CALEB CONOVER FIGHTS
The real campaign was at last under way, and the Mountain State thrilled
as never before in the history of politics. At a composite convention
made up of the Republican and lesser parties of the State, and held
almost directly after that of the Democrats, faction lines were cast
aside and Clive Standish nominated by acclamation. Ansel had presided,
and scores of bolting Democrats were in attendance.
Then, in Granite and throughout the State, Clive began what is still
recalled as his “whirlwind campaign.” Often ten speeches a day were
delivered as he hurried from point to point. The reports of his meetings
were sown broadcast, as was other legitimate campaign literature.
Because of the daring and extraordinary course he had taken, as well as
for the sane, practical reforms he advocated, he was everywhere listened
to with growing interest.
The Mountain State was at last awake—awake and hearkening eagerly to the
voice of the man who had roused it from its Rip Van Winkle slumbers.
Horrified, wholly aghast, the Conover lieutenants had heard their
master’s decree that the press gag was to be removed, and other
customary tactics of the sort abandoned. None dared to protest. And,
after the first shock, the majority, in their sublime faith, read in the
mandate some mysterious new manœuvre of the Railroader’s which time
would triumphantly justify.
Meantime, Conover was working as never before. The very difficulty of
the task in hand evoked all his fighting blood. He would have preferred
to win without so much labor. But since his ordinary moves were barred,
his soul secretly rejoiced in the prospect of fair and furious battle.
That he would conquer, as always before, he did not at first doubt. When
he had made his bargain with Anice Lanier, he had done so confident in
his power to sweep all opposition from his path; and he had secretly
despised the girl for allowing herself to be duped.
He, on his part, knew he must forego the “landslide” he had once so
confidently hoped for. But in the stress of later crises, this ambition
had grown quite subservient to his greater and ever-augmentive longing
for election at any terms and on any majority. The strengthening
intensity of this ambition surprised Conover himself. At first mere
pride had urged him to the office he sought. But as time went on and new
obstacles arose between him and his goal, that goal waxed daily more
desirable, until at last it filled the whole vista of his future.
His fingers ever on the pulse of the State, Caleb therefore noted with
annoyance, then with something akin to dread, the swelling onrush of
Clive’s popularity. To offset it the Railroader threw himself bodily
into the fight, personally directing and executing where of old he had
only transmitted orders; toiling like any ward politician; devising each
day new and brilliant tactics for use against the enemy.
He stuck to the letter of his pledge to Anice. Its spirit he had never
regarded. He was everywhere and at all hours; now spending his money
like water in the exact quarter where it would do most good; now
propping up some doubtful corner of the political edifice he had reared,
and again lending the fierce impetus of his individuality at points
where his followers seemed inclined to lag.
Little as he spared himself, Caleb spared his henchmen still less. With
deadly literalness he saw to the carrying out of his earlier order that
everyone, from Congressman too bootblack, must put his shoulder to the
wheel. The ward heelers, the privileged lieutenants, the rural agents
and the high officials in the Machine, alike, were driven as never
before. No stone was left unturned, no chance ignored. Nor was this all.
Forth went the call to all the hundreds, rich and poor, whom Conover at
various times had privately aided.
The capitalist whose doubtful bill he had shoved through the Assembly;
the coal-heaver whose wife’s funeral expenses he had paid; the Italian
peddler whose family he had saved from eviction; the countless poor whom
his secretly-donated coal, clothes and food had tided over hard winters;
the struggling farmer whose mortgage he had paid; the bartender he had
saved from a murderer’s fate: all these beneficiaries and more were
commanded, in this hour of stress, to remember the Boss’s generosity,
and to pay the debt by working for his election.
Checks of vast proportions (drawn ostensibly for railroad expenses) were
cashed by Shevlin, Bourke and the rest, and the proceeds hurled into
every crevice or vulnerable spot in the voting phalanx. The pick of the
Atlantic seaboard’s orators were summoned at their own price, and
commissioned to sway the people to the Machine’s cause. Conover even had
wild thoughts of winning favor with his home-city’s cultured classes by
beautifying Granite’s public gardens with the erecting of a heroic
marble statue of Ibid (who, he declared, was his favorite poet, and had
more sense than all the rest of the “Famous Quotation” authors put
together). When at length he was reluctantly convinced as to “Ibid’s”
real meaning, the Railroader ordered the papers to suppress the proposed
announcement and to substitute one to the effect that he intended to
donate a colossal figure of Blind Justice for the summit of the City
Hall.
