CHAPTER XXIICALEB CONOVER RECEIVES NEWS
The night train “out,” full of brown and disgruntled returning vacationists, drew away from Raquette Lake Station. Caleb, in the smoking room, his hat pulled over his eyes, his eternal cigar unlighted, sat with shut lids, trying to summon up the memory of Desirée’s big brave eyes as she had bidden him goodbye on the dock. Instead, he could only recall the sweatered, cloaked crowd at the Antlers pier, waiting in the lantern-light to say goodbye to the launchful of departing guests; the two or three cards that had been thrust into his hand,—and of whose purport he had not the remotest idea; the screech of the launch-whistle, and the churning out of the boat into the dark; dragging Caleb away from the happiest hours of all his life.
A man he had met at the Antlers entered the smoking room and tried to talk to him. Conover’s answers were so vague and disjointed that the other soon gave over the attempt. A fellow railroad-magnate from a camp near the lake glanced in at the door and nodded affably to the rising power in the provincial railroad world. Conover did not so much as see the greeting.He was trying once more, with shut eyes, to conjure up Desirée’s face.
He stopped over a train, in New York, next morning; took a cab to the store of a famous Fifth Avenue jeweler and demanded to see an assortment of engagement rings. The clerk laid on a velvet cushion half a dozen diamond solitaires averaging in size from one to two karats and variously set. Caleb waved the collection aside, after a single glance.
“I want the biggest, best diamond ring you got in the place,” he demanded.
A second, far more garish array was produced. Caleb chose from it a diamond of the size of his thumb-nail, looked it over critically and said:
“This’ll do, I guess. Biggest you’ve got? How much?”
At the astounding price named he merely smiled, and drew out his check book.
“That ought to tickle her fancy,” he mused. “Ain’t a di’mond in Granite as big.”
“What size, sir?” asked the clerk.
“Why,that’sthe one I’m takin’. That size,” replied Conover, perplexed.
The clerk explained.
“Oh, I see,” stammered Caleb. “I—I didn’t think to ask her. I didn’t even know fingers went by sizes. But—her hand’s a lot smaller’n mine, if that’ll help you any.”
The clerk looked away at some point of interest that had suddenly sprung into his vision at a remotepart of the store. Caleb picked up the huge diamond and began to fit the ring on his own fingers. His little finger alone would permit the circlet to slip down as far as the first bulging knuckle-joint.
“It won’t even go on my little finger,” he observed. “I guess that’ll be just ’bout the right size for her.”
“If I might suggest,” offered the clerk, “why don’t you leave the ring with me until you can find out the size of the lady’s finger? Then notify us and we will have it adjusted at once and forwarded to you.”
This in no way suited Caleb’s ideas. He had planned to put the ring on Desirée’s hand, the evening of her return to Granite, three weeks hence. He wanted to witness her delight and surprise. It would offset the incident of the American Beauties. Neither of them had said a word during that last, all-too-short day, about an engagement ring. He hoped she would think he did not know enough to get her one. The girl’s amazement and joy would be so much the greater. Whereas, if he asked her beforehand about the size—
“That’s all right,” he decided. “I’ll take it with me. If it don’t fit she can send it back. But I guess it will.”
It was the eve of the Legislature’s special session. Conover had moved, three days earlier, to the Capital and was massing his legislative cohorts for the charge which was forever to annihilate the revised Starke bill.
The price of Steeloids had slumped ever so little in view of the coming test. Caleb welcomed the slight drop; assuring Caine, Standish and the rest that it but preluded an unheard of “boom” in the stock the moment the result of the Assembly vote became known on ’Change. As to that result he had not an atom of doubt. He knew his strength to the minutest degree. Blacarda had made inroads upon his ranks, it was true; but the breaches were unimportant. And Caleb’s presence in the lobby on the day of the vote, together with certain highly effective secret manœuvres which were to be put into operation that day, would far more than offset them. Compared to the victorious struggle of six months earlier, he prophesied, this second affair would be no contest, but a rout.
The time was long since past when any of Caleb’s financial beneficiaries could receive the lightest of their leader’s forecasts with doubt. Hence the Steeloid ring rejoiced mightily; and plunged so heavily in the stock that the price took a swift preliminary climb even before its promised rise was due.
