A Certain Rich Man Part 7

CHAPTER VIII

This chapter might have had in it "all the quality, pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of glorious war" if it had not been for the matters that came up for discussion at the meeting of the Garrison County Old Settlers' a.s.sociation this year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eight. For until that meeting the legend of the last hour of the County-seat War of '73 had flourished unmolested; but there General Philemon Ward rose and laid an axe at the root of the legend, and while of course he did not destroy it entirely, he left it scarred and withered on one side and therefore entirely unfitted for historical purposes. It seems that Gabriel Carnine was a.s.signed by President John Barclay of the a.s.sociation to prepare and read a paper on "The Rise, Decline, and Fall of Minneola." Certainly that was a proper subject considering the fact that corn has been growing over the site of Minneola for twenty years. And surely Gabriel Carnine, whose black beard has whitened in thirty years' faithful service to Sycamore Ridge, whose wife lies buried on the Hill, and whose children read the Sycamore Ridge _Banner_ in the uttermost parts of the earth,--surely Gabriel Carnine might have been trusted to tell the truth of the conflict waged between the towns a generation ago. But men have curious works in them, and unless one has that faith in G.o.d that gives him unbounded faith in the goodness of man, one should not open men up in the back and watch the wheels go 'round. For though men are good, and in the long run what they do is G.o.d's work and is therefore acceptable, no man is perfect. There goes Lige Bemis past the post-office, now, for instance; when he was in the legislature in the late sixties, every one knows that Minneola raised twenty thousand dollars in cash and offered it to Lige if he would pretend to be sick and quit work on the Sycamore Ridge county-seat bill. He could have fooled us, and could have taken the money, which was certainly more than he could expect to get from Sycamore Ridge. Did he take it? Not at all. A million would not have tempted him. He was in that game; yet ten days after he refused the offer of Minneola, he tried to blackmail his United States senator out of fifty dollars, and sold his vote to a candidate for state printer for one hundred dollars and flashed the bill around Sycamore Ridge proudly for a week before spending it.

So Gabriel Carnine must not be blamed if in that paper on Minneola, before the Old Settlers' a.s.sociation, he let out the pent-up wrath of thirty years; and also if in the discussion General Ward unsealed his lips for the first time and blighted the myth that told how a hundred Minneola men had captured the court-house yard on the night that John Barclay and Bob Hendricks rode home from their captivity to sign the tax levy. Legend has always said that Lige Bemis, riding half a mile ahead of the others that night, came to the courtyard; found it guarded by Minneola men, rode back, met John and Bob and the general crossing the bridge over the old ford of the Sycamore, and told them that they could not get into the court-house until the men came up who had ridden out to rescue the commissioners,--perhaps a quarter of an hour behind the others,--and that even then there must be a fight of doubtful issue; and further that it was after eleven o'clock, and soon would be too late to sign the levy. The forty thousand people in Garrison County have believed for thirty years that finding the court-house yard in possession of the enemy, Bemis suggested going through the cave by the Barclays' home, which had its west opening in the wall of the bas.e.m.e.nt of the court-house; and furthermore, tradition has said that Bemis led John and Bob through the cave, and with crowbars and hammers they made a man-sized hole in the wall, crawled through it, mounted the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, unlocked the commissioners' room, held their meeting in darkness, and five minutes before twelve o'clock astonished the invading forces by lighting a lamp in their room, signing the levy that Bemis, as county attorney, had prepared the Sunday before, and slipping with it into the bas.e.m.e.nt, through the cave and back to the troop of hors.e.m.e.n as they were jogging across the bridge on their way back from Carnine's farm.

And here are the marks of General Ward's axe--verified by Gabriel Carnine: first, that there were no Minneola invaders in possession of the court-house, but only a dozen visitors loafing about town that night to watch developments; second, that the regular pickets were out as usual, and an invading force could not have stolen in; and third, that Bemis knew it, but as his political fortunes were low, he rode ahead of the others, hatched up the c.o.c.k-and-bull story about the guarded court-house, and persuaded the boys to let him lead them into a romantic adventure that would sound well in the campaign and help to insure his reelection the following year. In view of the general's remarks and Gabriel Carnine's corroborative statement, and in view of the bitterness with which Carnine a.s.sailed the whole Sycamore Ridge campaign, how can a truthful chronicler use the episode at all?

