“Yes. And the certified copy the following morning.”
“In case I should get absent-minded that night when the votes are counted? You’re a clever girl, Miss Lanier. Pity you’re to be wasted on Standish! Oh, that’s all right. I don’t need to be told. A girl like you isn’t acting the way you do just for the sake of a measly principle. And now,” his bantering tone changing to one of brusque command, “if there’s nothing more, maybe you’ll both get out. I’m tired, and——”
Clive and Anice withdrew. The latter, looking back as she left the room, saw Caleb sitting doubled over, motionless, in his chair, his gaze again on the fire.
Perhaps it was the flicker from the coals that made his face seem to her to have grown in a moment infinitely old; his keen, light eyes inexpressibly lonely and desolate. Undoubtedly so, for when he glanced up and saw she was not yet gone, there was no expression save the shadow of a sardonic grin stamped on his rugged features.
Long and late Caleb Conover sat there alone in his big, silent study. The lamp on the table flickered, guttered and went out. The live coals died down to embers. The cold of early autumn crept through the great room, along with the encroaching darkness. The clock on the wall chimed. Then again, and a third time, but the Railroader sat motionless.
At length he gathered himself together with an impatient grunt. He reached across to his table and drew from a drawer a gaudy velvet case. As he opened it, the dying firelight struck against a multi-pointed cluster of tiny lights.
“She wouldn’t have took it from me,” Caleb grumbled, half-aloud, as though explaining to some invisible companion, “but I would ’a’ made Letty give it to her. It’d ’a’ looked fine against that soft baby throat of hers. Hell!”
There was a swirling little eddy of cinders and sparks as the case crashed into the heart of the dull red embers.
The Railroader had fallen back into his former cramped, awkward attitude of reflection.
“First it was Jerry,” he whispered to the imaginary auditor among the shadows. “First Jerry. Then Blanche. And now—her. That’s worse than both the others put together. Not a one left.”