CALEB UNDERGOES A “HOME EVENING”
“There’s no use glowering at _me_ every time you speak of poor Clive,”
protested Mrs. Conover with all the fierce courage of a chased
guinea-pig. “It isn’t _my_ fault he’s running against you, and it isn’t
my fault that he’s my nephew, either.”
“I guess both those failings would come under the head of misfortunes,
rather’n faults,” retorted Caleb. “And they’re both as hard on him as
they are on you, Letty. I wasn’t glowering at you, either. Don’t stir up
another spat.”
The idea that Mr. Conover was capable of inciting any such disputation
so flattered that poor, spiritless little creature that she actually
bridled and looked about her to make sure Anice and Gerald, the only
other members of the household present, had heard.
The quartette were seated in the Conover library, whither they had
gathered after dinner for one of those brief intervals of family
intercourse which Caleb secretly loved, his wife as secretly dreaded and
Gerald openly loathed. The Railroader, at heart, was an intensely
home-loving man. He had never known a home. Least of all since moving
into the Mausoleum. He had always, in increasingly blundering fashion,
sought to make one.
The wife he bullied, the son he hectored, the daughter with whom he had
forever quarrelled, the secretary who met his friendliness with unbroken
reserve; all these he had tried to enroll as assistants in his various
homemaking plans. The results had not been so successful as to warrant
description.
Finally, Conover had centred his former efforts on one daily plan. He
had read in the advice column of the _Star_ about the joys of “pleasant
evening hour in the bosom of one’s family” and the directions therefor.
The idea appealed to him. He ordained accordingly that after the
unfashionably early evening meal the household should congregate in the
library, and there for at least one hour indulge in carefree
confidential chat. This, Caleb mentally argued, was a capital opening
wedge in the inculcation of the true home-spirit which had been his
lifelong dream.
The household obeyed the order, even as all Conover’s orders—at home and
abroad—were obeyed. The session usually began in laborious efforts at
small talk. Then an unfortunate remark of some sort from Mrs. Conover,
or an impertinence or sneer from Gerald, and the storm would break. The
“pleasant evening hour” oftener than not ended in a sea of weakly
miserable tears from Mrs. Conover, a cowed or _sotto voce_ profane exit
on Gerald’s part, and in Caleb’s stamping off to his study or else
around to the Kerrigans’ for a blissful, shirt-sleeved, old-time
political argument in front of the saloon’s back-room stove.
On this present evening Caleb had just received Shevlin’s report of the
Standish tour. He was full of the theme and strove to interest his three
hearers in it. In Anice he found, as ever, an eager listener. But Gerald
yawned in very apparent boredom, while Mrs. Conover shed a few
delightfully easy, but irritating tears at the account of the opera
house fight. Caleb had silently resented these moist signs of interest,
and his glare had called forth an unusual protest from his weak little
spouse.
“I’m sure,” she went on, nervously taking advantage of the rare fit of
courage that possessed her, “I’m _quite_ sure somebody else must have
put this Governorship idea into poor Clive’s head. He’d never have
thought of such a rash thing by himself. I don’t believe that at heart
he really wants to be Governor at all. He——”
“If he don’t,” remarked Conover, “I guess that makes it unanimous. I
wish that idiot Shevlin hadn’t given him the chance to play to the
gallery, though, in a fist fight. It’ll mean votes for him. Folks have a
sort of liking for a man who can scrap. By the way, Jerry, if you go
around to Headquarters to-night, tell Bourke I want him to run to
Matawan for me to-morrow on that floater business. He——”
“I don’t believe they can spare Bourke at Headquarters just now,” began
Gerald, with a faint show of interest. “You see——”
“If he was the sort of man they could spare, he wouldn’t be the sort of
man I’d want to send on a ticklish job like this. Has Brayle showed up
at any of our rallies yet?”
“No. And I don’t believe he will. He’s done with politics, Shevlin tells
me. Got religion, Billy says, and——”
“If Pete Brayle’s got religion, you can gamble he’s got it in his wife’s
name, like every other asset of his. ‘Done with politics,’ eh? Well,
politics ain’t done with him. I’ll see Shevlin about it in the morning.”
“I thought Mr. Brayle was an atheist,” put in Letty. “It’s an awful
thing to be. How do you suppose he ever became one?”
