Caleb Conover, Railroader by Albert Payson Terhune - HTML preview

CHAPTER XV
 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