Caleb Conover, Railroader

“The poor man!” sighed Mrs. Greer. “He must think he’s a cemetery!”

The long line of carriages was passing solemnly through a mighty white marble arch, aglare with electric light, leading into the “show place” of Pompton Avenue.

Athwart the arch’s pallid face, in raised letters a full foot in length were the words:

“CALEB CONOVER, R.R., 1893.”

In the ghastly, garish illumination, above the slow-moving procession of sombre vehicles, the arch and its inscription gave gruesome excuse for Mrs. Greer’s comment. She herself thought the phrase rather apt, and stored it away for repetition.

Her husband, a downy little man, curled up miserably in the other corner of the brougham, read her thought, from long experience, and twisted forward into what he liked to think was a commanding attitude.

“Look here!” he protested. “You’ve got to stop that. It’s bad enough to have to come here at all, without your spoiling everything with one of those Bernard Shawisms of yours. Why, if it ever got back to Conover’s ears——”

“He’d withdraw his support? And then good-by to Congress for the unfortunate Talbot Firth Greer?”

“Just that. He’ll stand all sorts of criticism about his start in life. In fact, he revels in talking of his rise to anyone who’ll listen. But when it comes to guying anything in his present exalted——”

“What does the ‘R. R.’ at the end of his name over the gate stand for? I’ve seen the inscription often enough, but——”

“‘Railroader.’ He uses it as a sort of title. Life for him is one long railroad, and——”

“And now we’re to do him honor at the terminus?”

“If you like to put it that way. Perhaps ‘junction’ would hit it closer. It was awfully good of you, Grace, to come. I——”

“Of course it was. If I didn’t want a try at Washington I’d never have dared it. It will be in all the papers to-morrow. He’ll see to that. And then—I hate to think what everyone will say. I suppose we’re the first civilized people who ever passed under that atrocious hanging mortuary chapel, aren’t we?”

“Hardly as bad as that. If it’s any comfort to you, there are plenty more in the same box as ourselves, to-night.”

“But surely everybody in Granite can’t want to run for Congress?”

“No. But enough people have axes of their own to grind to make it worth their while to visit the Conover whetstone. When a man who can float companies at a word, boom or smash a dozen different stocks, swing the Legislature, make himself heard from here to Washington, and carries practically every newspaper in the Mountain State in his vest pocket; when——”

“When such a man whistles, there are some people who find it wise not to be deaf. But what on earth does he want us for?”

“The world-old ambition that had its rise when Cain and Abel began moving in separate sets. The longing to ‘butt in,’ as Caleb himself would probably call it. He has everything money and political power can give. And now he wants the only thing left—what he terms ‘social recognition.’”

“And we are to help——”

“No. We’re to let him think we help. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, assisted by a score of Conover’s own freight derricks, couldn’t hoist that cad into a decent crowd. He’s been at it ever since he got his first million and married poor little Letty Standish. She was the fool of her family, and a broken family at that. But still it was a family. Yet it didn’t land Caleb anywhere. Then, when that unlicked cub of a son of his grew up, he made another try. But you know how that turned out. Now that his daughter’s captured a more or less authentic prince, I suppose he thinks the time has come. Hence to-night’s——”

“What a blow to his hopes it must have been to have the girl marry in Paris instead of here at Granite! But I suppose the honeymoon in America and this evening’s reception are the next best thing. Are we never to get there?”

“Soon enough, I’m afraid. Conover boasts that he’s laid out his grounds so that the driveway is a measured half-mile. We’ll be there in another minute or so.”

Mrs. Greer laughed a little nervously.

“It’ll be something to remember anyway,” said she. “I suppose all sorts of horrible people will be there. I read a half-page account of it this morning in the Star, and it said that ‘while the proudest families of Granite would delight to do Mr. Conover honor, the humbler associates of political and business life would also be present.’ Did you ever hear anything more delicious? And in the Star, too!”

“His own paper. Why not? I suppose we’re the ‘proudest families’; and the ‘humbler associates’ are some of the choice retinue of heelers who do his dirty work. Lord! what a notice of it there’ll be in to-morrow’s papers! Washington will have to be very much worth while to make up for this. If only I——”

“Hush!” warned Mrs. Greer, as the carriage lurched to a halt, in the pack before a great porte-cochère. “We’re actually here at last. See! There goes Clive Standish up the steps with the Polissen girls and old Mr. Polissen. There are a few real human beings here, after all. Why do you suppose——?”

“H’m!” commented Greer, “Polissen’s ‘long’ on Interstate Canal, the route Conover’s C. G. & X. Road is threatening to put out of business. But why young Standish——”

“Why not? Letty Conover’s own nephew. Though I did hear he and the Conovers were scarcely on speaking terms. He——”

“I fancy that’s because Standish’s ‘Mayflower’ back is too stiff to bend at the crack of Caleb’s whip. He could have made a mighty good thing of his law business if Conover had backed him. But I understand he refuses to ally himself with his great relative-in-law, and prefers a good social position and a small law practice——”

“Rather than go to Congress?” finished his wife with such sweet innocence that Greer could only glare at her with flabby helplessness. Before he could think of an apt retort, the brougham was at the foot of the endless marble steps, and its late occupants were passing up a wide strip of velvet between rows of vividly liveried footmen.

Caleb Conover, Railroader, was standing just within the wide doorway of a drawing-room that seemed to stretch away into infinity. Behind rose an equally infinite vista of heads and shoulders. But the loudly blended murmur of many voices that is the first thing to strike the ear of arriving guests at such functions was conspicuously absent. The scarce-broken hush that spread through the chain of rooms seemed to bear out still further Mrs. Greer’s mortuary simile.

But the constraint in no way extended to the host himself. The strong, alert face, with its shrewd light eyes and humorous mouth, was wreathed in welcoming smiles that seemed to ripple in a series of waves from the close-cut reddish hair to the ponderous iron jaw. The thickset form of the Railroader, massive of shoulder and sturdily full of limb, was ever plunging forward to grip some favored newcomer by the hand, or darting to one side or the other as he whispered instructions to servant or relative.

“I congratulate you on your friend’s repose of manner!” whispered Mrs. Greer, as she and her husband awaited their turn. “He has all the calm self-assurance of a jumping jack.”

“But there are springs of chilled steel in the jumping jack,” whispered Greer. “He’s out of his element, and he knows it. But he isn’t so badly confused for all that. If you saw him at a convention or a board meeting, you wouldn’t know him for the same——”

“And there’s his poor little wife, looking as much like a rabbit as ever! She’s a cipher here; and even her husband’s figure in front of her doesn’t raise the cipher to the tenth power. I suppose that is the daughter, to Mrs. Conover’s left? The slender girl with the rust-colored hair and the brown eyes? She’s prettier and more of a thoroughbred in looks than I should have——”

“That’s not his daughter. That’s Miss Lanier, Conover’s secretary. His daughter is the——”

“His secretary? Why, is she receiving?”

“She is his secretary and everything else. She came here three years ago as Blanche’s governess. To give the poor girl a sort of winding-up polish before Caleb sent her to Europe. She made all sorts of a hit with Conover. Principally because she’s the only person on earth who isn’t afraid of him, so I hear. And now she is secretary, and major domo, and ‘right-hand man,’ and I don’t know what not else. Mrs. Conover’s only a ‘cipher,’ as you say, and Miss Alice Lanier—not Caleb—is the ‘figure’ in front of her. That’s the new-made princess, to the right. The tall one with the no-colored hair. I suppose that’s the Prince d’Antri beside her.”

“He’s too handsome to be a very real prince. What a face for a sculptor or——”