DUNDERBERG SOLVES THE DIFFICULTY
Clive Standish had spent the evening at the Civic League headquarters,
awaiting reports of the day’s battle. The rooms were full of the
League’s minor candidates and officials, with a fair sprinkling of
women. Anice Lanier, chaperoned by her aunt, with whom she now lived,
was there, her high color and the light in her big eyes alone betraying
the fearful suspense under which she labored.
The belated returns, which should have been telegraphed at once to the
League headquarters, were still further delayed by the fact that the one
wire now running into town had been preëmpted by Conover. Hence, it was
not until well after one o’clock that Clive received definite news of
his own election. Throngs of friends and supporters had, on receipt of
the final figures, flocked about him with congratulations and good
wishes. To all he had given seeming heed, yet among the crush he saw but
one face, read in one pair of brown eyes the praise and infinite
gladness he sought.
And as soon as he could he departed with Anice and her aunt for the
latter’s home, where a little _souper à trois_ was to celebrate the
victory.
They formed a jolly trio about the dainty supper table. Late as it was,
all were far too excited to feel sleepy or wish to curtail by one minute
the little feast of triumph.
“To the next Governor of the Mountain State!” proclaimed Anice solemnly,
as she lifted her glass. “To be drunk standing, and with—No, no, Clive,”
she reproved as the Governor-elect also rose. “_You_ mustn’t drink it.
It’s——”
“I’m not going to,” retorted Standish indignantly. “I’m getting up to
look for a dictionary.”
“But what on earth——”
“I want to find the feminine for Governor. And——”
A whirr of the telephone bell broke in on his explanation.
“Some stupid political message for you,” hazarded Anice, taking down the
receiver. “Yes, this is 318 R. Yes. Yes, this is Miss La—Oh!” with a
changed intonation, “Mrs. Conover?”
A longer pause. Then Anice gave a little exclamation of sympathy,
listened a moment and said:
“Yes, we will come at once. But I hope you’ll find it’s not as bad as
you think. Don’t break down. I’m sure it will be all right.”
“What is it?” asked Clive and her aunt in a breath.
“I’m not quite sure,” answered the girl. “She was so upset I could
hardly understand her. Besides, the wires are still in bad condition.
But it seems some accident or injury has happened to her husband. Gerald
is away, and there is no one the poor woman can turn to, so she
telephoned for me. And, Clive, she wants to know if you won’t come, too.
Please, do. You’re the only relative she has. And she’s so unhappy.”
“Just as you wish,” acceded Standish, with no great willingness, “but
I’ll be sorry to have to-night’s happiness marred by another row with
Conover.”
“I gather from what she says he is in no condition for a ‘row’ with
anyone. I told her we’d come at once. Please hurry, dear. I hate to
think of that frightened little woman trying to meet any sort of a
crisis alone.”
In the great, comfortless drawing-room of the Mausoleum, on a couch
hastily pushed into the centre of the room under the chandelier, lay
Caleb Conover, Railroader. Two doctors, who had been working over him,
had now drawn back a few paces and were conferring in grave undertones.
At the foot of the couch, clad only in nightgown and slippers, as she
had been aroused from bed, her sparse hair tight-clumped in a semicircle
of kid curlers, Mrs. Conover crouched in a moaning, rocking heap.
Scared, whispering groups of servants blocked the doorways or peered
curiously in from behind curtains. The air was thick with the pungent
smell of antiseptics.
The Railroader, lying motionless beneath the unshaded glare of a
half-dozen gas jets, was swathed of head and bandaged of arm. He was
coatless, and his shirt and waistcoat were thrown open disclosing his
mighty chest. Across the couch-end his feet, still booted and spurred,
protruded stiffly as a manikin’s.
It was upon this scene that Anice and Clive entered. At sight of the
girl, Mrs. Conover scrambled to her feet, and with a wild outburst of
scared sobs, scuttled forward to meet her, the bedside slippers
shuffling and sliding grotesquely along the polished floor. Anice took
the panic-stricken, weeping creature into her arms and whispered what
words of comfort and encouragement she could.
Meanwhile Clive, not desiring to break in on the doctors’ conference,
turned to the doorway again and asked a question of one of the servants.
For reply the groom, Giles, was thrust forward and obliged to repeat,
with dolorous unction, for the tenth time within an hour, the story of
the accident.