“By thinking too hard with a mind that was too small; same as most
atheists do,” suggested Caleb. “Say, Jerry,” he added, “it won’t do you
no harm to know I’m rather tickled at the way you’ve took hold at
Headquarters this past week or so. You won’t lose by it.”
“She wrote me to,” answered Gerald, flushing. “You owe it to _her_. Not
to me.”
“She?”
“Yes. My——”
“Ugh! I might ’a’ known it! Well, so long as you do your work I don’t
care where the inspiration comes from. I ain’t too finicky to hit a
straight blow with a crooked stick. Why’d she tell you to hustle?”
“She said she ‘hoped it would touch your hard heart.’ Wait, and I’ll
read you what she——”
“No, you won’t. My hardness of heart isn’t a patch on my hardness of
hearing when it comes to listening to that sort of pink paper drivel.
I——”
“Now, father,” whined Mrs. Conover, persuasively, “why be so hard on the
poor boy? Perhaps——”
“Perhaps he’s wheedled you into thinking a yeller-haired high-kicker
would make the ideel daughter-in-law for the next Governor of the
Mountain State. But his golden eloquence hasn’t caught _me_ yet. So, as
long as there’s one sane member of the Conover family——”
“Oh, Caleb, how can you treat your own child——”
“Yes!” snorted Caleb, “my own children have a right to expect a fine
line of treatment from me, haven’t they? Blanche and Jerry, both. What
is it Ibid says about ‘A serpent’s tooth and a thankless——’”
“That was Shakespeare,” contradicted Mrs. Conover, with the tact that
was her chief charm. “And you’ve got it all wrong. There’s no such
person as——”
“I tell you it was Ibid,” growled Caleb, always tender on the subject of
his learning. “It says so in the ‘Famous Quotation’ book. Maybe you can
look down on my education. But I guess I can stand pat all right on the
things I _have_ learned. And——”
The butler entered with a card, which he carried to Caleb. After one
glance at the pasteboard Caleb crushed it in his fingers and threw it to
the floor.
“Turn her out!” he ordered.
“Why, who is it?” squeaked his wife in high excitement.
“It’s some woman for Jerry. Gaines brought me the card by mis——”
“For me?” cried Gerald, jumping up, his face aflame. “Why, it—it
can’t——”
“Yes, it can. And it is, or rather it _was_, for I’ve sent her away.
Maybe you forget I made you promise——”
“Stand aside!” spake a dramatic contralto voice from beyond the
portières, “I have a right here.”
The curtains were thrust apart, revealing the protesting, discomfited
butler; and, pushing past him, a tall, slender young woman, quietly but
prettily dressed, pompadoured of hair, and very, _very_ determined of
aspect.
“Good Lord!” grunted Caleb under his breath, “she ain’t even a blonde. I
thought they all——”
But she was in the library itself, and facing the amazed master of the
house. Gerald, at first sight of her, had sprung forward and now grasped
the newcomer ardently by both hands and drew her to him.
“I was sure,” murmured the intruder in that same throaty contralto,
rich, yet insensibly conveying a vague impression of latent vulgarity,
“I was _sure_ your man was mistaken, and that you couldn’t have meant to
turn me away without a word when I had come so far to see my precious
truant boy. _Did_ you? We women, Mrs. Conover,” she went on, eyes and
voice claiming alliance of the meek-faced little nonentity who shrank
behind Anice Lanier, “we women understand how hard it is to keep away
from the man who has taught us to love him. _Don’t_ we? Men never can
_quite_ realize that. Not even my Gerald, or he wouldn’t have stayed
away so long or made me stay away from him. _Would_ he?”
“It was Dad,” broke in Gerald. “I told you that in my first letter,
darling. He won’t stand for our marriage, and——”
“Ah! that is because he doesn’t know,” she laughed archly. “Mr. Conover,
this big splendid boy of mine is too much in love to explain as he
should. And he’s so high-spirited, he can’t listen as patiently to
advice as he ought to. _Can_ you, Gerald? So I came myself, when I
couldn’t stand it any longer to be away from him. I knew I could make
you understand. _Can’t_ I?”
“I can tell better when you’ve tried,” answered Caleb, watching with a
sort of awed fascination the alternate plunges and rearings of the
vibrant black pompadour, which, in deference to the prevailing style of
the moment—and of the chorus—was pendent directly above the visitor’s
right eye.
His curt rejoinder rather took the caller aback. She looked about the
group as if for inspiration. Anice Lanier had risen, and was at the
door. Caleb saw her.
