CALEB CONOVER LISTENS AND ANSWERS
“Well,” began Conover, breaking the short pause, “what do _you_ want?”
“I want to speak to you—alone,” answered Standish.
“Come up to my study. Gaines, tell the groom to keep Dunderberg moving.
I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
In silence the Railroader led the way upstairs. He passed into the
study, leaving Clive to follow. Nor, as he seated himself in his big
desk chair, did he request his visitor to sit down. Ignoring these
slights, Clive took up his stand on the opposite side of the desk.
“Now, then,” said Caleb, “get through your business as quick as you can.
What do you want?”
“To speak to you in reference to this campaign.”
“Had enough, eh?”
“Altogether too much of the sort you’ve inflicted on me.”
“Good! You’ve got more sense than I thought. There’s two kinds of fools:
the kind that put their heads in a hornet’s nest once and then have
sense enough to admit they’ve been stung, and the kind that keeps their
heads there because they’re too daffy to see the exit-signs or too
pig-headed to confess that hornet-stings ain’t the most diverting form
of massage. I’m glad to see you belong to the first class. I’d placed
you in the second.”
“But I——”
“But you want to get out of this p’ticular hornet’s nest, I s’pose,
without giving too life-like an imitation of a man shinning down from a
tree, eh? Well, I guess that can be fixed. Sit down. We’ll——”
“You’re mistaken!” broke in Standish, resenting the more civil tone of
his host as he had not resented his former rudeness, “I’m in this fight
to stay. I——”
“Want your cash losses made good! If you——”
“Mr. Conover,” said Clive calmly, though the knuckles that gripped the
table-edge were white with pressure, “when your lackey, Shevlin, made
that same proposition to me, he thought he was making a perfectly
straight offer. And, judging by the standards you’ve taught him, I
suppose the suggestion was almost holy compared with the majority of his
tactics. So I didn’t thrash him. He knew no better; for the same reason
I don’t thrash _you_.”
“That and maybe a few others,” laughed Conover, in no wise offended. “I
climbed up from yard-boy to railroad president by frequently jamming my
fists in where they’d do the most good. I guess you’d have a faint
s’spicion you’d been in a fight before you was through. But I presume
you didn’t come here to-night to give an encore performance of your
grand-stand play at Grafton. It seems I started on the wrong idea just
now. You don’t want to drop out gracefully or to sell out, and you
prefer the soothing attentions of the hornets to——”
“Yes, if you put it that way, Mr. Conover——”
“Hold on a second.”
The Railroader crossed to a screen at the farther end of the room.
Thrusting it aside he said to a stenographer who sat behind it, pencil
and pad in hand:
“We won’t need you any longer. This ain’t going to be that kind of
interview after all. You can go now. Just a little precaution of mine,”
he added to Clive as he returned to the table. “Now you can go on
talking.”
“You were setting a spy to take down what I said!” gasped Clive,
incredulous.
“No. A stenographer to report our little chat. We were a bit short on
campaign litterchoor. But I see it won’t be needed now. Go ahead.”
“I’ve just returned from a tour of the State,” commenced Standish, once
more forcing himself to keep down his temper.
Conover drew a typewritten bundle from a drawer.
“If you were counting on telling me all about it,” he observed, “I can
save you the trouble. Here’s the whole account.”
“Does your ‘account’ include the recital of a mob incited to smash
furniture, insult women and attempt murder? Or of suborned town
officials, bought policemen and muzzled editors? If not, it is
incomplete. I went on that tour prepared to meet all legitimate
obstacles. I met only fraud, violence and the creatures of boss-bought
conspiracy. It is to call you to account for that and to ask how far it
was done by your personal sanction that I have come to see you. Also to
ask if you intend to give me fair play in future.”
“Fair play?” echoed Conover in genuine bewilderment. “Son, this is
politics, not ping pong.”
“Everyone in God’s world is entitled to fair play. And I’m here to
demand it.”
“‘God’s’ world, eh? My friend, when you’ve travelled about it as long as
I have, you’ll find out that the original owner sublet the premises long
ago.”
