CHAPTER XXII
"Speaking of lunatics," said Mr. Dolan to Mr. Hendricks one June night, a few weeks after the women had persuaded Mrs. McHurdie not to drag the poet into politics,—"speaking of lunatics, you may remember that I was born in Boston, and 'twas my duty as a lad to drive the Cambridge car, and many a time I have heard Mr. Holmes the poet and Mr. Emerson the philosopher discussing how the world was made; whether it was objective or subjective,—which I take it to mean whether the world is in the universe or only in your eye. One fine winter night we were waiting on a switch for the Boston car, when Mr. Holmes said to Mr. Emerson: 'What,' says he, 'would you think if Jake Dolan driving this car should come in and say, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but the moon I see this moment is not some millions of miles away, but entirely in my own noddle?"' 'I'd think,' says the great philosopher, never blinking, 'that Mr. Dolan was drunk,' says he. And there the discussion ended, but it has been going on in my head ever since. Here I am a man climbing up my sixties, and when have I seen the moon? Once walking by this very creek here trying to get me courage up to put me arm around her that is now Mary Carnine; once with me head poked up close to the heads of Watts McHurdie, Gabe Carnine, and Philemon Ward, serenading the girls under the Thayer House window the night before we left for the army. And again to-night, sitting here on the dam, listening to the music coming down the mill-pond. Did you notice them, Robert—the young people—Phil Ward's boy, and John Barclay's girl, and Mary Carnine's oldest, and Oscar Fernald's youngest, with their guitars and mandolins, piling into the boats and rowing up stream? And now they're singing the songs we sang—to their mothers, God bless 'em—the otherday before these children were born or thought of, and now I sit here an old man looking at the moon."
"But is it the moon?" he went on after a long silence, puffing at his pipe. "If the moon is off there, three or thirty or three hundred million miles away in the sky, where has it been these forty years? I've not seen it. And yet here she pops out of my memory into my eye, and if I say the moon has always been in my eye, and is still in my eye, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson says I'm drunk. But does that settle the question of who's got the moon—me or the cosmos—as the poets call it?" After that the two men smoked in silence, and as Hendricks threw away the butt of his cigar, Dolan said, "'Tis a queer, queer world, Robert—a queer, queer world."
Now do not smile at Mr. Dolan, gentle reader, for Adam must have thought the same thing, and philosophy has been able to say nothing more to the point.
It is indeed a queer, queer world, and our blindness is the queerest thing in it. Here a few weeks, later sit John and Jane Barclay on the terrace before their house one June night, listening to singing on the water. Suddenly they realize that there is youth in the world—yet there has been singing on the mill-pond ever since it was built. It has been the habitat of lovers for a quarter of a century, this mill-pond, yet Jane and John Barclay have not known it, and not until their own child's voice came up to them, singing "Juanita," did they realize that the song had not begun anew after its twenty years' silence in their own hearts, but always had been on the summer breeze. And this is strange, too, considering how rich and powerful John Barclay is and how by the scratch of his pen, he might set men working by the thousands for some righteous cause. Yet so it is; for with all the consciousness of great power, with all the feeling of unrestraint that such power gives a man, driving him to think he is a kind of god, John Barclay was only a two-legged man, with a limp in one foot, and a little mad place in his brain, wherein he kept the sense of his relation to the rest of this universe. And as he sat, blind to the moon, dreaming of a time when hewould control Presidents and dominate courts if they crossed his path, out on the mill-pond under an elm tree that spread like a canopy upon the water, a boy, letting the oars hang loosely, was playing the mandolin to a girl—a pretty girl withal, blue as to eyes, fair as to hair, strong as to mouth and chin, and glorious as to forehead—who leaned back in the boat, played with the overhanging branches, and listened and looked at the moon, and let God's miracle work unhindered in her heart. And all up and down those two miles of mill-pond were other boats and other boys and other maidens, and as they chatted and sang and sat in the moonlight, there grew in their hearts, as quietly as the growing of the wheat in the fields, that strange marvel of life, that keeps the tide of humanity ceaselessly flowing onward. And it is all so simply done before our eyes, and in our ears, that we forget it is so baffling a mystery.
Now let us project our astral bodies into the living room of the Barclay home, while Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay are away in Boston, and only John Barclay's mother and his daughter are in Sycamore Ridge; and let us watch a young man of twenty-one and a young woman of eighteen dispose of a dish of fudge together. Fudge, it may be explained to the unsophisticated, is a preparation of chocolate, sugar, and cream, cooked, cooled, and cut into squares. As our fathers and mothers pulled taffy, as our grandfathers and grandmothers conjured with maple sugar, and as their parents worked the mysterious spell with some witchery of cookery to this generation unknown, so is fudge in these piping times the worker of a strange witchery. Observe: Through a large room, perhaps forty feet one way and twenty-five feet the other way, flits a young woman in the summer twilight. She goes about humming, putting a vase in place here, straightening a picture there, kicking down a flapping rug, or rearranging a chair; then she sits down and turns on an electric light and pretends to read. But she does not read; the light shows her something else in the room that needs attention, and she turns to that. Then she sits down again, and again goes humming aboutthe room. Suddenly the young woman rises and hurries out of the room, and a footstep is heard on the porch, outside. A bell tinkles, and a maid appears, and—
"Yes," she says. "I'll see if Miss Jeanette is at home!"
And then a rustle of skirts is heard on the stairway and Miss Jeanette enters with: "Why, Neal, you are an early bird this evening—were you afraid the worm would escape? Well, it won't; it's right here on the piano."
The young man's eyes,—good, clear, well-set, dark eyes that match his brown hair; eyes that speak from the heart,—note how they dwell upon every detail of the opposing figure, caressing with their shy surreptitious glances the girl's hair, her broad forehead, her lips; observe how they flit back betimes to those ripe red lips, like bees that hover over a flower trembling in the wind; how the eyes of the young man play about the strong chin, and the bewitching curves of the neck and shoulders, and rise again to the hair, and again steal over the face, to the strong shoulders, and again hurry back to the face lest some feature fade. This is not staring—it is done so quickly, so furtively, so deftly withal as the minutes fly by, while the lips and the teeth chatter on, that the stolen honey of these glances is stored away in the heart's memory, all unknown to him who has gathered it.
