Stories by American Authors Volume I Part 9

"Sure it's the first hard money I've seen these ten years, so it is,"

said Megilp.

"That is my case also," said Barwood. "I took as little interest in the matter as any boy of fourteen might be expected to; but I remember very well how rapidly specie disappeared at the beginning of the war."

"And where has it been?" said Megilp. "There's many fine points of interest about it, do you see. Consider the receptacles in which it has been h.o.a.rded--the secret places in chimneys, under floors and under ground, the vaults, old stockings, cabinets, and caskets that have teemed and glittered with it. Then there's the characters again, of all its various owners: the timid doubters about the government, the speculators, the curiosity hunters, the misers"--

"Yes," said Barwood, "the history of a single one of these pieces for the period would probably make a story full of interest." It did not detract from the value of Megilp's conversation, in Barwood's view, that the worthy artist said "foine" and "hoorded" instead of adopting the more conventional p.r.o.nunciation.

"But what I'm after telling you isn't the singular part of it at all,"

resumed Megilp, taking some silver from his pocket and evidently settling down to the subject. "What is ten years to it? According to the mint reports a coin of the precious metals loses by wear and tear but one twenty-four hundredth of its bulk in a year. These pieces I hold in my hand, coined forty years ago, are scarcely defaced. In another forty they will be hardly more so. What, for instance, has been the career of this Mexican dollar? Perhaps it was struck from bullion fresh from a Mexican mine. In that case I have nothing to say. But just as likely it was struck from old Spanish plate or from former coin, and then it takes us back to the earliest times, and its origin is lost in obscurity. The same metal is time after time re-melted, re-cast, re-stamped, and thus maintained in perpetual youth. This gold piece upon my watch-chain was perchance coined from the sands of the Pactolus, and once bore Chaldaean characters. And to what uses has it come?

'Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;'

and so the pieces paid for the ransom of the Inca of Peru or Richard the Lion-hearted, the material of the spurs of Agincourt, the rings of Cleopatra and Zen.o.bia, the golden targets of Solomon, fashioned from the treasures of Ophir, may purchase soap and candles and mutton-chops for John Smith. And yet why not? We ourselves have come down to commonplace usages; why should not the works of our hands? You with your conventional hat and English walking-coat, I with my spectacles and Irish brogue, have had ancestors that wore coats of mail in the first crusade, or tw.a.n.ged cross-bows with Robin Hood, sailed in the ships of Tarshish, and traded to Tyre and Sidon."

"You think, then," said Barwood, "that some part of the coinage of antiquity is still in circulation."

"To be sure I do, don't I tell you? I say the precious metals are indestructible. All the coins that have figured prominently in history are in some shape or other among us still. Twenty-four hundred years of active use are needed to wear out a coin completely. How long will it last with moderate use, and with intervals of lying buried for hundreds of years, as much of the coinage of antiquity now extant in its original condition has done? We have among us the rings, bolts, chains bracelets, drinking-vessels, and vases that glitter in the narratives of all the chroniclers, and embody the pomp and luxury of all the ages.

"My silver dollar here, which I ring upon Gruyere's table, and with which, had it not been for your amiable politeness, I should have paid for my frugal lunch, has haply been moulded in Cellini's dagger-hilts or crucifixes, or formed part of a pirate's booty from a scuttled galleon on the Spanish Main. For aught I know, it was current money in Nineveh and Babylon. Perhaps it is one of the pieces paid by Abraham to the children of Heth for the double cave that looked towards Mamre."

"Or one of the pieces for which Judas betrayed the Master," suggested Barwood.

Megilp looked startled, and involuntarily pushed the money away from him. "That is a singular fancy of yours."

"It came to me quite spontaneously this moment," said Barwood. "I don't know but it is, and yet it was a very natural sequence from what preceded."

Both were abstracted for some moments, and contemplated in silence the bubbles twisting up the stems of the delicate wine-gla.s.ses.

"Do you suppose," finally said Barwood, "that those coins, if extant, carry with them an enduring curse?"

"There's no good in them, you may depend," said the other. By this time both bottle and plates were empty. The train of thought they had been pursuing seemed to have found its climax in the turn given it by Barwood. Over their coffee and dessert they discussed more cheerful topics.

