CHAPTER XVIII
In the sunshine of that era of world-wide prosperity in the eighties, John Barclay made much hay. He spent little time in Sycamore Ridge, and his private car might be found in Minnesota to-day and at the end of the week in California. As president of the Corn Belt Road and as controlling director in the North Lake Line, he got rates on other railroads for his grain products that no competitor could duplicate. And when a competitor began to grow beyond the small fry class, Barclay either bought him out or built a mill beside the offender and crushed him out. Experts taught him the value of the chaff from the grain. He had a dozen mills to which he shipped the refuse from his flour and heaven only knows what else, and turned the stuff into various pancake flours and breakfast foods. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising—in a day when large appropriations for advertising were unusual. And the words "Barclay's Best" glared at the traveller from crags in the Rocky Mountains and from the piers of all the great harbour bridges. He used Niagara to glorify the name of Barclay, and "Use Barclay's Best" had to be washed off the statue of the Goddess of Liberty in New York Harbour. The greenish brown eyes of the little man were forever looking into space, and when he caught a dream, instead of letting it go, he called a stenographer and made it come true. In those days he was beginning to realize that an idea plus a million dollars will become a fact if a man but says the word, whereas the same idea minus a million remains a dream. The great power of money was slowly becoming part of the man's consciousness. During the years that were to come, he came to think that there was nothing impossible. Any wish he had might be gratified. Such a consciousness drives men mad.
But in those prosperous days, while the millions were piling up, Barclay kept his head. All the world was buying then, but wherever he could Barclay sold. He bought only where he had to, and paid cash for what he bought. He did not owe a dollar for anything. He had no equities; his titles were all good. And as he neared his forties he believed that he could sell what he had at forced sale for many millions. He was supposed to be much richer than he was, but the one thing that he knew about it was that scores of other men had more than he. So he kept staring into space and pressing the button for his stenographer, and at night wherever his work found him, whether in Boston or in Chicago or in San Francisco, he hunted up the place where he could hear the best music, and sat listening with his eyes closed. He always kept his note-book in his hand, when Jane was not with him, and when an idea came to him inspired by the music, he jotted it down, and the next day, if it stood the test of a night's sleep, he turned the idea into an event.
In planning his work he was ruthless. He learned that by bribing men in the operating department of any railroad he could find out what his competitors were doing. And in the main offices of the National Provisions Company two rooms full of clerks were devoted to considering the duplicate way-bills of every car of flour or grain or grain product not shipped by the Barclay companies. Thus he was able to delay the cars of his competitors, and get his own cars through on time. Thus he was able to bribe buyers in wholesale establishments to push his products. And with Lige Bemis manipulating the railroad and judiciary committees in the legislatures of ten states, no laws were enacted which might hamper Barclay's activities.
"Do you know, Lucy," said General Ward to his wife one night when they were discussing Barclay and his ways and works, "sometimes I think that what that boy saw at Wilson's Creek,—the horrible bloodshed, the deadly spectacle of human suffering at the hospital wagon, some way blinded his soul's eye to right and wrong. It was alla man could stand; the picture must have seared the boy's heart like a fire."
Mrs. Ward, who was mending little clothes in the light of the dining-room lamp, put down her work a moment and said: "I have always thought the colonel had some such idea. For once when he was speaking of the way John stole that wheat land, he said, 'Well, poor John, he got a wound at Wilson's Creek that never will heal,' and when I asked if he meant his foot, the colonel smiled like a woman and said gently, 'No, Miss Lucy, not there—not there at all; in his heart, my dear, in his heart!'"
And the general's eyes met the eyes of a mother wandering toward a boy of nine sleeping, tired out, on a couch near by; he was a little boy with dark hair, and red tanned cheeks, and his mouth—such a soft innocent mouth—curved prettily, like the lips of children in old pictures, and as he slept he smiled, and the general, meeting the mother's eyes coming back from the little face, wiped his glasses and nodded his head in understanding; in a moment they both rose and stood hand in hand over their child, and the mother said in a trembling voice, "And his mother prayed for him, too—she has told me so—so many times."
But the people of Sycamore Ridge and of the Mississippi Valley did not indulge in any fine speculations upon the meaning of life when they thought of John Barclay. He had become considerable of a figure in the world, and the Middle West was proud of him. For those were the days of tin cornices, false fronts, vain pretences, and borrowed plumes bought with borrowed money. Other people's capital was easy to get, and every one was rich. Debt was regarded as an evidence of prosperity, and the town ran mad with the rest of the country. It is not strange then that Mrs. Watts McHurdie, she who for four years during the war dispensed "beefsteak—ham and eggs—breakfast bacon—tea—coffee—iced tea—or—milk" at the Thayer House, and for ten years thereafter sold dry-goods and kept books at Dorman's store, should have become tainted with the infection of thetimes. But it is strange that she could have inoculated so sane a little man as Watts. Still, there were Delilah and Samson, and of course Samson was a much larger man than Watts, and Nellie McHurdie was considerably larger than Delilah; and you never can tell about those things, anyway. Also it must not be forgotten that Nellie McHurdie since her marriage had become Grand Preceptress in one lodge, Worthy Matron in another, Senior Vice Commander in a third, and Worshipful Benefactress in a fourth, to say nothing of positions as corresponding secretary, delegate to the state convention, Keeper of the Records and Seals, Scribe,—and perhaps Pharisee,—in half a dozen others, all in the interests of her husband's political future; and with such obvious devotion before him, it is small wonder after all that he succumbed.
But he would not run for office. He had trouble every spring persuading her, but he always did persuade her, that this wasn't his year, that conditions were wrong, and that next year probably would be better. But he allowed her to call their home "The Bivouac," and have the name cut in stone letters on the horse-block; and he sat by meekly for many long years at lodges, at church entertainments, at high school commencement exercises, at public gatherings of every sort, and heard her sing a medley of American patriotic songs which wound up with the song that made him famous. It was five drinks in Jake Dolan that stopped the medley, when the drinks aforesaid inspired him to rise grandly from his chair at the front of the hall at an installation of officers of Henry Schnitzler Post of the Grand Army, and stalk majestically out of the room, while the singing was in progress, saying as he turned back at the door, before thumping heavily down the stairs, "Well, I'm getting pretty damn tired of that!" Mrs. McHurdie insisted that Watts should whip Dolan, and it is possible that at home that night Watts did smite his breast and shake his head fiercely, for in the morning the neighbours saw Mrs. McHurdie walk to the gate with him, talking earnestly and holding his arm as if to restrain him; moreover, when Watts had turned the corner ofLincoln Avenue and had disappeared into Main Street, she hurried over to the Culpeppers' to have the colonel warn Dolan that Watts was a dangerous man. But when Dolan, sober, walked into the harness shop that afternoon to apologize, the little harness maker came down the aisle of saddles in his shop blinking over his spectacles and with his hand to his mouth to strangle a smile, and before Dolan could speak, Watts said, "So am I—Jake Dolan—so am I; but if you ever do that again, I'll have to kill you."