“Please don’t go, Miss Lanier!” he called.
“I would much prefer to,” answered Anice, “if you don’t object. This
seems to be purely a family affair and——”
“And at least one person with a decently-balanced brain ought to be
present. Our affairs are _your_ affairs as far as you’ll allow. Please
do me the favor of staying.”
The visitor had, by this diversion, regained grasp on her plan of
action.
“Mr. Conover,” she said, stretching out her suède-gloved hands toward
the Railroader in a pretty gesture of helpless appeal as to an
all-powerful judge, “I am your son’s wife. He loves me. I love him. Does
that tell you nothing?”
“Yes,” said Caleb judicially, “it tells me you love each other; if
that’s what you mean. For the sake of argument we’ll take that for
granted, just for the present. Now get down to facts.”
“I am your son’s wife,” repeated the woman, somewhat less throatily, but
still with brave resolve. “He sought me out and wooed me. He told me I
should receive a welcome in his home. He made me love him. _Didn’t_ you,
Gerald? And I married him. Ah, but we were happy, we two! Then, like a
thunderbolt from the blue sky fell your command that we part. He and I.
For long—oh, _so_ long—I have tried to be patient, to wait for time to
soften your heart. But at last I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t _bear_ it,
so I came here to meet you in person, to cast myself at your feet if
need be. To——”
She paused. The cold, inscrutable gaze of the Railroader’s light eyes
did not tend to inspire her very creditable recitation. As a matter of
fact, Caleb was at the moment paying very little attention to her words.
He was noting the hard dryness of her skin and the only half-hidden
lines about mouth, brow and eye; and contrasting them with Anice
Lanier’s baby-smooth skin and the soft contour of her neck and cheek.
Had the stranger been saying anything of import Caleb would have
missed no syllable. But, through long years of experience with the
dreary windiness and empty pothouse eloquence of politicians, the
Railroader had learned by instinct, and without waiting to catch so
much as the first word, whether anything worth hearing was being said,
or if the case were, as he was wont to express it, “an attack of
rush-of-words-to-the-mouth.” He had already placed his present
caller’s oration in the latter category. But her pause brought him
back to himself.
“Well?” he demanded.
“So I am here to implore you to be just, to be generous,” resumed the
girl, slightly raising the pitch of the scene as she approached a
climax. “I throw myself on your mercy. I, Enid Conover——”
“Enid Conover!” snorted the Railroader. “Why——”
“Yes. Enid Conover! How I have learned to love that name!”
“Have, hey? Then take my advice, young woman, and stifle that same wild
adoration for my poetic cognomen, for you aren’t going to have the
renting of it any longer’n I can help.”
“Not——?”
“Oh, you’ll get over it easy! Just as you got over your love for that
high-sounding title, Enid Montmorency. And just as, before that, when
you left your mother’s Germantown boarding-house, you got over any
passion you may have had for your original name, Emma Higgs. You see I
know some little about you. I took the trouble to have you looked up.
You and your family. You told Gerald your family’s old. From all I hear,
I guess the main difference between you and that same family is that
one’s older’n you make out and the other’s younger. Take your choice as
to which is which. And now——”
“You insult me!” declaimed the girl, her eyes flashing, her figure drawn
to the full height of a really excellent pose, her pompadour nestling
protectingly above the arched brow.
“No, I don’t. I couldn’t. (Jerry, you sit down there and behave yourself
or I’ll spank you!) If you think I’m wrong, maybe you’d like me to tell
my son the way you first happened to go on the stage. No? I guess I’ve
got this thing framed up pretty near straight. It’s a grand-stand play,
and Papa is It, eh? A masterstroke of surprise for the old man, and a
final tableau of the bunch of us clustering about you and Gerald in the
centre of the stage, while you fall on each other’s necks and
do a unison exclamation of ‘God-bless-the-dear-old-Dad!
How-much-will-he-leave-us? And-how-soon?’ You waited in town awhile. But
Papa didn’t relent and send Hubby back to his lonely wifie. Then you
sick Gerald on to acting like a human being, hoping to win Papa over by
being a good boy. No go. Then as a last play you butt in here on a
sudden with all your lines learned down pat, and do a grand appeal.
Well, Mrs.-Miss-Emma-Higgs-Enid-Montmorency-Conover, it doesn’t work.
