CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES NEWS
The night train “out,” full of brown and disgruntled returning
vacationists, drew away from Raquette Lake Station. Caleb, in the
smoking room, his hat pulled over his eyes, his eternal cigar
unlighted, sat with shut lids, trying to summon up the memory of
Desirée’s big brave eyes as she had bidden him goodbye on the dock.
Instead, he could only recall the sweatered, cloaked crowd at the
Antlers pier, waiting in the lantern-light to say goodbye to the
launchful of departing guests; the two or three cards that had been
thrust into his hand,--and of whose purport he had not the remotest
idea; the screech of the launch-whistle, and the churning out of the
boat into the dark; dragging Caleb away from the happiest hours of all
his life.
A man he had met at the Antlers entered the smoking room and tried to
talk to him. Conover’s answers were so vague and disjointed that the
other soon gave over the attempt. A fellow railroad-magnate from a camp
near the lake glanced in at the door and nodded affably to the rising
power in the provincial railroad world. Conover did not so much as see
the greeting. He was trying once more, with shut eyes, to conjure up
Desirée’s face.
He stopped over a train, in New York, next morning; took a cab to
the store of a famous Fifth Avenue jeweler and demanded to see an
assortment of engagement rings. The clerk laid on a velvet cushion half
a dozen diamond solitaires averaging in size from one to two karats and
variously set. Caleb waved the collection aside, after a single glance.
“I want the biggest, best diamond ring you got in the place,” he
demanded.
A second, far more garish array was produced. Caleb chose from it a
diamond of the size of his thumb-nail, looked it over critically and
said:
“This’ll do, I guess. Biggest you’ve got? How much?”
At the astounding price named he merely smiled, and drew out his check
book.
“That ought to tickle her fancy,” he mused. “Ain’t a di’mond in Granite
as big.”
“What size, sir?” asked the clerk.
“Why, _that’s_ the one I’m takin’. That size,” replied Conover,
perplexed.
The clerk explained.
“Oh, I see,” stammered Caleb. “I--I didn’t think to ask her. I didn’t
even know fingers went by sizes. But--her hand’s a lot smaller’n mine,
if that’ll help you any.”
The clerk looked away at some point of interest that had suddenly
sprung into his vision at a remote part of the store. Caleb picked
up the huge diamond and began to fit the ring on his own fingers. His
little finger alone would permit the circlet to slip down as far as the
first bulging knuckle-joint.
“It won’t even go on my little finger,” he observed. “I guess that’ll
be just ’bout the right size for her.”
“If I might suggest,” offered the clerk, “why don’t you leave the ring
with me until you can find out the size of the lady’s finger? Then
notify us and we will have it adjusted at once and forwarded to you.”
This in no way suited Caleb’s ideas. He had planned to put the ring
on Desirée’s hand, the evening of her return to Granite, three weeks
hence. He wanted to witness her delight and surprise. It would offset
the incident of the American Beauties. Neither of them had said a word
during that last, all-too-short day, about an engagement ring. He hoped
she would think he did not know enough to get her one. The girl’s
amazement and joy would be so much the greater. Whereas, if he asked
her beforehand about the size--
“That’s all right,” he decided. “I’ll take it with me. If it don’t fit
she can send it back. But I guess it will.”
* * * * *
It was the eve of the Legislature’s special session. Conover had moved,
three days earlier, to the Capital and was massing his legislative
cohorts for the charge which was forever to annihilate the revised
Starke bill.
The price of Steeloids had slumped ever so little in view of the coming
test. Caleb welcomed the slight drop; assuring Caine, Standish and
the rest that it but preluded an unheard of “boom” in the stock the
moment the result of the Assembly vote became known on ’Change. As to
that result he had not an atom of doubt. He knew his strength to the
minutest degree. Blacarda had made inroads upon his ranks, it was true;
but the breaches were unimportant. And Caleb’s presence in the lobby
on the day of the vote, together with certain highly effective secret
manœuvres which were to be put into operation that day, would far more
than offset them. Compared to the victorious struggle of six months
earlier, he prophesied, this second affair would be no contest, but a
rout.