On waged the fight. Disinterested outsiders beyond the scope of the
Machine’s attraction were daily drawn, by hundreds, into the Standish
camp. In the country districts his strength grew steadily and rapidly.
The people at large were aroused, not to the usual pitch of illogical
hysteria incident on a movement of the sort, but to a calm, resolute
jealousy of their own public rights. Which latter state every politician
knows to be immeasurably the more dangerous of the two.
Conover’s efforts, on the other hand were already bearing fruit. His
tireless energy, backed by his genius and the perfection of his system,
were hourly enlarging his following. The “railroad wards” and slums of
Granite and of other towns were with him to a man, prepared on Election
Day to hurl mighty cohorts of the Unwashed to the polls in their idol’s
behalf. Loyalty, self-interest, party allegiance, and more material
forms of pressure were binding throngs of others besides these
underworld denizens to the Conover standard. Not even the shrewdest
non-partisan dared forecast the result of the contest.
Caleb, colder, harder, less human than ever, gave no outward sign of the
silent warfare that had torn him during that study-fire vigil on the
night of Anice Lanier’s defection. Beyond curtly stating that the
secretary had left his service of her own accord, he gave no information
concerning her. He had heard she was living with an aunt in another part
of town; and twice, with stony face and unrecognizing eye, he had passed
her on the street, walking with Clive. He had also received from her a
brief, business-like note telling him that her brother had instructions
to deliver to Conover’s representative, any time after noon on Election
Day, the Denzlow letters.
It was on the eve of election. The campaign work was done. One way or
another, the story was now told. The last instructions for the next
day’s duties had been given. Conover, returning home from his
headquarters, felt as though the weight of weeks had rolled off his
shoulders. Now that he had done all mortal man could, he was not, like a
weaker soul, troubled about the morrow. That could take care of itself.
His worrying or not worrying could not affect the result. Hence, he did
not worry.
As he turned into Pompton Avenue and started up the long slope crowned
by the garish white marble Mausoleum, his step was as strong and untired
as an athlete’s. On his frame of steel and inscrutable face the untold
strain of past weeks had left no visible mark.
A few steps in advance of him, and going in the same direction, slouched
a lank, enervated figure.
The Railroader, by the gleam of a street lamp, recognized Gerald, and
moved faster to catch up with him. At such rare intervals as he had time
to think of domestic affairs, Caleb was more than a little concerned of
late over the behavior of this only son of his. Since the visit of his
wife to Granite, Gerald’s demeanor had undergone a change that had
puzzled even his father’s acute mind. He had waxed listless, taciturn
and unnaturally docile. No command seemed too distasteful for him to
execute uncomplainingly. No outbreak of rough sarcasm or wrath from
Caleb could draw from him a retort, nor so much as a show of interest.
Conover knew the lad had taken to drinking heavily and frequently, but
also that Gerald’s deepest potations apparently had no other outward
effect than to increase his listless apathy.
Partly from malice, partly to rouse the youth, Conover had thrown upon
him many details of campaign work. To the older man’s wonderment Gerald
had accomplished every task with a quiet, wholly uninterested competence
that was so unlike his old self as to seem the labor of another man.
More and more, since Anice’s departure, Conover had come to lean on
Gerald’s help. And now it no longer astonished him to find such help
capably given. Yet the father was not satisfied.
“It ain’t natural,” he said to himself, as he now overhauled his son.
“Ain’t like Jerry. Something’s the matter with him. He’s getting to be
some use in the world. But he’ll go crazy, too, if he keeps up those
moony ways of his. He needs a shaking up.”
He instituted the shaking-up process in literal form by a resounding
slap between Gerald’s narrow shoulders. But even this most maddening of
all possible salutations evoked nothing but a listless “Hello, father,”
from its victim.
“Start Weaver off for Grafton?” queried Caleb, falling into step with
his son.
“Yes.”
“Make out any of that padrone list I told you to frame up for me?”
“I’ve just finished it. Here it is.”
“Why, for a chap like you that list’s a day’s work by itself! Good boy!”
No reply. Caleb glanced obliquely at the taciturn lad. The sallow, lean
face, with its dark-hollowed eyes, was expressionless, dull, apathetic.