That’s all. If you’ve got the sense I think, you’ll see the show’s a
frost, and you’ll start back for Broadway. Take my blessing, if you want
it, and take Jerry along for good measure, if you like. It’s all you’ll
ever get from me, either of you.”
To Caleb Conover’s unbounded horror and amaze, Enid, instead of spurning
him haughtily, burst into a crescendo, throaty gurgle of contralto
weeping, and flung herself bodily upon him; her long-gloved arms twining
about his neck, her pompadoured head snuggling into his bosom.
“Oh, Father! _Father!_” came a muffled, yet artistic wail from somewhere
in the region of his upper waistcoat buttons. “How _can_ you? You’ve
broken Gerald’s heart. And now you’re breaking mine. Forgive us!”
“Miss Lanier!” thundered Caleb, struggling wildly to escape the
snake-like closeness of the embrace, “for heaven’s sake won’t you come
and—and unwind this person? She’s spoiling my shirt-front. Lord, how I
do hate to be pawed!”
“Do not touch me! Do not _dare_ to, menial!” commanded the bride,
relinquishing her hold, and glaring like a wounded tigress at Anice, who
had made no move whatever in response to Caleb’s horrified plea. The
visitor drew back from Caleb as though contact with him besmirched her.
“_Well!_” she gasped, and now the throaty contralto was merged into a
guttural snarl, ridiculously akin to an angry cat’s. “_Well!_ Of all the
cheap tight-wads I ever struck! Think you can backtrack _me_, do you?
Well, you _lose_! I’m married to him all right, and _I’m_ not giving him
up in a hurry. You try to butt in, and you’ll find yourself in a hundred
thousand alienation suit! Oh, I know _my_ rights, and no up-country
Rube’s going to skin me out of ’em. You old bunch of grouchiness! And to
think they let you boss things in this jay town of yours! Why, in New
York you’d never get nearer Broadway than Tenth Avenue, and you couldn’t
even boss a red light precinct. My Gawd! I’ll have to keep it dark about
my coming to a hole like this or my friends’ll think I’ve been playing a
ten-twenty-thirt’ circuit. No civilized person ever comes here, and now
I know why. They’re afraid they’ll be mistook for a friend of yours,
most likely. You redheaded old geezer, you don’t even know a lady when
you see one. Keep your lantern-jawed, pie-faced mutt of a son. I’m going
back to where there’s at least _one_ perfect gentleman who knows how to
behave when a lady honors him by——”
“Enid!” cried Gerald, who had sat in dumb, nerveless confusion during
the recent interchange of courtesies, “you don’t mean—? You mustn’t go
back to him! You _mustn’t_! Has he met you again since I left? Tell me!
I said I’d kill him if he ever spoke to you again, and, by God, I will!
He shan’t——”
A timid, falsetto screech, like that of a very young leveret that is
inadvertently trodden beneath a farmer’s foot in long grass, broke in on
the boy’s ravings. Mrs. Caleb Conover collapsed on the floor in a dead
faint.
Anice ran to the unconscious woman’s aid. Even Gerald, checked midway in
his mad appeal, stopped and stared down in stupid wonder at his mother’s
little huddled figure.
Caleb seized the moment to cross the room quickly toward the furious
chorus girl. He caught her by the shoulder, and in his pale eyes blazed
a flare that few men and no woman had ever seen there. The color, behind
the artistic paint on the visitor’s face, went white at the look. She,
who was accustomed to brave the rages of drunken rounders, shrank
speechless, cowering before those light eyes. One arm she raised
awkwardly as if to avert a blow. Yet Caleb’s touch on her shoulder was
gentle; and, when he spoke, his voice was strangely dead and
unemotional. So low was it that his meaning rather than his exact words
reached the actress.
“This is _my_ city,” said he. “What I say goes. There is a train to New
York in thirty minutes. If you are in Granite one minute after it
leaves, my police shall arrest you. My witnesses shall make the charge
something that even _you_ will hardly care to stand for. My judge shall
send you to prison for a year. And every paper in New York shall print
the whole story as I choose to tell it. Now go!”
The fear of death and worse than death was in her eyes. She slunk out,
shrunken in aspect to the form of an old and bent woman. Not even—most
beloved trick of stage folk!—did she turn at the portières for a parting
look. The patter of her scared, running feet sounded irregularly on the
marble outer hall. Then the front door slammed, and she was gone.