Caine, and more than one other of Conover’s business associates wondered at the subtle change that two weeks of absence had wrought in their champion. He was as shrewd, as daring, as resourceful as ever. Yet there was a difference. Caine voiced the general opinion when he said to Standish, the day the Assembly opened:—
“If I believed in miracles I should fancy a straygrain of humanity had somehow found its way into the man’s brain.”
The first day’s session of the Assembly was given over to the usual formalities. On the morning of the second, so Conover’s agent in the enemy’s camp reported that night, Blacarda intended to put forward his bill. Caleb was well prepared for the issue. One thing only puzzled him. Knowing Blacarda as he did, he could not understand why the man had tried no subterfuge this time, to draw his arch-opponent away from the scene of action. That such a trick could be attempted without Conover’s learning of it seemed impossible. Yet no tidings of the sort had reached him. And it was not like Blacarda to go into battle against a stronger foe without trying to weaken the odds against himself.
These things Caleb was pondering in his hotel room, early on the evening before the Starke bill was to be presented. He was dressing to go with Caine to a conference of political and business associates, to be held a mile or so distant. And, as he made ready to start out, the answer to his conjecture was received.
It came in the form of a telegram:
“Train derailed near Magdeburg. Miss Shevlin badly injured. At Magdeburg hotel. Wire instructions and come by next train. Dangerous.“J. Hawarden, Jr.”
“Train derailed near Magdeburg. Miss Shevlin badly injured. At Magdeburg hotel. Wire instructions and come by next train. Dangerous.
“J. Hawarden, Jr.”
For the briefest of intervals Conover’s blood settleddown stiflingly upon his heart. Then he laughed in grim relief.
“I thought Friend Blacarda was too sharp to try the same trick twice on me,” he growled, handing the dispatch to Caine, “an’ I thought he’d be afraid to. Seems I was wrong. He knew Dey was at the Antlers with the Hawardens, of course. But he might a’ took the pains to find out she wasn’t goin’ to leave there for a fortnight. I had a letter from her, there, to-day. An’ any railroad man could a’ told him,” he went on contemptuously, “that no train either from Noo York or the Ad’rondacks passes through Magdeburg. But most likely he chose that because it’s an out-of-the-way hole that takes f’ever to get to. Why couldn’t he a’ flattered my intelligence by a fake that had a little cleverness in it? Come on. We’ll be late to that meetin’. I’ll settle once more with Blacarda, afterward. An’ this time he won’t forget so soon.”
“I doubt if Blacarda had any hand in it,” said Caine, as they left the hotel. “There are only two general divisions of thegenus‘Fool.’ And Blacarda belongs to the species that doesn’t put his fingers in the same flame a second time.”
“You don’t mean you think there’s a ghost of a chance the tel’gram’s the reel thing? If I—”
“No, no,” soothed Caine. “As you’ve shown, it’s a palpable fraud. But there are others beside Blacarda who want the Starke bill to go through. The story of his ruse last spring has gone abroad in spite of Blacarda’s attempt to strangle it. And someone,remembering how well the trick worked then, has tried its effect a second time.”
“I’ll put some of my men on the track of it to-morrow,” answered Caleb. “By the time they’re through, I guess there won’t be many crooks left in the State who’ll dare to use Dey Shevlin’s name in their fake mess’ges. Maybe you’re right ’bout its not bein’ Blacarda himself. I’m kind of glad, too. He’ll get enough gruellin’ to-morrow without any extrys thrown in.”
“Poor old Blacarda! I’m afraid you’ll take away his perpetual grievance against you and leave him nothing but grief.”
“Grievance!” scoffed Conover. “He’s got no grievance. All’s he’s got is a grouch. There’s all the diff’rence in the world between the two. A white man with sense may have a grievance. But only a sorehead an’ a fool will let their grievance sour into a grouch. Blacarda’s grouch against me is doin’ him more harm than all my moves could. He hates me. That’s where he makes his mistake. Hate’s the heaviest handicap a feller can carry into a fight. If you’ve got a grievance against a man or want to get the best of him, don’t ever spoil your chances by hatin’ him. It won’t do him any hurt, an’ it’ll play the dickens with your own brain an’ nerves.”
“I suppose,” queried Caine ironically, “there was no hatred in your attack on Blacarda in his hotel room last spring? Pure, high-souled justice?”