“It looks so, in the Mountain State, I agree. But I’m trying to act as
local dispossess agent for the present tenant. All men are born equal,
and some of us are tired of being owned by a political boss. We——”
“You’re a terribly original feller, Standish! That remark, now, about
all men being ‘born equal.’ It was made in the first place, wasn’t it,
by a white-wigged, short-panted hero who owned more slaves than he could
count? ‘Born equal!’ Maybe all men are. But by the time they’re out of
swaddling-clothes they’ve got bravely over it. That old Jefferson
proverb’s responsible for more anarchy and scraps, and strikes and
grumbling and hard-luck stories, than all the whole measly dictionary
put together. Get down to business, man. This ain’t a p’litical rally.
Cut out the fine talk, can’t you? My horse is waiting.”
“I’ve told you already what I wish. I want to know if you will fight
like a man for the rest of the campaign, and if the outrages I
encountered on my tour were by your order?”
“That won’t take an awful lot of eloquence to answer. What was done to
you up-State was planned out by me, and it isn’t deuce-high to what’ll
drop on you if you’re still alive when the State Convention——”
“You cur!”
“Meaning _me_?” queried Caleb blandly.
“You cur!” repeated Clive, his last remaining shreds of temper thrown to
the winds. “I was told I’d meet this sort of reception, but I couldn’t
believe there was a man alive who had the crass effrontery to confess he
was a wholesale crook, and that he was going to continue one. You’ve
sapped the integrity, the honesty, the freedom of this city and State.
You’ve made us a byword for every community in America. You’ve trailed
your iniquitous railroad across the State, crushing every smaller and
more honest line, until you are czar of all our traffic. You rob the
people by sending to Legislature your own henchmen, who help you steal
franchises, and who cut down your taxes and throw the burden of
assessment on the very class of people you have already defrauded to the
top of your bent. Corruption of the foulest sort has been smeared by you
all over the face of this commonwealth, till the people are stricken
helpless and speechless under it. Who can help them? Are there ten
lawyers in this State who don’t wear your collar, and whose annual
passes from your road aren’t granted them on the written understanding
that such courtesies are really ‘retainers’? Then, when I try to help
the people you have ground to the dirt—when I try to wipe the filthy
stain from the Mountain State’s shield—even then you will not fight me
fair, as man to man. You stab in the back, like any other common felon,
and you feel so secure in your own stolen position, that you actually
boast of it, and propose to continue your damnable knifing tactics. Why,
Caleb Conover, you don’t even know how vile a _thing_ you are!”
He paused, breathless, still furious. The Railroader was leaning back in
his big chair eyeing the angry man with genuine amusement.
“You’ve got the hang of it!” murmured Caleb, half to himself. “The
regular reformer shout. I wouldn’t have thought it of you. Honestly,
son, it’s hard to take you reformers serious. You’re all so dead sure
you’re saying what’s never been said before, and that you’re discovering
what no one else ever dreamed of. If only I could buy one of you Civic
Leaguers at my own estimate of you, and sell you at your estimate of
yourself, it’d be the biggest deal I ever made. Now don’t get red and
try to think up new platitudes to beller at me. I’ve listened pretty
patient, but I think it’s my turn to do a little shouting, too. I’ve
heard you out. Now, maybe it’ll do you no harm to make the same
return-play to me. Sit down. You came here to reach an understanding,
and get a line on my course, eh? Well, you’ve got a big load of fine
words out of your system in the last few minutes. I’ll answer you as
best I can, and then maybe in future us two’ll understand each other the
better.”
In spite of himself, Clive Standish listened. This thickset, powerful
man, whose blazing temper was proverbial, had attended the young
candidate’s rather turgid arraignment with every evidence of
good-natured interest. He had endured insulting epithet with almost the
air of one who hearkens to a compliment. And, in answering, he had
spoken so moderately, so at variance with his usual mode of address,
that Standish was utterly puzzled, and was half-ashamed of his own
vehemence. What one of the Boss’s myriad moods was this, and what end
had he in view? Clive checked his own impulse to depart. After all,
there was something of justice in what Conover had said about the
courtesy due a man who had listened to such a tirade as his.
Standish remained standing at the table, looking across with unwilling
inquiry at his host, who lounged at ease in his chair, watching the
younger man with a grim smile, as though reading his every thought.
Their relative positions were ludicrously akin to those of judge and
prisoner. And the compelling force that lay behind the amusement in
Caleb’s light eyes strengthened the resemblance.