The final scene between Conover and his son’s wife had endured less than
twenty seconds. It was over, and she had departed before Gerald realized
what had happened. Then, with a cry, he was on his feet and hurrying to
the door. But his father stood in front of it.
“If you’re not cured now,” said Conover, “you never will be. Go back and
ring for your mother’s maid.”
The boy’s mouth was open for a wrathful retort. But embers of the blaze
that had transformed Caleb’s face as he had dismissed the chorus girl
still flickered there. And under their scorching heat Gerald Conover
slunk back, beaten but still muttering defiant incoherences under his
breath.
Mrs. Conover, under Anice’s gentle ministration, was coming to her
senses. She opened her eyes with a gasp of fear, then sat up and looked
apprehensively around.
“She is gone, dear,” whispered Anice, divining her meaning, “and Gerald
didn’t mean what he said. He was excited, that was all. He’s all right
again now. Shall I help you upstairs?”
But Mrs. Conover insisted on being assisted to the nearby sofa, from
which refuge she feebly waved away her maid and vetoed Anice’s further
offices.
“I am all right,” she pleaded under her breath. “Let me stay here. Caleb
hates to have me give way to these heart attacks. I’ll stay till he has
gone to his study. Then——”
“All right again, old lady?” asked Caleb, walking across to the sofa.
“Like me to send for the doctor?”
“No. Yes, I’m quite well again now,” stammered his wife. “Thank you for
asking.”
It was not wholly indifference which had kept Conover from the invalid’s
side. So great had been the unwonted fury that mastered him, he had
dared not speak to either of the women until he was able to some extent
to curb it. His usually iron nerves were still a-quiver, and his voice
was unlike its customary self.
“Until further notice,” he announced dryly, looking from one to the
other, “these ‘pleasant home hours’ are suspended. By request. They’re
too exciting for a quiet man like me. I hope you’ll all try to smother
any disappointment you feel. And now,” turning to the butler, who had
come in answer to his ring, “I’ll see if I can’t get the taste of this
farewell performance of the pleasant hour series out of my mouth before
I start my evening’s work. Gaines, order Dunderberg brought around in
ten minutes.”
“Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Conover, who had imperfectly caught
the order.
“To get into my riding clothes,” answered her husband from the doorway.
“But you spoke about Dunderberg. You’re surely not going to ride
Dunderberg when I’m so shaken up. I shall worry so——”
“Why? _You_ ain’t riding him.”
“But why not ride Sultan? He’s so gentle and quiet and——”
“Letty! do I look as if I was on a still hunt for something gentle and
quiet? I want something that’ll give me a fight. Something that’ll tire
me out and take my mind off black, floppy pompadours and stocking-leg
gloves! Jerry, you come along with me. I want a talk with you.”
“Oh, if only that dreadful horse would die!” sighed Mrs. Conover. “I
never have an instant’s peace while you’re riding him.”
“Rot!” growled Caleb, grinning reassurance at the pathetic little figure
on the sofa. “There never yet was a horse I couldn’t manage or that
could harm _me_. Come along, Jerry.”
He stamped upstairs to his dressing-room followed by the reluctant,
still muttering Gerald.
This was by no means the first time Mrs. Conover had plucked up courage
to entreat her lord not to ride his favorite horse, Dunderberg, the most
vicious, tricky brute in all that horse-breeding State. And never yet
had the Railroader deigned to heed her request. In fact, such opposition
rather pleased him than otherwise, inasmuch as it enhanced, to all
listeners, his own equestrian prowess.
Caleb Conover was a notoriously bad rider. Horsemanship must be learned
before the age of twenty or never at all. And Conover was well past
forty before he threw leg over saddle. But he loved the exercise, and
took special joy in buying and mastering the most unmanageable horses he
could find.
How so wretched a horseman could avert bad falls or even death was a
mystery to all who knew him. It was seemingly by his own sheer will
power and brutal strength of mind and body that he remained triumphant
over the worst horse; was never thrown nor failed to conquer his mount.
It was one of the sights of Granite to see Caleb Conover careering down
the main avenue of the residence district, backing some foaming,
plunging hunter, whose wildest efforts could never shake that stiff,
indomitable figure from its seat. With walloping elbows and jerking
shoulders, the Railroader was wont to thunder his way at top speed up
and down suburban byways; inciting his horse to its worst tricks,
tempting it to buck, kick, wheel or rear. And when the maddened brute at
length indulged in any or all of these manœuvres, a joy of battle would
light the rider’s face as, with unbreakable knee-grip and a
self-possession that never deserted him, he flogged the steed into
subjection.