It happened in the middle eighties—maybe a year before the college was opened—maybe a year after, though Gabriel Carnine, talking of it some twenty years later, insists that it happened two years after the opening of the college. But no one ever has mentioned the matter to Watts, so the exact date may not be recorded, though it is an important date in the uses of this narrative, as will be seen later. All agree—the colonel, the general, Dolan, Fernald, and perhaps two dozen old soldiers who were at the railroad station waiting for the train to take them to the National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic,—that it was a fine morning in September. Of course John Barclay contributed the band. He afterwards confessed to that, explaining that Nellie had told him that Watts never had received the attention he should receive either in the town or the state or the nation, and so long as Watts was a National Delegate for the first time in his life, and so long as she had twice been voted for as National President of the Ladies' Aid, and might get it this time, the band would be, as she put it, "so nice to take along"; and as John never forgot the fact that Nellie asked him to sing at her wedding, he hired the band. Thus are we bound to our past. But the band was not what caused the comrades to gasp, though its going was a surprise. And when they heard it turn into Main Street far up by Lincoln Avenue, playing the good old tune that the town loved for Watts' sake and for the sake of the time and the place and the heroic deeds it celebrated,—when they heard the band, the colonel asked the general, "Where'sWatts?" and they suspected that the band might be bringing him to the depot.
Heaven knows the town had bought uniforms and new horns for the band often enough for it to do something public-spirited once in a while without being paid for it. So the band did not come to the town as a shock in and of itself. Neither for that matter did the hack—the new glistening silver-mounted hack, with the bright spick-and-span hearse harness on the horses; in those bustling days a quarter was nothing, and you can ride all over the Ridge for a quarter; so when the comrades at the depot, in their blue soldiers' clothes their campaign hats, and their delegates' badges, saw the band followed by the hack, they were of course interested, but that was all. And when some of the far-sighted ones observed that the top of the hack was spread back royally, they commented upon the display of pomp, but the comment was not extraordinary. But when from the street as the band stopped, there came cheers from the people, the boys at the station felt that something unusual was about to come to them. So they watched the band march down the long sheet-iron-covered station walk, and the hack move along beside the band boys; and the poet's comrades-in-arms saw him sitting beside the poet's wife,—the two in solemn state. And then the old boys beheld Watts McHurdie,—little Watts McHurdie, with his grizzled beard combed, with his gold-rimmed Sunday glasses far down on his nose so that he could see over them, and—wonder of wonders, they saw a high shiny new silk hat wobbling over his modest head.
He stumbled out of the open hack with his hand on the great stiff awkward thing, obviously afraid it would fall off, and she that was Nellie Logan, late of the Thayer House and still later of Dorman's store, and later still most worshipful, most potent, most gorgeous and most radiant archangel of seven secret and mysterious covenants, conclaves, and inner temples, stood beaming at the pitiful sight, clearly proud of her shameless achievement. Watts, putting his hand to his mouth to cover his smile, grabbedthe shiny thing again as he nodded cautiously at the crowd. Then he followed her meekly to the women's waiting room, where the wives and sisters of the comrades were assembled—and they, less punctilious than the men, burst forth with a scream of joy, and the agony was over.
And thus Watts McHurdie went to his greatest earthly glory. The delegation from the Ridge, with the band, had John Barclay's private car; that was another surprise which Mrs. McHurdie arranged, and when they got to Washington, where the National Encampment was, opinions differ as to when Watts McHurdie had his high tide of happiness. The colonel says that it was in the great convention, where the Sycamore Ridge band sat in front of the stage, and where Watts stood in front of the band and led the great throng,—beginning with his cracked little heady tenor, and in an instant losing it in the awful diapason of ten thousand voices singing his old song with him; and where, when it was over, General Grant came down the platform, making his way rather clumsily among the chairs, and at last in front of the whole world grasped Watts McHurdie's hands, and the two little men, embarrassed by the formality of it all, stood for a few seconds looking at each other with tears glistening in their speaking eyes.
But Jake Dolan, who knows something of human nature, does not hold to the colonel's view about the moment of McHurdie's greatest joy. "We were filing down the Avenue again, thousands and ten thousands of us, as we filed past the White House nearly twenty years before. And the Sycamore Ridge band was cramming its lungs into the old tune, when up on the reviewing stand, beside all the big bugs and with the President there himself, stood little Watts, plug hat in hand, bowing to the boys. 'Twas a lovely sight, and he had been there for two mortal hours before we boys got down—there was the Kansas boys and the Iowa boys and some from Missouri, carrying the old flag we fought under at Wilson's Creek. Watts saw us down the street and heard the old band play; a dozen other bands had played that tune that day; but BillyDorman's tuba had its own kind of a rag in it, and Watts knew it. I seen him a-waving his hat at the boys, almost as soon as they saw him, and as the band came nearer and nearer I saw the little man's face begin to crack, and as he looked down the line and saw them Kansas and Iowa soldiers, I seen him give one whoop, and throw that plug hat hellwards over the crowd and jump down from that band stand like a wild man and make for the gang. He was blubbering like a calf when he caught step with me, and he yelled so as to reach my ears above the roar of the crowds and the blatting of the bands—yelled with his voice ripped to shreds that fluttered out ragged from the torn bosom of him, 'Jake—Jake—how I would like to get drunk—just this once!' And we went on down the avenue together—him bareheaded, hay-footing and straw-footing it the same as in the old days."
