CALEB CONOVER FIGHTS
Granite’s social life revolved about the Arareek Country Club. Granite
felt a guilty pride when its more sensational preachers railed against
the local preference for spending Sunday morning on the Arareek links
or on the big clubhouse veranda, rather than in church pews. Granite
social lights flared dazzlingly at the Club’s dances. Granite men chose
the Arareek smoking room as a lounging place in preference to the more
exclusive Pompton Club’s apartments. Situated a half mile beyond the
growing city’s borders, the Arareek clubhouse lay in the centre of a
narrow valley, whence its grounds radiated in all directions.
Thither, Conover, after his talk with Desirée Shevlin, bent his steps.
Caleb had been no less amazed than delighted when Caine, a year or so
earlier, had succeeded in engineering his election to the Arareek. The
Club had been in need of money and was therefore the less inquisitorial
as to the character of candidates. Conover was then unknown to most
of its members. With a half score of innocuous nobodies he had been
admitted. The combined initiation fees had lifted the Arareek
momentarily from its financial trouble.
Now, with much the excitement of a shoal of minnows to whose pool
a pickerel has found ingress, the club’s Governors were seeking to
correct their error of negligence. A committee had been appointed to
take semi-formal testimony in the case, to overrule whatsoever defense
Conover might seek to make and to report to the Board in favor of the
unwelcome member’s rejection. The exact mode of transaction was out
of rule, from a standpoint of rigid club standards. But the Arareek,
as its members boasted, was less an actual club than a phase of local
society, and as such was a law unto itself.
On the veranda, as Caleb arrived, several members were seated, watching
a putting match on the “green” that stretched betwixt porch and tennis
courts. One or two women were among the onlookers. From the awkward
hush that fell on the group as he ascended the steps, Conover deduced
the trend of the talk his presence had checked. He glanced in grim
amusement from one averted or expressionless face to another; then,
singling out Caine with a nod, passed in through the low, broad
doorway. Caine tossed away his cigarette, smiled non-committally in
reply to a bevy of questioning looks, and followed his protegée into
the building.
“They’re waiting for you,” said he, catching up with Conover. “The
Committee went to its room five minutes ago, pacing in single file like
the Court of Priests in _Aida_. Can’t you manage to tremble a little?
It seems hard that so much really excellent pomposity should be wasted
on a man who doesn’t care. Why are you late?”
“I’m always late to an appointment,” answered Conover. “Make the other
fellow do the waitin’. Don’t do it yourself. Lots of time saved that
way.”
Caine threw open a door and ushered Caleb into a room where a dozen
or more men were seated about a long table. Bowing carelessly to the
members in general, Caine took a seat at the table, and motioned
Conover toward a chair that had been placed for the purpose at the
lower end of the apartment. Conover, disregarding the gesture, slouched
across to a larger, more comfortable leather chair, pulled it to the
window, flung himself into the seat, his back to the strong afternoon
light, and drew out a cigar.
“Now then, gentlemen,” he ordered curtly, as he struck a match on his
sole. “Be as brief as you can. My time’s worth money. What do you want
of me?”
A murmur--almost a stifled gasp--went around the table, at the contempt
in his action and words. There was an embarrassed pause. Then, Reuben
Standish, as Chairman of the Committee, rose, gray and portentous, and
turned toward Caleb.
“Mr. Conover,” he began, “Certain statements,--charges, in fact,--have
been made to the Committee, relative to yourself. It is your right to
hear them in detail. I will now read--”
“Never mind that!” commanded Conover. “Just give the gist of the thing.
Cut out the details.”
Standish glared reprovingly at the wholly unimpressed man at the
window. But as the latter purposely sat with his back to the light, his
expression was quite illegible.
“Just as you wish,” resumed the Chairman after a moment’s hesitation.
