A Certain Rich Man Part 29

CHAPTER XXVI

And now as we go out into the busy world, after this act in the dawning of John Barclay's life, let the court convene, and the reporters gather, and the honourable special counsel for the government rage, and the defendant sit nervous and fidgety as the honourable counsel reads the indictment; let the counsel for the defendant swell and strut with indignation that such indignities should be put upon honest men and useful citizens, and let the court frown, and ponder and consider; for that is what courts are for, but what do we care for it all? We have left it all behind, with the ragged programmes in the seats. So if the honourable court, in the person of the more or less honourable Elijah Westlake Bemis, after the fashion of federal judges desiring to do a questionable thing, calls in a judge from a neighbouring court--what do we care? And if the judge of the neighbouring court, after much legal hemming and judicial hawing, decides in his great wisdom--that the said defendant Barclay has been charged in the indictment with no crime, and instructs the jury to find a verdict of not guilty for said defendant John Barclay, upon the mere reading of the indictment,--what are the odds? What do we care if the men in the packed courtroom hiss and the reporters put down the hisses in their note-books and editors write the hisses in headlines, and presses print the hisses all over the world? For the fidgety little man is free now--entirely free save for fifty-four years of selfish life upon his shoulders.

In the trial of nearly every cause it becomes necessary at some point in the proceedings to halt the narrative and introduce certain exhibits, records, and doc.u.ments, upon which foregone evidence has been based, and to which coming testimony may properly be attached.

That point has been reached in the case now before the reader. And as "Exhibit A" let us submit a letter written by John Barclay, January seventh, nineteen hundred and four, to Jane, his wife, at Naples.

"As I cabled you this afternoon, the case resulted exactly as I said it would the day after the indictment. I had not seen or talked with Lige since that day I talked with him over the telephone, before the indictment was made public, but I knew Lige well enough to know how he would act under fire. I had him out to dinner this evening, and we talked over old times, and he tells me he wants to retire from the bench. Jane, Lige has been my mainstay ever since this company was organized. Sometimes I feel that without his help in politics--looking to see that pernicious legislation was killed, and that the right men were elected to administrative offices, and appointed to certain judicial places--we never would have been able to get the company to its present high standing. I feel that he has been so valuable to us that we should settle a sum on him that will make him a rich man as men go in the Ridge. Heaven knows that is little enough, considering all that he has done. He may have his faults, Jane, but he has been loyal to me.

"I hope, my dear, that Jeanette has ceased to worry about the other matter; he is not worth her tears. Don't come home for a month or two yet. The same conditions prevail that I spoke of in my first cable the day of the indictment. The press and the public are perfectly crazy. America is one great howling mob, and it would make you and Jennie unhappy. As for me, I don't mind it. You know me."

And that the reader may know how truthful John Barclay is, let us append herewith a letter written by Mrs. Mary Barclay, of Sycamore Ridge, to her granddaughter at Naples, January 15, 1904. She writes among other things:--

"Well, dear, it is a week now since your father's case was settled, and he was at home for the first time last night. I expected that his victory--such as it was--would cheer him up, but some way he seems worse in the dumps than he was before. He does not sleep well, and is getting too nervous for a man of his age. I have the impression that he is forever battling with something. Of course the public temper is bitter, dearie. You are a woman now, and should not be shielded and pampered with lies, so I am going to tell you the truth. The indignation of the people of this nation at your father, as he represents present business methods, is past belief. And frankly, dearie, I can't blame them. Your father and my son is a brave, sweet, loving man; none could be finer in this world, Jennie.

But the head of the National Provisions Company is another person, dear; and of him I do not approve, as you know so well. I am sending you Neal Ward's statement which was published by the government the day after the case was dismissed. I have not sent it to you before, because I wanted to ask your father if it was true. Jennie, he admits that Neal told the truth, and nothing but the truth--and did not make it as bad as it was. You are ent.i.tled to the facts. You are a grown woman now, dear, and must make your own decisions. But oh, my dear little girl, I am heartsick to see your father breaking as he is. He seems to be fighting--fighting--fighting all the time; perhaps it is against the flames of public wrath, but some way I think he is fighting something inside himself--fighting it back; fighting it down--whatever it is."

Counsel also begs indulgence while he introduces and reads two clippings from the Sycamore Ridge _Daily Banner_, of February 12, 1904. The first one reads:--

"Judge Bemis Retires

"Hon. E. W. Bemis has retired from the federal bench, and rumour has it that he is soon to return with his estimable wife to our midst.