History is a fickle G.o.ddess, and perhaps Pontius Pilate, being human and used to human errors and human weakness, is not so much to blame for asking, "What is truth?" and then turning away before he had the answer.

Walking home from the meeting through Mary Barclay Park, Barclay's mind wandered back to the days when he won his first important lawsuit--the suit brought by Minneola to prevent the collection of taxes under the midnight levy to build the court-house. It was that lawsuit which brought him to the attention of the legal department of the Fifth Parallel Railroad Company, and his employment by that company to defeat the bonds of its narrow-gauged compet.i.tor, that was seeking entrance into Garrison County, was the beginning of his career. And in that fight to defeat the narrow-gauged railroad, the people of Garrison County learned something of Barclay as well. He and Bemis went over the county together,--the little fox and the old coyote, the people called them,--and where men were for sale, Bemis bought them, and where they were timid, John threatened them, and where they were neither, both John and Bemis fought with a ferocity that made men hate but respect the pair. And so though the Fifth Parallel Railroad never came to the Ridge, its successor, the Corn Belt Road, did come, and in '74 John spoke in every schoolhouse in the county, urging the people to vote the bonds for the Corn Belt Road, and his employment as local attorney for the company marked his first step into the field of state politics. For it gave him a railroad pa.s.s, and brought him into relations with the men who manipulated state affairs; also it made him a silent partner of Lige Bemis in Garrison County politics.

But even when he was county commissioner, less than two dozen years old, he was a force in Sycamore Ridge, and there were days when he had four or five thousand dollars to his credit in General Hendricks'

bank. The general used to look over the daily balances and stroke his iron-gray beard and say: "Robert, John is doing well to-day. Son, I wish you had the acquisitive faculty. Why don't you invest something and make something?" But Bob Hendricks was content to do his work in the bank, and read at home one night and slip over to the Culpeppers'

the next night, and so long as the boy was steady and industrious and careful, his father had no real cause for complaint, and he knew it.

But the town knew that John was getting on in the world. He owned half of Culpepper's second addition, and his interest in College Heights was clear; he never dealt in equities, but paid cash and gave warranty deeds for what he sold. It was believed around the Ridge that he could "clean up," for fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, and when he called Mrs. Mason of the Mason House, Minneola, into the dining room one afternoon to talk over a little matter with her, he found her most willing. It was a short session. After listening and punctuating his remarks with "of courses" and "yeses" and "so's," Mrs. Mason's reply was:--

"Of course, Mr. Barclay,"--the Mr. Barclay he remembered as the only time in his life he ever had it from her,--"of course, Mr. Barclay, that is a matter rather for you and Mr. Mason to settle. You know,"

she added, folding her hands across her ample waist, "Mr. Mason is the head of the house!" Then she lifted her voice, perhaps fearing that matters might be delayed. "Oh, pa!" she cried. "Pa! Come in here, please. There's a gentleman to see you."

Lycurgus Mason came in with a tea towel in his hands and an ap.r.o.n on.

He heard John through in a dazed way, his hollow eyes blinking with evident uncertainty as to what was expected of him. When Barclay was through, the father looked at the mother for his cue, and did not speak for a moment. Then he faltered: "Why, yes,--yes,--I see! Well, ma, what--" And at the cloud on her brow Lycurgus hesitated again, and rolled his ap.r.o.n about his hands nervously and finally said, "Oh--well--whatever you and her ma think will be all right with me, I guess." And having been dismissed telepathically, Lycurgus hurried back to his work.

It was when John Barclay was elected President of the Corn Belt Railway, in the early nineties, that Lycurgus told McHurdie and Ward and Culpepper and Frye, as the graybeards wagged around the big brown stove in the harness shop one winter day: "You know ma, she never saw much in him, and when I came in the room she was about to tell him he couldn't have her. Now, isn't that like a woman?--no sense about men.

But I says: 'Ma, John Barclay's got good blood in him. His grandpa died worth a million,--and that was a pile of money for them days;'

so I says, 'If Jane Mason wants him, ma,' I says, 'let her have him.