"Come around to my place before you leave town," said Megilp, as they shook hands at parting. "I have a one-legged bronze Hercules from Pompeii. I think ye'll enjoy it."

As he hobbled away he muttered to himself more than once, "It's the divil's own fancy, so it is."

II.

ETHEREAL CLAIMS.

The business of the Bureau of Ethereal Claims at Washington was conducted by a moderate force of clerks, under the direction of General Bellwether. The general had been a little of everything in his time. At the outbreak of the war he abandoned an unprofitable insurance agency to raise a company. He displayed considerable courage and strategic talent in his campaigning, came out a brevet brigadier, and had been making a good thing of it ever since in the government service. The office bristled with military t.i.tles. Everybody except Barwood and Judge Montane was either colonel, major, or captain. As to the judge, a middle-aged, uncommunicative man who was known to be supporting a large family, he confessed one day over a bottle, ordered in by the bureau during the general's absence, that his t.i.tle was chiefly honorary.

"What court did you used to be judge of, Montane?" inquired young Mars Brown.

"I'll tell you, boys," replied the judge, yielding to the genial influences of the occasion; "I'm just no judge at all, do you see, except may be as I'd be a good judge of whiskey or the like."

It was doubtful whether the claims of some others of the number could have been much better established.

Mars Brown, son of the senator of that name,--a man whose influence few generals or bureaus of claims could afford to disregard,--was naturally the most privileged character in the office. He chatted familiarly with the general when that irregular chief was present, absented himself for several days at a time with perfect unconcern, came late in the morning, and went early, as he explained, to make up for it. He was a handsome fellow, thoroughly confident of himself, and companionable. He displayed, among other accomplishments, an acquaintance with the manners and customs of horses and dogs, and a facility in the management of boats, guns, and fishing tackle that made him an indisputable authority on all matters of the sort. His stock of stories was immense, his wit always ready and very comical. He could convulse a dinner-party when everything else failed, by making ridiculous faces. Among ladies of all ages he was a sort of conquering hero. He was consequently in general social demand as the life of the company.

Such was Mars Brown, whom Barwood, shortly after his return to Washington, began to regard with distrust and dislike, as a possible rival in the quarter where his affections were chiefly centred.

It might have been expected, from the general's excessive preoccupation with lobbyists and politicians, that the business of the bureau should languish, and so it did. The brunt of it was borne by a few clerks--of whom Barwood was not one--whose tenure of office depended upon efficient work rather than upon influential backing. Government work must be performed by somebody, and it happens that, in spite of the great principle of rotation, the heads of men of undeniable usefulness rest firm upon their shoulders while hundreds are toppling all about them.

The bureau was not without spasmodic attempts at discipline. The general spent an occasional forenoon in lying in wait for delinquents, whose shortcomings he made the text for some very forcible remarks. The business of the office, he would state warmly, should be attended to, or he would make unpleasant theological arrangements for himself if he didn't know the reason why. With Brown he never went much further than to request, as a personal favor, that he would try to be on hand a little oftener and rather earlier, to which Brown always acceded quite cordially.

Admirable punctuality of attendance and of office hours was almost always observed for a couple of days after these formalities, and then things resumed the even tenor of their way.

Whatever might be the effect of this state of affairs upon the other employes of the office and upon the general public, it was certainly disastrous to the private interests of Henry Barwood. Naturally of an unpractical, somewhat morbid disposition, he needed the stimulus of a business life in which the necessity for action and its results when performed were constantly apparent. If engaged in his own ventures, taking risks and devising plans, he might have abandoned his speculations and fancies, and become a man of affairs. As it was, he found too much opportunity for their indulgence.

Every day from nine to three he a.s.sorted, copied, and made abstracts of applications and reports, the objects of which were remote, their expediency questionable, and their ultimate fate problematical. Without interest in the work and without any particular pressure for its performance, he dreamed over it, and often awoke from his reveries to find his figures inaccurate and his sentences meaningless.

Morbid people are probably as incomprehensible to themselves as to others. The world is viewed by each through the medium of his own ill-adjusted temperament. Objects are seen in a strangely tinted light, which is more than suspected to be delusive, yet cannot be decolorized.

