CHAPTER XIVCALEB CONOVER TAKES AN AFTERNOON OFF
The Fighter made life a burden, next day, for the office staff of the C. G. & X. An electric aura of uneasiness pervaded the big station—the indefinable, wordless something that gives warning to the most remote denizens of every office when the “boss” is out of temper.
Yet Caleb, as it happened, was not out of temper. He was merely unhappy. The effect, to casual observers, was the same as on the not very rare days of his rages. But, instead of storming up and down his office as on the latter occasions, Caleb merely sulked in his desk chair, chewed countless cigars, and roused himself every few minutes to make toil a horror for such luckless subordinates as just then chanced to impress their existence on his mind. Hence the President’s private office was shunned like a pest-house by everyone who could avoid going thither.
The office boy, official martyr of the day, shook visibly as he sidled into the room, about three that afternoon, and laid on his chief’s desk a sealed, unstamped envelope. Conover’s scowl vanished as he noted the handwriting. The office boy breathed deeper and his knees grew firm.
“Any answer?” asked Conover; and for the first time since his arrival his voice sounded scarcely more menacing than that of a sick bear.
“No, sir!” piped the youth with a propitiatory grin. “I ast the mes’nger an’ he said—”
“Clear out!” mumbled Caleb, his eyes and mind fixed on the sheet he had clumsily withdrawn from the envelope.
The boy departed; swaggering into the main office with all the conscious heroism of a lion-tamer. The door, wind-caught, swung shut behind him with a slam that turned swagger into helpless panic. But no dreaded voice howled a reprimand through the panels. Caleb Conover was reading and re-reading a few scribbled lines in exaggeratedly large writing. The Fighter’s face softened as he read. Then, glancing about in shame-faced caution, he hastily lifted the note; brushed it across his lips with a furtive, yet careless mien; as though the gesture might have been employed to cover a yawn. Contemptuous of the first covert loverly deed of his career, he cleared his throat and for the sixth time read the scrawled words. Half audibly, he perused them; smiling to himself.
“Please, I’m good now. I don’t think I’m EVER going to be bad again. Wouldn’t it be fine if you should come and take me for a walk this afternoon? D. S.”
“Please, I’m good now. I don’t think I’m EVER going to be bad again. Wouldn’t it be fine if you should come and take me for a walk this afternoon? D. S.”
“Isn’t she the dandiest ever?” Caleb asked himself gleefully as he straightened his tie before the officemirror and jammed his felt hat down over his forehead, “Why can’t the Letty girl be like her? Then there’d be some pleasure in gettin’ married. Hope she and Dey’ll be friends. If they ain’t—”
He strode through the outer office, looking so human that his expression, combined with the far more important fact that he was evidently departing for the day, put the whole staff into the utmost good humor for the rest of the afternoon.
It was a very natural, self-controlled Desirée who met Conover on the porch of the Shevlin cottage. If hers had been the muffled sobs that had sent him home with a lump in his throat—if she had lain wide-eyed, tortured, till broad daylight—there was no hint of such excess in her flower face nor in the girlish vigor of her pose. Conover, doubtful as to how he might best refer to the quarrel of the previous night, for once did an absolutely wise and tactful thing. He made no mention whatever of the affair.
“It was such a gorgeous day,” Desirée was saying, “that I felt I ought to let you know what beautiful weather it was. You’d never have thought to look, for yourself. You know you wouldn’t. Now take me somewhere. Anywhere, so long as it’s far enough. And I want to walk; not drive. Where are we going? It’s got to be somewhere outside of this squiffy, hot old town. Out where there’s a whole sky-ful of air.”
“How’d you like to walk out to the Arareek?” he suggested, “We can sit on the stoop there and drink seltzer lem’nade an’ watch the paretics chase guttapercha pills over the golf links. Would you care ’about doin’ that? There’s a big view there for folks that cares for that sort of rot.”
