upright.
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  Ella's promise to back me up. She thoroughly approves of him. The
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  governor smiled. You talk as if Ella had a political salon and distributed lettres
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  de cachet. I'm glad she approves of Ashford. But if you think my
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  wife makes my appointments for me, he broke off with a laugh. At
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  the superfluity of such a protest. Missus Nimmick reddened. One never knows how
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  you will take the simplest thing. What harm is there in my saying that
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  Ella approves of mister Ashford. I thought you liked her to take an interest
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  in your work. I like it immensely, but I shouldn't care to have
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  it take that form. What form that of promising to use her influence to
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  get people appointed? But you always talk of politics in the vocabulary of European
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  courts, Thank heaven, Ella has less imagination. She has her sympathies,
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  of course, but she doesn't think they can affect the distribution of offices.
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  Missus Nimmock gathered up her furs with an air at once crestfallen and resentful.
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  I'm sorry I always seem to say the wrong thing. I'm sure I came
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  with the best intentions. Is natural that your sister should want to be with
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  you at such a happy moment. Of course it is, my dear,
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  exclaimed the governor genially, as he rose to grasp the hands with which she
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  was nervously adjusting her wraps. Missus Nimmock, who lived a little way out
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  of town, and whose visits to her brother were apparently achieved at the cost
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  of immense effort and mysterious complications, had come to congratulate him on his victory
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  and to sound him regarding the nomination to a coveted post of the lawyer in
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  whose firm her eldest son was a clerk. In the urgency of the latter
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  errand she had rather lost sight of the former, but her face softened as
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  the Governor, keeping both her hands in his, said, in the voice
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  which always seemed to put the most generous interpretation on her motives, I was
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  sure you would be one of the first to give me your blessing. Oh
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  your success. No one feels it more than I do. Sighed Missus Nimmock,
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  always at home in the emotional key. I keep in the background.
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  I make no noise, I claim no credit, but whatever happens, no
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  one shall ever prevent my rejoicing in my brother's success. Missus Nimmock's felicitations were
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  always couched in the conditional, with a side glance at dark contingencies, and
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  the governor, smiling at the familiar construction, returned cheerfully. I don't see
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  why any one should want to deprive you of that privilege. They they couldn't,
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  They couldn't. Missus Nimmock heroically affirmed, Well, I'm in the saddle
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  for another two years at any rate, so you had better put in all
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  the rejoicing you can whatever happens, Whatever happens, cried Missus Nimmock, melting
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  on his bosom. The only thing likely to happen at present is that you
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  will miss your train if I let you go on saying nice things to me
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  much longer. Missus Nimmick at this, dried her eyes, renewed her clutch
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  on her draperies, and stood glancing sentimentally about the room while her brother rang
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  for the carriage. I take away a lovely picture of you. She murmured,
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  it's wonderful what you've made of this hideous house. Ah not I,
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  but Ella, there she does reign undisputed, he acknowledged, following her glance
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  about the library, which wore an air of permanent habitation, of slowly formed
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  intimacy with its inmates, in marked contrast to the gaudy impersonality of the usual
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  executive apartment. Oh, she's wonderful, quite wonderful. I see she has
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  got those important damask curtains she was looking at the other day at Fieldings.
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  When I am asked how she does it all? I always say, it's
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  beyond me. Missus Nimmick murmured, it's an art like another smiled the Governor.
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  Ella has been used to living intents, and she has the knack of
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  giving them a wonderful look of permanence. She certainly makes the most extraordinary bargains.
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  All the knack in the world won't take the place of such curtains and
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  carpets. Are they good? I'm glad to hear it. But all the
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  good curtains and carpets won't make a house comfortable to live in. That's where
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  the nap comes. In you see, he recalled with a shudder the lean
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  congressional years, the years before his marriage, when Missus Nimmick had lived with
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  him in Washington, and the daily struggle in the house had been combined with
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  domestic conflicts almost equally recurrent. The offer of a foreign mission, though disconnecting
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  him from active politics, had the advantage of freeing him from his sister's tutelage.
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  And in Europe, where he remained for two years, he had met
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  the lady who was to become his wife. Missus Wrenfield was the widow of
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  one of the diplomatists who languish in perpetual first secretaryship at our various embassies.
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  Her life had given her ease without triviality, and a sense of the importance
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  of politics seldom found in ladies of her nationality. She regarded a public life
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  as the noblest and most engrossing of careers, and combined with great social vers
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  ssatility, an equal gift for reading blue books and studying debates. So sincere
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  was the latter taste that she passed without regret from the amenities of a European
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  life well stalked with picturesque intimacies to the rawness of the Midsylvanian capital. She
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  helped Mornway in his fight for the governorship as a man likes to be helped
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  by a woman, by her tact, her good looks, her memory for
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  faces, her knack of saying the right thing to the right person, and
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  her capacity for obscure hard work in the background of his public activity. But
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  above all, she helped him by making his private life smooth and harmonious.
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  For a man careless of personal ease, Mornway was singularly alive to the domestic
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  amenities. Attentive service, well ordered dinners, brightly burning fires, and a
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  scent of flowers in the house. These material details, which had come to
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  seem the extension of his wife's personality the inevitable result of her nearness, were
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  as agreeable to him after five years of marriage as in the first surprise of
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  his introduction to them. Missus Nimick had kept house jerkily and vociferously. Ella
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  performed the same task silently and imperceptibly, and the results were all in favor
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  of the latter method. Though neither the governor nor his wife had large means,
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  the household under Missus Mornway's guidance took on the air of sober luxury,
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  as agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating to her sister in law.
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  The domestic machinery ran without a jar. There were no upheavals, no debts,
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  no squalid cookless hiatuses. Between intervals of showy hospitality, the household moved
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  along on lines of quiet, elegance and comfort, behind which only the eye
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  of the housekeeping sex could have detected a gradually increasing scale of expense. Such
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  an eye was now projected on the Governor's surroundings, and its explorations were summed
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  up in the tone in which missus Nimmick repeated from the threshold, I always
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  say I don't see how she does it. The tone did not escape the
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  governor, but it disturbed him no more than the buzz of a baffled insect.
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  Poor Grace. It was not his fault if her husband was given to
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  chimerical investments, if her sons were unsatisfactory, and her cooks would not stay
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  with her. But it was natural that these facts should throw into irritating contrast
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  the ease and harmony of his own domestic life. It made him all the
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  sorrier for his sister to know that her envy did not penetrate to the essence
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  of his happiness, but lingered on those external signs of well being which counted
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  for so little in the sum total of his advantages. Poor missus Nimmick's life
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  seemed doubly thin and mean when one remembered that beneath its shabby surface, there
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  were no compensating riches of the spirit. End of Section twenty nine.