An hour has passed now, while we have watched the restless eyes at their work, and what has passed with the hour? Nothing, ladies and gentlemen—nothing; gibber, chatter, giggles, and squeals—that is all. Grandma Barclay above stairs has her opinion of it, and wonders how girls can be so addle-pated. In her day—but who ever lived long enough or travelled far enough or inquired widely enough to find one single girl who was as wise, or as sedate, or as industrious, or as meek, or as gentle, or as kind as girls were in her grandmother's day? No wonder indeed that grandmothers are all married—for one could hardly imagine the young men of that dayoverlooking such paragons of virtue and propriety as lived in their grandmothers' days. Fancy an old maid grandmother with all those qualities of mind and heart that girls had in their grandmothers' days!
So the elder Mrs. Barclay in her room at the top of the stairs hears what "he said," "he said he said," and what "she said she said," and what "we girls did," and what "you boys ought to do," and what "would be perfectly lovely," and what "would be a lot of fun!" and so grandmother, good soul, grows drowsy, closes her door, and goes to bed. She does not know that they are about to sit down together on a sofa—not a long, straight, cold, formal affair, but a small, rather snuggly sofa, with the dish between them. No, girls never did that in their grandmothers' days, so of course who would imagine they would do so now? Who, indeed? But there they are, and there is the dish between them, and two hands reaching into the same dish, must of course collide. Collision is inevitable, and by carefully noting the repetitions of the collisions, one may logically infer that the collisions are upon the whole rather pleasurable than otherwise; and when it comes to the last piece of fudge in the dish,—the very last piece,—the astral observer will see that there is just the slightest, the very slightest, quickest, most fleeting little tussle of hands for it, and much laughter; and then the young woman rises quickly—also note the slight pink flush in her cheeks, and she goes to her chair and folds her pretty hands in her lap, and asks:—
"Well, do you like my fudge, Neal Ward? Is it as good as Belva Lockwood's? She puts nuts in hers—I've eaten it; do you like it with nuts in it?"
"Not so well as this," says the boy.
The girl slips into the dining room, for a glass of water. See the eyes of the youth following her. It is dusky in the dining room, and the youth longs for dusky places, but has not developed courage enough to follow her. But he has courage enough to steady his eyes as she comes back with the water, so that he can look into her blue eyes whileyou would count as much as one—two—three—slowly—four—slowly—five. A long, long time, so long indeed that she wishes he would look just a second longer.
So at the end of the evening here stand Neal, and Jeanette, even as Adam and Eve stood in the garden, talking of nothing in particular as they slowly move toward the door. "Yes, I suppose so," she says, as Eve said and as Eve's daughters have said through all the centuries, looking intently at the floor. And then Neal, suddenly finding the language of his line back to Adam, looks up to say, "Oh, yes, I forgot—but have you read 'Monsieur Beaucaire'?" Now Adam said, "Have you heard the new song that the morning stars are singing together?" and Priam asked Helen if she would like to hear that new thing of Solomon's just out, and so as the ages have rolled by, young gentlemen standing beside their adored but not declared ones have mixed literature with love, and have tied wisdom up in a package of candy or wild honey, and have taken it to the trysting place since the beginning of time. It is thus the poets thrive. And when she was asked about the new song of the morning stars, Eve, though she knew it as she knew her litany, answered no; and so did Eve's daughter, standing in the dimly lighted hallway of the Barclay home in Sycamore Ridge; and so then and there being, these two made their next meeting sure.
In those last years of the last century John Barclay became a powerful man in this world—one of the few hundred men who divided the material kingdoms of this earth among them. He was a rich man who was turning his money into great political power. Senates listened to him, many courts were his in fee simple, because he had bought and paid for the men who named the judges; Presidents were glad to know what he thought, and when he came to the White House, reporters speculated about the talk that went on behind the doors of the President's room, and the stock market fluttered. If he desired a law, he paid for it and got it—not in a coarse illegal way, to be sure, butthrough the regular conventional channels of politics, and if he desired to step on a law, he stepped on it, and a court came running up behind him, and legalized his transaction. He sneered at reformers, and mocked God, did John Barclay in those days. He grew arrogant and boastful, and strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain knowledge that he could increase the population of a state or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of a section of the country by his whim. For by changing a freight rate he could make wheat grow, where grass had nourished. By changing the rate again, he could beckon back the wilderness. And yet, how small was his power; here beside him, cherished as the apple of his eye, was his daughter, a slip of a girl, with blue eyes and fair hair, whose heart was growing toward the light, as the hearts of young things grow, and he, with all of his power, could only watch the mystery, and wonder at it. He was not displeased at what he saw. But it was one of the few things in his consciousness over which he could find no way to assume control. He stood in the presence of something that came from outside of his realm and ignored him as the sun and the rain and the simple processes of nature ignored him.
"Jane," he said one night, when he was in the Ridge for the first time in many weeks,—a night near the end of the summer when Jeanette and Neal Ward were vaguely feeling their way together, "Jane, mother says that while we've been away Neal Ward has been here pretty often. You don't suppose that—"
"Well, I've rather wondered about it myself a little," responded Jane. "Neal is such a fine handsome young fellow."
"But, Jane," exclaimed Barclay, impatiently, as he rose to walk the rug, "Jennie is only a child. Why, she's only—"
"Nineteen, John—she's a big girl now."
"I know, dear," he protested, "but that's absurdly young. Why—"
"Yes," she answered, "I was nearly twenty when I wasengaged to you, and Jennie's not engaged yet, nor probably even thinking seriously of it."