Jake always paused at this point and shook his head sorrowfully, and then continued dolefully: "But 'twas no use; he was caught and took away; some says it was to see the pictures in the White House, and some says it was to a reception given by the Relief Corps to the officers elect of the Ladies' Aid, where he was pawed over by a lot of old girls who says, 'Yes, I'm so glad—what name please—oh,—McHurdie, surely nottheMcHurdie; O dear me—Sister McIntire, come right here, this istheMcHurdie—you know I sang your song when I was a little girl'—which was a lie, unless Watts wrote it for the Mexican War, and he didn't. And then some one else comes waddling up and says, 'O dear me, Mr. McHurdie—you don't know how glad I am to see the author of "Home, Sweet Home,"' and Watts blinks his eyes and pleads not guilty; and she says, 'O dear, excuse the mistake; well, I'm sure you wrote something?' And Watts, being sick of love, as Solomon says in his justly celebrated and popular song, Watts looks through his Sunday glasses and doesn't see a blame thing, and smiles and says calmly, 'No, madam, you mistake—I am a simple harness maker.' And she sidles off looking puzzled, to make room for the one from Massachusetts, who stares at him through herglasses and says, 'So you're Watts McHurdie—who wrote the—' 'The same, madam,' says Watts, courting favour. 'Well,' says the high-browed one, 'well—you are not at all what I imagined.' And 'Neither are you, madam,' returns Watts, as sweet as a dill pickle; and she goes away to think it over and wonder if he meant it that way. No—that's where Nellie made her mistake. It wouldn't have hurt him—just once. But what's done's done, and can't be undone, as the man said when he fished his wife out of the lard vat."
Now this all seems a long way from John Barclay—the hero of this romance. Yet the departure of Watts McHurdie for his scene of glory was on the same day that a most important thing happened in the lives of Bob Hendricks and Molly Brownwell. That day Bob Hendricks walked one end of the station platform alone. The east-bound train was half an hour late, and while the veterans were teasing Watts and the women railing at Mrs. McHurdie, Hendricks discovered that it was one hundred and seventy-eight steps from one end of the walk to the other, and that to go entirely around the building made the distance fifty-four steps more. It was almost train time before Adrian Brownwell arrived. When the dapper little chap came with his bright crimson carnation, and his flashing red necktie, and his inveterate gloves and cane, Hendricks came only close enough to him to smell the perfume on the man's clothes, and to nod to him. But when Hendricks found that the man was going with the Culpeppers as far as Cleveland, as he told the entire depot platform, "to report the trip," Hendricks sat on a baggage truck beside the depot, and considered many things. As he was sitting there Dolan came up, out of breath, and fearful he should be late.
"How long will you be gone, Jake?" asked Hendricks.
"The matter of a week or ten days, maybe," answered Dolan.
"Well, Jake," said Hendricks, looking at Dolan with serious eyes, yet rather abstractedly, "I am thinking of taking a long trip—to be gone a long time—I don'tknow exactly how long. I may not go at all—I haven't said anything to the boys in the store or the bank or out at the shop about it; it isn't altogether settled—as yet." He paused while a switch engine clanged by and the crowd surged out of the depot, and ebbed back again into their seats. "Did you deliver my note this morning?"
"Yes," replied Dolan, "just as you said. That's what made me a little late."
"To the lady herself?"
"To the lady herself," repeated Dolan.
"All right," acquiesced Hendricks. "Now, Jake, if I give it out that I'm going away on a trip, there'll be a lot of pulling and hauling and fussing around in the bank and in the store and at the shop and—every place, and then I may not go. So I've gone over every concern carefully during the past week, and have set down what ought to be done in case I'm gone. I didn't tell my sister even—she's so nervous. And, Jake, I won't tell any one. But if, when you get back from Washington, I'm not here, I'm going to leave this key with you. Tell the boys at the bank that it will open my tin box, and in the tin box they'll find some instructions about things." He smiled, and Dolan assented. Hendricks uncoiled his legs from the truck, and began to get down. "I won't mix up with the old folks, I guess, Jake. They have their own affairs, and I'm tired. I worked all last night," he added. He held out his hand to Dolan and said, "Well, good-by, Jake—have a good time."
The elder man had walked away a few steps when Hendricks called him back, and fumbling in his pockets, said: "Well, Jake, I certainly am a fool; here—" he pulled an envelope marked "Dolan" from his inside pocket—"Jake, I was in the bank this morning, and I found a picture for you. Take it and have a good time. It's a long time till pension day—so long."
The Irishman peeped at the bill and grinned as he said, "Them holy pictures from the bank, my boy, have powerful healing qualities." And he marched off with joy in his carriage.
Hendricks then resumed his tramp; up and down the long platform he went, stepping on cracks one way, and avoiding cracks the next, thinking it all out. He tried to remember if he had been unfair to any one; if he had left any ragged edges; if he had taken a penny more than his honest due. The letter to the county treasurer, returning the money his father had taken, was on top of the pile of papers in his tin box at the bank. He had finally concluded, that when everything else was known, that would not add much to his disgrace. And then it would be paid, and that page with the forged entry would not always be in his mind. There were deeds, each witnessed by a different notary, so that the town would not gossip before he went, transferring all of his real estate to his sister, and the stock he had sold to the bank was transferred, and the records all in the box; then he went over the prices again at which he had disposed of his holdings to the bank, and he was sure he had made good bargains in every case for the bank. So it was all fair, he argued for the thousandth time—he was all square with the world. He had left a deposit subject to his check of twenty thousand dollars—that ought to do until they could get on their feet somewhere; and it was all his, he said to himself—all his, and no one's business.
And when he thought of the other part, the voice of Adrian Brownwell saying, "Well, come on, old lady, we must be going," rose in his consciousness. It was not so much Brownwell's words, as his air of patronage and possession; it was cheerful enough, quite gay in fact, but Hendricks asked himself a hundred times why the man didn't whistle for her, and clamp a steel collar about her neck. He wondered cynically if at the bottom of Brownwell's heart, he would not rather have the check for twelve thousand dollars which Hendricks had left for Colonel Culpepper, to pay off the Brownwell note, than to have his wife. For seven years the colonel had been cheerfully neglecting it, and now Hendricks knew that Adrian was troubling him about the old debt.
As he rounded the depot for the tenth time he got back to their last meeting. There stood General Ward with his arm about the girlish waist of Mrs. Ward, the mother of seven. There was John Barclay with Jane beside him, and they were holding hands like lovers. The Ward children were running like rabbits over the broad lawn under the elms, and there, talking to the wide, wide world, was Adrian Brownwell, propounding the philosophy of theBanner, and quoting from last week's editorials. And there sat Bob and Molly by the flower bed that bordered the porch.
"I am going to the city to hear Gilmore," he said. That was simple enough, and her sigh had no meaning either. It was just a weary little sigh, such as women sometimes bring forth when they decide to say something else. So she had said: "I'll be all alone next week. I think I'll visit Jane—if she's in town."
Then something throbbed in his brain and made him say:—
"So you'd like to hear Gilmore, too?"
She coloured and was silent, and the pulse of madness that was beating in her made her answer:—
"Oh—I can't—you know the folks are going to Washington to the encampment, and Adrian is going as far as Cleveland with the delegation to write it up."
