CHAPTER XXIV
It was nearly midnight when the special train pulled into Sycamore Ridge, and Neal Ward hurried home. He went to his room, and found there a letter and a package, both addressed in Jeanette's handwriting. The letter was only a note that read:—
"My dearest Boy: I could not wait to send it for your Christmas present. So I am sending it the very day it is finished. I hope it will bring me close to you—into your very heart and keep me there. I have kissed it—for I knew that you would."Your lovingJeanette."
He tore open the package and found a miniature of Jeanette done on ivory—that seemed to bring her into the room, and illumine it with her presence. The thing bloomed with life, and his heart bounded with joy as his eyes drank the beauty of it. His father called from below stairs, and the youth went down holding the note and the miniature in his hands. Before the father could speak, the son held out the picture, and Philemon Ward looked for a moment into the glowing faces—that of the picture and that of the living soul before him, and hesitated before speaking.
"I got your wire—" he began.
"But isn't it beautiful, father—wonderful!" broke in the son.
The father assented kindly and then continued: "So I thought I'd sit up for you. I had to talk with you." The son's face looked an interrogation, and the father answered, "Read that, Neal—" handing his son a letter in a rich linen envelope bearing in the corner the indication that it was written at the Army and Navy Club in Washington. The lovely face in the miniature lay on the table between them and smiled up impartially at father and son as the young man drew out the letter and read:—
"My dear General Ward: This letter will introduce to you Mr. H. S. Smith, an inspector from the Bureau of Commerce and Labour, who has been working upon evidence connected with the National Provisions Company. I happened to be at luncheon this afternoon with a man of the highest official authority, whose name it would be bad faith to divulge, but whom I know you respect, even if you do not always agree with him. I mentioned your name and the part you took in the battle of the Wilderness, and my friend was at once interested, though, of course, he had known you by name and fame for forty years. One word led to another, as is usual in these cases, and my friend mentioned the fact that your son, Neal Dow Ward, is secretary to John Barclay, and in a position to verify certain evidence which the government now has in the N.P.C. matter. I happen to know that the government is exceedingly anxious to be exactly correct in every charge it makes against this Company, and hence I am writing to you. Your son can do a service to his country to-day by telling the truth when he is questioned by Inspector Smith, to my mind as important as that you did in the Wilderness. Inspector Smith has a right to question him, and will do so, and I have promised my friend here to ask you to counsel with your son, and beg him in the name of that good citizenship for which you have always stood, and for which you offered your life, to tell the simple truth. As a comrade and a patriot, I have no doubt what you will do, knowing the facts."
Neal Ward put his hand on the table, with the letter still in his fingers. "Father," he asked blankly, "do you know what that means?"
"Yes, Neal, I think I understand; it means that to-morrow morning will decide whether you are a patriot or a perjurer, my boy—a patriot or a perjurer!" The general, who was in his shirt-sleeves and collarless, rose, and putting his hands behind him, backed to the radiator to warm them.
"But, father—father," exclaimed the boy, "how can I? What I learned was in confidence. How can I?"
The father saw the anguish in his son's face, and did not reply at once. "Is it crooked, Neal?"
"Yes," replied the son, and then added: "So bad I was going to get out of it, as soon as Jeanette came home. I couldn't stand it—for a life, father. But I promised to stay three years, and try, and I think I should keep my promise."
The father and son were silent for a time, and then thefather spoke. "And you love her with all your life—don't you, Nealie?" The son was gazing intently at the miniature and nodded. At length the father sighed. "My poor, poor boy—my poor, poor boy." He walked to the table on which were his books and papers, and then stood looking at the girl's face. "You couldn't explain it to her, I suppose?" he asked.
"No," replied the son. "No; she adores her father; to her he is perfect. And I don't blame her, for he is good—you can't know how good, to her." Again they stood in silence. The son looked up from the picture and said, "And you know, father, what the world would think of me—a spy, an informer—an ingrate?"
The old man did not reply, and the son shook his head and his face twitched with the struggle that was in him. Suddenly the father walked to the son and cried: "And yet you must, Neal Ward—you must. Is there any confidence in God's world so sacred as your duty to mankind? Is there any tie, even that of your wife, so sacred as that which binds you to humanity? I left your mother, my sweetheart, and went out to fight, with the chance of never seeing her again. I went out and left her for the same country that is calling you now, Neal!" The boy looked up with agony on his face. The father paused a moment and then went on: "Your soul is your soul—not John Barclay's, my boy—not Jeanette Barclay's—but yours—yours, Neal, to blight or to cherish, as you will." A moment later he added, "Don't you see, son—don't you see, Neal?" The son shook his head and looked down, and did not answer. The father put his arm about the son. "Boy, boy," he cried, "boy, you've got a a man's load on you now—a man's load. To-morrow you can run away like a coward; you can dodge and lie like a thief, or you can tell the simple truth, as it is asked of you, like a man—the simple truth like a man, Neal."
"Yes, I know, father—I see it all—but it is so hard—for her sake, father."
The old man was silent, while the kitchen clock ticked away a minute and then another and a third. Then hetook his arm away from his son, and grasped the boy's hand. "Oh, little boy—little boy," he cried, "can't I make you see that the same God who has put this trial upon you will see you through it, and that if you fail in this trial, your soul will be crippled for life, and that no matter what you get in return for your soul—you will lose in the bargain? Can't you see it, Nealie—can't you see it? All my life I have been trying to live that way, and I have tried to make you see it—so that you would be ready for some trial like this."
The son rose, and the two men stood side by side, clasping hands. The boy suddenly tore himself loose, and throwing his hands in the air, wailed, "Oh, God—it is too hard—I can't, father—I can't."
And with the miniature in his hand he walked from the room, and Philemon Ward went to his closet and wrestled through the night. At dawn his son sat reading and re-reading a letter. Finally he pressed another letter to his lips, and read his own letter again. It read:—
"My darling Girl: This is the last letter I shall ever mail to you, perhaps. I can imagine no miracle that will bring us together again. My duty, as I see it, stands between us. The government inspector is going to put me under oath to-morrow—unless I run, and I won't—and question me about your father's business. What I must tell will injure him—maybe ruin him. I am going to tell your father what I am going to do before I do it. But by all the faith I have been taught in a God—and you know I am not pious, and belong to no church—I am forced to do this thing. Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette—if I loved you less, I would take you for this life alone and sell my soul for you; but I want you for an eternity—and in that eternity I want to bring you an unsoiled soul. Good-by—oh, good-by.Neal."
The next morning when Neal Ward went out of the office at the mill, John Barclay sat shivering with wrath and horror. Every second stamped him with its indelible finger, as a day, or a month, puts its stain on other men.