“The papers I was about to read are to the effect that you are declared
to be in no sense a desirable member of the Arareek Club, either from a
personal or a business standpoint. Believe me, I regret the necessity
of--”
“Oh, I’ll take your grief for granted,” interrupted Conover. “This
meeting’s been called, as I understand it, to kick me out of the
Arareek. Now I--”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Conover,” urged Standish civilly. “We wish--”
“Be quiet!” said Caleb, “_I’m_ talkin’ now. You want to get me out of
this Club. Well, you can’t do it. You can’t stir me an inch. I’m no
measly lamb, like the one in the circus ‘Happy Family’ where the lion
an’ the lamb live together in one cage; an’ where the lamb’s got to be
renewed ev’ry now an’ then, on the sly. I didn’t butt in here. I was
elected. I’ve broke none of the Club rules. And till I do, here I’m
goin’ to stay. Is that clear? There ain’t a law in the land that can
get me out. Lord! But it makes me sick to hear a pack of sapheads like
you, tryin’ to scare a grown man. It won’t work. Now we understand each
other. Anything more?”
Amid the buzz, a man half way down the table spoke.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that we _don’t_ quite understand each other,
Mr. Conover. This is not a business concern. It is a social club. It is
a place where the women of our families are also welcome guests. The
presence of a man we cannot introduce to our wives and daughters will
only--”
“_Why_ can’t you?” demanded Conover. “Why can’t you introduce me? An’
for that matter, I haven’t asked you to, yet. Wait till I do, before
you say you can’t.”
“This club,” went on the other, “represents all that is best and
most congenial in Granite’s social life. With a discordant element
introduced into it, the club’s chief feature is gone. If there is a man
who frequents the place whom we do not know and whom we do not wish to
know--who cannot meet our--”
“I see we’ll have to waste more time over this than I thought,” grunted
Caleb. “Let’s go back a little. Why don’t you want to know me? Hey?”
“Need we go into that? Surely--”
“As you have made it one of the reasons for wantin’ me fired, I guess
we’d better. Why don’t you want to know me?”
“If you force me to say it, because you are not a gentleman.”
“No?” sneered Caleb, as a new and fainter murmur of deprecation ran
along the table, “Maybe I’m not. I don’t get tanked up on cheap booze
down in the bar after golf tournaments, like a lot of your ‘gentlemen’
here, an’ then wander up to dinner on the veranda an’ talk so loud
that the women at the next table can’t hear themselves cackle. I don’t
ask a party of men and women to dine with me here an’ then get a silly
jag an’ sing ‘_Mother, Pin a Rose on Me_,’ every five minutes durin’
the meal till ev’rybody at the table gets scared for fear I’ll sing
somethin’ worse,--like _you_ did last Sunday night.”
Conover’s interlocutor sat down very hard and tried to look loftily
indifferent. Caine’s undisguised laugh made the effort more difficult.
“No,” pursued Caleb, with impersonal calm, “I’m not a gentleman. I used
to think maybe I’d like to be one. But I don’t, any more. I come down
here for dinner sometimes, Sunday evenin’. As there’s no one exactly
clamorin’ to entertain me, I’ve plenty of chance to use my eyes an’
ears. So I get a line on ‘gentlemen’ an’ on how they act when they’re
in their own crowd. At the table next to me last Sunday, there was
a little dinner party. ’Bout a dozen in all. _You_ was givin’ it, I
b’lieve, Mr. Featherstone. By the time dessert came everybody was
a-tellin’ stories. Stories _I_ wouldn’t tell in a barroom. Women, too.
Gee! I never knew before that women--”
“Mr. Chairman!” cried Featherstone, jumping up. “I protest against this
vile abuse. As a member of the Arareek--”
“As a member of the Arareek,” cut in Caleb, “you’ll set down an’ be
quiet. You’ve had your say. What I’ve just told, I’ve told as a member
of the Club--an’ to fellow-members. Of course if I’m kicked out of the
Arareek--an’ kicked out on _your_ vote, Featherstone--I won’t feel
bound to keep my mouth shut about those same stories or who told ’em.
Nor what you whispered to a girl as you passed my table on your way
out. If--”
“This is blackmail!” shrieked Featherstone, “I--”
“It’s anything you like to name it,” agreed Caleb, cheerfully, “But it
goes. Understand that. Anyone else got somethin’ to say?”