“No,” grumbled Caleb. “It was hate. An’ I gotit out of my system the quickest, easiest way I could. If I’d bottled all that up an’ let it ferment till now, I’d be layin’ awake nights, losing sleep an’ health an’ nerve while I figgered out how cute he’d look with his throat cut from ear to ear. As it is, I’ve no more hard feelin’ about crushin’ Blacarda than I’d have if he was a perfec’ stranger. Yes, son, hate harms the hater a lot more’n it harms the hatee. You can bank on that.”
“I wonder if young Hawarden will agree with your peaceful doctrine,” hazarded Caine, “when he hears how some financial heeler has taken his name in vain in that telegram?”
“He’ll most likely hunt the feller up an’ lick him,” responded Conover. “He’s all right, that boy is. I’ve took a shine to him. Pity he ain’t got some commonsense ambition instead of hankerin’ after litterchoor. Kind of petty trade for a grown man, ain’t it?”
“No,” dissented Caine. “I should call slow starvation one of the big things of life. There’s nothing petty about it that I can see.”
“That’s the answer, hey? He told me ’bout a feller he’d met once at the Antlers who made twenty thousan’ a year just by writin’ novels ’bout s’ciety. Now, Hawarden knows all ’bout the s’ciety game. I sh’d think he’d write such stories fine.”
“The stories of Jack’s that I’ve read,” answered Caine, “all centre around labor problems and other things the boy knows as little about as if he had takena postgraduate course in ignorance. He couldn’t write a society story if he tried.”
“Why not? I sh’d think—”
“Because he’s been born and brought up in that atmosphere. A society man could no more write about society than he could write a love sonnet to his own sister.”
“But that kind of stories get written,” faltered Caleb, grubbing vainly for a possible jest in his friend’s puzzling dictum. “Somebodymust write ’em.”
“On the contrary,” denied Caine. “Nobodies write them. For instance, there is a man who was born in South Brooklyn or somewhere; and spent a year or two in Europe. So much for his environment. He used to write charming stories. They were fairly vibrant with satire, humor, color and a ceaseless rush of action. His nature-descriptions were revelations in word-painting. I always read every line he wrote. So did some other people. But onlysome. Then he moved to a little village, away from the centre of things, and forthwith began to write novels of New York Society.
“It was very easy. The Sunday papers cost him no more than they cost anyone else. He fell to describing the innermost life of New York’s innermost smart set. He scorned to depict a single character that wasn’t worth at least a million. Silver, cut glass and diamonds strewed his pages; till one longed for brown bread and pie. He flashed the fierce white light of unbiased ignorance into the darkest corners of a societythat never was by sea or land. And what was the result? In a day he leaped to immortality. The shop-girl read him so eagerly that she rode past her station. The youth behind the counter learned to rattle off the list of his books as easily as the percentages of the base ball-clubs. In the walks of life that he so vividly portrayed, such people as read at all made amused comments that could never by any possibility reach his ears. We others who had reveled in his earlier books felt as we might if an adored brother has left the diplomatic service to become a bartender. But we were in the minority. So we re-read Browning’s ‘Lost Leader,’ dropped the subject and sought in vain for a new idol.”
“I s’pose so,” agreed Caleb, hazily, recalling his wandered attention as Caine paused. “I wish I hadn’t got that tel’gram.”
It was after midnight when Caleb Conover returned to his room. Three more telegrams awaited him, as well as a penciled request that he call up Magdeburg Hotel on the long-distance telephone. While he was profanely waiting for the operator to establish the connection, Caleb ripped open the telegrams one after the other. All were from Jack. Each bore the same burden as the message that had come early in the evening. The last of the trio added:
“Long-distance ’phone wires here temporarily out of order. Will call you as soon as they are repaired; on chance your train may not yet have gone.”
“Here’s your party, sir,” reported the operator.
Curiously sick and dazed, even while his colder reason assured him the whole affair was probably a fraud, Conover caught up the receiver.
“That Magdeburg?” he shouted, “MagdeburgHotel? This is Conover. Caleb Conover. Lady named Shevlin there? Is she hurt?”
“Yes,” came the answer, droned with maddening indistinctness through a babel of buzzing sounds. “Lady’s hurt pretty bad. If she ain’t dead already. I just come on duty five minutes ago. So I don’t—Wait a second. Gentleman wants to speak to you.”
Then, through the buzz and whirr, spoke another voice. Unmistakably Jack Hawarden’s.
“Mr. Conover?” it called.
“Yes!” yelled Caleb, driving the words by sheer force through the horror that sanded his throat, “Go ahead!”