The time was long since past when any of Caleb’s financial
beneficiaries could receive the lightest of their leader’s forecasts
with doubt. Hence the Steeloid ring rejoiced mightily; and plunged so
heavily in the stock that the price took a swift preliminary climb even
before its promised rise was due.
Caine, and more than one other of Conover’s business associates
wondered at the subtle change that two weeks of absence had wrought in
their champion. He was as shrewd, as daring, as resourceful as ever.
Yet there was a difference. Caine voiced the general opinion when he
said to Standish, the day the Assembly opened:--
“If I believed in miracles I should fancy a stray grain of humanity
had somehow found its way into the man’s brain.”
The first day’s session of the Assembly was given over to the usual
formalities. On the morning of the second, so Conover’s agent in the
enemy’s camp reported that night, Blacarda intended to put forward his
bill. Caleb was well prepared for the issue. One thing only puzzled
him. Knowing Blacarda as he did, he could not understand why the man
had tried no subterfuge this time, to draw his arch-opponent away from
the scene of action. That such a trick could be attempted without
Conover’s learning of it seemed impossible. Yet no tidings of the sort
had reached him. And it was not like Blacarda to go into battle against
a stronger foe without trying to weaken the odds against himself.
These things Caleb was pondering in his hotel room, early on the
evening before the Starke bill was to be presented. He was dressing to
go with Caine to a conference of political and business associates, to
be held a mile or so distant. And, as he made ready to start out, the
answer to his conjecture was received.
It came in the form of a telegram:
“_Train derailed near Magdeburg. Miss Shevlin badly injured. At
Magdeburg hotel. Wire instructions and come by next train. Dangerous._
“_J. Hawarden, Jr._”
For the briefest of intervals Conover’s blood settled down stiflingly
upon his heart. Then he laughed in grim relief.
“I thought Friend Blacarda was too sharp to try the same trick twice
on me,” he growled, handing the dispatch to Caine, “an’ I thought he’d
be afraid to. Seems I was wrong. He knew Dey was at the Antlers with
the Hawardens, of course. But he might a’ took the pains to find out
she wasn’t goin’ to leave there for a fortnight. I had a letter from
her, there, to-day. An’ any railroad man could a’ told him,” he went on
contemptuously, “that no train either from Noo York or the Ad’rondacks
passes through Magdeburg. But most likely he chose that because it’s
an out-of-the-way hole that takes f’ever to get to. Why couldn’t he a’
flattered my intelligence by a fake that had a little cleverness in
it? Come on. We’ll be late to that meetin’. I’ll settle once more with
Blacarda, afterward. An’ this time he won’t forget so soon.”
“I doubt if Blacarda had any hand in it,” said Caine, as they left the
hotel. “There are only two general divisions of the _genus_ ‘Fool.’ And
Blacarda belongs to the species that doesn’t put his fingers in the
same flame a second time.”
“You don’t mean you think there’s a ghost of a chance the tel’gram’s
the reel thing? If I--”
“No, no,” soothed Caine. “As you’ve shown, it’s a palpable fraud.
But there are others beside Blacarda who want the Starke bill to go
through. The story of his ruse last spring has gone abroad in spite of
Blacarda’s attempt to strangle it. And someone, remembering how well
the trick worked then, has tried its effect a second time.”
“I’ll put some of my men on the track of it to-morrow,” answered Caleb.
“By the time they’re through, I guess there won’t be many crooks left
in the State who’ll dare to use Dey Shevlin’s name in their fake
mess’ges. Maybe you’re right ’bout its not bein’ Blacarda himself. I’m
kind of glad, too. He’ll get enough gruellin’ to-morrow without any
extrys thrown in.”
