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Title: Caleb Conover, Railroader
Author: Albert Payson Terhune
Release Date: February 11, 2022 [eBook #67374]
Language: English
Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB CONOVER,
RAILROADER ***
[Illustration: Something swished through the air from behind Clive’s
head. Page 137.]
Caleb Conover, Railroader
By
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
_Author of “Syria from the Saddle,” “Dr. Dale” (in collaboration with
Marion Harland), “Columbia Stories,” Etc._
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
Publishers
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE.
_Entered at Stationers’ Hall._
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES 5
II. CALEB CONOVER MAKES A SPEECH 27
III. CALEB CONOVER REGRETS 44
IV. IN TWO CAMPS 74
V. A MEETING, AN INTERRUPTION AND A LETTER 90
VI. CALEB WORKS AT LONG RANGE 115
VII. CALEB UNDERGOES A “HOME EVENING” 145
VIII. CALEB CONOVER LISTENS AND ANSWERS 173
IX. A CONVENTION AND A REVELATION 193
X. ANICE INTERVENES 207
XI. CALEB CONOVER MAKES TERMS 227
XII. CALEB CONOVER FIGHTS 247
XIII. THE FOURTH MESSENGER OF JOB 272
XIV. CALEB CONOVER LOSES AND WINS 291
XV. DUNDERBERG SOLVES THE DIFFICULTY 314
[Illustration: (FACSIMILE PAGE OF MANUSCRIPT FROM CALEB CONOVER,
RAILROADER)]
CALEB CONOVER,
RAILROADER
CHAPTER I
CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES
“The poor man!” sighed Mrs. Greer. “He must think he’s a cemetery!”
The long line of carriages was passing solemnly through a mighty white
marble arch, aglare with electric light, leading into the “show place”
of Pompton Avenue.
Athwart the arch’s pallid face, in raised letters a full foot in length
were the words:
“CALEB CONOVER, R.R., 1893.”
In the ghastly, garish illumination, above the slow-moving procession of
sombre vehicles, the arch and its inscription gave gruesome excuse for
Mrs. Greer’s comment. She herself thought the phrase rather apt, and
stored it away for repetition.
Her husband, a downy little man, curled up miserably in the other corner
of the brougham, read her thought, from long experience, and twisted
forward into what he liked to think was a commanding attitude.
“Look here!” he protested. “You’ve got to stop that. It’s bad enough to
have to come here at all, without your spoiling everything with one of
those Bernard Shawisms of yours. Why, if it ever got back to Conover’s
ears——”
“He’d withdraw his support? And then good-by to Congress for the
unfortunate Talbot Firth Greer?”
“Just that. He’ll stand all sorts of criticism about his start in life.
In fact, he revels in talking of his rise to anyone who’ll listen. But
when it comes to guying anything in his present exalted——”
“What does the ‘R. R.’ at the end of his name over the gate stand for?
I’ve seen the inscription often enough, but——”
“‘Railroader.’ He uses it as a sort of title. Life for him is one long
railroad, and——”
“And now we’re to do him honor at the terminus?”
“If you like to put it that way. Perhaps ‘junction’ would hit it closer.
It was awfully good of you, Grace, to come. I——”
“Of course it was. If I didn’t want a try at Washington I’d never have
dared it. It will be in all the papers to-morrow. He’ll see to that. And
then—I hate to think what everyone will say. I suppose we’re the first
civilized people who ever passed under that atrocious hanging mortuary
chapel, aren’t we?”
“Hardly as bad as that. If it’s any comfort to you, there are plenty
more in the same box as ourselves, to-night.”
“But surely everybody in Granite can’t want to run for Congress?”
“No. But enough people have axes of their own to grind to make it worth
their while to visit the Conover whetstone. When a man who can float
companies at a word, boom or smash a dozen different stocks, swing the
Legislature, make himself heard from here to Washington, and carries
practically every newspaper in the Mountain State in his vest pocket;
when——”
“When such a man whistles, there are some people who find it wise not to
be deaf. But what on earth does he _want_ us for?”
“The world-old ambition that had its rise when Cain and Abel began
moving in separate sets. The longing to ‘butt in,’ as Caleb himself
would probably call it. He has everything money and political power can
give. And now he wants the only thing left—what he terms ‘social
recognition.’”
“And we are to help——”
“No. We’re to let him _think_ we help. All the king’s horses and all the
king’s men, assisted by a score of Conover’s own freight derricks,
couldn’t hoist that cad into a decent crowd. He’s been at it ever since
he got his first million and married poor little Letty Standish. She was
the fool of her family, and a broken family at that. But still it was a
family. Yet it didn’t land Caleb anywhere. Then, when that unlicked cub
of a son of his grew up, he made another try. But you know how that
turned out. Now that his daughter’s captured a more or less authentic
prince, I suppose he thinks the time has come. Hence to-night’s——”
“What a blow to his hopes it must have been to have the girl marry in
Paris instead of here at Granite! But I suppose the honeymoon in America
and this evening’s reception are the next best thing. Are we never to
get there?”
“Soon enough, I’m afraid. Conover boasts that he’s laid out his grounds
so that the driveway is a measured half-mile. We’ll be there in another
minute or so.”
Mrs. Greer laughed a little nervously.
“It’ll be something to remember anyway,” said she. “I suppose all sorts
of horrible people will be there. I read a half-page account of it this
morning in the _Star_, and it said that ‘while the proudest families of
Granite would delight to do Mr. Conover honor, the humbler associates of
political and business life would also be present.’ Did you ever hear
anything more delicious? And in the _Star_, too!”
“His own paper. Why not? I suppose _we’re_ the ‘proudest families’; and
the ‘humbler associates’ are some of the choice retinue of heelers who
do his dirty work. Lord! what a notice of it there’ll be in to-morrow’s
papers! Washington will have to be very much worth while to make up for
this. If only I——”
“Hush!” warned Mrs. Greer, as the carriage lurched to a halt, in the
pack before a great _porte-cochère_. “We’re actually here at last. See!
There goes Clive Standish up the steps with the Polissen girls and old
Mr. Polissen. There are a _few_ real human beings here, after all. Why
do you suppose——?”
“H’m!” commented Greer, “Polissen’s ‘long’ on Interstate Canal, the
route Conover’s C. G. & X. Road is threatening to put out of business.
But why young Standish——”
“Why not? Letty Conover’s own nephew. Though I did hear he and the
Conovers were scarcely on speaking terms. He——”
“I fancy that’s because Standish’s ‘Mayflower’ back is too stiff to bend
at the crack of Caleb’s whip. He could have made a mighty good thing of
his law business if Conover had backed him. But I understand he refuses
to ally himself with his great relative-in-law, and prefers a good
social position and a small law practice——”
“Rather than go to Congress?” finished his wife with such sweet
innocence that Greer could only glare at her with flabby helplessness.
Before he could think of an apt retort, the brougham was at the foot of
the endless marble steps, and its late occupants were passing up a wide
strip of velvet between rows of vividly liveried footmen.
Caleb Conover, Railroader, was standing just within the wide doorway of
a drawing-room that seemed to stretch away into infinity. Behind rose an
equally infinite vista of heads and shoulders. But the loudly blended
murmur of many voices that is the first thing to strike the ear of
arriving guests at such functions was conspicuously absent. The
scarce-broken hush that spread through the chain of rooms seemed to bear
out still further Mrs. Greer’s mortuary simile.
But the constraint in no way extended to the host himself. The strong,
alert face, with its shrewd light eyes and humorous mouth, was wreathed
in welcoming smiles that seemed to ripple in a series of waves from the
close-cut reddish hair to the ponderous iron jaw. The thickset form of
the Railroader, massive of shoulder and sturdily full of limb, was ever
plunging forward to grip some favored newcomer by the hand, or darting
to one side or the other as he whispered instructions to servant or
relative.
“I congratulate you on your friend’s repose of manner!” whispered Mrs.
Greer, as she and her husband awaited their turn. “He has all the calm
self-assurance of a jumping jack.”
“But there are springs of chilled steel in the jumping jack,” whispered
Greer. “He’s out of his element, and he knows it. But he isn’t so badly
confused for all that. If you saw him at a convention or a board
meeting, you wouldn’t know him for the same——”
“And there’s his poor little wife, looking as much like a rabbit as
ever! She’s a cipher here; and even her husband’s figure in front of her
doesn’t raise the cipher to the tenth power. I suppose that is the
daughter, to Mrs. Conover’s left? The slender girl with the rust-colored
hair and the brown eyes? She’s prettier and more of a thoroughbred in
looks than I should have——”
“That’s not his daughter. That’s Miss Lanier, Conover’s secretary. His
daughter is the——”
“His secretary? Why, is she receiving?”
“She is his secretary and everything else. She came here three years ago
as Blanche’s governess. To give the poor girl a sort of winding-up
polish before Caleb sent her to Europe. She made all sorts of a hit with
Conover. Principally because she’s the only person on earth who isn’t
afraid of him, so I hear. And now she is secretary, and major domo, and
‘right-hand man,’ and I don’t know what not else. Mrs. Conover’s only a
‘cipher,’ as you say, and Miss Alice Lanier—not Caleb—is the ‘figure’ in
front of her. That’s the new-made princess, to the right. The tall one
with the no-colored hair. I suppose that’s the Prince d’Antri beside
her.”
“He’s too handsome to be a very real prince. What a face for a sculptor
or——”
“Or a barber. A beard like that——”
A gorgeously apparelled couple just in front of the Greers, in the line,
moved forward within the zone of Conover’s greeting. Caleb nodded
patronizingly to the man, and more civilly to the woman.
“Mr. Conover,” the latter was murmuring in an anguish of respectful
embarrassment, “’tis a great honor you do me and the man, askin’ us here
to-night with all your stylish friends, an’——”
“Oh, there’s more than your husband and me, here, who’d get hungry by
habit if they heard a noon whistle blow,” laughed Conover, as with a
jerk of his red head and a word of pleasant welcome, he passed them on
down the reception line. Then the Railroader’s light, deep-set eyes fell
on Greer, and he stepped forward, both hands outstretched.
“Good evening, Greer!” he cried, and there was a subcurrent of latent
power in his hearty voice. “Good evening! Pleased to see you in my
house. Mrs. Greer, I presume? Most kind of you to come, ma’am. Proud to
make your acquaintance. Letty!”—summoning with a jerk of the head an
overdressed, frightened-looking little woman from the line behind
him—“Letty, this is my very good friend, Mr. Talbot Firth Greer—Mrs.
Conover—Mr. and Mrs. Greer. Mr. Greer is the next Congressman from the
Eleventh District. (That’s a little prophecy, Mr. Greer. You can gamble
on its coming true.) My daughter, Princess d’Antri—Mr. and Mrs. Greer.
Prince Amadeo d’Antri. My secretary, Miss Anice Lanier—Mr. and Mrs.——”
A new batch of guests swarmed down the hall toward the host, and the
ordeal was over. The Greers, swept on in the rush, did not hear
Conover’s next greeting. This was rather a pity, since it differed
materially from that lavished upon themselves.
Its recipient was a big young man, with a shock of light hair and quiet,
dark eyes. He wore his clothes well, and looked out of place in his
vulgar, garish surroundings. Caleb Conover, Railroader, eyed the
newcomer all over with a cold, expressionless glance. A glance that no
seer on earth could have read; the glance that had gained him more than
one victory when wits and concealment of purpose were rife. Then he held
out a grudging hand.
“Well, Mr. Clive Standish,” he observed, “it seems the lion and the lamb
lie down together, after all—a considerable distance this side of the
millennium. And the lamb inside, at that. To think of a clubman and a
cotillon leader, and a first-families scion and a Civic Leaguer and all
that sort of thing condescending to honor my poor shanty——”
“My aunt, Mrs. Conover, wrote, asking me especially to come, as a favor
to her,” replied the younger man stiffly. “I thought——”
“And you were O. K. in thinking it. I know Letty wrote, because I
dictated the letter. I wanted to count you in with the rest to-night,
and I had a kind of bashful fear that your love for me, personally,
might not be strong enough to fetch you. You’ve got too much sense to
think the invite will score either way in our feelings to each other, or
that I’m going back on what I said to you four years ago. Now that
you’re here, chase in and enjoy yourself. This place is like heaven,
to-night, in one way. You’ll see a whole lot of people here you never
expected to, and you’ll miss more’n a few you thought would sure belong.
Good-by. Don’t let me block your job of heavenly recognition.”
The wilful coarseness and brutality of the man came as no surprise to
Standish. He had expected something of the sort, and had braced himself
for it. To please his aunt, whom he sincerely pitied, he had entered the
Conover house to-night for the first time since the Homeric quarrel,
incident on his refusal to avail himself of Caleb’s prestige in his law
work, and, incidentally to enroll himself as one of the Railroader’s
numberless political vassals. That the roughness to which Conover had
just subjected him was no more a part of the former’s real nature than
had been the nervous effusiveness of his greeting to the Greers, Clive
well knew. It had been intended to cover any embarrassing memories of a
former and somewhat less strained acquaintanceship; and as such it—like
most of Conover’s moves—had served its turn.
So, resisting his first impulse to depart as he had come, Standish moved
on. The formal receiving phalanx was crumpling up. He paused for a
moment’s talk with little Mrs. Conover, exchanged a civil word or two
with his cousin Blanche and her prince, and then came to where Anice
Lanier was trying to make conversation for several awed-looking,
bediamonded persons who were evidently horribly ill at ease in their
surroundings.
At sight of the girl, the formal lines about Clive’s mouth were broken
by a smile of very genuine pleasure. A smile that gave a younger aspect
to his grave face, and found ready answer in the brown eyes that met
his.
“Haven’t you toiled at a forlorn hope long enough?” he asked, as the
awed beings drifted away into the uncomfortable crowd, carrying their
burden of jewels with them.
“A forlorn hope?” she queried, puzzled.
“You actually seemed to be trying to galvanize at least a segment of
this portentous gathering into a semblance of life. Don’t do it. In the
first place you can’t. Saloonkeepers and Pompton Avenue people won’t
blend. In the second place, it isn’t expected of you. The papers
to-morrow will record the right names just as jealously as if every one
had had a good time. Suppose you concentrate all your efforts on me.
Come! It will be a real work of charity. For Mr. Conover has just shown
me how thoroughly I’m the prodigal. And he didn’t even hint at the
whereabouts of a fatted calf. Please be merciful and make me have a good
time. It’s months since I’ve seen you to talk to.”
“Then why don’t you come here oftener?” she asked, as they made their
way through the press, and found an unoccupied alcove between two of the
great rooms. “I’m sure Mrs. Conover——”
“My poor aunt? She’d be frightened to death that Conover and I would
quarrel. No, no! To-night is an exception. The first and the last. I
persuaded myself I came because of Aunt Letty’s note. But I really came
for a chat with you.”
She looked at him, doubting how to accept this bald compliment. But his
face was boyish in its sincerity.
“You and I used to be such good friends,” he went on, “and now we never
see any more of each other. Why don’t we?”
“I think you know as well as I. You no longer come here—you have not
come, I think, since a year before I arrived. And I go almost nowhere
since——”
“Since you gave up all your old world and the people who cared for you
and became a drudge in the Conover household? If you were to be found
anywhere else, you would see so much of me that I’d bore you to
extinction. But it would be even unpleasanter for you than for me if I
were to call on you here. I miss our old-time talks more than I can
say.”
“I miss them, too. Do you remember how we used to argue over politics,
and how you always ended by telling me that there were two things no
woman could understand, and that politics was one and finance the
other?”
“And you would always make the same retort: That woman’s combined
ignorance of politics and finance were pure knowledge as compared with
the men’s ignorance of women. It wasn’t especially logical repartee, but
it always served to shut me up.”
“I wish we had time for another political spat. Some day we must. You
see, I’ve learned such a lot about politics—and finance, too—_practical_
politics and finance—since I came here.”
“Decidedly ‘practical,’ I fancy, if Mr. Conover was your teacher. He
doesn’t go in much for idealism.”
“And you?” asked Anice, ignoring the slur. “Are you still as rabid as
ever in your ideas of reform? But, of course, you are. For I read only
last week that you had been elected President of the Civic League. I
want to congratulate you. It’s a splendid movement, even though Mr.
Conover declares it’s hopeless.”
“Good citizenship is never quite hopeless, even in a boss-ridden
community like Granite, and a boss-governed commonwealth like the
Mountain State. The people will wake up some day.”
“Their snores sound very peaceful and regular just now,” remarked Anice,
with a flippancy whereof she had the grace to be ashamed.
“Perhaps,” he smiled, “the sounds you and Conover mistake for snores may
possibly be groans.”
“How delightfully dramatic! That would sound splendidly on the stump.”
“It may have a chance to.”
“What do you mean? Are you going to——”
“No. I am going to run for governor this fall.”
“WHAT?”
“Do you know,” observed Standish, “when you open your eyes that way you
really look——”
“Never mind how I look! Tell me about——”
“My campaign? It is nothing yet. But the Civic League is planning one
more effort to shake off Conover’s grip on the throat of the Mountain
State—another good ‘stump’ line, by the way. And I have been asked to
run for governor.”
“But——”
“Oh, yes, I know. Conover holds the Convention in the hollow of his
hand. He owns the delegates and the newspapers and the Legislature as
well as the railroads. And no sane man would dream of bucking such a
combination. But maybe I’m not quite sane. For I’m going to try it. Now
laugh all you like.”
“Laugh? I feel more like crying. It’s—it’s knightly and _splendid_ of
you, Clive! And—perhaps it may prove less crazy than you think.”
“You mean?”
“I mean nothing at all. I wish you luck, though. All the luck in the
world. Tell me more.”
“There is no more. Besides, I’d rather talk about _you_. Tell me of your
life here.”
“There’s nothing to tell. It’s work. Pleasant enough work, even though
it’s hard. Everyone is nice to me. I——”
“That doesn’t explain your choosing such a career out of all that were
open to you. Why did you take it?”
“I’ve often explained it to you, but you never seem to understand. When
father died, he left me nothing. I had my living to make, and——”
“But surely there were a thousand easier, pleasanter ways of earning it
than to kill yourself socially by becoming an employee in such a family
as this. It can’t be congenial——”
The odd smile in her eyes checked him and gave him a vague sense of
uneasiness.
“It _is_ congenial,” said the girl after a pause. “I have my own suite
of rooms, my own hours, my own way. I have a natural bent for finance,
and business association with Mr. Conover is a real education. The
salary is good. My word in all household matters is law. Mr. Conover
knows I understand how things should be conducted, and he has grown to
rely on me. I am more mistress here than most women in their own homes.
Mrs. Conover is ill so much—and Blanche being away——”
“Anice,” he broke in, “I’ve known you since you first went into long
dresses. And I know that the reasons you’ve just given are none of them
the sort that appeal to a girl like you. To some women they might. But
not to you. Why did you come here, and why do you stay? There is some
reason you haven’t——”
“’Scuse me, Miss Lanier,” said a voice at the entrance of the alcove,
“the Boss sent me to ask you would you come to the drorin’-room. He says
the supper-room’s open, an’ he’d like you to soop’rintend things. I’ve
been lookin’ everywhere for you. Gee, but goin’ through a bunch of cops
in a pool-room raid is pie alongside of workin’ a way through this
push.”
The speaker was a squat, swarthy little man on whom his ready-made
evening clothes sat with the grace and comfort of a set of thumb screws.
Clive recognized him with difficulty as the usually self-assured “Billy”
Shevlin, Conover’s most trusted political henchman.
“Very well,” replied Anice Lanier, rising to obey the summons. She noted
the dumb misery in Billy’s face, and paused to ask:
“Aren’t you having a good time, Mr. Shevlin?”
“A good time? _Me?_ Oh, yes. _Sure_, I am. I only hope no one’ll mistake
me in this open-face suit for a senator or a mattinay idol. That’s all
that’s botherin’ me. I’ve been rubbin’ elbows with the Van Alstynes that
own half of Pompton Av’no and live in Yoorup, and with Slat Kerrigan’s
wife, who used to push coffee and sinkers at Kerry’s beanery. Oh, I’m in
sassiety all right. An’ I feel like a pair of yeller shoes at a
fun’ral.”
“Never mind!” laughed Anice. “The supper-room’s open, and you’ll enjoy
that part of the evening, at any rate.”
“I will, eh? Not me, Miss! The Boss’s passed the word that the boys is
to hold back, and kind of make a noise like innercent bystanders till
the swell push is all fed. So it’s me for the merry outskirts while
they’re gettin’ their money’s wort’.”
Clive Standish watched them thread their way through the crowd, until
Anice’s dainty little head with its crown of shimmering bronze hair was
lost to sight. Then he sat looking moodily out on the heterogeneous,
ill-assorted company before him.
Now that he had talked with Anice he no longer regretted the impulse
that had led him to accept Mrs. Conover’s invitation. The girl had
always exerted a subtle charm, a nameless influence, over him. Years
before, when he was struggling, penniless, to make a living in a city
where his family name opened every door to him, yet where it was more of
an impediment than otherwise in his task of bread winning; even then he
had worked with a vague, half-formed hope of Anice Lanier sharing his
final victory.
Then had come her own financial reverses, her father’s death, and her
withdrawal from the world that had known them both. Since that time
circumstances had checked their growing intimacy. It was pleasant to
Standish to feel that that intimacy and understanding were now renewed
almost just where they had left off. His battle for livelihood and
success had beaten from him much of the buoyancy that had once been his
charm. Anice seemed the one link connecting him with Youth—the link
whereby he might one day win his way back to that dear lost country of
his boyish hopes and dreams. It would be good to forget, with her, the
dreary uphill struggle that was so bitter and youth-sapping when endured
alone. Then he laughed grimly at his own silly fantasy, and came back to
every-day self-control.
The rooms were clearing. Clive got to his feet and followed the general
drift toward the enormous ball-room in the rear of the mansion that had
for the occasion been converted into a banquet hall.
On the way he encountered a long, lean, pasty-faced young man who hailed
him with a weary:
“Hello, Standish! Didn’t expect to see you here. Beastly bore, isn’t it?
And the governor dragged me all the way from New York to show up at it.”
“You spend most of your time in New York nowadays, don’t you, Jerry?”
said Clive.
“Say, old chap,” protested young Conover, “cut out the ‘Jerry,’ can’t
you? My Christian name’s Gerald. ‘Jerry’ was all right enough when I was
a kid in this one-horse provincial hole. But it would swamp a man of my
standing in New York.”
Clive had a fair idea of the “standing” in question. A half-baked lad,
turned out of Harvard after two years of futile loafing, sent on a trip
around the world (that culminated in a delightfully misspent year in
Paris), at last coming home with a well-grounded contempt for his native
city, and turned loose at his own request on long-suffering New York,
with more money than belonged to him and fewer brains than sufficed to
keep it. This in a nutshell was the history—so far as the world at large
knew—of Caleb Conover’s only son.
From time to time newspaper accounts of beaten cabmen, suppers that
ended in police stations, and similar feats of youthful gayety and
culture had floated to Granite. Yet Caleb Conover, otherwise so rigid in
the matter of appearances, read such accounts with relish, and boasted
loudly of the swath his son was cutting in Gotham society. For, on
Gerald’s word, Conover was firmly assured that this was the true career
of a young man of fashion. It represented all he had missed in his own
poverty-fighting early manhood, and he rejoiced in his son’s good times.
Getting rid of Gerald as soon as he decently might, Standish made his
way to the supper-room. At a hundred tables sat more or less bored
guests. Waiters swirled wildly to and fro. In a balcony above blared an
orchestra. At the doors and in a fringe about the edges of the room were
grouped the Conover political and business hangers on. The place was hot
to suffocation and heavy with the scent of flowers.
Suddenly, through the volume of looser sound, came a succession of sharp
raps. The orchestra stopped short. The guests ceased speaking, and
craned their necks.
At the far end of the room, under a gaudy floral piece, a man had risen
to his feet.
“Speech!” yelled Shevlin, enthusiastically, from a doorway. Then, made
aware of his breach of etiquette by a swift but awful glance from his
chief, he wilted behind a palm.
But Shevlin had read the signs aright.
Caleb Conover, Railroader, was about to make a speech.
CHAPTER II
CALEB CONOVER MAKES A SPEECH
Conover had broken, that night, two rules that had for years formed
inviolate tenets of his life creed. In the first place, he—whose battles
had for the most part been won by the cold eye that told nothing, and by
the colder brain that dictated the words of his every-day speech as
calculatingly as a diplomat dictates a letter of state—he had forced
himself to throw away his guard and to chatter and make himself
agreeable like any bargain counter clerk. The effort had been irksome.
In the second, he had departed from his fixed habit of total abstinence.
The love of strong drink ran high in his blood. Early in life he had
decided that such indulgence would militate against success. So he had
avoided even the mildest potations from thenceforward. To-night (his
usually stolid nerves tense with the excitement of the grand cast he was
making for “social recognition”) he had felt, as never before in
campaign or in business climax, the need for stimulant to enable him to
play his awkward rôle. Moreover—he had his son, Gerald’s, high authority
for the statement—total abstinence was no longer in vogue among the
elect.
As soon, therefore, as he had taken his seat in the supper-room he had
braced himself by a glass of champagne. The unwonted beverage sent a
delicious glow through him. His puzzled brain cleared, his last doubts
of the entertainment’s success began to fade.
An obsequious waiter at his elbow hastened to refill the glass, and
Conover, his eyes darting hither and thither among the guests to single
out and dwell on the various faces he had so long and so vainly yearned
to see in his house, absent-mindedly emptied it and another after it. He
was talking assiduously to Mrs. Van Alstyne, whom at first he had found
somewhat frigid and difficult; but who, he now discovered to his
surprise, it was growing momentarily easier to entertain. He had had no
idea of his own command of language.
Supper was still in its early stages when a fourth glass of heady
vintage champagne followed the other three. From doorways and walls his
political followers looked on with amaze. To them the sight of the Boss
drinking was the eighth wonder of the world. They nudged each other and
muttered awed comments out of the corners of their mouths.
But Caleb heeded this not at all. He was happy. Very happy. The party
over which he had suffered such secret qualms and to secure the desired
guests for which he had strained every atom of his vast political and
business influence, was proving a marvellous success. At last he was in
society. And he had thought the barriers of that Body so impassable! He
was in society. At last. And talking with delightful, brilliant fluency
with one of its acknowledged leaders. He had conquered.
The waiter filled his glass for the fifth time. After all, champagne had
an effect whiskey could never equal. The fifth draught (for he allowed
but one swallow to the goblet) seemed to inspire him even more than had
its predecessors.
Then it was that fifty generations of Irishmen who, under the spell of
liquor, acquired a flow of language not their own, clamored for voice in
this their latest and greatest descendant. Now that he was in so
foreign, brilliant a mood, what more apt than a graceful little speech
of greeting to those his fellow-townsmen who had flocked thither to do
him honor? The idea was sublime. Conover rose to his feet and rapped for
silence. He would speak while the gift of eloquence was still strong
upon him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Caleb, clearing his voice and looking down
the great room across the concourse of wondering, amused, or expectant
faces that gently swayed in a faint haze before his eyes, “I guess you
all know, without my telling you, how glad I am to see you here
to-night, and I want you should enjoy every minute of your evening. Some
of you are old friends of mine. There’s more’n a few here to-night that
remembers me when I was barefooted Cale Conover, without a dollar to my
name nor any very hectic prospects of getting one.
“But there’s a lot more of you here that I hadn’t the honor of knowing
then, nor for that matter of meeting at all till to-night. It’s to
these, mostly, that I’m talking now. For I want ’em to know me better
and like me better. Maybe if they hear more about me they will. That’s
why I’m on my feet now.
“I b’lieve it isn’t customary to make a speech any more at parties. But
you’ll have to forgive me. I’m not much onto the latest frills and
fashions. But give me a chance, and I’ll learn as easy as a Chinaman. It
came to me all of a sudden to say what I’ve got to say, right here and
now, even if it’s at the expense of a little etiquette. I’ve asked you
here to-night, mainly, of course, for the pleasure of entertaining you,
and I hope you’re all having a real good time. But I had another reason,
too.”
The men at the tables looked perplexed. Was this the Caleb Conover they
had met and cringed to in the outer world, this garrulous, rambling man
with the flushed face?
“You see, I’ve come to be a kind of a feature of this city of ours and
of the State, too. I’m here to stay. And I want that my towns-folks and
my fellow-residents of the Mountain State should know me. Many of ’em
do. There’s a full half-million folks in this city and State that know
all about Caleb Conover. They know he’s on the square, that he’ll look
after their interests, that he’s a white man. They know he’s a man they
can trust in their public life and welcome in their homes. And, as I
said, there’s a lot of these people here to-night.
“But there’s a lot of other folks here who only know me by what slander
and jokes they’ve picked up around town or in the out-of-State
newspapers. It’s these latter folks I’m talking to now. I want them to
know the _real_ me; not the uneducated crook and illiterate feller my
p’litical enemies have made me out. They can’t think I’m _all_ bad, or
they wouldn’t be my guests. Would they, now? And a little frankness
ought to do the rest.
“Some people say I’ve risen from the gutter. Well, I’ve _risen_ from it,
haven’t I? A lot of men on Pompton Avenue and in the big clubs are just
where they started when they were born. Not a step in advance of where
their fathers left ’em. Swell chance _they’d_ have had if their parents
had started ’em in the gutter as mine did, wouldn’t they? Where’d they
be now?
“What does the start amount to? The finish line’s where the score’s
counted. Gutter or palace.
“‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ says a poet by the name of R. Burns. And
he was right, even if he did waste his time on verse-stringing. Only it
always seemed a pity to me those words wasn’t said by someone bigger’n a
measly poet. Someone whose name carried weight, and whose words would be
quoted more. Because then more folks might hear of it and believe it. I
don’t suppose one person in fifty’s ever heard of this R. Burns person.
(I never did, myself, till I bought a Famous Quotation book to use in
one of my campaigns. That’s how I got familiar with the writings of R.
Burns and Ibid and Byron and all those rhymer people.) Now, if some
public character like Tom Platt, or Matt Quay, or someone else that
everybody’s heard of, had said that quotation about a man being a man——”
Caleb paused to gather up the loose threads of his discourse. This
caused him a moment of dull bewilderment, for he was not accustomed to
digress, either in mind or talk, and the phenomenon puzzled him. He
rallied and went on:
“But that isn’t the point. I was telling you about myself. I started in
the gutter, just as the ‘knockers’ say I did. Or down by the freight
yards, and that’s about the same thing. My mother took in washing—when
she could get it. My father went to the penitentiary for freight-lifting
when I was ten—he was a stevedore—and he died there. I was brought up on
a street where the feller—man or boy—who couldn’t fight had to stay
indoors. And indoors was one place I never stayed. I began as coal boy
in the C. G. & X. elevators; then I got a job firing on a fast freight,
and from that I took to braking on a local passenger run. Then I was
yardmaster, and then in the sup’rintendent’s office, and then came the
job of sup’rintendent and after that general manager, and I worked my
way up till I ran the C. G. & X. road single-handed. Meantime I was
looking after your city’s interests. Three times as Alderman and then
once as Mayor, for the boys knew they could bank on me. I got hold of
interests here and interests there. Cheap, run-down interests they were,
for the most part, but I built ’em up. Take the C. G. & X., for
instance. Biggest road in the State to-day. How’d it get so? _I_ made
it. It was all run down, and on its last legs when I took hold. I
acquired it and——”
He paused once more, fighting back that queer tendency to let slip his
grasp on his subject.
“I remember that C. G. & X. deal,” whispered Greer to his wife. “He
juggled shares and pulled wires and spread calamity rumors till he was
able to smash the stock down to a dollar-ten per. He scared out all the
other big holders, gobbled their stock, reorganized, and reaped a clean
five million on the deal.”
“Hush!” retorted Mrs. Greer. “This is too rich to miss. I must remember
it all, to——”
“—So, you see,” Caleb was continuing, “I fought my way up. Every move
was a fight, and every fight was a win. That’s my motto. Fight to win.
An’ if you _don’t_ win, let it be your executor, not you, that knows you
lost. But the biggest fight of all was to come. I controlled the city. I
helped control the State. I had all the money any man needed, and I was
spending it right here in the town where it was earned. I was a
successful man. But the man who’s satisfied with success would be
satisfied with failure. And I wasn’t satisfied.
“There was still one thing I couldn’t get. I couldn’t get one set of
people to recognize me when they met me in the street, to ask me to
their houses, to come to _my_ house. Why? I don’t know. Maybe _they_
don’t know. Maybe they didn’t _want_ to know. There’s a lot of things
society folks don’t seem to want to know. And one of those things was
me. I couldn’t win ’em over. I built this house. Cost $200,000 more’n
any other house in town. If you doubt it, step down to the Building
Commissioner’s and look over the specifications. Built it on the most
fash’nable avenue, too. But still society wouldn’t say: ‘Pleased to know
you!’ ‘Maybe it’s my lack of blue blood,’ thinks I. ‘Though my pile’s
been made a good deal cleaner than many an aristocrat’s.’ I married a
lady of the first families here”—a ripple of unintelligible surprise
broke in on his ears, but quickly died. “What was the result? She was
asked out and I wasn’t. But I kept on fighting. And at last I’m in the
winning stride.
“I’m not a college man myself. All my education’s hand-made and since I
was thirty. But I was bound my son should be one. And he is. He’s in
society, too. The best New York affords, I’m told. My girl’s had
advantages, too, and you see the result. Do unto others what you can’t
do for yourself. That’s worth remembering sometimes. And now at last I
get my comeback for all my outlay.
“To-night I guess I cover the final lap of the race. For the bluest
blood of Granite is—are—is among my guests here, and I’m meeting ’em on
equal terms. All this talk, maybe, isn’t what the etiquette books call
‘good form.’ But if you knew how many years I’ve worked for what I’ve
won to-night, you’d sympathize with me for wanting to crow just a
little.”
“Heavens!” murmured Mrs. Greer, “does the creature think anyone’s going
to regard this as his ‘début’? And the awful part of it is, the whole
speech will be in every paper to-morrow. Oh, if only the reporters will
get our names wrong!”
“No fear of that,” answered Greer. “The typewritten list is probably
being put in print even now. But what ails Conover?”
“So,” resumed Caleb, beaming about him, “I wanted the chance to let you
all know me as I really am. Not what my enemies say about me. Is there
any reason why I shouldn’t be your friend and entertain you often? None
in the least, you’ll all say. It seems a little thing, perhaps, to you
who’ve been in the game always. But it’s meant a lot to me!”
He paused. There seemed nothing more to say, yet he longed to end with a
climax. A glorious, dazzling inspiration came, and he hurried on:
“And now, in honor of this little meeting between friends, let me tell
you all a secret. It won’t be a secret to-morrow, but you can always be
able to say you were the first who was told. I have at last yielded to
the earnest entreaties of my constituents and friends and party in
general, and have consented to accept the nomination for Governor at the
coming convention.”
From the proletariat fringing the walls and blocking the doorway arose
an excited, exultant hum. Only the wild efforts of certain efficient, if
unofficial, sergeants-at-arms prevented a mighty yell of applause. At
the tables, however, the women looked bored or puzzled; while the men
glanced at each other with the blank look of people who, out for a day’s
jolly hunting, find themselves caught unexpectedly in a bear trap.
“Good Lord!” grunted Greer, “I hope our being here doesn’t commit any of
us! To think of Conover, of all men, as governor! This’ll be a bombshell
with a vengeance.”
“I have heretofore,” went on Caleb, after allowing the impression of his
words to sink in, “refused all State offices. But now I feel it a social
as well as a political duty that I owe. And I shall be grateful to you
for your honest support.”
He had rehearsed this last sentence many times for campaign speeches. It
seemed to him to have the true oratorical ring, and to be singularly
appropriate. He prepared to sit down, then checked himself.
“Some men,” he added, as an afterthought, “are in politics for a ‘holy’
purpose. Some for what’s in it for them. I find the result’s usually
pretty much the same in both cases. As governor I shall do my best for
Granite and for the Mountain State. Thank you.”
Caleb bowed, reseated himself and swallowed another glass of champagne
at a gulp. He was not ill pleased with himself. He had risen merely to
thank his guests for their presence. Little by little he had drifted
further than he had at first intended. Yet, he was glad he had yielded
to this unprecedented, unaccustomed yearning to expand; to show himself
at his best before these people with whom he now firmly believed himself
on a footing of friendly equality. Yes, on the whole, he was convinced
of his success.
He glanced about him. The buzz of talk had recommenced; it seemed to him
more loudly, more interestedly, with less of constraint than before.
Dozens of eyes were upon him, not with the bored coldness of the earlier
evening, but with curiosity and open interest. He had put people at
their ease. They were accepting him as one of themselves, and behaving
as he had heard they did at other functions.
Caleb was glad.
Then his complacent glance fell on his wife. She was very red in the
face, and was bending over her plate, eating fast.
“Proud of the old man, poor little thing!” mused Conover, a twinge of
affection for his scared, invertebrate spouse sending a softer light
into his strenuous, lean face. His gaze next travelled to Blanche, his
daughter. She, too, was red of face, and was talking hard, as if against
time. Somehow Caleb was less assured as to the cause of her flush.
Perhaps in Europe such speeches were not customary. He could explain to
her later.
Anice Lanier, alone, met his eye with the frank, honest, unafraid look
that was her birthright, and which made her the only living person he
instinctively felt he could not bully. In her look he read, now, a mute
question. He could not fathom the expression.
Caleb left his place and made his way among the tables to where she sat.
“How’d it go?” he asked. “It seemed to take ’em.”
“I think it did,” she replied, noting the flush on his cheek and the
brightness of his gaze, and wondering thereat.
“Wasn’t too long to hold their interest?”
“No. They seemed interested.”
“You think so? Good! Do you know, if I’d had time to think, I’d rather
have made fifty campaign speeches than that one. I’d have been rattled
to death. But it was easier than any speech I ever made. Good climax,
eh, that announcement?”
“How long ago did you make up your mind to run for Governor?”
“Think it’s queer that, as my secretary, you hadn’t heard of it? Well,
I’ll tell you. I decided it just about seven minutes ago. It came to me
like a flash, plumb in the middle of my speech. I figgered out all at
once that if there was any flaw in my plans so far, the governorship was
dead sure to cinch me in society. Folks’ll think twice before they turn
up their noses at a governor. It came as an inspiration. A genuine
hunch. I never have one of them but what it wins. Why, when——”
“But can you get the nomination?”
“Can I get it? _Can_ I get it? Say, Miss Lanier, haven’t you learned yet
that there isn’t a thing in the city of Granite or in the Mountain State
that Caleb Conover, Railroader, can’t get if he wants it bad enough?
To-night ought to have showed you that. Why, with the legislature and
every newspaper, and the railroad system and every decent State job
right here safe between my fingers, all I’ve got to do is to turn the
wheel, and the little ball will drop into the governor’s chair all
right, all right.”
The girl’s big brown eyes were vaguely troubled. The reserve habitual to
her when in her employer’s society deepened. She thought of Clive
Standish and his aspirations. What would become of the young lawyer’s
already desperate hope, now that the Boss himself—and not some mere
puppet of the latter’s—was to be his opponent?
“Say,” sighed Caleb Conover in perfect content, “this is the happiest
night ever! I’ve got everything there is in life for a man. All the
money I want, the running of the State, a place in society at last, a
daughter that’s a princess, a boy that’s making his mark in the biggest
city in America, and now—the governorship. Lord! but I’m a lucky man.
And that speech—I didn’t think I had it in me. Of course, I know those
snobs from the Pompton Avenue crowd were dragged here by the ears. I had
to drag pretty hard, too, in most cases. But they’re _here_. And they
listened to me. They had to. And they can’t ever look on me just as they
did before.”
“No,” assented Anice, “they can’t.”
To her there was something impersonally pathetic in the way this usually
keen, stern man had unbent and made himself ridiculous. She was the only
person living in whose presence, as a rule, he expanded. She was used to
the semi-occasional talkative, boastful moods of this Boss whom all the
rest of the world deemed as sharp, and concise as a steel trap—and as
deadly. Yet never had even she seen him like this before.
It was sad, she mused, that Samson, shorn of his locks of self-restraint
and of his calculating coolness, should thus have made sport for the
Philistines. That he had perhaps done so for a purpose—even though for
once in his life it was a futile purpose—rendered his folly no less
humiliating.
“Yes,” reiterated Conover, as he prepared to return to his own table.
“It was an inspiration. And an ounce of inspiration discounts a half-ton
of any other commodity that ever passed over the counter.”