She assented gaily and they set off, walking close together and chattering like a couple of schoolgirls on a holiday. Caleb felt oddly young and buoyant. The girl had ever the power of imparting to him, when they were alone together, something of her own youth and gaiety. To-day, the spell worked with double force, because of last night’s scene. It would have needed a far cleverer onlooker than Conover to detect any artificiality in Desirée’s high spirits. She bullied him, petted him, cajoled and instructed him by turns as was her wont, until they had entered the Arareek grounds. Then of a sudden she fell silent.
The deep clubhouse veranda was filled with knots of men and women. Among the idling groups, the girl had recognized Letty Standish and Caine. Jack Hawarden, who was sitting with the couple, ran down the steps to welcome the newcomers.
“There are two extra chairs at our table,” he said eagerly, “And I believe they’re the only two left on the whole veranda. I wondered why no one took them. Now I see it was providential.”
Caleb hesitated, glancing in doubt at Desirée. The girl, a little to his surprise, assented with perfect willingness to Jack’s suggestion, and led the way between several bevies of frankly admiring men and openly curious women, toward the table where Caine and Letty were seated. Miss Standish’s cheeks wereflushed as she noted their approach. Nor did her gentle face wear quite its best expression. But Caine, masculinely obtuse, was very evidently glad to see them. He signalled a waiter as Caleb and Desirée seated themselves.
“When Providence ordained hot days like this,” said Caine oracularly, “He mercifully devised seltzer lemonades to go with them. Would you rather have a Scotch-and-soda, Conover?”
“No thanks,” demurred the Fighter. “No use in spoilin’ two perfec’ly good things like booze an’ water by fizzin’ ’em up together.”
“That is so,” agreed Caine tritely, “Mixing whiskey with water is like merging love into matrimony. It—”
Letty giggled appreciation. She had a marvellous ear for humor, and could almost always tell by a speaker’s tone when he had said anything funny. It was a natural gift many girls envied her. In the midst of the laugh she remembered Desirée’s presence and fell back on her defenses of gentle reserve.
Caine was hailed from another table and went across to reply to some question. Jack, too, was for the moment, leaning over to speak with someone on the lawn below. Caleb, left alone between Desirée and Letty, racked his brain for something to say. For once, Desirée did not help him. She was gazing out with dreamy joy at the beautiful grounds; her eyes resting longest on the stately avenue of trees that wound up to the house. Thus it devolved upon Lettyto save the conversational ship from utter wreck.
“I hardly thought to see you here, Miss Shevlin,” she observed with a graciousness that did not however leave the second personal pronoun quite unaccented.
“Why not?” asked Desirée, simply. “I hear some really very nice people come here,—sometimes.”
“I—I meant I feared you would hardly feel at home,” persisted Letty, walking round-eyed toward destruction.
“Oh, I don’t,” Desirée assured her, with a child-like smile. “At home I never see men sit with their feet on a veranda rail. And I never see women drinking whisky there, either,” she added with a glance toward a nearby table whither a tray of high-balls had just been borne.
“I wonder you came, then,” sputtered Letty, with a despairing effort at cold reproof.
“One goes anywhere nowadays,” replied Desirée. “And besides,” she sighed raptly, “Ilovethe country. Everything about it always has a charm for me. From trees like those splendid old oaks, down to—” her eyes swept the scene for an antithesis; accidently resting for the remotest instant on Letty’s profile as she finished, “down to the funny little rabbits with their ridiculous round bodies and bulging, scared eyes.”
“Gee!” groaned Caleb to himself, glancing helplessly from one girl to the other, “It must behellto be a Mormon!”
For a moment, Letty pondered on Desirée’s harmless speech.
Then, all at once, a queer, gurgling little sound rumbled far down in her throat and she slowly grew pink. Her nose quivered a mute appeal to all mankind. Caine mercifully returned at this juncture. All unconscious of the smouldering fires, he proceeded, man-like, to stir up the coals.
“You have made one more of an endless line of conquests, Miss Shevlin,” he announced, “General Greer,—Miss Standish’s uncle, you know,—called me over to his table expressly to ask who you were; and to demand, in lurid diction, why he had never met you before. He is coming over here in a moment, if you’ll permit, to be introduced to you. You don’t mind?”