In telling Letty that there was no horse he could not safely manage and
control Conover had but repeated an oft-made boast—a boast whose truth
he had a score of times proven. He was not a constant equestrian. He
never rode for the mere pleasure of it. In ordinary moments he cared
little for such recreation. But when he was angered, or perplexed, or
desired to freshen jaded nerves or brain, his first order was for his
newest, worst-tempered horse.
As he rode so semi-occasionally, and as the horse he selected was
usually one which even his pluckiest grooms feared to exercise, the
brute in question was fairly certain to be in a state of rampant, rank
“freshness,” and to require the best work of two men to lead him from
the stables to the _porte-cochère_. As few steeds could long withstand
such training as Conover inflicted, he was forever changing mounts. The
horse of the hour would wax so tame and docile as to preclude further
excitement, or would break a blood-vessel or go dead lame in one of the
fierce conflicts with its master. Then a new mount must be sought out.
It was barely a month earlier that Caleb had discovered Dunderberg, and
had bought the great black stallion at an outrageously high price. And
thus far the purchase still delighted him, for Dunderberg not only
showed no signs of cringing to the master’s fiery will, but daily grew
fiercer and more unmanageable.
So, while Mrs. Conover trembled, wept and alternately prayed and watched
the length of driveway beyond her window, the Railroader was wont to
dash at breakneck speed along the farther country roads, atop his huge
black horse, checking the mad pace only for occasional battles-royal
with the ever-fractious beast.
To-night, coming atop the previous excitement of the “pleasant home
hour,” the strain on Letty was too great. Clinging convulsively to
Anice, the poor woman wept with a hysterical abandon that almost
frightened the girl. Tenderly, lovingly as a mother the girl soothed the
trembling old lady; comforting her as only a woman of great heart and
small hand can; quieting at length the shuddering hysterics into
half-stifled sobs.
Had Caleb Conover (upstairs wrestling with an overtight riding boot)
chanced upon the group, he would have been sore puzzled to recognize in
this all-tender, pitying maiden the coldly reserved secretary on whose
unruffled composure and steady nerve he had so utterly come to rely.
“Oh, it’s horrible—_horrible_!” panted Mrs. Conover, finding voice as
the sobs subsided.
“Yes, yes, I know,” soothed Anice. “But it——”
“You _don’t_ know. You can’t know. It isn’t only the horse. It’s
everything! I sometimes wonder how I stand it. Each time it seems as
if——”
“Don’t! Don’t, dear! You’re overwrought and tired. Let me take you
upstairs and——”
“No. It does me good. There’s never been anyone I could talk to. And
sometimes I’ve felt I’d give all this abominable money and everything
just for one hour’s friendship with anyone who really cared.”
“But _I_ care. Really, _really_ I do. Let me help you, won’t you,
please? I want so much to.”
“‘Help’ me?” echoed the weeping woman, with as near an approach to
bitterness as her crushed spirit could muster. “_Help_ me? How can
anyone help one of Caleb Conover’s slaves? And I am the only one of them
all who has no hope of escape. The others can leave him and find work
somewhere else. Even the horses he loves to fight have the satisfaction
of fighting back. But I haven’t courage enough to do either of those
things. What _can_ I do?”
It was the first time in their three years of daily intercourse that
Anice Lanier had seen or so much as suspected the existence of this
feeble spark of resentment in the older woman’s cowed soul. It
dumbfounded her, and left her for the time without power of consoling.
“Do you know, Miss Lanier,” went on Letty, “at one time I hated you?
Yes”—as she noted the pained surprise in the girl’s big, tear-swimming
eyes—“actually hated you. You were all I was not. You were not afraid of
him. He deferred to you. He never deferred to me, or to anyone else but
you since he was born. He never cared for me. And he did care for you.
If I were to die——”
“Mrs. Conover!”
Anice had shaken off Mrs. Conover’s clinging hands, and was on her feet,
her eyes dry, her cheeks blazing.
“Don’t be angry with me! _Don’t!_” whimpered the invalid. “I didn’t mean
any harm. You said you wanted to help me. And oh, if you only knew what
a help it is to be able to speak out for once in my life without fear of
that terrible will power of Caleb’s choking me silent! I don’t hate you
now. I didn’t as soon as I saw you cared nothing for him. For you don’t.