“What was it like?” rhapsodized Billy Shevlin at 2 A.M., as he gazed
loftily upon a semicircle of humbler querists in the back room of
Kerrigan’s saloon. “It was like the King of England an’ one of them
Fashion Joinals an’ a lake of $4-a-bottle suds, all mixed; with a Letter
Carriers’ Ball on the side. And”—he added, in a glow of divine
memories—“_I_ was ace-high with the biggest of the push. If I hadn’t a’
been, would the Van Alstyne dame a’ stood for it so civil when I treads
on the train of her Sunday regalia and rips about ten yards of the fancy
tatting off’n it?”
“What was it like?” echoed Mrs. Greer to a query of one of her daughters
who had sat up to await the parental home-coming. “It was something
clear outside the scriptural prohibition of swearing. For it was like
nothing in ‘the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under
the earth.’”
“What was it like?” thought Clive Standish drowsily as he fell asleep.
“A dozen people are certain to ask me that to-morrow. It—her—her eyes
have that same old queer way—of making me feel as if—I were in church.”
CHAPTER III
CALEB CONOVER REGRETS
Caleb Conover, Railroader, was in a humor when all the household thought
well to tread softly.
It was the morning after his “début.” He paced his study intermittently,
stopping now and again at a window to watch laborers at work in the
grounds below, dismantling the strings of Chinese lanterns, and carting
away other litter of the festivities. A pile of newspapers filled one of
the study chairs. On the front page of each local journal was blazoned a
garish account of the Conover reception. Yet Caleb, eager as he had once
been to read every word concerning the fête, had not so much as glanced
at any of the papers. In fact, he seemed, in his weary pacing to and
fro, to avoid the locality of the chair where they lay.
For an hour—in fact, ever since he had left his bedroom—he had paced
thus. And none had dared disturb him. For the evil spirit was heavy upon
Saul, and the javelin of wrath, at such times, was not prone to tarry in
its flight.
Caleb’s black mood this morning came from within, not from objective
causes. He was travelling through that deepest, most horrible of all the
multi-graded Valleys of Humiliation—the Vale of Remembered Folly. Let a
man recall a crime, and—especially if he be troubled at the time with
indigestion—remorse of a smug if painful sort will be his portion. Let
him recall a misfortune, and a wave of gentle, self-pitying grief will
lave his heart, soothing the throb of an old sting into soft regret. But
let him awake to the fact that he has made himself sublimely
ridiculous—and that in the presence of the multitude—and his
self-torture can be lashed to a pitch that shames the Inquisition’s most
zealous efforts. Therein lies the True Valley of Humiliation, the ravine
where no sunlight of redeeming circumstances shines, where no refreshing
rill of excuse and palliation flows. And it was in this unrelieved, arid
gorge of self-contempt that Caleb Conover now wallowed.
He had made a fool of himself. An arrant fool. He had drunk until he was
drunken. And in that drunkenness he had spoken blatant words of idiocy.
He had made himself ridiculous in the eyes of the very class he had
sought to cultivate. His had not been the besottedness that babbles,
sleeps and forgets. Even as his drink-inspired tongue had betrayed no
thickness nor hiatus during his drivelling speech, so the steady brain
had, on waking, remorselessly told him of his every word.
Thirty years before, in a drunken spree, he had been seized with a
fervor of patriotism and had enlisted in the army. On coming to himself
it had cost him nearly every dollar he possessed to get himself free.
After a similar revel, a year later, he had stampeded a meeting of the
local “machine” by making a tearful speech in favor of reform and purity
in politics. The oration had cost him his immediate chances of political
preferment. After that he had done away with this single weakness in his
iron nature and had drunk no more. The sacrifice had been light for so
strong a man, once he forced himself to make it.
Last night—secure in his impregnable self-trust—he had broken his
inviolable rule. As a result he had become a laughing-stock for the
people whose favor he so unspeakably desired to win. As to his own
adherents, he gave their possible opinions not one thought. Whatever the
Boss said “went” with them. Had he declared himself a candidate for holy
orders, or blurted out the innermost secrets of the “machine,” they
would probably have believed he was acting for the best. But those
others——!
[Illustration: She was very pretty and dainty and young, in her simple
white morning frock. Page 47.]
And, over and above all, his declaration of candidacy for Governor——
A knock at the door of his study broke in on the audible groan of
self-contempt this last and ever-recurrent thought wrung from his tight
lips. Caleb stopped midway down the room, his short red hair bristling
with fury at the interruption.
“What do you want?” he snarled.
The door opened and Anice Lanier came in. She was very pretty and dainty
and young, in her simple white morning frock. She carried a set of
tablets whereon it was her custom to transcribe notes of Caleb’s morning
instructions for reference or for later amplification by his two
stenographers.
“Well!” roared Conover, glowering across the room at her, “what in hell
do _you_ want?”
“To tender my resignation,” was the unruffled reply.
“Your _what_?” he gasped, stupidly.
“My resignation,” in the same level, impersonal tones. “To take effect
at once. Good morning.”
She was half-way out of the room before her employer could hurry after
and detain her.
“What’s—what’s the meaning of this?” asked Caleb, the brutal
belligerency trailing out of his voice. Then, before she could answer,
he added: “Because I spoke like that just now? Was that it? Because I
said—And you’d throw over a good job just because of a few cranky words?
Yes, I believe you would. You’d do it. It isn’t a bluff. Maybe that’s
why you make such a hit with me, Miss Lanier. You’re not scared every
time I open my mouth. And you stand up for yourself.”
He eyed her in a quizzically admiring fashion, as one might a beautiful
but unclassified natural history specimen. She made no reply, but stood
waiting in patience for him to move from between her and the door.
Caleb grinned.
“Want me to apologize, I s’pose?” he grumbled.
“A gentleman would not wait to ask.”
“Maybe you think a gentleman wouldn’t of said what I did, in the first
place, eh?”
“Yes, I do think so. Don’t you?”
“Well, I’m sorry. Let it go at that. Now let’s get to work. Say”—as they
moved across to their wonted places at the big centre table, “you
oughtn’t to take offence at anything about me this morning. You must
know how sore I am.”
“What’s the matter?”
“As if you didn’t know! You saw how many kinds of a wall-eyed fool I
made of myself last night. Isn’t that enough to make a man sore? And to
think of it being taken down by those newspaper idiots and printed all
over the country!”
He gave the nearby chair a kick, avalanching the morning papers to the
floor.
“Have you read those?” queried Anice.
“No. Why should I rub it in? I know what they——”
“Why not look at them before you lose your temper?”
Caleb snatched up the _Star_, foremost journal of Granite. He glanced
down the last column of the front page, and over to the second.
“Here’s the story of the show just as we dictated it beforehand,” he
commented. “List of guests—Where in thunder is that measly speech? Have
they given it a column to itself? Oh—way down at the bottom. ‘In a
singularly happy little informal address at the close of the evening Mr.
Conover mentioned his forthcoming candidacy for governor.’ Is that all
any of them have got about it?”
“They have your pledge to run for Governor blazoned over two columns of
the front page of nearly all the papers. But nothing more about the
speech itself.”
“But how——”
“I took the liberty of stopping the reporters before they left the
house, and telling them it would be against your wish for any of your
other remarks to be quoted.”
“You did that? Miss Lanier, you’re fine! You’ve saved me a guying in
every out-of-State paper in the East. I want to show my appreciation——”
“If that means another offer to raise my salary, I am very much obliged.
But, as I’ve told you several times before, I can’t accept it. Thank you
just the same.”
“But why not? I can afford——”
“But I can’t. Don’t let’s talk of it, please.”
“And every other soul in my employ spraining his brain to plan for a
raise! The man who understands women—if he’s ever born—won’t need to
read his Bible, for there’ll be nothing that even the Almighty can teach
him.”
“Shan’t we begin work? About this Fournier matter. He refuses to pay the
$30,000, and we can’t even get him to admit he owes it. Shall I——”
“Write and tell him unless he pays that $41,596 within thirty days——”
“But it’s $30,000, not $41,000. He——”
“I know that. And he’ll write us so by return mail. That’ll give us the
acknowledgment we want of the $30,000 debt. What next?”
“The Curtis-Bayne people of Hadley are falling behind on their contract
with the C. G. & X.”
“I guess they are,” chuckled Caleb. “They’re beginning to see a great
light, just as I figured out. Well, let ’em squirm a bit.”
“But the contract—you may remember Mr. Curtis asked to look at our copy
of it when he was in Granite. He said he wanted to verify a clause he
couldn’t quite recollect. You told me to send it to him, and I did.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, he never returned it. And this morning we get this letter from
him: ‘_In regard to your favor of the 9th inst., in which you speak of a
contract, we beg to state you must have confused us with some other of
your road’s customers. The Curtis-Bayne Company has no contract with the
C. G. & X., and can find no record of one. If you have such a document
kindly produce it._’”
“Well, well, well!” gurgled Caleb. “To think how that wicked old Curtis
fox has imposed on my trust in human nature! He’s got us, eh?”
“It looks so, I’m afraid.”
“Looks so to him, too. It’ll keep on looking so till I shove him into
court and make him swear on the witness stand that no contract ever
existed. Then it’ll be time enough to produce the certified copy I had
made just after I got his request to send the original to his hotel.
Poor old Curtis! Please write him a very blustering, scared, appealing
kind of letter. Next?”
“O’Flaherty’s sent another begging note, about that claim of his against
the road. It begins: ‘_Dear Mr. Conover: As you know, I’ve seen better
days_’——”
“Tell him I can’t be held accountable for the weather. And—say, Miss
Lanier, let all the rest of this routine go over for to-day. I’ve a
bigger game on, and I’ve got to hustle. That Governorship business——”
“Yes?”
“That was the foolest thing I ever did. It seemed to me at the minute a
grand idea as a wind-up for my crazy speech. But I guess I’ll have to
pay my way all right before I’m done with last evening. The free list’s
suspended as far’s I’m concerned.”
“You mean there’s some doubt of your getting the nomination?” she asked,
a sudden hope making her big eyes lustrous.
“Doubt? _Doubt?_ Say, I thought you knew me better than that. Why, the
nomination’s right in front of me on a silver salver and trimmed with
blue ribbons. And the election, too, for that matter.”
“Then”—the hope dying—“why do you speak as you did just now?”
“It’s this way: I’ve held Granite and the Mountain State by the nape of
the neck for ten years. I’m the Boss. And when I give the word folks
come to heel. But all this time I’ve been standing in the background
while I pulled the strings. It was safer that way and pleasanter. I’d a
lot rather write the play than be just a paid actor in it. But now I’ve
got to jump out of my corner in the wings and take the centre of the
stage. There’s a lot more glory on the stage than in the wings, but
there’s lots more bad eggs and decayed fruit drifting in that direction,
too. If the audience don’t like the actor they hiss him. The man in the
wings don’t get any of that. All he has to do is to call off that actor
and put on another the crowd’ll like better, or maybe a new play if it
comes to the worst.
“But here I’m to take the stage and get the limelight and the newspaper
roasts—outside the State—and not an actor can I shunt it off on. That’s
why I’ve never took public office since I was Mayor. And then it was
only a stepping-stone to the Leadership. Now I’ve got to leave the
background and pose in the Capitol. There’s nothing in it for me, except
a better social position. That’s a lot, I know. But I’m not so sure that
even such a raise is worth the price.”
“Then why not withdraw?”
“Not me! Withdraw, and be laughed at by my own crowd as well as the
society click? It’d smash me forever. It’s human nature to love a
criminal and to hate a four-flusher. And cold feet ain’t good for the
circulation of the body politic. It’s apt to end by freezing its
possessor out. No, sir! I’m in it, and I got to swim strong. The
nomination and the election’s easy enough. But just a ‘won handily’
won’t fill the bill. I’ve got to sweep the State with the all-firedest
landslide ever slidden since U. S. Grant ran around the track twice
before Horace Greeley got on speaking terms with his own stride. It’s
got to be a case of ‘the all-popular Governor Conover.’ I’ve got to go
in on the shoulders of that rampant steed they call ‘The Hoorah!’
That’ll settle forever any doubts of my fitness, and it’ll stop all
laughs at what I said last night. When a man’s the people’s unanimous
choice, the few stray knocks that happen at intervals do him more good
than harm. But if it was just touch-and-go, everybody’d be screeching
about fraud and boss rule winning over honest effort. These Civic
Leaguers are too noisy, as it is. I’ve got to start in right away.”
“Any orders?”
“Yes. When you go down stairs, please send for Shevlin and Bourke and
Raynor and the rest on this list, and telephone the editors I’d like to
see ’em this afternoon. I’ll have the ball rolling by night. Say, Miss
Lanier, the campaign’ll mean extra work for you. I want to make it worth
your while. Come now, don’t be silly. Let me make your salary——”
“I beg you won’t speak of that any more. I cannot accept a raise of
salary from you.”
“But why not? You earn more and——”
“I earn all I get. And, as I’ve told you before, my reasons for
accepting no larger stipend than you offered publicly for a governess
for Blanche three years ago, are my own. I consider them good. I am glad
to get the money I do. I believe I more than earn it. But I can accept
no more, and I can take no presents nor favors of any sort from you. I
can’t explain to you my reasons. But I believe they are good.”
“But it’s so absurd! I——”
“Have you ever found me shirking my work or disloyal in any way to your
interests, on account of the smallness of my salary? I have handled
business and political secrets of yours that would have involved
millions in loss to you if I had betrayed you. I have been loyal to
those interests. I have done your work satisfactorily. I could have done
no more on three times my pay. There let the matter rest, please.”
“Just as you like!” grumbled Conover. “Lord! how the crowd’d stare if it
heard Caleb Conover teasing anyone to take more of his money!”
“Money won’t buy everything.”
“No? Well, it gives a pretty big assortment to choose from. And——”
The door was flung unceremoniously open, and Gerald slouched in, his
pasty face unwontedly sallow from last night’s potations. For, with a
few of the mushroom crop of the _jeunesse dorée_ of Granite, he had
prolonged the supper-room revels after the departure of the other
guests.
“Hello, Dad!” he observed. “Thought I’d find you alone.”
Caleb, his initial ill-temper softened by his talk with Anice, greeted
his favorite child with a friendly nod.
“Sit down,” he said. “I’ll be at leisure in a few moments. And, say,
throw that measly blend of burnt paper and Egyptian sweepings out of the
window. Why a grown man can’t smoke man’s-sized tobacco is more’n I can
see.”
The lad, with sulky obedience, tossed away the cigarette and came back
to the table.
“Hear the news?” he asked. “It seems you’ve got a rival for the
nomination.”
“Hey?”
“Grandin was telling me about it last night. His father’s one of the big
guns in the Civic League, you know. It seems the League’s planning to
spring Clive Standish on the convention.”
“Clive Standish? That kid? For governor? Lord!”
“Good joke, isn’t it? I——”
“Joke? _No!_” shouted Caleb. “It’s just the thing I wouldn’t have had
happen for a fortune. He’s poor, but he belongs to the oldest family in
the State, and his blood so blue you could use it to starch clothes
with. Just the sort of a visionary young fool a lot of cranks will
gather around. He’ll yell so loud about the ‘people’s sacred rights’ and
‘ring rule’ and all that rot, that they’ll hear him clear over in the
other States. And when they do, the out-of-State papers will all get to
hammering me again. And the very crowd I’m trying to score with, by
running for Governor, will vote for him to a man. He’s _one_ of them.”
“So you think he has a chance of winning?” asked Anice.
“Not a ghost of a chance. He’ll die in the convention—if he ever reaches
that far. But it will stir up just the opposition I’ve been telling you
I was afraid of. Well, if it meant work before, it means a
twenty-five-hour-a-day hustle now. I wish you’d telephone Shevlin and
the others, please, Miss Lanier. Tell ’em to be here in an hour.”
As the girl left the room, Caleb swung about to face his son. The glow
of coming battle was in his face.
“Now’s your chance, Jerry!” he began, hot with an enthusiasm that failed
to find the faintest reflection in the sallow countenance before him.
“Now’s your chance to get back at the old man for a few of the things
he’s done for you.”
“I—I don’t catch your meaning,” muttered Gerald, uncomfortably.
“You’ve got a sort of pull with a certain set of young addlepates here,
because you live in New York and get your name in the papers, and
because you’ve a dollar allowance to every penny of theirs: I want you
to use that pull. I want you should jump right in and begin working for
me. Why, you ought to round up a hundred votes in the Pompton Club
alone, to say nothing of the youngsters on the fringe outside, who’ll be
tickled to death at having a feller of your means and position notice
’em. Yes, you can be a whole lot of help to me this next few weeks. Take
off your coat and wade in! And when we win——”
“Hold on a moment, Dad!” interrupted Gerald, whose lengthening face had
passed unnoted by the excited elder man. “Hold on, please. You mean you
want me to work for you in the campaign for Governor?”
“Jerry, you’ll get almost human one of these days if you let your
intelligence take flights like that. Yes, I——”
“Because,” pursued Gerald, who was far too accustomed to this form of
sarcasm from his father to allow it to ruffle him, “because I can’t.”
“You—you—_what_?” grunted Caleb, incredulously.
“I can’t stay here in Granite all that time. I—I must get back to New
York this week. I’ve important business there.”
“Well, I’ll be—” gasped Conover, finding his voice at last, and with it
the grim satire he loved to lavish on this son, so unlike himself.
“Business, eh? ‘Important business!’ Some restaurant waiter you’ve got
an appointment to thrash at 2.45 A.M. on Tuesday, or a hotel window
you’ve made a date to drive through in a hansom? From all I’ve read or
heard of your life there, those were the two most important pieces of
business you ever transacted in New York. And it was _my_ money paid the
fines both times. No, no, Sonny, your ‘important business’ will keep, I
guess, till after November. Anyhow, in the meantime you’ll stay right
here and help Papa. See? Otherwise you’ll go to New York on foot, and
have the pleasure of living on what the three-ball specialists will give
you for your hardware. No work, no pennies, Jerry. Understand that? Now
go and think it over. Papa’s too busy to play with little boys to-day.”
To Caleb’s secret delight he saw he had at last roused a spark of spirit
in the lad.
“My business in New York,” retorted Gerald hotly, “is not with waiters
or hotels. It is with my wife.”
Caleb sat down very hard.
“Your—your—” he sputtered apoplectically.
“My wife,” returned the youth, a sheepish pride in look and words. “It
was that I came up here to speak to you about this morning. You were so
busy yesterday when I got to town that——”
[Illustration: “Are you going to tell me about this thing, or have I got
to shake it out of you?” Page 61.]
“Jerry, you ass! Are you crazy or only drunk?”
“Father,” protested Gerald with a petulance that only half hid his
growing nervousness, “I do wish you’d call me ‘Gerald,’ and drop that
wretched nickname. If——”
He got no further. Conover was upon him, his tough, knotty hands
gripping the youngster’s shoulders and shaking him to and fro with a
force that set Gerald’s teeth clicking.
“Now then!” bellowed the Railroader, mighty, masterful, terrible as he
let the breathless lad slide to the floor and towered wrathful above
him. “Are you going to tell me about this thing, or have I got to shake
it out of you? Speak up!”
Gulping, panting, all the spirit momentarily buffeted out of him, Gerald
Conover lay staring stupidly up at the angry man.
“I’m—I’m married!” he bleated. “I—I meant to tell you when——”
“Who to?” demanded Caleb in an agony of self-control.
“Miss Enid Montmorency. She——”
“Who is she?”
“She is—she’s my wife. Two months ago we——”
“Who is she? Is she in society?”
“Her family were very famous before the war. She——”
“Is she in good New York society?”
“She—she had to earn her own living and——”
“And what?”
“She—I met her at Rector’s first. Her company——”
“Great Lord!”
The words came like a thunderclap. Caleb Conover stepped back to the
wall, his florid face gray.
“_You MARRIED a chorus girl?_”
“She—her family before the war——”
Caleb had himself in hand.
“Get up!” he ordered. “You haven’t money enough nor earning power enough
to buy those boards you’re sprawling on. Yet you saddle yourself with a
wife—a wife you can’t support. A woman who will down all your social
hopes. And mine. You let a designing doll with a painted face dupe you
into——”
“You shan’t speak that way of Enid!” flared up the boy, tearfully. “She
is as good and pure as——”
“As _you_ are. And with a damned sight more sense. For she knows a legal
way of grabbing onto a livelihood; and _you_ don’t. Shut up! If you try
any novel-hero airs on me, you young skunk, I’ll break you over my knee.
Now you’ll stand still and you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
Gerald, cowed, but snarling under his breath, obeyed.
“I won’t waste breath telling you all I’d hoped for you,” began Conover,
“or how I tried to give you all I missed in my own boyhood. You haven’t
the brains to understand—or care. What I’ve got to say is all about
money. And I never found you too stupid to listen to that. You’ve cut
your throat. Nothing can mend that. We’ll talk about the future at
another time. It’s the present we’ve got to ’tend to now. You’re going
to be of some use to me at last. The only use you ever will be to
anyone. Your allowance, for a few months, is going on just the same as
before. But you’ve got to earn it. And you’re going to earn it by
staying right here in Granite, and working like a dog for me in this
campaign. If you stir out of this town, or if your—that woman comes
here, or if you don’t use your pull in my behalf with the sap-heads you
travel with at the Pompton Club—if you don’t do all this, I say, till
further orders—then, for now and all time, you’ll earn your own way. For
you’ll not get another nickel out of me. I guess you know me well enough
to understand I’ll go by what I say. Take your choice. You’ve got an
earning ability of about $4 a week. You’ve got an allowance of $48,000 a
year. Now, till after election, which’ll it be?”
Father and son faced each other in silence for a full minute. Then the
latter’s eyes fell.
“I’ll stay!” he muttered.
“I thought so. Now chase! I’m busy.”
Gerald slouched to the door. On the threshold he turned and shook his
fist in impotent fury at the broad back turned on him.
“I’ll stay!” he repeated, his voice scaling an octave and breaking in a
hysterical sob, “I’ll stay! But, before God, I’ll find a way to pay you
off for this before the campaign is over.”
Caleb did not turn at the threat nor at the loud-slamming door. He was
scribbling a telegram to his New York lawyer.
“_Gerald in scrape with chorus girl, Enid Montmorency_,” he wrote.
“_Find her and buy her off. Go as high as $100,000._”
“Father Healy says, ‘The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the
children,’” he quoted half-aloud as he finished; “but when they are
visited in the shape of blithering idiocy, it seems ’most like a breach
of contract.”
The Railroader was not fated to enjoy even the scant privilege of
solitude. He had hardly seated himself at his desk when the sacred door
was once more assailed by inquisitive knuckles.
“The Boys haven’t wasted much time,” he thought as he growled permission
to enter.
The tall, exquisitely-groomed figure of his new son-in-law, the Prince
d’Antri, blocked the threshold. With him was Blanche.
“Do we intrude?” asked d’Antri, blandly, as he ushered his wife through
the doorway and placed a chair for her. Caleb watched him without reply.
The multifarious branches of social usage always affected him with
contemptuous hopelessness. He saw no sense in them; but neither, as he
confessed disgustedly to himself, could he, even if he chose, possibly
acquire them.
“We don’t intrude, I hope,” repeated the prince, closing the door behind
him, and sitting down near the littered centre table.
“Keep on hoping!” vouchsafed Conover gruffly. “What am I to do for you?”
He could never grow accustomed to this foreign son-in-law whom he had
known but two days. Obedient, for once, to his wife, and to his
daughter’s written instructions, he had yielded to the marriage, had
consented to its performance at the American Embassy at Paris rather
than at the white marble Pompton Avenue “Mausoleum,” and had readily
allowed himself to be convinced that the union meant a social stride for
the entire family such as could never otherwise have been attained.
His wife and daughter had returned from Europe just before the reception
(whose details had, by his own command, been left wholly to Caleb),
bringing with them the happy bridegroom. Caleb had never before seen a
prince. In his youth, fairy tales had not been his portion; so he had
not even the average child’s conception of a mediæval Being in
gold-spangled doublet and hose, to guide him. Hence his ideas had been
more than shadowy. What he had seen was a very tall, very slender, very
handsome personage, whose costumes and manner a keener judge of fashion
would have decided were on a par with the princely command of English:
perfect, but a trifle too carefully accentuated to appeal to Yankee
tastes.
Beyond the most casual intercourse and table talk there had been
hitherto no scope for closer acquaintanceship between the two men. The
reception had taken up everyone’s time and thoughts. Caleb had, however,
studied the prince from afar, and had sought to apply to him some of the
numberless classifications in which he was so unerringly wont to place
his fellow-men. But none of the ready-made moulds seemed to fit the
newcomer.
“What can I do for you?” repeated Conover, looking at his watch. “In a
few minutes I’m expecting some——”
“We shall not detain you long. We have come to speak to you on a—a
rather delicate theme.”
“Delicate?” muttered Caleb, glancing up from the politely embarrassed
prince to his daughter. “Well, speak it out, then. The best treatment
for delicate things is a little healthy exposure. What is it?”
“I ventured to interrupt your labors,” said d’Antri, his face reflecting
a gentle look of pain at his host’s brusqueness, “to speak to you in
reference to your daughter’s _dot_.”
“Her which?” queried Caleb, looking at the bride as though in search of
symptoms of some violent, unsuspected malady.
“Amadeo means my dowry,” explained Blanche, with some impatience. “It is
the custom, you know, on the Continent.”
“Not on any part of the Continent _I_ ever struck. And I’ve been pretty
much all over it from ’Frisco to Quebec. It’s a new one on me.”
“In Europe,” said Blanche, tapping her foot, and gazing apologetically
at her handsome husband, “it is customary—as I thought everybody
knew—for girls to bring their husbands a marriage portion. How much are
you going to settle on me?”
“How much what? Money? You’ve always had your $25,000 a year allowance,
and I’ve never kicked when you overdrew it. But now you’re married, I
suppose your husband——”
“But, Mr. Conover,” broke in the prince, with more eagerness than Caleb
had ever before seen on his placid exterior, “I think you fail to
understand. I—we——”
“What are you driving at?” snapped Conover. “Do you mean you can’t
support your wife?”
“Papa!” cried Blanche, in distress, “for once in your life try not to be
coarse. It isn’t a question of support. It is the custom——”
“For a father to pay a man to marry his girl? I can’t see it myself,
though now you speak about it, I seem to have read or heard something of
the sort. Well, if it’s a custom, I suppose it goes. How much?”
The prince shivered, very gently, very daintily.
“If it affects you that way,” growled Caleb, “I wouldn’t ’a’ brought up
the subject if I was you. Say, Blanche, if you’re too timid to make a
suggestion, how’ll this strike you? I’ll double your present
allowance—$50,000 a year, eh?”
“Impossible!” gasped d’Antri.
“Not on your life!” retorted Caleb. “I could double that and never feel
it. Don’t you worry about me not being able——”
“But I cannot consent to——”
“Who’s asked you to? It’s to be _her_ cash, ain’t it? Not yours. I don’t
think you come on in this scene at all, Prince. It seems to be up to me
and Blanche. And——”
“Oh, you’ll _never_ understand!” cried Blanche in despair. “For the
daughter of a man of your means, and the social position I am to occupy
as Princess d’Antri, my _dot_ should be at least——”
“Hold on!” interposed Caleb. “I think I begin to see. I——”
“You _don’t_ see,” contradicted his daughter, pettishly; “I’ll have to
explain. It——”
“No, you won’t. If I couldn’t understand things without waiting to have
’em explained, I’d still be braking at $50 a month. As I take it, this
prince party meets you in Yurrup, hears your father is _the_ Caleb
Conover—an old fool of an American with a pretty daughter to place on
the nobility market—and you make your bid. You marry him and he’s so
sure of his ground he don’t even hold out for an ante-wedding bonus. He
chases over here with you, and when he don’t find the dowry, or whatever
else you call it, waiting for him at the dock, he makes bold to ring the
cash register.”
The prince was on his feet.
“I cannot consent, sir, to listen to such——”
“Oh, yes, you can. I’ve heard of your sort. But I somehow thought they
were all counts. I didn’t know exactly how a prince stood; but I
supposed the job carried an income with it. It seems you’re just in the
count class, after all. The kind of man that loafs about Yurrup living
on the name of some ancestor who got his title by acting as hired man to
his king or emperor or whoever ruled his two-for-a-quarter country. The
sort of man that does nothing for a living and don’t even do that well
enough to keep him in pocket money. Then some lookout makes the high
sign, ‘Heiress in sight!’ and——”
Blanche burst into tears. Her husband threw his arm about her shoulders
in assiduous, theatrical fashion, while Caleb sat gnawing his unlighted
cigar and grimly eyeing the couple.
“There, there, _carissima mia_!” soothed d’Antri, “your father knows no
better. In this barbarous country of his there are no leisure classes.
I——”
“You bet there are!” snorted Caleb. “Only, here we call ’em tramps. And
we give ’em thirty days instead of our daughters. Here, stop that damned
snivelling, Blanche! You know how I hate it. I’m stung all right, and
it’s too late to squeal. The only time there’s any use in crying over
spilt milk is when there’s a soft-hearted milkman cruising around within
hearing distance. And from where I sit, I don’t see any such rushing to
my help. You’ll get your ‘_dot_’ all right. Just as you knew you would
before you put up that whimper. We’ll fix up the details when I’ve got
more time on my hands.
“Only, I want you and me and this prince-feller of yours to understand
each other, _clear_. I’m letting myself be bled for a certain sum,
because I’ve crowed so loud about your being a princess that I can’t
back down now without raising a laugh, and without spoiling all I’ve
planned to get by this marriage. Besides, I’m going to run for governor,
and I don’t want any scandal or ‘dramatic separation for lack of cash’
coming from my own family. I’m caught fair, and I’ll pay. But I want us
three to understand that it’s straight blackmail, and that I pay it just
as I’d pay to have any other dirty story hushed up. That’ll be all
to-day. If you want some reading matter, Prince, here’s a paper with a
list of the liners that sail for Yurrup next week. Nothing personal
intended, you know. Good-by.”
“But, papa—” began Blanche, who, like d’Antri, had listened to this
exordium with far less natural resentment than might have been looked
for.
“That’ll be all, I said,” repeated Conover. “You win your point. Clear
out! I’m busy.”
The princess knew Caleb too well to press the victory further. She
tearfully left the room, d’Antri following in her wake. At the door the
latter paused, his long white fingers toying with his silky beard.
“Sir,” he said, “you may be assured that I shall never forget your
generosity, even though it is couched in such unusual language. You
shall never regret it. I understand you have a wish to adorn the best
society and——”
“No,” grunted Conover, “not the Best, only the Highest. And it’s no
concern of yours, either way. Good-by!”
As the titled couple withdrew, Anice Lanier came in.
“Mr. Shevlin, Mr. Bourke and most of the others you sent for have come,”
she reported. “Shall I send them up?”
“Yes,” said Conover dully, “send ’em along. It’ll be good to talk to
real human beings again. Say, Miss Lanier”—as the girl started to obey
his order—“did you ever write out that measly interview of mine for the
_Star_, endorsing those new views of Roosevelt’s on race-suicide, and
saying something about a childless home being a curse to——”
“Yes. I was just going to mail it. Shall——?”
“Well, don’t! Tear it up. There’s no sense in a man being funny at his
own expense.”
CHAPTER IV
IN TWO CAMPS
In the headquarters of the Civic League sat Clive Standish. With him
were the committee chosen to conduct his campaign. Karl Ansel, a lean,
hard-headed New England giant, their chairman, and incidentally,
campaign manager, was going laboriously over a list of counties, towns
and villages, corroborating certain notes he made from time to time, by
referring to a big colored map of the Mountain State.
“I’ve checked off the places that are directly under the thumb of the C.
G. & X.,” Ansel was explaining as the rest of the group leaned over to
watch the course of his pencil along the map. “I’m afraid they are as
hopelessly in Conover’s grip as Granite itself. It’s in the rural
districts, and in the towns that aren’t dependent on the main line, that
we must find our strength. It’s an uphill fight at best, with——”
“With a million-and-a-half people who are paying enormous taxes for
which they receive scant value, who have thrust on them a legislature
and other officials they are forced to elect at the Boss’s order!”
finished Standish. “Surely, it’s an uphill fight that’s well worth
while, if we can wake men to a sense of their own slavery and the frauds
they are forced to connive at. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
The more experienced, if less enthusiastic, Ansel scratched his chin
doubtfully.
“The people, as a mass, are slow to wake,” he observed. “Oftener they
just open one eye and growl at being bothered, and then roll over and go
happily to sleep again while the Boss goes through their pockets. Don’t
start this campaign too optimistically, Mr. Standish. And don’t get the
idea the people are begging to be waked. If you wake them you’ve got to
do it against their will. Not with any help of theirs. Maybe you can.
Maybe you can’t. As you say, it’s perhaps worth a try. Even if——”
“But they’ve been waked before,” insisted Standish. “And when they do
awaken, there are no half-measures about it. Look how Jerome, on an
independent fight, won out against the Machine in 1905. Why should the
Mountain State——”
“The people are sleepy by nature,” laughed Ansel. “They wake up with a
roar, chase the Boss out of their house, smash the Machine and then go
back to bed again with the idea they’re heroes. As soon as their eyes
are shut, back strolls the Boss, mends his Machine and reopens business
at the old stand. And that’s what you have to look forward to. But we’ve
been all over this sort of thing before. I’ll have your ‘speech-route’
made out in an hour, and start a man over it this afternoon to arrange
about the halls and the ‘papering’ and the press work. Speaking of press
work, I had your candidature telegraphed to New York to the Associated
Press early this morning. There’ll be a perfect cloud of reporters up
here before night. We must arrange to see them before the Conover crowd
can get hold of them. Sympathy from out-of-State papers won’t do us any
harm. The country at large has a pretty fair idea of the way Conover
runs the Mountain State. And the country likes to watch a good fight
against long odds. There’s lots of sympathy for the under dog—as long as
the sympathizer has no money on the upper one.”
“How about the sketch of the situation that you were having Craig write
out, telling about the stolen franchises, the arbitrary tax-rate, the
machine-made candidates, the railroad rule and all that? It ought to
prove a good campaign document if he handles the subject well.”
“Oh, he’s handled it all right. I’ve read the rough draft. Takes Conover
from the very start. Tells of his boyhood in the yards of the C. G. &
X., and how he bullied and schemed until he got into the management’s
offices, the string of saloons he ran along the route and the
drink-checks he made the men on his section cash in for liquor at his
saloons, and all that. Then his career as Alderman, when he found out
beforehand where the new reservoir lands and City Hall site were to be,
and his buying them up, on mortgage, and clearing his first big pile.
And that deal he worked in ‘bearing’ the C. G. & X. stock to $1.10, and
scaring everyone out and scooping the pot; that’s brought in, too. And
he’s got the story of Conover’s gradually working the railroad against
the State and the State against the road, till he had a throat grip on
both, and——”
“Wait a moment!” interrupted Standish. “Is all the sketch made up of
that sort of thing?”
“Most of it. Good, red-hot——”
“It must be done all over, then. We are not digging up Conover’s
personal past, but his influence on the State and on the Democratic
Party. I’m not swinging the muckrake or flinging dirt at my opponent.
That sort of vituperation——”
“But it’s hot stuff, I tell you, that sort of literature! It helps a
lot. You can’t hope to win if you wear kid gloves in a game like this.”
“What’s the use of arguing?” said Standish pleasantly. “If the League
was rash enough to choose me to represent it, then the League must put
up with my peculiarities. And I don’t intend to rise to the Capitol on
any mud piles. If you can show me how Conover’s early frauds and his
general crookedness affect the issues of the campaign, then I’ll give
you leave to publish his whole biography. But till then let’s run clean,
shan’t we?”
“‘_Clean?_’” echoed Ansel aghast. “I’ve been in this business a matter
of twenty-five years, and I never yet heard of a victory won by
drawing-room methods. But have your own way. I suppose you know, though,
that they’ll rake up every lie and slur against you they can get their
hands on?”
“I suppose so. But _that_ won’t affect the general issue either. You
don’t seem to realize, Ansel, that this isn’t the ordinary routine
campaign. It’s an effort to throw off Boss rule and to free a State.
Politics and personalities don’t enter into it at all. I’d as soon have
run on the Republican as the Democratic ticket if it weren’t that the
Republican Party in this State is virtually dead. The Democratic nominee
for governor in the Mountain State is practically the governor-elect.
That is why I——”
“Excuse me, Mr. Standish,” said a clerk, entering from the outer office,
“Mr. Conover would like a word with you.”
The committee stared at one another, unbelieving.
“H’m!” remarked Ansel, breaking the silence of surprise, “I guess the
campaign’s on in earnest, all right. Shall you see him?”
“Yes. Show him in, please, Gardner.”
“He says, sir, he wants to speak with you alone,” added the clerk.
“Tell him the League’s committee are in session, and that he must say
whatever he has to say to me in their presence.”
The clerk retired and reappeared a few moments later, ushering in—Gerald
Conover.
A grunt of disappointment from Ansel was the first sound that greeted
the long youth as he paused irresolute just inside the committee-room
door.
“Good morning, Gerald,” said Standish, rising to greet the unexpected
visitor; “we thought it was your father who——”
“No. And he didn’t send me here, either,” blurted out Gerald. His pasty
face was still twitching, and his usually immaculate collar awry from
the recent paternal interview.
“I came here on my own account,” he went on, with the peevish wrath of a
child. “I came here to tell you I swing over a hundred votes. Maybe a
hundred more. My father says so himself. And I’ve come to join your
League.”
A gasp of amazement ran around the table. Then, with a crow of delight,
Ansel sprang up.
“Great!” he shouted. “His _son_! It’s good for more votes than you know,
Standish! Why, man, it’s a bonanza! When even a man’s own son can’t——”
Standish cut him short.
“Are you drunk, Gerald?” he asked.
“No, I’m not!” vociferated the lad. “I’m dead cold sober, and I’m doing
this with my eyes open. I want to join your League, and I’ll work like a
dog for your election.”
“But why? You and I have never been especially good friends. You’ve
never shown any interest in politics or ref——”
“Well, I will now, you bet! I’ll make the old man wish he’d packed me
off to New York by the first train. He’ll sweat for the way he treated
me before he’s done. I suppose I’ve got to work secretly for you, so he
won’t suspect. But I’ll do none the less work for that; and I can keep
you posted on the other side’s moves, too. If I’m to be tied to this
damned one-horse town by Father’s orders till after election, I’ll make
him sorry he ever——”
“Good for you!” cried Ansel. “You’ve got the spirit of a man, after all.
Here’s a bunch of our membership blanks. Fill this one out, and give the
rest to your club friends. We—why, Standish!” he broke off, furious and
dumbfounded; for Clive had calmly stepped between the two, taken the
membership blank from Gerald’s shaky hand and torn it across.
“We don’t care for members of your sort, Gerald,” he said, with a cold
contempt that was worse than a kick. “This League was formed to help our
City and State, not to gratify private grudges; for white men, not for
curs who want to betray their own flesh and blood. Get out of here!”
“Standish!” protested the horrified Ansel, “you’re crazy! You’re
throwing away our best chance. You are——”
“If this apology for a human being is ‘our best chance,’ I’ll throw him
out bodily, unless he goes at once,” retorted Clive, advancing on the
cowering and utterly astonished boy.
“Why!” sputtered Gerald, as he backed doorward, before the menacing
approach of the Leaguer, “I thought you’d want me— I— Oh, I’ll go, then,
if you’ve no more sense than that! But I’ll find a way of downing the
old man in spite of you! Maybe you’ll be glad enough to get my help when
the time comes! I——”
His heels hit against the threshold in his retrograde march. Still
declaiming, he stepped over the sill into the outer office, and Clive
Standish slammed the door upon him, breaking off his threats in the
middle of their fretful outpouring.
“There,” said Clive, returning to the gaping, frowning committeemen,
“that’s off our hands. Now let’s get down to business.”
“Mr. Standish,” remarked Ansel, after a moment’s battle with words he
found hard to check, “you’re the most Quixotic, impractical idealist
that ever got hold of the foolish idea he had a ghost of a chance for
success in politics. And,” he added, after a pause, “I’m blest if I
don’t think I’d rather lose with a leader like you than win with any
other man in the Mountain State.”
Meanwhile, at the head of the great study table in his Pompton Avenue
“Mausoleum” sat Caleb Conover, Railroader. And about him, on either side
of the board, like feudal retainers of old, were grouped the pick of his
lieutenants and henchmen. A rare coterie they were, these Knights of
Graft. Separated by ten thousand varying interests, social strata and
aspirations, they were as one on the main issue—their blind adherence to
the Boss and to the lightest of his orders.