Another morning, a week later, as he sat at his desk, a telegram from his office manager in the city fluttered in his hands. It read: "We are privately advised that you were indicted by the federal grand jury last night—though wedo not know upon what specific charge—our friend B. will advise us later in the day."
It was a gray December day, and a thin film of ice covered the mill-pond. Barclay looked there and shuddered away from the thought that came to him. He was alone in the mill. He longed for his wife and daughter, and yet when he thought of their homecoming to disgrace, he shook with agony. Over and over again he whispered the word "indicted." The thought of his mother and her sorrow broke him down. He locked the door, dropped heavily into his chair, and bowed his head on his crossed arms. And then—
What, tears? Tears for Mr. Barclay?—for himself? Look back along the record for his life: there are many tears charged to his account, but none for his own use. Back in the seventies there are tears of Miss Culpepper, charged to Mr. Barclay, and one heart-break for General Hendricks. Again in the eighties there is sorrow for Mr. Robert Hendricks, and more tears for Mrs. Brownwell, that was Miss Culpepper—all charged to the account of Mr. Barclay; and in the early nineties there are some manly tears for Martin F. Culpepper, also charged to Mr. Barclay—but none before for his own use. Are they, then, tears of repentance? No, not tears for the recording angel, not good, man's size, soul-washing tears of repentance, but miserable, dwarf, useless, self-pitying, corroding tears—tears of shame and rage, for the proud, God-mocking, man-cheating, powerful, faithless, arrogant John Barclay, dealer in the Larger Good.
And so with his head upon his arms, and his arms upon his desk,—a gray-clad, gray-haired, slightly built, time-racked little figure,—John Barclay strained his soul and wrenched his body and tried in vain to weep.
CHAPTER XXV
Down comes the curtain. Only a minute does John Barclay sit there with his head in his arms, and then, while you are stretching your legs, or reading your programme, or looking over the house to see who may be here, up rises John Barclay, and while the stage carpenters are setting the new scene, he is behind there telephoning to Chicago, to Minneapolis, to Omaha, to Cleveland, to Buffalo,—he fairly swamps the girl with expensive long-distance calls,—trying to see if there is not some way to stop the filing of that indictment. For to him the mere indictment advertises to mankind that money is not power, and with him and with all of his caste and class a confession of weakness is equivalent to a confession of wrong. For where might makes right, as it does in his world, weakness spells guilt, and with all the people jeering at him, with the press saying: "Aha, so they have got Mr. Barclay, have they? Well, if all his money and all his power could not prevent an indictment, he must be a pretty tough customer,"—with the public peering into his private books and papers in a lawsuit, confirming as facts all that they had read in the newspapers, in short with the gold plating of respectability rubbed off his moral brass, he feels the crushing weight of the indictment, as he limps up and down his room at the mill and frets at the long-distance operator for being so slow with his calls.
But he is behind the scenes now; and so is Neal Ward, walking the streets of Chicago, looking for work on a newspaper, and finally finding it. And so are Mrs. Jane Barclay and Miss Barclay, as they sail away on their ten days' cruise of the Mediterranean. And while the orchestra plays and the man in the middle of row A of the dress circle edges out of his seat and in again, we cannot hear John Barclay sigh when the last telephone call isanswered, and he finds that nothing can be done. And he is not particularly cheered by the knowledge that the Associated Press report that very afternoon is sending all over the world the story of the indictment. But late in the afternoon Judge Bemis, in whose court the indictment was found, much to his chagrin, upon evidence furnished by special counsel sent out from Washington—Judge Bemis tells him, as from one old friend to another, that the special counsellor isn't much of a lawyer. The pleasant friendly little rip-saw laugh of the judge over the telephone nearly a thousand miles away is not distinct enough to be heard across the stage even if the carpenters were not hammering, and the orchestra screaming, and the audience buzzing; but that little laugh of his good friend, Judge Bemis, was the sweetest sound John Barclay had heard in many a day. It seemed curious that he should so associate it, but that little laugh seemed to drown the sound of a clicking key in a lock—a large iron lock, that had been rattling in his mind since noon. For even in the minds of the rich and the great, even in the minds of men who fancy they are divinely appointed to parcel out to their less daring brethren the good things of this world, there is always a child's horror of the jail. So when Mr. Barclay, who was something of a lawyer himself, heard his good friend, Judge Bemis, laugh that pleasant little friendly laugh behind the scenes, the heart of Mr. Barclay gave a little pulse-beat of relief if not of joy.
But an instant later the blight of the indictment was over him again. Hammer away, and scream away, and buzz away with all your might, you noises of the playhouse; let us not hear John Barclay hastening across the bridge just before the early winter sunset comes, that he may intercept theIndexand theBannerin the front yard of the Barclay home, before his mother sees them. Always heretofore he has been glad to have her read of his achievements, in the hope that she would come to approve them, and to view things as he saw them—his success and his power and his glory. But to-night he hides the paper under his gray coat and slips into the house. Sheand her son sit down to dinner alone. This must be a stage dinner they are eating—though it is all behind the scenes; for Mr. Barclay is merely going through the empty form of eating. "No, thank you," for the roast. "Why, Mr. Barclay did not touch his soup!" "Well," says the cook, tasting it critically, "that's strange." And "No, thank you" for the salad, and "Not any pie to-night, Clara." "What—none of the mince pie, John? Why, I went out in the kitchen and made it for you myself." "Well, a little."
Heigh-ho! We sigh, and we drum on our table-cloth with our fingers, and we are trying to find some way to tell something. We have been a bad boy, maybe—a bad little boy, and must own up; that is part of our punishment—the hardest part perhaps, even with the curtain down, even with the noise in front, even with the maid gone, even when a mother comes and strokes our head, as we sit idly at the organ bench, unable to sound a key. Shall the curtain go up now? Shall we sit gawking while a boy gropes his way out of a man's life, back through forty years, and puts his head in shame and sorrow against a mother's breast? How he stumbles and falters and halts, as the truth comes out—and it must come out; on the whole the best thing there is to say of John Barclay on that fateful December day in the year of our Lord 1903 is that he did not let his mother learn the truth from any lips but his. And so it follows naturally, because he was brave and kind, that instead of having to strengthen her, she sustained him—she in her seventies, he in his fifties.