I see more than people think. And—I suppose it’s wicked of me to even
think such things—but when I die it will be good to know Caleb will for
once be balked in his wishes; for you’ll never marry him. I know that.”
“I can’t listen to you!” exclaimed Anice. “You are not yourself or you
wouldn’t talk so. Please——”
“May I come in?”
Both women, with the wondrous art which their sex alone can master, had
dropped into conventional attitudes with their backs to the light by the
time the intruder’s first word was spoken. As Clive Standish passed
through the portières into the library, he saw only that its two
occupants were seated, one reading, the other crocheting, in polite
boredom, each evidently quite willing that their prolonged session of
dreary small talk should be interrupted.
“Good evening, Aunt Letty,” said Clive, as he stooped over the excited
woman and kissed her. “I called to see Mr. Conover on a matter of some
importance. The footman was not sure whether he could—or would—see me or
not. So, while I was waiting for him to find out, I thought I heard your
voice in here and ventured in. Good evening, Miss Lanier. You’ll pardon
my left hand?”
The right he held behind him, yet in one of the mirrors Anice could see
the knuckles were swathed in plaster. The hand he offered, too, was
bruised, cut and discolored.
“I—I had a slight accident,” he said hastily, noting her glance.
“Nothing of importance. I——”
“Mr. Conover has told us of it,” answered Anice. “It was splendid of
you, Clive! You risked your life to——”
“To get out of a fight that my own folly had brought on. That was all.
I’m afraid my tour wasn’t exactly a success. In fact, I fear it will go
down in Mountain State annals as the colossal failure of the century. So
I’m back.”
“You’ve given up?” she asked in quick interest.
“Why? Do you want me to?”
“No.”
Her monosyllable told little. Her eyes, which he alone could see, told
more. Clive was satisfied.
“I have not given up,” he said simply, “and I am not going to.”
“Oh, but, Clive,” put in his aunt, finding her voice at last after the
shock of seeing Standish walk thus boldly into the lion’s den. “You’d
really better give up the whole silly business. I’m sure Mr. Conover
would be so pleased.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied Standish, smiling grimly at Anice over the
old lady’s bobbing head, “but I’m afraid it is a pleasure that’s at
least deferred. The kind that Solomon tells us ‘maketh the heart sick.’
I’m still in the race. Very much in it.”
“But then, why—why have you come here, Clive?” urged Letty nervously.
“Mr. Conover and you are such bad friends. I’m sure there’ll be an awful
scene, just as there was that time four years ago. And I do so hate
scenes. After this evening’s——”
“I’m afraid there may be a ‘scene,’ as you call it,” admitted Clive,
“but it won’t be at all on the order of the one four years ago. And I
hope it won’t be in your presence either, Aunt.”
Again his eyes met Anice Lanier’s. She nodded ever so slightly, and he
knew that when the time should come he could trust her to remove the
timid woman from the danger zone.
“Why do you want to see Mr. Conover?” asked Anice, “or is that an
impertinent——?”
“Not in the least. I want to come to an understanding with him. Affairs
have reached a point where that is necessary.”
“An understanding?”
“Yes. As long as he contented himself with ordering his followers to
lampoon and vilify myself and the League I made no complaint. It was
dirty, but I suppose it was politics. But when he muzzles the press,
orders the police and the mayor of the cities to refuse me fair play,
and sets thugs to attack me and illegally steals the State conventions,
it’s time to have it out with him face to face. That is why I am here,
and why I shan’t leave until I have seen him. I hadn’t meant to say all
this to you,” he added, ashamed of his own heat, “but——”
“Oh, I’m _certain_ Mr. Conover won’t like it!” moaned his aunt. “I’m
quite certain he won’t. Now, if you’d only speak tactfully and
pleasantly to him——”
“Well,” came the Railroader’s strident tones from the hall outside,
“where is he, then?”
The portières were swished aside with a jerk that set the curtain rings
to jingling, and Caleb Conover, in riding dress, hatted, spurred and
slashing his crop against one booted leg, filled the narrow doorway.
Mrs. Conover gave a little gasp of fear. Anice Lanier let fall over her
bright face the mask of quiet reserve it always wore in her employer’s
presence.
Clive rose and took a step toward his unwelcoming host.
And so, for ten seconds, the rival candidates faced each other in
silence—a silence heavy with promise of storm.