“Say!” demanded Conover, “what’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
“Nothing.”
“Ain’t sick, or anything?”
“No.”
“Still grouching over that girl?”
“My wife? Yes.”
“Ain’t got over it yet? I’ve told you you’re well out of it. If she’d
cared anything for you she’d never have settled with my New York lawyer
for $60,000 and withdrawn that fool alienation suit she was starting
against me, or signed that general release. You’re well out of it. I’ll
send you up to South Dakota after the campaign’s all over and let you
get a divorce on the quiet. No one around here’ll ever know you was
married, and in the long run the experience won’t hurt you. You’ve acted
pretty decent lately, Jerry, and I’m not half sorry I changed my mind on
that ‘heavy-father’ stunt and didn’t kick you out. After all, one
marriage more or less is more of an accident than a failing, so long as
folks don’t let it get to be a habit. You acted like an idiot. But
bygones are bygones, so cut out the sulks. Cheap chorus girls weren’t
made for grown men to marry.”
“I’ll thank you to say nothing against her,” intervened Gerald stiffly,
with the first faint show of interest his father had observed in him for
weeks.
“Just as you like,” assented Caleb, in high, good humor, glad to have
broken even so slightly into the other’s armor of apathy. “In her case,
maybe, least said the better. So you’re still home-sicking for her—and
for New York, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Still feel your own city ain’t good enough for you?”
“What place is for a man who has lived in New York?”
“Rot! ‘What place is?’ About ten thousand places! And some seventy
million Americans living in those places are as good and as happy and
stand pretty near as good a chance of the pearly gates as if they had
the heaven-sent blessing of living between the North and East rivers.”
“Yes?”
There was no interest and only absent-minded query in Gerald’s
monosyllable. Listlessness had again settled over him. Word and mental
attitude jarred on the Railroader.
“New York!” reiterated Conover. “I’ve took some slight pains to learn a
few things about that place these last couple of months. Before that I
took your word for it that it was a hectic, electric-lit whirlpool where
nothing ever was quiet or sane, and where a young cub who could get
arrested for smashing up a hotel lobby was looked up to as a pillar of
gilded society. Since then I’ve bothered to find out on my own account.
New York’s a city with about two millions of people living on Manhattan
Island alone. We out-of-town jays are told these two millions are a gay,
abandoned, fashionable lot that spend their days in the congenial stunt
of piling up fortunes and their nights in every sort of high jinks that
can cost money and keep ’em up till dawn. ‘All-night fun, all-day
fortune-grabbing. Great place! Come see it!’ Well, I _have_ seen it.
Along around five or six P.M. about ninety-eight per cent. of those two
million people stop work. They’ve been fortune-grabbing all right, since
early morning. Only, they’ve been grabbing it usually for some one else.
They pile onto the subway or the elevated or the big bridge and—and
where do they go? To a merry old all-night revel on the Great White Way?
To an orgy of ‘On-with-the-dance, let-joy-be-unrefined,’ hey? Not them.
It’s home they go, quiet and without exhibiting to the neighbors any
season passes for all-night dissipation. They are as respectable,
decent, orderly, early-to-bed a crowd as if they lived on a farm.
’Tain’t their fault if ‘home’s’ usually built on the folding-bed plan
and more condensed than a can of patent milk. Apart from that, they live
just as everybody else in this country lives—no better, no worse, no
gayer, no quieter. There’s not a penny’s difference between that decent
ninety-eight per cent. and the business and working folks right here in
Granite.”
Gerald did not answer. He had not heard.
“That’s the ‘typical New Yorker,’” went on Caleb. “The ‘typical New
Yorker’—ninety-eight per cent. of him—is the typical every-day man or
woman of any city. He does his work, supports his family, and goes to
bed before eleven. Those are the folks I guess _you_ didn’t see much of
when you was there. Nor of the _real_ society push or even the climbers.
The society headliners are too few anyhow to count in the general
percentage. Besides, they’re out of town half the year. _You_ was mostly
engaged in playing ‘Easy Mark’ for the other two per cent. The crowd you
went with is the sort that calls themselves ‘typical New Yorkers,’ and
stays out all-night ’cause they haven’t the brains to find any other
place to go. Just a dirty little fringe of humanity, hanging about
all-night restaurants or drinking adulterated booze in some thirst
emporium, or spending some one else’s money in a green-table joint. They
yawn and look sick of life, and they tell everyone who’ll listen that
they’re ‘typical New Yorkers.’
