[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.