Barwood's vision was affected by such a distorting influence. He discovered subtle meanings in ordinary things or circ.u.mstances, in the manner of a nod from an acquaintance or the tone of a remark, and brooded over them. He continually scrutinized and questioned his own motives and those of others.

The mind of every human being is a puzzle to every other. With what is it occupied when left to its own devices? There is, in Barwood's handwriting,[1] proof that his brain was filled with a procession of changing activities and impressions which were for the most part melancholy,--aspirations for fame, distrust in his own powers, forecasting of probabilities, repining for past sins and follies, rage and epithets for imaginary meetings with enemies. In the midst of all there were moments of perfect peace made up of reminiscences of a high-porticoed house, the gra.s.s-grown wheel-tracks and the sandy beach of the village on the Connecticut coast where his early home had been.

His fancies were rich and full, but slightly chaotic. So also his will was strong and imperious at times, but vacillating.

It could not be said that he was not ambitious He would have desired success in order to secure a kindly recognition and to obviate the jars and harshness of life. But no one prevailing impulse had ever enlisted his full powers. He saved money, with a general indefinite notion of some day becoming a capitalist, and also gave much time to studies of various sorts. He learned music among the rest, after coming of age, and composed music of his own, using as an inspiration a favorite poem, picture, or character. These compositions were marked by a quaintness like that--if a comparison may be made to something tangible--, of a Chinese vase or a broken bronze figure. His family, the Barwoods, had been from the earliest times a race of shrewd and driving New England storekeepers, the very antipodes of sentiment and dilettanteism. Such incongruities are among the compensations of nature. The Holbrook farm was the one locality, and Nina Holbrook the one figure, in the generally sombre prospect which Barwood saw about him, that gleamed in sunshine.

By the interposition of Mars Brown these also were presently shadowed.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: From entries in a carefully kept diary.]

III.

THE SEARCH.

It would have been strange, with Barwood's habits of retrospection and continual casting about for the rare and curious, if the subject matter of his conversation with the old painter at Gruyere's had not taken some hold upon his imagination. But to explain the rapidity with which the notion there suggested grew, and the absorbing interest with which it finally held him, would be difficult. The influence of the mind upon the body is known. By persistent direction of thought one can both create and cure a pain in any specific spot of his organism. The mind has a similar power over itself. By intense concentration upon one subject it may suspend and finally destroy its faculty of interest in any and all others.

The idea that the price of the treason of Judas is still extant and current in these every-day, commonplace times is at first sight utterly incongruous and incredible, perhaps a little sacrilegious. Yet it is evidently plausible. "The precious metals are indeed indestructible, as Megilp has said," soliloquized Barwood. "They do not oxidize. The most violent excesses of the elements have no effect upon them. If not still extant, where then are the treasures of the ages?

"Buried under ground or in the ocean.

"What proportion of the whole has been thus disposed of?

"In the absence of statistics a definite amount cannot be stated, but from the nature of the case it cannot be large. This form of wealth has been too highly esteemed, too jealously guarded, and too rigorously sought for when lost. In the wars and convulsions of society it has changed hands but it could not be destroyed. Alexander and Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar and Mahomet might overrun the world, burning and destroying, and melting its more fragile riches like frost-work. But the money of the vanquished was useful to the victor for his own purposes.

Rome took from Alexander, the barbarians from Rome, and modern civilization from the barbarians. The waves of time roll over and engulf all the monuments of men, all that gold and silver buy and sell, and, as it were, create; but these irrepressible tokens themselves float and glitter in the foam-crests upon those very billows. It cannot, then, be doubted that the instruments and accompaniments of most of the pomp and luxury, the war, treasons, and varied mercenary crimes of the world, are still acting their part in it.

"And why not with the rest the fatal money which Judas cast down before the chief priests in his remorse, going out to destroy himself?"

These were the reflections that recurred again and again to Barwood, and possessed him with a strange fascination. All coins acquired a new and intense interest. He saw in each the exponent of centuries of human pa.s.sions and activities. It is true that in a country like our own a large part of the coinage is fresh from the mine. Yet his occasional encounters with foreign, especially Mexican and Canadian pieces, and a consideration of the immense sums received at the great ports of entry, were, in his regard, sufficient to leaven the whole.