“Why, of course not,” said Desirée in sweet effusion, “Miss Standish knows how glad I am to meet anyone connected with her. By the way, she and I have been raving over the joys of country life. We—”
Letty was saved by the advent of an elderly man, apoplectic of mien, stumpy of gait, who hobbled across to their table and greeted her with a bluff manner he had spent many busy years in mastering. Then, without waiting for her reply, he nodded to Jack and looked expectantly toward Caine. The latter rose to the occasion.
“Miss Shevlin,” he said, trying to make the actseem bred of an unexpected meeting, “May I present General Greer?”
The General bowed low; his best old-world air and his corpulence battling doughtily for supremacy in the salutation. He was about to follow up the bow with some remarks of a fatherly yet admiring nature, when Caine, with malice aforethought, broke in:
“And, General, may I introduce Mr. Caleb Conover?”
The old man’s honeyed words collided with a snort that sprang unbidden from his throat; resulting in a sound that was neither old-world or fatherly.
“Conover, eh?” he rapped out. “Heard of you, sir! Heard of you!— Too often, in fact. You’re the fellow that’s always buying up our legislators, aren’t you? Why do you do it, sir?”
“Because they’re for sale,” said Caleb, unruffled. “I guess that’s ’bout the only reason I’m able to.”
“You mean to accuse the men who represent our interests at the Capital,—to accuse them of being willing, untempted, to sell their vote?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as that,” answered Caleb with a tolerant grin. “They ain’tallwaitin’ for chances to sell their vote. Some of ’em prefers to rent it out by the year.”
“Do you want me to believe such a libel on our statesmen?” declaimed Greer. “On the men we—”
“I’m not exactly coaxin’ you to believeanything,” replied Caleb, pleasantly, “An’ I ain’t liable to laywake nights moanin’ because you doubt it. If the people didn’t want to be run by a lobby, they wouldn’t be. That’s all there is to it.”
“I didn’t come to discuss ethics with a man of your stamp,” sneered the General. “But I can tell you you are wrong—wrong, sir—in thinking the people will always stand such conditions as you and your kind are thrusting upon them. Only yesterday one of my clients was telling me that if he could not curb your legislative influence by fair means he would—”
“Come to you for help?” finished Caleb blandly.
General Greer stared at him speechless, apoplectic. Letty, who, despite years of sharp contrary experience, still clung to the fond delusion that she was the spoiled-child-niece of fiction who could twist an otherwise crotchety uncle about her finger, now intervened with one of her inspired blunders. The General’s rumbling voice had drawn attention to their table and Miss Standish conceived a plan of pouring oil on the thundrous waters.
“Why, Uncle Guy!” she pouted prettily, “You’ll make Mr. Conover think you’re in earnest in the dreadful things you are saying to him! It’s just dear Uncle Guy’s bluff way, Mr. Conover, that he picked up when he was commanding soldiers in the army. He’s really a darling old lamb, if only—”
After one long, dumb glare of annihilation at his self-appointed spoiled-child-niece, the darling old lamb stumped away, bleating blasphemously.
“I wonder,” conjectured Desirée, looking up fromher tall glass, “why seltzer lemonades make such squizzy sounds through the straw when the glass is almost empty.”
“If that’s a hint,—” observed Caine, glancing about for a waiter.
“No,” she replied. “Only a scientific comment. Oh, itisgood to be in the country a day like this.”
“I’ll be in the country for the summer, this time next month,” said Jack Hawarden, “Mother’s taken the same cottage at the Antlers we had last year. It will be nice to get back to the old Adirondacks again.”
“The Adirondacks?” exclaimed Desirée. “Oh, take me along. I’ve always wanted to go there!”
Letty, pained at a suggestion so palpably immodest, looked in frightened appeal to Caine. But Amzi was once more talking to people at the next table. So Miss Standish drew around her an aloofness that lifted her high above any ribaldry that might be bandied about her.