"My poor dear child," she said, "I know—I know. But don't worry, John—don't worry. I don't mind. Jane won't mind, I am sure, and I know Jennie will understand. It isn't what even we who love you think of you, John—it is what you are that counts. Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie, maybe you could serve your country and humanity in jail—by showing the folly and the utter uselessness of all this money-getting, just as your father served it by dying. I would not mind if it made men see that money isn't the thing—if it made you see it, my boy; if youcould come out of a jail with that horrible greed for money purged from you—"
But no—we will not peep behind the curtain; we will not dwell with John Barclay as he walked all night up and down the great living room of his home. And see, the footlights have winked at the leader of the orchestra, to let him know he is playing too long; observe, how quickly the music dies down—rather too quickly, for the clatter of cast iron is heard on the stage, and the sound of hurried footsteps is audible, as of some one moving rapidly about behind the curtain. The rattling iron you hear is the stove in Watts McHurdie's shop; they have just set it up, and got it red hot; for it is a cold day, that fifteenth day of December, 1903, and the footsteps you hear are those of the members of the harness shop parliament.
Ah! There goes the curtain, and there sits Watts astraddle of his bench, working with all his might, for he has an order to sew sleigh-bells on a breast strap, for some festivity or another; and here sits the colonel, and over there the general, and on his home-made chair Jacob Dolan is tilted back, warming his toes at the stove. They are all reading—all except Watts, who is working; on the floor are the Chicago and St. Louis evening papers, and the Omaha and Kansas City morning papers. And on the first pages of all of these papers are pictures of John Barclay. There is John Barclay in theBee, taken in his Omaha office by theBee'sown photographer—a new picture of Mr. Barclay, unfamiliar to the readers of most newspapers. It shows the little man standing by a desk, smiling rather benignly with his sharp bold eyes fixed on the camera. There is a line portrait of Mr. Barclay in theTimes, one of recent date, showing the crow's-feet about the eyes, the vertical wrinkle above the nose, and the furtive mouth, hard and naked, and the square mean jaw, that every cartoonist of Barclay has emphasized for a dozen years. And there are other pictures of Mr. Barclay in the papers on the floor, and the first pages of the papers are filled with the news of the Barclay indictment. All over this land, and in Europe, the news of that indictmentcaused a sensation. In theTimes, there on the floor, is an editorial comment upon the indictment of Barclay cabled from London, another from Paris, and a third from Berlin. It was a big event in the world, an event of more than passing note—this sudden standing up of one of the richest men of his land, before the front door of a county jail. Big business, and little business that apes big business, dropped its jaw. The world is not accustomed to think of might making wrong, so when a Charles I or a Louis XVI or a John Barclay comes to harm, the traditions of the world are wrenched. Men say: "How can these things be—if might makes right? Here is a case where might and right conflict—how about it? Jails are for the poor, not for the rich, because the poor are wrong and the rich are right, and no just man made perfect by a million should be in jail."
And so while the members of the parliament in Watts McHurdie's shop read and were disturbed at the strange twist of events, the whole world was puzzled with them, and in unison with Jacob Dolan, half the world spoke, "I see no difference in poisoning breakfast foods and poisoning wells, and it's no odds to me whether a man pinches a few ounces out of my flour sack, or steals my chickens."
And the other half of the world was replying with Colonel Culpepper, "Oh, well, Jake, now that's all right for talk; but in the realms of high finance men are often forced to be their own judges of right and wrong, and circumstances that we do not appreciate, cannot understand, in point of fact, nor comprehend, if I may say so, intervene, and make what seems wrong in small transactions, trivial matters and pinch-penny business, seem right in the high paths of commerce."
The general was too deeply interested in reading what purported to be his son's testimony before Commissioner Smith, to break into the discussion at this point, so Dolan answered, "From which I take it that you think that Johnnie down at the mill keeps a private God in his private car."
The colonel was silent for a time; he read a few linesand looked into space a moment, and then replied in a gentle husky voice: "Jake, what do we know about it? The more I think how every man differs from his neighbour, and all our sins are the result of individual weakness at the end of lonely struggles with lonely temptations—the more I think maybe there is something in what you say, and that not only John but each of us—each of us under this shining sun, sir—keeps his private God."
"You'll have to break that news gently to the Pope," returned Dolan. "I'll not try it. Right's right, Mart Culpepper, and wrong's wrong for me and for Johnnie Barclay, white, black, brown, or yellow—'tis the same."
"There's nothing in your theory, Mart," cut in the general, folding his paper across his knee; "not a thing in the world. We're all parts of a whole, and the only way this is an individual problem at all—this working out of the race's destiny—is that the whole can't improve so long as the parts don't grow. So long as we all are like John Barclay save in John's courage to do wrong, laws won't help us much, and putting John in jail won't do so very much—though it may scare the cowards until John's kind of crime grows unpopular. But what we must have is individual—"
Tinkle goes the bell over Watts McHurdie's head—the bell tied to a cord that connects with the front door. Down jumps Watts, and note the play of the lights from the flies, observe that spot light moving toward R. U. E., there by the door of the shop. Yes, all ready; enter John Barclay. See that iron smile on his face; he has not surrendered. He has been clean-shaven, and entering that door, he is as spick and span as though he were on a wedding journey. Give him a hand or a hiss as you will, ladies and gentlemen, John Barclay has entered at the Right Upper Entrance, and the play may proceed.
"Well," he grinned, "I suppose you are talking it over. Colonel, has the jury come to a verdict yet?"
What a suave John Barclay it was; how admirably he held his nerve; not a quiver in the face, not a ruffle of the voice. The general looked at him over his spectacles, andcould not keep the kindness out of his eyes. "What a brick you are!" he said to himself, and Jake Dolan, conquered by the simplicity of it, surrendered.
"Oh, well, John, I suppose we all have our little troubles," said Jake. Only that; the rack of the inquisitor grew limp. And Colonel Culpepper rose and gave Barclay his hand and spoke not a word. The silence was awkward, and at the end of a few moments the colonel found words.
"How," he asked in his thick asthmatic voice, mushy with emotion, "how in the world did this happen, John? How did it happen?"
Barclay looked at the general; no, he did not glare, for John Barclay had grown tame during the night, almost docile, one would say. But he did not answer at first, and Watts McHurdie, bending over his work, chuckled out: "Ten miles from Springfield, madam—ten miles from Springfield." And then John sloughed off thirty years and laughed. And the general laughed, and the colonel smiled, and Jake Dolan took John Barclay's hand from the colonel, and said:—
"The court adjudges that the prisoner at the bar pay the assembled company four of those cigars in his inside pocket, and stand committed until the same is paid."
And then there was a scratching of matches, and a puffing, and Barclay spoke: "I knew there was one place on earth where I was welcome. The mill is swarming with reporters, and I thought I'd slip away. They'll not find me here." The parliament smoked in silence, and again Barclay said, "Well, gentlemen, it's pretty tough—pretty tough to work all your life to build up an industry and in the end—get this."