Remember what a fuss your folks made over me getting you,' I says; 'and see how it's turned out.' Then I turned to John--I can see the little chap now a-standing there with his d.i.c.ky hat in his hand and his pipe-stem legs no bigger than his cane, and his gray eyes lookin'

as wistful as a dog's when you got a bone in your hand, and I says, 'Take her along, John; take her along and good luck go with you,' I says; 'but,' I says, 'John Barclay, I want you always to remember Jane Mason has got a father.' Just that way I says. I tell you, gentlemen, there's nothing like having a wife that respects you." The crowd in the harness shop wagged their heads, and Lycurgus went on: "Now, they ain't many women that would just let a man stand up like that and, as you may say, give her daughter right away under her nose. But my wife, she's been well trained."

In the pause that followed, Watts McHurdie's creaking lever was the only sound that broke the silence. Then Watts, who had been sewing away at his work with waving arms, spoke, after clearing his throat, "I've heard many say that she was sich." And the old man cackled, and it became a saying-among them and in the town.

One who goes back over the fifty years that have pa.s.sed since Sycamore Ridge became a local habitation and a name finds it difficult to realize that one-third of its life was pa.s.sed before the panic of '78, which closed the Hendricks' bank. For those first nineteen years pa.s.sed as the life of a child pa.s.ses, so that they seem only sketched in; yet to those who lived at all, to those like Watts McHurdie and Philemon Ward, who now pa.s.s their happiest moments mooning over tilted headstones in the cemetery on the Hill, those first nineteen years seem the longest and the best. And that fateful year of '73 to them seems the most portentous. For then, perhaps for the first time, they realized the cruel uncertainty of the struggle for existence. With the terrible drouth of '60 this realization did not come; for the town was young, and the people were young; only Ezra Lane was a graybeard in all the town in the sixties; and youth is so sure; there is no hazard under thirty. In the war they fought and marched and sang and starved and died, and were still young. But when the financial panic of '73 spread its dread and its trouble over the land, youth in Sycamore Ridge was gone; it was manhood that faced these things in the Ridge, and manhood had cares, had given hostages to fortune, and life was serious and hard; and big on the horizon was the fear of failure.

General Hendricks swayed in the panic of '73; and the time marked him, took the best of the light from his eye, and put the slightest perceptible hobble on his feet. To Martin Culpepper and Watts McHurdie and Philemon Ward and Jacob Dolan and Oscar Fernald, the panic came in their late thirties and early forties, a flash of lightning that prophesied the coming of the storm and stress of an inexorable fate.

The wedding of John Barclay and Jane Mason occurred in September, 1873, two days after he had stood on the high stone steps of the Exchange National Bank and made a speech to the crowd, telling them he was the largest depositor in the bank, and begging them to stop the run. But the run did not stop, and the day before John's wedding the bank did not open; the short crop and the panic in the East were more than Garrison County people could stand. But all the first day of the bank's closing and all the next day John worked among the people, rea.s.suring them. So that it was five o'clock in the evening before he could start to Minneola for his wedding.

And such a wedding! One would say that when hard times were staring every one in the face, social forms would be observed most simply. But one would say so without reckoning with Mrs. Lycurgus Mason. As the groom and the bridesmaid and best man rode up from Sycamore Valley, two miles from Minneola, in the early falling dusk that night, the Mason House loomed through the darkness, lighted up like a steamboat.

"You'll have to move along, John," said Bob Hendricks; "I think I heard her whistle."

On the sidewalk in front of the hotel they met Mrs. Mason in her black silk with a hemst.i.tched linen ap.r.o.n over it. She ushered them into the house, took them to their rooms, and whirled John around on a pivot, it seemed to him, with her interminable directions. His mother, who had come over to Minneola the day before, came to his room and quieted her son, and as he got ready for what he called the "ordeal," he could hear Mrs. Mason swinging doors below stairs, walking on her heels through the house, receiving belated guests from Sycamore Ridge and the country,--for the whole county had been invited,--and he heard her carrying out a dog that had sneaked into the dining room.