“Poor old Blacarda! I’m afraid you’ll take away his perpetual grievance
against you and leave him nothing but grief.”
“Grievance!” scoffed Conover. “He’s got no grievance. All’s he’s got
is a grouch. There’s all the diff’rence in the world between the two.
A white man with sense may have a grievance. But only a sorehead an’
a fool will let their grievance sour into a grouch. Blacarda’s grouch
against me is doin’ him more harm than all my moves could. He hates
me. That’s where he makes his mistake. Hate’s the heaviest handicap a
feller can carry into a fight. If you’ve got a grievance against a man
or want to get the best of him, don’t ever spoil your chances by hatin’
him. It won’t do him any hurt, an’ it’ll play the dickens with your own
brain an’ nerves.”
“I suppose,” queried Caine ironically, “there was no hatred in your
attack on Blacarda in his hotel room last spring? Pure, high-souled
justice?”
“No,” grumbled Caleb. “It was hate. An’ I got it out of my system the
quickest, easiest way I could. If I’d bottled all that up an’ let it
ferment till now, I’d be layin’ awake nights, losing sleep an’ health
an’ nerve while I figgered out how cute he’d look with his throat cut
from ear to ear. As it is, I’ve no more hard feelin’ about crushin’
Blacarda than I’d have if he was a perfec’ stranger. Yes, son, hate
harms the hater a lot more’n it harms the hatee. You can bank on that.”
“I wonder if young Hawarden will agree with your peaceful doctrine,”
hazarded Caine, “when he hears how some financial heeler has taken his
name in vain in that telegram?”
“He’ll most likely hunt the feller up an’ lick him,” responded Conover.
“He’s all right, that boy is. I’ve took a shine to him. Pity he ain’t
got some commonsense ambition instead of hankerin’ after litterchoor.
Kind of petty trade for a grown man, ain’t it?”
“No,” dissented Caine. “I should call slow starvation one of the big
things of life. There’s nothing petty about it that I can see.”
“That’s the answer, hey? He told me ’bout a feller he’d met once at the
Antlers who made twenty thousan’ a year just by writin’ novels ’bout
s’ciety. Now, Hawarden knows all ’bout the s’ciety game. I sh’d think
he’d write such stories fine.”
“The stories of Jack’s that I’ve read,” answered Caine, “all centre
around labor problems and other things the boy knows as little about as
if he had taken a postgraduate course in ignorance. He couldn’t write
a society story if he tried.”
“Why not? I sh’d think--”
“Because he’s been born and brought up in that atmosphere. A society
man could no more write about society than he could write a love sonnet
to his own sister.”
“But that kind of stories get written,” faltered Caleb, grubbing vainly
for a possible jest in his friend’s puzzling dictum. “_Somebody_ must
write ’em.”
“On the contrary,” denied Caine. “Nobodies write them. For instance,
there is a man who was born in South Brooklyn or somewhere; and spent
a year or two in Europe. So much for his environment. He used to
write charming stories. They were fairly vibrant with satire, humor,
color and a ceaseless rush of action. His nature-descriptions were
revelations in word-painting. I always read every line he wrote. So did
some other people. But only _some_. Then he moved to a little village,
away from the centre of things, and forthwith began to write novels of
New York Society.
“It was very easy. The Sunday papers cost him no more than they cost
anyone else. He fell to describing the innermost life of New York’s
innermost smart set. He scorned to depict a single character that
wasn’t worth at least a million. Silver, cut glass and diamonds strewed
his pages; till one longed for brown bread and pie. He flashed the
fierce white light of unbiased ignorance into the darkest corners of a
society that never was by sea or land. And what was the result? In a
day he leaped to immortality. The shop-girl read him so eagerly that
she rode past her station. The youth behind the counter learned to
rattle off the list of his books as easily as the percentages of the
base ball-clubs. In the walks of life that he so vividly portrayed,
such people as read at all made amused comments that could never by any
possibility reach his ears. We others who had reveled in his earlier
books felt as we might if an adored brother has left the diplomatic
service to become a bartender. But we were in the minority. So we
re-read Browning’s ‘Lost Leader,’ dropped the subject and sought in
vain for a new idol.”