“I should like to ask Mr. Conover,” put in another man, “if he
can truthfully deny that his business dealings will not bear such
inspection as--”
“As your own deal in buyin’ the tip of where the new High School was
to be built an’ then gettin’ an option on the land an’ squeezin’ the
city for $48,000?” asked Conover. “Oh, I guess most of my business will
frame up pretty well alongside of that. Say, your talk of ‘business
methods’ makes me laugh, when I remember what you offered for that
tip an’ who you went shares with on the money you got. As a feller
Club member, my mouth’s shut on that. When I’m kicked out, it’ll be a
diff’rent story. That’s blackmail again, if you like.”
A nervous, gray-haired man at the foot of the board checked comment by
saying:
“It’s scarcely needful, Mr. Conover, to adopt that tone. For the sake
of the club’s good name, we are simply inquiring into the truth of
certain reports of the way your money was made. We--”
“It’s my own business how it was made, Mr. Hawarden,” countered Caleb.
“The way I spend it is anybody’s business. An’ when I leave this Club
I’m willin’ to make public the accounts of some of my disbursements.”
Though the retort was not rough of tone and seemed quite
harmless,--even vapid--of meaning, Hawarden all at once dropped out of
the dispute. In vain did several of his fellow Committeemen who had
relied on him to press the prosecution, signal for a renewal of attack.
Thenceforth, throughout the session, Hawarden was gloomily mute.
But there were others to carry on the attack he had so unexpectedly
abandoned. Notably a downy little man who sat at Reuben Standish’s
right.
“It is said, Mr. Conover,” observed the new assailant, with an air of
nervous relish, “that your father was a convict.”
Again the murmur of deprecation at the bland brutality of the assault.
Caine leaned far forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of Caleb’s
silhouetted face, and half expecting to see the downy-haired accusor
tossed bodily from the window.
For an instant, Conover made no reply. His cigar had gone out and he
was busy fumbling for a match. But when he did speak, it was with
perfect, unaffected calm.
“Yes, Mr. Vroom,” he said, “My father _was_ a convict. He may be one
again, by this time, for anything _I_ know. I’ve never set eyes on the
old crook since the day they sentenced him to five years in the pen.”
He puffed at his cigar. Then rambled on, half to himself:
“I was ten years old then. It was my birthday, I remember. The old man
had a job in the C. G. & X. coal yards. I came home early from school.
Ma had promised me a birthday cake with candles for supper. She an’ dad
had planned to have some measly little cel’bration for me, an’ take me
a to variety show in the evenin’. I ran home all the way from school.
When I got to the ten’ment, there was a crowd of gapin’ kids an’ women
around our door. Just then out came a couple of cops with Dad between
’em; an’ Ma followed with her apron over her head, cryin’ to break her
heart. I remember she still had one of those silly birthday candles
gripped in her hand. She’d been puttin’ it onto the cake when the
cops came. After that there wasn’t any talk of birthday sprees in the
Conover flat. It was up to us to hustle. An’ we did. My mother went out
washin’ an’ as a floor-scrubber. An’ _I_ got a job as tally boy in the
C. G. & X. yards. That was my start.”
He paused again, looked thoughtfully at his cigar ash and went on in a
more business-like tone.
“Yes, Mr. Vroom, my father was a convict. Not much of one; but as much
as his small chances allowed. He was only weigher at the coal scales.
He ‘fixed’ the scales an’ took his rake-off. That was all. It went on
for a couple years. We got the only square meals I’d ever ate, durin’
that time. Then he was sent up; an’--well, Ma wasn’t used to scrubbin’.
She took pneumonia an’ died the year before Dad got out. He never came
back to our neighborhood, an’ I haven’t seen him since. He may be dead
or in jail or a mine owner, for all I know--or care. I’m sorry, for the
sake of your arg’ment, he wasn’t more of a criminal, Mr. Vroom. Now,
if he’d been indicted for misappropriation of the Orphan’s Home trust
funds, like your wife’s brother was; an’ if his family had had the
indictment quashed by payin’ the right parties $18,400--”
“You are out of order, Mr. Conover!” rebuked Standish, in answer to a
look of frenzied protest from Vroom. “Your retort is--”
“Is dead-true; an’ I’ve the means of layin’ my hands on the proof,”
finished Caleb. “I’d do it, too--just for the sake of punishin’ a
cur--if the cur’s brother-in-law, Mr. Vroom, didn’t happen to be a
clubmate of mine.”