"Well, John," said the general, as he rolled up his newspaper and put it away, "I'm sorry—just as sorry as Mart is; not so much for the indictment, that is all part of the inevitable consequence of your creed; if it hadn't been the indictment, it would have been something else, equally sad—don't you see, John?"
"Oh, I know what you think, General," retorted Barclay,bitterly. "I know your idea; you think it's retribution."
"Not exactly that either, John—just the other side of the equation. You have reaped what you sowed, and I am sorry for what you sowed. God gave you ten talents, John Barclay—ten fine talents, my boy, and you wrapped them in a napkin and buried them in the ground, buried them in greed and cunning and love of power, and you are reaping envy and malice and cruelty. You were efficient, John; oh, if I had been as efficient as you, how much I could have done for this world—how much—how much!" he mused wistfully.
Barclay did not reply, but his face was hard, and his neck was stiff, and he was not moved. He was still the implacable Mr. Barclay, the rich Mr. Barclay, and he would have no patronage from old Phil Ward—Phil Ward the crank, who was a nation's joke. Ting-a-ling went the bell over Watts McHurdie's head, and the little man climbed down from his bench and hurried into the shop. But instead of a customer, Mr. J. K. Mercheson, J. K. Mercheson representing Barber, Hancock, and Kohn,—yes, the whip trust; that's what they call it, but it is really an industrial organization of the trade,—Mr. J. K. Mercheson of New York came in. No, McHurdie did not need anything at present, and he backed into the shop. He had all of the goods in that line that he could carry just now; and he sidled toward his seat. The members of the parliament effaced themselves, as loafers do in every busy place when business comes up; the colonel got behind his paper, Barclay hid back of the stove, Dolan examined a bit of harness, and the general busied himself picking up the litter on the floor, and folding the papers with the pictures of Barclay inside so that he would not be annoyed by them. But Mr. Mercheson knew how to get orders; he knew that the thing to do is to stay with the trade.
So he leaned against the work bench and began:—
"This is a great town, Mr. McHurdie; we're always hearing from Sycamore Ridge. When I'm in the East they say, 'What kind of a town is that Sycamore Ridgewhere Watts McHurdie and your noted reformer, Robert Hendricks, who was offered a place in the cabinet, and this man John Barclay live?'"
Mr. Mercheson paused for effect. Mr. McHurdie smiled and went on with his work.
"Say," said Mr. Mercheson, "your man Barclay is in all the papers this morning. I was in the smoker of the sleeper last evening coming out of Chicago, and we got to talking about him—and Lord, how the fellows did roast him."
"They did?" asked Barclay, from his chair behind the stove.
"Sure," replied Mr. Mercheson; "roasted him good and brown. There wasn't a man in the smoker but me to stand up for him."
"So you stood up for the old scoundrel, did you?" asked Barclay.
"Sure," answered the travelling man. "Anything to get up an argument, you know," he went on, beginning to see which way sentiment lay in the shop. "I've been around town this morning, and I find the people here don't approve of him for a minute, any more than they did on the train."
"What do they say?" asked Barclay, braiding a four-strand whip, and finding that his cunning of nearly fifty years had not left his fingers.
"Oh, it isn't so much what they say—but you can tell, don't you know; it's what they don't say; they don't defend him. I guess they like him personally, but they know he's a thief; that's the idea—they simply can't defend him and they don't try. The government has got him dead to rights. Say," he went on, "just to be arguing, you know last evening I took a poll of the train—the limited—the Golden State Limited—swell train, swell crowd—all rich old roosters; and honest, do you know that out of one hundred and twenty-three votes polled only four were for him, and three of those were girls who said they knew his daughter at the state university, and had visited at his house. Wasn't that funny?"
Barclay laughed grimly, and answered, "Well, it was pretty funny considering that I'm John Barclay."
The suspense of the group in the shop was broken, and they laughed, too.
"Oh, hell," said Mr. Mercheson, "come off!" Then he turned to McHurdie and tried to talk trade to him. But Watts was obdurate, and the man soon left the shop, eying Barclay closely. He stood in the door and said, as he went out of the store, "Well, you do look some like his pictures, Mister."
There was a silence when the stranger went, and Barclay, whose face had grown red, cried, "Damn 'em—damn 'em all—kick a man when he is down!"
Again the bell tinkled, and McHurdie went into the shop. Evidently a customer was looking at a horse collar, for through the glass door they could see Watts' hook go up to the ceiling and bring one down.
"John," said the colonel, when Barclay had spoken, "John, don't mind it. Look at me, John—look at me! They had to put me in jail, you know; but every one seems to have forgotten it but me—and I am a dog that I don't."
John Barclay looked at the old, broken man, discarded from the playing-cards of life, with the hurt, surprised look always in his eyes, and it was with an effort that the suave Mr. Barclay kept the choke in his throat out of his voice as he replied:—
"Yes, Colonel, yes, I know I have no right to kick against the pricks."
Watts was saying: "Yes, he's in there now—with the boys; you better go in and cheer him up."
And then at the upper right-hand entrance entered Gabriel Carnine, president of the State Bank, unctuous as a bishop. He ignored the others, and walking to Barclay, put out his hand. "Well, well, John, glad to see you; just came up from the mill—I was looking for you. Couldn't find Neal, either. Where is he?"
The general answered curtly, "Neal is in Chicago, working on theRecord-Herald."
"Oh," returned Carnine, and did not pursue the subject further. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "fine winter weather we're having."
"Is that so?" chipped in Dolan. "Mr. Barclay was finding it a little mite warm."
Carnine ignored Dolan, and Barclay grinned. "Well, John," Carnine hesitated, "I was just down to see you—on a little matter of business."
"Delighted, sir, delighted," exclaimed Dolan, as he rose to go; "we were going, anyway—weren't we, General?" The veterans rose, and Colonel Culpepper said as he went, "I told Molly to call for me here about noon with the buggy—if she comes, tell her to wait."
All of life may not be put on the stage, and this scene has to be cut; for it was at the end of half an hour's aimless, footless, foolish talk that Gabriel Carnine came to the business in hand. Round and round the bush he beat the devil, before he hit him a whack. Then he said, as if it had just occurred to him, "We were wondering—some of the directors—this morning, if under the circumstances—oh, say just for the coming six months or such a matter—it might not be wise to reorganize our board; freshen it up, don't you know; kind of get some new names on it, and drop the old ones—not permanently, but just to give the other stockholders a show on the board."
"So you want me to get off, do you?" blurted Barclay. "You're afraid of my name—now?"
