CHAPTER VIII
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.