"Don't you think," cried Barclay, as he limped down the diagonal of the rug, "that you should do something? Isn't it a little unusual? Why—"
"Well, John," smiled the wife, "I might do what mother did: turn the young man over to father!" Barclay laughed, and she went on patiently: "It's not at all unusual, John, even if they do—that is, if they are—you know; but they aren't, and Jennie is too much in love with her work at school to quit that. But after all it's the American way; it was the way we did, dear, and the way our mothers and fathers did, and unless you wish to change it—to Europeanize it, and pick—"
"Ah, nonsense, Jane—of course I don't want that! Only I thought some way, if it's serious she ought to—Oh, don't you know she ought to—"
Mrs. Barclay broke her smile with, "Of course she ought to, dear, and so ought I and so ought mother when she married father and so ought my grandmother when she married grandpa—but did we? Dear, don't you see the child doesn't realize it? If it is anything, it is growing in her heart, and I wouldn't smudge it for the world, by speaking to her now—unless you don't like Neal; unless you think he's too—unless you want a different boy. I mean some one of consequence?"
"Oh, no, it isn't that, Jane—it isn't that. Neal's all right; he's clean and he is honest—I asked Bob Hendricks about him to-day, when we passed the boy chasing news for theBanner, and Bob gives him a fine name." Barclay threw himself into a chair and sighed. "I suppose it's just that I feel Jeanette's kind of leaving us out of it—that is all."
Jane went to him and patted his head gently, as she spoke: "That is nature, dear—the fawn hiding in the woods; we must trust to Jennie's good sense, and the good blood in Neal. My, but his sisters are proud of him! Last week Lizzie was telling me Neal's wages had been increased to ten dollars a week—and I don't supposetheir father in all of his life ever had that much of a steady income. The things the family is planning to do with that ten dollars a week brought tears of joy to my eyes. Neal's going to have his mother-in-law on his side, anyway—just as you had yours. I know now how mother felt."
But John Barclay did not know how mother felt, and he did not care. He knew how father felt—how Lycurgus Mason felt, and how the father of Mrs. Lycurgus Mason felt; he felt hurt and slighted, and he could not repress a feeling of bitterness toward the youth. All the world loves a daughter-in-law, but a father's love for a son-in-law is an acquired taste; some men never get it. And John Barclay was called away the next morning to throttle a mill in the San Joaquin Valley, and from there he went to North Dakota to stop the building of a competitive railroad that tapped his territory; so September came, and with it Jeanette Barclay went back to school. The mother wondered what the girl would do with her last night at home. She was clearly nervous and unsettled all the afternoon before, and made an errand into town and came back with a perturbed face. But after dinner the mother heard Jeanette at the telephone, and this is the one-sided dialogue the mother caught: "Yes—this is Miss Barclay." "Oh, yes, I didn't recognize your voice at first." "What meeting?" "Yes—yes." "And they are not going to have it?" "Oh, I see." "You were—oh, I don't know. Of course I should have felt—well, I—oh, it would have been all right with me. Of course." Then the voice cheered up and she said: "Why, of course—come right out. I understand." A pause and then, "Yes, I know a man has to go where he is called." "Oh, she'll understand—you know father is always on the wing." "No—why, no, of course not—mother wouldn't think that of you. I'll tell her how it was." "All right, good-by—yes, right away." And Jeanette Barclay skipped away from the telephone and ran to her mother to say, "Mother, that was Neal Ward—he wants to come out, and he was afraid you'd think it rude for him to ask that way, but you know he had ameeting to report and thought he couldn't come, and now they've postponed the meeting, and I told him to come right out—wasn't that all right?"
And so out came Neal Ward, a likely-looking young man of twenty-one or maybe twenty-two—a good six feet in height, with a straight leg, a square shoulder, and firm jaw, set like his father's, and clean brown eyes that did not blink. And as Jeanette Barclay, with her mother's height, and her father's quick keen features, and her Grandmother Barclay's eyes and dominant figure, stood beside him in the doorway, Mrs. Jane Barclay thought a good way ahead, and Jeanette would have blushed her face to a cinder if the mother had spoken her thoughts. The three, mother and daughter and handsome young man, sat for a while together in the living room, and then Jane, who knew the heart of youth, and did not fear it, said, "You children should go out on the porch—it's a beautiful night; I'm going upstairs."
And now let us once more in our astral bodies watch them there in the light of the veiled moon—for it is the last time that even we should see them alone. She is sitting on a balustrade, and he is standing beside her, and their hands are close together on the stones. "Yes," he is saying, "I shall be busy at the train to-morrow trying to catch the governor for an interview on the railroad question, and may not see you."
"I wish you would throw the governor into the deep blue sea," she says, and he responds:—
"I wish I could." There is a silence, and then he risks it—and the thing he has been trying to say comes out, "I wonder if you will do something for me, Jeanette?"
"Oh, I don't know—don't ask me anything hard—not very hard, Neal!"
The last word was all he cared for, and by what sleight of hand he slipped his fraternity pin from his vest into her hand, neither ever knew.
"Will you?" he asks. "For me?"
She pins it at her throat, and smiles. Then she says, "Is this long enough—do you want it back now?"
He shakes his head, and finally she asks, "When?" and then it comes out:—
"Never."
And her face reddens, and she does not speak. Their hands, on the wall, have met—they just touch, that is all, but they do not hasten apart. A long, long time they are silent—an eternity of a minute; and then she says, "We shall see in the morning."
And then another eternal minute rolls by, and the youth slips the rose from her hair—quickly, and without disarranging a strand.
"Oh," she cries, "Neal!" and then adds, "Let me get you a pretty one—that is faded."
But no, he will have that one, and she stands beside him and pins it on his coat—stands close beside him, and where her elbows and her arms touch him he is thrilled with delight. In the shadow of the great porch they stand a moment, and her hand goes out to his.
"Well, Jeanette," he says, and still her hand does not shrink away, "well, Jeanette—it will be lonesome when you go."
"Will it?" she asks.
"Yes—but I—I have been so happy to-night."