Our people will welcome the judge and Mrs. Bemis with open arms. He retires from an honourable career, to pa.s.s his declining years in the peace and quiet of the town in which he began his career over fifty years ago. For as every one knows, he came West as a boy, and before having been admitted to the bar dealt largely in horses and cattle. He has always been a good business man, having with his legal ac.u.men the acquisitive faculty, and now he is looking for some place to invest a modest competence here in the Ridge, and rumour has it again that he is negotiating for the purchase of the Sycamore Ridge Waterworks bonds, which are now in litigation. If so, he will make an admirable head of that popular inst.i.tution."

In this connection, and before introducing the other clipping from the _Banner_, it would be entirely proper to introduce the ma.n.u.script for the above, in the typewriting of the stenographer of Judge Bemis's court, and a check for fifty dollars payable to Adrian Brownwell, signed by Judge Bemis aforesaid; but those doc.u.ments would only clog the narrative and would not materially strengthen the case, so they will be thrown out.

The second clipping, found in the personal column of the _Banner_ of the date referred to, February 12, 1904, follows:--

"Mrs. John Barclay and Miss Barclay are on the steamer _Etruria_ which was sighted off Fire Island to-day. They will spend a few weeks in New York, and early in March Miss Barclay will enter the state university to do some post-graduate work in English, and Mrs.

Barclay will return to Sycamore Ridge. Mr. Barclay will meet them at the pier, and they expect to spend the coming two weeks attending German opera. Mrs. Mary Barclay left to-day for the East to join them. She will remain a month visiting relatives near Haverhill, Ma.s.s."

It becomes necessary to append some letters of Miss Jeanette Barclay's, and they are set down here in the order in which they were written, though the first one takes the reader back a few weeks to December 5, 1903. It was posted at Rome, and in the body of it are found these words:--

"My dear, I know you will smile when you hear I have been reading all the Italian scientific books I can find, dealing with the human brain--partly to help my Italian, but chiefly, I think, to see if I can find and formulate some sort of a definition for love. It is so much a part of my soul, dear heart, that I would like to know more about it. And I am going to write down for you what I think it is as we know it. I have been wearing your ring nearly three years, Neal, and if you had only known it, I would have been happy to have taken it a year sooner. In those four years I have grown from a girl to a woman, and you have become a man full grown. In that time all my thoughts have centred on you. In all my schoolbooks your face comes back to me as I open them in fancy. As I think of the old room at school, of my walk up the hill, as I think of home and my room there, some thought of you is always between me and the picture. All through my physical brain are little fibres running to every centre that bring up images of you. You are woven into my life, and I know in my heart that I am woven into your life. The thing is done; it is as much apart of my being as my blood--those million fibres of my brain that from every part of my consciousness bring thoughts of you. We cannot be separated now, darling--we are united for life, whether we unite in life or not. I am yours and you are mine. It is now as inexorable as anything we call material. More than that--you have made my soul. All the aspirations of my spiritual life go to you for beginning and for being as truly as the fibres of my brain thrill to the sound of your name or the mental image of your face.

My soul is your soul, because in the making the thought of you was uppermost. I know that my love for you is immortal, ineffaceable, and though I should live a hundred years, that love would still be as much a part of my life as my hands or my eyes or my body. And the best of it all is that I am so glad it is so. Divorce is as impossible with a love like that as amputation of the brain. It is big and vital in me, real and certain, and so long as I live on earth, or dwell in eternity, my soul and your soul are knit together."

Three weeks later, on December 28, 1903, Miss Barclay wrote to Mr.

Ward as follows:--

"Your letter and father's letter were on my desk when we returned from our cruise. I have just finished writing to him, and I herewith return your ring and your pin."

There was neither signature nor superscription--just those words. And a month later, Miss Barclay wrote this letter to her Grandmother Barclay in Sycamore Ridge:--

"MY DEAR, DEAR GRANNY: I have told mother what you wrote of father, and we are coming home just as soon as we can get a steamer. We are cabling him to-day, and hope to sail within a week or ten days at the very farthest. But I cannot wait until I see you, dear, to come close into your heart. And first of all I want you to know that I share your views about the heart-break of all this money and the miserable man-killing way it is being piled up. I know the two men you speak of--father and the president of the N.P.C. But he is my father, and I must stand by him, and brace him if I can. But, oh, Granny, I don't want the old money! It has never made me happy--never for one minute. The only happiness I have ever had was when he was at home with us all, away from business--and--but you know about that other happiness, and it hurts to speak of it now. I have not read what you sent me. I can't. But I will keep it. That it is true doesn't help me any. Nothing can help me. It is just one of those awful things that I have read of coming to people, but which I thought never could possibly come to me. Oh, Granny, Granny, you who pray so much for others, now pray for me. Granny, you can't cut something out of you--right out of the heart of you, by merely saying so; it keeps growing back; it hurts, and hurts, and keeps hurting; even if you know it is cut out and thrown away. They say that men who have had legs cut off can feel them for months and even years if they are cramped when they are buried. The nerves of the old dead body reach through s.p.a.ce and hurt. It is that way with me.