The screams of Mr. Carnine, the protesting screams of that oleaginous gentleman, if they could have been vocalized in keeping with their muffled, low-voiced, whispering earnestness, would have been loud enough to be heard a mile away, but Barclay talked out:—
"All right, take my name off; and out comes my account. I don't care."
And thereupon the agony of Mr. Carnine was unutterable. If he had been a natural man, he would have howled in pain; as it was, he merely purred. But Barclay's skin was thin that day, sensitive to every touch,and he felt the rough hand of Carnine and winced. He let the old man whine and pur and stroke his beard awhile, and then Barclay said wearily, "All right, just as you please, Gabe—I'll not move my account. It's nothing to me."
In another minute the feline foot of Mr. Carnine was pattering gently toward the front door. Barclay sat looking at the stove, and Watts went on working. Barclay sighed deeply once or twice, but McHurdie paid no heed to him. Finally Barclay rose and went over to the bench.
"Watts," cried Barclay, "what do you think about it—you, your own self, what do you think way down in your heart?"
Watts sewed a stitch or two without speaking, and then put down his thread and put up his glasses and said, "That's fairly spoken, John Barclay, and will have a fair answer."
The old man paused; Barclay cried impatiently, "Oh, well, Watts, don't be afraid—nothing can hurt me much now!"
"I was just a-thinking, lad," said Watts, gently, "just a-thinking."
"What?" cried Barclay.
"Just a-thinking," returned the old man, as he put his hand on the younger man's shoulder, "what a fine poet you spoiled in your life, just to get the chance to go to jail. But the Lord knows His business, I suppose!" he added with a twinkle in his eye, "and if He thinks a poet more or less in jail would help more than one out—it is all for the best, John, all for the best. But, my boy," he cried earnestly, "if you'll be going to jail, don't whine, lad. Go to jail like a gentleman, John Barclay, go to jail like a gentleman, and serve your Lord there like a man."
"Damn cheerful you are, Watts," returned Barclay. "What a lot of Job's comforters you fellows have been this morning." He went on half bitterly and half jokingly: "Beginning with the general, continuing withyour travelling salesman friend, and following up with Gabe, who wants me to get off the board of directors of his bank for the moral effect of it, and coming on down to you who bid me Godspeed to jail—I have had a—a—a rather gorgeous morning."
The door-bell tinkled, and a woman's voice called, "Father, father!"
"Yes, Molly," the harness maker answered; "he'll be here pretty soon. He said for you to wait."
"Come in, for heaven's sake, Molly," cried Barclay, "come back here and cheer me up."
"Oh, all right—it's you, John? What are you doing back here? I'm so glad to find you. I've just got the dearest letter from Jane. We won't talk business or anything—you know how I feel, and how sorry I am—so just let's read Jane's letter; it has something in it to cheer you. She said she was going to write it to you the next day—but I'll read it to you." And so Mrs. Brownwell took from her pocketbook the crumpled letter and unfolded it. "It's so like Jane—just good hard sense clear through." She turned the pages hastily, and finally the fluttering of the sheets stopped. "Oh, yes," she said, "here's the place—the rest she's told you. Let me see—Oh: 'And, Molly, what do you think?—there's a duke after Jeanette—a miserable, little, dried-up, burned-out, poverty-stricken Italian duke. And oh, how much good it did us both to cut him, and let him know how ill-bred we considered him, how altogether beneath any wholesome honest girl we thought such a fellow.' And now, John, isn't this like Jane?" interposed Mrs. Brownwell. "Listen; she says, 'Molly, do you know, I am so happy about Jeanette and Neal. We run such an awful risk with this money—such a horrible risk of unhappiness and misery for the poor child—heaven knows she would be so much happier without it. And to think, dear, that she has found the one in the world for her, in the sweet simple way that a girl should always find him, and that the money—the menacing thing that hangs like a shadow over her—cannot by any possibility spoil her life! It makes mehappy all the day, and I go singing through life with joy at the thought that the money won't hurt Jennie—that it can't take from her the joy that comes from living with her lover all her life, as I have lived.' Isn't that fine, John?" asked Mrs. Brownwell, and looking up, she saw John Barclay, white-faced, with trembling jaw, staring in pain at the stove. Watts had gone into the store to wait on a customer, and the woman, seeing the man's anguish, came to him and said: "Why, John, what is it? How have I hurt you?—I thought this would cheer you so."
The man rose heavily. His colour was coming back. "Oh, God—God," he cried, "I needed that to-day—I needed that."
The woman looked at him, puzzled and nonplussed. "Why—why—why?" she stammered.
"Oh, nothing," he smiled back at her bitterly, "except—" and his jaw hardened as he snapped—"except that Neal Ward is a damned informer—and I've sent him about his business, and Jeanette's got to do the same."
Mollie Brownwell looked at him with hard eyes for a moment, and then asked, "What did Neal do?"
"Well," replied Barclay, "under cross-examination, I'll admit without incriminating myself that he gave the testimony which indicted me."
"Was it that or lie, John?" He did not reply. A silence fell, and the woman broke it with a cry: "Oh, John Barclay, John Barclay, must your traffic in souls reach your own flesh and blood? Haven't you enough without selling her into Egypt, too? Haven't you enough money now?" And without waiting for answer, Molly Brownwell turned and left him staring into nothing, with his jaw agape.
It was noon and a band was playing up the street, and as he stood by the stove in McHurdie's shop, he remembered vaguely that he had seen banners flying and some "Welcome" arches across the street as he walked through the town that morning. He realized that some lodge or conclave or assembly was gathering in the town, and that the band was a part of its merriment. It was playing agay tune and came nearer and nearer. But as he stood leaning upon his chair, with his heart quivering and raw from its punishment, he did not notice that the band had stopped in front of the harness shop. His mind went back wearily to the old days, fifty years before, when as a toddling child in dresses he used to play on that very scrap-heap outside the back door, picking up bits of leather, and in his boyhood days, playing pranks upon the little harness maker, and braiding his whips for the town herd. Then he remembered the verses Watts had written about Bob Hendricks and him in that very room, and the music he and Watts had played together there. The old song Watts had made in his presence in the hospital at St. Louis came back to his mind. Did it come because outside the band had halted and was playing that old song to serenade Watts McHurdie? Or did it come because John Barclay was wondering if, had he made a poet of himself, or a man of spiritual and not of material power, it would have been better for him?