This impelling force was difficult of defining. Love, fear, trust,
desire for spoils? Perhaps a little of all four; perhaps much; perhaps
an indefinable something apart from these. For the power that draws and
holds men to a political leader who possesses neither eloquence, charm
nor the qualities of popularity has never been—can never be—clearly
defined. Not one great Boss in ten can boast these qualities.
Yet, whatever the reason of Caleb Conover’s dominance, none could for a
moment doubt its presence. So ever-present was it that it had long since
choked down all opposition from within his own ranks. Once, years
before—as the story is still related—when he had first claimed, fought
for and won his party preëminence, certain district leaders, eight in
all, had plotted his downfall, and had privately selected one of their
number to fill his shoes. News of the closed-door meeting which was to
ratify this deposition was brought to Caleb by faithful Shevlin. The
Railroader, without a word, had started for the back room of the saloon
where the conference was in progress. Stalking in on the conspirators,
he had gained the centre of their circle before they were well aware of
his presence. Hat on head, cigar in mouth, he had swept the ring of
faces with his light, steely eyes, noting each man there in one
instant-brief glance as he did so. Then, twisting the cigar into one
corner of his mouth, he had brought down his fist on the table and
demanded:
“How many of you people are with ME?”
Like a pack of eager schoolboys the entire eight were upon their feet,
clamoring their fealty. Then, without another word or look, the Master
had stamped out of the room; leaving the erstwhile malcontents, as one
of them afterward expressed it:
“Standin’ there like a bunch of boiled sheepsheads without a thought but
to shake hands with ourselves for havin’ such a grand Boss as Caleb
Conover.”
At the Boss’s right in to-day’s conclave sat Billy Shevlin, most trusted
and adoring of all his followers. At his left was Guy Bourke, Alderman
and the Boss’s jackal. Next to Billy was Bonham, Mayor of Granite, and
next Giacomo Baltazzi, who held the whole Italian section force of the
C. G. & X. and the Sicilian quarter of Granite in the hollow of his
unwashed hand. Beyond was Nicholas Caine, proprietor of the _Star_, and
to his right Beiser, the Democratic State Chairman. Between a second
newspaper editor and the President of the Board of Aldermen lounged
Kerrigan, the Ghetto saloon-keeper. A sprinkling of railroad men,
heelers and district leaders made up the remainder. Conover was
speaking:
“And that’s the layout,” said he. “And that’s why I’m not content for
this to be just a plain ‘win.’ Two years ago I thought Shearn would be
our best man for governor. So I gave the word, and Shearn got in with a
decent majority. But it’s got to be a landslide this time, and not a
trick’s to be overlooked in the whole hand. Nick, you know the line of
editorial policy to start in to-morrow’s _Star_. And be on the lookout
for the first break in any of the League’s speeches. It’s easier to
think of a fool thing than not to say it, and those Reform jays are
always putting their feet in their mouths when they try to preach
politics. And, knowing nothing about the game, they’re sure to talk a
heap. They never seem to realize that the man who really practices
politics hasn’t time to preach it.”
“I understand,” answered Caine. “Print, as usual, a ‘spread’ on the
windy, blundering speeches, and forget to report the others. Same as
when——”
“Sure. And pass the ‘press-gag’ sign up-State, too. Standish is certain
to make a tour. Beiser,” turning to the portly State Chairman, “I want
the county caucuses two weeks from Saturday. I’ve an idea we can work
the same old ‘snap’ move in more’n half of them. Pass it on to the
county chairman to treble last year’s floaters, and to work the ‘back
door’ the way we did in Bowden County in ’97. They understand their
business pretty well, most of ’em. And I’ll have Shevlin and Bourke jack
up those that don’t, and learn ’em their little lines. Two weeks from
Saturday, then. That’s understood? It’ll give us all the time we need,
if we hustle. Never mind the other State or city candidates or
Congressmen. Those jobs’ll take care of themselves. If the wrong men get
into the Assembly or Congress, they’ll get licked into shape quick
enough. We’re all right there. I want the whole shove to be made on the
Governorship this year. Pass it on! Baltazzi, I hear those dagoes of
yours are grouching again. What’s——”
“They say they don’t get nothin’. They say all the good jobs goes to the
Irish or Dutch or even Americans, and——”
“Promise ’em something, then.”
“I have. But——”
“Then promise ’em something more. Don’t be stingy. If that don’t satisfy
’em, give me the tip, and I’ll have a ten per cent. drop ordered on the
foreign section gangs’ pay, and make Chief Geoghegan pass the word to
his cops to make things bad for the pushcart men and organ grinders, and
close up the dago saloons an hour early. That’ll bring ’em in a-running.
How ’bout litterchoor, Abbott?”
“I’ll start the staff to work on songs to-night,” said a long-haired
little man, “and get out a bunch of ‘Friend of the Plain People’ tracts
and——”
“Won’t do! ‘Man-of-Experience-and-Benefactor-of-the-State or
Ignorant-Meddling-Boy-Reformer. Which-Will-You-Vote-For?’ That’s the
racket this time. Guy the whole League crowd. ‘Silk Stockings _vs._
Laboring Man.’ That’s the idea. Get the cartoonists at work on
pictures like Standish making the police sprinkle the streets with
Florida water while thugs break into houses, and that sort of thing.
‘What-We-May-Expect-from-Civic-League-Rule.’ Understand? Say, Caine,
detail one or two of your men, of course, to look up Standish’s past
performances in private life, too. Anything about booze or the cards
or any sort of scrape will work up fine just now. The gag’s old, but
about a reformer it always makes a hit. Even a bit of a stretch goes.
I’ll stand a libel suit or two if it comes to a show-down.”
“How about the out-of-town papers?” queried Caine. “Our regular chain
are all right. But the rest——”
“The C. G. & X. owns the Mountain State, don’t it? And it controls
ninety per cent. of the mileage of the other roads that run through the
State. And wherever there’s towns big enough for a paper there’s a
railroad somewhere near. And wherever there’s an editor he wants his
passes, don’t he? And a rebate on his freight? Well—don’t you lose sleep
over the ‘press-gag.’”
“How about floaters?” asked Bourke. “Same rule and same price?”
“Yes. Subject to change if we’re pressed. Aldermen all right, I s’pose?”
“Haven’t had a chance to sound ’em since you declared yourself,” said
the president of that body, “but all except Fowler and Brayle are your
own crowd and——”
“Tell Fowler the C. G. & X. will give his firm a tip on the price for
the next ‘sealed-bid’ contract for railroad ties. Give Brayle a hint
about that indictment against his brother. It was pigeonholed, but if I
tried real hard, I might induce the District Attorney to look for it. I
tell you,” went on Conover, raising his voice for the first time, and
glaring about the table, “every mother’s son, from engine-oiler to
Congressman, has got to get down to the job and hustle as he never did
before. And I’ve got the means of finding out who hustles and who
shirks. And I’ve got the means of paying both kinds. And I guess there
isn’t anyone that doubts I can do it. Pass that on, too. Caleb Conover
for Governor, and to hell with reform!”
CHAPTER V
A MEETING, AN INTERRUPTION AND A LETTER
The campaign was on in sober earnest. Conover, who kept as well posted
on his foe’s movements as though the League itself sent him hourly
reports, grew vaguely annoyed as, from day to day, he learned the
headway Standish was making in Granite. The better classes, almost to a
man, flocked to Clive’s standard. By a series of fiery speeches he
succeeded in rousing a certain hitherto dormant enthusiasm among the
business men of the town. They found to their surprise that he was
neither a visionary nor a mere agitator; that he based his plans not on
some Utopian Altruria of high-souled commonweal, but on a practical
basis of clean government.
He pointed out to them how utterly the Machine ran the Mountain State;
how the railroads and the vested interests of the party clique sent
their own representatives to the Legislature, and then made them grant
fraudulent franchise after fraudulent franchise to the men who sent them
there. How the taxes were raised and so distributed that the brunt fell
upon the people who least profited by the State expenditures and by the
legalized wholesale robberies. How, in fact, the populace of Granite and
of the whole Mountain State were being ridden at will by a handful of
unscrupulous men.
That Caleb Conover was the head and front of the clique referred to
everyone was well aware, yet Standish studiously avoided all mention of
his name, all personal vituperation. Whereat Caleb Conover wondered
mightily. Stenographic reports of Clive’s speeches and of the
increasingly large and enthusiastic meetings he addressed were carefully
conned by the Railroader. And the tolerant grin with which he read the
first of these reports changed gradually to a scowl as time went on.
He had made no effort to suppress or in any way to molest these early
meetings. He wanted to try out his young opponent’s strength, gauge his
following and his methods. But when, to his growing astonishment, he
found Clive was actually winning a respectful, ever larger, hearing in
his home town, he decided it was high time to call a halt. Accordingly
he summoned Billy Shevlin.
“What’s doing?” he asked curtly, as he received his henchmen in the
Mausoleum study.
“To-night’s the big rally at Snyder’s Opera House, you know,” replied
Billy. “Standish’s booked to make his star speech before he starts on
his State tour. He’s got a team of Good Gov’ment geezers from Boston to
do a spiel, and he’s callin’ this the biggest scream of the campaign so
far. Say, that young feller’s makin’ an awful lot of noise, Boss. When
are you goin’ to give us the office to put the combination on his mouth?
On the level, he ain’t doin’ you no good. Them speeches of his means
votes. The Silk-Socks is with him already, and he’s winner with the
business bunch in fam’ly groups.”
“Look here,” said Caleb, pointing out of the study’s north window, which
commanded a view of exclusive Pompton Avenue and its almost equally
fashionable cross streets, “how would you figure up the population of
that district?”
“The Silk-Sockers? You know’s well as me. Thirty-eight hundred in round
numbers.”
“And over there?” pointing east.
“Th’ business districk? An easy 12,000.”
“Say 16,000 in both. S’pose they are all for the young Standish. Now
look here.”
He crossed the long room and ran up the shade of one of the south
windows. The great marble house stood on the edge of a hill-crest,
overlooking a distant vista of mean, winding streets, dirty,
interminable rows of tenements, factories and small shops. Through the
centre, like a huge snake, the tracks of the C. G. & X. wound their way,
and over all a smeared pall of reek and coal smoke brooded like some
vast bird of prey. Coal yards, docks, freight houses, elevators,
shanties—and once more that interminable sea of dingy, squalid
domiciles.
“What’s the population down there, Billy?”
“Hundred’n ten thousand, six hundred an’—” began Shevlin glibly. “An’
every soul of them solid for you, Boss. Sixteen thousand to
hundred-’n’-ten-thous——”
“That’s right. So as long as the youngster’s content to speak his little
pieces here in Granite, I’ve stood by and let him talk. It would be time
enough to put in a spoke when he started across country. But this
blowout to-night is different. The stories of it will get in the Boston
and Philadelphia and New York papers. So——”
“Well?”
“So there won’t be any meeting?”
“If you say so, it goes. Will I give the boys the office to rough-house
the joint?”
“And have every out-of-State paper screeching about ring rule and
rowdyism? Billy, you must have been born more ignorant than most. You
never could have picked up all you don’t know, in the little time you’ve
lived.”
Shevlin looked duly abashed and awaited further orders.
“I hear the gas main that serves Snyder’s Opera House isn’t in very good
order,” resumed the Boss. “I shouldn’t wonder if all the lights went out
just as the meeting opens to-night. That’ll mean a lot of confusion. And
my friend, Chief Geoghegan, being a careful man, will disperse the crowd
to prevent a riot, and to keep pickpockets from molesting those pure
patriots. I want you to see Geoghegan and the gas company about it,
right away. But look here, there mustn’t be any rough-house or disorder.
Tell the boys to keep away. I’ll have work enough for them to do when
Standish takes the road.”
Billy Shevlin, a great light of joy in his little beady eyes, departed
on his mission, while Caleb, summoning Anice Lanier, set about his daily
task of dictation. His always large mail was still more voluminous
during the past week or so, and he had been forced to double his staff
of stenographers. He and his secretary toiled steadily for three hours
to-day, then laid aside the remaining work until later on.
“How’ll you like being secretary to the Governor, Miss Lanier?” asked
Caleb, as he lighted his cigar and stretched out his thick legs under
the table.
“Fully as much as you’ll like being Governor, I fancy,” she answered.
“I guess you won’t have to be very much wedded to the job at that,”
sighed Conover. “Do you know, I’d give a year’s income if I’d never made
that measly speech. But now that I’m in for it, I’m going to make the
fight of my life. Everybody in the Mountain State will sure know there’s
been a big scrap, and when it’s over, our young friend, Standish, is
going to be just a sweet, sad memory.”
“I hear he is making some strong speeches.”
“And I hear you went to hear a couple of them,” retorted Caleb,
grinning.
“Do you mean,” she cried indignantly, “that you’ve actually been spying
on me? You have dared to——?”
“Now, _don’t_ get woozey, Miss Lanier. What on earth would I spy on
_you_ for? Your time, outside work hours, is your own. And besides, I’ve
got all sorts of proof that you’re always loyal to my interests.”
“Then how——”
“How’d I find it out? While I don’t keep tabs on _you_, I do keep tabs
on Nephew-in-law Standish, and on his meetings and what sort of people
go there. And a couple of times my men happened to mention that they saw
my pretty secretary in the audience. There, now, don’t get red. What
harm is there in being found out? Only it kind of amused me that you
never spoke about it here.”
“Why should I? I——”
“No reason at all. A person’s got a right to lock up what’s in their
minds as well as what’s in their pockets. I always have a lot of respect
for folks who keep their mouths shut. If you keep your mouth shut about
your own affairs, you’ll keep it shut about mine. That’s why I have a
kind of sneaking respect for liars, too. Folks who guard what’s in their
brains by making a false trail with their mouths. The public’s got no
more right to the contents of a man’s brain than it has to the contents
of his safe. And the man who ain’t ashamed to lock his safe needn’t be
ashamed to tell a lie.”
“Is that your own philosophy? It’s a dangerous one.”
“Oh, I’m not speaking of the man who lies for the fun of it. Telling a
lie when you don’t need to is tempting Providence.”
The girl laughed; so simple and so totally in earnest was he in
expounding his pet theory. It was only to her that the Railroader was in
the habit of talking on abstruse themes. Despite her habitual reserve,
he read an underlying interest in his odd ideas and experiences, and was
accordingly lavish in relating them. She served, unconsciously to both,
as an escape valve for the man’s habitual dominating self-restraint.
“So you agree with Talleyrand,” she suggested, “that words are given us
to hide our thoughts?”
“Talleyrand?” he asked, puzzled. “Oh, one of those book characters you
admire so much, I s’pose. Yes, he was all right in that proposition. But
a lot of times the truth will hide a man’s thoughts even better. It was
by telling the truth I got out of the worst hole I ever was in. Ever
tell you the mix-up I had with the Mountain State Coal Company?”
“Coal Company? I didn’t know there was any coal in the Mountain State.”
“No more there is. Only I didn’t know it then. A chap came along and
interested me in the deal. He said he’d struck a rich coal vein up in
Jericho County. Showed me specimens. Got ’em somewhere in Pennsylvania,
I s’pose. And got me to float a company. Well, the stuff they took out
of the measly shaft was a sort of porous black slate or shale or
something, and it wouldn’t burn if you put it in a white-hot blast
furnace. One look showed me that. And there I was with a company
capitalized at $300,000—half of it my own money—and suckers subscribing
for the stock and all that, and a gang of a couple of hundred Ginneys
and Svensks at work in the pit. It wasn’t that I minded the cash loss so
much as I minded being played for a jay, and the black eye it would give
any companies I might float in the future.
“I’ll tell you, I was pretty sore. I was younger in those days, you see.
I ran up to Jericho to look over the wreck. Next day was pay day for the
hands, and I hadn’t enough cash with me for half of ’em. I sat in my
hotel that night thinking of the row and smashup there’d be next
morning, and just wishing I had a third foot to kick myself with. The
lamp got low, and I called for the landlord to fill it. Some of the
kerosene leaked out while he was doing it and spilled over a handful of
the ore that was lying on the table. That porous stuff soaked it up like
a sponge. The mess made me sick, and I picked up the samples of
near-coal and slammed ’em into the fireplace. They blazed like a Sheeney
clothing store.”
“I thought you said it wouldn’t burn.”
“The pieces were soaked in kerosene, and of course they burned, just as
a lamp would if you threw it in the fire. But it gave me the tip I
wanted. I bolted out of that hotel and hunted up a couple of my own
crowd. We had the busiest night on record. No use bothering you with
details. A shed, three barrels of kerosene and a half a ton of ore. Then
early next morning I wandered into the hotel office and did a despairful
scream. I’d seen to it that the editor of the local paper was there, and
I knew a bunch of the ‘big guns’ of the place always congregated in the
office for an after-breakfast gossip. Well, I groaned pretty loud and
hectic about the way I’d been stuck on the ore.
“‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked one of my two pals. ‘Won’t the stuff
burn?’
“‘Burn!’ I yells. ‘It won’t do a thing _but_ burn. It burns so hot,
it’ll ruin any grate it’s put in. Why, heat like that is worse than none
at all. It’ll burn out the best grate or furnace in a week. Nobody’ll be
fool enough to buy such stuff. The company’s smashed!’
“They all stared at me as if I were looney. Then I made out I was mad
clear through.
“‘Don’t believe me, eh?’ says I. ‘Then look at this.’
“I throws a pocketful of the ore into the grate, and it blazes up like
mad. The whole office was torrid hot in five minutes. But the crowd was
a blamed sight hotter. They went plumb wild over the new, wonderful fuel
I’d discovered, and tried to explain to me that it had the heating power
of ten times its weight of coal. But all the time I just shook my head,
and kept on whining that no one’d buy it because it would burn out
furnaces too quick.
“Well, the upshot of it was that the news travelled like a streak of
lightning. By the time I got over to the shaft, the gangs were all on,
and their padrones raked up a clause in the contract that permitted ’em
to take their pay in stock, at par, if they chose to, instead of cash.
Just a piece of technical red tape they used to stick in mining
contracts. Those padrones fairly squealed for stock, and near mobbed me
when I implored ’em to accept money instead. So I compromised by issuing
’em orders for stock at ten above. But before I’d do even that, I told
’em over and over that they were making fools of themselves and the
stock and ore were worthless. They laughed at me, and thought I was
trying to grab all the stock for myself. So I made ’em sign a paper
saying that they took it at their own request and risk, and against my
will and advice; and I gave ’em their stock orders and came back to town
with my pay satchel still full.
“By the time I struck the hotel the place was jammed. Folks had flocked
from all over to see the wonderful fuel and watch it burn. Rich farmers,
capitalists from Granite and a lot more. The stock had been at 28¼.
Inside of two days it was at 129, and still booming. Then I sold. But as
president of the company I refused to let a single share be distributed
without the buyer signing a blank that he took it at his own risk, and
that I had told him the ore was worthless. And I kept on shouting that
it was worthless, and that the public was robbing itself by buying such
stuff. What was the result? The more I told the truth, the harder the
suckers bit. Widows and ministers and such-like easy marks most of all,
I hear. I got out of the company in disgust, and announced I’d have no
dealings with such an iniquitous, swindling scheme. Folks thought I’d
gone clean silly, and they bought and bought and bought, and then——”
“And then?” as Conover lighted a fresh cigar.
“Oh, then they woke up and screamed louder than ever.”
“What was done about it? Was there no redress?”
“‘Redress’ nothing! What redress could there be for a pack of
get-rich-quick guys who had insisted on buying my stock after I’d told
them just how worthless it was? Didn’t I have their own signed
statements that I——”
“And you call that transaction an instance of truth-telling?”
“Oh, well, the _real_ truth’s too precious to squander foolishly where
it won’t be appreciated. It’s like whiskey: got to be weakened to the
popular taste. And speaking of liars, have you kept your eye much on
Jerry lately?”
“No, why?”
“That young ass has got something on the thing he calls his mind, and
I’ve a good working notion the ‘Something’ is a scheme to get even with
me. I just judge that from what I know of him. He gets his morning
letter from that chorus missus of his, and then he sits and rolls his
eyes at me for half an hour. He’s framing up something all right, all
right. What it is, I don’t know. That’s the advantage a fool has over a
wise man! You can dope out some line of action on a man of brains, but
the Almighty himself don’t know what a fool’ll do next. So I’m kind of
riding herd on Jerry from afar.”
“Perhaps if you tried a new tack—took him into your confidence——”
“There wouldn’t be any confidence left. No man’s got enough for two.
Sometimes I’m shy on even the little I once had.”
“The campaign?”
“The campaign? That ain’t a question of confidence any more than knowing
the sun will rise and Missouri will go Democratic. I was thinking of the
confidence I had of winning the Pompton Avenue crowd by that measly
reception.”
“You haven’t succeeded?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it. A few of the people who are so tangled up in
my deals that they are scared not to be civil, nod sort of sheepish at
me when I meet ’em. The rest get near-sighted as soon as I come round
the corner. As for calling on us or inviting me to any of their houses,
why you’d think I was the Voice of Conscience by the way they sidestep
me.”
“But the season hasn’t really opened. In most cities, people aren’t even
back from the seaside or mountains yet. Perhaps, later on——”
“Later on the present performance will be encored by popular request.
Say, Miss Lanier, I was half jagged that night. But I can remember
telling you that I was happier just then than I’d ever been before. I
was in society at last. My boy was a member of the smart set in New
York. My girl was a princess. I was going to be Governor.”
“Yes?”
“Well, look at me now. Jerry’s made a lifelong mess of his future.
Blanche is on the way to Yurrup with a bargain counter prince that I’d
hate to compliment by calling deuce-high. My deebut into society was
like the feller in the song, who ‘Walked Right in and Turned Around and
Walked Right out Again.’ The Governorship’s the only thing left; and I’m
getting so I’m putting into that all the hopes I squandered on the rest.
And when I’ve nailed it, I’ve a half mind to try for President. That’d
carry me clear through society, and on out on the other side.”
Anice listened to him with a sort of wonderment, which always possessed
her when he spoke of his social aspirations. That a man of his
indomitable strength and largeness of nature should harp so eternally
and yearn so strenuously in that one petty strain, never ceased to amaze
her.
“The feet of clay on the image of iron,” she told herself as she
dismissed the thought.
“By the way,” asked Conover, as she rose to leave the room, “were you
thinking of going to the Standish meeting to-night?”
“Yes,” she answered, meeting his quizzical gaze fearlessly, “if you can
spare me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve about a ream of
campaign stuff to go through, and I shall need your help.”
“Very well,” answered Anice, and he could decipher neither
disappointment nor any other emotion in those childlike brown eyes of
hers.
“Lord!” he muttered to himself as she went out, “what a politician that
woman would have made! The devil himself can’t read her. If I had
married a girl like that instead—I wonder if that heart-trouble of the
wife’s is ever likely to carry her off sudden.”
An hour or so of sunlight remained. Anice, tired from her all-day
confinement indoors, donned hat and jacket and sallied forth for a walk.
She turned her steps northward toward the open country that lay beyond
Pompton Avenue. There was a sting in the early fall air in that high
latitude which made walking a pleasure. Moreover, after the atmosphere
of work, tobacco, politics and reminiscences that had been her portion
since early morning, it was a joy to be alone with the cool and the
sweetness of the dying day. Besides, she wanted to think.
But the solitary stroll she had planned was not to be her portion, for,
as she rounded the first corner, she came upon Clive Standish deep in
talk with Ansel. Clive’s tired eyes brightened at the sight of her. The
look of weariness that had crept into the candidate’s face since she had
last seen him went straight to Anice’s heart. With a hurried word of
dismissal to his campaign manager, Standish left his companion and fell
into step at Miss Lanier’s side.
“This is better than I expected,” said he. “I always manage to include
Pompton Avenue in my tramps lately, but this is the first time I’ve
caught a glimpse of you.”
“You are looking badly,” she commented. “You are working too hard.”
“One must, in a fight like mine. It’s nothing to what I must do during
my tour. Everything depends on that. I start to-morrow.”
“So soon? I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he asked in some surprise.
“I’m afraid you’ll find Mr. Conover stronger up-State than you think. I
don’t like to see you disappointed.”
“You care?”
“Of course I do. I hate to see anyone disappointed.”
“How delightfully impersonal!” grumbled Clive, in disgust.
“I thought you were averse to personalities. You’ve said so in both the
speeches I’ve heard you make.”
“You came to hear me? I——”
“One likes to keep abreast of the times; to hear both sides——”
“And having heard both——”
“One forms one’s own conclusions.”
“And yours are——”
“Quite formed.”
“Anice!” exclaimed Standish impatiently, “nature never cut you out for a
Sybil. Can’t you be frank? If you only knew what your approval—your good
wishes—mean to me, you would be kinder.”
“There are surely enough people who encourage you and——”
“No, there are not. I want _your_ encouragement, _your_ faith; just as I
had it when we were boy and girl together, you and I!”
“You forget, I am in the employ of Mr. Conover. As long as I accept his
wages, would it be loyal of me to——”
“Then why accept them? If only——”
“One must make a living in some way. I have other reasons, too.”
“That same wretched old mystery again! As for making a living, that’s a
different thing, and it has changed too many lives. Once, years ago, for
instance, when I was struggling to make a living—and a bare, scant one
at that—I kept silent when my heart clamored to speak. I kept silent
because I had no right to ask any woman to share my hard luck. But now
I’m on my feet. I’ve made the ‘living’ you talk about. And there’s
enough of it for two. So I——”
“I congratulate you on your success,” said the girl nervously. “Here is
my corner. I must hurry back. I’ve a long evening’s work to——”
“Anice!”
“Good-by!”
“You _must_ hear me. I——”
“Hello, Miss Lanier! Parleying with the enemy, eh? Come, come, that
isn’t playing square. ’Evening, Standish!”
Caleb Conover, crossing the street from the side entrance of his own
grounds, had confronted the two before they noted his approach. Looking
from one to the other, he grinned amusedly.
“I’ve heard there was more’n one leak in our camp,” he went on, “but I
never s’posed _this_ was it.”
Trembling with confusion, perhaps with some deeper emotion, Anice
nevertheless answered coolly:
“I hope my absence hasn’t delayed any of your work? I was on my way
back, when you——”
“Now look at that,” exclaimed Caleb with genuine admiration. “Here’s my
hated enemy as red and rattled as if I’d caught him stuffing
ballot-boxes or cheering for Conover! And the lady in the case is as
cool as cucumbers, and she don’t bat an eye. Standish, she’s seven more
kinds of a man than you are, or ever will be, for all your big shoulders
and bigger line of talk. Well, we won’t keep you any longer, son. No use
askin’ you in, I s’pose? No? Then maybe I’ll drop around to your meeting
this evening. I’d ’a’ come before, but it always makes me bashful to
hear myself praised to the public. Good night.”
It was late that evening when Clive reached his rooms, for a few brief
hours of rest before setting forth on his tour of the State. He was
tired out, discouraged, miserable. His much-heralded meeting had been
the dreariest sort of fiasco. Scarcely had the opening address begun and
the crowded house warmed up to the occasion, when every light in the
building had been switched off.
Inquiry showed that a break had occurred in the gas mains which could
not be remedied until morning. Candles and lamps were hurriedly sent
for. Meantime, though a certain confusion followed the plunging of the
place into darkness, the crowd had been, on the whole, orderly. In spite
of this, the chief of police, with twenty reserves, coming on the scene,
had ordered Standish civilly enough to dismiss the audience. Then the
policemen had filed up on the stage, illumining it by their bull’s-eye
lanterns, and clustered ominously about the speakers.
In response to Clive’s angry protest, the chief had simply reiterated
his order, adding that his department was responsible for the city’s
peace and quiet, and that the crowd showed an inclination to riot. Nor
could the Arm of the Law be shaken from this stand. The audience, during
the colloquy between Standish and the chief had grown impatient, and an
occasional catcall or shrill whistle had risen from the darkened
auditorium. At each of these sounds the police had gripped their
nightsticks and glanced with a fine apprehension at their leader for
commands.
The upshot of the matter had been the forced dismissal of the
spectators. Standish had scouted Ansel’s suggestion that the whole
catastrophe was a ruse of Conover’s, until, as he walked down the dark
aisle toward the door, he heard a policeman whisper:
“I was waitin’ for the chief to give some of us the tip to pinch him.”
“An’ let him make a noise like a martyr?” grunted a second voice easily
recognized as Billy Shevlin’s. “You must think the Boss is as balmy in
the belfry as you blue lobsters. He’d ’a’ had Geoghegan broke if he’d——”
The rest of the reply had been lost.
No other disengaged hall could be found in the vicinity; and the meeting
from which Clive had expected so much had gone by the board. He walked
home in a daze of chagrin. How could he hope to fight a man who employed
such weapons; who swayed such power in every city department; who thus
early in the campaign showed plainly he would stop at nothing in beating
his opponent?
Then the young candidate’s teeth clenched tight, and the sullen grit
that for so many centuries has carried the bulldog race of
yellow-haired, strong-jawed Anglo-Saxons to victory against hopeless
odds came to his aid. He shook his big shoulders as if tossing off some
physical weight, entered his rooms and switched on the electric light.
On his study table lay a special delivery letter, neatly typewritten, as
was the single long sheet of foolscap it contained. Standish glanced at
the bottom of the page. There was no signature. Then he read:
“The date for the various county conventions has not been formally set.
It is unofficially given as a week from Saturday. Instead, the caucus
will be held in three of the eight counties _next_ Saturday. The
Machine’s men know this. The League’s don’t. It will be sprung as a
surprise, with two days’ notice instead of the customary seven. This
will keep many of the League’s people from attending. At the Bowden and
Jericho caucuses telegrams will be received saying you have withdrawn.
“At Matawan and Haldane the regular delegates will be notified to meet
at the town halls. While they are waiting outside the locked front
doors, the county chairman and his own crowd will step in the back way
and hold their caucus and elect their delegates. Floaters will be
brought into several counties. In Wills County the chairman will fail to
hear the names of your delegates. Have your manager arrange for the
Wills men to bolt at the right time. Force the State Committee _at once_
to declare the date for the county conventions. Notify the League’s men
at Matawan and Haldane of the ‘back door’ trick, and have the telegraph
operators at Jericho and Bowden warned not to receive or transmit any
fake message of your withdrawal.
“On your State tour you will find newspapers closed to your speeches and
advertisements, and a number of the halls engaged before you get to the
town. Arrange for injunctions restraining the papers from barring your
notices, and have someone go ahead of you to secure halls. And arrange
for police protection to break up rowdyism at your meetings.”
Clive Standish read and re-read this remarkable epistle. That it had
come from the Conover camp he could not doubt. He had heard, before
Caleb’s hint of the previous afternoon, that there was a certain
discontent and vague rumor of treachery, in more than one of the
multifarious branches of the Boss’s business and political interests.
For the unexpected strength developed by the Civic League and the
eloquence of its candidate had shaken divers of the enemy’s less
resolute followers, and more than one of these might readily seek to
curry future favor with the winning side by casting just such an anchor
to windward.
In any case, there was the letter. Its author’s identity, for the
moment, was of no great matter.
“Anonymous!” mused Standish, eyeing the missive with strong distaste.
“Is it a trick of Conover’s or a bit of treachery on the part of one of
the men he trusts? In either case, there’s only one course a white man
can take with a thing of this kind.”
Picking up the letter, he crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the
fireplace.
“Better not say anything about it to Ansel,” he decided as he watched
the paper twist open under the heat and break into a blaze. “He’d only
call me a visionary crank again. And if it’s a trap, the precautions
he’d take would play straight into Conover’s hand.”
Some blocks away, in his Pompton Avenue Mausoleum, the Railroader was
giving final orders to the henchmen to whom he had intrusted the details
of watching Standish’s forthcoming tour. And some of these same details
he had even intrusted to the unenthusiastic Gerald.
CHAPTER VI
CALEB WORKS AT LONG RANGE
Clive Standish opened his up-State tour the following night in the small
town of Wayne. It was a farming centre, and the hall was tolerably well
filled with bearded and tanned men who had an outdoor look. Some of them
had brought their wives; sallow, dyspeptic, angular creatures with the
patient, dull faces of women who live close to nature and are too busy
to profit thereby.
The audience listened interestedly as Clive outlined the Boss-ridden
condition of the Mountain State, the exorbitant cost of transporting and
handling agricultural products, the unjust taxes that fell so heavily on
the farmer and wage-earner, the false system of legislation and the
betrayal of the people’s rights by the men they were bamboozled into
electing to represent them and protect their interests. He went on to
tell how New York and other States had from time to time risen and
shaken off a similar yoke of Bossism, and to show how, both materially
and in point of self-respect, the voters of the Mountain State could
profit by following such examples. In closing he briefly described the
nature, aims and purposes of the Civic League and the practical reforms
to which he himself stood pledged.
It did Clive’s heart good to see how readily his audience responded in
interest to his pleas. He had not spoken ten minutes before he felt he
had his house with him. He finished amid a salvo of applause. His
hearers flocked about him as he came down from the platform, shaking his
hand, asking him questions, praising his discourse.
One big farmer slapped him on the back, crying:
“You’re all right, Mr. Standish! If you can carry out all you’ve
promised, I guess Wills County’ll stand by you, solid. But why on earth
didn’t you advertise you was comin’ to Wayne to-night? If it hadn’t ’a’
been for your agent that passed through here yesterday and told some of
the boys at the hotel and the post office, you wouldn’t ’a’ had anyone
to hear you. If we’d known what was comin’, this hall’d ’a’ been
packed.”
“But surely you read my advertisements in your local papers?” exclaimed
Clive, “I——”
“We sure didn’t read anything of the kind,” retorted a dairyman. “I read
everything in the _Wayne Clarion_, from editorials to soap ads., an’
there hasn’t been a line printed about your meetin’.”
“I sent my agent ahead to place paid advertisements with every paper
along my route,” said the puzzled Standish. “And you say he was in town
here yesterday. So he couldn’t have skipped Wayne. I’ll drop in on the
editor of the _Clarion_ on my way to the station and ask him why the
advertisement was overlooked.”
Accordingly, a half hour later, en route for the midnight train,
Standish sought out the _Clarion_ office and demanded an interview with
its editor-in-chief.
“I guess that’s me,” observed a fat, shirt-sleeved man, who looked up
from his task of tinkering with a linotype machine’s inner mysteries.
“I’m Mr. Gerrett, editor-in-chief, managing editor, city editor, too. My
repertorial staff’s out to supper, this being pay day and he being
hungry. Were you wanting to subscribe or—? Take a chair, anyhow,” he
broke off, sweeping a pile of proofs off a three-legged stool. “Now,
what can I do for you?”
“My name is Standish,” began Clive, “and I called to find out why——”
“Oh!”
The staccato monosyllable served as clearing house for all Gerrett’s
geniality, for he froze—as much as a stout and perspiring man can—into
editorial super-dignity. Aware that the atmosphere had congealed, but
without understanding why, Clive continued:
“My agent called here, did he not? And left an advertisement of——”
“Yes,” snapped Gerrett, “he did. I was out. He left it with my foreman
with the cash for it. I mailed a check for the amount this morning to
your League headquarters at Granite.”
“But why? The advert——”
“The ad.’s in my waste-basket. Now, as this is my busy night, maybe
you’ll clear out and let——”
“Look here!” said Clive, sternly, and refusing to notice the opened
door, “what does this mean?”
“It means we don’t want your ads. nor your money.”
“Were you too crowded for space and had to leave the advertisement out?”
“No, we weren’t. We don’t want any dealings with you or the alleged
‘League’ you’re running. That’s all. Ain’t that plain enough?”
“No,” answered Clive, trying to keep cool, “I want a reason.”
“You’ll keep on wanting it, then. I’m boss of this office, and——”
“The _real_ boss? I doubt it. If you were, what reason would you have
for turning away paid advertisements? I may do you an injustice, my
friend, but I think you’re acting under orders.”
“You’re off!” shouted Gerrett, reddening. “I run this paper as I choose.
And I don’t take orders from any man. I——”
“Nor passes? Nor freight rebates on paper rolls, and——”
“D’ye mean to insult me?” bellowed Gerrett, wallowing forward,
threatening as a fat black thundercloud. “I’ll have you know——”
“I don’t think,” replied Clive, calmly, and receding not a step, “I
don’t think you _could_ be insulted, Mr. Gerrett. You are making rather
a pitiable exhibition of yourself. Why not own up to it that you are
acting under orders of the ‘Machine,’ whose tool you are? The ‘Machine’
which is so afraid of the truth that it takes pains to muzzle the press.
The ‘Machine’ that is so well aware of its own rottenness, it dare not
let the people whom it is defrauding hear the other side of the case.
Why not admit you are bought?”
Gerrett was sputtering unintelligible wrath.
“Get out of my office!” he roared at last.
“Certainly,” assented Standish, “I’ve learned all I wanted to. You serve
your masters well. I hope they pay you as adequately.”
He turned to the door. Before he reached it a thin youth with ink-smears
on his fingers swung in.
“Hard luck!” exclaimed the newcomer. “That Standish meeting’s raised a
lot of interest downtown. Pity we can’t run anything on it! It’d make a
dandy first-page spread.”
“Shut up!” bellowed Gerrett. “You young——”
“Don’t scold him,” counselled Standish, walking out. “He didn’t make any
break. We’re all three in the secret.”
The next few days witnessed practical repetitions of the foregoing
experiences. In almost every town the local newspapers not only refused
to report a line of Standish’s speeches, but would not accept his
advertisements. Nor, in most places, could he find a job office willing
to print handbills for him. His agent had nearly everywhere been able to
engage a hall; but as no adequate preliminary notice of the meeting had
been published, audiences were pitiably slim. In one or two towns, where
the papers did not belong to the “Machine,” it was discovered that every
hall, lodge-room or other available meeting-place had been engaged in
advance by some mysterious competitor. Clive, at such settlements, was
forced to speak in open air. Even then the police at one town dispersed
the gathering under excuse of fearing a riot; at two others the mayor
refused a license to hold an outdoor meeting, and at a fourth, a gang of
toughs, at long range, pelted the audience with stones and elderly eggs,
the police refusing to interfere.
At length Clive’s advance agent returned to the candidate in abject
despair.
“I’ve been doing this sort of work eight years,” the man reported, “but
this time I’m clean stumped. I can’t make any headway. The papers, the
city authorities, the opera-house-and-hall-proprietors and the police
are all under Conover’s thumb. It’s got so that as soon as I reach a
town I can find out right away who is and who isn’t in the ‘Machine’s’
pay. Where the papers aren’t muzzled—and there are precious few such
places—the halls are closed to us, and either the mayor or the police
will stop the meeting. Where the papers are working for Conover, we can
get all the halls we want, because the Boss knows the news of your
speech can’t circulate except by word of mouth.
“Oh, they’ve got us whipsawed in grand shape! I’m wondering what’ll
happen at Grafton Monday night. That’s the biggest city next to Granite,
and there’s always been more or less of a kick there against Conover
rule. They’ve got a square man for mayor, and one of their three
newspapers is strong for you. I was able to get the opera house, too.
It’s your big chance of the campaign, and your last chance on this tour.
The rest of the towns on your route I can’t do anything with. I’m
waiting to see what dirty game Conover will play at Grafton, now that he
can’t work his usual tricks there. He’ll be sure to try something.”
Billy Shevlin, who had also acted (unsuspectedly as unofficially) as
advance agent of Clive Standish’s tour, had in three respects excelled
the authorized agent: In the first place, he had been as successful as
the other had been a failure. In the second, he had not turned back.
Third, and last, he was not in the very least discouraged. Nor had he
need to be.
Yet even to him Grafton presented the first serious problem. And to it
he devoted much of his time and more of his cleverness. At last he
formed a plan and saw that his plan was good.
Clive reached Grafton at noon of the day he was scheduled to speak. This
was the second largest city in the Mountain State. Here, next to
Granite, must the chief battle of the campaign be waged. On the effect
of his speech here hung a great percentage of Clive’s hopes for the
coming State convention. As Grafton went, so would big Matawan County,
whose centre it was. And Grafton, wavering in fealty to Conover, might
yet be won to the Standish ranks by the right sort of speech. So with
the glow of approaching struggle upon him Clive awaited the night. All
he asked was a fair hearing. This, presumably, was for once to be
accorded him.
At the hotel on his arrival he found Karl Ansel waiting. The big, lean
New Englander was in a state of white-hot wrath.
“You got my telegram and the notice of the caucuses, I suppose!” he
growled as Clive met him.