“You haven’t even started?” cried the boy, a break in his voice. “For God’s sake, come! Comenow!”
As no reply could be heard, Jack’s tones droned on; their despair twisted by distance into a grotesque, semi-audible squeak:
“She may not live through the night, the doctor says. You see,” he rambled along, incoherently talkative in his panic, “we were called away from the Antlers, suddenly, by a letter telling my mother her sister in Hampden was ill. So we all left, two weeks earlier than we had meant. When we got to Hampden my mother stayed there and I started back toGranite with Miss Shevlin. We took the branch road; and just outside of Magdeburg—”
“Party’s rung off long ago,” put in the operator.
Caleb, at Jack’s second sentence, had dropped the receiver, bolted from the hotel and hailed a night-hawk hansom. Already he was galloping through the empty streets toward the station; scribbling with unsteady hand on envelope-backs a series of orders and dispatches that should assure him a clear track and a record-breaking journey from the Capital to Magdeburg. This detail arranged, his brain ceased to act. Sense of time was wiped out. So, mercifully, was realization of pain. In the cab of the road’s fastest engine he crouched through the long hours of darkness; while the wheels jolted out an irritating, meaningless sing-song refrain that ran:
“Haven’t—you—started?—For—God’s—sake,—come!”
To still the hateful iteration and to rouse himself to some semblance of calm, Caleb pulled from his side pocket a bunch of letters brought on from his office at Granite that same afternoon, by his secretary. He had been busy when the package arrived and had thrust it into his coat. Now he drew it forth and mechanically began to glance over the envelopes.
It was personal mail and had been accumulating for days. Desirée always addressed her letters to his hotel at the Capital; and his secretary attended toofficial mail. So Caleb had not ordered the forwarding of such personal letters as might come to the office. In fact he had been mildly annoyed at the secretary’s well meant act in bringing them to him.
Through the small sheaf of envelopes his thick fingers wandered. Suddenly, the man’s lack-lustre look brightened to one of astonishment. Midway in the package was an envelope in Desirée Shevlin’s hand. Letting the rest of the letters slide to the swaying floor the Fighter nervously caught this up. Why had she written to the office instead of to his hotel? Probably, he thought, by mere mistake. A mistake that meant a few moments of surcease now from his nightmare journey.
With ice-damp fingers Conover held the letter; tore it open as though the ripping of the paper caused him physical pain; smoothed wide the pages with awkward, awed gentleness, and read:
“Heart’s Dearest:—Just as soon as you’ve read this, you can come straight to see me. Honestly! For I’ll be at home. Mrs. Hawarden’s sister is ill. We only heard of it by this noon’s mail and we are leaving by the night train. At first I wanted to telegraph you at the Capital. But if I do I’m so afraid you will drop everything and come to meet me. And youmustn’t. You must stay at the Capital till you win your fight there for all the men who have put money in Steeloid. We are so happy we can’t afford to do anything now to make other people blue. Can we? So stay andwin for them. That’s why I’m sending this to your office.“You have just come back to Granite all tired from your work. Then you saw my letter and opened it and—I’mafraidyou’re on your way to my house before you’ve gotten this far.“Oh, dear! This is the last of my little batch of Adirondack love letters. And I believe you’re rushing off to see me instead of reading it. And it isn’t a love letter after all. For it’s going to be only a note. I’ve all my packing to do and the ‘white-horse chariot’ comes for our trunks at six. It has been a beautiful vacation. Two weeks of it was heaven. And the memory of that last golden day of ours makes something queer come into my throat.“But I’m oh so glad,—soglad—we are coming away. Every minute brings me nearer to Granite. You won’t be there when I arrive; but I’ll be where you have lived. And I’ll be waiting for you every minute till you come back. Just thinking about you and loving you, heart of my heart.“I’m glad, too, that we are leaving the Antlers before everyone else does. It is sad, somehow, to watch the boat-loads go off into the dark and to be part of the dwindling group that is left. It is pleasantest to go away from a place,—yes, and from the world, too, I should think,—while everything is at its height; before friends thin out and the jolly crowd falls away and the happy, happy times begin to end. To leaveeverything in the flood-tide of the fun and to remember it as it was at its best; to be remembered as a little part of the happiness of it all. Not as one of the few last ones left behind.“What a silly way to write! This isn’t a love letter at all. I told you it wasn’t. But I had ahorriddream last night and it has given me the shivers all day. I think some of its hagorousness has crept into my pen. No, I won’t write it. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. And then you can put your darling strong arms around me and laugh at me for letting myself get frightened by a silly dream. I wish this was a love letter. I never wrote one till this past week. So I don’t know how to say what I want to; to say all the wonderful things that are in my heart. But Iloveyou, my own. And the whole world centres just aroundyou. It always has. But now that youknowit does, I feel so happy it frightens me. We’re going to be together forever and ever and ever—and ever,—andthensome more.Aren’twe?Sayso!“Say so, beloved, and hold me very tight in your arms, very near to your heart when you say it. For to-day I’m foolish enough to want to be comforted a little bit. I wish I hadn’t had that dream. It was all nonsense,wasn’tit? Dreamsnevercome true. So I won’t worry one minute longer. Only,—I wish I was with you, my strong, splendid old sweetheart. The only dream that can possibly come to pass is theglorious one we dreamed that night up on the mountain with the sea of mist all around us and God’s stars overhead. And we will never wake from it.“The gentle, friendly northland summer is over now and the frost lies thick nearly every morning. It is time to go.“Oh, my darling, I am coming home to you.Home!We must never be away from each other again. Not for a single day;—so long as we live.”