He presses her hand a little closer, and as she says, "I'm so glad," he says, "Good-by," and moves down the broad stone steps. She stands watching him, and at the bottom he stops and again says:—
"Well—good-by—Jeanette—I must go—I suppose." And she does not move, so again he says, "Good-by."
"Youth," said Colonel Martin Culpepper to the assembled company in the ballroom of the Barclay home as the clock struck twelve and brought in the twentieth century; "Youth," he repeated, as he tugged at the bottom of Buchanan Culpepper's white silk vest, to be sure that it met his own black trousers, and waved his free hand grandly aloft; "Youth," he reiterated, as he looked over the gay young company at the foot of the hall,while the fiddlers paused with their bows in the air, and the din of the New Year's clang was rising in the town; "Youth,—of all the things in God's good green earth,—Youth is the most beautiful." Then he signalled with some dignity to the leader of the orchestra, and the music began.
It was a memorable New Year's party that Jeanette Barclay gave at the dawn of this century. The Barclay private car had brought a dozen girls down from the state university for the Christmas holidays, and then had made a recruiting trip as far east as Cleveland and had brought back a score more of girls in their teens and early twenties—for an invitation from the Barclays, if not of much social consequence, had a power behind it that every father recognized. And what with threescore girls from the Ridge, and young men from half a dozen neighbouring states,—and young men are merely background in any social picture,—the ballroom was as pretty as a garden. It was her own idea,—with perhaps a shade of suggestion from her father,—that the old century should be danced out and the new one danced in with the pioneers of Garrison County set in quadrilles in the centre of the floor, while the young people whirled around them in the two-step then in vogue. So the Barclays asked a score or so of the old people in for dinner New Year's Eve; and they kept below stairs until midnight. Then they filed into the ballroom, with its fair fresh faces, its shrill treble note of merriment,—these old men and women, gray and faded, looking back on the old century while the others looked into the new one. There came Mr. and Mrs. Watts McHurdie in the lead, Watts in his best brown suit, and Mrs. Watts in lavender to sustain her gray hair; General Ward, in his straight black frock coat and white tie, followed with Mrs. Dorman, relict of the late William Dorman, merchant, on his arm; behind him came the Brownwells, in evening clothes, and Robert Hendricks and his sister,—all gray-haired, but straight of figure and firm of foot; Colonel Culpepper followed with Mrs. Mary Barclay; the Lycurgus Masons were next in the file, andin their evening clothes they looked withered and old, and Lycurgus was not sure upon his feet; Jacob Dolan in his faded blue uniform marched in like a drum-major with the eldest Miss Ward; and the Carnines followed, and the Fernalds followed them; and then came Judge and Mrs. Bemis—he a gaunt, sinister, parchment-skinned man, with white hair and a gray mustache, and she a crumbling ruin in shiny satin bedecked in diamonds. Down the length of the long room they walked, and executed an old-fashioned grand march, such as Watts could lead, while the orchestra played the tune that brought cheers from the company, and the little old man looked at the floor, while Mrs. McHurdie beamed and bowed and smiled. And then they took their partners to step off the quadrille—when behold, it transpired that in all the city orchestra, that had cost the Barclays a thousand dollars according to town tradition, not one man could be found who could call off a quadrille. Then up spake John Barclay, and stood him on a chair, and there, when the colonel had signalled for the music to start, the voice of John Barclay rang out above the din, as it had not sounded before in nearly thirty years. Old memories came rushing back to him of the nights when he used to ride five and ten and twenty miles and play the cabinet organ to a fiddle's lead, and call off until daybreak for two dollars. And such a quadrille as he gave them—four figures of it before he sent them to their seats. There were "cheat or swing," the "crow's nest," "skip to my Loo,"—and they all broke out singing, while the young people clapped their hands, and finally by a series of promptings he quickly called the men into one line and the women into another, and then the music suddenly changed to the Virginia reel. And so the dance closed for the old people, and they vanished from the room, looking back at the youth and the happiness and warmth of the place with wistful but not eager eyes; and as Jacob Dolan, in his faded blues and grizzled hair and beard, disappeared into the dusk of the hallway, Jeanette Barclay, looking at her new ring, patted it and said to Neal Ward: "Well, dear, the nineteenthcentury is gone! Now let us dance and be happy in this one."
And so she danced the new year and the new century and the new life in, as happy as a girl of twenty can be. For was she not a Junior at the state university, if you please? Was she not the heir of all the ages, and a scandalous lot of millions besides, and what is infinitely more important to a girl's happiness, was she not engaged, good and tight, and proud of it, to a youth making twelve dollars every week whether it rained or not? What more could an honest girl ask? And it was all settled, and so happily settled too, that when she had graduated with her class at the university, and had spent a year in Europe—but that was a long way ahead, and Neal had to go to the City with father and learn the business first. But business and graduation and Europe were mere details—the important thing had happened. So when it was all over that night, and the girls had giggled themselves to bed, and the house was dark, Jeanette Barclay and her mother walked up the stairs to her room together. There they sat down, and Jeanette began—
"Neal said he told you about the ring?"
"Yes," answered her mother.
"But he did not show it to you—because he wanted me to be the first to see it."
"Neal's a dear," replied her mother. "So that was why? I thought perhaps he was bashful."
"No, mother," answered the girl, "no—we're both so proud of it." She kept her hand over the ring finger, as she spoke, "You know those 'Short and Simple Annals' he's been doing for theStar—well, he got his first check the day before Christmas, and he gave half of it to his father, and took the other twenty-five dollars and bought this ring. I think it is so pretty, and we are both real proud of it." And then she took her hand from the ring, and held her finger out for her mother's eyes, and her mother kissed it. They were silent a moment; then the girl rose and stood with her hand on the doorknob and cried: "I think it is the prettiest ring in all the world,and I never want any other." Then she thought of mother, and flushed and ran away.