“In the first place,” said the Railroader, “I think you called me a
‘cur.’ Twice, I believe, you said that. You most likely thought I’d get
mad. A cur _does_ get mad when he’s called bad names. But a grown man’s
too busy to kick the puppy that yelps at his heels. A man of sense keeps
his mouth shut, unless he’s got something to say. If a cur hasn’t
anything else to yelp at, he goes out and picks a scrap with the moon,
or at something else that’s too big or too high up to bother to hit back
when he barks at it. Me, for instance. So we’ll let it go at that, and
we won’t bother to get up a puzzle picture of us both and label it ‘Find
the cur.’ Have a cigar? No? They aren’t campaign smokes. You needn’t ’a’
been afraid of ’em.”
He lighted a gaudily-banded perfecto, puffed it a minute, and went on:
“I don’t know why I’m going to waste time talking to you. I’ve never
took the trouble, before, to defend myself or to try to make other folks
see my view of the case. But you’re a well-meaning chap, for all you’re
such an ass. And maybe something’s due you after the luck I put you up
against on that tour of yours. So I’m just going to squander some words
on you. And after that I’ll ask you to trot off home, for I’ve some
riding to do.”
He shifted his cigar to an angle of his mouth and resumed:
“In the first place, you give me the usual rank old talk about the way I
treat the people of the Mountain State. Why do I boss this City and the
State? Because the people want me to. Why do I run things to suit myself
in my railroads and my legislature? Because the people want me to. Now
you’re getting ready to say that’s a lie. It isn’t. Why don’t I grab the
food off some man’s dinner table? Because he _don’t_ want me to. He’d
yell for the police or pull a gun on me if I tried it. Why do I saddle
that same man with any taxes I choose? Why do I elect my own crowd to
office and work franchises and everything else just as I like? Because
he _does_ want me to. If he didn’t he wouldn’t let me. He could stop me
from stealing his dinner. And he would. He could stop me from grabbing
his State. And he doesn’t. Do you s’pose for a second that I, or Tom
Platt, or Richard Croker, or Charley Murphy, or Matt Quay or any other
boss who ever lived, could have made ten people in the whole world do
what those people didn’t want to? You knew well enough they couldn’t.
Then, why did Platt and Quay and the rest boss the Machine? Why do _I_
boss the Machine? Because the people _want_ to be bossed. Because they’d
rather be led than to lead themselves. Can you find a flaw in that?
Facts is facts, and history is history. Bosses is bosses, and the people
are sheep. Is a shepherd in the herding business for his health and to
amuse and el’vate the sheep? Not he. He’s in the game for the money he
can get out of shearing and occasional butchering. So am I. My own
pocket first, last and always. If it wasn’t me it’d be another shepherd.
And maybe one that’d make the sheep sweat worse’n I do.”
Clive’s lips parted in protest, but Caleb waved him to silence.
“You were going to say some wise thing about the people’s inviolate
rights, eh? We’ve all got ‘inviolate rights.’ But if we leave ’em laying
around loose and don’t stand up for ’em, we can’t expect much pity when
someone else cops ’em away from us. If I try to turn you out of your
house, you’ve got a right to prevent me. And you would. If you sat by
and let me do it, you’d deserve what you got. If I try to turn the
people out of their rights in the Legislature and they stand for it,
who’s got a kick coming? Once in a blue moon some man whose brains have
all run to lungs—nothing personal—gets up and shouts to the people that
they’re being conned. Sometimes—not _this_ time, mind you—they believe
it, and they throw over the Machine and elect a bunch of wall-eyed
reformers that know as much about practical politics as a corn-fed dodo
bird knows about theology. What happens? The city and the State are run
in a way that’d make a schoolboy cry. At the end of one single
administration there’s a record of incompetence and messed-up official
affairs that takes a century to straighten out. The police have been
made so pure they won’t let ice and milk be sold for sick babies on
Sundays, but they haven’t time to keep folks from being sandbagged in
open daylight. The Building Department Commissioners are so
incorruptible they don’t know a brick from a lump of putty. And the
contractors eat up chunks of overpay for rotten work. And so in every
branch of government. The people get wise to all this, and they decide
it’s better to be bled by professionals and to get at least part of
their money’s worth in decent service than it is to be bled just as
heavy by a pack of measly amachoors and get no service at all. So back
they come to the Boss, begging him to get on the job again. Which he
does, being a self-sacrificing sort of a cuss, and glad to help the
‘plain pe-ople.’ Likewise himself.”