“With a man like this on our rolls,” fumed an elderly Governor, “We
shall lose our reputation for--”
“If some of you fellers could get rid of your reputations,” interrupted
Caleb, “you’d be in luck.”
A man at Standish’s left had risen and was awaiting a moment of silence
in which to speak. He was nattily clad in blue reefer and white duck
trousers. A yachting cap lay on the table beside him. Every inch of
his stalwart body from the curling black hair and pink cheeks down to
the immaculate white canvas shoes bespoke a perfection of grooming that
seemed vaguely redolent of scented soap and tailors’ models. His full
red lips were curled back now from a double set of ultra-pearly teeth,
and his eyes, which Desirée Shevlin had disrespectfully likened to twin
chocolate pies, were glassy with wrath.
“Well, Brother Blacarda,” hailed Conover, breaking off in his reply as
his gaze rested on this latest opponent who stood threateningly above
him, “What have _you_ got to say? Did you come to congratulate me on
the Steeloid win-out, or have you somethin’ to add to the bokays that
your little friends here have been tossin’ at me? Speak up, man! Stop
lookin’ like ‘This-Nobby-Style-$7.49,’ an’ say what you’ve got to.”
“You’ve played a trick on my Steeloid Company,” sputtered Blacarda,
“that ought to land you in State’s Prison with your crook father. A
trick that ought to put you out of the society of decent men. It will
certainly put you out of this Club. Either you leave the Arareek or I
do.”
“Well, now, that’s too bad, Blacarda,” purred Caleb, “Us chappies at
the Club will be real sorry to lose you. But if you _must_ go,--why
take my blessin’ with you.”
“This man, gentlemen,” pursued Blacarda, loudly, wheeling to face the
rest, “has, by dirty chicanery, absorbed all the Independent Steeloid
Companies,--my own among the number,--in his iniquitous Trust. Let him
deny it if he dares to.”
“Deny it?” laughed Caleb, “Not me! Best day’s work of my life. Cleaned
up an easy million on the deal. Watcher you goin’ to do about it?”
“Do about it?” gasped Blacarda. “_Do_ about it? There’s a law in the
land and--”
“That’s so,” assented Caleb, “A Fed’ral law an’ a law of States, too.
It’s lucky those two laws ain’t the same. Otherwise, you’d have been
outlawed from the whole country instead of only from Iowa, the time you
promoted that fake Des Moines Improvement Comp’ny. But that’s neither
here nor there. I’m told you’re goin’ to carry our Steeloid squabble to
the Legislature. I tell you in advance, you’ll lose. You may be able to
swing part of the Assembly, but I can do a little swingin’ myself, up
there. You’ll find the Steeloid Trust is goin’ to win at the Capital as
easy as it won to-day at--”
“We have Right behind us,” blustered Blacarda, “and--”
“An’ the Steeloid Trust has Caleb Conover behind it,” retorted Caleb.
“I guess he’s as good a backer as ‘Right,’ any day. I’m expectin’ a
tough scramble in order to beat you at the Capital, Blacarda. But I’ll
do it. I’ll be on the ground myself. An’ I’ll beat you as sure as I
beat you to-day. It’ll mean a fight--a big fight. I know that. But a
fight’s somethin’ I don’t generally run ki-yi-in’ away from.”
“All this is somewhat beside the point, gentlemen,” interposed
Standish. “Is there any further--?”
He paused and glanced about the table. But no one cared to couch lance
at the brute who had thus far held the lists so successfully against
the Arareek’s doughtiest champions. At length Caine spoke.
“It appears to me,” he drawled in his lazy, half-bantering way, “that
these proceedings have been decidedly informal; even for an avowedly
informal meeting. Also, that we have made little real progress on
either side. There are several broken heads, and the atmosphere is
somewhat heavy with the reek of battle. But I fail to hear any shout
of victory. Certainly not from our Honorable Committee. Perhaps you
will all pardon me if I suggest that our learned body has gone about
the present business in a less tactful way that one might have expected
from such natural diplomats. Mr. Conover, you have had to answer some
extremely impertinent--_unnecessarily_ impertinent--questions this
afternoon. If you have answered them in their own key, I am sure no one
can honestly blame you. Unless you care to say anything more, I think
the Committee may as well go at once into executive session and put the
matter to vote. I so move, Mr. Chairman.”