“I s’pose so,” agreed Caleb, hazily, recalling his wandered attention
as Caine paused. “I wish I hadn’t got that tel’gram.”
* * * * *
It was after midnight when Caleb Conover returned to his room. Three
more telegrams awaited him, as well as a penciled request that he
call up Magdeburg Hotel on the long-distance telephone. While he was
profanely waiting for the operator to establish the connection, Caleb
ripped open the telegrams one after the other. All were from Jack. Each
bore the same burden as the message that had come early in the evening.
The last of the trio added:
“Long-distance ’phone wires here temporarily out of order. Will call
you as soon as they are repaired; on chance your train may not yet have
gone.”
“Here’s your party, sir,” reported the operator.
Curiously sick and dazed, even while his colder reason assured him the
whole affair was probably a fraud, Conover caught up the receiver.
“That Magdeburg?” he shouted, “Magdeburg _Ho_tel? This is Conover.
Caleb Conover. Lady named Shevlin there? Is she hurt?”
“Yes,” came the answer, droned with maddening indistinctness through
a babel of buzzing sounds. “Lady’s hurt pretty bad. If she ain’t dead
already. I just come on duty five minutes ago. So I don’t--Wait a
second. Gentleman wants to speak to you.”
Then, through the buzz and whirr, spoke another voice. Unmistakably
Jack Hawarden’s.
“Mr. Conover?” it called.
“Yes!” yelled Caleb, driving the words by sheer force through the
horror that sanded his throat, “Go ahead!”
“You haven’t even started?” cried the boy, a break in his voice. “For
God’s sake, come! Come _now_!”
As no reply could be heard, Jack’s tones droned on; their despair
twisted by distance into a grotesque, semi-audible squeak:
“She may not live through the night, the doctor says. You see,” he
rambled along, incoherently talkative in his panic, “we were called
away from the Antlers, suddenly, by a letter telling my mother her
sister in Hampden was ill. So we all left, two weeks earlier than we
had meant. When we got to Hampden my mother stayed there and I started
back to Granite with Miss Shevlin. We took the branch road; and just
outside of Magdeburg--”
“Party’s rung off long ago,” put in the operator.
Caleb, at Jack’s second sentence, had dropped the receiver, bolted from
the hotel and hailed a night-hawk hansom. Already he was galloping
through the empty streets toward the station; scribbling with unsteady
hand on envelope-backs a series of orders and dispatches that should
assure him a clear track and a record-breaking journey from the Capital
to Magdeburg. This detail arranged, his brain ceased to act. Sense of
time was wiped out. So, mercifully, was realization of pain. In the
cab of the road’s fastest engine he crouched through the long hours
of darkness; while the wheels jolted out an irritating, meaningless
sing-song refrain that ran:
“_Haven’t--you--started?--For--God’s--sake,--come!_”
* * * * *
To still the hateful iteration and to rouse himself to some semblance
of calm, Caleb pulled from his side pocket a bunch of letters brought
on from his office at Granite that same afternoon, by his secretary.
He had been busy when the package arrived and had thrust it into his
coat. Now he drew it forth and mechanically began to glance over the
envelopes.
It was personal mail and had been accumulating for days. Desirée always
addressed her letters to his hotel at the Capital; and his secretary
attended to official mail. So Caleb had not ordered the forwarding of
such personal letters as might come to the office. In fact he had been
mildly annoyed at the secretary’s well meant act in bringing them to
him.
Through the small sheaf of envelopes his thick fingers wandered.
Suddenly, the man’s lack-lustre look brightened to one of astonishment.