“Heart’s Dearest:—Just as soon as you’ve read this, you can come straight to see me. Honestly! For I’ll be at home. Mrs. Hawarden’s sister is ill. We only heard of it by this noon’s mail and we are leaving by the night train. At first I wanted to telegraph you at the Capital. But if I do I’m so afraid you will drop everything and come to meet me. And youmustn’t. You must stay at the Capital till you win your fight there for all the men who have put money in Steeloid. We are so happy we can’t afford to do anything now to make other people blue. Can we? So stay andwin for them. That’s why I’m sending this to your office.
“You have just come back to Granite all tired from your work. Then you saw my letter and opened it and—I’mafraidyou’re on your way to my house before you’ve gotten this far.
“Oh, dear! This is the last of my little batch of Adirondack love letters. And I believe you’re rushing off to see me instead of reading it. And it isn’t a love letter after all. For it’s going to be only a note. I’ve all my packing to do and the ‘white-horse chariot’ comes for our trunks at six. It has been a beautiful vacation. Two weeks of it was heaven. And the memory of that last golden day of ours makes something queer come into my throat.
“But I’m oh so glad,—soglad—we are coming away. Every minute brings me nearer to Granite. You won’t be there when I arrive; but I’ll be where you have lived. And I’ll be waiting for you every minute till you come back. Just thinking about you and loving you, heart of my heart.
“I’m glad, too, that we are leaving the Antlers before everyone else does. It is sad, somehow, to watch the boat-loads go off into the dark and to be part of the dwindling group that is left. It is pleasantest to go away from a place,—yes, and from the world, too, I should think,—while everything is at its height; before friends thin out and the jolly crowd falls away and the happy, happy times begin to end. To leaveeverything in the flood-tide of the fun and to remember it as it was at its best; to be remembered as a little part of the happiness of it all. Not as one of the few last ones left behind.
“What a silly way to write! This isn’t a love letter at all. I told you it wasn’t. But I had ahorriddream last night and it has given me the shivers all day. I think some of its hagorousness has crept into my pen. No, I won’t write it. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. And then you can put your darling strong arms around me and laugh at me for letting myself get frightened by a silly dream. I wish this was a love letter. I never wrote one till this past week. So I don’t know how to say what I want to; to say all the wonderful things that are in my heart. But Iloveyou, my own. And the whole world centres just aroundyou. It always has. But now that youknowit does, I feel so happy it frightens me. We’re going to be together forever and ever and ever—and ever,—andthensome more.Aren’twe?Sayso!
“Say so, beloved, and hold me very tight in your arms, very near to your heart when you say it. For to-day I’m foolish enough to want to be comforted a little bit. I wish I hadn’t had that dream. It was all nonsense,wasn’tit? Dreamsnevercome true. So I won’t worry one minute longer. Only,—I wish I was with you, my strong, splendid old sweetheart. The only dream that can possibly come to pass is theglorious one we dreamed that night up on the mountain with the sea of mist all around us and God’s stars overhead. And we will never wake from it.
“The gentle, friendly northland summer is over now and the frost lies thick nearly every morning. It is time to go.
“Oh, my darling, I am coming home to you.Home!We must never be away from each other again. Not for a single day;—so long as we live.”