“Hold on a second,” said Conover. “You people can vote in a minute if
you want to. First, _I’ve_ got a word more to say. The main counts
against me, as I take it, are that I had a bad start in life an’ that
my business methods aren’t any better than the methods of other men in
this Club. Also that I ain’t a gentleman. We’ll let the question of my
business methods slide. I guess there ain’t as few stones on the carpet
as there’s men here to throw ’em at me on _that_ score. Now, as to my
not bein’ a gentleman an’ my start in life: I started at the bottom of
the ladder. I’m only in the early thirties and I’m not far from the
top. How many of you could a’ got where I am if you’d started where I
did? Not a man of you. I worked my way up from tally boy of the C. G. &
X. yards to the job of president of the whole road. An’ I’m makin’ it
the biggest road in the State.
“How’d I do it? By fightin’. I had no pull, no cash, no family at my
back. Ev’rybody took a turn at tryin’ to step on my hands whenever
I’d grab a new rung of the ladder. But I climbed on--an’ I fought on.
To-day I’m as rich a man as there is in Granite. Other rich men were
members of this Club an’ got fun out of it. So I joined it, too. I’ve
as good a right to fun as anyone. An’ I’m goin’ to have it. That’s why
I won’t get out. An’ you can’t put me out. You’re goin’ to vote on my
case in a few minutes. An’ you’re goin’ to vote to keep me here. Not
because you want to; but because I’ve _made_ you do it. If you hit a
sulky dog with an axe-handle, he won’t exactly love you. But he’ll mind
you, next time. An’ it’s better to be minded than to be ignored. I
guess there won’t anybody here ignore me in future.
“By the way, gentlemen: Just to show how much int’rested I am in the
Club’s welfare, I bought in the mortgage on the Arareek’s house and
grounds last month. I bought it for fear it might fall in the hands of
some crank member who’d foreclose if he was dropped from the Club. Or
such a crank as might foreclose if he was treated like a measly social
leper at the Club’s blowouts. That’s all, gentlemen. I’ll wait out on
the porch for your verdict. Good-day, all. I’ll excuse the Committee
from risin’ and escortin’ me to the door.”
He rose, stretched his big frame and lounged out of the room. Silence
accompanied his exit, but was split by a dozen excited voices the
moment the door slammed behind him.
* * * * *
Caleb Conover was loafing in a low wicker chair on the veranda, a cigar
between his teeth and a long frosty glass at his side. He was idly
watching the putting match on the green before him. The veranda’s other
occupants had more or less unobtrusively withdrawn to the far end of
the porch, leaving him quite alone.
It was thus Caine found him when the Committee meeting broke up. The
newspaper owner strolled across toward Conover, a tantalizing smile on
his thin, bored face.
“Well?” he queried.
Conover glanced up eagerly at his friend’s approach.
“Say, Caine,” he asked, pointing, “Why do they choose one of the
iron-tipped sticks sometimes and then use one of the brass headed ones
next time, for just the same kind of a swat?”
Caine gazed down at Caleb in genuine wonder; then dropped into a chair
at his side.
“Conover,” he declared, “You’re the only man on earth who never bores
me. And it’s because you never by any chance happen to say or do what
people have a right to expect you to.”
“If it’s a riddle--” said Caleb, puzzled, as he looked away from the
green.
“It isn’t. It’s genius,” answered Caine. “Here I come to bring you the
decision of the Committee. The decision that’s supposedly been keeping
you on pins and needles. And, instead of dragging the news out of me by
main force, you ask a question about a putting match.”
“Oh, the decision?” returned Caleb, carelessly. “That’s all right. I’m
to be kept on as a pop’lar, respected member. I knew that before I left
the Committee room.”
“You knew more than I did, then.”
“I always do,” agreed Caleb with utter simplicity. “That’s why I’m
where I am to-day. If I couldn’t size up folk’s plans before they made
’em, I’d still be a brakeman on the C. G. & X. or runnin’ the railroad
saloon where I made my first cash. I’m kept in the Club by every vote
except Blacarda’s.”
“You listened?” cried Caine in wonder.
“Son,” sighed Caleb, wearily, “You make me tired. Why should I
a-listened when I knew already?”