Gerald heard and nodded assent to the rapped-out series of directions with as little emotion as though commanded to transmit some campaign message to Billy Shevlin. His father, noting the quiet attention and response, was pleased therewith. And the latent fondness and trust which were slowly placing his recent contempt for his only and once adored son, perceptibly increased.
As the two men left the room, Mrs. Conover looked lovingly after Gerald through her tears.
“Poor dear boy!” she soliloquized. “He’s getting to be quite his old bright self again. When Caleb mentioned his going to New York his eyes lighted up just the way they used to when he was little.”
All unaware that she had detected something which even the Railroader’s vigilance had overlooked, the good woman once more abandoned herself to the joys of a new and delightfully unrestrained fit of weeping.
When at last she and her husband were together, alone, that night, Mrs. Conover had some thought of commenting upon that fleeting expression she had caught on Gerald’s face. But Caleb was so immersed in his own unpleasant thoughts she lacked the courage to intrude upon his reflections.
Which is rather a pity, for had she done so, the inefficient little woman might have changed the history of the Mountain State.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FOURTH MESSENGER OF JOB
The rain Caleb Conover had so eagerly desired as a check on fair weather reformers’ Election Day zeal began soon after midnight, and with it a gale that is still remembered as the “Big November Wind.”
The wind-whips lashed the many-windowed Mausoleum, and the roar and swirl of dashing water echoed from roof and veranda-cover. The autumn gale-blasts set the naked trees to creaking and groaning like sentient things. Here and there a huge branch was ripped from its trunk and ploughed a gash in the lawn’s withered turf. More than one maple and ash on the Conover grounds crashed to earth with a rending din that was drowned in the howl of the storm.
A belated equinoctial was sweeping the Mountain State, driven on the breath of a tornado such as not one year in twenty can record, east of the Mississippi. Its screaming onset unroofed houses, tore up forest giants, wrecked telegraph lines, buffeted fragile dwellings to their fall and dissolved hayricks into miles of flying wisps.