“Lord! you might as well say our two per cent. Chinese population is
typical Americans. First time I ever was in New York overnight I walked
from Ninetieth Street down to Fourteenth, at about one in the morning,
taking in a few side streets on the way. I didn’t meet on an average of
two people to the block, and every light was out in nineteen houses out
of twenty. Down along part of Broadway I saw a few tired, frowsy-looking
folks in big restaurants, and a few drunks and a girl or two, and some
half a dozen cabs prowling about. That was ‘gay New York by night.
Hilarious and reeskay attractions furnished by typical New Yorkers!’
Whenever I hear that chestnut about ‘typical New Yorkers,’ I think of
old Baldy Durling up in Campgaw, who was sixty years old when he went to
his first circus. He stood half an hour in front of the dromedary’s
stall, taking in all its queer bumps and funny curves, and then he looks
around, kind of defiant at the crowd, and yells out: ‘Hell! There
_ain’t_ no such animal!’”
A polite smile from the dry lips, which Gerald of late was forever
moistening, was the only reply to this harangue. Caleb gave up trying to
draw the youth into an argument, and adopted a more business-like tone.
“I want you should run down to Ballston for me soon’s you’ve voted
to-morrow, Jerry. Better take the 7.15 train. I want you to go to the
office of the Ballston _Herald_, and give a note from me to Bruce
Lanier, one of the editors. He’ll hand you a package. Nothing that
amounts to much, but I’ve paid a big price for it, so I don’t want it
lost. Take good care of it, and bring it back on the two o’clock train.
Get all the sleep you can to-night. You’re liable to have a wakeful
day.”
“All right.”
“The package Lanier’s to give you is just a bunch of letters about a
railroad deal. Nothing you’d understand. They’re to be ready for me any
time after noon to-morrow.”
“I thought you wanted me to work at the polls for you.”
“Anybody that knows how to lie can work at the polls. There’s nobody but
you I can send for those letters. All the other men I can trust can’t be
spared to-morrow.”
“Bruce Lanier,” repeated Gerald idly. “Any relation to Miss——”
“Only a relation by marriage. He’s her brother.”
“Nice sort of girl, always seemed to me. What’d she leave you for?”
“She left of her own accord.”
“So you told me. But why?”
“Because she got a crazy idea that I was the original Unpardonable
Sinner. And having made up her mind to it, she natcher’lly didn’t want
her opinions shaken by any remarks for the defence. So she left.”
Gerald did not pursue the subject. He seldom, indeed, dwelt so long,
nowadays, on any one theme of talk. He moistened his dry lips once more,
sucked at his cigarette and slouched along in silence. His father asked
several questions that bore on the impending election, and was answered
in monosyllables. The cigarette burned down to its cork tip, and Gerald
lighted another at its smouldering stump.
“Have a cigar?” suggested Caleb, viewing this operation with manifest
disgust.
“No, thanks.”
“It’s better’n one of those measly connecting links between fire and a
fool,” grunted Caleb. Gerald puffed on without answering.
“I _said_,” repeated Caleb, a little louder, “the rankest Flor de
Garbage campaign cigar, with a red-and-yaller surcingle around its
waist, is a blamed sight better’n any Cairo, Illinois, Egyptian
cig’rette. Is there five minutes a day when you’re not smoking one?”
“No.”
“’Tain’t good for any man, smoking so much as that, ’spesh’ly a man with
a boy’s size chest like yours. Stunts the growth, too, I hear, and——”
“I’ve got my growth.”
“You sure have,” agreed Caleb, looking up and down his son’s weedy
length, “and you’d ’a’ had still more if so much of you hadn’t been
turned up for feet. Well, smoke away and drink away, too, if you like.
I’m not responsible for you. Only you’ll smash up or turn queer one of
these days if you don’t look out. Is it the booze or the near-tobacco
that makes your lips all dry like that? Neither of ’em usually has that
effect. Your hands are wet and cold all the time, too. Better see a
doctor, hadn’t you?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said the lad wearily.
Caleb looked in doubt at his listless companion, seemed inclined to say
more on the subject, then changed his mind.