An impulse loosened his tongue, and he asked:—
"Why not? Come on. If you don't know any one up there, go to the Fifth Avenue; it's all right, and I'll get tickets, and we'll go every night and both matinees. Come on!" he urged.
She was aflame and could not think. "Oh—don't, Bob, don't—not now. Please don't," she begged, in as low a tone as she dared to use.
Adrian was thundering on about the tariff, and the general was wrangling with him. The Barclays were talking to themselves, and the children were clattering about underfoot, and in the trees overhead. Bob's eyes and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw of pathos and yearning, and he said: "Well, why not?It's no worse to go than to want to go. What's wrong about it—Molly, do you think—"
He did not finish the sentence, for Adrian had ceased talking, and Molly, seeing his jealous eyes upon her, rose and moved away. But before they left that night she found occasion to say, "I've been thinking about it, Bob, and maybe I will."
In the year that had passed since Hendricks had left her sobbing in the chair on the porch of the Culpepper home, a current between them had been reëstablished, and was fed by the chance passing in a store, a smile at a reception, a good morning on the street, and the current was pulsing through their veins night and day. But that fine September morning, as she stood on the veranda of her home with a dust-cap on her head, cleaning up the litter her parents had made in packing, she was not ready for what rushed into her soul from the letter Dolan left her, as he hurried away to overtake the band that was turning from Lincoln Avenue into Main Street. She sat in a chair to read it, and for a moment after she had read it, she held it open in her lap and gazed at the sunlight mottling the blue grass before her, through the elm trees. Her lips were parted and her eyes wide, and she breathed slowly. The tune the band was playing—McHurdie's song—sank into her memory there that day so that it always brought back the mottled sunshine, the flowers blooming along the walk, and the song of a robin from a lilac bush near by. She folded the letter carefully, and put it inside her dress, and then moving mechanically, took it out and read it again:—
"My Darling, my Darling: There is no use struggling any more. You must come. I will meet you in the city at the morning train, the one that leaves the Ridge here at 2.35A.M. We can go to the parks to-morrow and be alone and talk it all out, before the concert—and then—oh, Molly, core of my soul, heart of my heart, why should we ever come back!Bob."
All that she could feel as she sat there motionless was a crashing "no." The thing seemed to drive her mad by its insistence—a horrible racking thing that all butshook her, and she chattered at it: "Why not? Why not? Why not?" But the "no" kept roaring through her mind, and as she heard the servant rattling the breakfast dishes in the house, the woman shivered out of sight and ran to her room. She fell on her knees to pray, but all she could pray was, "O God, O God, O God, help me!" and to that prayer, as she said it, the something in her heart kept gibbering, "Why not? Why not? Why not?" From an old box hidden in a closet opening out of her mother's room she took Bob Hendricks' picture,—the faded picture of a boy of twenty,—and holding it close to her breast, stared open-lipped into the heart of an elm tree-top. The whistle of the train brought her back to her real world. She rose and looked at herself in the mirror, at the unromantic face with its lines showing faintly around her eyes, grown quiet during the dozen years that had settled her fluffy hair into sedate waves. She smiled at the changes of the years and shook her head, and got a grip on her normal consciousness, and after putting away the picture and closing the box, she went downstairs to finish her work.
On the stairs she felt sure of herself, and set about to plan for the next day, and then the tumult began, between the "no" and her soul. In a few minutes as she worked the "no" conquered, and she said, "Bob's crazy." She repeated it many times, and found as she repeated it that it was mechanical and that her soul was aching again. So the morning wore away; she gossiped with the servant a moment; a neighbour came in on an errand; and she dressed to go down town. As she went out of the gate, she wondered where she would be that hour the next day, and then the struggle began again. Moreover, she bought some new gloves—travelling gloves to match her gray dress.
In the afternoon she and Jane Barclay sat on the wide porch of the Barclay home. "Gilmore's going to be in the city all this week," said Jane, biting a thread in her sewing.
"Is he?" replied Molly. "I should so like to hear him. It's so poky up at the house."
"Why don't you?" inquired Jane. "Get on the train and go on up."
"Do you suppose it would be all right?" replied Molly.
"Why, of course, girl! Aren't you a married woman of lawful age? I would if I wanted to."
There was a pause, and Molly replied thoughtfully, "I have half a notion to—really!"
But as she walked home, she decided not to do it. People from the Ridge might be there, and they wouldn't understand, and her finger-tips chilled at the memory of Adrian Brownwell's jealous eyes. So as she ate supper, she went over the dresses she had that were available. And at bedtime she gave the whole plan up and went upstairs humming "Marguerite" as happily as the thrush that sang in the lilacs that morning. As she undressed the note fell to the floor. When she picked it up, the flash of passion came tearing through her heart, and the "no" crashed in her ears again, and all the day's struggle was for nothing. So she went to bed, resolved not to go. But she stared through the window into the night, and of a sudden a resolve came to her to go, and have one fair day with Hendricks—to talk it all out forever, and then to come home, and she rose from her bed and tiptoed through the house packing a valise. She left a note in the kitchen for the servant, saying that she would be back for dinner the next evening, and when she struck a match in the front hall to see what time it was, she found that it was only one o'clock. For an hour she sat in the chill September air on the veranda, thinking it all over—what she would say; how they would meet and part; and over and over again she told herself that she was doing the sensible thing. As the clock struck two she picked up her valise—it was heavier than she thought, and it occurred to her that she had put in many unnecessary things, and that she had time to lighten it. But she stopped a moment only, and then walked to the gate and down a side street to the station. It was 2.20 when she arrived, and the train was marked on the blackboard by the ticket window on time. Shekept telling herself that it was best to have it out; that she would come right back; but she remembered her heavy valise, and again the warning "no" roared through her soul. She walked up and down the long platform, and felt the presence of Bob Hendricks strong and compelling; she knew he had been there that very day, and wondered where he sat. Then she thought perhaps she would do better not to go. She looked into the men's waiting room, and it was empty save for one man; his back was turned to her, but she recognized Lige Bemis. A tremble of guilt racked and weakened her. And with a thrill as of pain she heard the faint whistle of a train far up the valley. The man moved about the room inside. Apparently he also heard the far-off whistle. She shrank around the corner of the depot. But he caught sight of her dress, and slowly sauntered up and down the platform until he passed near enough to her to identify her in the faint flicker of the gas. He spoke, and she returned his greeting. The train whistled again—much nearer it seemed to her, but still far away, and her soul and the "no" were grappling in a final contest. Suddenly it came over her that she had not bought her ticket. Again the train whistled, and far up the tracks she could see a speck of light. She hurried into the waiting room to buy the ticket. The noise of the train was beginning to sound in her ears, She was frightened and nervous, and she fumbled with her purse and valise. Nearer and nearer came the train, and the "no" fairly screamed in her ears, and her face was pallid, with the black wrinkles standing out upon it in the gaslight. The train was in the railroad yards, and the glare of the headlight was in the waiting room. Bemis came in and saw her fumbling with her ticket, her pocket book, and her valise.
