CHAPTER XII
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.