“No. I ordered all mail forwarded here, and telegrams, too. I broke away
from my route Saturday, when I found I couldn’t get a hall at
Smithfield. I cancelled my date there and went over to Deene, leaving
word for everything to be sent on to Grafton. Then, yesterday——”
“Never mind that. We’re done! Beat! Tricked!”
“What do you mean?”
“The county conventions—the caucuses! In every—nearly every one of the
eight counties Conover worked some blackguardism. To some he sent
telegrams that you backed out. In others his chairmen tried the ‘back
door’ act. And I wrote you how they’d ‘snapped’ the dates and caught us
unready. Then——”
Clive recalled the anonymous letter which later events had driven from
his memory. If only he had been able to lower himself to his opponent’s
level and take advantage of it—of the treachery in the Conover ranks!
If——
But Ansel was still pouring out the flood of his ill-temper.
“Whipsawed us, right and left,” he declared. “Beat us at every point as
easy as taking candy from a baby. What are _we_ doing in politics? We’re
a lot of silly amateurs against——”
“We’re a lot of honest men against a gang of crooks. And in the long run
we’ll win. We——”
“The long run, eh? Well, the run has begun, and they’ve got us on it.
We’re beat!”
“Poor old Ansel,” laughed Clive, “how many times during the past
fortnight have I heard you say that? And every time you pick yourself up
again and go on with the fight. Just as you’ll do now.”
“Not on your life! I—oh, well, I suppose I will, if it comes to that!
But it’s a burning, blazing shame.”
“If it wasn’t for just such ‘burning, blazing shames,’ there’d be no
need for our campaign. It’s to crush such ‘shames’ that we’re working.
Cheer up! I’ve great hopes for to-night’s meeting.”
Tersely he described his trip, the drawbacks he had encountered, and the
better chances that seemed to attend the Grafton rally, Ansel
interspersing the tale with a volley of queries and expletives.
“I’d heard of this press-muzzling,” said he as Standish ended, “and I
have one way of blocking it. I’ve arranged for your speeches and ‘ads.’
and advance notices to be printed in the biggest paper in the next
State, and scattered all through the Mountain State as campaign
documents. I don’t think even Conover can block that move.”
“Splendid!” cried Standish. “Old man, you’re a genius!”
“No, I’m not,” contradicted Ansel, rather ruefully, “but someone else
is. I don’t know who.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why, the idea was sent to me three days ago, anonymously. Typewritten
on foolscap. No signature. What d’you think of that?”
“Anonymously?”
“Yes. I wonder why. The idea’s so good, one would think the originator’d
claim it. Unless——”
“Unless it came from the Conover camp?”
“Just what occurred to _me_. Anyhow, I’ve adopted the suggestion. I
suppose _you’d_ have refused to accept anonymous help, eh?”
“Every man to his own folly. It’s done now.”
“It sure is. And with a few more such tips, Conover would be ‘done,’
too. He’s carried matters high-handedly for years, but now maybe someone
he’s ridden rough-shod over has turned on him.”
The great night had come. Clive and Ansel, arriving at the Opera House,
found that gaudy, gayly-lighted auditorium full to the doors. On the
stage sat the mayor, the proprietor of one of the papers, a half-dozen
clergymen and a score of civic dignitaries. The boxes were filled with
well-dressed women. Evening suits blended with the less conspicuous
costumes of the spectators who stretched from stage to entrance, from
orchestra to roof. A band below the stage played popular and national
airs.
The news of Clive’s eccentric pre-convention tour, of his eloquence, his
clean manliness and the obstacles he had overcome, had drawn hundreds
through sheer curiosity. More had come because they were weary of
Conover’s rule and eagerly desired to learn what his young antagonist
had to offer them in place of bossism.
Skilled, by experience, in reading the sentiment of crowds, Clive, as he
stepped onto the stage, felt instinctively that the main body of the
house was kindly disposed toward him. Not only was this proven by the
spontaneous applause that heralded his appearance, but by a ripple—a
rustle—of interest that rose on every hand. The sound nerved him. He
considered once more how much hung on to-night’s success or failure, and
the advance augury was as music to his ears.
The mayor, a little, nervous man with a monstrous mustache and a cast in
one eye, opened the meeting with a brief speech, defining the purpose of
the evening, and ended by introducing the candidate. Clive came forward.
A volley of applause such as he had never before known hailed him. He
bowed and bowed again, waiting for it to subside. But it did not. It
continued from every quarter of the house.
From pleasure Clive felt a growing uneasiness. The majority of the
audience seemed to have relapsed into silence, and were staring about
them in wonder at the unduly continued ovation. The thumping of feet and
canes and the shouts of welcome increased rather than diminished. It
settled down into a steady volume of sound, regular and rhythmic,
shaking the whole auditorium, losing any hint at spontaneity and
degenerating into a deafening, organized babel.
The men on the platform glanced at each other in angry bewilderment. For
fully ten minutes the tumult endured, rendering intelligible words out
of the question. The mayor, as chairman, rapped for silence. But his
efforts were vain. The sound was drowned in the vaster, reëchoing volume
of rhythmic sound. Clive held up his hand with a gesture of authority.
The applause doubled.
This was growing absurd. The quiet majority of the audience waxed
restive, and half-rose in its seats to locate the disturbance. To end
the embarrassing delay Standish began to speak, hoping the clamor would
die down. But his words did not reach the second row of seats.
Ansel slipped forward to his side.
“This is a put-up job!” he exclaimed, shouting to make himself heard
above the uproar. “They are pretending to applaud because they think you
dare not call them down for that. They’ll keep it up all evening if they
get a chance, and you won’t be able to speak ten words.”
In a front orchestra seat a man stood up waving a flag and bawling:
“_Standish!_ _Standish!_ _We want_ STANDISH!”
The rest of Billy Shevlin’s carefully drilled cohorts took up the cry,
and it was chanted a hundred times to the accompaniment of resounding
sticks and boot heels.
The mayor beckoned a deputy sheriff from the wings. Pointing to the
front-seat ringleader he commanded:
“Put that fellow out.”
The deputy descended the steps to the orchestra, grabbed the
vociferating enthusiast by the collar and started to propel him up the
aisle. In an instant, as though the action were a signal, every sound
ceased. The house was as still as death. And through the silence soared
the shrill, penetrating protest of the man who had just been collared.
“You leave me be!” he yelled. “I’ve got as much right here as you have.
An’ I’m earnin’ my money.”
“What money!” shouted a trained querist in the gallery.
“The cash Mr. Standish promised me for leadin’ the applause, of course.
He’s payin’ me an’ the rest of the boys good, an’ we’re goin’ to earn
our dough. _Standish!_ _Standish!_ _We want_——”
Then pandemonium broke loose. Hundreds of voices caught up the rhythmic
refrain, while hundreds more shrieked “Fake!” and a counter rhythm arose
of
“_Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ FAKE!”
Standish, abandoning all present hope of making the audience understand
that the shrill-voiced man was a hireling of Conover’s, and that the
whole affair was a gigantic, well-rehearsed trick, turned to face the
group on the platform. But there, at a glance, he read in a dozen pairs
of eyes suspicion, contempt, disgust.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Standish,” sneered the little mayor, “that your friends
are over-zealous in earning their——”
“Do you mean that you—that _anybody_—can believe such an absurdity?”
cried Standish. “Can’t you see——?”
“I can only see,” said the mayor, rising, “that I have evidently
misunderstood the purpose and nature of this meeting. Good night.”
To Clive’s horror the little dignitary walked off the stage, followed by
two-thirds of those who had sat there with him. The majority of the
boxes’ occupants followed suit. The few who remained on the platform did
so, to judge from their expression, more from interest in the outcome of
the riotous audience’s antics than through any faith in Clive. For by
this time the erstwhile orderly place was in full riot. Individual
fights and tussles were waging here and there. Men were shouting
aimlessly. Women were screaming. People were hurrying in a jostling,
confused mass up the aisles toward the exits, while others bellowed to
them to sit still or move faster. And through all (both factions of
shouters having united in a common slogan) rang to an accompaniment of
smashing chairs and pounding feet that endless metrical refrain of
“_Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ FAKE!”
Standish, Ansel at his side, was once more at the platform’s edge,
striving in vain to send his mighty voice through the cataract of noise.
One tough, in the pure joy of living and rioting, had climbed over the
rail of a proscenium box—the only one still occupied—and, throwing an
arm about the neck of a young girl, sitting there with an elderly man
and woman, tried to kiss her. The girl screamed. Her elderly escort
thrust the rowdy backward, and the latter, his insecure balance on the
box rail destroyed, tumbled down among the orchestra chairs. The scene
was greeted with a howl of delight from kindred spirits.
The youth scrambled to his feet and, joined by a half dozen intimates,
once more swarmed up the side of the box. The girl shrank back, and
futilely tugged at the closed box door, which had become jammed. The old
man, quivering with senile fury, leaned over the box-front and grappled
the foremost assailant. He was brushed aside and, amid a hurricane of
laughter from the paid phalanx in the gallery, the group of half-drunk,
wholly-inspired young brutes clustered across the box rail. The whole
incident had not occupied five seconds. Yet it had served to draw the
multi-divided attention of the mob and the rest of the escaping audience
to that particular and new point of interest And now, dozens of the
tougher element, seeing a prospect of better sport than a mere campaign
row, elbowed their way to the spot.
The girl’s cry and that of the woman with her had barely reached the
stage when Clive Standish, with one tremendous spring, had cleared the
six-foot distance between footlights and box. There was a confused,
whirling, cursing mass of bodies and arms. Then the whole group rolled
outward over the rail.
Before they had fairly touched ground Clive was on his feet, the centre
of a surprised but bellicose swirl of opponents who were nothing loath
to change their plan of baiting a well-dressed girl into the more
thrilling pastime of beating a well-dressed candidate.
As the score of toughs rushed him, Clive had barely time to get his back
into the shallow angle between the bulging outer bases of the two
proscenium boxes. Then the rush was upon him.
Hitting clean and straight, and with the speed and unerring deadliness
of the trained heavyweight boxer, Clive for the moment held his own.
There was no question of guarding. He relied rather for protection on
the unusual length of his arms.
Nor could a blow be planned beforehand. It was hit, hit, and keep on
hitting. Fully twenty youths and men surged forward at him, and at
nearly every blow one went down among the pushing throng. But for each
who fell there were always two more to take his place. The impact and
crash of blows sounded above the yells and shuffle of feet. This was not
boxing. It was butchery.
Only his semi-sheltered position and the self-confusing hurry and
numbers of his assailants kept Clive on his feet and allowed him to hold
his own.
Yet, as he dimly realized even through the wild lust of battle that
gripped and intoxicated him, the fight was but a question of moments.
Soon someone, running in, must grapple or trip him, or a kick would
reach and disable him. And once down, in that bedlam of stamping,
kicking feet, his life would not be worth a scrap of paper.
While it lasted, though, it was glorious. The veneered shell of
civilization had been battered away. He was primitive man, gigantic,
furious, terrible; battling against hopeless odds. Yet battling (as had
those ancestors from whom his yellow hair, great shoulders and bulldog
jaw were inherited) all the more gladly and doughtily because of those
very odds.
He was aware of a man who, running along the box rail from the stage,
had dropped to his side and stood swinging a gilded, blue-cushioned
box-chair about his head. This apparition and the whizzing sweep of his
odd weapon caused the toughs to give back for an instant.
“Good old Ansel!” panted Clive.
“Save your breath!” grunted Karl. “You’ll need it.”
Then a yell from twenty throats and the rush was on again. At first,
anticipating the easy triumph which their type so love, the toughs had
turned from the milder fun of frightening a girl of the better class to
the momentary work of thrashing the solitary man who had interfered with
that simple amusement. Now, bleeding faces, swollen eyes and more than
one fractured jaw and nose had transformed the earlier phase of rough
spirits into one of murderous rage.
The man who had so mercilessly punished them must not be allowed to
escape alive. The tough never fights fair. When fists fail, a gouge,
bite or kick is considered quite allowable. When, as in the present
instance, the intended victim is so protected as to render these tactics
difficult of success, pockets are usually ransacked for more formidable
weapons.
Ansel’s arrival on the scene had but checked the onrush. No two men, big
and powerful as both were, could subdue nor hold out against that
assault.
Clive struck, right, left, with the swiftness of thought. And each blow
crashed into yielding, reeling flesh.
Down whirled Ansel’s chair on the bullet head of one man, and down went
the man beneath the impact.
Up whirled the chair and again it descended on another head—descended
and shivered into kindling wood.
Dropping the fragments, Karl ranged close to Clive and together the two
struck out, the one with the wild force and fury of a kicking horse, the
other with the colder but no less terrific accuracy of the trained
athlete.
A tough, ducking one of Ansel’s wild swings, ran in and caught him about
the waist. Doubling his left leg under him, Karl caught the man’s
stomach with the point of his knee. The assailant collapsed, gasping.
But the momentary lapse of the tall New Englander’s fistic attack had
opened a breach through which two more men rushed and flung themselves
bodily on him.
Clive, unaware of his ally’s plight, yet felt the increased impetus of
the onslaught on himself, and had to rally his every faculty to
withstand it. His breath was coming hard from his heaving chest, and his
head swam with fatigue and excitement. More than one heavy blow had
reached his face and body. Then——
“Clear the way there, youse!” howled an insane, mumbling voice “Lemme at
’im! I’ll pay ’im for this smashed jaw!”
The press immediately in front of Clive Standish slackened and the crowd
opened. In its centre reeled a horrible figure—bloodstained, torn of
clothing, raging and distorted of face, one hand nursing an unshaven
jaw, while the other flourished a revolver.
“Lemme at ’im!” mumbled the pain-maddened tough through a hedge of
splintered teeth. “Clear the way or I’ll shoot to clear!”
Then, finding himself directly in front of Standish, the maniac halted
and levelled his weapon.
Something swished through the air from behind Clive’s head. A big
shapeless object hurtled forward and smote the broken-jawed tough full
across the eyes on the very instant he fired at point-blank range.
The ball went wild, and surprise at the odd blow he had received
(apparently from nowhere), caused the man’s pistol to clatter to the
ground.
The girl in the box—innocent cause of the whole battle—had paid her debt
to the man who had imperilled his life in her defence. She had crouched,
trembling, in the background watching the progress of the fray. But as
the intended murderer’s trigger-finger had tightened, she had hurled at
his face, with all her frail force, the huge bouquet she carried. For
once a woman’s aim was unerring, and thereby a man’s life was saved.
Her act—melodramatic, amazing, unlooked-for, eccentric in its poetic
justice and theatric effects—sent a roar of applause from the onlookers,
even as the pistol-shot momentarily startled the group of ruffians into
sanity. Clive, without awaiting the result of the shot, had flung
himself upon the little knot of toughs who were locked in death-grip
about Ansel.
But even as he did so, a cry of warning rang from a dozen parts of the
big building:
“The cops! Lights out! The cops!”
The hastily-summoned cohort of blue-coated reserves, pistols and
nightsticks drawn, charged down the centre aisle. And before their onset
the rabble melted like snow in April.
The historic Grafton Opera House riot was a thing of the past.
An hour later Clive Standish sat alone in his hotel room. Ansel had just
said good night to him and left him to his own miserable reflections.
Now that the excitement was over, he had time to realize what a ghastly
failure, from a campaign standpoint, his Grafton meeting had been. It
was the climax of his long, unbroken series of failures. He was beaten,
and he could no longer force himself to think otherwise.
Heart and mind and pride were as sore as the aching, bruised face and
body from which he had so recently washed the stains of battle.
At other towns he had scored nothing worse than failure. Here at Grafton
Conover had gained yet another point. The Railroader had made the people
look on his young opponent as a cheap trickster. The very class Clive
was working to rescue from Boss misrule would brand him as a charlatan.
Yes, he was beaten. How could a man hope by clean methods to stand
against such powers as Caleb Conover possessed, and did not scruple to
use? The fight had been hard. And now it was over. He had done his best.
No one could have done more. And he had failed.
The reaction from the violent physical and mental strain of the riot was
upon Standish. Hope, vitality, even self-trust were at their very ebb.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” he called wearily, supposing Ansel was coming back for
something he had left.
“Thanks, I will,” replied Billy Shevlin, sidling into the room and
closing the door behind him.
Clive stared in blank astonishment at his unexpected visitor. The latter
grinned pleasantly and sat himself down, unasked, in a chair near the
door, tucking his derby hat between his feet.
“Good evening, Mr. Standish,” said Billy. “Pleased to see you again.
‘Same here,’ says you,” he added, after an embarrassed little pause
which Clive made no move to break.
“What do you want?” asked the candidate at last.
“Just a little gabfest with you. That’s all. I——”
“You come with a message from Mr. Conover?”
“Not me. I ain’t seen the Boss this ten days.”
“I thought you were his special henchman,” said Clive, amused in spite
of himself by the heeler’s ingratiating manner, and puzzled as to the
cause of this midnight call.
“The Boss’s _what_?” queried Billy.
“His ‘henchman,’ I said. Aren’t——”
“No, I ain’t. I don’t know just what a hench-person is, but _I_ ain’t
one. This ain’t the first time I’ve been called that. Some day when I
get time I’m goin’ to look it up in the dicshunary. An’ if it means what
I think it does, I’m going to lick——”
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you. But you haven’t told me why you’re
here.”
“Well,” responded Shevlin, with an air of casting all possible reserve
to the winds, “I wanted you to kind of get a line on what you’re up
against. Why not take your medicine graceful and quit?”
“Is that any affair of yours?”
“Sure, it’s my affair. Do you s’pose I’m settin’ here just to hand out
ree-fined conversation with you this time of night? You’ve put me to a
whole lot of bother lately, Mr. Standish. I’ve had all I could do
sometimes to block the game ahead of you on this tour. An’ then,
to-night——”
“So it was you——”
“I done my best,” assented Shevlin modestly.
“Hold on!” he continued, as Clive jumped up. “Hold on, Mr. Standish!
Don’t you get wedded to the idee that ’twas me who kicked up that row
over the girl nor the scrap that followed. That ain’t my line. The
Boss’ll skin me alive fer lettin’ you make such a pose in the limelight
as you did when you butted in as the heero and copped off that rescue.
All _I_ did was to organize the cheerin’ party, and post that guy what
to say when he was nabbed. I’d ’a’ got away with it all without a break,
at that, only this Grafton gang ain’t got no ree-finement. They has to
go an’ make a toadpie of the whole party.”
Clive sat down again. He realized that the little heeler, for his own
interest, was telling the truth in disclaiming all share in the riot’s
later stages. He was curious, too, to learn what else Shevlin had to
say.
“So it was a Pyrrhic victory for you after all, you think?” suggested
Standish.
“Pyrrhic?” mused Billy, thoughtfully. “Must ’a’ run on some of the
Western tracks. No skate of that name ever won a vict’ry here in the
East. Someone’s been stringin’ you about that, I guess, Mr. Standish.”
“Perhaps so. And you’ve come to suggest that I withdraw? Why should I?”
“’Cause you ain’t got the chance a snowball has on the south slopes of
Satanville. Come! Drop out an’ let’s have no hard feelin’. Conover’s got
ten times your strength everywhere. An’ the strong man’s always the man
that’ll win. You can dope that out——”
“Not always. There was David’s fight with Goliath, for one, and——”
“David who?”
“A little chap who won out against a man double his size,” smiled Clive.
“Goliath was what you’d call a heavyweight.”
“An’ what was David’s manager doin’, puttin’ a bantam into the ring with
a heavyweight? He’d ’a’ had that David person asleep in the first round.
Say, Mr. Standish, I seen to-night you’re a first-rate scrapper, an’ you
handle your hands fine for an amachoor. But what you don’t know about
prizefights an’ racehorses’d fill a City Record. Someone’s sure been
guying you good an’ plenty.”
“Well, all that has nothing to do with what you came here about. You’ve
got something on your mind. Speak out, can’t you?”
“It’s just this,” replied Shevlin, edging his chair nearer, and lowering
his voice, “you’re beat. An’ you’ve been to consid’ble expense in the
campaign, an’——”
“Yes?”
“An’ Mr. Conover’s set his heart on bein’ Gov’nor by a good majority.
An’ when he sets his heart on a thing he’s willin’ to pay well for it.”
“Yes?”
“So,” continued Billy, emboldened by Clive’s calmness, “what’s the
matter with you an’ him fixin’ this thing up peaceable?”
“How?”
“I’ve got a blank check here. It was give me for expenses. Shows how the
Boss trusts me, eh? Well, I’m willin’ to fill this out for $5,000 if you
say, an——”
Then Clive Standish picked up his caller very gently by the nape of the
neck, carried him tenderly to the door, opened it and deposited him in
the hall outside.
Returning, he shut the door, crossed over to his bath-room and washed
his hands.
“Beaten?” he murmured to himself, all his fatigue and discouragement
forgotten. “Not yet! When they find it worth while to try to buy me off
it shows they’re still afraid. I’m in for another try at this uphill
game. But first of all I’ll see Caleb Conover face to face and have it
out with him. I wonder,” he speculated less belligerently, “I wonder if
Anice will happen to be in when I go there?”
CHAPTER VII
CALEB UNDERGOES A “HOME EVENING”
“There’s no use glowering at _me_ every time you speak of poor Clive,”
protested Mrs. Conover with all the fierce courage of a chased
guinea-pig. “It isn’t _my_ fault he’s running against you, and it isn’t
my fault that he’s my nephew, either.”
“I guess both those failings would come under the head of misfortunes,
rather’n faults,” retorted Caleb. “And they’re both as hard on him as
they are on you, Letty. I wasn’t glowering at you, either. Don’t stir up
another spat.”
The idea that Mr. Conover was capable of inciting any such disputation
so flattered that poor, spiritless little creature that she actually
bridled and looked about her to make sure Anice and Gerald, the only
other members of the household present, had heard.
The quartette were seated in the Conover library, whither they had
gathered after dinner for one of those brief intervals of family
intercourse which Caleb secretly loved, his wife as secretly dreaded and
Gerald openly loathed. The Railroader, at heart, was an intensely
home-loving man. He had never known a home. Least of all since moving
into the Mausoleum. He had always, in increasingly blundering fashion,
sought to make one.
The wife he bullied, the son he hectored, the daughter with whom he had
forever quarrelled, the secretary who met his friendliness with unbroken
reserve; all these he had tried to enroll as assistants in his various
homemaking plans. The results had not been so successful as to warrant
description.
Finally, Conover had centred his former efforts on one daily plan. He
had read in the advice column of the _Star_ about the joys of “pleasant
evening hour in the bosom of one’s family” and the directions therefor.
The idea appealed to him. He ordained accordingly that after the
unfashionably early evening meal the household should congregate in the
library, and there for at least one hour indulge in carefree
confidential chat. This, Caleb mentally argued, was a capital opening
wedge in the inculcation of the true home-spirit which had been his
lifelong dream.
The household obeyed the order, even as all Conover’s orders—at home and
abroad—were obeyed. The session usually began in laborious efforts at
small talk. Then an unfortunate remark of some sort from Mrs. Conover,
or an impertinence or sneer from Gerald, and the storm would break. The
“pleasant evening hour” oftener than not ended in a sea of weakly
miserable tears from Mrs. Conover, a cowed or _sotto voce_ profane exit
on Gerald’s part, and in Caleb’s stamping off to his study or else
around to the Kerrigans’ for a blissful, shirt-sleeved, old-time
political argument in front of the saloon’s back-room stove.
On this present evening Caleb had just received Shevlin’s report of the
Standish tour. He was full of the theme and strove to interest his three
hearers in it. In Anice he found, as ever, an eager listener. But Gerald
yawned in very apparent boredom, while Mrs. Conover shed a few
delightfully easy, but irritating tears at the account of the opera
house fight. Caleb had silently resented these moist signs of interest,
and his glare had called forth an unusual protest from his weak little
spouse.
“I’m sure,” she went on, nervously taking advantage of the rare fit of
courage that possessed her, “I’m _quite_ sure somebody else must have
put this Governorship idea into poor Clive’s head. He’d never have
thought of such a rash thing by himself. I don’t believe that at heart
he really wants to be Governor at all. He——”
“If he don’t,” remarked Conover, “I guess that makes it unanimous. I
wish that idiot Shevlin hadn’t given him the chance to play to the
gallery, though, in a fist fight. It’ll mean votes for him. Folks have a
sort of liking for a man who can scrap. By the way, Jerry, if you go
around to Headquarters to-night, tell Bourke I want him to run to
Matawan for me to-morrow on that floater business. He——”
“I don’t believe they can spare Bourke at Headquarters just now,” began
Gerald, with a faint show of interest. “You see——”
“If he was the sort of man they could spare, he wouldn’t be the sort of
man I’d want to send on a ticklish job like this. Has Brayle showed up
at any of our rallies yet?”
“No. And I don’t believe he will. He’s done with politics, Shevlin tells
me. Got religion, Billy says, and——”
“If Pete Brayle’s got religion, you can gamble he’s got it in his wife’s
name, like every other asset of his. ‘Done with politics,’ eh? Well,
politics ain’t done with him. I’ll see Shevlin about it in the morning.”
“I thought Mr. Brayle was an atheist,” put in Letty. “It’s an awful
thing to be. How do you suppose he ever became one?”
“By thinking too hard with a mind that was too small; same as most
atheists do,” suggested Caleb. “Say, Jerry,” he added, “it won’t do you
no harm to know I’m rather tickled at the way you’ve took hold at
Headquarters this past week or so. You won’t lose by it.”
“She wrote me to,” answered Gerald, flushing. “You owe it to _her_. Not
to me.”
“She?”
“Yes. My——”
“Ugh! I might ’a’ known it! Well, so long as you do your work I don’t
care where the inspiration comes from. I ain’t too finicky to hit a
straight blow with a crooked stick. Why’d she tell you to hustle?”
“She said she ‘hoped it would touch your hard heart.’ Wait, and I’ll
read you what she——”
“No, you won’t. My hardness of heart isn’t a patch on my hardness of
hearing when it comes to listening to that sort of pink paper drivel.
I——”
“Now, father,” whined Mrs. Conover, persuasively, “why be so hard on the
poor boy? Perhaps——”
“Perhaps he’s wheedled you into thinking a yeller-haired high-kicker
would make the ideel daughter-in-law for the next Governor of the
Mountain State. But his golden eloquence hasn’t caught _me_ yet. So, as
long as there’s one sane member of the Conover family——”
“Oh, Caleb, how can you treat your own child——”
“Yes!” snorted Caleb, “my own children have a right to expect a fine
line of treatment from me, haven’t they? Blanche and Jerry, both. What
is it Ibid says about ‘A serpent’s tooth and a thankless——’”
“That was Shakespeare,” contradicted Mrs. Conover, with the tact that
was her chief charm. “And you’ve got it all wrong. There’s no such
person as——”
“I tell you it was Ibid,” growled Caleb, always tender on the subject of
his learning. “It says so in the ‘Famous Quotation’ book. Maybe you can
look down on my education. But I guess I can stand pat all right on the
things I _have_ learned. And——”
The butler entered with a card, which he carried to Caleb. After one
glance at the pasteboard Caleb crushed it in his fingers and threw it to
the floor.
“Turn her out!” he ordered.
“Why, who is it?” squeaked his wife in high excitement.
“It’s some woman for Jerry. Gaines brought me the card by mis——”
“For me?” cried Gerald, jumping up, his face aflame. “Why, it—it
can’t——”
“Yes, it can. And it is, or rather it _was_, for I’ve sent her away.
Maybe you forget I made you promise——”
“Stand aside!” spake a dramatic contralto voice from beyond the
portières, “I have a right here.”
The curtains were thrust apart, revealing the protesting, discomfited
butler; and, pushing past him, a tall, slender young woman, quietly but
prettily dressed, pompadoured of hair, and very, _very_ determined of
aspect.
“Good Lord!” grunted Caleb under his breath, “she ain’t even a blonde. I
thought they all——”
But she was in the library itself, and facing the amazed master of the
house. Gerald, at first sight of her, had sprung forward and now grasped
the newcomer ardently by both hands and drew her to him.
“I was sure,” murmured the intruder in that same throaty contralto,
rich, yet insensibly conveying a vague impression of latent vulgarity,
“I was _sure_ your man was mistaken, and that you couldn’t have meant to
turn me away without a word when I had come so far to see my precious
truant boy. _Did_ you? We women, Mrs. Conover,” she went on, eyes and
voice claiming alliance of the meek-faced little nonentity who shrank
behind Anice Lanier, “we women understand how hard it is to keep away
from the man who has taught us to love him. _Don’t_ we? Men never can
_quite_ realize that. Not even my Gerald, or he wouldn’t have stayed
away so long or made me stay away from him. _Would_ he?”
“It was Dad,” broke in Gerald. “I told you that in my first letter,
darling. He won’t stand for our marriage, and——”
“Ah! that is because he doesn’t know,” she laughed archly. “Mr. Conover,
this big splendid boy of mine is too much in love to explain as he
should. And he’s so high-spirited, he can’t listen as patiently to
advice as he ought to. _Can_ you, Gerald? So I came myself, when I
couldn’t stand it any longer to be away from him. I knew I could make
you understand. _Can’t_ I?”
“I can tell better when you’ve tried,” answered Caleb, watching with a
sort of awed fascination the alternate plunges and rearings of the
vibrant black pompadour, which, in deference to the prevailing style of
the moment—and of the chorus—was pendent directly above the visitor’s
right eye.
His curt rejoinder rather took the caller aback. She looked about the
group as if for inspiration. Anice Lanier had risen, and was at the
door. Caleb saw her.
“Please don’t go, Miss Lanier!” he called.
“I would much prefer to,” answered Anice, “if you don’t object. This
seems to be purely a family affair and——”
“And at least one person with a decently-balanced brain ought to be
present. Our affairs are _your_ affairs as far as you’ll allow. Please
do me the favor of staying.”
The visitor had, by this diversion, regained grasp on her plan of
action.
“Mr. Conover,” she said, stretching out her suède-gloved hands toward
the Railroader in a pretty gesture of helpless appeal as to an
all-powerful judge, “I am your son’s wife. He loves me. I love him. Does
that tell you nothing?”
“Yes,” said Caleb judicially, “it tells me you love each other; if
that’s what you mean. For the sake of argument we’ll take that for
granted, just for the present. Now get down to facts.”
“I am your son’s wife,” repeated the woman, somewhat less throatily, but
still with brave resolve. “He sought me out and wooed me. He told me I
should receive a welcome in his home. He made me love him. _Didn’t_ you,
Gerald? And I married him. Ah, but we were happy, we two! Then, like a
thunderbolt from the blue sky fell your command that we part. He and I.
For long—oh, _so_ long—I have tried to be patient, to wait for time to
soften your heart. But at last I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t _bear_ it,
so I came here to meet you in person, to cast myself at your feet if
need be. To——”
She paused. The cold, inscrutable gaze of the Railroader’s light eyes
did not tend to inspire her very creditable recitation. As a matter of
fact, Caleb was at the moment paying very little attention to her words.
He was noting the hard dryness of her skin and the only half-hidden
lines about mouth, brow and eye; and contrasting them with Anice
Lanier’s baby-smooth skin and the soft contour of her neck and cheek.
Had the stranger been saying anything of import Caleb would have
missed no syllable. But, through long years of experience with the
dreary windiness and empty pothouse eloquence of politicians, the
Railroader had learned by instinct, and without waiting to catch so
much as the first word, whether anything worth hearing was being said,
or if the case were, as he was wont to express it, “an attack of
rush-of-words-to-the-mouth.” He had already placed his present
caller’s oration in the latter category. But her pause brought him
back to himself.
“Well?” he demanded.
“So I am here to implore you to be just, to be generous,” resumed the
girl, slightly raising the pitch of the scene as she approached a
climax. “I throw myself on your mercy. I, Enid Conover——”
“Enid Conover!” snorted the Railroader. “Why——”
“Yes. Enid Conover! How I have learned to love that name!”
“Have, hey? Then take my advice, young woman, and stifle that same wild
adoration for my poetic cognomen, for you aren’t going to have the
renting of it any longer’n I can help.”
“Not——?”
“Oh, you’ll get over it easy! Just as you got over your love for that
high-sounding title, Enid Montmorency. And just as, before that, when
you left your mother’s Germantown boarding-house, you got over any
passion you may have had for your original name, Emma Higgs. You see I
know some little about you. I took the trouble to have you looked up.
You and your family. You told Gerald your family’s old. From all I hear,
I guess the main difference between you and that same family is that
one’s older’n you make out and the other’s younger. Take your choice as
to which is which. And now——”
“You insult me!” declaimed the girl, her eyes flashing, her figure drawn
to the full height of a really excellent pose, her pompadour nestling
protectingly above the arched brow.
“No, I don’t. I couldn’t. (Jerry, you sit down there and behave yourself
or I’ll spank you!) If you think I’m wrong, maybe you’d like me to tell
my son the way you first happened to go on the stage. No? I guess I’ve
got this thing framed up pretty near straight. It’s a grand-stand play,
and Papa is It, eh? A masterstroke of surprise for the old man, and a
final tableau of the bunch of us clustering about you and Gerald in the
centre of the stage, while you fall on each other’s necks and
do a unison exclamation of ‘God-bless-the-dear-old-Dad!
How-much-will-he-leave-us? And-how-soon?’ You waited in town awhile. But
Papa didn’t relent and send Hubby back to his lonely wifie. Then you
sick Gerald on to acting like a human being, hoping to win Papa over by
being a good boy. No go. Then as a last play you butt in here on a
sudden with all your lines learned down pat, and do a grand appeal.
Well, Mrs.-Miss-Emma-Higgs-Enid-Montmorency-Conover, it doesn’t work.
That’s all. If you’ve got the sense I think, you’ll see the show’s a
frost, and you’ll start back for Broadway. Take my blessing, if you want
it, and take Jerry along for good measure, if you like. It’s all you’ll
ever get from me, either of you.”
To Caleb Conover’s unbounded horror and amaze, Enid, instead of spurning
him haughtily, burst into a crescendo, throaty gurgle of contralto
weeping, and flung herself bodily upon him; her long-gloved arms twining
about his neck, her pompadoured head snuggling into his bosom.
“Oh, Father! _Father!_” came a muffled, yet artistic wail from somewhere
in the region of his upper waistcoat buttons. “How _can_ you? You’ve
broken Gerald’s heart. And now you’re breaking mine. Forgive us!”
“Miss Lanier!” thundered Caleb, struggling wildly to escape the
snake-like closeness of the embrace, “for heaven’s sake won’t you come
and—and unwind this person? She’s spoiling my shirt-front. Lord, how I
do hate to be pawed!”
“Do not touch me! Do not _dare_ to, menial!” commanded the bride,
relinquishing her hold, and glaring like a wounded tigress at Anice, who
had made no move whatever in response to Caleb’s horrified plea. The
visitor drew back from Caleb as though contact with him besmirched her.
“_Well!_” she gasped, and now the throaty contralto was merged into a
guttural snarl, ridiculously akin to an angry cat’s. “_Well!_ Of all the
cheap tight-wads I ever struck! Think you can backtrack _me_, do you?
Well, you _lose_! I’m married to him all right, and _I’m_ not giving him
up in a hurry. You try to butt in, and you’ll find yourself in a hundred
thousand alienation suit! Oh, I know _my_ rights, and no up-country
Rube’s going to skin me out of ’em. You old bunch of grouchiness! And to
think they let you boss things in this jay town of yours! Why, in New
York you’d never get nearer Broadway than Tenth Avenue, and you couldn’t
even boss a red light precinct. My Gawd! I’ll have to keep it dark about
my coming to a hole like this or my friends’ll think I’ve been playing a
ten-twenty-thirt’ circuit. No civilized person ever comes here, and now
I know why. They’re afraid they’ll be mistook for a friend of yours,
most likely. You redheaded old geezer, you don’t even know a lady when
you see one. Keep your lantern-jawed, pie-faced mutt of a son. I’m going
back to where there’s at least _one_ perfect gentleman who knows how to
behave when a lady honors him by——”
“Enid!” cried Gerald, who had sat in dumb, nerveless confusion during
the recent interchange of courtesies, “you don’t mean—? You mustn’t go
back to him! You _mustn’t_! Has he met you again since I left? Tell me!
I said I’d kill him if he ever spoke to you again, and, by God, I will!
He shan’t——”
A timid, falsetto screech, like that of a very young leveret that is
inadvertently trodden beneath a farmer’s foot in long grass, broke in on
the boy’s ravings. Mrs. Caleb Conover collapsed on the floor in a dead
faint.
Anice ran to the unconscious woman’s aid. Even Gerald, checked midway in
his mad appeal, stopped and stared down in stupid wonder at his mother’s
little huddled figure.
Caleb seized the moment to cross the room quickly toward the furious
chorus girl. He caught her by the shoulder, and in his pale eyes blazed
a flare that few men and no woman had ever seen there. The color, behind
the artistic paint on the visitor’s face, went white at the look. She,
who was accustomed to brave the rages of drunken rounders, shrank
speechless, cowering before those light eyes. One arm she raised
awkwardly as if to avert a blow. Yet Caleb’s touch on her shoulder was
gentle; and, when he spoke, his voice was strangely dead and
unemotional. So low was it that his meaning rather than his exact words
reached the actress.
“This is _my_ city,” said he. “What I say goes. There is a train to New
York in thirty minutes. If you are in Granite one minute after it
leaves, my police shall arrest you. My witnesses shall make the charge
something that even _you_ will hardly care to stand for. My judge shall
send you to prison for a year. And every paper in New York shall print
the whole story as I choose to tell it. Now go!”
The fear of death and worse than death was in her eyes. She slunk out,
shrunken in aspect to the form of an old and bent woman. Not even—most
beloved trick of stage folk!—did she turn at the portières for a parting
look. The patter of her scared, running feet sounded irregularly on the
marble outer hall. Then the front door slammed, and she was gone.
The final scene between Conover and his son’s wife had endured less than
twenty seconds. It was over, and she had departed before Gerald realized
what had happened. Then, with a cry, he was on his feet and hurrying to
the door. But his father stood in front of it.
“If you’re not cured now,” said Conover, “you never will be. Go back and
ring for your mother’s maid.”
The boy’s mouth was open for a wrathful retort. But embers of the blaze
that had transformed Caleb’s face as he had dismissed the chorus girl
still flickered there. And under their scorching heat Gerald Conover
slunk back, beaten but still muttering defiant incoherences under his
breath.
Mrs. Conover, under Anice’s gentle ministration, was coming to her
senses. She opened her eyes with a gasp of fear, then sat up and looked
apprehensively around.
“She is gone, dear,” whispered Anice, divining her meaning, “and Gerald
didn’t mean what he said. He was excited, that was all. He’s all right
again now. Shall I help you upstairs?”
But Mrs. Conover insisted on being assisted to the nearby sofa, from
which refuge she feebly waved away her maid and vetoed Anice’s further
offices.
“I am all right,” she pleaded under her breath. “Let me stay here. Caleb
hates to have me give way to these heart attacks. I’ll stay till he has
gone to his study. Then——”
“All right again, old lady?” asked Caleb, walking across to the sofa.
“Like me to send for the doctor?”
“No. Yes, I’m quite well again now,” stammered his wife. “Thank you for
asking.”
It was not wholly indifference which had kept Conover from the invalid’s
side. So great had been the unwonted fury that mastered him, he had
dared not speak to either of the women until he was able to some extent
to curb it. His usually iron nerves were still a-quiver, and his voice
was unlike its customary self.
“Until further notice,” he announced dryly, looking from one to the
other, “these ‘pleasant home hours’ are suspended. By request. They’re
too exciting for a quiet man like me. I hope you’ll all try to smother
any disappointment you feel. And now,” turning to the butler, who had
come in answer to his ring, “I’ll see if I can’t get the taste of this
farewell performance of the pleasant hour series out of my mouth before
I start my evening’s work. Gaines, order Dunderberg brought around in
ten minutes.”
“Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Conover, who had imperfectly caught
the order.
“To get into my riding clothes,” answered her husband from the doorway.
“But you spoke about Dunderberg. You’re surely not going to ride
Dunderberg when I’m so shaken up. I shall worry so——”
“Why? _You_ ain’t riding him.”
“But why not ride Sultan? He’s so gentle and quiet and——”
“Letty! do I look as if I was on a still hunt for something gentle and
quiet? I want something that’ll give me a fight. Something that’ll tire
me out and take my mind off black, floppy pompadours and stocking-leg
gloves! Jerry, you come along with me. I want a talk with you.”
“Oh, if only that dreadful horse would die!” sighed Mrs. Conover. “I
never have an instant’s peace while you’re riding him.”