"You'll have to hurry, Mrs. Brownwell, this is the limited—it only stops a minute. Let me help you."
He picked up the valise and followed her from the room. The rush of the incoming train shattered her nerves. They pulsed in fear of some dreadful thing, and in that moment she wondered whether or not she wouldever see it all again—the depot, the familiar street, the great mill looming across the river, and the Barclay home half a mile above them. In a second she realized all that her going meant, and the "no" screamed at her, and the "why not" answered feebly. But she had gone too far, she said to herself. The engine was passing her, and Bemis was behind her with the heavy valise. She wondered what he would say when Bob met her at the train in the city. All this flashed across her mind in a second, and then she became conscious that the rumbling thing in front of her was not the limited but a cattle train, and the sickening odour from it made her faint. In the minute while it was rushing by at full speed she became rigid, and then, taking her valise from the man behind her, turned and walked as fast as she could up the hill, and when she turned the corner she tried to run. Her feet took her to the Barclay home. She stood trembling in terror on the great wide porch and rang the bell. The servant admitted the white-faced, shaking woman, and she ran to Jane Barclay's room.
"Oh, Jane," chattered Molly, "Jane, for God's love, Jane, hold me—hold me tight; don't let me go. Don't!" She sank to the floor and put her face in Jane's lap and stuttered: "I—I—have g-g-got to t-t-tell you, Jane. I've g-g-ot to t-t-t-ell you, J-J-Jane." And then she fell to sobbing. "Hold me, don't let me go out there. When it whistles ag-g-gain h-h-hold me t-t-tight."
Jane Barclay's strong kind hands stroked the dishevelled hair of the trembling woman. And in time she looked up and said quietly, "You know—you know, Jane, Bob and I—Bob and I were going to run away!" Molly looked at Jane a fearful second with beseeching eyes, and then dropped her head and fell to sobbing again, and lay with her face on the other woman's knees.
When she was quiet Jane said: "I wouldn't talk about it any more, dear—not now." She stroked the hair and patted the face of the woman before her. "Shall we go to bed now, dear? Come right in with me." And soon Molly rose, and her spent soul rested in peace. But theydid not go to bed. The dawn found the two women talking it out together—clear from the beginning.
And when the day came Molly Brownwell went to Jane Barclay's desk and wrote. And when Bob Hendricks came home that night, his sister handed him a letter. It ran:—
"My dearBob: I have thought it all out, dear; it wouldn't do at all. I went to the train, and something, I don't know what, caught me and dragged me over to Jane's. She was good—oh, so good. She knows; but it was better that she should than—the other way."It will never do, Bob. We can't go back. The terrible something that I did stands irrevocably between us. The love that might have made both our lives radiant is broken, Bob—forever broken. And all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot ever put it together again. I know it now, and oh Bob, Bob, it makes me sadder than the pain of unsatisfied love in my heart."It just can't be; nothing ever can make it as it was, and unless it could be that way—the boy and girl way, it would be something dreadful. We have missed the best in the world, Bob; we cannot enjoy the next best together. But apart, each doing his work in life as God wills it, we may find the next best, which is more than most people know."I have found during this hour that I can pray again, Bob, and I am asking God always to let me hope for a heaven, into which I can bring a few little memories—of the time before you left me. Won't you bring yours there, too, dear? Until then—good-by."Molly."
The springs that move God's universe are hidden,—those that move the world of material things and those that move the world of spiritual things, and make events creep out of the past into the future so noiselessly that they seem born in the present. It is all a mystery, the half-stated equation of life that we call the scheme of things. Only this is sure, that however remote, however separated by time and space, the tragedy of life has its root in the weakness of men, and of all the heart-breaking phantasms that move across the panorama of the day, somewhere deep-rooted in our own souls' weakness is the ineradicable cause. Even God's mercy cannot separate the punishment that follows sin, and perhaps it is the greatest mercy of His mercy that it cannot do so. For when we leave this world, our books are clear. If our souls grow—we pay the pricein suffering; if they shrivel, we go into the next world, poorer for our pilgrimage.
So do not pity Molly Brownwell nor Robert Hendricks when you learn that as she left the station at Sycamore Ridge that night, Lige Bemis went to a gas lamp and read the note from Robert Hendricks that in her confusion she had dropped upon the floor. Only pity the miserable creature whose soul was so dead in him that he could put that note away to bide his time. In this wide universe, wherein we are growing slowly up to Godhood, only the poor leprous soul, whitened with malice and hate, deserves the angels' tears. The rest of us,—weak, failing, frail, to whom life deals its sorrows and its tears, its punishments and its anguish,—we leave this world nearer to God than when we came here, and the journey, though long and hard, has been worth the while.
CHAPTER XIX
Back in the days when John Barclay had become powerful enough to increase the price of his door strips to the railroad companies from five dollars to seven and a half, he had transferred the business of the factory that made the strips from Hendricks' Exchange National to the new Merchants' State Bank which Gabriel Carnine was establishing. For Carnine and Barclay were more of a mind than were Barclay and Hendricks; Carnine was bent on getting rich, and he had come to regard Barclay as the most remarkable man in the world. Hendricks, on the other hand, knew Barclay to the core, and since the quarrel of the seventies, while they had maintained business relations, they were merely getting along together. There were times when Barclay felt uncomfortable, knowing that Hendricks knew much about his business, but the more Carnine knew, the more praise Barclay had of him; and so, even though Jane kept her own account with Hendricks, and though John himself kept a personal account with Hendricks, the Economy Door Strip Company and the Golden Belt Wheat Company did business with Carnine, and Barclay became a director of the Merchants' State Bank, and greatly increased its prestige thereby. And Bob Hendricks sighed a sigh of relief, for he knew that he would never become John Barclay's fence and be called upon to dispose of stolen goods. So Hendricks went his way with his eyes on a level and his jaw squared with the world. And when he knew that Jane knew the secret of his soul, about the only comfort he had in those black days was the exultation in his heart that John—whatever he might know—could not turn it into cash at the Exchange National Bank.