“The administration you describe is the result of fanaticism, not real
reform. It——”
“From where I sit, the difference between the two ain’t so great as to
show to the undressed eye. You speak of lawyers and country editors
being bought by my passes. Is there any law making ’em accept those
passes if they don’t want ’em? Could I buy ONE of those men if he wasn’t
for sale? There’s just one thing more, and then your little lesson’ll be
over and you can run home. All through this delightful little ree-union
you’ve kind of took the ‘holier-than-thou’ tone that’s such a pleasing
trait of you reformers when you’re dealing with mere sane folks. Now,
the best thing you can do is to take that fool idea out for a walk and
lose it, for you not only ain’t any better than me, but ain’t half the
man, and never _will_ be half the man I am. You were born with a gold
spoon in your mouth. The spoon was pulled out after you grew up, but not
till you had your education and your profession. What did you do? You’d
had the best advantages money could buy you. And for all that, the most
you could rise to was a measly every-day law practice. That’s all the
dividends the tens of thousands of dollars invested in your future were
ever able to declare, or ever _will_ be able to. _I_ started life dead
broke. No education, no pull, no cash, no prospects. I don’t know just
how rich I am to-day, but no one’s going to call you a liar if you put
it at forty millions. And I’m bossing bigger territory—and bossing with
more power—than half the so-called high and mighty kings of Yurrup. Now,
s’pose _you’d_ started where I did? Where’d you be to-day? You’d be the
‘honest young brakeman on the branch road,’ or at best you’d be ‘our
genial and rising young feller-townsman,’ the second deputy assistant
passenger agent of the C. G. & X. That’s where _you’d_ be. And you know
it. Had you the brains or the sand to get where I am? Not you. Any more
than one of those patent leather ’ristocrats in France had the genius to
win out the Napoleon job. You’re where you started. I’ve kept on rising.
And I’ll rise to the White House before I’m done. Now I ask you, fair
and square, which of us two is the best man, and if you oughtn’t to be
looking up to Caleb Conover instead of——”
“I am the better man,” answered Clive quietly. “And so is any honest
man. And I can look down on you for the same reason any square American
can look down on a political Boss. Because we are honest and you are
not.”
“Well,” vouchsafed Caleb, grudgingly, “that’s an answer anyhow, and it
comes nearer being sense than anything you’ve said so far. But you’re
wrong for all that. You talk about honesty. What’s honesty? The pious
Pilgrim Fathers came here and swindled old Lo, the poor Indian, out of
his country in a blamed sight more raw fashion than I’ve ever bamboozled
the people of the Mountain State. And the Mountain Staters were willing,
while the Indian wasn’t. Yet the old settlers are called ‘nation
builders’ and ‘martyrs,’ and a lot of other hot-air titles, and they get
statues put up to their memories. How about the Uncle Sam’s buying a
whole nation of Filipinos and coolly telling ’em: ‘_I’m_ bossing your
islands now. Listen to me while I soften your rebellious hearts with the
blessed gospel of the gatling gun.’ Yet Uncle Sam’s all right. So’s John
Bull, who done the same trick, only worse, in India and Egypt. No one’s
going to call America or England or the Pilgrim Fathers dishonest and
crooks, is there? Then why do you call Caleb Conover dishonest for doing
the same thing, only a lot more squarely and mercifully? The crook of
to-day is the hero of to-morrow. And I’m no crook at that. Why, Son, a
hundred years from now there’s liable to be a statue stuck up somewhere
of ‘Caleb Conover, Railroader, Champion of the People.’ Honesty, eh?
What _you_ call ‘honesty’ is just a sort of weak-kneed virtue meaning
lack of chance to be something else. ‘Honester than me’ means ‘less
chance than me.’ The honestest community on earth, according to you
reformers’ way of thinking, is in the State Penitentiary. For not a
crime of any sort’s committed there from one year’s end to the other.”