The old dead thing in my heart that is buried and gone keeps cramping and hurting. You are the only one I can come to, Granny. It hurts mother too much, and she is not strong this winter. I think it is worry. She is growing thin, and her heart doesn't act right. I am terribly worried about her; but she made me promise to say nothing to father, and you must not, either; for he will see for himself soon."

A few letters from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay, and a doc.u.ment some twenty years old, which the reader may have forgotten, but which one person connected with this narrative has feared would come to light every day in that time--and then this tedious business of introducing doc.u.mentary evidence will be over. The letter from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay is one of hundreds that he wrote and never mailed.

They were dated, sealed, addressed, and put away. This one was written at midnight as the bells and whistles and pistols and fireworks were welcoming the year 1904. It begins:--

"MY VERY DEAREST: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of the _Banner_. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, but I feel that I must bring everything to you. Bob Hendricks wired me to come down. He has a mortgage on the _Banner_, and he feels that things are not being properly managed, so he persuaded Mr.

Brownwell to give me a place as sort of manager of the paper at twenty dollars a week--a sum that seems princely considering that I was making only eighteen dollars in Chicago, and that it costs so much less to live here. Hendricks guarantees my wages, so that Adrian cannot stand me off. Hendricks has another motive for wanting me to come here. The waterworks franchise will come up for renewal June first of this year, and Mr. Hendricks is for munic.i.p.al ownership. Carnine and the State Bank are against munic.i.p.al ownership, because the water company does business with them, and as they control the _Index_, they are preparing to make a warm fight for the renewal of the old franchise. So there will be a hot time in the old town this spring. But the miserable part of it is this. The growth of the town has made it dangerous to use the present supply station. The water must not come out of the mill-pond any longer, as the town is tilted so that all the surface drainage goes into it, and the sewers that drain into it, while they drain a few hundred yards below the intake of the waterworks, cannot help tainting the whole pond. Mr. Hendricks has had an expert here who declared that both the typhoid and diphtheria epidemics here last fall were due directly to the water supply, and Mr. Hendricks is going to make the fight of his life to have the city buy the waterworks plant, and move the intake six miles above town, where there is plenty of clean water. Of course it will mean first a city election to get decent councilmen, and then a bond election to vote money to buy the old plant; the waterworks company are going to move heaven and earth to get an anti-Hendricks council elected and to renew the franchise and let things go as they are. So that is why I am here, dear heart, and oh, my darling, you do not know how painful it all seems to be here and not have you--I mean--you know what I mean. All my a.s.sociations with the work here in the office and on the street are with my heart close to yours. Everything in the old town tells me of you. 'Saint Andrews by the Northern sea, a haunted city is to me.' To-night I hear the music of the New Year's dance, and I can shut my eyes and feel you with me there. Oh, sweetheart, I have kept you so close, by writing to you every night. I come and lay my heart and all its thoughts at your shrine, and put all my day's work before you for your approval, just as I used to do. It is so sweet a privilege.

"Last night I dreamed about you. It was so real and your voice sounded so clearly, crying to me, that you have been with me all day. I wonder if while we sleep, we whose souls would struggle to meet through eternity, if through the walls of s.p.a.ce they may not find each other, and speak to each other through our dreams. It is midnight here now, and you are just waking, perhaps, or just sleeping that sleep of early morning wherein the soul sinks to unknown depths. Oh--oh--oh, if I could but speak to you there, my dear! I am going to sit here and close my eyes and try."