“Rot!” growled Caleb, grinning reassurance at the pathetic little figure
on the sofa. “There never yet was a horse I couldn’t manage or that
could harm _me_. Come along, Jerry.”
He stamped upstairs to his dressing-room followed by the reluctant,
still muttering Gerald.
This was by no means the first time Mrs. Conover had plucked up courage
to entreat her lord not to ride his favorite horse, Dunderberg, the most
vicious, tricky brute in all that horse-breeding State. And never yet
had the Railroader deigned to heed her request. In fact, such opposition
rather pleased him than otherwise, inasmuch as it enhanced, to all
listeners, his own equestrian prowess.
Caleb Conover was a notoriously bad rider. Horsemanship must be learned
before the age of twenty or never at all. And Conover was well past
forty before he threw leg over saddle. But he loved the exercise, and
took special joy in buying and mastering the most unmanageable horses he
could find.
How so wretched a horseman could avert bad falls or even death was a
mystery to all who knew him. It was seemingly by his own sheer will
power and brutal strength of mind and body that he remained triumphant
over the worst horse; was never thrown nor failed to conquer his mount.
It was one of the sights of Granite to see Caleb Conover careering down
the main avenue of the residence district, backing some foaming,
plunging hunter, whose wildest efforts could never shake that stiff,
indomitable figure from its seat. With walloping elbows and jerking
shoulders, the Railroader was wont to thunder his way at top speed up
and down suburban byways; inciting his horse to its worst tricks,
tempting it to buck, kick, wheel or rear. And when the maddened brute at
length indulged in any or all of these manœuvres, a joy of battle would
light the rider’s face as, with unbreakable knee-grip and a
self-possession that never deserted him, he flogged the steed into
subjection.
In telling Letty that there was no horse he could not safely manage and
control Conover had but repeated an oft-made boast—a boast whose truth
he had a score of times proven. He was not a constant equestrian. He
never rode for the mere pleasure of it. In ordinary moments he cared
little for such recreation. But when he was angered, or perplexed, or
desired to freshen jaded nerves or brain, his first order was for his
newest, worst-tempered horse.
As he rode so semi-occasionally, and as the horse he selected was
usually one which even his pluckiest grooms feared to exercise, the
brute in question was fairly certain to be in a state of rampant, rank
“freshness,” and to require the best work of two men to lead him from
the stables to the _porte-cochère_. As few steeds could long withstand
such training as Conover inflicted, he was forever changing mounts. The
horse of the hour would wax so tame and docile as to preclude further
excitement, or would break a blood-vessel or go dead lame in one of the
fierce conflicts with its master. Then a new mount must be sought out.
It was barely a month earlier that Caleb had discovered Dunderberg, and
had bought the great black stallion at an outrageously high price. And
thus far the purchase still delighted him, for Dunderberg not only
showed no signs of cringing to the master’s fiery will, but daily grew
fiercer and more unmanageable.
So, while Mrs. Conover trembled, wept and alternately prayed and watched
the length of driveway beyond her window, the Railroader was wont to
dash at breakneck speed along the farther country roads, atop his huge
black horse, checking the mad pace only for occasional battles-royal
with the ever-fractious beast.
To-night, coming atop the previous excitement of the “pleasant home
hour,” the strain on Letty was too great. Clinging convulsively to
Anice, the poor woman wept with a hysterical abandon that almost
frightened the girl. Tenderly, lovingly as a mother the girl soothed the
trembling old lady; comforting her as only a woman of great heart and
small hand can; quieting at length the shuddering hysterics into
half-stifled sobs.
Had Caleb Conover (upstairs wrestling with an overtight riding boot)
chanced upon the group, he would have been sore puzzled to recognize in
this all-tender, pitying maiden the coldly reserved secretary on whose
unruffled composure and steady nerve he had so utterly come to rely.
“Oh, it’s horrible—_horrible_!” panted Mrs. Conover, finding voice as
the sobs subsided.
“Yes, yes, I know,” soothed Anice. “But it——”
“You _don’t_ know. You can’t know. It isn’t only the horse. It’s
everything! I sometimes wonder how I stand it. Each time it seems as
if——”
“Don’t! Don’t, dear! You’re overwrought and tired. Let me take you
upstairs and——”
“No. It does me good. There’s never been anyone I could talk to. And
sometimes I’ve felt I’d give all this abominable money and everything
just for one hour’s friendship with anyone who really cared.”
“But _I_ care. Really, _really_ I do. Let me help you, won’t you,
please? I want so much to.”
“‘Help’ me?” echoed the weeping woman, with as near an approach to
bitterness as her crushed spirit could muster. “_Help_ me? How can
anyone help one of Caleb Conover’s slaves? And I am the only one of them
all who has no hope of escape. The others can leave him and find work
somewhere else. Even the horses he loves to fight have the satisfaction
of fighting back. But I haven’t courage enough to do either of those
things. What _can_ I do?”
It was the first time in their three years of daily intercourse that
Anice Lanier had seen or so much as suspected the existence of this
feeble spark of resentment in the older woman’s cowed soul. It
dumbfounded her, and left her for the time without power of consoling.
“Do you know, Miss Lanier,” went on Letty, “at one time I hated you?
Yes”—as she noted the pained surprise in the girl’s big, tear-swimming
eyes—“actually hated you. You were all I was not. You were not afraid of
him. He deferred to you. He never deferred to me, or to anyone else but
you since he was born. He never cared for me. And he did care for you.
If I were to die——”
“Mrs. Conover!”
Anice had shaken off Mrs. Conover’s clinging hands, and was on her feet,
her eyes dry, her cheeks blazing.
“Don’t be angry with me! _Don’t!_” whimpered the invalid. “I didn’t mean
any harm. You said you wanted to help me. And oh, if you only knew what
a help it is to be able to speak out for once in my life without fear of
that terrible will power of Caleb’s choking me silent! I don’t hate you
now. I didn’t as soon as I saw you cared nothing for him. For you don’t.
I see more than people think. And—I suppose it’s wicked of me to even
think such things—but when I die it will be good to know Caleb will for
once be balked in his wishes; for you’ll never marry him. I know that.”
“I can’t listen to you!” exclaimed Anice. “You are not yourself or you
wouldn’t talk so. Please——”
“May I come in?”
Both women, with the wondrous art which their sex alone can master, had
dropped into conventional attitudes with their backs to the light by the
time the intruder’s first word was spoken. As Clive Standish passed
through the portières into the library, he saw only that its two
occupants were seated, one reading, the other crocheting, in polite
boredom, each evidently quite willing that their prolonged session of
dreary small talk should be interrupted.
“Good evening, Aunt Letty,” said Clive, as he stooped over the excited
woman and kissed her. “I called to see Mr. Conover on a matter of some
importance. The footman was not sure whether he could—or would—see me or
not. So, while I was waiting for him to find out, I thought I heard your
voice in here and ventured in. Good evening, Miss Lanier. You’ll pardon
my left hand?”
The right he held behind him, yet in one of the mirrors Anice could see
the knuckles were swathed in plaster. The hand he offered, too, was
bruised, cut and discolored.
“I—I had a slight accident,” he said hastily, noting her glance.
“Nothing of importance. I——”
“Mr. Conover has told us of it,” answered Anice. “It was splendid of
you, Clive! You risked your life to——”
“To get out of a fight that my own folly had brought on. That was all.
I’m afraid my tour wasn’t exactly a success. In fact, I fear it will go
down in Mountain State annals as the colossal failure of the century. So
I’m back.”
“You’ve given up?” she asked in quick interest.
“Why? Do you want me to?”
“No.”
Her monosyllable told little. Her eyes, which he alone could see, told
more. Clive was satisfied.
“I have not given up,” he said simply, “and I am not going to.”
“Oh, but, Clive,” put in his aunt, finding her voice at last after the
shock of seeing Standish walk thus boldly into the lion’s den. “You’d
really better give up the whole silly business. I’m sure Mr. Conover
would be so pleased.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied Standish, smiling grimly at Anice over the
old lady’s bobbing head, “but I’m afraid it is a pleasure that’s at
least deferred. The kind that Solomon tells us ‘maketh the heart sick.’
I’m still in the race. Very much in it.”
“But then, why—why have you come here, Clive?” urged Letty nervously.
“Mr. Conover and you are such bad friends. I’m sure there’ll be an awful
scene, just as there was that time four years ago. And I do so hate
scenes. After this evening’s——”
“I’m afraid there may be a ‘scene,’ as you call it,” admitted Clive,
“but it won’t be at all on the order of the one four years ago. And I
hope it won’t be in your presence either, Aunt.”
Again his eyes met Anice Lanier’s. She nodded ever so slightly, and he
knew that when the time should come he could trust her to remove the
timid woman from the danger zone.
“Why do you want to see Mr. Conover?” asked Anice, “or is that an
impertinent——?”
“Not in the least. I want to come to an understanding with him. Affairs
have reached a point where that is necessary.”
“An understanding?”
“Yes. As long as he contented himself with ordering his followers to
lampoon and vilify myself and the League I made no complaint. It was
dirty, but I suppose it was politics. But when he muzzles the press,
orders the police and the mayor of the cities to refuse me fair play,
and sets thugs to attack me and illegally steals the State conventions,
it’s time to have it out with him face to face. That is why I am here,
and why I shan’t leave until I have seen him. I hadn’t meant to say all
this to you,” he added, ashamed of his own heat, “but——”
“Oh, I’m _certain_ Mr. Conover won’t like it!” moaned his aunt. “I’m
quite certain he won’t. Now, if you’d only speak tactfully and
pleasantly to him——”
“Well,” came the Railroader’s strident tones from the hall outside,
“where is he, then?”
The portières were swished aside with a jerk that set the curtain rings
to jingling, and Caleb Conover, in riding dress, hatted, spurred and
slashing his crop against one booted leg, filled the narrow doorway.
Mrs. Conover gave a little gasp of fear. Anice Lanier let fall over her
bright face the mask of quiet reserve it always wore in her employer’s
presence.
Clive rose and took a step toward his unwelcoming host.
And so, for ten seconds, the rival candidates faced each other in
silence—a silence heavy with promise of storm.
CHAPTER VIII
CALEB CONOVER LISTENS AND ANSWERS
“Well,” began Conover, breaking the short pause, “what do _you_ want?”
“I want to speak to you—alone,” answered Standish.
“Come up to my study. Gaines, tell the groom to keep Dunderberg moving.
I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
In silence the Railroader led the way upstairs. He passed into the
study, leaving Clive to follow. Nor, as he seated himself in his big
desk chair, did he request his visitor to sit down. Ignoring these
slights, Clive took up his stand on the opposite side of the desk.
“Now, then,” said Caleb, “get through your business as quick as you can.
What do you want?”
“To speak to you in reference to this campaign.”
“Had enough, eh?”
“Altogether too much of the sort you’ve inflicted on me.”
“Good! You’ve got more sense than I thought. There’s two kinds of fools:
the kind that put their heads in a hornet’s nest once and then have
sense enough to admit they’ve been stung, and the kind that keeps their
heads there because they’re too daffy to see the exit-signs or too
pig-headed to confess that hornet-stings ain’t the most diverting form
of massage. I’m glad to see you belong to the first class. I’d placed
you in the second.”
“But I——”
“But you want to get out of this p’ticular hornet’s nest, I s’pose,
without giving too life-like an imitation of a man shinning down from a
tree, eh? Well, I guess that can be fixed. Sit down. We’ll——”
“You’re mistaken!” broke in Standish, resenting the more civil tone of
his host as he had not resented his former rudeness, “I’m in this fight
to stay. I——”
“Want your cash losses made good! If you——”
“Mr. Conover,” said Clive calmly, though the knuckles that gripped the
table-edge were white with pressure, “when your lackey, Shevlin, made
that same proposition to me, he thought he was making a perfectly
straight offer. And, judging by the standards you’ve taught him, I
suppose the suggestion was almost holy compared with the majority of his
tactics. So I didn’t thrash him. He knew no better; for the same reason
I don’t thrash _you_.”
“That and maybe a few others,” laughed Conover, in no wise offended. “I
climbed up from yard-boy to railroad president by frequently jamming my
fists in where they’d do the most good. I guess you’d have a faint
s’spicion you’d been in a fight before you was through. But I presume
you didn’t come here to-night to give an encore performance of your
grand-stand play at Grafton. It seems I started on the wrong idea just
now. You don’t want to drop out gracefully or to sell out, and you
prefer the soothing attentions of the hornets to——”
“Yes, if you put it that way, Mr. Conover——”
“Hold on a second.”
The Railroader crossed to a screen at the farther end of the room.
Thrusting it aside he said to a stenographer who sat behind it, pencil
and pad in hand:
“We won’t need you any longer. This ain’t going to be that kind of
interview after all. You can go now. Just a little precaution of mine,”
he added to Clive as he returned to the table. “Now you can go on
talking.”
“You were setting a spy to take down what I said!” gasped Clive,
incredulous.
“No. A stenographer to report our little chat. We were a bit short on
campaign litterchoor. But I see it won’t be needed now. Go ahead.”
“I’ve just returned from a tour of the State,” commenced Standish, once
more forcing himself to keep down his temper.
Conover drew a typewritten bundle from a drawer.
“If you were counting on telling me all about it,” he observed, “I can
save you the trouble. Here’s the whole account.”
“Does your ‘account’ include the recital of a mob incited to smash
furniture, insult women and attempt murder? Or of suborned town
officials, bought policemen and muzzled editors? If not, it is
incomplete. I went on that tour prepared to meet all legitimate
obstacles. I met only fraud, violence and the creatures of boss-bought
conspiracy. It is to call you to account for that and to ask how far it
was done by your personal sanction that I have come to see you. Also to
ask if you intend to give me fair play in future.”
“Fair play?” echoed Conover in genuine bewilderment. “Son, this is
politics, not ping pong.”
“Everyone in God’s world is entitled to fair play. And I’m here to
demand it.”
“‘God’s’ world, eh? My friend, when you’ve travelled about it as long as
I have, you’ll find out that the original owner sublet the premises long
ago.”
“It looks so, in the Mountain State, I agree. But I’m trying to act as
local dispossess agent for the present tenant. All men are born equal,
and some of us are tired of being owned by a political boss. We——”
“You’re a terribly original feller, Standish! That remark, now, about
all men being ‘born equal.’ It was made in the first place, wasn’t it,
by a white-wigged, short-panted hero who owned more slaves than he could
count? ‘Born equal!’ Maybe all men are. But by the time they’re out of
swaddling-clothes they’ve got bravely over it. That old Jefferson
proverb’s responsible for more anarchy and scraps, and strikes and
grumbling and hard-luck stories, than all the whole measly dictionary
put together. Get down to business, man. This ain’t a p’litical rally.
Cut out the fine talk, can’t you? My horse is waiting.”
“I’ve told you already what I wish. I want to know if you will fight
like a man for the rest of the campaign, and if the outrages I
encountered on my tour were by your order?”
“That won’t take an awful lot of eloquence to answer. What was done to
you up-State was planned out by me, and it isn’t deuce-high to what’ll
drop on you if you’re still alive when the State Convention——”
“You cur!”
“Meaning _me_?” queried Caleb blandly.
“You cur!” repeated Clive, his last remaining shreds of temper thrown to
the winds. “I was told I’d meet this sort of reception, but I couldn’t
believe there was a man alive who had the crass effrontery to confess he
was a wholesale crook, and that he was going to continue one. You’ve
sapped the integrity, the honesty, the freedom of this city and State.
You’ve made us a byword for every community in America. You’ve trailed
your iniquitous railroad across the State, crushing every smaller and
more honest line, until you are czar of all our traffic. You rob the
people by sending to Legislature your own henchmen, who help you steal
franchises, and who cut down your taxes and throw the burden of
assessment on the very class of people you have already defrauded to the
top of your bent. Corruption of the foulest sort has been smeared by you
all over the face of this commonwealth, till the people are stricken
helpless and speechless under it. Who can help them? Are there ten
lawyers in this State who don’t wear your collar, and whose annual
passes from your road aren’t granted them on the written understanding
that such courtesies are really ‘retainers’? Then, when I try to help
the people you have ground to the dirt—when I try to wipe the filthy
stain from the Mountain State’s shield—even then you will not fight me
fair, as man to man. You stab in the back, like any other common felon,
and you feel so secure in your own stolen position, that you actually
boast of it, and propose to continue your damnable knifing tactics. Why,
Caleb Conover, you don’t even know how vile a _thing_ you are!”
He paused, breathless, still furious. The Railroader was leaning back in
his big chair eyeing the angry man with genuine amusement.
“You’ve got the hang of it!” murmured Caleb, half to himself. “The
regular reformer shout. I wouldn’t have thought it of you. Honestly,
son, it’s hard to take you reformers serious. You’re all so dead sure
you’re saying what’s never been said before, and that you’re discovering
what no one else ever dreamed of. If only I could buy one of you Civic
Leaguers at my own estimate of you, and sell you at your estimate of
yourself, it’d be the biggest deal I ever made. Now don’t get red and
try to think up new platitudes to beller at me. I’ve listened pretty
patient, but I think it’s my turn to do a little shouting, too. I’ve
heard you out. Now, maybe it’ll do you no harm to make the same
return-play to me. Sit down. You came here to reach an understanding,
and get a line on my course, eh? Well, you’ve got a big load of fine
words out of your system in the last few minutes. I’ll answer you as
best I can, and then maybe in future us two’ll understand each other the
better.”
In spite of himself, Clive Standish listened. This thickset, powerful
man, whose blazing temper was proverbial, had attended the young
candidate’s rather turgid arraignment with every evidence of
good-natured interest. He had endured insulting epithet with almost the
air of one who hearkens to a compliment. And, in answering, he had
spoken so moderately, so at variance with his usual mode of address,
that Standish was utterly puzzled, and was half-ashamed of his own
vehemence. What one of the Boss’s myriad moods was this, and what end
had he in view? Clive checked his own impulse to depart. After all,
there was something of justice in what Conover had said about the
courtesy due a man who had listened to such a tirade as his.
Standish remained standing at the table, looking across with unwilling
inquiry at his host, who lounged at ease in his chair, watching the
younger man with a grim smile, as though reading his every thought.
Their relative positions were ludicrously akin to those of judge and
prisoner. And the compelling force that lay behind the amusement in
Caleb’s light eyes strengthened the resemblance.
“In the first place,” said the Railroader, “I think you called me a
‘cur.’ Twice, I believe, you said that. You most likely thought I’d get
mad. A cur _does_ get mad when he’s called bad names. But a grown man’s
too busy to kick the puppy that yelps at his heels. A man of sense keeps
his mouth shut, unless he’s got something to say. If a cur hasn’t
anything else to yelp at, he goes out and picks a scrap with the moon,
or at something else that’s too big or too high up to bother to hit back
when he barks at it. Me, for instance. So we’ll let it go at that, and
we won’t bother to get up a puzzle picture of us both and label it ‘Find
the cur.’ Have a cigar? No? They aren’t campaign smokes. You needn’t ’a’
been afraid of ’em.”
He lighted a gaudily-banded perfecto, puffed it a minute, and went on:
“I don’t know why I’m going to waste time talking to you. I’ve never
took the trouble, before, to defend myself or to try to make other folks
see my view of the case. But you’re a well-meaning chap, for all you’re
such an ass. And maybe something’s due you after the luck I put you up
against on that tour of yours. So I’m just going to squander some words
on you. And after that I’ll ask you to trot off home, for I’ve some
riding to do.”
He shifted his cigar to an angle of his mouth and resumed:
“In the first place, you give me the usual rank old talk about the way I
treat the people of the Mountain State. Why do I boss this City and the
State? Because the people want me to. Why do I run things to suit myself
in my railroads and my legislature? Because the people want me to. Now
you’re getting ready to say that’s a lie. It isn’t. Why don’t I grab the
food off some man’s dinner table? Because he _don’t_ want me to. He’d
yell for the police or pull a gun on me if I tried it. Why do I saddle
that same man with any taxes I choose? Why do I elect my own crowd to
office and work franchises and everything else just as I like? Because
he _does_ want me to. If he didn’t he wouldn’t let me. He could stop me
from stealing his dinner. And he would. He could stop me from grabbing
his State. And he doesn’t. Do you s’pose for a second that I, or Tom
Platt, or Richard Croker, or Charley Murphy, or Matt Quay or any other
boss who ever lived, could have made ten people in the whole world do
what those people didn’t want to? You knew well enough they couldn’t.
Then, why did Platt and Quay and the rest boss the Machine? Why do _I_
boss the Machine? Because the people _want_ to be bossed. Because they’d
rather be led than to lead themselves. Can you find a flaw in that?
Facts is facts, and history is history. Bosses is bosses, and the people
are sheep. Is a shepherd in the herding business for his health and to
amuse and el’vate the sheep? Not he. He’s in the game for the money he
can get out of shearing and occasional butchering. So am I. My own
pocket first, last and always. If it wasn’t me it’d be another shepherd.
And maybe one that’d make the sheep sweat worse’n I do.”
Clive’s lips parted in protest, but Caleb waved him to silence.
“You were going to say some wise thing about the people’s inviolate
rights, eh? We’ve all got ‘inviolate rights.’ But if we leave ’em laying
around loose and don’t stand up for ’em, we can’t expect much pity when
someone else cops ’em away from us. If I try to turn you out of your
house, you’ve got a right to prevent me. And you would. If you sat by
and let me do it, you’d deserve what you got. If I try to turn the
people out of their rights in the Legislature and they stand for it,
who’s got a kick coming? Once in a blue moon some man whose brains have
all run to lungs—nothing personal—gets up and shouts to the people that
they’re being conned. Sometimes—not _this_ time, mind you—they believe
it, and they throw over the Machine and elect a bunch of wall-eyed
reformers that know as much about practical politics as a corn-fed dodo
bird knows about theology. What happens? The city and the State are run
in a way that’d make a schoolboy cry. At the end of one single
administration there’s a record of incompetence and messed-up official
affairs that takes a century to straighten out. The police have been
made so pure they won’t let ice and milk be sold for sick babies on
Sundays, but they haven’t time to keep folks from being sandbagged in
open daylight. The Building Department Commissioners are so
incorruptible they don’t know a brick from a lump of putty. And the
contractors eat up chunks of overpay for rotten work. And so in every
branch of government. The people get wise to all this, and they decide
it’s better to be bled by professionals and to get at least part of
their money’s worth in decent service than it is to be bled just as
heavy by a pack of measly amachoors and get no service at all. So back
they come to the Boss, begging him to get on the job again. Which he
does, being a self-sacrificing sort of a cuss, and glad to help the
‘plain pe-ople.’ Likewise himself.”
“The administration you describe is the result of fanaticism, not real
reform. It——”
“From where I sit, the difference between the two ain’t so great as to
show to the undressed eye. You speak of lawyers and country editors
being bought by my passes. Is there any law making ’em accept those
passes if they don’t want ’em? Could I buy ONE of those men if he wasn’t
for sale? There’s just one thing more, and then your little lesson’ll be
over and you can run home. All through this delightful little ree-union
you’ve kind of took the ‘holier-than-thou’ tone that’s such a pleasing
trait of you reformers when you’re dealing with mere sane folks. Now,
the best thing you can do is to take that fool idea out for a walk and
lose it, for you not only ain’t any better than me, but ain’t half the
man, and never _will_ be half the man I am. You were born with a gold
spoon in your mouth. The spoon was pulled out after you grew up, but not
till you had your education and your profession. What did you do? You’d
had the best advantages money could buy you. And for all that, the most
you could rise to was a measly every-day law practice. That’s all the
dividends the tens of thousands of dollars invested in your future were
ever able to declare, or ever _will_ be able to. _I_ started life dead
broke. No education, no pull, no cash, no prospects. I don’t know just
how rich I am to-day, but no one’s going to call you a liar if you put
it at forty millions. And I’m bossing bigger territory—and bossing with
more power—than half the so-called high and mighty kings of Yurrup. Now,
s’pose _you’d_ started where I did? Where’d you be to-day? You’d be the
‘honest young brakeman on the branch road,’ or at best you’d be ‘our
genial and rising young feller-townsman,’ the second deputy assistant
passenger agent of the C. G. & X. That’s where _you’d_ be. And you know
it. Had you the brains or the sand to get where I am? Not you. Any more
than one of those patent leather ’ristocrats in France had the genius to
win out the Napoleon job. You’re where you started. I’ve kept on rising.
And I’ll rise to the White House before I’m done. Now I ask you, fair
and square, which of us two is the best man, and if you oughtn’t to be
looking up to Caleb Conover instead of——”
“I am the better man,” answered Clive quietly. “And so is any honest
man. And I can look down on you for the same reason any square American
can look down on a political Boss. Because we are honest and you are
not.”
“Well,” vouchsafed Caleb, grudgingly, “that’s an answer anyhow, and it
comes nearer being sense than anything you’ve said so far. But you’re
wrong for all that. You talk about honesty. What’s honesty? The pious
Pilgrim Fathers came here and swindled old Lo, the poor Indian, out of
his country in a blamed sight more raw fashion than I’ve ever bamboozled
the people of the Mountain State. And the Mountain Staters were willing,
while the Indian wasn’t. Yet the old settlers are called ‘nation
builders’ and ‘martyrs,’ and a lot of other hot-air titles, and they get
statues put up to their memories. How about the Uncle Sam’s buying a
whole nation of Filipinos and coolly telling ’em: ‘_I’m_ bossing your
islands now. Listen to me while I soften your rebellious hearts with the
blessed gospel of the gatling gun.’ Yet Uncle Sam’s all right. So’s John
Bull, who done the same trick, only worse, in India and Egypt. No one’s
going to call America or England or the Pilgrim Fathers dishonest and
crooks, is there? Then why do you call Caleb Conover dishonest for doing
the same thing, only a lot more squarely and mercifully? The crook of
to-day is the hero of to-morrow. And I’m no crook at that. Why, Son, a
hundred years from now there’s liable to be a statue stuck up somewhere
of ‘Caleb Conover, Railroader, Champion of the People.’ Honesty, eh?
What _you_ call ‘honesty’ is just a sort of weak-kneed virtue meaning
lack of chance to be something else. ‘Honester than me’ means ‘less
chance than me.’ The honestest community on earth, according to you
reformers’ way of thinking, is in the State Penitentiary. For not a
crime of any sort’s committed there from one year’s end to the other.”
Conover chuckled softly to himself, then continued:
“And there’s something else about me that ought to make ’em sculp a halo
onto that same statue. What I’ve done to build up my pile I’ve done open
and with all the cards on the table. I have called a spade a spade, and
I haven’t referred to it, vague-like, as an ‘industr’l utensil.’ I
haven’t took the Lord in as a silent partner on my deals. What I’ve took
I’ve took, and I’ve said, ‘Whatcher going to do about it?’ I’ve won out
by strength, and I ain’t ashamed of my way of playing the game. I
haven’t talked through my nose about being one of the noble class picked
out by Providence to watch over the wealth that poor folks’d have had
the good of if I hadn’t grabbed it from ’em. And I haven’t tried to
square myself On High by endowing colleges and heathens and libraries
and churches. I guess a sinner’s hush-money don’t make so much of a hit
with the Almighty as these philanthropist geezers seem to think it will.
What I’ve given I’ve given on the quiet and where it’d keep folks from
the poorhouse. When it comes to the final show-down on Judgment Day,
I’ve a sneaking notion the out-and-out pirate—_me_, if you like—will win
out by about seven lengths over the holy hypocrite. That’s another
reason why I tell you you’re wrong when you say I ain’t honest. I don’t
hope to convince you by any of the words I’ve been wasting. If you were
the sort of man reason could reach you wouldn’t be a reformer. I’ve
squandered enough time on you for one evening. Save all the pat replies
that I can see you’re bursting with, and spring ’em at your next
meeting. I’ve no time to listen to ’em now. Good night.”
Unceremoniously as he had entered the room he quitted it, leaving
Standish to go as he would.
“I talked more’n I have since that fool speech of mine at the
reception,” muttered the Railroader as he clattered down the broad
staircase. “But I steered him off from the chance to say what he really
wanted to, and I dodged any scene that would be of use to him in his
campaign. Too bad he’s a Reformer! He’s got red blood in him, the young
idiot. Yes, and he’s not such an idiot either if it comes to that.”
Clive Standish, descending the stairs a moment later, puzzled,
disappointed, vaguely aware that he had somehow been tricked, heard the
shout of a groom and the thundering beat of Dunderberg’s flying hoofs
along the gravel of the drive.
“If he was as much master of the situation, and as content with himself
as he tried to make me think,” reflected Clive as he passed out into the
darkness, “he’d never ride like that.”
Standish went to the League’s headquarters, where for two hours he
busied himself with routine affairs, and tried to shut out memory of the
deep, taunting voice and masterful, amused eyes that had held him
captive, and had turned him from the real purpose of his visit. And in
time the light, sneering eyes deepened into liquid brown, and the
sonorous voice into Anice Lanier’s. For whatever theme might form any
particular verse of the day’s song for Clive, he noticed of late that
Anice was certain to be the ever-recurrent refrain.
Wearied with his evening’s work, Standish returned late to his own
rooms. His man said, as he helped the candidate off with his light
covert coat:
“A messenger boy brought a letter for you, sir, about an hour ago. He
said there was no answer. I left it on your desk.”
Clive picked up the typewritten envelope listlessly and tore it open. It
contained a note, also typewritten, and a thicker enclosure. He read:
“_Anonymous letters carry a stigma. Perhaps that is why you did not
profit by my last one. I have good reasons for not signing my name. And
you have good reason to know by now that what I write is the truth. Be
wiser this time. I enclose a list of the County Chairmen who have sold
out to Conover, the name of the Chairman to be chosen for next week’s
State Convention, and a rough draft of the plan to be used for your
defeat. Next to each detail you will find my suggestion for blocking it.
You owe it to yourself and to the people to take advantage of what I
send you._”
“He’s right, whoever he is!” exclaimed Clive, half-aloud. “It’s the only
way I can fight Conover on equal terms. There’s no sense in my standing
on a foolish scruple when so much hangs on the result of the
Convention.”
He snatched up the enclosure which had slipped to the floor. Irresolute
he held it for almost a minute, his firm lips twitching, his eyes cloudy
with perplexity. Then, with a sigh of self-contempt he slipped note and
enclosure in a long envelope, addressed it and rang for his man.
“See that this is delivered to-night,” he ordered.
The valet, as he left the room, glanced surreptitiously at the
envelope’s address. To his infinite bewilderment he saw the
superscription:
“_Caleb Conover, Esq., 167 Pompton Avenue. Personal._”
There was a terrible half hour in the Mausoleum that night.
CHAPTER IX
A CONVENTION AND A REVELATION
The day of the State Convention!
The Convention Hall at Granite was a big barn-like building, frequently
used for church and school entertainments, and occasionally giving a
temporary home to some struggling theatrical company. For the holding of
the convention which was to name the Governor of the Mountain State a
feeble attempt at decorating the vast interior had been made by
Conover’s State chairman.
On the front of the dingy little stage were a table and chairs for the
officers, and a series of desks for the reporters of the local and New
York newspapers. Across the back hung a ragged drop curtain showing a
garden scene in poisonous greens and inflammatory reds. Stuck askew on
the proscenium arch were crudely-drawn portraits of Jefferson and Andrew
Jackson. Between these alleged likenesses of Democracy’s sponsors, Billy
Shevlin had, by inspiration and acclaim, caused a huge crayon picture of
Caleb Conover himself to be hung.
This monstrous trio of ill-assorted portrait parodies were the first
thing that struck the eye as one entered the main door at the front end
of the hall. On seeing them, grim old Karl Ansel had cast about him
until he located Shevlin and a group of the Railroader’s other
lieutenants.
“Say, Billy,” he drawled in tones that penetrated the farthest corners
of the auditorium, “what did you want to show your ignorance of the
Scriptures for by hanging Conover’s picture in the middle with Jackson
and Jefferson on the outside? You’ve got things reversed. In the
original it was the Just Man who hung between two thieves. You ought to
have put your mug and Conover’s up there with Clive Standish in the
centre, if you wanted to carry out the right idea.”
And Shevlin, in no wise comprehending, looked for the first time with
somewhat less pride on his artistic work, and waxed puzzled at the roar
of laughter that swept over the massed delegates.
“Them pictures set the Boss back fifteen dollars apiece,” he began, in
self-justification, “an’——”
“And like most of the crowd here,” finished Ansel, “they were sold to
Conover before the convention began.”
There was the usual noise and tramping of feet and clamoring of brass
bands, the customary rabble of uniformed campaign clubs with their gaudy
banners and pompous drum-majors about the hall and in it, for an hour
before the time that had been set for the calling of the convention.
Here, there and everywhere circulated the busy lieutenants of Boss
Conover. Their master, with a little coterie of chosen lieutenants moved
early into his headquarters in one of the rooms at the rear of the
stage, where he sat like some wise old spider in the heart of his web,
sending out warnings, advice and admonitions to his under-strappers.
Although Conover was leaving no ravelled ends loose in his marvellously
perfect machine, he took his wonted precautions more through force of
habit and for discipline’s sake than through any necessity. He felt
calmly confident of the result. He had looked upon his work and he had
seen that it was good. Even had Standish been the choice of a majority
of the people in all eight counties of the State, it would have availed
him little, for through the routine tricks whereof the Railroader was
past master, his young opponent was at the last able to control the
votes of but two counties—Matawan and Wills.
Standish’s contesting delegates from the other six counties sat sullen
and grim in the gallery. Fraudulent Conover delegates, who had usurped
the formers’ places by the various ruses so successfully put into action
at the caucuses, held the credentials and occupied the seats belonging
by rights to the Leaguers on the floor of the Convention Hall. There the
Machine delegates smilingly sat and awaited the moment when they should
name their Boss as candidate for Governor.
From the seats of the usurpers there went up a merry howl of derision as
Standish’s two little blocks of delegates from Matawan and Wills marched
in and took their places well down in front, where they formed a
pitifully small oasis among the Conover delegates from Bowden, Carney,
Haldane, Jericho, Sparta and Pompton counties.
There was no cheering by the Standish delegates on the floor of the
convention. Nine out of ten knew that it was practically a hopeless
fight into which they were about to plunge, and they knew, too, that not
one of them would have been given his rightful place as a delegate, had
it not been that even Conover feared to outrage sentiment in those
ever-turbulent rural counties, as he had done in the larger and more
“loyal” sections of the State.
Karl Ansel, with an inscrutable grin on his long, leathery face, might
have sat for a picture of a typical poker player, as he slipped into his
place at the head of the Wills County delegation. If the shadow of
defeat was in his heart, it did not rest upon his lignum vitæ features.
What mattered it that his every opponent was smugly aware that the
League’s cards were deuces? It was Karl’s business to wear the look of a
man secure behind a pat flush. And he wore it. But at heart he was sore
distressed for the hopes of the brave lad he had learned to like so
well. And, as he watched the swelling ranks of Conover delegates, his
sorrow hardened into white-hot wrath.
Standish was nowhere in sight. Following the ordinary laws of campaign
etiquette, he did not show himself before the delegates in advance of
the nomination; but, like Conover, sat in temporary headquarters behind
the stage. About him were a little knot of Civic Leaguers, some of them
men who had run the risk of personal violence in the campaign in their
fight to obtain a square deal for the young reformer against the
Juggernaut onrush of the Machine. One and all they were Job’s
comforters, for they knew it would take a miracle now to snatch the
nomination from the Railroader’s grip.
Promptly at twelve o’clock Shevlin, in his newly acquired capacity of
State Chairman, called the convention to order. He had judiciously
distributed bunches of his best trained shouters where they would do the
most good. This claque, glad to earn their money, kept an eye on their
sub-captains and cheered at the slightest provocation. They cheered
Shevlin as he brought the gavel down sharply on the oak table in front
of him, and went through the customary rigmarole of announcing the
purposes of the convention. They cheered when he named the secretaries
and assistant secretaries who would act until the permanent organization
had been effected. And between times they cheered just for the joy of
cheering.
Through the din the little square of Standish delegates from Wills and
Matawan sat grim and silent, while the contesting delegates in the
gallery above muttered to one another under their breath their yearnings
for the opportunity to take personal payment on the bodies of those who
had ousted them from their lawful places.
Both sides knew that the first and last test of strength would come upon
the selection of the Committee on Credentials, since it was to this
committee that the contests of the six larger counties for the right to
sit in the convention would go for settlement. By an oversight common to
more than one State, there was no clause in the party laws setting forth
the procedure to be followed in the selection of the committee of a
State convention. At preceding conventions the chairman had invariably
(and justly) ruled that only delegates whose seats were not contested
should be entitled to a hand in the selection of the Committee on
Credentials, for custom holds that to permit delegates whose seats are
contested to have a hand in the selection of the committee, would be
like allowing men on trial to sit as jurors.
On the observance of this unwritten rule hinged Clive Standish’s last
and greatest hope. If this precedent were to be followed now, it would,
of course, as he had pointed out to the doubting Ansel, result in the
selection of a committee by the Standish delegates from Wills and
Matawan counties, since in those counties alone there were no contests.
This must mean a fair struggle. On it Clive staked his all. Staked it,
forgetting the endless resource and foresight of his foe. For Caleb
Conover had no quixotic notion of giving his rival any advantage
whatever. On the preceding night he had written out his decree. This
command Shevlin now hastily read over before acting on it:
“_Announce that the chairman rules there shall be three members of the
Committee on Credentials from each county, regardless of that county’s
voting strength, and that the delegates holding the credentials from
each county shall be allowed to choose those committeemen._”
To the layman such an order may mean little. To the convention it meant
everything. Six counties were, officially, for Conover. Two for
Standish. Thus eighteen of Caleb’s adherents could, and would, vote to
ratify the seating of the Railroader’s delegates. The opponents of this
weird measure could muster a numerical force of but six.
Meanwhile, the preliminary organization of the convention had been
effected without much delay. The Standish delegates, knowing the
futility of making a fight at this time, had raised merely a perfunctory
opposition to the nomination of Bourke as temporary chairman. Through
Bourke (by way of Shevlin) Conover now proclaimed his plan of choosing
the all-important Committee on Credentials.
Bourke, well drilled, repeated the decision in a droning monotone.
Instantly the convention was in the maddest uproar. All semblance of
order was lost. Bedlam broke loose. In the gallery the contesting
Standish delegates writhed in impotent rage, leaning far over the rail,
shaking their fists and howling down insult, curse and threat.
On the floor the delegates from Wills and Matawan were already upon
their feet, yelling furious protests, shrieking “Fraud;” “Robbery!” and
kindred pleasantries, without trying or hoping to secure recognition
from the chair.
Foreseeing the inevitable trend of affairs, the Conover “heelers” and
the fraudulent delegates from the six larger counties had been prepared
for this. At a signal from Billy Shevlin they burst into a deafening
uproar of applause.
The furtive-faced Bourke rapped on the table, but the bang of his heavy
gavel was unheard. The Standish delegates would not be quieted, and the
Conover crowd did not want to be.
A dozen fist-fights started simultaneously. A ’longshoreman—Conover
district captain from one of the “railroad” wards of Granite—wittily
spat in the face of a vociferating little farmer from Wills County, and
then stepped back with a bellow of laughter at his own powers of
repartee. But others understood the gentle art of “retort courteous”
almost as well as he. Losing for once his inherited New England calm,
Karl Ansel drove his big gnarled fist flush into the grinning face of
the dock-rat, and sent him whirling backward amid a splintering of
broken seats.
As the ’longshoreman staggered to his feet, wiping the blood from his
face, the sergeant-at-arms (foreman of a C. G. & X. section gang), made
a rush for Ansel, but prudently held back as the gaunt old man fell on
guard and grimly awaited his new opponent’s onset.
Ansel, smarting and past all control, ploughed his way down the main
aisle, and halting below the stage, shook his clenched fist at Caleb’s
crayon likeness.
“I’ve seen forty pictures of Judas Iscariot in my time,” he thundered,
apostrophizing the portrait in a nasal voice that rose high above the
clamor, “and no two of them looked alike. But by the Eternal, they _all_
were the living image of YOU!”
Then he went down under an avalanche of Conover rowdies, giving and
taking blows as he was borne headlong to the floor. Through the tumult,
the pounding of Bourke’s gavel upon the table was like the unheeded
rat-tat of a telegraph ticker in a tornado. It was fifteen minutes
before a semblance of order had been restored. By that time there were
on every side a kaleidoscopic vista of bleeding noses, torn clothing,
and battered, wrathful faces.