As he walked alone under the stars that first night after Molly Brownwell's note came to him, he saw his life as itwas, with things squarely in their relations. Of course this light did not stay with him always; at times in his loneliness the old cloud of wild yearning would come over him, and he would rattle the bars of his madhouse until he could fight his way out to the clean air of Heaven under the stars. And at such times he would elude Dolan, and walk far away from the town in fields and meadows and woods struggling back to sanity—sometimes through a long night. But as the years passed, this truth came to be a part of his consciousness—that in some measure the thing we call custom, or law, or civilization, or society, with all its faults, is the best that man, endowed as he is to-day, can establish, and that the highest service one can pay to man or to God is found in conforming to the social compact, at whatever cost of physical pain, or mental anguish, if the conformation does not require a moral breach. That was the faith he lived by, that by service to his fellows and by sacrifice to whatever was worthy in the social compact, he would find a growth of soul that would pay him, either here or hereafter. So he lent money, and sold light, and traded in merchandise, and did a man's work in politics—playing each game according to the rules.
But whatever came to him, whatever of honour or of influence, or of public respect, in his own heart there was the cloud—he knew that he was a forger, and that once he had offered to throw everything he had aside and take in return—But he was not candid enough even in his own heart to finish the indictment. It made him flush with shame, and perhaps that was why on his face there was often a curious self-deprecating smile—not of modesty, not of charity, but the smile of the man who is looking at a passing show and knows that it is not real. As he went into his forties, and the flux of his life hardened, he became a man of reserves—a kind, quiet, strong man, charitable to a fault for the weaknesses of others, but a man who rarely reflected his impulses, a listener in conversation, a dreamer amid the tumult of business, whose success lay in his industry and caution, and who drew men tohim not by what he promised, but by the faith we chattering daws have in the man who looks on and smiles while we prattle.
His lank bones began to take on flesh, and his face rounded at the corners, and the eagerness of youth passed from him. He always looked more of a man than John Barclay. For Barclay was a man of enthusiasms, who occasionally liked to mouth a hard jaw-breaking "damn," and who followed his instincts with womanly faith in them—so that he became known as a man of impulse. But Hendricks' power was in repression, and in Sycamore Ridge they used to say that the only reason why Bob Hendricks grew a mustache was to chew it when people expected him to talk. It wasn't much of a mustache—a little blond fuzz about as heavy as his yellow eyebrows over his big inquiring blue eyes, and he once told Dolan that he kept it for a danger signal. When he found himself pulling at it, he knew he was nervous and should get out into the open. They tell a story in the Ridge to the effect that Hendricks started to run to a fire, and caught himself pulling at his mustache, and turned around and went out to the power-house instead.
It was the only anecdote ever told of Hendricks after he was forty—for he was not a man about whom anecdotes would hang well, though the town is full of them about John Barclay. So Hendricks lived a strong reticent man, who succeeded in business though he was honest, and who won in politics by choosing his enemies from the kind of noisy men who make many mistakes, and let every one know it. The time came when he did not avoid Molly Brownwell; she felt that he was not afraid to see her in any circumstances, and that made her happy. Sometimes she went to him in behalf of one of her father's charges,—some poor devil who could not pay his note at the bank and keep the children in school, or some clerk or workman at the power-house who had been discharged. At such times they talked the matter in hand over frankly, and it ended by the man giving way to the woman, or showing her simply that she was wrong.
Only once in nearly a score of years did a personal word pass between them. She had come to him for his signature to a petition for a pardon for a man whose family suffered while he was in the penitentiary. Hendricks signed the paper and handed it back to her, and his blue eyes were fixed impersonally upon her, and he smiled his curious, self-deprecatory smile and sighed, "As we forgive our debtors." Then he reached for a paper in his desk and seemed oblivious to her presence. No one else was near them, and the woman hesitated a moment before turning to go and repeated, "Yes, Bob—as we forgive our debtors." She tried to show him the radiance in her soul, but he did not look up and she went away. When she had gone, he pushed aside his work and sat for a moment looking into the street; he began biting his mustache, and rose, and went out of the bank and found some other work.
That night as Hendricks and Dolan walked over the town together, Dolan said: "Did you ever know, Robert"—that was as near familiarity as the elder man came with Hendricks—"that Mart Culpepper owed his son-in-law a lot of money?"
"Well," returned Hendricks, "he borrowed a lot fifteen years ago or such a matter; why?"
"Well," answered Dolan, "I served papers on Mart to-day in a suit for—I dunno, a lot of money—as I remember it about fifteen thousand dollars. That seems like a good deal."
Hendricks grunted, and they walked on in silence. Hendricks knew from Brownwell's overdraft that things were not going well with him, and he believed that matters must have reached a painful crisis in the Culpepper family if Brownwell had brought suit against the colonel.
The next morning Colonel Martin Culpepper came into the bank. He had grown into a large gray man—with gray hair, gray mustaches of undiminished size, and chin whiskers grayed and broadened with the years. His fine black eyes were just beginning to lose their lustre, and the springwas going out of his stride. As he came into the bank, Hendricks noticed that the colonel seemed to shuffle just a little. He put out his fat hand, and said:—
"Robert, will you come into the back room with me a moment? It isn't business—I just want to talk with you." He smiled apologetically and added, "Just troubles, Robert—just an old man wants to talk to some one, in point of fact."
Hendricks followed the colonel into the directors' room, and without ceremony the colonel sank heavily into a fat leather chair, facing the window, and Hendricks sat down facing the colonel. The colonel looked at the floor and fumbled his triangular watch-charm a moment, and cleared his throat, as he spoke, "I don't know just how to begin—to get at it—to proceed, as I may say, Robert." Hendricks did not reply, and the colonel went on, "I just wanted to talk to some one, that's all—to talk to you—just to you, sir, to be exact."
Hendricks looked kindly at the colonel, whose averted eyes made the younger man feel uncomfortable. Then he said gently, "Well, Colonel, don't be backward about saying what you want to to me." It was a long speech for Hendricks, and he felt it, and then qualified it with, "But, of course, I don't want to urge you."
The colonel's face showed a flush of courage to Hendricks, but the courage passed, and there was a silence, and then a little twitch under his eyes told Hendricks that the colonel was contemplating a flank attack as he spoke, "Robert, may I ask you in confidence if Adrian Brownwell is hard up?"
Hendricks believed the truth would bring matters to a head, and he answered, "Well, I shouldn't wonder, Colonel."
"Very hard up?" pressed the colonel.
Hendricks remembered Brownwell's overdraft and half a dozen past due notes to cover other overdrafts and answered, "Well, Colonel, not desperate, but you know theIndexhas been getting the best of theBannerfor two or three years."
There was a pause, and then the colonel blurted out, "Well, Bob, he's sued me."
"I knew that, Colonel," returned Hendricks, anxious to press the matter to its core. "Jake told me yesterday."