The next letter in the exhibit was written six weeks later and is dated February 12, 1904. It says in part:--

"I must tell you what a bully fellow Bob Hendricks is. Judge Bemis sent a highly laudatory article about himself to the office to-day with a check for fifty dollars. In the article it develops that he is going to retire from the federal bench and come down here and buy the waterworks plant--on the theory that he will get a bargain because of the expiring franchise and the prospective fight. That fifty dollars looked as big as a barn to poor Adrian, so he trotted off with the letter and the check to Hendricks. Of course, the letter and the check together, just framed and put in the bank window, would make great sport of the judge; but Bob is a thoroughbred, and probably Bemis knows it, and figures on that in his dealings with him. I was in the bank when Adrian came in with the letter. He showed the check and the article to Hendricks, and you could almost see Adrian wag his tail and hear him whine to keep the check; Bob looked at the poor fellow's wistful eyes and handed it back with a quizzical little smile and said, 'Oh, I guess I'd run it; it can't hurt anything.' The light that came into Adrian's eyes was positively beatific, and he shook Bob by the hand, and twirled his cane, and waved his gloves in a sort of canine ecstasy, and trotted to the cashier's window with the check like a dog with a bone. It is the largest piece of real money he has had in six months, the boys say, and he has spent it for clothes. To-morrow he will hurry off to the first convention in the city like a comet two centuries behind time. But that is beside the point; the thing I don't like is the coming of Bemis. I know him; the things I have seen him do in your father's business and when he was on the bench, make me shudder for decent politics in this town. He is shrewd, unscrupulous, and without any restraint on earth.

"I feel closer to you than I have felt since I put the barrier between us. For you are in this country to-night--I could go to the telephone there five feet away and reach you if I would. I looked to-day in the papers and saw that they would be giving Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera House, and knowing your father as I do, I think he will take you there. I can hear the music rising and see you drinking in the harmony, and as it swells into exquisite pain, and thrills through the holy places of your soul where are old memories of our love, sweetheart, maybe your spirit will go forth in G.o.d's strange universe where we all dwell neighbours, loosed from those material chains that bind our bodies, and will seek the heart that is searching for you out there in the highway of heaven. I seem to feel you now, dear soul--did the music fling your spirit free for a second till it touched my own? I am so happy, Jeanette--even to love you and to know that you have loved me, and must always love me while you are you and I am I."

And now let us consider the final exhibit. It will be necessary to turn back the action of this story a month and a half and sit with John Barclay and his friend, former federal judge Elijah Westlake Bemis, before the fire in the wide fireplace in the Barclay home, one cold January night, a week after Barclay had gone free from the court and the world had hissed him. They were talking of the judge's business future, and the judge was saying:--

"John, how did Bob Hendricks ever straighten out that affair in the treasurer's office in connection with the first year's taxes of the old Wheat Company? What did he do with it finally?"

Barclay looked at the fire and then turned his searchlight eyes into Bemis's. There was not a quiver. The man sat there without a muscle of his parchment face moving. His eyes were squinted up, looking at the tip of his long cigar.

"Why?" asked Barclay.

"Well," responded Bemis, impa.s.sive as an ox, "it would help me in my business to know. Tell me."

He spoke the last two words as one in authority.

"Well," answered Barclay, "one day back in the seventies, I was appointed to check up the treasurer's book, and I found where he had fixed it on the county books--apparently between two administrations.

I recognized his hand; and it made the balance for the first time."

Bemis smoked awhile. "What time in the seventies?" he asked.

There was a pause. "In January, 1879."

Bemis grinned a wicked, mean little grin and said: "That settles it. I believe I am safe in buying the waterworks."

"What are you going to do to Bob?" Barclay asked.

"Nothing, nothing--absolutely nothing, if he has any sense and drops this munic.i.p.al ownership tommyrot. Absolutely nothing."

Again the grin came over his face, and at the end of a pause Barclay said:--

"Well, if not, what then?"

Bemis shut his eyes and crossed his gaunt legs, and began: "Think back twenty years ago--more or less. Do you remember when I brought your car down here for Watts McHurdie and his crowd to go to Washington in, to the G.A.R. celebration? All right; do you remember that I came to the office and told you I saw Bob Hendricks waiting for some one at the Union Station, when the train got into the city that morning?"

"Yes," said Barclay, "you were so mysterious and funny about it, I remember."

"Well," said Bemis, as he got up and poked a log that was annoying him in the fireplace, "well, I have a little doc.u.ment in my desk at home, that I got the night before in the Ridge, which will convince Bobbie, if he has any sense, that this munic.i.p.al ownership business isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Barclay, who knew from Jane something of the truth, guessed the rest, but he did not question Bemis further. "Oh, I don't know, Lige," he began; "it seems to me I wouldn't drag that into it."

Bemis turned his old face, full of malicious pa.s.sion, toward Barclay and cried, "Maybe you wouldn't, John Barclay--you forget things; but I never do; and you're a coward sometimes, and I am not."