Caleb Conover, Railroader

by Albert Payson Terhune

“A debt? What rot are you trying to talk? I——”

“If you care to listen I’ll tell you. I will make it as short as I can. Shall I go on?”

Conover nodded assent as a man in a dream.

“My father,” began Anice, speaking dispassionately, her rich voice flattened to a quiet monotone—“my father was Foster Lanier. You never knew him. You never knew many of the men you have wrecked. But he was chief stockholder in the Oakland-Rodney Railroad. He was not a business man. The stock was left him by his father. It was all we had to live on. It was enough. You owned the C. G. & X. Little by little you bought up the other Mountain State roads. At last you came to the Oakland-Rodney. Do you remember?”

“I remember my lawyer told me there was some stiff-necked old fossil who owned the majority stock and wouldn’t sell.”

“So you crushed him,” went on Anice, unmoved, “as you have crushed others. You cut off the road’s connecting points and severed its communication with your own and your allied lines. After isolating it you lowered your own freight rates and mileage until all the Oakland-Rodney patronage was gone. The road collapsed, and you bought it in. My father was a pauper. Other men have been driven to the same straits by you—men whose very names you did not take the trouble to learn. My father knew little of business. To save others who had bought Oakland-Rodney stock at his advice, he sold what little property he had and bought their worthless stock back at par. He was ruined and above his head in debt. My mother was an invalid. The doctors said a trip to the Mediterranean might save her life. We had not a dollar. So she died. My father—he was out of his mind from grief and from financial worry—my father shot himself. It was hushed up by our friends, and he was reported accidentally killed while hunting. It was only one of the countless victories you ‘financiers’ are so proud of. He and my mother were but two of the numberless victims each of those victories entails.”

She paused. Caleb made no reply. He sat looking in front of him into the pulsing heart of the fire. He had scarce heard her. His mind was occupied to bursting by the shock and acute pain of this rupturing of his last intimate bond with humanity.

“I was left to make my own way,” continued Anice, “and I came here. Out of one hundred applicants you accepted me. It was not mere coincidence. I believe it was something more. Something higher. I entered your service that I might some day pay the debt I owed my father, who was not strong enough to bear your ‘victory,’ and my mother, whose life the money you wrested from us might have saved. This is melodramatic, of course. But I think most things in real life are. I came here. I worked for you. I won your confidence, your respect, your trust. Perhaps you think it was a pleasant task I had set myself? I am not trying to justify it. If it was unworthy, I have paid. You say I’ve ‘eaten your bread and lived on your money.’ I have. And I have received your confidence. But have I ever eaten a mouthful or received one penny that I did not earn three times over? You yourself have said again and again that I was worth to you ten times what you paid me. You have begged me to let you raise my salary, to accept presents from you. Have I ever consented? If there is a money balance between us, the debit is all on your side. I owe you nothing for what confidences you have lavished on me. Have I ever asked for them or lured you into bestowing them? Have not all such confidences come unsought, even repelled, by me? Have I ever spoken to you with more than ordinary civility? Have I ever so much as voluntarily shaken your hand? The Judas parallel does not hold good, Mr. Conover.”

She waited again for a reply. But none came. Conover merely shifted his heavy gaze from the fire to her pale, drawn face.

“In all these years,” said Anice, “I have waited my chance. I could not take your life to atone for the two gentle lives you crushed out. Nor would a life like yours have paid one-hundredth of the debt. So I have waited until your life-happiness, your whole future, should be bound up in some one great aspiration. Until you should stake all on one card. When such a time should come I resolved I would make you taste the bitter shame and despair you have made others groan under. Oh, it was long, weary waiting, but I think the end is coming. It has come.”