"I was going to pay him; he's spoken about it several times—dunned me, sir, in point of fact, off and on for several years. But he knew I was good for it. And now the little coward runs off up to Chicago to attend the convention and sues me while he's gone. That's what I hate." Hendricks could see that the object of the colonel's visit was still on his mind, and so he left the way open for the colonel to talk. "You know how Mrs. Culpepper feels and how Molly feels—disgraced, sir, humiliated, shamed, to be exact, sir, in front of the whole town. What would you do, Robert? What can a man do in a time like this—I ask you, what can he do?"
"Well, I'd pay him, Colonel, if I were you," ventured the younger man.
The colonel straightened up and glared at Hendricks and exclaimed: "Bob Hendricks, do you think, sir, that Martin Culpepper would rest for a minute, while he had a dollar to his name, or a rag on his back, under the imputation of not paying a debt like that? It is paid, sir,—settled in full this morning, sir. But what am I going to do about him, sir—the contemptible scamp who publicly sued his own wife's father? That's what I came to you for, Robert. What am I going to do?"
"It'll be forgotten in a week, Colonel—I wouldn't worry about it," answered Hendricks. "We all have those little unpleasantnesses."
The colonel was silent for a time, and then he said: "Bob—" turning his eyes to meet Hendricks' for the first time during their meeting—"that scoundrel said to me yesterday morning before leaving, 'If I hadn't the misfortune of being your son-in-law, you wouldn't have the honour of owing me this money.' Then he sneered at me—you know the supercilious way he has, the damn miserable hound-pup way he has of grinning at you,—and says,'I regarded it as a loan, even though you seemed to regard it as a bargain.' And he whirled and left me." The colonel's voice broke as he added: "In God's name, Bob, tell me—did I sell Molly? You know—you can tell me."
The colonel was on his feet, standing before Hendricks, with, his hands stretched toward the younger man. Hendricks did not reply at once, and the colonel broke forth: "Bob Hendricks, why did you and my little girl quarrel? Did she break it or did you? Did I sell her, Bob, did I sell my little girl?" He slipped back into the chair and for a moment hid his face, and shook with a great sob, then pulled himself together, and said, "I know I'm a foolish old man, Bob, only I feel a good deal depends on knowing the truth—a good deal of my attitude toward him."
Hendricks looked at the colonel for an abstracted moment, and then said: "Colonel, Adrian Brownwell is hard up—very hard up, and you don't know how he is suffering with chagrin at being beaten by theIndex. He is quick-tempered—just as you are, Colonel." He paused a moment and took the colonel by the hand,—a fat, pink hand, without much iron in it,—and brought him to his feet. "And about that other matter," he added, as he put his arm about the colonel, "you didn't sell her. I know that; I give you my word on that. It was fifteen years ago—maybe longer—since Molly and I were—since we went together as boy and girl. That's a long time ago, Colonel, a long time ago, and I've managed to forget just why we—why we didn't make a go of it." He smiled kindly at the colonel as he spoke—a smile that the colonel had not seen in Hendricks' face in many years. Then the mask fell on his face, and the colonel saw it fall—the mask of the man over the face of the boy. A puzzled, bewildered look crept into the gray, fat face, and Hendricks could see that the doubt was still in the colonel's heart. The younger man pressed the colonel's hand, and the two moved toward the door. Suddenly tears flushed into the dimmed eyes of the colonel, andhe cried, through a smile, "Bob Hendricks, I believe in my soul you're a liar—a damn liar, sir, but, boy, you're a thoroughbred—God bless you, you're a thoroughbred." And he turned and shuffled from the room and out of the bank.
When Colonel Martin Culpepper left Robert Hendricks at the door of the directors' room of the Exchange National Bank, the colonel was persuaded in his heart that his daughter had married Adrian Brownwell to please her parents, and the colonel realized that day that her parents were pleased with Brownwell as a suitor for their daughter, because in time of need he had come to their rescue with money, and incidentally because he was of their own blood and caste—a Southern gentleman of family. The colonel went to the offices of the Culpepper Mortgage and Loan Company and went over his bank-book again. The check that he drew would take all but three hundred and forty-five dollars out of the accounts of his company, and not a dollar of it was his. The Culpepper Mortgage Company was lending other people's money. It had been lending money on farm mortgages for ten years. Pay-day on many mortgages was coming due, and of the fifteen thousand dollars he checked out to pay Adrian Brownwell's debt, thirteen thousand dollars was money that belonged to the Eastern creditors of the company—men and women who had sent their money to the company for it to lend; and the money checked out represented money paid back by the farmers for the release of their mortgages. Some of the money was interest paid by farmers on their mortgages, some of it was partial payments—but none of it was Colonel Culpepper's money.
"Molly," said the colonel, as his daughter came into the office, "I've given a check for that—that money, you know, to Adrian—paid it in full, my dear. But—" the colonel fumbled with his pencil a moment and added, "I'm a trifle shy—a few thousand in point of fact, and I just thought I'd ask—would you borrow it of Bob, if you were me?"
He looked at her closely, and she coloured and shook herhead vehemently as she replied: "Oh, no, father—no, can't you get it somewhere else? Not from Bob—for that! I mean—oh—I'd much rather not."
The colonel looked at his daughter a moment and drew a deep breath, and sighed, and smiled across his sigh, and took her hand and put it around his neck and kissed it, and when she was close to him he put his arm about her, and their eyes met for a fleeting instant, and they did not speak. But in a moment from across his desk the daughter spoke, "Why don't you go to John or Carnine, father?"
"Well, Gabe—you know Gabe. I'm borrowed clear to the limit there, now. And John—you know John, Molly—and the muss, the disagreeable muss,—the row, in point of fact, we had over that last seventy-five dollars settling up the College Heights business—you remember? Well, I just can't go to John. But," he added cheerfully, "I can get it elsewhere, my dear—I have other resources, other resources, my dear." And the colonel smiled so gayly that he deceived even his daughter, and she went home as happy as a woman with eyelids as red as hers were that day might reasonably expect to be.