Conover chuckled softly to himself, then continued:
“And there’s something else about me that ought to make ’em sculp a halo
onto that same statue. What I’ve done to build up my pile I’ve done open
and with all the cards on the table. I have called a spade a spade, and
I haven’t referred to it, vague-like, as an ‘industr’l utensil.’ I
haven’t took the Lord in as a silent partner on my deals. What I’ve took
I’ve took, and I’ve said, ‘Whatcher going to do about it?’ I’ve won out
by strength, and I ain’t ashamed of my way of playing the game. I
haven’t talked through my nose about being one of the noble class picked
out by Providence to watch over the wealth that poor folks’d have had
the good of if I hadn’t grabbed it from ’em. And I haven’t tried to
square myself On High by endowing colleges and heathens and libraries
and churches. I guess a sinner’s hush-money don’t make so much of a hit
with the Almighty as these philanthropist geezers seem to think it will.
What I’ve given I’ve given on the quiet and where it’d keep folks from
the poorhouse. When it comes to the final show-down on Judgment Day,
I’ve a sneaking notion the out-and-out pirate—_me_, if you like—will win
out by about seven lengths over the holy hypocrite. That’s another
reason why I tell you you’re wrong when you say I ain’t honest. I don’t
hope to convince you by any of the words I’ve been wasting. If you were
the sort of man reason could reach you wouldn’t be a reformer. I’ve
squandered enough time on you for one evening. Save all the pat replies
that I can see you’re bursting with, and spring ’em at your next
meeting. I’ve no time to listen to ’em now. Good night.”
Unceremoniously as he had entered the room he quitted it, leaving
Standish to go as he would.
“I talked more’n I have since that fool speech of mine at the
reception,” muttered the Railroader as he clattered down the broad
staircase. “But I steered him off from the chance to say what he really
wanted to, and I dodged any scene that would be of use to him in his
campaign. Too bad he’s a Reformer! He’s got red blood in him, the young
idiot. Yes, and he’s not such an idiot either if it comes to that.”
Clive Standish, descending the stairs a moment later, puzzled,
disappointed, vaguely aware that he had somehow been tricked, heard the
shout of a groom and the thundering beat of Dunderberg’s flying hoofs
along the gravel of the drive.
“If he was as much master of the situation, and as content with himself
as he tried to make me think,” reflected Clive as he passed out into the
darkness, “he’d never ride like that.”
Standish went to the League’s headquarters, where for two hours he
busied himself with routine affairs, and tried to shut out memory of the
deep, taunting voice and masterful, amused eyes that had held him
captive, and had turned him from the real purpose of his visit. And in
time the light, sneering eyes deepened into liquid brown, and the
sonorous voice into Anice Lanier’s. For whatever theme might form any
particular verse of the day’s song for Clive, he noticed of late that
Anice was certain to be the ever-recurrent refrain.
Wearied with his evening’s work, Standish returned late to his own
rooms. His man said, as he helped the candidate off with his light
covert coat:
“A messenger boy brought a letter for you, sir, about an hour ago. He
said there was no answer. I left it on your desk.”
Clive picked up the typewritten envelope listlessly and tore it open. It
contained a note, also typewritten, and a thicker enclosure. He read:
“_Anonymous letters carry a stigma. Perhaps that is why you did not
profit by my last one. I have good reasons for not signing my name. And
you have good reason to know by now that what I write is the truth. Be
wiser this time. I enclose a list of the County Chairmen who have sold
out to Conover, the name of the Chairman to be chosen for next week’s
State Convention, and a rough draft of the plan to be used for your
defeat. Next to each detail you will find my suggestion for blocking it.
You owe it to yourself and to the people to take advantage of what I
send you._”
“He’s right, whoever he is!” exclaimed Clive, half-aloud. “It’s the only
way I can fight Conover on equal terms. There’s no sense in my standing
on a foolish scruple when so much hangs on the result of the
Convention.”
He snatched up the enclosure which had slipped to the floor. Irresolute
he held it for almost a minute, his firm lips twitching, his eyes cloudy
with perplexity. Then, with a sigh of self-contempt he slipped note and
enclosure in a long envelope, addressed it and rang for his man.
“See that this is delivered to-night,” he ordered.
The valet, as he left the room, glanced surreptitiously at the
envelope’s address. To his infinite bewilderment he saw the
superscription:
“_Caleb Conover, Esq., 167 Pompton Avenue. Personal._”
There was a terrible half hour in the Mausoleum that night.