And we should not follow her. Rather let us climb Main Street and turn into Lincoln Avenue and enter the room where Martin Culpepper sits writing the Biography of Watts McHurdie. He is at work on his famous chapter, "Hymen's Altar," and we may look over his great shoulder and see what he has written: "The soul caged in its prison house of the flesh looks forth," he writes, "and sees other chained souls, and hails them in passing like distant ships. But soul only meets soul in some great passion of giving, whether it be man to his fellow-man, to his God, or in the love of men and women; it matters not how the ecstasy comes, its root is in sacrifice, in giving, in forgetting self and merging through abnegation into the source of life in this universe for one sublime moment. For we may not come out of our prison houses save to inhale the air of heaven once or twice, and then go scourged back to our dungeons. Great souls are they who love the most, who breathe the deepest of heaven's air, and give of themselves most freely."
CHAPTER XXIII
The next morning, before the guests were downstairs, Barclay, reading his morning papers before the fireplace, stopped his daughter, who was going through the living room on some morning errand.
"Jeanette," said the father, as he drew her to his chair arm, "let me see it."
She brought the setting around to the outside of her finger, and gave him her hand. He looked at it a moment, patted her hand, put the ring to his lips, and the two sat silent, choked with something of joy and something of sorrow that shone through their brimming eyes. Thus Mary Barclay found them. They looked up abashed, and she bent over them and stroked her son's hair as she said:—
"John, John, isn't it fine that Jennie has escaped the curse of your millions?"
Barclay's heart was melted. He could not answer, so he nodded an assenting head. The mother stooped to kiss her son's forehead, as she went on, "Not with all of your millions could you buy that simple little ring for Jennie, John." And the father pressed his lips to the ring, and his daughter snuggled tightly into his heart and the three mingled their joy together.
Two hours later Barclay and General Ward met on the bridge by the mill. It was one of those warm midwinter days, when nature seems to be listening for the coming of spring. A red bird was calling in the woods near by, and the soft south wind had spring in it as it blew across the veil of waters that hid the dam. John Barclay's head was full of music, and he was lounging across the bridge from the mill on his way home to try his new pipe organ. He had spent four hours the day before at his organ bench,trying to teach his lame foot to keep up with his strong foot. So when General Ward overhauled him, Barclay was annoyed. He was not the man to have his purposes crossed, even when they were whims.
"I was just coming over to the mill to see you," said the general, as he halted in Barclay's path.
"All right, General—all right; what can I do for you?"
The general was as blunt a man as John Barclay. If Barclay desired no beating around the bush, the general would go the heart of matters. So he said, "I want to talk about Neal with you."
Barclay knew that certain things must be said, and the two men sat in a stone seat in the bridge wall, with the sun upon them, to talk it out then and there. "Well, General, we like Neal—we like him thoroughly. And we are glad, Jane and I, and my mother too—she likes him; and I want to do something for him. That's about all there is to say."
"Yes, but what, John Barclay—what?" exclaimed the general. "That's what I want to know. What are you going to do for him? Make him a devil worshipper?"
"Well now, General, here—don't be too fast," Barclay smiled and drawled. He put his hands on the warm rocks at his sides and flapped them like wing-tips as he went on: "Jeanette and Neal have their own lives to live. They're sensible—unusually sensible. We didn't steal Neal, any more than you stole Jeanette, General, and—"
"Oh, I understand that, John; that isn't the point," broke in the general. "But now that you've got him, what are you going to do with him? Can't you see, John, he's my boy, and that I have a right to know?"
"Now, General, will you let me do a little of this talking?" asked Barclay, impatiently. "As I was saying, Jeanette and Neal are sensible, and money isn't going to make fools of them. When the time comes and I'm gone, they'll take the divine responsibility—"
"The divine tommyrot!" cried the general; "the divinefiddlesticks! Why should they? What have they done that they should have that thrust upon them like a curse; in God's name, John Barclay, why should my Neal have to have that blot upon his soul? Can't they be free and independent?"
Barclay did not answer; he looked glumly at the floor, and kicked the cement with his heel. "What would you have them do with the money when they get it," he growled, "burn it?"
"Why not?" snapped the general.
"Oh—I just thought I'd ask," responded Barclay.
The two men sat in silence. Barclay regarded conversation with the general in that mood as arguing with a lunatic. Presently he rose, and stood before Ward and spoke rather harshly: "What I am going to do is this—? and nothing more. Neal tells me he understands shorthand: I know the boy is industrious, and I know that he is bright and quick and honest. That's all he needs. I am going to take him into our company as a stockholder—with one share—a thousand-dollar share, to be explicit; I'm going to give that to him, and that's all; then he's to be my private secretary for three years at five thousand a year, so long as you must know, and then at the end of that time, if he and Jennie are so minded, they're going to marry; and if he has any business sense—of course you know what will happen. She is all we have, General—some one's got to take hold of things."
As Barclay spoke General Ward grew white—his face was aquiver as his trembling voice cried out: "Oh, God, John Barclay, and would you take my boy—my clean-hearted, fine-souled boy, whom I have taught to fear God, and callous his soul with your damned money-making? How would you like me to take your girl and blacken her heart and teach her the wiles of the outcasts? And yet you're going to teach Neal to lie and steal and cheat and make his moral guide the penal code instead of his father's faith. Shame on you, John Barclay—shame on you, and may God damn you for this thing, John Barclay!" The old man trembled, but the sob that shookhis frame had no tears in it. He looked Barclay in the eyes without a tremor for an angry moment, and then broke: "I am an old man, John; I can't interfere with Neal and Jeanette; it's their life, not mine, and some way God will work it out; but," he added, "I've still got my own heart to break over it—that's mine—that's mine."
He rose and faced the younger man a moment, and then walked quickly away. Barclay limped after him, and went home. There he sat on his bench and made the great organ scream and howl and bellow with rage for two hours.