Heaven knows why the old tune came into his head. But when he recognized that they were serenading the little harness maker, and that so far as they thought of John Barclay and his power and his achievements, it was with scorn, he had a flash of insight into his relations with the world that illumined his soul for a moment and then died away. The great Mr. Barclay, alone, sitting in the dingy little harness shop, can hear the band strike up the old familiar tune again, and hear the crowd cheer and roar its applause at the little harness maker, who stands shamefaced and abashed, coatless and aproned, before the crowd. And he is only a poet—hardly a poet, would be a better way to say it; an exceedingly bad poet who makes bad rhymes, and thinks trite thoughts, and says silly and often rather stupid things, but who once had his say, and for that one hour of glorious liberty of the soul has moved millions of hearts to love him. John Barclay does not envy Watts McHurdie—not at all; for Barclay, with all his faults, is not narrow-gauged; he does not wish they would call for him—not to-day—not at all; he could notface them now, even if they cheered him. He says in his heart of pride, beneath his stiff neck, that it is all right; that Watts,—poor little church-mouse of a Watts, whom he could buy five times over with the money that has dropped into the Barclay till since he entered the shop—that Watts should have his due; but only—only—only—that is it—only, but only—!
CHAPTER XXVI
And now as we go out into the busy world, after this act in the dawning of John Barclay's life, let the court convene, and the reporters gather, and the honourable special counsel for the government rage, and the defendant sit nervous and fidgety as the honourable counsel reads the indictment; let the counsel for the defendant swell and strut with indignation that such indignities should be put upon honest men and useful citizens, and let the court frown, and ponder and consider; for that is what courts are for, but what do we care for it all? We have left it all behind, with the ragged programmes in the seats. So if the honourable court, in the person of the more or less honourable Elijah Westlake Bemis, after the fashion of federal judges desiring to do a questionable thing, calls in a judge from a neighbouring court—what do we care? And if the judge of the neighbouring court, after much legal hemming and judicial hawing, decides in his great wisdom—that the said defendant Barclay has been charged in the indictment with no crime, and instructs the jury to find a verdict of not guilty for said defendant John Barclay, upon the mere reading of the indictment,—what are the odds? What do we care if the men in the packed courtroom hiss and the reporters put down the hisses in their note-books and editors write the hisses in headlines, and presses print the hisses all over the world? For the fidgety little man is free now—entirely free save for fifty-four years of selfish life upon his shoulders.
In the trial of nearly every cause it becomes necessary at some point in the proceedings to halt the narrative and introduce certain exhibits, records, and documents, upon which foregone evidence has been based, and to which coming testimony may properly be attached. That point has been reached in the case now before the reader. Andas "Exhibit A" let us submit a letter written by John Barclay, January seventh, nineteen hundred and four, to Jane, his wife, at Naples.
"As I cabled you this afternoon, the case resulted exactly as I said it would the day after the indictment. I had not seen or talked with Lige since that day I talked with him over the telephone, before the indictment was made public, but I knew Lige well enough to know how he would act under fire. I had him out to dinner this evening, and we talked over old times, and he tells me he wants to retire from the bench. Jane, Lige has been my mainstay ever since this company was organized. Sometimes I feel that without his help in politics—looking to see that pernicious legislation was killed, and that the right men were elected to administrative offices, and appointed to certain judicial places—we never would have been able to get the company to its present high standing. I feel that he has been so valuable to us that we should settle a sum on him that will make him a rich man as men go in the Ridge. Heaven knows that is little enough, considering all that he has done. He may have his faults, Jane, but he has been loyal to me."I hope, my dear, that Jeanette has ceased to worry about the other matter; he is not worth her tears. Don't come home for a month or two yet. The same conditions prevail that I spoke of in my first cable the day of the indictment. The press and the public are perfectly crazy. America is one great howling mob, and it would make you and Jennie unhappy. As for me, I don't mind it. You know me."
And that the reader may know how truthful John Barclay is, let us append herewith a letter written by Mrs. Mary Barclay, of Sycamore Ridge, to her granddaughter at Naples, January 15, 1904. She writes among other things:—
"Well, dear, it is a week now since your father's case was settled, and he was at home for the first time last night. I expected that his victory—such as it was—would cheer him up, but some way he seems worse in the dumps than he was before. He does not sleep well, and is getting too nervous for a man of his age. I have the impression that he is forever battling with something. Of course the public temper is bitter, dearie. You are a woman now, and should not be shielded and pampered with lies, so I am going to tell you the truth. The indignation of the people of this nation at your father, as he represents present business methods, is past belief. And frankly, dearie, I can't blame them. Your father and my son is a brave, sweet, loving man; none could be finer in this world, Jennie. But the head of the National Provisions Company is another person, dear; and of him I do not approve, as you know sowell. I am sending you Neal Ward's statement which was published by the government the day after the case was dismissed. I have not sent it to you before, because I wanted to ask your father if it was true. Jennie, he admits that Neal told the truth, and nothing but the truth—and did not make it as bad as it was. You are entitled to the facts. You are a grown woman now, dear, and must make your own decisions. But oh, my dear little girl, I am heartsick to see your father breaking as he is. He seems to be fighting—fighting—fighting all the time; perhaps it is against the flames of public wrath, but some way I think he is fighting something inside himself—fighting it back; fighting it down—whatever it is."
Counsel also begs indulgence while he introduces and reads two clippings from the Sycamore RidgeDaily Banner, of February 12, 1904. The first one reads:—
"Judge Bemis Retires"Hon. E. W. Bemis has retired from the federal bench, and rumour has it that he is soon to return with his estimable wife to our midst. Our people will welcome the judge and Mrs. Bemis with open arms. He retires from an honourable career, to pass his declining years in the peace and quiet of the town in which he began his career over fifty years ago. For as every one knows, he came West as a boy, and before having been admitted to the bar dealt largely in horses and cattle. He has always been a good business man, having with his legal acumen the acquisitive faculty, and now he is looking for some place to invest a modest competence here in the Ridge, and rumour has it again that he is negotiating for the purchase of the Sycamore Ridge Waterworks bonds, which are now in litigation. If so, he will make an admirable head of that popular institution."
In this connection, and before introducing the other clipping from theBanner, it would be entirely proper to introduce the manuscript for the above, in the typewriting of the stenographer of Judge Bemis's court, and a check for fifty dollars payable to Adrian Brownwell, signed by Judge Bemis aforesaid; but those documents would only clog the narrative and would not materially strengthen the case, so they will be thrown out.
The second clipping, found in the personal column of theBannerof the date referred to, February 12, 1904, follows:—
"Mrs. John Barclay and Miss Barclay are on the steamerEtruriawhich was sighted off Fire Island to-day. They will spend a few weeks in New York, and early in March Miss Barclay will enter the state university to do some post-graduate work in English, and Mrs. Barclay will return to Sycamore Ridge. Mr. Barclay will meet them at the pier, and they expect to spend the coming two weeks attending German opera. Mrs. Mary Barclay left to-day for the East to join them. She will remain a month visiting relatives near Haverhill, Mass."