The groom missed the bride, and as he was tying his necktie,--which reminded him of General Ward by its whiteness,--he wondered why she did not come to him. He did not know that she was a prisoner in her room, while all the young girls in Sycamore Ridge and Minneola were looking for pins and hooking her up and stepping on each other's skirts. For one wedding is like all weddings--whether it be in the Mason House, Minneola, or in Buckingham Palace. And some there are who marry for love in Minneola, and some for money, and some for a home, and some for Heaven only knows what, just as they do in the chateaux and palaces and mansions. And the groom is n.o.body and the bride is everything, as it was in the beginning and as it shall be ever after.

Probably poor Adam had to stand behind a tree neglected and alone, while Lilith and girls from the land of Nod bedecked Eve for the festivities. Men are not made for ceremonies. And so at all the formal occasions of this life--whether it be among the great or among the lowly, in the East or the West, at weddings, christenings, and funerals--man hides in shame and leaves the affairs to woman, who leads him as an ox, even a muzzled ox, that treadeth out the corn.

"The doomed man," whispered John to Bob as the two in their black clothes stood at the head of the stair that led into the parlour of the Mason House that night, waiting for the wedding march to begin on the cabinet organ, "ate a hearty supper, consisting of beefsteak and eggs, and after shaking hands with his friends he mounted the gallows with a firm step!"

Then he heard the thud of the music book on the organ, the creak of the treadle,--and when he returned to consciousness he was Mrs.

Mason's son-in-law, and proud of it. And she,--bless her heart and the hearts of all good women who give up the joy of their lives to us poor unworthy creatures,--she stood by the wax-flower wreath under the gla.s.s case on the whatnot in the corner, and wept into her real lace handkerchief, and wished with all the earnestness of her soul that she could think of some way to let John know that his trousers leg was wrinkled over his left shoe top. But she could not solve the problem, so she gave herself up to the consolation of her tears. Yet it should be set down to her credit that when the preacher's amen was said, hers was the first head up, and while the others were rushing for the happy pair she was in the kitchen with her ap.r.o.n on dishing up the wedding supper. Well might the Sycamore Ridge _Weekly Banner_ declare that the "tables groaned with good things." There were not merely a little piddling dish of salad, a bite of cake, and a dab of ice-cream. There were turkey and potatoes and vegetables and fruit and bread and cake and pudding and pie--four kinds of pie, mark you--and preserves, and "Won't you please, Mrs. Culpepper, try some of that piccalilli?" and "Oh, Mrs. Ward, if you just would have a slice of that fruit cake," and "Now, General,--a little more of the gravy for that turkey dressing--it is such a long ride home," or "Colonel, I know you like corn bread, and I made this myself as a special compliment to Virginia."

And through it all the bride sat watching the door--looking always through the crowd for some one. Her face was anxious and her heart was clouded, and when the guests had gone and the house was empty, she left her husband and slipped out of the back door. There, after the glare of the lamps had left her eyes, she saw a little man walking with his head down, out near the barn, and she ran to him and threw her arms about him and kissed him, and when she led Lycurgus Mason, who was all washed and dressed, back through the kitchen to her husband, John saw that the man's eyelids were red, and that on the starched cuffs were the marks of tears. For to him she was only his little girl, and John afterward knew that she was the only friend he had in the world. "Oh, father, why didn't you come in?" cried the daughter. "I missed you so!" The man blinked a moment at the lights and looked toward his wife, who was busy at a table, as he said: "Who?

Me?" and then added: "I was just lookin' after their horses. I was coming in pretty soon. You oughtn't to bother about me. Well, John,"

he smiled, as he put out his hand, "the seegars seems to be on you--as the feller says." And John put his arm about Lycurgus Mason, as they walked out of the kitchen, and Jane reached for her gingham ap.r.o.n. Then life began for Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay in earnest.