When Neal Ward went to the City to live, he had a revelation of John Barclay as a man of moods. The Barclay Neal Ward saw was an electric motor rather than an engine. The power he had to perceive and to act seemed transmitted to him from the outside. At times he dictated letters of momentous importance to the young man, which Neal was sure were improvised. Barclay relied on his instincts and rarely changed a decision. He wore himself out every day, yet he returned to his work the next day without a sign of fag. The young man found that Barclay had one curious vanity—he liked to seem composed. Hence the big smooth mahogany table before him, with the single paper tablet on it, and the rose—the one rose in the green vase in the centre of the table. Visitors always found him thus accoutred. But to see him limping about from room to room, giving orders in the great offices, dictating notes for the heads of the various departments, to see him in the room where the mail was received, worrying it like a pup, was to see another man revealed. He liked to have people from Sycamore Ridge call upon him, and the man who kept door in the outer office—a fine gray-haired person, who had the manners of a brigadier—knew so many people in Sycamore Ridge that Neal used to call him the City Directory. One day Molly Brownwell called. She was the only person who ever quelled the brigadier; but when a woman has been a social leader in a country town all of her life, she has a social poise that may not be impressed by a mere brigadier. Mrs. Brownwellrealized that her call was unusual, but she refused to acknowledge it to him. Barclay seemed glad to see her, and as he was in one of his mellow moods he talked of old times, and drew from a desk near the wall, which he rarely opened, an envelope containing a tintype picture of Ellen. Culpepper. He showed it to her sister, and they both sat silent for a time, and then the woman spoke.
"Well, John," she said, "that was a long time ago."
"Forty years, Molly—forty years."
When they came back to the world she said: "John, I am up here looking for a publisher. Father has written a Biography of Watts, and collected all of his poems and things in it, and we thought it might sell—Watts is so well known. But the publishers won't take it. I want your advice about it."
Barclay listened to her story, and then wheeled in his chair and exclaimed, "Can Adrian publish that book?"
"Yes," she answered tentatively; "that is, he could if it didn't take such an awful lot of money."
After discussing details with her, Barclay called Neal Ward and said:—
"Get up a letter to Adrian Brownwell asking him to print for me three thousand copies of the colonel's book, at one dollar and fifty cents a copy, and give seventy-five per cent of the profits to Colonel Culpepper. We'll put that book in every public library in this country. How's that?" And he looked at the tintype and said, "Bless her dear little heart."
"Neal," asked Barclay, as Mrs. Brownwell left the room, "how old are you? I keep forgetting." When the young man answered twenty-five, Barclay, who was putting away the tintype picture, said, "And Jeanette will be twenty-three at her next birthday." He closed the desk and looked at the youth bending over his typewriter and sighed. "Been going together off and on five or six years—I should say."
Neal nodded. Barclay put his hand on his chin and contemplated the young man a moment. "Ever have any other love affair, son?"
The youngster coloured and looked up quickly with a puzzled look and did not reply.
Barclay cut in with, "Well, son, I'm glad to find you don't lie easily." He laughed silently. "Jennie has—lots of them. When she was six she used to cry for little Watts Fernald, and they quarrelled like cats and dogs, and when she was ten there was an Irish boy—Finnegan I think his name was—who milked the cow, whom she adored, and when she was fourteen or so, it was some boy in the high school who gave her candy until her mother had to shoo him off, and I don't know how many others." He paused for a few seconds and then went on, "But she's forgotten them—that's the way of women." His eyes danced merrily as he continued, while he scratched his head: "But with us men—it's different. We never forget." He chuckled a moment, and then his face changed as he said, "Neal, I wish you'd go into the mail room and see if the noon mail has anything in it from that damn scoundrel who's trying to start a cracker factory in St. Louis—I hate to bother to smash him right now when we're so busy."
But it so happened that the damn scoundrel thought better of his intention and took fifty thousand for his first thought, and Neal Ward, being one of the component parts of an engaged couple, went ahead being sensible about it. All engaged couples, of course, resolve to be sensible about it. And for two years and a half—during nineteen one and two and part of nineteen three—Jeanette Barclay and Neal Ward had tried earnestly and succeeded admirably (they believed) in being exceedingly sensible about everything. Jeanette had gone through school and was spending the year in Europe with her mother, and she would be home in May; and in June—in June of 1904—why, the almanac stopped there; the world had no further interest, and no one on earth could imagine anything after that. For then they proposed not to be sensible any longer.
In the early years of this century—about 1902, probably—John Barclay paid an accounting company twenty-fivethousand dollars—more money than General Ward and Watts McHurdie and Martin Culpepper and Jacob Dolan had saved in all their long, industrious, frugal, and useful lives—to go over his business, install a system of audits and accounts, and tell him just how much money he was worth. After a score of men had been working for six months, the accounting company made its report. It was put in terms of dollars and cents, which are fleeting and illusive terms, and mean much in one country and little in another, signify great wealth at one time and mere affluence in another period. So the sum need not be set down here. But certain interesting details of the report may be set down to illuminate this narrative. For instance, it indicates that John Barclay was a man of some consequence, when one knows that he employed more men in that year than many a sovereign state of this Union employed in its state and county and city governments. It signifies something to learn that he controlled more land growing wheat than any of half a dozen European kings reign over. It means something to realize that in those years of his high tide John Barclay, by a few lines dictated to Neal Ward, could have put bread out of the reach of millions of his fellow-creatures. And these are evidences of material power—these men he hired, these lands he dominated, and this vast store of food that he kept. So it is fair to assume that if this is a material world, John Barclay's fortune was founded upon a rock. He and his National Provisions Company were real. They were able to make laws; they were able to create administrators of the law; and they were able to influence those who interpreted the law. Barclay and his power were substantial, palpable, and translatable into terms of money, of power, of vital force.