As for the colonel, he sat figuring for an hour upon a sheet of white paper. His figures indicated that by putting all of his property except his home into the market, and reserving all of his commissions on loans that would fall due during the three years coming, he could pay back the money he had taken, little by little, and be square with the company's creditors in three years—or four at the most. So he let the check stand, and did not try to borrow money of the banks to make it good, but trusted to to-morrow's receipts to pay yesterday's debts of the company. Knowing that several mortgages of more than three thousand each would fall due in a few weeks, and that the men carrying them, expected to pay them, the colonel wrote dilatory letters to the Eastern creditors whose money he had taken, explaining that there was some delay in the payment of the notes, and that the matter would be straightened out in a few weeks. When the money came in from the mortgages falling due the next month,he paid those already due, and delayed the payment of Peter until Paul paid up. It was a miserable business, and Colonel Culpepper knew that he was a thief. The knowledge branded him as one, and bent his eyes to the ground, and wrenched his proud neck so that his head hung loosely upon it. Always when he spoke in public, or went among his poor on errands of mercy, at his elbow stood the accusing spectre, and choked his voice, and unnerved his hand. And trouble came upon the Culpeppers, and the colonel's clothes, which, had always been immaculate, grew shabby. As that year and the next passed and mortgages began falling due, not only in the colonel's company but all over the county, all over the state, all over the Missouri Valley, men found they could not pay. The cycle of business depression moved across the world, as those things come and go through the centuries. Moreover, General Ward was riding on the crest of a wave of unrest which expressed in terms of politics what the people felt in their homes. Debts were falling due; crops brought small returns; capital was frightened; men in the mills lost their work; men on the farms burned their corn; and Colonel Martin Culpepper sank deeper and deeper into the mire.
Those years of the panic of the early nineties pressed all the youth out of his step, dimmed the lustre of his eyes, and slowly broke his heart. His keenest anguish was not for his own suffering, but because his poor, the people at the Mission, came trooping to him for help, and he had to turn so many away. The whole town knew that he was in trouble, though no one knew or even suspected just what it was. For the people had their own troubles in those days, and the town and the county and the state and the whole world grew shabby.
One day in the summer of '93, Colonel Culpepper was sitting in his office reading a letter from Vermont demanding a long-deferred interest payment on a mortgage. There were three hundred dollars due, and the colonel had but half that amount, and was going to send what he had. Jake Dolan came into the office and saw the colonelsitting with the letter crumpled in his hands, and with worry in the dull old eyes.
"Come in, Jake, come in," cried the colonel, a little huskily. "What's the trouble, comrade—what's wrong?"
But let Dolan tell it to Hendricks three days later, as the two are sitting at night on the stone bridge across the Sycamore built by John Barclay to commemorate the battle of Sycamore Ridge. "'Well, Mart,' says I, 'I'm in vicarious trouble,' says I. 'It's along of my orphan asylum,' says I. 'What orphan asylum?' says he. 'Well, it's this way, Mart,' says I. 'You know they found Trixie Lee guilty this afternoon in the justice court, don't you?' Mart sighs and says, 'Poor Trixie, I supposed they would sooner or later, poor girl—poor girl. An' old Cap Lee of the Red Legs was her father; did you know that, Jake?' he asks. 'Yes, Mart,' says I, 'and Lady Lee before her. She comes by it honestly.' Mart sat drumming with his fingers on the table, looking back into the years. 'Poor Jim,' he says, 'Jim was a brave soldier—a brave, big-hearted, generous soldier—he nursed me all that first night at Wilson's Creek when I was wounded. Poor Jim.' 'Yes,' says I, 'and Trixie has named her boy for him—Jim Lord Lee Young; that was her husband's name—Young,' says I. 'And it's along of the boy that I'm here for. The nicest bright-eyed little chap you ever saw; and he seems to know that something is wrong, and just clings to his mother and cries—seven years old, or maybe eight—and begs me not to put his mother in jail. And,' says I to Mart, 'Mart, I just can't do it. The sheriff he's run, and so has the deputy; they can't stand the boy crying, and damn it to hell, Mart, I can't, either; so I just left 'em in the office and locked the door and come around to see you. I'd 'a' gone to see Bob, only he's out of town this week,' I says. 'I can throw up the job, Mart—though I'd have to go on the county; but Mart, they ain't a soul for the boy to go to; and it ain't right to put him in jail with the scum that's in there.'"
"Tough—wasn't it?" said Hendricks. "What did you do? Why didn't you go to Carnine or Barclay?"
"That's just what I'm a-comin' to,—the Priest or the Levite?" said Jake. "Well, Mart said, 'Where're the men they caught—won't they help?' and I says, 'They paid their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 'it amounts to the same thing; she can't pay her fine, and that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid!' 'So they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says Mart.' That's what your reform means,' says I, 'or I let her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh, Mart,' says I, 'the screams of that little boy at the disgrace of it and the terror of the jail—man—I can't stand it!' 'How much is it?' sighs Mart. 'An even hundred fine and seventeen dollars and fifty cents costs,' says I. Mart's eyes was leaking, and he gets up and goes to the vault, and comes back with the cash and says, blubbering like a calf: 'Here, Jake Dolan, you old scoundrel, take this. I'll pass a paper and get it to-morrow—now get out of here.' And he handed me the money all cried over where he'd been slow counting it out, and said when he'd got hold of his wobbly jaw: 'Don't you tell her where you got it—I don't want her around here. I'll see her to-morrow when I'm down that way and talk to her for old Cap Lee—' And then he laughs as he stands in the door and says: 'Well, Jim,' and he points up, 'your bread cast upon the waters was a long time a-coming—but here she is;' and he says, 'Do you suppose the old villain knows?' And I turned and hunted up the justice and went around to the office, and told Trixie to 'go sin no more,' and she laughs and says, 'Well, hardly ever!' and I kissed the kid, and he fought my whiskers, and we all live happy ever after."
But the colonel, after Dolan left the office, went into the darkening room, and spread out the harsh letter from the Vermont banker demanding money long past due, and read and reread it and took up his burden, and got into the weary treadmill of his life. It rained the next day, and he did not go out with his subscription paper; he hadlearned that people subscribe better on bright days; and as Hendricks and Barclay were both out of town, he wrote a dilatory letter to the Vermont people—the fifth he had written about that particular transaction—and waited another rainy day and still another before starting out with his paper. But the event was past; the cry of the child was not in the people's ears; they knew that the colonel had put up the money; so it was not until Hendricks came back and heard the story from Dolan that the colonel was repaid. Then because he actually had the money—at least half of it due on that particular debt, which was one of scores of its kind—the colonel delayed another day and another, and while he was musing the fire burned. And events started in Vermont which greatly changed the course of this story.
"I wonder," he has written in that portion of the McHurdie Biography devoted to "The Press of the Years," "why, as we go farther and farther into life, invariably it grows dingier and dingier. The 'large white plumes' that dance before the eyes of youth soil, and are bedraggled. And out of the inexplicable tangle of the mesh of life come dark threads from God knows where and colour the woof of it gray and dreary. Ah for the days of the large white plumes—for the days when life's woof was bright!"