CHAPTER IX

Forty thousand words--and that is the number we have piled up in this story--is a large number of words to string together without a heroine. That is almost as bad as the dictionary, in which He and She are always hundreds of pages apart and never meet,--not even in the "Z's" at the end,--which is why the dictionary is so unpopular, perhaps. But this is the story of a man, and naturally it must have many heroines. For you know men--they are all alike! First, Mrs. Mary Barclay was a heroine--you saw her face, strong and clean and sharply chiselled with a great purpose; then Miss Lucy--black-eyed, red-cheeked, slender little Miss Lucy--was a heroine, but she married General Ward; and then Ellen Culpepper was a heroine, but she fluttered out of the book into the sunlight, and was gone; and then came Jane Mason,--and you have seen her girlish beauty, and you will see it develop into gentle womanhood; but the real heroine,--of the real story,--you have not seen her face. You have heard her name, and have seen her moving through these pages with her back consciously turned to you--for being a shy minx, she had no desire to intrude until she was properly introduced. And now we will whirl her around that you may have a good look at her.

Let us begin at the ground: as to feet--they are not too small--say three and a half in size. And they support rather short legs--my goodness, of course she has legs--did you think her shoes were pinned to her over-skirt? Her legs carry around a plump body,--not fat--why, certainly not--who ever heard of a fat heroine (the very best a heroine can do for comfort is to be plump)--and so beginning the sentence over again, being a plump little body, there is a neck to account for--a neck which we may look at, but which is so exquisite that it would be hardly polite to consider it in terms of language. Only when we come to the chin that tips the oval of the face may we descend to language, and even then we must rise and flick the red mouth with, but a pa.s.sing word. But this much must be plainly spoken. The nose does turn up--not much--but a little (Bob used to say, just to be good and out of the way)! That, however, is mere personal opinion, and of little importance here. But the eyes are brown--reddish brown, with enough white at the corners to make them seem liquid; only liquid is not the word. For they are radiant--remember that word, for we may come back to it, after we are done with the brow--a wide brow--low enough for d.i.c.kens and Thackeray and Charlotte Bronte, and for Longfellow and Whittier and Will Carleton in his day, and high enough for Tennyson at the temples, but not so high but that the gate of the eyes has to shut wearily when Browning would sail through the current of her soul. As to hair--Heaven knows there is plenty of that, but it had rather a checkered career. As she clung to her mother's ap.r.o.n and waved her father away to war, she was a tow-headed little tot, and when he came back from the field of glory he thought he could detect a tendency to red in it, but the fire smouldered and went out, and the hair turned brown--a dark brown with the glint of the quenched fires in it when it blew in the sun. Now frame a glowing young face in that soft waving hair, and you have a picture that will speak, and if the picture should come to life and speak as it was in the year of our Lord 1873, the first word of all the words in the big fat dictionary it would utter would be Bob. And so you may lift up your face and take your name and place in this story--Molly Culpepper, heroine.

And when you lift your face, we may see something more than its pretty features: we shall see a radiant soul. For scientists have found out that every material thing in this universe gives off atomic particles of itself, and some elements are more radiant than others. And there is a paralleling quality in the spiritual world, and some souls give off more of their colour and substance than others, though what it is they radiate we do not know. Even the scientists do not know the material things that the atoms radiate, so why should we be asked to define the essence of souls? Yet from the soul of Molly Culpepper, in joy and in sorrow, in her moments of usefulness and in her deepest woe, her soul glowed and shed its glory, and she grew even as she gave her substance to the world about her. For that is the magic of G.o.d's mystery of life.

And now having for the moment finished our discussion on the radio-activity of souls, let us go back to the story.

Mary Barclay rode home from her son's wedding that night with Bob Hendricks and Molly Culpepper. They were in a long line of buggies that began to scatter out and roam across fields to escape the dust of the roads. "Well," said Mrs. Barclay, as they pulled up the bank of the Sycamore for home, "I suppose it will be you and Molly next, Bob?"

It was Molly who replied: "Yes. It is going to be Thanksgiving."

"Well, why not?" asked Mrs. Barclay.

"Oh--they all seem to think we shouldn't, don't you know, Mrs.

Barclay--with all this hard times--and the bank closing. And hasn't John told you of the plan he's worked out for Bob to go to New York this winter?"

The buggy was nearing the Barclay home. Mrs. Barclay answered, "No,"

and the girl went on.

"Well, it's a big wheat land scheme--and Bob's to go East and sell the stock. They worked it out last night after the bank closed. He'll tell you all about it."