Thus it was that, at the cost of a brief interim of fruitless rioting,
the Machine had its way. Over the hopeless protests and bitter
denunciations of the tricked minority the empty form of choosing the
Committee on Credentials was carried through. As a foreseen result,
Standish had but six members on the committee, three from Wills and
three from Matawan, while from the Conover faction eighteen were to sit
in judgment upon the merits of their own cause.
The contest was over. The Standish delegates offered but a perfunctory
opposition to the work of choosing the Committees on Organization and
Platform. This much having been done, the convention took the usual
recess, leaving the committees to go into session in separate rooms back
of the stage.
The delegates filed out, the men from Wills and Matawan angry and silent
in their shamed defeat, those from the six victorious counties crowing
exuberant glee at their easy triumph.
The adjournment announced, Clive slipped out of the Convention Hall by a
rear entrance, and went across to his private office at the League
rooms. He wanted to be alone—away from even the staunchest friends—in
this black hour. Against all counsel and experience, against hope
itself, he had hoped to the last. His bulldog pluck, his faith in his
mission, had upheld him above colder, saner reason. Even the repeated
warnings of Ansel had left him unconvinced. Up to the very moment
Conover’s final successful move was made Standish had hoped. And now
hope was dead.
He was beaten. Hopelessly, utterly, starkly beaten. From the outset
Conover had played with him and his plans, as a giant might play with a
child. It had been no question of open battle, with the weaker
antagonist battered to earth by the greater strength of his foe. Far
worse, the whole campaign had been a futile struggle of an enmeshed
captive to break through a web too mighty for his puny efforts, while
his conqueror had sat calmly by, awaiting a victory that was as sure as
the rise of the sun.
Standish knew that in a few minutes he would be able to pull himself
together and face the world as a man should. In the interim, with the
hurt animal’s instinct, he wanted to be alone.
Save for a clerk in the antechamber, the League’s rooms were deserted.
Everyone was at the convention. The clerk rose at Clive’s entrance and
would have spoken, but the defeated candidate passed unheeding into his
own office, closing the door behind him.
Then, stopping short, his back to the closed door, he stared,
unbelieving, at someone who rose at his entrance and hurried forward,
hands outstretched, to greet him.
“I knew you would come here!” said Anice Lanier. “I _felt_ you would, so
I hurried over as soon as they adjourned. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
He still stared, speechless, dumbfounded. She had caught his
unresponsive hands, and was looking up into his tired, hopeless eyes
with a wealth of pity and sympathy that broke through the mask of blank
misery on his face, and softened the hard lines of mouth and jaw into a
shadow of a smile.
“It was good of you to come,” he said at last. “I thought I couldn’t
bear to see anyone just now. But—it’s so different with you. I——”
He ceased speaking. His overstrung nerves were battling against a
childish longing to bury his hot face in those cool little white hands
whose lightest touch so thrilled him, and to tell this gentle,
infinitely tender girl all about his sorrows, his broken hopes, his
crushed self-esteem. In spirit he could feel her arms about his aching
head, drawing it to her breast; could hear her whispered words of
soothing and encouragement.
Then, on the moment, the babyish impulse passed and he was himself
again, self-controlled, outwardly stolid, realizing as never before that
the price of strength is loneliness.
“I am beaten,” he went on, “but I think, we made as good a fight as we
could. Perhaps another time——”
She withdrew her hands from his. Into her big eyes had crept something
almost akin to scorn.
“You are giving up?” she asked incredulously. “You will make no further
effort to——”
“What more is to be done? The Committee on Credentials——”
“I know. I was there. It’s all been a wretched mistake from the very
beginning. Oh, _why_ were you so foolish about those letters?”
“Letters? What letters?”
“The letters sent you with news of Mr. Conover’s plans for——”
“Those anonymous letters I got? What do _you_ know——”
“I wrote them,” said Anice Lanier.
CHAPTER X
ANICE INTERVENES
“You wrote them? _You_ wrote them?” muttered Standish, over and over,
stupid, dazed, refusing to believe, to understand.
“Yes,” she said, “I wrote them. And I wrote one to Mr. Ansel. He was
wiser than you. He tried to profit by what I——”
“And I—_I_ thought it might be Gerald Conover.”
“Gerald? He never knew any of the more secret details of the campaign.
His father couldn’t trust him.”
“And he _did_ trust _you_.”
Clive had not meant to say it. He was sorry before the words had passed
his lips. Yet it was the first lucid thought that came to him as his
mind cleared from the first shock of Anice’s revelation. He knew how
fully Conover believed in this pretty secretary of his; how wholly the
Railroader had, in her case, departed from his life rule of universal
suspicion. That she should thus, coldbloodedly, calculatingly, have
betrayed the trust of even such an employer as Caleb was monstrous. He
could not reconcile it with anything in his own long knowledge of her.
The revelation turned him sick.
“You despise me, don’t you?” she asked. There was no shame, no faltering
in her clear young voice.
“I have no right to—to judge anyone,” he stammered. “I——”
“You despise me.” And now it was a statement, not a query.
“No,” he said, slowly, trying to gauge his own tangled emotions, “I
don’t. I don’t know why I don’t, but I don’t. I should think anyone else
that did such a thing was lower than the beasts. But you—why, _you_ are
yourself. And the queen can do no wrong. I’ve known you nearly all your
life. If it had been possible for you to harbor a mean or dishonest
impulse I’d have been the first person on earth to guess it. Because no
one else would have cared as I did. As I _do_. I don’t understand it at
all. And just at first it bowled me over, and a whole rush of disloyal
thoughts and doubts came over me. But I know now it’s all right,
somehow, for it’s _you_.”
“You mean,” exclaimed the girl, wonderingly, “that after what I’ve told
you, you trust me?”
“Why, of course.”
“And you don’t even ask me to explain?”
“If there was anything I had a right to know—that you wanted me to
know—you’d have explained of your own accord.”
She looked at him long, searchingly. Her face was as inscrutable as the
Sphinx’s, yet when she spoke it was of a totally different theme.
“What are you going to do?” she inquired.
“Do?” he repeated, perplexed.
“Yes, about the campaign.”
“There’s nothing to do. I am beaten. When the convention meets, in half
an hour, Conover will be nominated. Only my two little blocks of
delegates will be left to oppose him, against all that whole——”
“Yes; yes, I know that,” she interposed, “but what then?”
“That is the end, I suppose. Perhaps by the next gubernatorial
campaign——”
“The next? _This_ campaign hasn’t fairly begun yet. Do you mean to say
you are going to sit by with folded hands and accept defeat?”
“What else is left?”
“Everything is left. You have tried to fight an all-powerful machine, to
fight it on its own ground, along its own lines, yet refusing to use its
own weapons or to guard against them. And you have failed. The _real_
fight begins now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you must call on the people at large to help you. You have
aroused them. Already there is so much discontent against Boss rule that
Mr. Conover is troubled. You have no right to abandon the Cause now that
you’ve interested others in it. Put yourself in the people’s hands.”
“You mean, to——?”
“To declare yourself an independent candidate.”
“‘Bolt’ the Democratic ticket? It——”
“It is against custom, but good men have done it. In this battle, as I
understand it, there is no question of party issues. It is the people
against the Machine. Can’t you see?”
“Yes,” he replied, after a moment of hesitation, “I see. And you are
right. But it means only the courting of further defeat. What Conover
has already done in muzzling the press and using other crooked tactics,
he will continue to do. My speeches won’t be allowed to circulate. My
meetings will be broken up. More Conover men will register than can be
found on the census list. And on Election Day there will be the usual
ballot frauds. All the voting machinery is in Conover’s hands. Even if I
won I would be counted out at the polls. No——”
“Wait! If I can clear the way for you, if I can insure you a fair
chance, if I can prevent any frauds and force Mr. Conover to leave the
issue honestly to the people of the Mountain State—if I can do all this,
then will you declare yourself an independent candidate, and——?”
“But how can _you_—a girl—do all this?”
“I’ll explain that to you afterwards. But it won’t be in any unfair or
underhand way. You said just now you trusted me. Can’t you trust me in
this, too?”
“You know I can.”
“And you’ll do as I ask?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
“It’s worth trial. I’ll do it.”
“Then I shall be the first to congratulate the future Governor.”
“Anice!”—the old-time boyish impetuosity she so well remembered flashing
into one of its rare recurrences—“if I win this fight—if I am elected
Governor—I shall have something worth while at last to offer you. If I
come to you the day I am elected——”
“I shall congratulate you only as I would any other friend.”
His lips tightened as at a blow. For a moment neither spoke. It was
Clive who broke the silence.
“I have said it awkwardly,” he began. “If it had been less to me I might
have found more eloquence. I love you. I think I have always loved you.
You know that. A woman always knows. I love you. I loved you in the old
days, when I was too poor to have the right to speak. What little I
am—what little I may have achieved—is for _you_. I have not made much of
myself. But that I’ve made anything at all is due to you. In everything
I have done, your eyes and your smile have been before me. At heart,
I’ve laid every success at your feet. At heart I’ve asked your faith and
your pardon for each of my failures. And, whether you care or not, it
will always be the same. That one dear ambition will spur me on to make
the very best of myself. My victories shall be your victories whether
you wish it or not. Perhaps that seems to you presumptuous or foolish?”
“No.”
There was no perceptible emotion in the half-whispered word. From it
Clive could glean nothing. Presently he went on:
“I think whenever you see a man trying to make the most of all that is
in him, and wearing out his very soul in this breakneck American race
for livelihood, you’ll find there is some woman behind it all. It is for
her, not for his own selfish ambition, that he is fighting. Sometimes
she crowns his victory. Sometimes he wins only the thorn-crown. But the
glory of the work and the winning are hers. Not his. Now you know why I
entered this Governorship fight, and why I am willing to keep it up. Oh,
sweetheart, I _love_ you so. You _must_ understand, now, why I longed to
come to you in my hour of triumph and——”
“You would have come too late,” she said in that same enigmatic
undertone.
“_Anice._”
There was a world of pain in his appeal, yet she disregarded it; and,
with face averted, hurried on:
“Would you care for—for the love of a girl who made you wait until you
could buy her with fame and an income? Do I care for the love of a man
who holds that love so cheaply he must accompany its gift with a
Governorship title——?”
“And now,” she observed, some minutes later, as she strove to rearrange
her tumbled crown of rust-colored hair before the tiny patch of office
mirror, “and now, if you can be sensible for just a little while, we’ll
go back to the convention. And I’ll explain to you about those letters.
The anonymous ones.”
“It’s all right. I don’t have to be told. I——”
“But I have to tell you. That’s the worst of being a girl.”
The crowd had trooped back into the Convention Hall. Gerald Conover had
not been at the earlier session, but now, his sallow face flushed with
liquor, he sat silent and dull-eyed among a party of noisy young
satellites, in one of the dingy, chicken-coop boxes at the side of the
stage.
He had evidently been drinking hard. In fact, since his wife’s visit to
Granite, the previous week, the youngster had seldom if ever been wholly
sober. Nor was his habitual apathy all due to drink.
The Conover machine, having greased the wheels and oiled the cogs, did
not propose to lose any time in running its Juggernaut over the young
reformer who had dared to brave an entrenched and ruthless organization.
Amid a hullabaloo Bourke called the conference to order, ending his
formula with the equally perfunctory request:
“All gents kindly r’frain from smokin’!”
At the word a hundred matches were struck, in scattered volley, from all
corners of the place. For nothing else so inflames the desire to smoke
as does its unenforceable prohibition. Thus, amid clouds of malodorous
campaign tobacco smoke, was the sacrifice to the Machine consummated.
The Committee on Resolutions offered a perfunctory platform filled with
the customary hackneyed phrases, lauding the deeds of Democracy and
denouncing the Republican party. As the Republicans had never won a
victory in the Mountain State since 1864, these platitudes were
provocative of vast yawns and of shuffling of feet as the delegates
impatiently awaited the call to the slaughter.
The six Standish men on the Platform Committee had prepared a minority
report, but on the advice of Ansel they did not present it.
The Committee on Organization, by a vote of eighteen to six, offered a
report nominating Bourke, temporary chairman, to succeed himself as
permanent chairman.
Then, while the Conover claque hooted joyously and the Standish men sat
by in helpless silence, the finishing stroke was delivered.
Two reports were offered from the Committee on Credentials, one of the
minority, signed by the six members from Wills and Matawan, recommending
the seating of the contesting Standish delegates from the other six
counties; the other, signed by the eighteen Conover members of the
committee, recommending that the delegates holding credentials be
allowed to retain their seats.
The majority report was jammed through, while Shevlin’s noble army of
brazen-lunged shouters cheered, screeched and blew tin horns.
In his den behind the stage Caleb Conover’s mouth corners twisted in a
grim smile of satisfaction as the babel of noise reached him. From some
mysterious source Shevlin had produced a half-dozen bottles of
champagne, and there, in the room of the successful candidate, corks
were drawn and success was pledged to “the Mountain State’s next and
greatest Governor,” with Caleb’s time-honored slogan, “To hell with
reform!” as a rider.
In another room, directly across the stage, a very different scene was
in action. Karl Ansel had left his seat in the Wills County delegation,
turning over the floor leadership of the forlorn Standish hope to Judge
Shelp, of Matawan; and had gone direct to Standish’s quarters. The room
had been empty when he entered, but before he had waited thirty seconds,
the door was flung open and Clive hurried in.
Ansel looked sharply at him. Then in astonished bewilderment. He had
expected to find the beaten man dejected, bereft of even his customary
strong calm. On the contrary, Standish, his face alive with resolve and
with some other impulse that baffled even Ansel’s shrewd observation,
came into the place like a whirlwind. Kicking aside the litter of dusty
stage properties and dingy, discolored hangings that were piled near the
door, he made his way to Karl and grasped his hand.
“How goes it?” he asked. “I’m sorry to be late. I thought——”
“Well, Boy, it’s all up,” said Ansel. “Some fool said once that virtue
was its own reward, and I guess it just naturally has to be. It never
gets any other. In half an hour from now Caleb Conover will be nominated
for Governor, and we will be bowing our necks for his collar, and
pledging ourselves to support him and his dirty gang, just as we always
have in the past and just as we always will in the future, I presume. We
put up a good fight and an honest one, but you see where it’s landed us.
So far as we are concerned, it’s all over but the shouting.”
And the grim old New Englander dropped his hand upon the shoulder of the
defeated candidate with an awkward gesture that was half a caress.
“You’re mistaken,” retorted Clive, “the shouting has just begun. Ansel,
I have made up my mind. A man owes more to his State than he owes to his
party. Political regularity is one thing, and common decency is another.
I marched into this convention a free man, with nobody’s collar on my
neck, and I’m going to march out in the same way.”
“What?” almost shouted Ansel. “You’re not going to bolt?”
“Yes, I am,” answered Standish. “And I’m going to bolt right now before
the nomination is made.”
“But, man,” protested Ansel, “think of it—the irregularity of it! You’ll
be branded as a bolter and a renegade, and a traitor and a lot of other
things. Why, man alive, it’ll _never_ do.”
“It _will_ do,” responded Standish. “I have it all planned. If we walk
out of this convention now, we are going to take some of the delegates
with us. I believe that the Independents will indorse us, and I believe
that the Republicans will indorse us; if we take this stand. I believe
that there are thousands of Democrats who think more of the State than
they do of any one man or any one party. They have followed Conover
because there was no one else to follow. Yes, _I’m_ going to bolt, and
I’m going out there now and tell these people why I do it.”
“But look here, Standish,” remonstrated Ansel, “that’s mighty near as
irregular as the bolting itself, going out there and making a speech. No
candidate’s ever supposed to show his face to the convention until after
the nomination is made. You know that, don’t you? Then, after the
nomination he comes out either to accept it or to promise his support to
the winner. You’ll bust the party traditions all to flinders.”
“Very well,” assented Clive, “if I can smash the Machine, too, it’s all
I ask. I tell you my mind is made up. This convention has been a
mockery, a farce. You know how many voters were with us, and you know
the deal our delegates got. The time’s come in this State to draw up a
new Declaration of Independence. And, right now, I’m going to be the man
to start the ball rolling.”
“But, hold on!” began Ansel. Clive did not hear. Brushing past the lank
manager, he walked out of the room and made his way to the front of the
platform. Karl, muttering perplexedly, followed him.
As the young candidate’s tall figure emerged from the wings, a buzz of
wonder went up from the delegates on the floor below, for, as Ansel had
said, such an advent at such a time was without precedent. But there was
neither hisses from the Conover crowd nor cheers from the corner where
the survivors of the Standish hope sat. The delegates were too
astonished to make any demonstration.
Straight across the stage Standish strode. Shevlin, hurrying out from
Conover’s room, made as though to bar his way, but gave place before the
other’s greater bulk, and fled to tell the Railroader what was afoot.
With Ansel still behind him, Standish kept on until he reached the table
beside which the chairman sat. At his coming Bourke jumped nervously to
his feet.
“Hey! This ain’t regular,” he began, unconsciously copying Ansel’s
words. “The nomination’s just goin’ to begin, and we——”
But he could get no further. Standish pushed him aside, ignoring the
chairman as completely as if he were one of the battered stage
properties.
Dropping one hand upon the table, he faced the crowd, his whole being
alert with tense nervous force. A low murmur, like a ground swell, ran
from row to row of seats, and found its echo in the galleries, where
hundreds of the townspeople had packed themselves to hear the nominating
speeches, and to witness, with varying emotions, the crowning victory of
Caleb Conover.
In the midst of a silence in which the fall of the proverbial pin would
have sounded like the early morning milk wagon, Clive Standish began the
most unusual speech that a Mountain State convention had ever heard.
“My friends——”
From Shevlin’s rooters came a volley of hisses and cat-calls, but the
disturbance and the disturbers were speedily squelched. From the
galleries and from the back of the stage, where many prominent townsfolk
sat, there sprang up a roll of protest, so menacing in its tone, that
the half-drunken thugs’ cheer-leaders deemed it the better part of valor
to draw into their shells and remain thereafter mute.
“My friends,” repeated Standish, his powerful voice echoing from floor
to roof, “Abraham Lincoln freed the black men forty odd years ago. It’s
time that somebody freed the white brother. For years this State has
groaned under the tribute of a relentless Machine, under the rule of a
railroad that was all stomach and no conscience, all bowels and no
heart, all greed and no generosity. Our party—and with shame I say
it—has been turned into a vest-pocket asset of this vile corporation.
For months past, and more especially to-day, you have seen what its
power is, as opposed to the power of the more honest citizens of our
party. It won to-day, it won yesterday, and it won the day before. It
always has won. It rests with us here to-day, now and in this hour, to
decide whether a new Proclamation of Emancipation is to be issued or
whether the great Democratic party in the Mountain State shall continue
to be the chattel, the credulous, simple, weak-kneed, backboneless,
hopeless, helpless victim of the greediest, most corrupt railroad that
ever trailed its steel shackles across the face of the earth. Whether or
not the Boss-guided Machine shall beat us to earth and hold us there
forever. We have tried reforming the party from the inside, and we have
failed. Has the time come to reform it from the outside?”
He paused, and the answer came. From the Conover hosts went up a shout
of “No! No!” mingled with hiss and groan. But instantly, from a great
scattered mass of the audience, and from the Standish delegates on the
floor, there arose an outburst of cheering that drowned the barking
negatives of what had been but ten short minutes before a majority of
that convention.
The effect of this outburst was diverse on its hearers. With Standish
himself it acted as a tonic, as an electric battery which gave him added
force and vigor for what he had yet to say. Karl Ansel it seemed for the
moment to stupify and paralyze. Conover’s lieutenants it threw into a
state of consternation, which approached frenzy, panic, demoralization.
They ran aimlessly to and fro, conferring excitedly in hoarse whispers.
Conover, alone, from his den at the rear of the stage, smiled to himself
and gave no other sign of interest.
Standish was speaking again, and now behind him stood Karl Ansel
recovering from his amazement, and intent to catch his leader’s every
word.
“I tell you,” thundered Clive, beside himself with excitement, “we have
got to act—and to act _now_. I tell you that the people of this State,
irrespective of party, are waiting for half a chance to throw off the
yoke of the railroad—of the Machine. All over this country of ours
bosses are being overthrown. They are going down to ruin in the wreckage
of their own Machines; and it is the PEOPLE who are downing them. The
day of Bossism is passing—passing forever. We came into this convention
as free men. _Some_ of us did. And I for one propose to walk out of it a
free man. If we go before the people of this State on the issue of
honest government as opposed to dishonesty, I tell you that we will
_win_. It only needs a man with a match, and the nerve to use that
match, to start a conflagration that will burn party ties to cinders and
leave a free, emancipated people.
“Let them call me bolter, if they will! Let them call me traitor,
ingrate, renegade! I would rather be a bolter than a thief. I would
rather rip my party, dearly as I love it, to rags and tatters, than to
sacrifice my own self-respect any longer! I would rather see the
Democratic party pass from existence altogether than to see it continue
the tool and the creature of greed and dishonesty.
“Yes, they may call me bolter, and properly so, for I am going to bolt
this convention! Is there a man who will follow me out of doors? Out of
the filthy atmosphere of this Machine-ridden, Boss-owned convention,
into the pure sunshine of God’s own people?”
In the midst of an indescribable tumult, in which hisses and cheers were
madly intermingled, Clive Standish leaped off the platform, cleared the
orchestra railing and strode up the middle aisle toward the open door at
the far end of the hall.
And then a strange thing occurred. Karl Ansel, as a man wakened from a
dream, rubbed his eyes, and peered for a moment at Clive’s retreating
back. Then with a yell that shook the rafters he, too, bounded over the
rail and hastened up the aisle behind his leader.
The delegates from Wills and Matawan counties arose as one man, forming
in procession behind Ansel and Standish.
Down the steps from the gallery came not one, nor a dozen, but
nine-tenths of those who had heard the speech, including the very cream
of the representative business element of Granite.
The remarkable scene was over in almost less than it takes to tell of
it. In a daze sat the abandoned convention. Glancing about them, even
the Conover delegates on the floor discovered here and there vacant
chairs, gaps in their own solid ranks, where some one, weaker perhaps
than the others—or perhaps stronger—had been moved by the furious
oratory of Clive Standish to join that procession which even now was
rolling out of the front door into the quiet, gaslit street like a
living avalanche.
Bourke managed to pull the remnants of the convention back into some
sort of shape. The delegates went through the form of nominating
Conover. A quantity of hand-made enthusiasm burst forth; and then,
without a speech from the successful nominee, the great occasion wound
up in a roar of cheers, shouts and blaring music.
“There wasn’t any stereopticon stunts done while I was out of the room,
was there?” asked Billy Shevlin as, at the close of the proceedings, he
and Bourke repaired to Conover’s den behind the stage.
“’Course not,” answered the chairman. “Why?”
“Oh, nothin’,” said Billy, “only I heard one of them N’ York reporters
sayin’ something about ‘handwritin’ on the wall.’ Maybe it’s a new joke
that ain’t reached Granite yet.”
“No,” remarked the Railroader, as he joined his lieutenants, “it hasn’t
reached Granite, and what’s more it ain’t going to. The only handwriting
on these walls will take the form of a double cross. And it’ll be
opposite Standish’s name.”
CHAPTER XI
CALEB CONOVER MAKES TERMS
“Well,” remarked Caleb Conover, Railroader, with a Gargantuan sigh of
relief as he flung himself into the great desk chair in his study, and
lighted one of his eternal black cigars, “_that’s_ over!”
“It sure is!” chuckled Billy Shevlin, who, alone of the cheering throng
that had escorted the gubernatorial nominee home from the convention,
had been permitted to enter the sanctum. “But, Boss, I wisht that
Standish feller hadn’t stampeded the herd like he did. It’ll cut holes
in your ‘landslide’ scheme.”
“What can the crank do?” grinned Caleb. “Not a paper in Granite’ll
report his speech. And we’ll work the same game up-State we did during
his tour. If worst comes to worst, there’s always a quiet, orderly way
of losing sight of him at the polls. No, son, Standish’s yawps don’t
bother me any more. I’ve got him about where I want him, I guess. Here’s
the cash for the rooters. And here’s something for the boys to-night,
too. Whoop it up all you like, so long as you keep on the other side of
the railroad tracks. That’ll be all. Come around by eight to-morrow. And
say, Billy!” he called after his departing henchman, “see if you can
find Miss Lanier downstairs anywhere. I want to speak to her.”
The Railroader leaned farther back in the depths of the soft chair,
drawing in great draughts of strong tobacco-reek and expelling it in
duplex clouds through his thick nostrils.
It was good to rest. As far as his iron frame and cold nerves could feel
such a weakness, reaction from the long strain of the day was upon him.
In Conover’s case it took the form of lazy comfort; of enjoyment in his
rank cigar, in the sensuous delight of relaxing every tense muscle and
of sprawling idly, happily before his coal fire. The grim lines of the
mouth relaxed, the keen eyes took on a pleasanter light.
He had fought. He had won. He would continue to win. For him the joy of
fighting lay more in the battle itself than in the victory. But in the
pause between two conflicts it was good to stretch one’s self out in a
great, comfortable chair, to smoke, to blink drowsily into the red
coals. The one thing remaining to complete his sense of utter well-being
was the presence of some congenial soul wherewith to talk over his
achievement. And——
Anice Lanier’s knock sounded at the door. Caleb’s placid expression
deepened into a smile of real pleasure.
“Come in!” he called. “I was just hoping you’d——”
He checked himself. Across the threshold stepped Anice. She wore a hat
and was dressed for the street. Over her shoulder Caleb caught sight of
Clive Standish.
“Here’s all sorts of unexpected honors!” exclaimed the Railroader. “I
heard you’d bolted, Standish, but I never thought you’d bolt so far as
this poor shanty of mine. Come in and sit down. We’ll make a real merry
family party, us three.”
There was something peculiarly happy in this advent of the defeated man
to swell the victor’s triumph. Caleb vaguely felt this. He was glad
Anice should see Clive and himself together; should be able to observe
his own reserved strength as opposed to the bombastic denunciation
Standish had doubtless come to deliver. It would amuse her to note the
contrast between the two; to see her employer’s superiority in
self-control and repartee.
So, as Standish followed the girl into the room, the host actually
beamed on his intended victim. Then he noticed that neither Anice nor
her escort sat down. Also that the latter remained near the door, while
Miss Lanier advanced toward the desk chair Caleb had drawn so snugly
into the hearth-angle. But she ignored a second and even softer chair he
had arranged on the opposite side of the fire. And all this dimly
troubled Caleb Conover.
“Anything the matter?” he asked, with somewhat less assurance. “Come to
propose a compromise, Standish? Or maybe a campaign partnership? Good
idea, that! Only I’m afraid it wouldn’t work this time. In business
partnership, you know, one man puts up the money and the other the
experience. And by the end of sixty days they’ve usually swapped. But in
politics one man always has both the experience and the money. Or the
means of getting ’em. Otherwise he wouldn’t be there at all. So I’m
afraid I’ll have to refuse.”
He ended with a laugh that did not carry conviction, even to himself. No
one replied. Neither of his guests’ faces showed sign of having heard.
Conover’s good temper wavered.
“What’s up?” he demanded of Clive. “Speak out, can’t you?”
But it was Anice Lanier who replied.
“Mr. Conover,” she said, “you recollect the unsigned letter, enclosing
some of your campaign plans, that was sent back to you by Mr. Standish
last week?”
Caleb’s red hair bristled.
“Yes,” he answered, deep in his throat. “Have you found out who sent
it?”
“I have,” she returned, in the same level voice. “Also the sender of two
other letters of the sort, earlier in the campaign. One of these was to
Mr. Standish. It contained a description of your plan for the county
caucuses and of the measures you had framed against his up-State tour.
Mr. Standish destroyed that letter and refused to act on its
suggestion.”
“More fool he. Who wrote it?”
“The second letter was to Mr. Ansel,” went on Anice. “It gave him the
idea for scattering issues of an out-of-State paper along the
speech-route, with advertisements and report of——”
“Who wrote it, I asked you?”
“The same person wrote all three.”
“Then who——”
“I did.”
“This isn’t a thing to joke about. There’s a leak somewhere pretty high
up, and I must find——”
“I wrote them.”
She spoke slowly, as though imparting a lesson. The Railroader’s eyes
searched her face one instant. Then he dropped back, heavy and inert,
into the farthest recess of his chair.
“Good Lord!” he whispered, staring at her blankly.
“I wrote them,” reiterated Anice. “No one knew, not even Mr. Standish,
until to-day. I brought him here this evening, because something that is
to be said must be said in his hearing. I have his promise not to
interfere in this interview, but to let me take my own course. It was I,
too, at whose advice he bolted the ticket at——”
“_You’ve_ done all this?” blurted Caleb, finding his shattered
self-poise at last. “Are you crazy, girl?”
“No; I am quite sane. From the start I have helped Mr. Standish. By my
help, I believe, he will win the Governorship. I have learned much from
you, in practical politics, Mr. Conover. I intend to put some of that
education into use. You see——”
“You’ve backtracked me? _You_, of all the folks alive! Why, I’d ’a’
gambled my whole pile on your whiteness, girl. This is a measly joke of
some kind. It’s——”
“It’s the truth, Mr. Conover.”
And Caleb, looking deep into her eyes, could at last doubt no longer. A
dull red crept into his face.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, slow, measured of voice, rigid of body.
“Jockeyed by the one person in the world I ever had any trust in!
Cleaned out like any drunken sailor in a dance hall! Say,” he added in
puzzled querulousness, “what’d the Almighty mean by putting eyes like
yours in the face of a——”
A sudden forward movement from Standish checked him, and, incidentally,
drove from his brain the last mists of bewilderment. The Railroader
settled forward in his chair, his teeth meeting in the stump of the
cigar he had so contentedly lighted but a few minutes before. He was
himself again; arrogant, masterful, vibrant with quick resource. A
sardonic smile creased his wooden face.
“You’re a noble work of God, Miss Lanier, ain’t you?” he sneered. “In
Bible days the man who betrayed his Master was made the star villain for
all time. But when it’s a woman that does the betraying, I guess even
the Bible would have to go shy on words blazing enough to show her up.
For three years,” he went on, as Anice, by a quick gesture, silenced
Clive’s fierce interruption—“for three years and more you’ve eaten my
bread and lived on my money. For three years I’ve treated you like you
were a queen. Whatever I’ve done or been to other folks, to _you_ I’ve
been as white as any man could be. You’ve had everything from me and
mine. And you pay me by playing the petticoat-Judas. Look here, there’s
something behind all this! Tell me what it means.”
“It means,” answered Anice, who had borne without wincing the hot lash
of the angry man’s scorn—“it means that I have tried to pay a debt. Part
I have paid. Part I am paying.”
“A debt? What rot are you trying to talk? I——”
“If you care to listen I’ll tell you. I will make it as short as I can.
Shall I go on?”
Conover nodded assent as a man in a dream.
“My father,” began Anice, speaking dispassionately, her rich voice
flattened to a quiet monotone—“my father was Foster Lanier. You never
knew him. You never knew many of the men you have wrecked. But he was
chief stockholder in the Oakland-Rodney Railroad. He was not a business
man. The stock was left him by his father. It was all we had to live on.
It was enough. You owned the C. G. & X. Little by little you bought up
the other Mountain State roads. At last you came to the Oakland-Rodney.
Do you remember?”
“I remember my lawyer told me there was some stiff-necked old fossil who
owned the majority stock and wouldn’t sell.”
“So you crushed him,” went on Anice, unmoved, “as you have crushed
others. You cut off the road’s connecting points and severed its
communication with your own and your allied lines. After isolating it
you lowered your own freight rates and mileage until all the
Oakland-Rodney patronage was gone. The road collapsed, and you bought it
in. My father was a pauper. Other men have been driven to the same
straits by you—men whose very names you did not take the trouble to
learn. My father knew little of business. To save others who had bought
Oakland-Rodney stock at his advice, he sold what little property he had
and bought their worthless stock back at par. He was ruined and above
his head in debt. My mother was an invalid. The doctors said a trip to
the Mediterranean might save her life. We had not a dollar. So she died.
My father—he was out of his mind from grief and from financial worry—my
father shot himself. It was hushed up by our friends, and he was
reported accidentally killed while hunting. It was only one of the
countless victories you ‘financiers’ are so proud of. He and my mother
were but two of the numberless victims each of those victories entails.”
She paused. Caleb made no reply. He sat looking in front of him into the
pulsing heart of the fire. He had scarce heard her. His mind was
occupied to bursting by the shock and acute pain of this rupturing of
his last intimate bond with humanity.
“I was left to make my own way,” continued Anice, “and I came here. Out
of one hundred applicants you accepted me. It was not mere coincidence.
I believe it was something more. Something higher. I entered your
service that I might some day pay the debt I owed my father, who was not
strong enough to bear your ‘victory,’ and my mother, whose life the
money you wrested from us might have saved. This is melodramatic, of
course. But I think most things in real life are. I came here. I worked
for you. I won your confidence, your respect, your trust. Perhaps you
think it was a pleasant task I had set myself? I am not trying to
justify it. If it was unworthy, I have paid. You say I’ve ‘eaten your
bread and lived on your money.’ I have. And I have received your
confidence. But have I ever eaten a mouthful or received one penny that
I did not earn three times over? You yourself have said again and again
that I was worth to you ten times what you paid me. You have begged me
to let you raise my salary, to accept presents from you. Have I ever
consented? If there is a money balance between us, the debit is all on
your side. I owe you nothing for what confidences you have lavished on
me. Have I ever asked for them or lured you into bestowing them? Have
not all such confidences come unsought, even repelled, by me? Have I
ever spoken to you with more than ordinary civility? Have I ever so much
as voluntarily shaken your hand? The Judas parallel does not hold good,
Mr. Conover.”
She waited again for a reply. But none came. Conover merely shifted his
heavy gaze from the fire to her pale, drawn face.
“In all these years,” said Anice, “I have waited my chance. I could not
take your life to atone for the two gentle lives you crushed out. Nor
would a life like yours have paid one-hundredth of the debt. So I have
waited until your life-happiness, your whole future, should be bound up
in some one great aspiration. Until you should stake all on one card.
When such a time should come I resolved I would make you taste the
bitter shame and despair you have made others groan under. Oh, it was
long, weary waiting, but I think the end is coming. It _has_ come.”
“You talk fine, Miss Lanier,” observed Caleb, all master of himself once
more, “but talking’s never quoted at par, except in a poker game and a
wedding ceremony. You’ve been reading novels, and you’ve framed up a
dandy line of story book ree-venge. It’s as good as any stage villainess
could have thought of. But, honest, it clean surprises me how a woman
with all your brains could have took such a fool plan seriously. It’s a
grand stunt to grab the centre of the stage and drive the wicked
oppressor out into the snow. Only it don’t happen to be snowing
to-night. Neither really nor fig’ratively. No, no, Miss Lanier, your
hand’s a four-flush, and I hold a whole bunch of aces. Go ahead with
your little fireworks, if that’s your diversion. It won’t bother anyone.
Certainly not _me_. The only regret I’ve got in the whole business is
finding you’ve so little horse sense.”
“If I had so little,” answered Anice calmly, “the affair would have to
end here and now. As it is——”
“Well?”
“It’s going on.”
“Oh, you’ve extra cards to turn that four-flush into a win, eh? Show ’em
out. I call.”
“If you put it that way. I’m told it only needs one card to convert a
‘four-flush’ into a good hand. Perhaps I can play that card later.
Perhaps you won’t oblige me to play it at all. I hope you won’t.”
“Go ahead.”
“I have not been, unwillingly, in your confidence all these years for
nothing.”
Caleb whistled.
“I’m on!” said he curtly. “If I don’t stand aside and let your little
friend Standish win the race, you’ll do some exposing? Sort of like the
girl who showed up John D. in a magazine? Well, fire away. In the first
place, I’m not John D., and the American public (outside the Mountain
State) ain’t laying awake nights to find out how Caleb Conover got his.
And if you mean to use ‘Confessions of a Secretary’ for a campaign
document this fall, you’re welcome to. I’ll take my chance on getting a
little more mud than usual slung at me. It won’t affect the election,
and you know it won’t. And you ought to know by this time how little I
care what folks think of my character. No, it won’t do, Miss Lanier. If
that’s the card you’re counting on using to change your four-flush into
a winning hand——”
“You are mistaken. This time, Mr. Conover, it is _I_ who am surprised at
_your_ lack of perception. The ‘card’ I spoke of is the Denzlow
correspondence.”
“The Denzlow—? I burned that a year ago—burned it in this very room. In
this fireplace. You were here and saw me. And Denzlow died last May. I’m
afraid your ‘card’ won’t help that poor, lonely four-flush hand of yours
after all. I’m sorry, but——”
“You burned a package of letters wrapped in a sheet indorsed ‘Denzlow,’”
interposed Anice, “but they happened to be a sheaf of insurance
circulars. With Mr. Denzlow’s permission (and on my promise not to make
use of them while he was alive) I bought those letters at the time you
thought _you_ bought them back from him. He got extra money, and the
letters were supposed to be transmitted to you through me. I kept the
originals. If you doubt it, here are certified copies. You will see the
notary’s signature was dated last June. Does that convince you?”
“Where’s the letters themselves?”
“With my brother. He is one of the subeditors of the Ballston _Herald_.
He is holding them subject to my orders. When he receives word from me
he will either turn them over to the Federal authorities (for it is a
United States Government matter, as you know, with a term of
imprisonment involved, and not a mere State offence that can be settled
with a few thousand dollars), or else he will publish the whole
correspondence in his paper, and leave the Government to act as it sees
fit. Does the card improve my hand?”
Conover made no immediate answer. When he spoke there was no emotion in
his dry, business-like tones.
“Yes, it does,” he admitted, “and I’m glad to see I was wrong about the
condition of those brains of yours. You’ve got me. I could bluff anybody
else, but I guess you know my game too well. A bluff’s a blamed good
anchor in a financial storm. But after the ship’s wrecked I never heard
that the cap’n got any special good out of the anchor. So we’ll play
straight, if you like. How much do you want?”
“How much?” she repeated, doubtful of his meaning.
“How much will you take for those Denzlow letters? Come now, let’s cut
out the measly diplomacy and get to the point. The man who gets ahead in
my line of work is the man who knows when to pay hush-money and when not
to. This is the time to pay. How much? Make me a cash offer.”
“You don’t understand,” protested Anice, again with a pretty, imperious
gesture restraining Clive. “I am not one of the blackmailers you spend
so much of your time silencing. I——”
“No? I never yet heard a scream that was so loud a big enough check
wouldn’t gag it. This interview isn’t so allooring that I’m stuck on
stretching it out any longer. Make your offer.”
“I’ve explained to you that I want none of your money.”
“Then what—Oh!” broke off Conover, clicking his teeth and narrowing his
eyes to gleaming slits, “I think I see. The Governorship, eh?”
Anice inclined her head.
“So I’m to throw it to Standish? H’m! And yet you say you’re not putting
the hooks in me! If that isn’t cold, straight, all-wool blackmail, I
don’t know what is. You think you owe me something because I didn’t
treat your father just square. So you pay the grudge off by blackmailing
me. Maybe your holy New England conscience is too near-sighted to see
it’s only in the devil’s ledger that two wrongs make a right.”
“Do you speak from experience? Because it doesn’t fit this case. I
propose nothing of the sort.”
“Then what in thunder _do_ you want?” snarled Caleb, thoroughly
mystified. “If it ain’t cash or——”
“I want you to give Mr. Standish a fair chance. That is all. I want you
to remove the embargo from his speeches and advertising; to open the
columns of every paper in the Mountain State to him. To promise not to
molest him in any way, not to allow your rowdies to break up his
meetings nor to prevent him from hiring halls. Not to stuff the
ballot-boxes, falsify the returns, employ ‘floaters’ or—in short, I want
you to give him an equal chance with yourself; to conduct the campaign
honestly, and to leave the issue solely to the voters. Will you do
this?”
“And if I beat him at that?”
“If you are elected by an honest majority, that is no concern of ours.
All I demand is that you fight in the open and leave the result to the
people.”
Caleb thought in silence for a few moments.
“If I do this?” he asked at last.
“Then, on the afternoon of Election Day, my brother shall turn over to
you, or to your representative, the entire Denzlow correspondence.”
“I have your word for that? Certified copies and all?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t lie. That’s about the one foolish trait I’ve ever found in
you. If I’ve got your word, you’ll stand by it. Can’t say quite the same
of _me_, eh?”
“I don’t think that needs an answer.”