“You see, sir,” he said, lowering his voice as though in the room with a
corpse, “Mr. Conover sent word for me to ride with him. We started off
at a dead run, and my horse couldn’t noways keep up with Dunderberg, so
I follows along behind as fast as I could, but I couldn’t keep up to the
right distance between us, to save me. Mr. Conover turns out of the
drive, up Pompton Av’noo, sir, and on past the Humason place, me
a-followin’ as fast as I could. All of a sudden I catches up. It’s in
that dark, woody patch of road just this side the quarries. The way I
happens to catch up is because Dunderberg was havin’ one of them
tantrums of his an’ Mr. Conover was givin’ it to him for all he was
worth, crop an’ spur, an’ Dunderberg a-whirlin’ around and passagin’ an’
tryin’ his best to rear. An’ every time that horse’s forelegs goes up in
the air Mr. Conover’d bring his fist down between his ears an’ down’d
come Dunderberg on all-fours again. They was takin’ up all the road,
wide as it is, an’ Dunderberg was lashin’ an’ plungin’ like he was
crazy, an’ Mr. Conover stickin’ on like he was glued there an’ sendin’
in the spurs and the whacks of the crop till you’d ’a’ thought he’d kill
the brute. Then, Dunderberg makes a dive ahead an’ gets out alongside
the quarry-pit an’ tries to rear again. Right on the edge of the pit.”
“Yes,” said Clive excitedly, as the groom paused, “and then?”
“Why, sir, I can’t rightly tell, the light was so bad. If it’d been
anyone else but Mr. Conover, I’d say he lost his nerve, an’ when
Dunderberg reared up he forget to bring him down like he’d done those
other times, or maybe he _did_ hit the horse between the ears again an’
didn’t hit hard enough. Anyhow, over goes Dunderberg backward—clean
fifteen feet drop—into the quarry. An’ Mr. Conover under him. An’
then——”
But Clive had moved away. The doctors had finished their consultation,
and one of them—Dr. Hawes, the Conover family physician—had again
approached that silent figure on the couch.
At sight of Standish the second doctor came forward to meet the young
man.
“No,” he whispered, reading the unspoken question in Clive’s face, “no
possible hope. He can’t last over an hour longer at most. Another man,
crushed as he was, would have been killed at once. As it is, he probably
won’t recover consciousness. Nothing but his tremendous vitality holds
the shreds of life in him so long as this.”
“Does his wife know——?”
“She is not in a state to be told. I wish we could persuade her to leave
the room. Perhaps Miss Lanier——”
A gesture from Dr. Hawes drew them toward the couch.
“He is coming to his senses,” said the family physician, adding under
his breath, so that only his colleague and Clive could hear; “it is the
final rally. Not one man in a thousand——”
But Clive had caught Anice’s eye and beckoned her to lead Mrs. Conover
to the side of the couch.
The Railroader’s face, set like carven granite, began to twitch. The
rigid mouth relaxed its set whiteness and the eyelids flickered. Mrs.
Conover, at these signs of life, prepared for a fresh attack of
hysteria, but a gentle, firm pressure of Anice’s hand in hers
forestalled the outburst. With an aggrieved look at the girl, Letty
again turned her scared attention to her husband.
Dr. Hawes was bending once more over the prostrate man, seeking to
employ a restorative. Now he rose, and as he did so, Caleb’s eyes
opened.
There was no bewilderment, no surprise nor pain in the calm glance that
swept his garish surroundings.
“Is he suffering?” whispered Anice. “Or——?”
“Horribly,” returned Dr. Hawes in the same tone. “He——”
The shrewd, pale eyes that scorned to show trace of physical or mental
anguish, slowly took in the group beside the couch, resting first on the
two physicians, then on Anice Lanier.
As he saw and recognized Anice the first change came over the dying
man’s hard-set features. A look of perplexity that merged into glad
surprise lighted his whole face, smoothing from it with magic touch
every line of care, thought or time; transfiguring it into the
countenance of a happy boy. Long he sought and held her sympathetic
glance, that look of youth and gladness growing and deepening on his
face, while all around stood silent and marvelling.
It was Mrs. Conover who broke the spell.
“Oh, Caleb!” she wailed querulously, “you _said_ no horse could get the
better of you. And now——”
At her words the beatific light was gone from Conover’s eyes. In its
stead came a gleam of grim, ironical amusement. Then, his gaze
travelling past Anice to Clive Standish, his brows contracted in a frown
of displeasure. But this, too, faded. The swathed head settled lower
among the cushions, the powerful body seemed to shrink and flatten. The
eyes closed, and Conover lay very still.
His wife, divining for the first time the actual state of affairs, flung
herself forward on her knees beside the silent figure, her sobs scaling
to a crescendo cry of terror.
Slowly Caleb Conover opened his eyes. Reluctantly, as though drawn back
by sheer force from the very threshold of the wide portals of Rest, his
spirit paused for an instant longer in its earthly abode—paused and
flared up, as a dying spark, in the Railroader’s stiffening face.
For a moment his eyes—already wide with the awful mystery of the
Beyond—strayed over his kneeling wife; over the sparse locks bunched up
in that halo of kid curlers; over the pudgy shape so mercilessly
outlined by the sheer nightgown; over the tear-swollen red eyes, the
blotched cheeks, the quivering, pursed-up mouth.
“Letty,” he panted, in tired disgust, “you look—more like a measly
rabbit—every day!”
THE END
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 262, changed “its waist, it a blamed” to “its waist, is a
blamed”.
2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.