And then one day, after long years of growth in the under-consciousnesses of men, an idea came into full bloom in the world. It had no especial champions. The people began to think this idea. That was all. Now life reduced to its lowest terms consists of you and him and me. Put us on a desert island together—you and him and me—and hecan do nothing without you and me—except he kill us, and then he is alone; even then we haunt him, so our influence still binds him. You can do nothing without him and me, and I can do nothing without you and him. Not that you and he will hold me; not that you will stop me; but what you think and say will bind me to your wishes tighter than any chains you might forge. What you and he think is more powerful than all the material forces of this universe. For what you and he think is public opinion. It is not substantial; it is not palpable. It may not readily be translated into terms of money, or power, or vital force. But it crushes all these things before it. When this public opinion rises sure and firm and strong, no material force on this earth can stop it. For a time it may be dammed and checked. For a day or a week or a year or a decade it may be turned from its channel; yet money cannot hold it; arms cannot hold it; cunning cannot baffle it. For it is God moving among men. Thus He manifests Himself in this earth. Through the centuries, amid the storm and stress of time, often muffled, often strangled, often incoherent, often raucous and inarticulate with anguish, but always in the end triumphant, the voice of the people is indeed the voice of God!
Nearly a dozen years had passed since the Russian painted the picture of John Barclay, which hangs in the public library of Sycamore Ridge, and in that time the heart of the American people had changed. Barclay was beginning to feel upon him, night and day, the crushing weight of popular scorn. He called the idea envy, but it was not envy. It was the idea working in the world, and the weight of the scorn was beginning to crumple his soul; for this idea that the people were thinking was finding its way into newspapers, magazines, and books. They were beginning to question the divine right of wealth to rule, because it was wealth—an idea that Barclay could not comprehend even vaguely. The term honest wealth, which was creeping into respectable periodicals, was exceedingly annoying to him. For the very presence of the term seemed to indicate that there was such a thing as dishonestwealth,—an obvious absurdity; and when he addressed the students of the Southwestern University at their commencement exercises in 1902, his address attracted considerable attention because it deplored the modern tendency in high places toward socialism and warned the students that a nation of iconoclasts would perish from the earth. But the people went on questioning the divine right of wealth to rule. In the early part of 1903 Barclay was astounded at the action of a score of his senators and nearly a hundred of his congressmen, who voted for a national law prohibiting the giving of railroad rebates. He was assured by all of them that it was done to satisfy temporary agitation, but the fact that they voted for the law at all, as he explained to Senator Myton, at some length and with some asperity, was a breach of faith with "interests in American politics which may not safely be ignored." "And what's more," he added angrily, "this is a personal insult to me. That law hits my Door Strip."
And then out of the clear sky like a thunderbolt, not from an enemy, not from any clique or crowd he had fought, but from the government itself, during the last days of Congress came a law creating a Department of Commerce and Labour at Washington, a law giving federal inspectors the right to go through books of private concerns. Barclay was overwhelmed with amazement. He raged, but to no avail; and his wrath was heated by the rumours printed in all the newspapers that Barclay and the National Provisions Company were to be the first victims of the new law. Mrs. Barclay and Jeanette were going to Europe in the spring of 1903, and Barclay on the whole was glad of it. He wished the decks cleared for his fight; he felt that he must not have Jane at his elbow holding his hand from malice in the engagement that was coming, and when he left them on the boat, he spent a week scurrying through the East looking for some unknown enemy in high financial circles who might be back of the government's determination to move against the N.P.C. He felt sure he could uncover the source of his trouble—andthen, either fight his enemy or make terms. It did not occur to Barclay that he could not find a material, palpable, personal object upon which to charge or with which to capitulate. But he found nothing, and crossed the Alleghanies puzzled.
When he got home, he learned that a government inspector, one H. S. Smith, was beginning the investigation of the Provisions Company's books in St. Paul, Omaha, Chicago, and Denver. Barclay learned that Smith had secured some bills of lading that might not easily be explained. Incidentally, Barclay learned that an attempt had been made, through proper channels, to buy Smith, and he was nonplussed to learn that Smith was not purchasable. Then to end the whole matter, Barclay wrote to Senator Myton, directing him to have Smith removed immediately. But Myton's reply, which was forwarded to Barclay at Sycamore Ridge, indicated that "the orders under which Smith is working come from a higher source than the department."
Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith—a man whom he could buy and sell a dozen times from one day's income from his wealth—flamed into a passion. He tore Myton's letter to bits, and refreshed his faith in the god of Things As They Are by garroting a mill in Texas. While the Texas miller was squirming, Barclay did not consider Inspector Smith consciously, but in remote places in his mind always there lived the scorned person whom Barclay knew was working against him.
From time to time in the early summer the newspapers contained definite statements, authorized from Washington with increasing positiveness, that the cordon around the N.P.C. was tightening. In July Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith grew into disquietude; for a letter from Judge Bemis, of the federal court,—written up in the Catskills,—warned him that scorn was not the only emotion with which he should honour Smith. After reading Bemis' confidential and ambiguous scrawl, Barclay drummed for a time with his hard fingers on the mahogany before him, stared at the print sketches of machinery above him, andpaced the floor of his office with the roar of the mill answering something in his angry heart. He could not know that the tide was running out. He went to his telephone and asked for a city so far away that when he had finished talking for ten minutes, he had spent enough money to keep General Ward in comfort for a month. Neal Ward, sitting in his room, heard Barclay say: "What kind of a damn bunco game were you fellows putting up on me in 1900? You got my money; that's all right; I didn't squeal at the assessment, did I?" Young Ward in the pause closed his door. But the bull-like roar of Barclay came through the wood between them in a moment, and he heard: "Matter enough—here's this fellow Smith bullying my clerks out in Omaha, and nosing around the St. Paul office; what right has he got? Who is he, anyway—who got him his job? I wrote to Myton to get him removed, or sent to some other work, and Myton said that the White House was back of him. I wish you'd go over to Washington, and tell them who I am and what we did for you in '96 and 1900; we can't stand this. It's a damned outrage, and I look to you to stop it." In a moment Ward heard Barclay exclaim: "You can't—why, that's a hell of a note! What kind of a fellow is he, anyway? Tell him I gave half a million to the party, and I've got some rights in this government that a white man is bound to respect—or does he believe in taking your money and letting you whistle?" A train rolling by the mill drowned Barclay's voice, but at the end of the conversation Ward heard Barclay say: "Well, what's a party good for if it doesn't protect the men who contribute to its support? You simply must do it. I look to you for it. You got my good money, and it's up to you to get results."