“Can’t turn over the letters to me now, on my pledge to——?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Anice, almost apologetically. “I must——”
“And you’re dead right. A promise is such a sacred thing that it’s
always wise to keep your finger on the trigger till the real money’s
handed over. Just to keep the sacredness from spoiling. As I understand
it, I’m to loosen up on Standish; and then if I lick him fair, you and I
are quits? I’ll do it. Such a fight ought to prove pretty amusing. It’ll
be an experience anyhow, as Sol Townsley said when Father Healy told him
he’d some day burn in hell. I’ll accept those silly terms of yours for
the same reason so many men stay honest. They don’t enjoy it, but it’s
more fun than going to jail. I’ll send out the orders first thing in the
morning. And on the afternoon of Election Day I’ll get that Denzlow
stuff?”
“Yes. And the certified copy the following morning.”
“In case I should get absent-minded that night when the votes are
counted? You’re a clever girl, Miss Lanier. Pity you’re to be wasted on
Standish! Oh, that’s all right. I don’t need to be told. A girl like you
isn’t acting the way you do just for the sake of a measly principle. And
now,” his bantering tone changing to one of brusque command, “if there’s
nothing more, maybe you’ll both get out. I’m tired, and——”
Clive and Anice withdrew. The latter, looking back as she left the room,
saw Caleb sitting doubled over, motionless, in his chair, his gaze again
on the fire.
Perhaps it was the flicker from the coals that made his face seem to her
to have grown in a moment infinitely old; his keen, light eyes
inexpressibly lonely and desolate. Undoubtedly so, for when he glanced
up and saw she was not yet gone, there was no expression save the shadow
of a sardonic grin stamped on his rugged features.
Long and late Caleb Conover sat there alone in his big, silent study.
The lamp on the table flickered, guttered and went out. The live coals
died down to embers. The cold of early autumn crept through the great
room, along with the encroaching darkness. The clock on the wall chimed.
Then again, and a third time, but the Railroader sat motionless.
At length he gathered himself together with an impatient grunt. He
reached across to his table and drew from a drawer a gaudy velvet case.
As he opened it, the dying firelight struck against a multi-pointed
cluster of tiny lights.
“She wouldn’t have took it from me,” Caleb grumbled, half-aloud, as
though explaining to some invisible companion, “but I would ’a’ made
Letty give it to her. It’d ’a’ looked fine against that soft baby throat
of hers. Hell!”
There was a swirling little eddy of cinders and sparks as the case
crashed into the heart of the dull red embers.
The Railroader had fallen back into his former cramped, awkward attitude
of reflection.
“First it was Jerry,” he whispered to the imaginary auditor among the
shadows. “First Jerry. Then Blanche. And now—_her_. That’s worse than
both the others put together. Not a one left.”
The study door behind him was timidly opened. Caleb did not hear.
“Not a one left!” he murmured again. “And——”
“Is anything the matter, dear?” nervously queried his wife from the
threshold. “It’s nearly——”
“_You_ don’t count!” shouted Caleb Conover, with odd irrelevance. “Go to
bed, can’t you?”
CHAPTER XII
CALEB CONOVER FIGHTS
The real campaign was at last under way, and the Mountain State thrilled
as never before in the history of politics. At a composite convention
made up of the Republican and lesser parties of the State, and held
almost directly after that of the Democrats, faction lines were cast
aside and Clive Standish nominated by acclamation. Ansel had presided,
and scores of bolting Democrats were in attendance.
Then, in Granite and throughout the State, Clive began what is still
recalled as his “whirlwind campaign.” Often ten speeches a day were
delivered as he hurried from point to point. The reports of his meetings
were sown broadcast, as was other legitimate campaign literature.
Because of the daring and extraordinary course he had taken, as well as
for the sane, practical reforms he advocated, he was everywhere listened
to with growing interest.
The Mountain State was at last awake—awake and hearkening eagerly to the
voice of the man who had roused it from its Rip Van Winkle slumbers.
Horrified, wholly aghast, the Conover lieutenants had heard their
master’s decree that the press gag was to be removed, and other
customary tactics of the sort abandoned. None dared to protest. And,
after the first shock, the majority, in their sublime faith, read in the
mandate some mysterious new manœuvre of the Railroader’s which time
would triumphantly justify.
Meantime, Conover was working as never before. The very difficulty of
the task in hand evoked all his fighting blood. He would have preferred
to win without so much labor. But since his ordinary moves were barred,
his soul secretly rejoiced in the prospect of fair and furious battle.
That he would conquer, as always before, he did not at first doubt. When
he had made his bargain with Anice Lanier, he had done so confident in
his power to sweep all opposition from his path; and he had secretly
despised the girl for allowing herself to be duped.
He, on his part, knew he must forego the “landslide” he had once so
confidently hoped for. But in the stress of later crises, this ambition
had grown quite subservient to his greater and ever-augmentive longing
for election at any terms and on any majority. The strengthening
intensity of this ambition surprised Conover himself. At first mere
pride had urged him to the office he sought. But as time went on and new
obstacles arose between him and his goal, that goal waxed daily more
desirable, until at last it filled the whole vista of his future.
His fingers ever on the pulse of the State, Caleb therefore noted with
annoyance, then with something akin to dread, the swelling onrush of
Clive’s popularity. To offset it the Railroader threw himself bodily
into the fight, personally directing and executing where of old he had
only transmitted orders; toiling like any ward politician; devising each
day new and brilliant tactics for use against the enemy.
He stuck to the letter of his pledge to Anice. Its spirit he had never
regarded. He was everywhere and at all hours; now spending his money
like water in the exact quarter where it would do most good; now
propping up some doubtful corner of the political edifice he had reared,
and again lending the fierce impetus of his individuality at points
where his followers seemed inclined to lag.
Little as he spared himself, Caleb spared his henchmen still less. With
deadly literalness he saw to the carrying out of his earlier order that
everyone, from Congressman too bootblack, must put his shoulder to the
wheel. The ward heelers, the privileged lieutenants, the rural agents
and the high officials in the Machine, alike, were driven as never
before. No stone was left unturned, no chance ignored. Nor was this all.
Forth went the call to all the hundreds, rich and poor, whom Conover at
various times had privately aided.
The capitalist whose doubtful bill he had shoved through the Assembly;
the coal-heaver whose wife’s funeral expenses he had paid; the Italian
peddler whose family he had saved from eviction; the countless poor whom
his secretly-donated coal, clothes and food had tided over hard winters;
the struggling farmer whose mortgage he had paid; the bartender he had
saved from a murderer’s fate: all these beneficiaries and more were
commanded, in this hour of stress, to remember the Boss’s generosity,
and to pay the debt by working for his election.
Checks of vast proportions (drawn ostensibly for railroad expenses) were
cashed by Shevlin, Bourke and the rest, and the proceeds hurled into
every crevice or vulnerable spot in the voting phalanx. The pick of the
Atlantic seaboard’s orators were summoned at their own price, and
commissioned to sway the people to the Machine’s cause. Conover even had
wild thoughts of winning favor with his home-city’s cultured classes by
beautifying Granite’s public gardens with the erecting of a heroic
marble statue of Ibid (who, he declared, was his favorite poet, and had
more sense than all the rest of the “Famous Quotation” authors put
together). When at length he was reluctantly convinced as to “Ibid’s”
real meaning, the Railroader ordered the papers to suppress the proposed
announcement and to substitute one to the effect that he intended to
donate a colossal figure of Blind Justice for the summit of the City
Hall.
On waged the fight. Disinterested outsiders beyond the scope of the
Machine’s attraction were daily drawn, by hundreds, into the Standish
camp. In the country districts his strength grew steadily and rapidly.
The people at large were aroused, not to the usual pitch of illogical
hysteria incident on a movement of the sort, but to a calm, resolute
jealousy of their own public rights. Which latter state every politician
knows to be immeasurably the more dangerous of the two.
Conover’s efforts, on the other hand were already bearing fruit. His
tireless energy, backed by his genius and the perfection of his system,
were hourly enlarging his following. The “railroad wards” and slums of
Granite and of other towns were with him to a man, prepared on Election
Day to hurl mighty cohorts of the Unwashed to the polls in their idol’s
behalf. Loyalty, self-interest, party allegiance, and more material
forms of pressure were binding throngs of others besides these
underworld denizens to the Conover standard. Not even the shrewdest
non-partisan dared forecast the result of the contest.
Caleb, colder, harder, less human than ever, gave no outward sign of the
silent warfare that had torn him during that study-fire vigil on the
night of Anice Lanier’s defection. Beyond curtly stating that the
secretary had left his service of her own accord, he gave no information
concerning her. He had heard she was living with an aunt in another part
of town; and twice, with stony face and unrecognizing eye, he had passed
her on the street, walking with Clive. He had also received from her a
brief, business-like note telling him that her brother had instructions
to deliver to Conover’s representative, any time after noon on Election
Day, the Denzlow letters.
It was on the eve of election. The campaign work was done. One way or
another, the story was now told. The last instructions for the next
day’s duties had been given. Conover, returning home from his
headquarters, felt as though the weight of weeks had rolled off his
shoulders. Now that he had done all mortal man could, he was not, like a
weaker soul, troubled about the morrow. That could take care of itself.
His worrying or not worrying could not affect the result. Hence, he did
not worry.
As he turned into Pompton Avenue and started up the long slope crowned
by the garish white marble Mausoleum, his step was as strong and untired
as an athlete’s. On his frame of steel and inscrutable face the untold
strain of past weeks had left no visible mark.
A few steps in advance of him, and going in the same direction, slouched
a lank, enervated figure.
The Railroader, by the gleam of a street lamp, recognized Gerald, and
moved faster to catch up with him. At such rare intervals as he had time
to think of domestic affairs, Caleb was more than a little concerned of
late over the behavior of this only son of his. Since the visit of his
wife to Granite, Gerald’s demeanor had undergone a change that had
puzzled even his father’s acute mind. He had waxed listless, taciturn
and unnaturally docile. No command seemed too distasteful for him to
execute uncomplainingly. No outbreak of rough sarcasm or wrath from
Caleb could draw from him a retort, nor so much as a show of interest.
Conover knew the lad had taken to drinking heavily and frequently, but
also that Gerald’s deepest potations apparently had no other outward
effect than to increase his listless apathy.
Partly from malice, partly to rouse the youth, Conover had thrown upon
him many details of campaign work. To the older man’s wonderment Gerald
had accomplished every task with a quiet, wholly uninterested competence
that was so unlike his old self as to seem the labor of another man.
More and more, since Anice’s departure, Conover had come to lean on
Gerald’s help. And now it no longer astonished him to find such help
capably given. Yet the father was not satisfied.
“It ain’t natural,” he said to himself, as he now overhauled his son.
“Ain’t like Jerry. Something’s the matter with him. He’s getting to be
some use in the world. But he’ll go crazy, too, if he keeps up those
moony ways of his. He needs a shaking up.”
He instituted the shaking-up process in literal form by a resounding
slap between Gerald’s narrow shoulders. But even this most maddening of
all possible salutations evoked nothing but a listless “Hello, father,”
from its victim.
“Start Weaver off for Grafton?” queried Caleb, falling into step with
his son.
“Yes.”
“Make out any of that padrone list I told you to frame up for me?”
“I’ve just finished it. Here it is.”
“Why, for a chap like you that list’s a day’s work by itself! Good boy!”
No reply. Caleb glanced obliquely at the taciturn lad. The sallow, lean
face, with its dark-hollowed eyes, was expressionless, dull, apathetic.
“Say!” demanded Conover, “what’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
“Nothing.”
“Ain’t sick, or anything?”
“No.”
“Still grouching over that girl?”
“My wife? Yes.”
“Ain’t got over it yet? I’ve told you you’re well out of it. If she’d
cared anything for you she’d never have settled with my New York lawyer
for $60,000 and withdrawn that fool alienation suit she was starting
against me, or signed that general release. You’re well out of it. I’ll
send you up to South Dakota after the campaign’s all over and let you
get a divorce on the quiet. No one around here’ll ever know you was
married, and in the long run the experience won’t hurt you. You’ve acted
pretty decent lately, Jerry, and I’m not half sorry I changed my mind on
that ‘heavy-father’ stunt and didn’t kick you out. After all, one
marriage more or less is more of an accident than a failing, so long as
folks don’t let it get to be a habit. You acted like an idiot. But
bygones are bygones, so cut out the sulks. Cheap chorus girls weren’t
made for grown men to marry.”
“I’ll thank you to say nothing against her,” intervened Gerald stiffly,
with the first faint show of interest his father had observed in him for
weeks.
“Just as you like,” assented Caleb, in high, good humor, glad to have
broken even so slightly into the other’s armor of apathy. “In her case,
maybe, least said the better. So you’re still home-sicking for her—and
for New York, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Still feel your own city ain’t good enough for you?”
“What place is for a man who has lived in New York?”
“Rot! ‘What place is?’ About ten thousand places! And some seventy
million Americans living in those places are as good and as happy and
stand pretty near as good a chance of the pearly gates as if they had
the heaven-sent blessing of living between the North and East rivers.”
“Yes?”
There was no interest and only absent-minded query in Gerald’s
monosyllable. Listlessness had again settled over him. Word and mental
attitude jarred on the Railroader.
“New York!” reiterated Conover. “I’ve took some slight pains to learn a
few things about that place these last couple of months. Before that I
took your word for it that it was a hectic, electric-lit whirlpool where
nothing ever was quiet or sane, and where a young cub who could get
arrested for smashing up a hotel lobby was looked up to as a pillar of
gilded society. Since then I’ve bothered to find out on my own account.
New York’s a city with about two millions of people living on Manhattan
Island alone. We out-of-town jays are told these two millions are a gay,
abandoned, fashionable lot that spend their days in the congenial stunt
of piling up fortunes and their nights in every sort of high jinks that
can cost money and keep ’em up till dawn. ‘All-night fun, all-day
fortune-grabbing. Great place! Come see it!’ Well, I _have_ seen it.
Along around five or six P.M. about ninety-eight per cent. of those two
million people stop work. They’ve been fortune-grabbing all right, since
early morning. Only, they’ve been grabbing it usually for some one else.
They pile onto the subway or the elevated or the big bridge and—and
where do they go? To a merry old all-night revel on the Great White Way?
To an orgy of ‘On-with-the-dance, let-joy-be-unrefined,’ hey? Not them.
It’s home they go, quiet and without exhibiting to the neighbors any
season passes for all-night dissipation. They are as respectable,
decent, orderly, early-to-bed a crowd as if they lived on a farm.
’Tain’t their fault if ‘home’s’ usually built on the folding-bed plan
and more condensed than a can of patent milk. Apart from that, they live
just as everybody else in this country lives—no better, no worse, no
gayer, no quieter. There’s not a penny’s difference between that decent
ninety-eight per cent. and the business and working folks right here in
Granite.”
Gerald did not answer. He had not heard.
“That’s the ‘typical New Yorker,’” went on Caleb. “The ‘typical New
Yorker’—ninety-eight per cent. of him—is the typical every-day man or
woman of any city. He does his work, supports his family, and goes to
bed before eleven. Those are the folks I guess _you_ didn’t see much of
when you was there. Nor of the _real_ society push or even the climbers.
The society headliners are too few anyhow to count in the general
percentage. Besides, they’re out of town half the year. _You_ was mostly
engaged in playing ‘Easy Mark’ for the other two per cent. The crowd you
went with is the sort that calls themselves ‘typical New Yorkers,’ and
stays out all-night ’cause they haven’t the brains to find any other
place to go. Just a dirty little fringe of humanity, hanging about
all-night restaurants or drinking adulterated booze in some thirst
emporium, or spending some one else’s money in a green-table joint. They
yawn and look sick of life, and they tell everyone who’ll listen that
they’re ‘typical New Yorkers.’
“Lord! you might as well say our two per cent. Chinese population is
typical Americans. First time I ever was in New York overnight I walked
from Ninetieth Street down to Fourteenth, at about one in the morning,
taking in a few side streets on the way. I didn’t meet on an average of
two people to the block, and every light was out in nineteen houses out
of twenty. Down along part of Broadway I saw a few tired, frowsy-looking
folks in big restaurants, and a few drunks and a girl or two, and some
half a dozen cabs prowling about. That was ‘gay New York by night.
Hilarious and reeskay attractions furnished by typical New Yorkers!’
Whenever I hear that chestnut about ‘typical New Yorkers,’ I think of
old Baldy Durling up in Campgaw, who was sixty years old when he went to
his first circus. He stood half an hour in front of the dromedary’s
stall, taking in all its queer bumps and funny curves, and then he looks
around, kind of defiant at the crowd, and yells out: ‘Hell! There
_ain’t_ no such animal!’”
A polite smile from the dry lips, which Gerald of late was forever
moistening, was the only reply to this harangue. Caleb gave up trying to
draw the youth into an argument, and adopted a more business-like tone.
“I want you should run down to Ballston for me soon’s you’ve voted
to-morrow, Jerry. Better take the 7.15 train. I want you to go to the
office of the Ballston _Herald_, and give a note from me to Bruce
Lanier, one of the editors. He’ll hand you a package. Nothing that
amounts to much, but I’ve paid a big price for it, so I don’t want it
lost. Take good care of it, and bring it back on the two o’clock train.
Get all the sleep you can to-night. You’re liable to have a wakeful
day.”
“All right.”
“The package Lanier’s to give you is just a bunch of letters about a
railroad deal. Nothing you’d understand. They’re to be ready for me any
time after noon to-morrow.”
“I thought you wanted me to work at the polls for you.”
“Anybody that knows how to lie can work at the polls. There’s nobody but
you I can send for those letters. All the other men I can trust can’t be
spared to-morrow.”
“Bruce Lanier,” repeated Gerald idly. “Any relation to Miss——”
“Only a relation by marriage. He’s her brother.”
“Nice sort of girl, always seemed to me. What’d she leave you for?”
“She left of her own accord.”
“So you told me. But why?”
“Because she got a crazy idea that I was the original Unpardonable
Sinner. And having made up her mind to it, she natcher’lly didn’t want
her opinions shaken by any remarks for the defence. So she left.”
Gerald did not pursue the subject. He seldom, indeed, dwelt so long,
nowadays, on any one theme of talk. He moistened his dry lips once more,
sucked at his cigarette and slouched along in silence. His father asked
several questions that bore on the impending election, and was answered
in monosyllables. The cigarette burned down to its cork tip, and Gerald
lighted another at its smouldering stump.
“Have a cigar?” suggested Caleb, viewing this operation with manifest
disgust.
“No, thanks.”
“It’s better’n one of those measly connecting links between fire and a
fool,” grunted Caleb. Gerald puffed on without answering.
“I _said_,” repeated Caleb, a little louder, “the rankest Flor de
Garbage campaign cigar, with a red-and-yaller surcingle around its
waist, is a blamed sight better’n any Cairo, Illinois, Egyptian
cig’rette. Is there five minutes a day when you’re not smoking one?”
“No.”
“’Tain’t good for any man, smoking so much as that, ’spesh’ly a man with
a boy’s size chest like yours. Stunts the growth, too, I hear, and——”
“I’ve got my growth.”
“You sure have,” agreed Caleb, looking up and down his son’s weedy
length, “and you’d ’a’ had still more if so much of you hadn’t been
turned up for feet. Well, smoke away and drink away, too, if you like.
I’m not responsible for you. Only you’ll smash up or turn queer one of
these days if you don’t look out. Is it the booze or the near-tobacco
that makes your lips all dry like that? Neither of ’em usually has that
effect. Your hands are wet and cold all the time, too. Better see a
doctor, hadn’t you?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said the lad wearily.
Caleb looked in doubt at his listless companion, seemed inclined to say
more on the subject, then changed his mind.
“Be ready for the 7.15 to-morrow morning,” he ordered as they mounted
the broad marble steps of the Mausoleum. “Turn in early and get a good
rest. Lord! I hope this drizzle will turn into rain before morning.
Nothing like a rainy election day to drown reform. The honest heeler
would turn out in a blizzard to earn his two dollars by voting, but a
sprinkle will scare a Silk Socker from the polls easier’n a——”
The great door was swung open. Outlined against the lighted hall behind
it was Mrs. Conover. She had seen their approach, and had hastened out
into the veranda to meet them.
“Hello!” exclaimed the Railroader. “This is like old times! Must be
twenty years since you came out to——”
“Oh, Caleb!” sobbed the little woman, and as the light for the first
time fell athwart her face, they saw she was red-eyed and blotched of
cheek from much weeping. “Oh, Caleb, how long you’ve been! I telephoned
the Democratic Club an hour ago, and they said you’d just——”
“What’s the row?” broke in her bewildered husband. “Afraid I’d been ate
by your big nephew, or——”
“Don’t, don’t joke! Something dreadful’s happened. I——”
“Then come into the library and tell us about it quiet,” interrupted
Caleb, “unless maybe you’re aiming to call in the servants later for
advice.”
The footman behind Mrs. Conover, at the door, tried to look as though he
had heard nothing, and bitterly regretted he had not been allowed to
hear more. But Letty was silenced as she always was when the Railroader
adopted his present tone. She obediently scuttled down the hall toward
the library, an open letter fluttering in her hand. Caleb followed; and,
at a word from his father, Gerald accompanied his parents.
As soon as the library door closed behind the trio, Mrs. Conover’s grief
again rose from subdued sniffling to unchecked tears.
“Oh, talk out, can’t you!” growled Conover. “What’s up? That letter
there? Is——?”
“Yes,” gurgled poor Letty, torn between the luxury of weeping and the
fear of offending Caleb, “it’s—it’s from Blanche at Lake Como,
and—and—Oh, she isn’t married at all—and——!”
“WHAT?” roared Conover. Even Gerald dropped his cigarette.
“It’s—it’s _true_, Caleb!” wailed Letty. “She isn’t. And——”
“What are you blithering about? Here!”
Conover snatched the letter and glanced over it. Then with a snort he
thrust it back into his wife’s hand.
“French!” he sniffed, in withering contempt. “Why in hell can’t the girl
write her own language, so folks can understand what she’s——?”
“She’s always written her letters to me in French ever since she was at
school in Passy. They told her it——”
“Never mind what they told her. What’s the letter say? Ain’t married?
Why——!”
“She _was_ married. But she isn’t. And——”
“You talk like a man in a cave. Is d’Antri dead, or——”
Her husband’s frenzied impatience, as usual, served to drive the cowed
little rabbit-like woman into worse agonies of incoherence. But by
degrees, and through dint of much questioning, the whole sordid petty
tragedy related in the Como postmarked letter was at length extracted
from her.
Blanche, thanks to her heavy dower and her prince’s family connections,
had cut more or less of a swath in certain strata of continental society
during these early days of her stay in d’Antri’s world. Her husband’s
ancestral rock with its tumble-down castle had been bought back, and the
edifice itself put into course of repair. A bijou little house on the
Parc Monceau and a palazzo at Florence had been added to the Conover
fortune’s purchases, and at each of these latter abodes a gaudy fête had
been planned, to introduce the American princess and her dollars to the
class of people who proposed henceforth to endure the one for the sake
of the other.
Then, according to the letter, a château on the north shore of Como had
been rented for the autumn months. Here the bride and groom had dwelt in
Claude Melnotte fashion for barely a week when another woman appeared.
The newcomer was a singer formerly employed at the Scala, but now just
returned from a prolonged South American tour. Her voice had given out,
and, faced by poverty, she had prudently unearthed certain proofs to the
effect that, twelve years earlier, she had secretly married Prince
Amadeo d’Antri, then a youth of twenty-two.
Thus equipped, she had descended on the happy pair, and a most painful
scene had ensued. D’Antri, confronted with the documents, had made no
denial, but had tearfully assured Blanche that he had supposed the woman
dead. Be this as it might, the first wife had been so adamantine as to
refuse with scorn the rich allowance d’Antri offered her, and had
carried the matter to the Italian courts.
There it was promptly decided that, as Amadeo’s princely title was
chiefly honorary, and carried no royal prerogatives of morganatic
unions, the first marriage held.
“So I am without a home and without a name,” laboriously translated
Letty, punctuating her daughter’s written sentences with snuffle and
moan. “What am I to do? Poor Amadeo is disconsolate. It would break your
heart to witness his grief. But he cannot help me. Most of our ready
money has gone into the houses we have bought and other necessaries. The
bulk of my dot is, of course, deeded to Amadeo, according to continental
custom, and it seems the poor fellow’s ignorance of finance has led him
to invest it in such a way that for the present it is all tied up. I am
without money, without friends. _Helas!_ I——”
“In other words,” interpolated Caleb, “he’s got her cash nailed down,
and now he’s kicking her out dead broke, while he and the other woman——”
“I start to-morrow for Paris,” continued the letter. “I have just about
money enough to get me there, and I shall stay with the Pages until you
can send for me. Oh, Mother, _please_ make it all right with Father if
you can. Don’t let him blame poor Amadeo. You know how Father always——”
“Well, go on!” commanded the Railroader grimly.
“That’s about all,” faltered Letty. “The rest is just——”
“A eulogy on the old man, eh? Let it go at that. Now——”
“Oh, what _are_ we to do?” drivelled the poor woman, sopping her eyes.
“And all the——”
“All the splurge we made, and the way our dutiful girl was going to
boost us into the Four Hundred?” finished Caleb. “Thank the Lord, it
comes too late for a campaign document! But I guess it about wrecks my
last sneaking hope of landing on the social hay-pile. Never mind that
part of it now. We’ll have all the rest of our lives to kick ourselves
over the way we’ve been sold. And I’ll give myself the treat, as soon as
I can get away, of running over to Yurrup and having Friend d’Antri sent
to jail for bigamy and treated real gentle and loving while he’s there,
if a million-dollar tip to the right politicians in Italy will do it.
And I guess it will. But I _can’t_ get away till after this election
business is all cleared up. And Blanche’s got to be brought home right
off. Jerry!”
His son’s momentary interest in the family crisis had already lapsed. He
was sitting, stupid, glazed of eye, staring at the floor. At his
father’s call he glanced up.
“You’ll have to go to Paris for her,” went on Conover, “and bring her
back. Take the next steamer. There’s boats sailing on most of the lines
Wednesdays. Let’s see, this is Monday. Go to Ballston, as you were going
to, to-morrow morning. Get that package from Lanier, and send it to me
from there by registered mail. Be sure to have it registered. Then catch
the afternoon train to New York. That ought to get you in by five-thirty
or six. I’ll telegraph Wendell to-night to find out what’s the fastest
steamer sailing next morning, and tell him to take passage for you. Hunt
him up as soon as you reach town. And sleep on board the boat. That’ll
cut out any chance of your missing it. Bring Blanche back here to us by
the earliest steamer from France or England that you can get. And while
you’re in Paris, if you can hire some one on the quiet to drop over into
Italy and put d’Antri into the accident ward of some dago hospital for a
month or two, I don’t mind paying five thousand for the job. Come up to
my study, and I’ll fix you up financially for the trip, and give you
that note to Bruce Lanier.”
Gerald heard and nodded assent to the rapped-out series of directions
with as little emotion as though commanded to transmit some campaign
message to Billy Shevlin. His father, noting the quiet attention and
response, was pleased therewith. And the latent fondness and trust which
were slowly placing his recent contempt for his only and once adored
son, perceptibly increased.
As the two men left the room, Mrs. Conover looked lovingly after Gerald
through her tears.
“Poor dear boy!” she soliloquized. “He’s getting to be quite his old
bright self again. When Caleb mentioned his going to New York his eyes
lighted up just the way they used to when he was little.”
All unaware that she had detected something which even the Railroader’s
vigilance had overlooked, the good woman once more abandoned herself to
the joys of a new and delightfully unrestrained fit of weeping.
When at last she and her husband were together, alone, that night, Mrs.
Conover had some thought of commenting upon that fleeting expression she
had caught on Gerald’s face. But Caleb was so immersed in his own
unpleasant thoughts she lacked the courage to intrude upon his
reflections.
Which is rather a pity, for had she done so, the inefficient little
woman might have changed the history of the Mountain State.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FOURTH MESSENGER OF JOB
The rain Caleb Conover had so eagerly desired as a check on fair weather
reformers’ Election Day zeal began soon after midnight, and with it a
gale that is still remembered as the “Big November Wind.”
The wind-whips lashed the many-windowed Mausoleum, and the roar and
swirl of dashing water echoed from roof and veranda-cover. The autumn
gale-blasts set the naked trees to creaking and groaning like sentient
things. Here and there a huge branch was ripped from its trunk and
ploughed a gash in the lawn’s withered turf. More than one maple and ash
on the Conover grounds crashed to earth with a rending din that was
drowned in the howl of the storm.
A belated equinoctial was sweeping the Mountain State, driven on the
breath of a tornado such as not one year in twenty can record, east of
the Mississippi. Its screaming onset unroofed houses, tore up forest
giants, wrecked telegraph lines, buffeted fragile dwellings to their
fall and dissolved hayricks into miles of flying wisps.
Yet none of the three members of the Conover family, sheltered within
the Mausoleum, were awakened by the bellow of the cyclone, for none were
asleep. Letty, alone in her great, hideous bedroom, lay alternately
praying and weeping in maudlin comfortlessness over her absent daughter;
and at sound of the hubbub outside wept the more and prayed with an
added terror.
Gerald, despite the early start he must make in the morning, was still
dressed, and was slouching back and forth in his suite of apartments,
muttering occasionally to himself, and at other times pausing to gaze
lifelessly ahead of him. As the ever-louder voice of the storm broke in
on his thoughts, he stopped short in his aimless march, his dry lips
twitching and on his face the nervous terror of a suddenly awakened
child. He shambled into an inner chamber, unlocked and opened a drawer
in his chiffonier, fumbled for a moment or two with something he took
therefrom, then closed and locked the drawer and returned to the light.
In a few moments the nervousness had died out of his face and bearing,
and with a return of his habitual listless air he had resumed his walk.
Caleb Conover, stretched on a camp-bed in the corner of his study,
smiled contentedly as the rain beat in torrents on the panes. But when
the gale waxed fiercer and the rain at last ceased, he frowned.
“Going to blow off clear and cold after all!” he grumbled, turning over.
“And the Weather Bureau’s the only one that can’t be ‘fixed.’”
But even the shriek of the storm could not long hold his attention. The
Railroader was vaguely troubled as to himself. Heretofore, like
Napoleon’s, his steel will had been able to dictate to Nature as
imperiously as to his fellow-man. When he had commanded the presence of
Sleep, the drowsy god had hastened on the moment to do his bidding. He
had slumbered or awakened at wish. On the eve of his greatest crisis he
had been unable to sleep like a baby. Yet for the past few weeks he had
been aware of a subtle change. Sleep had deserted him, even as had so
much else that he had loftily regarded as his to command.
He had acquired an unpleasant habit of lying awake for hours in that big
lonely study of his, of seeking in vain to recover his old-time power of
perfect self-mastery. Thought, Memory, Unrest—a trio that never could
unduly assail him in saner hours—now had a way of rushing in upon the
insomniac with the extinguishing of the last light. To-night these
unwelcomed guests were lingering still longer than usual, and all the
Conover’s dominating will power failed to banish them.
At length he gave over the struggle and let his vagrant fancies have
their will. Was he growing old, he wondered, that his forces—mental,
physical and political—thus wavered?
Worry? He had heard others complain of it, and he had laughed at them.
Nerves? Those were for women. Not for a man with an eighteen-inch neck.
Then what ailed him? He had been this way ever since—ever since—Yes, it
was the night Anice Lanier left that he had first lain awake.
Anice Lanier! He had never analyzed his feelings toward her. He had been
dully satisfied to know that in her presence he ever had an unwonted
feeling of content, of sure knowledge that she would understand; that
she was as unlike his general idea of women as he himself differed from
his equally contemptuous estimate of other men; that he was at his best
with her. Had he been less practical and more given to hackneyed phrases
of thought, he would have said she inspired him.
But now? The Railroader could not yet force himself to dwell on the
jarring end of all that. He tried to think of something else. Blanche?
Yes, _there_ was a nice sort of complication, wasn’t it? Another
international marriage and the usual ending thereof.
“These foreigners can give us poor Yankee jays cards and spades at the
bunco game!” he mused, half-admiringly. “They beat _our_ ‘con’ men hands
down, for they don’t even need to pay out cash in manufacturing green
goods and gold bricks, and they don’t get jugged when they’re found out.
When’ll American girls get sense? When their parents do, I presume.”
And this unwelcome answer to his own question brought him back to the
memory of his joy at hearing of Blanche’s proposed marriage to d’Antri.
It had seemed to him to set the capstone of fulfilment to his social
yearnings. As father of a princess, he had in fancy seen himself at last
exalted amid the close-serried ranks of that class to whom only his
wealth had heretofore entitled him to ingress. And money—even _his_
money—had failed to act as _open sesame_. But surely as father-in-law to
a prince——
Even the very patent fiasco attendant on his one effort to use this
relationship as a master key to the portals of society had not wholly
discouraged him. Later, when, practically by acclamation, he should have
won the Governorship, and when the Princess d’Antri’s European triumphs
should be noised abroad in Granite, surely _then_——
But now there was no question of acclamation. If he should win it would
be by bare margin. He knew that. And, as for Blanche—well, if he could
keep the worst of the scandal out of the American papers and make people
think his daughter had come home merely because her husband abused her,
or because she was tired of her surroundings—if he could achieve this
much it would be the best he could expect.
Gerald, too; he had hoped so much from the boy’s glittering New York
connections. Now _that_ illusion was forever gone. Though his son’s more
recent behavior had in a slight measure softened the hurt to paternal
pride and hope, yet the hurt itself, Caleb knew, must always remain. And
that particular pride and hope were forever dead.
The Railroader was not in any sense a religious devotee. For appearance
sake, however, and to add still further force to his liberal gifts to
the Catholic clergy, he semi-occasionally attended mass at the
Cathedral. He also, for other reasons, occupied now and then, with
Letty, his higher-priced pew in the Episcopal church of St. Simeon
Stylites, religious rendezvous of Granite’s smart set.
At one of these two places of worship—he could not now remember
which—and, after all, it didn’t matter—he had heard, some time recently,
a Scripture reading that had held his attention more closely than did
most passages of the sort. It was a story of some man—he could not
remember whom—the recital of whose continued and unmerited ill-luck had
stamped itself on the hearer’s mind. The man had been rich, prosperous,
happy. Then one day four messengers had come to him in swift succession,
with tales of disaster to goods and family, each narration telling of
worse misfortunes than had its predecessor. And the fourth had left its
recipient stripped of wealth and family.
In a quaint twist of thought Conover, as he lay staring up into the dark
and listening to the noisy rage of the storm, fell to fitting the
biblical story to his own case.
“The first message I got,” he reflected, becoming grimly entertained in
his own analogy, “knocked over my plans for Jerry. Then the second stole
from me the only square woman I ever knew and all my chances of a
campaign walkover. The third smashed my idees for Blanche, and for
making a hit in society. The fourth—well, I guess the fourth ain’t
showed up yet. Will it clean me out when it _does_ come, I wonder, like
it did the feller in the Bible? Let’s see, _he_ had a whiny fool for a
wife, too, if I remember it straight. Yes, there’s a whole lot of points
in common between me and him. I wonder if he ever run for any office.
How was it all those messages of his wound up? ‘And—and I only am
escaped alone to tell thee.’ That was it.
“I wonder was he the same chap that had all those devils cast out of
him. I don’t just remember, but whoever it was that had ’em cast out,
I’d like to ’a’ known him, for he was a _man_. Most folks’ natures ain’t
big enough to hold a single half-size devil, let alone a whole crowd of
’em. If that Bible chap had all those it showed he was a man enough to
hold ’em. And if only one of ’em had been cast out it’d ’a’ been a
bigger thing he did than it would be for a dozen ordinary men to turn
into saints. Maybe I’m a little bit like _that_ feller, too.”
After which plunge into the theological exegesis—the first and last
whereof he ever was guilty—Caleb Conover turned his thoughts to the
morrow’s election, and thus communed with himself till dawn caught him
open-eyed and unsleepy, his splendid strength and energy in nowise
diminished by forty-eight hours of wakefulness.
It was a tattered, desolate world that met the Railroader’s eyes as he
gazed down from his window across the broad grounds and over the city
that lay at their foot. The wind had fallen, and a pink-gray light was
filling the clean-swept sky. Nature seemed ashamed to look on the
results of her own violence, for the dawnlight crept timidly over the
sleeping houses.
Everywhere were strewn signs of the hurricane. Tree branches, toppled
chimneys, unroofed shanties, swaths of telegraph and telephone wires,
overturned fences; these and a thousand other proofs of the gale’s brief
power lay broadcast throughout Granite’s streets.
And, with the first glimmers in the east, the people of city and State
were afoot, for history was to be made. Election Day had begun.
Midnight had again come around. The election was long since over, yet
the city did not ring with the uproar incident on such affairs. For the
result was not yet known. The storm of the previous night had cut off
telegraph and telephone communication in twenty parts of the Mountain
State. Granite itself was isolated. Hundreds of mechanics were at work
repairing the various lines of broken wire and replacing overthrown
poles. But the work had not yet sufficiently progressed to allow the
full transmission of election returns from the up-State counties.
Train service remained unimpaired, save for an occasional broken trestle
on one or two of the minor branches of the C. G. & X. And since
nightfall some of the returns had been brought to Granite by rail, but
these merely proved the closeness of the conflict, and gave no true hint
as to the actual outcome. The Granite vote was all in, hours ago. From
the slums and the dark places of the city’s underworld the long-trained
servants of the Machine had swarmed to the polls, overwhelming all
opposition from the smaller and more respectable element, and had
carried Granite tumultuously for Conover.
The Railroader, with a dozen or more men—district leaders, ward captains
and picked adherents of his own—sat about the big centre table of his
study, an Arthur, somewhat changed in the modernizing and surrounded by
equally altered Paladins. A telegraph operator sat at an instrument in a
far corner of the room, jotting down and carrying to the table such few
despatches as were at last beginning to trickle in. At Conover’s left a
ticker purred forth infrequent lengths of message-laden tape.
The table was littered with papers, yellow sheets of “flimsy,” bottles,
glasses and open cigar boxes. The henchmen lounged about, drinking and
smoking in nervous suspense, fighting over again the day’s battle, and
hazarding innumerable diverse opinions on the bearing each new despatch
would have on the general result. All were in a greater or less state of
tension, and relieved it by frequent resource to the battalion of
bottles that dotted the board.
Conover, alone of them all, touched no liquor. Before him was a big cup
of black coffee, which a noiseless-treading footman entered the room
every few minutes to renew.
“Ain’t that li’ble to keep you awake to-night, Boss?” asked Shevlin, as
he watched the fourth cupful vanish at a swallow.
“It don’t bother me any more,” returned Caleb, “I’m too used to it. But
I can remember when a single cup of it at Sunday morning breakfast would
make me so I couldn’t sleep a wink all church time. I’d toss from one
end of my pew to the other the whole morning. I couldn’t seem to drowse
no matter how long Father Healy’s sermon was. ’Nother county heard
from?” as the operator laid a message before him. “Read it, Billy.”
“Delayed in transmission,” spelled Shevlin. “Jericho County, with two
precincts missing, gives Conover 7,239, Standish 4,895.”
A yell went around the table. Bourke scribbled hurriedly on a pad, then
announced:
“That offsets the Standish lead in Haldane by 780. Two to one you’ve got
Bowden, too.”
A purr from the ticker, and Caleb caught up the tape.
“This machine don’t agree with you,” he reported. “Bowden complete gives
me 5,861 and Standish 6,312. That cuts us down a bit.”
“Did you ever see such a rag-time ’lection!” growled Shevlin. “It’s like
a seesaw board. One minute it’s you, and the next minute it ain’t.
What’s the hay-eaters up-State thinkin’ about, anyhow? A year ago they’d
no more ’a’ dared to——”
“A year’s a long time, son, in a country that makes a hero to order one
day and puts him into the discard the next.”
“Oh, if you’d ’a’ only just let us work like we always have before! We’d
’a’ sent this Standish person screechin’ up a tree. He’d ’a’ thought a
whale had bit him! But with all this amachoor line of drorin’-room
stunts at the polls an’ givin’ him the chance to——”
“That’s _my_ business,” replied Caleb. “Cut it out.”
And Billy relapsed into grumbling incoherence. Nor did any of the rest
dare voice their equally strong opinions on the subject of Conover’s
recent mystifying campaign tactics. Had a less powerful Boss dictated
and carried out such a senselessly honest plan of battle, his leadership
would have ended with the issuance of his first order. Impregnable as
had been Conover’s position in the machine, he himself well knew he had
strained his power and influence well-nigh to the breaking point. Should
he, in spite of his self-confidence and the wondrous skill he had
employed along this new line of warfare, lose the day——
“Coming in better now,” remarked the operator after a fusillade of
clicks had held his attention to the instrument for a minute or two.