It becomes necessary to append some letters of Miss Jeanette Barclay's, and they are set down here in the order in which they were written, though the first one takes the reader back a few weeks to December 5, 1903. It was posted at Rome, and in the body of it are found these words:—
"My dear, I know you will smile when you hear I have been reading all the Italian scientific books I can find, dealing with the human brain—partly to help my Italian, but chiefly, I think, to see if I can find and formulate some sort of a definition for love. It is so much a part of my soul, dear heart, that I would like to know more about it. And I am going to write down for you what I think it is as we know it. I have been wearing your ring nearly three years, Neal, and if you had only known it, I would have been happy to have taken it a year sooner. In those four years I have grown from a girl to a woman, and you have become a man full grown. In that time all my thoughts have centred on you. In all my schoolbooks your face comes back to me as I open them in fancy. As I think of the old room at school, of my walk up the hill, as I think of home and my room there, some thought of you is always between me and the picture. All through my physical brain are little fibres running to every centre that bring up images of you. You are woven into my life, and I know in my heart that I am woven into your life. The thing is done; it is as much apart of my being as my blood—those million fibres of my brain that from every part of my consciousness bring thoughts of you. We cannot be separated now, darling—we are united for life, whether we unite in life or not. I am yours and you are mine. It is now as inexorable as anything we call material. More than that—you have made my soul. All the aspirations of my spiritual life go to you for beginning and for being as truly as the fibres of my brain thrill to the sound of your name or the mental image of your face. My soul is your soul, because in the making the thought of you was uppermost. I know that my love for you is immortal, ineffaceable, and though I should live a hundred years, that love would still be as much a part of my life as my hands or my eyes or my body. And the best of it all is that I am so glad it is so. Divorce is as impossible with a love like that as amputation of the brain. It is big and vital in me, real and certain, and so long as I live on earth, or dwell in eternity, my soul and your soul are knittogether."
Three weeks later, on December 28, 1903, Miss Barclay wrote to Mr. Ward as follows:—
"Your letter and father's letter were on my desk when we returned from our cruise. I have just finished writing to him, and I herewith return your ring and your pin."
There was neither signature nor superscription—just those words. And a month later, Miss Barclay wrote this letter to her Grandmother Barclay in Sycamore Ridge:—
"My dear, dear Granny: I have told mother what you wrote of father, and we are coming home just as soon as we can get a steamer. We are cabling him to-day, and hope to sail within a week or ten days at the very farthest. But I cannot wait until I see you, dear, to come close into your heart. And first of all I want you to know that I share your views about the heart-break of all this money and the miserable man-killing way it is being piled up. I know the two men you speak of—father and the president of the N.P.C. But he is my father, and I must stand by him, and brace him if I can. But, oh, Granny, I don't want the old money! It has never made me happy—never for one minute. The only happiness I have ever had was when he was at home with us all, away from business—and—but you know about that other happiness, and it hurts to speak of it now. I have not read what you sent me. I can't. But I will keep it. That it is true doesn't help me any. Nothing can help me. It is just one of those awful things that I have read of coming to people, but which I thought never could possibly come to me. Oh, Granny, Granny, you who pray so much for others, now pray for me. Granny, you can't cut something out of you—right out of the heart of you, by merely saying so; it keeps growing back; it hurts, and hurts, and keeps hurting; even if you know it is cut out and thrown away. They say that men who have had legs cut off can feel them for months and even years if they are cramped when they are buried. The nerves of the old dead body reach through space and hurt. It is that way with me. The old dead thing in my heart that is buried and gone keeps cramping and hurting. You are the only one I can come to, Granny. It hurts mother too much, and she is not strong this winter. I think it is worry. She is growing thin, and her heart doesn't act right. I am terribly worried about her; but she made me promise to say nothing to father, and you must not, either; for he will see for himself soon."
A few letters from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay, and a document some twenty years old, which the reader may have forgotten, but which one person connected with this narrative has feared would come to light every day inthat time—and then this tedious business of introducing documentary evidence will be over. The letter from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay is one of hundreds that he wrote and never mailed. They were dated, sealed, addressed, and put away. This one was written at midnight as the bells and whistles and pistols and fireworks were welcoming the year 1904. It begins:—
"My very Dearest: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in the old office of theBanner. I could only scribble you a little note on the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, but I feel that I must bring everything to you. Bob Hendricks wired me to come down. He has a mortgage on theBanner, and he feels that things are not being properly managed, so he persuaded Mr. Brownwell to give me a place as sort of manager of the paper at twenty dollars a week—a sum that seems princely considering that I was making only eighteen dollars in Chicago, and that it costs so much less to live here. Hendricks guarantees my wages, so that Adrian cannot stand me off. Hendricks has another motive for wanting me to come here. The waterworks franchise will come up for renewal June first of this year, and Mr. Hendricks is for municipal ownership. Carnine and the State Bank are against municipal ownership, because the water company does business with them, and as they control theIndex, they are preparing to make a warm fight for the renewal of the old franchise. So there will be a hot time in the old town this spring. But the miserable part of it is this. The growth of the town has made it dangerous to use the present supply station. The water must not come out of the mill-pond any longer, as the town is tilted so that all the surface drainage goes into it, and the sewers that drain into it, while they drain a few hundred yards below the intake of the waterworks, cannot help tainting the whole pond. Mr. Hendricks has had an expert here who declared that both the typhoid and diphtheria epidemics here last fall were due directly to the water supply, and Mr. Hendricks is going to make the fight of his life to have the city buy the waterworks plant, and move the intake six miles above town, where there is plenty of clean water. Of course it will mean first a city election to get decent councilmen, and then a bond election to vote money to buy the old plant; the waterworks company are going to move heaven and earth to get an anti-Hendricks council elected and to renew the franchise and let things go as they are. So that is why I am here, dear heart, and oh, my darling, you do not know how painful it all seems to be here and not have you—I mean—you know what I mean. All my associations with the work here in the office and on the street are with my heart close to yours. Everything in the old town tells me of you. 'Saint Andrews by theNorthern sea, a haunted city is to me.' To-night I hear the music of the New Year's dance, and I can shut my eyes and feel you with me there. Oh, sweetheart, I have kept you so close, by writing to you every night. I come and lay my heart and all its thoughts at your shrine, and put all my day's work before you for your approval, just as I used to do. It is so sweet a privilege."Last night I dreamed about you. It was so real and your voice sounded so clearly, crying to me, that you have been with me all day. I wonder if while we sleep, we whose souls would struggle to meet through eternity, if through the walls of space they may not find each other, and speak to each other through our dreams. It is midnight here now, and you are just waking, perhaps, or just sleeping that sleep of early morning wherein the soul sinks to unknown depths. Oh—oh—oh, if I could but speak to you there, my dear! I am going to sit here and close my eyes and try."