There was some growling, and then Barclay hung up the receiver. But he was mad all day, and dictated a panic interview to Ward, which Ward was to give to the Associated Press when they went to Chicago the next day. In the interview, Barclay said that economic conditions were being disturbed by half-baked politicians, and that values would shrink and the worst panic in thehistory of the country would follow unless the socialistic meddling with business was stopped.
The summer had deepened to its maturest splendour before Barclay acknowledged to himself his dread of the City. For he began to feel a definite discomfiture at the panorama of his pictures on the news-stands in connection with the advertising of the Sunday newspapers and magazines. The newspapers were blazoning to the whole country that the Economy Door Strip was a blind for taking railroad rebates, and everywhere he met the report of Inspector Smith that the National Provisions Company's fifty-pound sack of Barclay's Best contained but forty-eight pounds and ten ounces; also that Barclay had been taking three ounces out of the pound cartons of breakfast food, and that the cracker packages were growing smaller, while the prices were not lowered. Even in Sycamore Ridge the reporters appeared with exasperating regularity, and the papers were filled with diverting articles telling of the Barclays' social simplicity and rehashing old stories of John Barclay's boyhood. His attempt to stop the investigation of the National Provisions Company became noised around Washington, and the news of his failure was frankly given out from the White House. This inspired a cartoon from McCutcheon in theChicago Tribune, representing the President weighing a flour sack on which was printed "Barclay's Worst," with Barclay behind the President trying to get his foot on the scales.
All of his life Barclay had been a fighter; he liked to hit and dodge or get hit back. His struggles in business and in the business part of politics had been with tangible foes, with material things; and his weapons had been material things: coercion, bribery (more or less sugar-coated), cheating, and often in these later years the roar of his voice or the power of his name. But now, facing the formless, impersonal thing called public opinion, hitherto unknown in his scheme of things, he was filled with uncertainty and indecision.
One autumn day, after sending three stenographershome limp and weary with directions for his battles, Barclay strayed into McHurdie's shop. The general and Dolan were the only members of the parliament present that afternoon, besides Watts. Barclay nodded at the general without speaking, and Dolan said:—
"Cool, ain't it? Think it will freeze?"
Barclay took a chair, and when Dolan and Ward saw that he had come for a visit, they left.
"Watts," asked Barclay, after the others had gone, and the little man at the bench did not speak, "Watts, what's got into the people of this country? What have I done that they should begin pounding me this way?"
McHurdie turned a gentle smile on his visitor, knowing that Barclay would do the talking. Barclay went on: "Here are five suits in county courts in Texas against me; a suit in Kansas by the attorney-general, five or ten in the Dakotas, three in Nebraska, one or two in each of the Lake states, and the juries always finding against me. I haven't changed my methods. I'm doing just what I've done for fifteen years. I've had lots of lawsuits before, with stockholders and rival companies and partners, and millers and all that—but this standing in front of the mob and fighting them off—why? Why? What have I done? These county attorneys and attorneys-general seem to delight in it—now why? They didn't used to; it used to be that only cranks like old Phil Ward even talked of such things, and people laughed at them; and now prosecuting attorneys actually do these things, and people reelect them. Why? What's got into the people? What am I doing that I haven't been doing?"
"Maybe the people are growing honest, John," suggested the harness maker amiably.
Barclay threw back his head and roared: "Naw—naw—it isn't that; it's the damn newspapers. That's what it is! They're what's raising the devil. But why? Why? What have I done? Why, they have even bulldozed some of my own federal judges—my own men, Watts, my own men; men whose senators came into my office with their hats in their hands and asked permissionto name these judges. Now why?" He was silent awhile and then began chuckling: "But I fixed 'em the other day. Did you see that article in all the papers briefed out of New York about how that professor had said that the N.P.C. was an economic necessity? I did that, Watts: and got it published in the magazines, too—and our advertising agents made all the newspapers that get our advertising print it—and they had to." Barclay laughed. After a moody silence he continued: "And you know what I could do. I could finance a scheme to buy out the meat trust and the lumber trust, and I could control every line of advertising that goes into the damn magazines—and I could buy the paper trust too, and that would fix 'em. The Phil Wards are not running this country yet. The men who make the wealth and maintain the prosperity have got to run it in spite of the long-nosed reformers and socialists. You know, Watts, that we men who do things have a divine responsibility to keep the country off the rocks. But she's drifting a lot just now, and they're all after me, because I'm rich. That's all, Watts, just because I've worked hard and earned a little money—that's why." And so he talked on, until he was tired, and limped home and sat idly in front of his organ, unable to touch the keys.
Then he turned toward the City to visit his temporal kingdom. There in the great Corn Exchange Building his domain was unquestioned. There in the room with the mahogany walls he could feel his power, and stanch the flow of his courage. There he was a man. But alas for human vanity! When he got to the City, he found the morning papers full of a story of a baby that had died from overeating breakfast food made at his mills and adulterated with earth from his Missouri clay banks, as the coroner had attested after an autopsy; and a miserable county prosecutor was looking for John Barclay. So he hid all the next day in his offices, and that evening took Neal Ward on a special train in his private car, on a roundabout way home to Sycamore Ridge.
It was a wretched homecoming for so great and successful a man as Barclay. Yet he with all his riches, withall his material power, even he longed for the safety of home, as any hunted thing longs for his lair. On the way he paced the diagonals of the little office room in his car, like a caged jackal. The man had lost his anchor; the things which his life had been built on would not hold him. Money—men envied the rich nowadays, he said, and the rich man had no rights in the courts or out of them; friends—they had gone up in the market, and he could not afford them; politics—he had found it a quicksand. So he jabbered to Neal Ward, his secretary, and pulled down the curtains of his car on the station side of every stop the train made in its long day's journey.