Midway in the package was an envelope in Desirée Shevlin’s hand.
Letting the rest of the letters slide to the swaying floor the Fighter
nervously caught this up. Why had she written to the office instead of
to his hotel? Probably, he thought, by mere mistake. A mistake that
meant a few moments of surcease now from his nightmare journey.
With ice-damp fingers Conover held the letter; tore it open as though
the ripping of the paper caused him physical pain; smoothed wide the
pages with awkward, awed gentleness, and read:
“Heart’s Dearest:--Just as soon as you’ve read this, you can come
straight to see me. Honestly! For I’ll be at home. Mrs. Hawarden’s
sister is ill. We only heard of it by this noon’s mail and we are
leaving by the night train. At first I wanted to telegraph you at
the Capital. But if I do I’m so afraid you will drop everything and
come to meet me. And you _mustn’t_. You must stay at the Capital
till you win your fight there for all the men who have put money in
Steeloid. We are so happy we can’t afford to do anything now to make
other people blue. Can we? So stay and win for them. That’s why I’m
sending this to your office.
“You have just come back to Granite all tired from your work. Then
you saw my letter and opened it and--I’m _afraid_ you’re on your way
to my house before you’ve gotten this far.
“Oh, dear! This is the last of my little batch of Adirondack love
letters. And I believe you’re rushing off to see me instead of
reading it. And it isn’t a love letter after all. For it’s going
to be only a note. I’ve all my packing to do and the ‘white-horse
chariot’ comes for our trunks at six. It has been a beautiful
vacation. Two weeks of it was heaven. And the memory of that last
golden day of ours makes something queer come into my throat.
“But I’m oh so glad,--so _glad_--we are coming away. Every minute
brings me nearer to Granite. You won’t be there when I arrive; but
I’ll be where you have lived. And I’ll be waiting for you every
minute till you come back. Just thinking about you and loving you,
heart of my heart.
“I’m glad, too, that we are leaving the Antlers before everyone
else does. It is sad, somehow, to watch the boat-loads go off into
the dark and to be part of the dwindling group that is left. It is
pleasantest to go away from a place,--yes, and from the world, too,
I should think,--while everything is at its height; before friends
thin out and the jolly crowd falls away and the happy, happy times
begin to end. To leave everything in the flood-tide of the fun and
to remember it as it was at its best; to be remembered as a little
part of the happiness of it all. Not as one of the few last ones left
behind.
“What a silly way to write! This isn’t a love letter at all. I told
you it wasn’t. But I had a _horrid_ dream last night and it has given
me the shivers all day. I think some of its hagorousness has crept
into my pen. No, I won’t write it. I’ll tell you all about it when I
see you. And then you can put your darling strong arms around me and
laugh at me for letting myself get frightened by a silly dream. I
wish this was a love letter. I never wrote one till this past week.
So I don’t know how to say what I want to; to say all the wonderful
things that are in my heart. But I _love_ you, my own. And the whole
world centres just around _you_. It always has. But now that you
_know_ it does, I feel so happy it frightens me. We’re going to be
together forever and ever and ever--and ever,--and _then_ some more.
_Aren’t_ we? _Say_ so!
“Say so, beloved, and hold me very tight in your arms, very near to
your heart when you say it. For to-day I’m foolish enough to want to
be comforted a little bit. I wish I hadn’t had that dream. It was all
nonsense, _wasn’t_ it? Dreams _never_ come true. So I won’t worry one
minute longer. Only,--I wish I was with you, my strong, splendid old
sweetheart. The only dream that can possibly come to pass is the
glorious one we dreamed that night up on the mountain with the sea of
mist all around us and God’s stars overhead. And we will never wake
from it.
“The gentle, friendly northland summer is over now and the frost lies
thick nearly every morning. It is time to go.
“Oh, my darling, I am coming home to you. _Home!_ We must never be
away from each other again. Not for a single day;--so long as we
live.”