The next letter in the exhibit was written six weeks later and is dated February 12, 1904. It says in part:—
"I must tell you what a bully fellow Bob Hendricks is. Judge Bemis sent a highly laudatory article about himself to the office to-day with a check for fifty dollars. In the article it develops that he is going to retire from the federal bench and come down here and buy the waterworks plant—on the theory that he will get a bargain because of the expiring franchise and the prospective fight. That fifty dollars looked as big as a barn to poor Adrian, so he trotted off with the letter and the check to Hendricks. Of course, the letter and the check together, just framed and put in the bank window, would make great sport of the judge; but Bob is a thoroughbred, and probably Bemis knows it, and figures on that in his dealings with him. I was in the bank when Adrian came in with the letter. He showed the check and the article to Hendricks, and you could almost see Adrian wag his tail and hear him whine to keep the check; Bob looked at the poor fellow's wistful eyes and handed it back with a quizzical little smile and said, 'Oh, I guess I'd run it; it can't hurt anything.' The light that came into Adrian's eyes was positively beatific, and he shook Bob by the hand, and twirled his cane, and waved his gloves in a sort of canine ecstasy, and trotted to the cashier's window with the check like a dog with a bone. It is the largest piece of real money he has had in six months, the boys say, and he has spent it for clothes. To-morrow he will hurry off to the first convention in the city like a comet two centuries behind time. But that is beside the point; the thing I don't like is the coming of Bemis. I know him; the things I have seen him do in your father's business and when he was on the bench, make me shudder for decent politics in this town. He is shrewd, unscrupulous, and without any restraint on earth."I feel closer to you than I have felt since I put the barrier between us. For you are in this country to-night—I could go to thetelephone there five feet away and reach you if I would. I looked to-day in the papers and saw that they would be giving Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera House, and knowing your father as I do, I think he will take you there. I can hear the music rising and see you drinking in the harmony, and as it swells into exquisite pain, and thrills through the holy places of your soul where are old memories of our love, sweetheart, maybe your spirit will go forth in God's strange universe where we all dwell neighbours, loosed from those material chains that bind our bodies, and will seek the heart that is searching for you out there in the highway of heaven. I seem to feel you now, dear soul—did the music fling your spirit free for a second till it touched my own? I am so happy, Jeanette—even to love you and to know that you have loved me, and must always love me while you are you and I am I."
And now let us consider the final exhibit. It will be necessary to turn back the action of this story a month and a half and sit with John Barclay and his friend, former federal judge Elijah Westlake Bemis, before the fire in the wide fireplace in the Barclay home, one cold January night, a week after Barclay had gone free from the court and the world had hissed him. They were talking of the judge's business future, and the judge was saying:—
"John, how did Bob Hendricks ever straighten out that affair in the treasurer's office in connection with the first year's taxes of the old Wheat Company? What did he do with it finally?"
Barclay looked at the fire and then turned his searchlight eyes into Bemis's. There was not a quiver. The man sat there without a muscle of his parchment face moving. His eyes were squinted up, looking at the tip of his long cigar.
"Why?" asked Barclay.
"Well," responded Bemis, impassive as an ox, "it would help me in my business to know. Tell me."
He spoke the last two words as one in authority.
"Well," answered Barclay, "one day back in the seventies, I was appointed to check up the treasurer's book, and I found where he had fixed it on the county books—apparently between two administrations. I recognized his hand; and it made the balance for the first time."
Bemis smoked awhile. "What time in the seventies?" he asked.
There was a pause. "In January, 1879."
Bemis grinned a wicked, mean little grin and said: "That settles it. I believe I am safe in buying the waterworks."
"What are you going to do to Bob?" Barclay asked.
"Nothing, nothing—absolutely nothing, if he has any sense and drops this municipal ownership tommyrot. Absolutely nothing."
Again the grin came over his face, and at the end of a pause Barclay said:—
"Well, if not, what then?"
Bemis shut his eyes and crossed his gaunt legs, and began: "Think back twenty years ago—more or less. Do you remember when I brought your car down here for Watts McHurdie and his crowd to go to Washington in, to the G.A.R. celebration? All right; do you remember that I came to the office and told you I saw Bob Hendricks waiting for some one at the Union Station, when the train got into the city that morning?"
"Yes," said Barclay, "you were so mysterious and funny about it, I remember."
"Well," said Bemis, as he got up and poked a log that was annoying him in the fireplace, "well, I have a little document in my desk at home, that I got the night before in the Ridge, which will convince Bobbie, if he has any sense, that this municipal ownership business isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Barclay, who knew from Jane something of the truth, guessed the rest, but he did not question Bemis further. "Oh, I don't know, Lige," he began; "it seems to me I wouldn't drag that into it."
Bemis turned his old face, full of malicious passion, toward Barclay and cried, "Maybe you wouldn't, John Barclay—you forget things; but I never do; and you're a coward sometimes, and I am not."
The blaze of his wrath went out in a moment, and Barclay's mind went back to that afternoon in the seventieswhen Hendricks picked Bemis up and threw him bodily from the county convention and branded him as a boodler. Barclay knew argument was useless. So he said nothing.
"He has the county officers—every man-jack of them from the treasurer to Jake Dolan, the janitor—and I couldn't get hold of that book by fair means without his knowing it. But I am going to have that book, John—I'm going to have that book."
Barclay followed Bemis's mental processes, as if they were his own. "Well—what if he does know it?" asked Barclay.
"Oh, if he knew I was after the book, he'd fix me,—have it destroyed or something; he could do lots of things or beat me some way. I've got to get that book—get it out of the court-house—and there's just one way to get into the court-house, without using the doors and the windows." When Bemis had finished speaking, he gazed steadily into Barclay's eyes. And Bemis saw the fear that was in Barclay's face. "Yes, I know a way into the court-house, John—it's mine by fifty years' right of discovery. I'm going to have that book, and get an expert opinion as to the similarity of the handwriting in the book and the handwriting of my own little document. My own little document," he mused, licking his chops like a hound at the prospect.
Now we will call that little document "Exhibit I" in the case of the Larger Goodvs.The People, and close thereby a long and tedious chapter. But we will begin another chapter in which the wheels of events spin rapidly in their courses toward that moral equilibrium that deeds must find before they stop when they are started for the Larger Good.