“They’ve got the lines patched up enough to allow you straight service.
The stuff’ll all be here in a rush pretty soon.”
“Here comes some more ticker reports!” cried Staatz, leader of the Third
District, and strongest man, next to Conover himself, in all the
Machine. “Why can’t it hurry up? Here—‘Pompton County complete gives
Conover 28,042, Standish 6,723.’”
Another and louder yell from the tableful, and a battering of bottles
and glasses on the board. Conover alone sat calm through the din. Bourke
again did rapid figuring.
“Hooray!” he yelled. “That brings it up all right. Pompton County and
the city of Granite together give you enough plurality to stall all the
jay counties except——”
“It hangs on the one city of Grafton now,” interposed Caleb, who had as
usual gripped the whole situation before his lieutenant had jotted down
the first line of figures. “We’ve got enough reports to bring it up to
that. We know where we stand everywhere else, except in a few places too
small to count. As Grafton goes, the State will go. That’s a cinch.”
“That’s right,” admitted Bourke after another spasm of ciphering. “But
how’d you get onto us when the rest of us——?”
“If I didn’t get onto things before the rest of you did, one of you
would be sitting at the head of this table instead of me.”
The Railroader glanced, as by accident, toward Staatz, who coughed
raucously and plunged at once into talk.
“Pete Brayle tried to backtrack us on the sly in Pompton County, I
hear,” said the latter. “Thought it’d get him a soft place in the reform
gang in case they won. A lot of good it did him.”
“Brayle’s always looking for soft places,” observed Caleb dryly. “And he
ain’t the only one. Such fellers gen’rally end up in a soft place, all
right. Only it’s apt to be a swamp, and that’s——”
“Jericho County complete returns,” translated the operator aloud, as his
machine began again to click out its news, “Conover 7,910, Standish
5,495.”
“Why don’t we hear from Grafton?” asked Staatz.
“They’re patching up the connection now,” answered the operator. “It’s
farthest city on the line. You’ve got all the rest of the returns from
its county.”
“That place is a regular nest of reformers, from the mayor down,”
commented Bourke. “And besides, Standish won a lot of votes by his
grand-stand scrap in the op’ra house there last month. It looks bad.”
“Most reform places do after they’ve tried a dose of their own medicine
for awhile,” answered Caleb. “But we’ve spent enough good dough there to
square the whole noble army of martyrs. I guess Grafton’s O. K.”
“Boss,” said Billy Shevlin, “you’re the only man in this whole shootin’
match what ain’t all hectic over this fight. An’ you’re the one man
who’s _It_ or out in th’ woolly white snow accordin’ to th’ way that
genial beast of prey th’ free an’ independent an’ otherwise bought-up
voters jumps. Ain’t you worried none?”
“What good’d that do? No use paying twice, if there’s anything to worry
about. And if there ain’t, what’s the use of wasting a lot of good
anxiety? Start my phonograph going.”
“Phonograph?” hotly protested Staatz. “At a time like this, when
everything hangs on the next half hour and——”
“Well,” drawled Caleb, and if his words were light, his steady eyes
fixed the district leader’s vexed gaze as a wasp might pierce an angry,
blundering bumblebee, “I don’t believe the voters of the Mountain
State’ll rise in arms to any extent and demand a new election and a new
Boss just because they hear I wanted a little music. I like the
phonograph. It’s the only musical instrument I ever had time to learn to
play. And it’s the only one that’ll play over the pieces I like as often
as I want to hear ’em, and won’t make me listen to a lot of opera
war-whoops in Dutch and Dago. But, say, Staatz, I’m not forcing other
folks to listen to it. If you’re not stuck on the way I amuse myself,
there ain’t nobody exactly imploring you to stay on here.”
Staatz, his red face redder than its wont, and his great gray mustache
abristle at the Railroader’s tone and look, nevertheless mumbled some
apology. But Caleb did not hear him out. He broke in on the words with a
curt nod, then said to Shevlin:
“Start it up, Billy. Any old tune’ll do. There’s none there but the kind
I like. Might try——”
Again the footman came in. This time not with coffee, but with a card.
“I thought I told Gaines I wasn’t to be broke in on this evening,” began
Conover, glowering at the intruder. “Say I can’t see anyone. I’m busy,
and——”
He had taken the card as he spoke. Now, as he read it, his order trailed
off into perplexed silence, even as Billy Shevlin, his face one big grin
at Staatz’s discomfiture, started the phonograph on the classic strains
of “Everybody Works but Father.”
“Turn off that measly racket!” roared Caleb. “Ain’t you got any better
sense than to go fooling with toys a time like this? I’ll be back in a
few minutes, boys. My New York lawyer wants me for something.”
He left the study and hurried downstairs to where, in the hall, a man
stood awaiting him.
“Come in here, Wendell,” directed the Railroader, shaking hands with his
new guest, and leading the way to the library. “What’re you doing in
this part of the country? Glad to see you.”
“I bring you bad news—very bad news, I am afraid,” began the lawyer as
Conover closed the library door behind them.
“I know that,” snapped Caleb. “I knew it as soon as I saw your face, but
I didn’t want you shouting it out in the hall where my butler could hear
you. That’s why I—well, what is it? Tell me, can’t you?”
“Your son——”
“Yes, Jerry, of course. I knew that, too. But what’s he done this time?”
“This is, as I said, a very serious——”
“Good Lord, man! I didn’t s’pose you’d took a four-hour train ride from
New York a night like this to tell me he’d won a ping pong prize or
joined the Y. M. C. A. The chap that’s got to have news broke to him has
a head too thick for truth to be let into it any other way. Don’t stand
there like a lump of putty. What’s up?”
The lawyer, flushing at the coarse invective, spared the father no
longer. He spoke, and to the point.
“Your son,” he said, “is in the West Thirtieth Street police station on
a charge of murder.”
Conover looked at him without a start, without visible emotion. For a
full half minute he made no reply, no comment. Nor did his light, keen
eyes flicker or turn aside.
Then—and Wendell feared from his words that the tidings had turned
Caleb’s brain—the Railroader muttered, half to himself:
“‘And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.’”
CHAPTER XIV
CALEB CONOVER LOSES AND WINS
“I don’t quite understand,” ventured the puzzled lawyer.
“Neither do I,” said Caleb. “Tell me your story as brief as you can.”
“Your son reached town a little after six o’clock this evening,”
answered Wendell. “It seems he went directly to a restaurant in the
theatre district of Broadway, a place frequented by men of a certain
class and by the women they take there. It was early, but on account of
the election night fun to come later many people were already dining.
Gerald afterward told me he went there in the hope of catching a glimpse
of his former wife. He saw her there. With her was a man she had known
before she met your son, a bookmaker named Stange, whom Gerald—or
Gerald’s money—had originally won her from, and for whom he always, it
appears, retained some jealousy. Gerald walked straight up to the table
where they sat, drew a revolver and fired four times point-blank in
Stange’s face. Any one of the shots by itself would have been fatal.
Then he tossed the revolver to a waiter and spent the time until the
police arrived in trying to console this Montmorency woman and to quiet
her hysterics. They took him to the Tenderloin station and he got the
police to telephone for me. I found him in a state of semi-collapse. A
police surgeon was working over him. Heart failure brought on by
excitement. His heart was already in a depressed, weakened state, the
surgeon said, from an overdose of morphine. The poor boy apparently was
in the habit of taking it, for they found a case with a hypodermic
syringe and tablets in his pocket. And one of his arms——”
“So that was the ‘third thing’ beside booze and cigarettes?”
It was Caleb’s first interruption. During the recital of his son’s crime
he had stood motionless, expressionless. Not until this trivial detail
was reached had he spoken. And even now his voice was as emotionless as
was his face. The inscrutable Spartan quiet that had so often left his
business and political opponents in the dark was now upon him. Wendell
saw and wondered. Mistaking the other’s mental attitude for the first
daze of horror, he resumed:
“He came around in a few minutes. I did what I could for him. Then I
tried to reach you by long-distance telephone. But the wires were down
all through this State. I had no better fortune in telegraphing. So I
caught the eight-ten train and came straight here. I thought you ought
to be told at once, so that——”
“Quite so. Thank you. It was very white. I’m sorry I was so brisk with
you awhile ago.”
The lawyer stared. Conover was talking as though a mere financial matter
were involved. Still supposing his client suffering from shock that
dulled his sensibilities, Wendell continued:
“Morphine and jealousy combining to cause temporary insanity. That must
be our line of defence. You agree with me of course?”
“Suit yourself. I’ll stand by whatever you suggest.”
The lawyer drew out his watch.
“Twelve forty-five,” he said. “The New York express passes through
Granite at one twenty. We’ll have plenty of time to catch it. If you
will get ready at once, we’ll start. We can discuss details during the
trip.”
“‘We’?” echoed Caleb. “What d’ye mean? _I’m_ not going to New York with
you.”
“Mr. Conover!” exclaimed Wendell, shaking his inert host by the shoulder
to rouse him from his apparent stupor, “you don’t realize! Gerald is in
a cell on a murder charge. To-morrow he will be sent to the Tombs—our
city prison—to remain until his case comes up. Then he will be tried for
his life and——”
“I know all about the course of such things. You don’t need to tell me.”
“But this is a life-and-death matter!”
“Well, if _I_ can keep cool over it, I presume _you_ can, can’t you?
It’s very kind of you to explain all this to me, but it ain’t necessary.
I understand everything you’ve told me, and I understand a lot you’ve
overlooked. For instance, the pictures that’ll be in all to-morrow’s
evening papers of my boy on his way to the Tombs, handcuffed to a
plain-clothes man, and pictures of that chorus woman of his in all sorts
of poses, and pictures of the ‘stricken father’—that’s me—and Letty
figuring as the ‘aged mother, heart-broke at her son’s crime.’ And my
daughter and her—the Prince d’Antri. And my house and a diagram of the
restaurant where the shooting was done. And there’ll be interviews with
the Montmorency thing and accounts of her being brave and visiting Jerry
in the Tombs. And a maynoo of what he’ll have for Thanksgiving dinner in
his cell. And——”
“I’ll do what I can to prevent publicity. I——”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. What happens in public the public has a
right to read about. If Jerry’s dragged us into the limelight, can we
kick if the papers let folks see us there?”
“But surely——”
“That’s the easiest part of it. I’ve got to face my wife with this
story. Not to-night, but to-morrow anyhow. Sweet job, eh? A white man
don’t enjoy squashing the life out of even a guinea-pig in cold blood,
let alone a boy’s mother. And reporters’ll begin coming here by sunrise
for interviews, and folks’ll be staring at us in the street and offering
their measly sympathy and then running off to tell the neighbors how we
took it. And every paper we pick up will be full of the ‘latest
d’vel’pments’ and all that. And those of us who know Jerry will get into
the pleasing habit of remembering what a cute, friendly kid he used to
be when he was little, and the great things we used to dream he’d do
when he grew up, and how we hustled so’s he’d have as good a chance in
life as any young feller on earth. And then we’ll remember he’s waiting
in jail to be tried for murdering a chorus slattern’s lover, and all the
black, filthy shame he’s put on decent folks that was fools enough to
love him, and the way he’s fulfilled them silly hopes of ours. Oh, yes,
Wendell, I guess I ‘realize,’ all right, all right. I don’t need no
‘wakening sense.’ But maybe I’ve made it clear to you now why it is I
don’t go cavorting off by the next train to console and cheer up the boy
who’s brought this on us. I don’t just hanker——”
“Don’t take that tone, I beg, sir!” pleaded the lawyer, deeply pained by
what underlay the father’s half-scoffing, ironical tirade. “He may live
it down. He is only twenty-four. The jury will surely be lenient. After
all, there’s the ‘unwritten law’ and——”
“And of all the slimy rot ever thought up by a paretic’s brain, that
same ‘unwritten law’ is about the rankest specimen,” snarled Caleb. “By
the time a man’s learned to live up to all the _written_ laws, I guess
he won’t have a hell of a lot of leisure left to go moseying around
among the unwritten ones. Whenever a coward takes a pot-shot at some one
within half a mile of a petticoat, up goes the ‘unwritten law’ scream.
Use it if you like in the trial, but for God’s sake cut out such
hypocritical bosh when you’re talking to _me_. ‘Unwritten law!’ Why
don’t the Legislature take a day off and write it?”
“Then you won’t come with me to town?” asked the lawyer, with another
covert glance at his watch.
“Come with you and tell Jerry how sorry I am for him, and how I
sympathize with him for killing his mother—for that’s what it’ll come
to—and for wrecking a name I’ve spent all my life building up for him,
and for making me the shame of all my friends? No, Wendell, I guess I’ll
have to deprive him of that treat. I’ll think up later what’s best to do
about him. In the meantime get him acquitted.”
“Acquitted? That is not so easy. But——”
“Not so easy? Why ain’t it? Didn’t I tell you to draw on me for all you
wanted? I’ve got somewhere between forty and fifty millions all told.
The jury don’t live this side of the own-your-own-cloud suburbs of
heaven that hasn’t at least one man on it that $100,000 will buy. If not
that, then $1,000,000. I’ll leave the details to you. Buy enough jurors
to ‘hang’ every verdict till they get tired of trying Jerry and turn him
loose to save the State further expense. If a murderer ain’t convicted
on his first trial, it’s a cinch he’s never going to be on his second or
third. Now, it’s up to you to buy that drawn verdict for the first
trial, and then for the others till they acquit him or parole him in
your custody. It’s been done before, and it’ll be done again. This ain’t
a ‘life-and-death matter’ as you called it. It’s a question of dollars
and cents. And as long as I’ve got enough of those same dollars and
cents, no boy of mine’s going to the death-chair or to life imprisonment
either. You’ll have to hustle for that train. If you miss it, come back
and I’ll put you up for the night.”
Tense excitement, as was lately his way, had made the formerly taciturn
Railroader voluble. He now, as frequently since the night of his speech
at the reception, noted this, himself, with a vague surprise.
“If Jerry wants any ready money, just now——” he began, as he escorted
the lawyer to the door.
“He seems to have plenty for any immediate needs,” returned Wendell. “I
saw the contents of his pockets that the police had taken charge of.
Besides the morphine case and a few cards and a packet of letters in a
sealed wrapper, there were large-denomination bills to the amount of——”
“Packet of letters—sealed?” croaked Conover, catching the other’s arm in
a grasp that bit to the point of agony. “Letters?” he repeated, his
throat dry and contracted.
“Oh, I meant to speak to you about them. Gerald asked me to bring them
along. He said he got them for you from a man in Ballston to-day, and
was to have sent them to you by registered mail. But in the hurry of
catching the New York train and the excitement over the prospects of
seeing——”
“Where are they? Did you bring them?”
“I couldn’t,” answered Wendell, marveling at the lightning change in his
client’s voice and face. “The police, of course, took charge of them.
They will have to be examined by the district attorney’s office
before——”
“You must hurry or you’ll miss your train. Good night.”
Conover slammed the door on his astonished guest and walked back into
the library.
In the middle of the room where he had so vainly sought to inculcate
into his family the “pleasant home hour” habit, the Railroader now stood
alone, silent, without motion, his shrewd face an empty, expressionless
mask of gray, his eyes alone burning like live coals, showing that the
brain within in no way shared the outer shell’s inertia.
“I’ve got to work this out later, when I’ve more time,” he muttered.
And with the resolve came the impulse so common to him when troubled or
excited.
“Gaines!” he called to the butler, who, late though the hour was, had
not received permission on this great night to retire, “Gaines! order
Dunderberg saddled and brought around in fifteen minutes, and have Giles
ride with me to-night.”
Caleb went up to his dressing-room and hastily changed into his riding
clothes.
As he strapped on the second of his spurs a confused babel of sound
arose just beyond his dressing-room. This apartment served as a sort of
antechamber to the study. The noise, therefore, must have come, he knew,
from the bevy of men he had left there. This patent fact dawned on
Conover as a surprise. He had forgotten his followers’ existence,
forgotten the undecided election, the impending Grafton returns on which
its result would hang. He had even, since Wendell’s departure, forgotten
Jerry’s plight and his own rage and mortification thereat. All life—all
the future—now concentrated, for him, about the Denzlow packet, whose
contents must by this time, or by morning at latest, be known to the
authorities. This last and greatest blow had filled all his emotions,
driving out lesser thoughts, fears, hopes and griefs, as a cyclone might
rip to thin air the dawn mists over a lake.
Now, at the clamor in the study, he pulled himself together. The iron
will still held. He strode to the connecting door and opened it. The
tumult had died down, and Staatz alone was now speaking. So intent were
the speaker and his hearers that none noted the Boss’s advent from so
unexpected a quarter. On the threshold stood Caleb, surveying the scene
with quiet contempt.
“And that’s how it is!” Staatz was declaiming. “We’re licked. _Licked!_
Pretty sort of news for Democrats _this_ is!” picking up a newly-broken
length of ticker tape around which the other men had been clustering.
“‘City of Grafton, complete: Conover 5,100, Standish 12,351.’ Is it a
wonder you all went nutty when you got it? In Grafton, too, stronghold
of Democracy. This means the State for Standish by an easy 4,000, maybe
more. And who’s to blame? Are you? Am I? Not us! We’ve had—the whole
party’s had—our hands tied behind us. And we were sent in to fight like
that. Could we use the good old moves? Not us! It must be kid-glove,
silk-sock, amachoor politics, meeting Standish on his own ground. No
wonder he licked us! A Prohibitionist could have licked men that were
hampered like we were. And who was it tied our hands? Who got the party
beat and the Machine smashed? Who did it? Caleb Conover!”
He paused panting and sweating with wrath. Then, encouraged by a murmur
of assent that ran around the ring of listeners, he bellowed:
“We ain’t in politics for our health, are we? It’s our bread and butter.
That bread and butter’s been snatched away from us. Who by? Caleb
Conover! Are you going to be led by the nose any longer by a man who
betrays you like that? For my part _I’m_ tired of wearing his collar.”
A growl of approbation greeted his query. His bellow changed to a lower
tone of persuasion.
“I ain’t saying,” he resumed, “but what Conover’s done work for the
Machine. In his day he was a great man, but his day’s past. He’s
breaking up. Don’t this campaign prove he is? Makes us throw our chances
out of the winder for Standish to pick up. And when we’re waiting news
from the deciding city he plays a phonograph, and then wanders off and
most likely forgets we’re here. There’s another thing: How did Richard
Croker and Charlie Murphy and Matt Quay and N. Bonaparte and all the
rest of the big bosses hold their power? By keeping their mouths shut.
When Croker once began to talk, what happened? Down tumbled all his
power. Same with Quay. Same with N’poleon. Same with all of ’em. Talking
was the first sign of losing hold. Look at Conover’s case. We can all
remember when words was as hard to get out of him as dollars. How about
him now? Talks to any one. I tell you he’s breaking up. Unless we want
the Machine to break up for good and all, too, we got to get a new
Leader.”
“If the new Leader’s _you_, Adolphe Staatz,” cut in a rasping snarl,
like a dog’s, from the group of politicians, as Billy Shevlin shouldered
his way forward and thrust his unshaven face close to the district
leader’s bristling gray mustache, “if _you’re_ the new Leader you’re
rootin’ for, let me put you wise to somethin’: You’ll go to the
primaries straight from the hospital, an’ with your shyster mug in a
sling. Fer, if I hear another peep out of you, roastin’ the Boss, I’ll
knock you from under your hat, and push your ugly face in till your back
teeth bend. _You_ take the Boss’s job? Chee! It’s to ha-ha! Go chase
yourself, ’fore I chase you so far you’ll d’scover a new street. _You’d_
backtrack Mister Conover, would you’se? Why, if you go ’round Granite
spreadin’ idees of that kind in your own pin-head brain, I’ll sure be
c’mpelled to do all sorts of things to you. An’ when I’m finished with
you the Staatz family’ll be able to indulge in that alloorin’ pastime
called ‘Put Papa Together!’ _You_ fer Leader, eh? Say! I’m flatterin’
you a whole heap when I call you——”
“Let him alone, Billy,” intervened Bourke, as the startled Staatz backed
toward the wall, ever followed by that belligerent, blue-jawed little
face so close to his own—“let him alone. He’s talking straight. I for
one——”
“You for one,” sounded a sneering voice from the dressing-room doorway
behind them, “you for one, friend Bourke, were starving on the street
when I took you in and fed you and got your kids out of the Protectory
and gave you a job.”
At the first word the mumbled assent to Staatz’s and Bourke’s opinion,
that had welled up in a dozen throats, died into sacred silence.
“You for another, ’Dolphe Staatz,” went on Caleb, still standing on the
threshold and viewing the group of malcontents with a cold disgust. “You
were on the road to the ‘pen’ for knowing too much about that ‘queer
paper’ joint on Willow Street, when I got the indictment quashed and
squared things with the district attorney and put you on your feet.
“Caine,” turning to the _Star’s_ editor, “I think I heard _you_ agreeing
among the rest, didn’t I, hey? Diff’r’t sound from the kind you made
when you come to me twelve years ago and cried and said the _Star_ was
all in, and would I save you from going bankrupt by taking it over? And
there’s plenty more of you here with the same sort of story to tell.”
He strode forward and was among them, forcing one after another to meet
his eye, dominating by his very presence the men who had sought to
dethrone him. In his hour of stress all the old power, the splendid
rulership of men, surged back upon the Railroader. He stood a king amid
awestruck serfs, a stern schoolmaster among a naughty band of scared
children.
“Some one spoke about being tired of wearing my collar,” he said. “Is
there a man here who put on that collar against his will, or a man who
didn’t beg for it? Is there a man who hasn’t profited by it? A man who
hasn’t risen as I have risen and benefited when I benefited? Don’t stand
there, mumchance, like a lot of dago section-hands! You were ready
enough to speak before I came in. Why aren’t you, now? Is it because
you’re so sorry for this poor, broken old man, who talks too much and
ain’t fit to run the Machine any longer, eh? Spit it out, Staatz! If
you’re qualifying for my shoes you got to learn to look less like a
whipped puppy when you’re spoke to. Stand up and state your grievance
like a man, you Dutch crook that I lifted out of jail! You, too, Bourke!
Where’s your tongue? And all the rest of you that was on the point of
choosing a new Leader.”
No one answered. The Boss’s instinct power rather than his mere words
held them sulky and dumb. Over each was creeping the old subservience to
the peerless will that had so long shaped the Mountain State’s destinies
and theirs.
“I talk too much, eh?” mocked Conover. “Well, to prove that’s so, I’m
going to give you curs a little Sunday-school talk right now. You say I
cut out the old methods, this campaign. I did. And why did I do it?
Because if these reformers had thought they were licked unfair there’s
so many of ’em they’d ’a’ carried the case to every court in the land,
and ’a’ drawed the whole country’s op’ra-glasses onto this p’ticular
Machine, and started another such wave as swamped Dick Croker and
Tammany in ’94. And then where’d the Machine and you fellers have been?
There’s got to be reform in a State just so often, just like there’s got
to be croup in a nursery. Every other State’s had it. And each time
they’ve fished up something queer about their local Machine, and that
same Machine’s never been so strong again. Well, the Mountain State’s
turn for reform was overdue. It had to come. And this was the time. I
thought maybe I could beat ’em on their own ground. If I had, that’d ’a’
ended reform here, forever and amen. Even if I was beat I knew the
people would get so sick of one term of reform, they’d come screeching
to us to take ’em back. And then’s the time my kid-glove stunts of this
campaign would shine out fine against a rotten reform administration.
The Machine would escape any investigation of the kind that follers a
crooked campaign, and we’d simply be begged to take everything in sight
for the rest of our lives. Maybe you think a chance of one term out of
office was too much to pay for such a future cinch?”
The speech—reasons and all—was improvised as he spoke. And again it was
the Boss’s manner and his brutal magnetism rather than his words that
carried conviction.
“Because I didn’t print this all out in big letters and simple words
that you dolts could understand,” resumed Caleb, “you forget the holes
I’ve got you and the party out of in the past, and go grouching about my
‘breaking up.’ Maybe my brain _is_ softening a bit, just to keep company
with the ninnies I travel with. But it’s still a _brain_. And that’s
more’n anyone else here can boast of having. Now, I’ve showed you how
the land lays. Which of _you_ would ’a’ carried the Machine over it any
safer, and how would he’d ’a’ done it? _You_, for instance, Staatz?”
The big German sheepishly grumbled something unintelligible under his
breath.
“Sounds about as clear and sensible as most of your ideas, ’Dolphe,”
commented Caleb. “You’ll have to learn more words’n that before you’re
Boss. Now, then,” he resumed, throwing aside his stolid bearing and
hammering imperiously on the table with his riding crop, “we’ll proceed
to choose a new Leader. It’s irregular, but there’s easy a quorum of
district leaders here. Who’ll it be that steps into Caleb Conover’s
shoes? Who’ll say he’s strong enough to hold the reins he thinks I’m too
weak to handle? Who’ll it be? I lifted the party and every man here from
the dirt to a higher, stronger place than anyone dreamed they _could_ be
lifted. Who’ll hold ’em there now that I stand aside? Speak up! Choose
your leader!”
“_CONOVER!_” yelled Billy Shevlin ecstatically.
“Shut up, you mangy little tough!” fiercely ordered Caleb; but a
half-score of eager voices had caught up the cry. About the Railroader
pressed the district leaders, smiting him on the back, striving to grab
his hands, over and over again vociferating his name; crying out on him
to stand by them, to lead them, to forgive their ingratitude and folly.
And in the centre of the exultant babel stood Caleb Conover, unmoved
save for a sneering smile that twisted one corner of his hard mouth, the
only man present who was not carried away by that crazy wave of reactive
enthusiasm.
“Staatz,” observed the Railroader, as the hubbub at length died down,
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a wee peckle longer for that leadership.
But cheer up. Everything comes to the man who waits—till no one else
wants it. I’ve got one thing more to say, and then my ‘talking’ will be
done for good, as far as you men are concerned. I had a kennel of dogs
once, on my place here. A whole lot of pedigreed, high-priced whelps
that it cost me a fortune to buy. I thought maybe I’d enjoy their
society. It was so much sensibler’n politicians’. But somehow after a
while I got tired of ’em. For they didn’t take to me, not from the
first. Animals don’t, as a rule. Every now and then when I’d go to their
enclosure they’d forget to mind me, and once or twice they combined and
tried to get me down and throttle me. Of course I could lash ’em into
minding, and I could lash all the fight out of ’em when they started for
my throat. And I did. But by and by I got tired of having to lick the
brutes every few days in order to make ’em treat me decent. They weren’t
worth the trouble. So I got rid of them. Just as I’m going to get rid of
you fellers, and for the same good reason. I resign. I’m out of politics
for good. As far as I’m concerned the Machine is smashed for all time.
Now clear out of here, the whole kennelful of you. Be on your way!”
Stilling the furious volley of protest that had arisen on all sides at
his announcement, Caleb flung open the outer door of his study. Several
of the dazed politicians essayed to speak, but the quick gleam in their
self-deposed Leader’s eye halted the words ere they were spoken.
Obedient, cowed to the last, the Machine’s officers and henchmen finally
yielded to that look and to the peremptory gesture of the Railroader’s
arm. One by one they filed out, Staatz in the van, Bourke with averted
gaze slinking along in the rear.
With a grunt of ultimate dismissal Conover closed the door.
Glancing over the scene of the late conflict before departing for his
ride, his glance fell on a solitary, ill-dressed figure seated at one
corner of the deserted table.
“Billy!” exclaimed Conover, exasperated, “why didn’t you get out with
the rest!”
“’Cause I don’t belong with that cheapskate push. I belong here with
you, Boss.”
“But I’m out of it, you idiot. Out of the game for good and all. I’m
leaving Granite.”
“When do we start?”
Conover looked at his little henchman in annoyance that merged into a
vexed laugh.
“I tell you,” he repeated, “I’m out of politics for good.”
“So’m I, then,” cheerfully responded Billy. “D’ye know, Boss, I’m kind
o’ glad. Sometimes I’ve suspicioned politics wasn’t—well, wasn’t quite
square. Maybe it’s best that two pious men like us is out of it. Now,
say, Mister Conover,” he hurried on more seriously, “I know what you
mean. You want to shake the whole bunch. You’re sore on ’em all. You’re
goin’ to cut out Granite, too, after the lemon you’ve been handed. But
whatever your game is an’ wherever you spiel it, it won’t do you no harm
to have Billy Shevlin along with you as a ‘also-ran.’ Now, will it? Why,
Boss, I’ve worked for you ever since I was no bigger’n—no bigger’n
Staatz’s chances of becomin’ a white man. An’ I ain’t goin’ to cut out
the old job at this time of day. If it ain’t Caleb Conover, Governor, I
work for, then it’ll be Caleb Conover, Something-or-other. An’ that’s
good enough for W. Shevlin. So let’s let it go at that. I won’t bother
you no more to-night, ’cause I see you’re on edge. But I’m comin’ around
in the mornin’. An’ when I come I’m comin’ for keeps. Just like I’ve
always done. So long, Boss.”
“Poor old Billy!” muttered Conover as the Shevlin slipped out too
hurriedly to permit of his Leader’s framing any reply to what was quite
the longest speech the henchman had ever made. “He’ll never make a hit
in politics till he gets rid of some of that loyalty. Next to gratitood
there ain’t another vice that hampers a man so bad.”
Then, dismissing the recent events from his mind, the Railroader ran
downstairs, lightly as a boy, and to the outer entrance, where
Dunderberg was plunging and pivoting in the grip of two grooms. A third
groom, mounted on a quieter steed, sat well beyond range of the
stallion’s lashing heels.
Late as it was, Mrs. Conover was still up. Caleb brushed past her in the
hall, cutting short the feeble remonstrances with which she always
prefaced one of his wild rides.
“Oh, Caleb!” she pleaded as she followed him out on the broad veranda.
“Not to-night, dear! Just give it up this once, to please ME! He’s—he’s
such a terrible horse. I never saw him so wild as he is now. The men can
scarcely hold him. Oh, please——”
[Illustration: “All right!” shouted Conover, in glorious excitement.
“All right! Let him go! Never mind the hat.” Page 313.]
But the Railroader was already preparing to mount.
“Don’t you worry, old girl,” he called back over his shoulder; “he’s
none too wild for my taste. There never was a horse yet could get the
best of me.”
The wind was rising again. It whistled across the grounds, ruffling the
puddles and stirring the dead leaves. A whiff of it caught Conover’s hat
as he fought his way to the plunging stallion’s back. The exultance of
coming battle was already upon both rider and horse.
“Your hat, sir!” called one of the grooms, as another sprang forward to
catch the falling headgear. But Caleb had no mind to wait for trifles.
The night wind was in his face, the furious horse whirling and rearing
between his vice-like knee-grip.
“All right!” shouted Conover in glorious excitement, signalling to the
struggling groom to release the bit. “All right! Let him go! Never mind
the hat. Come on, Giles.”
Dunderberg, his head freed, leaped forward as from a catapult. Master
and man thundered away down the drive, and were swallowed in the
blackness. The double roar of flying hoofs grew fainter, then was lost
in the solemn hush of the autumn night.
CHAPTER XV
DUNDERBERG SOLVES THE DIFFICULTY
Clive Standish had spent the evening at the Civic League headquarters,
awaiting reports of the day’s battle. The rooms were full of the
League’s minor candidates and officials, with a fair sprinkling of
women. Anice Lanier, chaperoned by her aunt, with whom she now lived,
was there, her high color and the light in her big eyes alone betraying
the fearful suspense under which she labored.
The belated returns, which should have been telegraphed at once to the
League headquarters, were still further delayed by the fact that the one
wire now running into town had been preëmpted by Conover. Hence, it was
not until well after one o’clock that Clive received definite news of
his own election. Throngs of friends and supporters had, on receipt of
the final figures, flocked about him with congratulations and good
wishes. To all he had given seeming heed, yet among the crush he saw but
one face, read in one pair of brown eyes the praise and infinite
gladness he sought.
And as soon as he could he departed with Anice and her aunt for the
latter’s home, where a little _souper à trois_ was to celebrate the
victory.
They formed a jolly trio about the dainty supper table. Late as it was,
all were far too excited to feel sleepy or wish to curtail by one minute
the little feast of triumph.
“To the next Governor of the Mountain State!” proclaimed Anice solemnly,
as she lifted her glass. “To be drunk standing, and with—No, no, Clive,”
she reproved as the Governor-elect also rose. “_You_ mustn’t drink it.
It’s——”
“I’m not going to,” retorted Standish indignantly. “I’m getting up to
look for a dictionary.”
“But what on earth——”
“I want to find the feminine for Governor. And——”
A whirr of the telephone bell broke in on his explanation.
“Some stupid political message for you,” hazarded Anice, taking down the
receiver. “Yes, this is 318 R. Yes. Yes, this is Miss La—Oh!” with a
changed intonation, “Mrs. Conover?”
A longer pause. Then Anice gave a little exclamation of sympathy,
listened a moment and said:
“Yes, we will come at once. But I hope you’ll find it’s not as bad as
you think. Don’t break down. I’m sure it will be all right.”
“What is it?” asked Clive and her aunt in a breath.
“I’m not quite sure,” answered the girl. “She was so upset I could
hardly understand her. Besides, the wires are still in bad condition.
But it seems some accident or injury has happened to her husband. Gerald
is away, and there is no one the poor woman can turn to, so she
telephoned for me. And, Clive, she wants to know if you won’t come, too.
Please, do. You’re the only relative she has. And she’s so unhappy.”
“Just as you wish,” acceded Standish, with no great willingness, “but
I’ll be sorry to have to-night’s happiness marred by another row with
Conover.”
“I gather from what she says he is in no condition for a ‘row’ with
anyone. I told her we’d come at once. Please hurry, dear. I hate to
think of that frightened little woman trying to meet any sort of a
crisis alone.”
In the great, comfortless drawing-room of the Mausoleum, on a couch
hastily pushed into the centre of the room under the chandelier, lay
Caleb Conover, Railroader. Two doctors, who had been working over him,
had now drawn back a few paces and were conferring in grave undertones.
At the foot of the couch, clad only in nightgown and slippers, as she
had been aroused from bed, her sparse hair tight-clumped in a semicircle
of kid curlers, Mrs. Conover crouched in a moaning, rocking heap.
Scared, whispering groups of servants blocked the doorways or peered
curiously in from behind curtains. The air was thick with the pungent
smell of antiseptics.
The Railroader, lying motionless beneath the unshaded glare of a
half-dozen gas jets, was swathed of head and bandaged of arm. He was
coatless, and his shirt and waistcoat were thrown open disclosing his
mighty chest. Across the couch-end his feet, still booted and spurred,
protruded stiffly as a manikin’s.
It was upon this scene that Anice and Clive entered. At sight of the
girl, Mrs. Conover scrambled to her feet, and with a wild outburst of
scared sobs, scuttled forward to meet her, the bedside slippers
shuffling and sliding grotesquely along the polished floor. Anice took
the panic-stricken, weeping creature into her arms and whispered what
words of comfort and encouragement she could.
Meanwhile Clive, not desiring to break in on the doctors’ conference,
turned to the doorway again and asked a question of one of the servants.
For reply the groom, Giles, was thrust forward and obliged to repeat,
with dolorous unction, for the tenth time within an hour, the story of
the accident.
“You see, sir,” he said, lowering his voice as though in the room with a
corpse, “Mr. Conover sent word for me to ride with him. We started off
at a dead run, and my horse couldn’t noways keep up with Dunderberg, so
I follows along behind as fast as I could, but I couldn’t keep up to the
right distance between us, to save me. Mr. Conover turns out of the
drive, up Pompton Av’noo, sir, and on past the Humason place, me
a-followin’ as fast as I could. All of a sudden I catches up. It’s in
that dark, woody patch of road just this side the quarries. The way I
happens to catch up is because Dunderberg was havin’ one of them
tantrums of his an’ Mr. Conover was givin’ it to him for all he was
worth, crop an’ spur, an’ Dunderberg a-whirlin’ around and passagin’ an’
tryin’ his best to rear. An’ every time that horse’s forelegs goes up in
the air Mr. Conover’d bring his fist down between his ears an’ down’d
come Dunderberg on all-fours again. They was takin’ up all the road,
wide as it is, an’ Dunderberg was lashin’ an’ plungin’ like he was
crazy, an’ Mr. Conover stickin’ on like he was glued there an’ sendin’
in the spurs and the whacks of the crop till you’d ’a’ thought he’d kill
the brute. Then, Dunderberg makes a dive ahead an’ gets out alongside
the quarry-pit an’ tries to rear again. Right on the edge of the pit.”
“Yes,” said Clive excitedly, as the groom paused, “and then?”
“Why, sir, I can’t rightly tell, the light was so bad. If it’d been
anyone else but Mr. Conover, I’d say he lost his nerve, an’ when
Dunderberg reared up he forget to bring him down like he’d done those
other times, or maybe he _did_ hit the horse between the ears again an’
didn’t hit hard enough. Anyhow, over goes Dunderberg backward—clean
fifteen feet drop—into the quarry. An’ Mr. Conover under him. An’
then——”
But Clive had moved away. The doctors had finished their consultation,
and one of them—Dr. Hawes, the Conover family physician—had again
approached that silent figure on the couch.
At sight of Standish the second doctor came forward to meet the young
man.
“No,” he whispered, reading the unspoken question in Clive’s face, “no
possible hope. He can’t last over an hour longer at most. Another man,
crushed as he was, would have been killed at once. As it is, he probably
won’t recover consciousness. Nothing but his tremendous vitality holds
the shreds of life in him so long as this.”
“Does his wife know——?”
“She is not in a state to be told. I wish we could persuade her to leave
the room. Perhaps Miss Lanier——”
A gesture from Dr. Hawes drew them toward the couch.
“He is coming to his senses,” said the family physician, adding under
his breath, so that only his colleague and Clive could hear; “it is the
final rally. Not one man in a thousand——”
But Clive had caught Anice’s eye and beckoned her to lead Mrs. Conover
to the side of the couch.
The Railroader’s face, set like carven granite, began to twitch. The
rigid mouth relaxed its set whiteness and the eyelids flickered. Mrs.
Conover, at these signs of life, prepared for a fresh attack of
hysteria, but a gentle, firm pressure of Anice’s hand in hers
forestalled the outburst. With an aggrieved look at the girl, Letty
again turned her scared attention to her husband.
Dr. Hawes was bending once more over the prostrate man, seeking to
employ a restorative. Now he rose, and as he did so, Caleb’s eyes
opened.
There was no bewilderment, no surprise nor pain in the calm glance that
swept his garish surroundings.
“Is he suffering?” whispered Anice. “Or——?”
“Horribly,” returned Dr. Hawes in the same tone. “He——”
The shrewd, pale eyes that scorned to show trace of physical or mental
anguish, slowly took in the group beside the couch, resting first on the
two physicians, then on Anice Lanier.
As he saw and recognized Anice the first change came over the dying
man’s hard-set features. A look of perplexity that merged into glad
surprise lighted his whole face, smoothing from it with magic touch
every line of care, thought or time; transfiguring it into the
countenance of a happy boy. Long he sought and held her sympathetic
glance, that look of youth and gladness growing and deepening on his
face, while all around stood silent and marvelling.
It was Mrs. Conover who broke the spell.
“Oh, Caleb!” she wailed querulously, “you _said_ no horse could get the
better of you. And now——”
At her words the beatific light was gone from Conover’s eyes. In its
stead came a gleam of grim, ironical amusement. Then, his gaze
travelling past Anice to Clive Standish, his brows contracted in a frown
of displeasure. But this, too, faded. The swathed head settled lower
among the cushions, the powerful body seemed to shrink and flatten. The
eyes closed, and Conover lay very still.
His wife, divining for the first time the actual state of affairs, flung
herself forward on her knees beside the silent figure, her sobs scaling
to a crescendo cry of terror.
Slowly Caleb Conover opened his eyes. Reluctantly, as though drawn back
by sheer force from the very threshold of the wide portals of Rest, his
spirit paused for an instant longer in its earthly abode—paused and
flared up, as a dying spark, in the Railroader’s stiffening face.
For a moment his eyes—already wide with the awful mystery of the
Beyond—strayed over his kneeling wife; over the sparse locks bunched up
in that halo of kid curlers; over the pudgy shape so mercilessly
outlined by the sheer nightgown; over the tear-swollen red eyes, the
blotched cheeks, the quivering, pursed-up mouth.
“Letty,” he panted, in tired disgust, “you look—more like a measly
rabbit—every day!”
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 262, changed “its waist, it a blamed” to “its waist, is a
blamed”.
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spelling.
3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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