Yet Cora had not seen the last of her visitor's stately back before she repented her open championship of Handsome Ludlow. Knickerbocker domination, not conviction, had forced her hand. Since she had hung her banner on the walls, however, she resolved to stand fast, and the following Sunday morning issued an unmistakable declaration of war. On her way to service she saw Ludlow crossing the park before the capitol, and stopped her carriage.
"'Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd,'" quoted the man, his handsome, impudent eyes on hers.
"I propose that you'll do that for yourself," Cora retorted archly.
"Get in."
She had intended going to the cathedral, but withal sudden resolve she ordered the carriage driven to an older church just at hand, which time out of mind had made special provision for the head of the state, down whose central aisle she marshalled Ludlow, and installed him in the governor's pew.
CHAPTER III
Had the protest against Knickerbocker arrogance languished at this pass, history would be the poorer, but Cora Shelby found it impossible to stop with this show of independence. Her ambition was whetted for an exercise of actual power, and the outcome was the famous battle of Beverwyck, whose story still lacks its balladist.
Early in her survey of Albany society, Cora had met with the Beverwyck
Club.
"It is the local academy of immortals," instructed the military secretary. "Its judgments may not be infallible, but they're beyond appeal. It is the pink of exclusiveness; it worships etiquette above all other gods; and its receptions to incoming governors demand the reddest lettering in the calendar."
When Shelby's turn for this signal honor drew near, and the military secretary, to whom Fortune, not content with sending him into the world a grandson of Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, had added membership in the Beverwyck Club, approached him to discuss preliminaries, the governor cheerfully referred him to his wife in whose social knowingness he placed an abounding trust. Of Albany other than as a legislative workshop he knew next to nothing. His social progress in the salad days of his first term in the Assembly had begun in a saloon behind the capitol much frequented by departmental clerks, whence through hotel corridor intercourse he evolved by his second session to a grillroom, patronized by public servants of higher cast who gave stag dinners and occasional theatre parties, which called for evening dress. Up to this period Shelby had never found evening clothes essential to his happiness. His little sectarian college had rather frowned on such garments, and he, too, for a time had vaguely considered them un-American. Yet, taught by the grillroom, he assumed this livery, wore off its shyness, and grew to like it for the best it signified. Here evolution paused. Mrs. Teunis Van Dam, Canon North, and the Beverwyck Club, so far as they stood for anything, peopled a frigid zone of inconsequence which he had no wish to penetrate. Washington, influence in his party, and intimacy with its leaders sophisticated him before his return; behind every mask he now discerned a human being; and no social ordeal terrified. Nevertheless, something of his old-time diffidence toward the unknown country beyond the grillroom lingered, and it made for peace that his wife seemed so competent to guide.
On the score of her competency, Cora entertained no misgivings, and the day following Handsome Ludlow's public elevation to sanctity she met the club's representatives, the military secretary, and an august judge of the Court of Appeals, with a self-possession she felt would grace the daughter of a belted earl. The judge, after some ponderous compliments, told her that the committee in charge, having assured itself through the secretary that the governor and herself had no conflicting engagement, had agreed upon a near date for the reception, which he named. Cora promptly decided that in not consulting her the military secretary had been wanting in respect, and to punish him invented a previous engagement out of hand. Withered by his senior's Jove-like frown, the young man apologized in hot-skinned contrition for his ignorance of the unknowable.