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.”