“Be ready for the 7.15 to-morrow morning,” he ordered as they mounted
the broad marble steps of the Mausoleum. “Turn in early and get a good
rest. Lord! I hope this drizzle will turn into rain before morning.
Nothing like a rainy election day to drown reform. The honest heeler
would turn out in a blizzard to earn his two dollars by voting, but a
sprinkle will scare a Silk Socker from the polls easier’n a——”
The great door was swung open. Outlined against the lighted hall behind
it was Mrs. Conover. She had seen their approach, and had hastened out
into the veranda to meet them.
“Hello!” exclaimed the Railroader. “This is like old times! Must be
twenty years since you came out to——”
“Oh, Caleb!” sobbed the little woman, and as the light for the first
time fell athwart her face, they saw she was red-eyed and blotched of
cheek from much weeping. “Oh, Caleb, how long you’ve been! I telephoned
the Democratic Club an hour ago, and they said you’d just——”
“What’s the row?” broke in her bewildered husband. “Afraid I’d been ate
by your big nephew, or——”
“Don’t, don’t joke! Something dreadful’s happened. I——”
“Then come into the library and tell us about it quiet,” interrupted
Caleb, “unless maybe you’re aiming to call in the servants later for
advice.”
The footman behind Mrs. Conover, at the door, tried to look as though he
had heard nothing, and bitterly regretted he had not been allowed to
hear more. But Letty was silenced as she always was when the Railroader
adopted his present tone. She obediently scuttled down the hall toward
the library, an open letter fluttering in her hand. Caleb followed; and,
at a word from his father, Gerald accompanied his parents.
As soon as the library door closed behind the trio, Mrs. Conover’s grief
again rose from subdued sniffling to unchecked tears.
“Oh, talk out, can’t you!” growled Conover. “What’s up? That letter
there? Is——?”
“Yes,” gurgled poor Letty, torn between the luxury of weeping and the
fear of offending Caleb, “it’s—it’s from Blanche at Lake Como,
and—and—Oh, she isn’t married at all—and——!”
“WHAT?” roared Conover. Even Gerald dropped his cigarette.
“It’s—it’s _true_, Caleb!” wailed Letty. “She isn’t. And——”
“What are you blithering about? Here!”
Conover snatched the letter and glanced over it. Then with a snort he
thrust it back into his wife’s hand.
“French!” he sniffed, in withering contempt. “Why in hell can’t the girl
write her own language, so folks can understand what she’s——?”
“She’s always written her letters to me in French ever since she was at
school in Passy. They told her it——”
“Never mind what they told her. What’s the letter say? Ain’t married?
Why——!”
“She _was_ married. But she isn’t. And——”
“You talk like a man in a cave. Is d’Antri dead, or——”
Her husband’s frenzied impatience, as usual, served to drive the cowed
little rabbit-like woman into worse agonies of incoherence. But by
degrees, and through dint of much questioning, the whole sordid petty
tragedy related in the Como postmarked letter was at length extracted
from her.
Blanche, thanks to her heavy dower and her prince’s family connections,
had cut more or less of a swath in certain strata of continental society
during these early days of her stay in d’Antri’s world. Her husband’s
ancestral rock with its tumble-down castle had been bought back, and the
edifice itself put into course of repair. A bijou little house on the
Parc Monceau and a palazzo at Florence had been added to the Conover
fortune’s purchases, and at each of these latter abodes a gaudy fête had
been planned, to introduce the American princess and her dollars to the
class of people who proposed henceforth to endure the one for the sake
of the other.
Then, according to the letter, a château on the north shore of Como had
been rented for the autumn months. Here the bride and groom had dwelt in
Claude Melnotte fashion for barely a week when another woman appeared.
The newcomer was a singer formerly employed at the Scala, but now just
returned from a prolonged South American tour. Her voice had given out,
and, faced by poverty, she had prudently unearthed certain proofs to the
effect that, twelve years earlier, she had secretly married Prince
Amadeo d’Antri, then a youth of twenty-two.
Thus equipped, she had descended on the happy pair, and a most painful
scene had ensued. D’Antri, confronted with the documents, had made no
denial, but had tearfully assured Blanche that he had supposed the woman
dead. Be this as it might, the first wife had been so adamantine as to
refuse with scorn the rich allowance d’Antri offered her, and had
carried the matter to the Italian courts.