Mrs. Barclay was standing by the buggy when the girl finished. The elder woman bade the young people good night, and turned and went into the yard and stood a moment looking at the stars before going into her lonely house. The lovers let the tired horses lag up the hill, and as they turned into Lincoln Avenue the girl was saying: "A year's so long, Bob,--so long. And you'll be away, and I'm afraid." He tried to rea.s.sure her; but she protested: "You are all my life,--big boy,--all my life. I was only fourteen, just a little girl, when you came into my life, and all these long seven years you are the only human being that has been always in my heart. Oh, Bob, Bob,--always."

What a man says to his sweetheart is of no importance. Men are so circ.u.mscribed in their utterances--so tongue-tied in love. They all say one thing; so it need not be set down here what Bob Hendricks said. It was what the king said to the queen, the prince to the princess, the duke to the lady, the gardener to the maid, the troubadour to his dulcinea. And Molly Culpepper replied, "When are you going, Bob?"

The young man picked up the sagging lines to turn out for Watts McHurdie's buggy. He had just let Nellie Logan out at the Wards', where she lived. After a "h.e.l.lo, Watts; getting pretty late for an old man like you," Hendricks answered: "Well, you know John--when he gets a thing in his head he's a regular tornado. There was an immense crowd in town to-day--depositors and all that. And do you know, John went out this afternoon with a paper in his hand, and five hundred dollars he dug out of his safe over in the office, and he got options to lease their land for a year signed up by the owners of five thousand acres of the best wheat land in Garrison County. He wants twenty thousand acres, and pretty well bunched down in Pleasant and Spring townships, and I'm going in four days." The young man was full of the scheme. He went on: "John's a wonder, Molly,--a perfect wonder. He's got grit.

Father wouldn't have been able to stand up under this--but John has braced him, and has cheered up the people, and I believe, before the week is out, we will be able to get nearly all the depositors to agree to leave their money alone for a year, and then only take it out on thirty days' notice. And if we can get that, we can open up by the first of the month. But I've got to go on to Washington to see if I can arrange that with the comptroller of the currency."

They were standing at the Culpepper gate as he spoke. A light in the upper windows showed that the parents were in. Buchanan came ambling along the walk and went through the gate between them without speaking. When he had closed the door, the girl came close to her lover. He took her in his arms, and cried, "Oh, darling,--only four more days together." He paused, and in the starlight she saw on his face more than words could have told her of his love for her. He was a silent youth; the spoken word came haltingly to his lips, and as often happens, words were superfluous to him in his moments of great emotion. He put her hands to his lips, and moaned, for the hour of parting seemed to be hurrying down upon him. Finally his tongue found liberty. "Oh, sweetheart--sweetheart," he cried, "always remember that you are bound in my soul with the iron of youth's first love--my only love. Oh, I never could again, dear,--only you--only you. After this it would be a sacrilege."

They stood silent in the joy of their ecstacy for a long minute, then he asked gently: "Do you understand, Molly,--do you understand? this is forever for us, Molly,--forever. When one loves as we love--with our childhood and youth welded into it all--whom G.o.d hath joined--"

he stammered; "oh, Molly, whom G.o.d hath joined," he whispered, and his voice trembled as he sighed again, and kissed her, "whom G.o.d hath joined. Oh, G.o.d--G.o.d, G.o.d!" cried the lover, as he closed his eyes with his lips against her hair.

The restless horses recalled the lovers to the earth. It was Molly who spoke. "Bob--Bob--I can't let you go!"

Molly Culpepper had no reserves with her lover. She went on whispering, with, her face against his heart: "Bob--Bob, big boy, I am going to tell you something truthy true, that I never breathed to any one. At night--to-night, in just a few minutes--when I go up to my room--all alone--I get your picture and hold it to me close, and holding it right next to my very heart, Bob, I pray for you." She paused a moment, and then continued, "Oh, and--I pray for us--Bob--I pray for us." Then she ran up the stone walk, and on the steps she turned to throw kisses at him, but he did not move until he heard the lock click in the front door.

At the livery-stable he found Watts McHurdie bending over some break in his buggy. They walked up the street together. At the corner where they were about to part the little man said, as he looked into the rapturous face of the lanky boy, "Well, Bob,--it's good-by, John, for you, I suppose?"

"Oh--I don't know," replied the other from his enchanted world and then asked absently, "Why?"