“You’ve never been?” asked Jack in surprise, “You’ve missed a lot. There’s no other region just like the Adirondacks. It rains about a third of the time, as a rule. But when it’s clear you forget it can ever be anything else. The breath goes down a mile deeper into your lungs than it can in any other part of the world; and you never get tired. A sort of perpetual ozone jag. Almost any place there is worth going to. We generally hang out at the Antlers,—Mother and I. Up on Raquette Lake, you know. It’s different from other places. It’s run byCharlie Bennett, a giant of a man as broad as Mr. Conover and half a foot taller. He and Father are old chums from the time when it took three days to get into the wilderness and when you could shoot Adirondack bear for breakfast any morning. Bennett used to be Father’s guide in those days. Now, I suppose he could buy and sell Dad half a dozen times over.”
“IwishI could go there—or anywhere at all in the Adirondacks,” sighed Desirée wistfully. “I read once—”
Caleb noted the longing inflection and made quick mental memorandum of it.
“How big’s your cottage, Jack?” he asked the boy.
“Four rooms. We get our meals at the hotel. Why?”
“Oh, nothin’!” Continuing with elephantine humor, “Though maybe I might drop in on you sometime. How many of you goin’ to be there?”
“Father can only stay a month this year. After that there will be only Mother and I. Did you really think of joining us? We’d be ever so glad. There’s an extra room.”
“Much obliged. I’ve never took a vacation yet, an’ I guess I’m a little bit too old to begin. I don’t b’lieve in vacations. Neither would you if you could see how my clerks look when they get back from ’em. The first day back, you’d think they was beginnin’ a life sentence in prison. It costs ’em six months’ savin’s to grow a bunch of callous spots on their handsan’ tan on their faces that they could a’ got free of charge, workin’ in my freight yards. When d’you expect to go to the country, Miss Standish?” he broke off, remembering belatedly his new-chosen role of attentive swain, and turning unexpectedly upon Letty before she had an opportunity to resume the aloofness which she had just discarded as unnecessary.
“I—I don’t quite know yet,” she made reply, unreasonably scared by his sudden glance, “We shall probably stay in town rather late this year.”
“Good!” approved Caleb. “I hope we’ll see a lot of each other.”
And, looking into his light, masterful eyes, the girl knew all at once that she would not have the wit nor the force to avoid him. The knowledge turned her sick. Her round, helpless gaze shifted involuntarily to Desirée, as the nearest woman to her. And, under the genuine fright behind that appeal, the steel glint that had of a sudden hardened Desirée’s big eyes, softened unaccountably. A quick sentence that had risen to her lips died unborn.
For a moment, before convention could lower the veil, the two women read each other to the very soul. At what the brief glance told her, Letty drew her breath with a sharp intake that made Conover glance at her inquiringly. To cover her confusion, Miss Standish plunged into speech on the first subject that crossed her mind.
“I hope you didn’t mind Uncle Guy’s rudeness, Mr. Conover,” she began, “He really doesn’t mean half the cross things he says. He suffers so dreadfullyfrom dyspepsia and—and there are sometimes family troubles, too, that—”
“I know,” assented Caleb, “I’ve heard. Married a wife that was too rich for him. She don’t always agree with him, I hear, an’ I s’pose it gives him mental indigestion. No offence. I forgot they’re rel’tives of yours.”
“I’m sorry, just the same, that he spoke so threateningly to you,” went on Letty.
She found it so easy to talk to him now. A weight seemed off her heart.
“Threats don’t keep me guessin’ very much,” Conover reassured her, delighted at her new ease of bearing toward him, “No one’s goin’ to do a rich man any real harm or hold grouches against him. To him that hath, it shall be forgiven. That’s in the Bible, ain’t it? Or somethin’ like it. The trouble with men like your uncle is that they don’t see any farther ahead than twenty years ago. Business an’ pol’tics have changed a lot since then. But the old crowd don’t see it. They’re like a feller that rows a boat. They move ahead because the boat carries ’em ahead. But they’re always facin’ astern.”
He felt he was talking amazingly well. He was almost annoyed when Desirée, having sat in troubled silence for some minutes, rose abruptly and proposed that they should go.
Letty Standish, watching them depart, was saying over and over to herself in a rapturous sing-song:
“She won’tlethim make love to me. She won’t! Shewon’t!”