There it was promptly decided that, as Amadeo’s princely title was
chiefly honorary, and carried no royal prerogatives of morganatic
unions, the first marriage held.
“So I am without a home and without a name,” laboriously translated
Letty, punctuating her daughter’s written sentences with snuffle and
moan. “What am I to do? Poor Amadeo is disconsolate. It would break your
heart to witness his grief. But he cannot help me. Most of our ready
money has gone into the houses we have bought and other necessaries. The
bulk of my dot is, of course, deeded to Amadeo, according to continental
custom, and it seems the poor fellow’s ignorance of finance has led him
to invest it in such a way that for the present it is all tied up. I am
without money, without friends. _Helas!_ I——”
“In other words,” interpolated Caleb, “he’s got her cash nailed down,
and now he’s kicking her out dead broke, while he and the other woman——”
“I start to-morrow for Paris,” continued the letter. “I have just about
money enough to get me there, and I shall stay with the Pages until you
can send for me. Oh, Mother, _please_ make it all right with Father if
you can. Don’t let him blame poor Amadeo. You know how Father always——”
“Well, go on!” commanded the Railroader grimly.
“That’s about all,” faltered Letty. “The rest is just——”
“A eulogy on the old man, eh? Let it go at that. Now——”
“Oh, what _are_ we to do?” drivelled the poor woman, sopping her eyes.
“And all the——”
“All the splurge we made, and the way our dutiful girl was going to
boost us into the Four Hundred?” finished Caleb. “Thank the Lord, it
comes too late for a campaign document! But I guess it about wrecks my
last sneaking hope of landing on the social hay-pile. Never mind that
part of it now. We’ll have all the rest of our lives to kick ourselves
over the way we’ve been sold. And I’ll give myself the treat, as soon as
I can get away, of running over to Yurrup and having Friend d’Antri sent
to jail for bigamy and treated real gentle and loving while he’s there,
if a million-dollar tip to the right politicians in Italy will do it.
And I guess it will. But I _can’t_ get away till after this election
business is all cleared up. And Blanche’s got to be brought home right
off. Jerry!”
His son’s momentary interest in the family crisis had already lapsed. He
was sitting, stupid, glazed of eye, staring at the floor. At his
father’s call he glanced up.
“You’ll have to go to Paris for her,” went on Conover, “and bring her
back. Take the next steamer. There’s boats sailing on most of the lines
Wednesdays. Let’s see, this is Monday. Go to Ballston, as you were going
to, to-morrow morning. Get that package from Lanier, and send it to me
from there by registered mail. Be sure to have it registered. Then catch
the afternoon train to New York. That ought to get you in by five-thirty
or six. I’ll telegraph Wendell to-night to find out what’s the fastest
steamer sailing next morning, and tell him to take passage for you. Hunt
him up as soon as you reach town. And sleep on board the boat. That’ll
cut out any chance of your missing it. Bring Blanche back here to us by
the earliest steamer from France or England that you can get. And while
you’re in Paris, if you can hire some one on the quiet to drop over into
Italy and put d’Antri into the accident ward of some dago hospital for a
month or two, I don’t mind paying five thousand for the job. Come up to
my study, and I’ll fix you up financially for the trip, and give you
that note to Bruce Lanier.”
Gerald heard and nodded assent to the rapped-out series of directions
with as little emotion as though commanded to transmit some campaign
message to Billy Shevlin. His father, noting the quiet attention and
response, was pleased therewith. And the latent fondness and trust which
were slowly placing his recent contempt for his only and once adored
son, perceptibly increased.
As the two men left the room, Mrs. Conover looked lovingly after Gerald
through her tears.
“Poor dear boy!” she soliloquized. “He’s getting to be quite his old
bright self again. When Caleb mentioned his going to New York his eyes
lighted up just the way they used to when he was little.”
All unaware that she had detected something which even the Railroader’s
vigilance had overlooked, the good woman once more abandoned herself to
the joys of a new and delightfully unrestrained fit of weeping.
When at last she and her husband were together, alone, that night, Mrs.
Conover had some thought of commenting upon that fleeting expression she
had caught on Gerald’s face. But Caleb was so immersed in his own
unpleasant thoughts she lacked the courage to intrude upon his
reflections.
Which is rather a pity, for had she done so, the inefficient little
woman might have changed the history of the Mountain State.