What was that at the door? The sound of a soft and timid rapping, and
through the glass of the door-pane, a face, a woman’s face looking into
the fire-lit room with pleading eyes. What was it she bore in her arms,
the little bundle that she held tight to her breast to shield it from
the falling snow? Can you guess, reader? Try three guesses and see.
Right you are. That’s what it was.
The farmer’s wife went hastily to the door.
“Lord’s mercy!” she cried, “what are you doing out on such a night?
Come in, child, to the fire!”
The woman entered, carrying the little bundle with her, and looking
with wide eyes (they were at least an inch and a half across) at
Enderby and his wife. Anna could see that there was no wedding-ring on
her hand.
“Your name?” said the farmer’s wife.
“My name is Caroline,” the girl whispered. The rest was lost in the low
tones of her voice. “I want shelter,” she paused, “I want you to take
the child.”
Anna took the baby and laid it carefully on the top shelf of the
cupboard, then she hastened to bring a glass of water and a dough-nut,
and set it before the half-frozen girl.
“Eat,” she said, “and warm yourself.”
John rose from his seat.
“I’ll have no child of that sort here,” he said.
“John, John,” pleaded Anna, “remember what the Good Book says: ‘Things
which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another!’”
John sank back in his chair.
And why had Caroline no wedding-ring? Ah, reader, can you not guess.
Well, you can’t. It wasn’t what you think at all; so there. Caroline
had no wedding-ring because she had thrown it away in bitterness, as
she tramped the streets of the great city. “Why,” she cried, “should
the wife of a man in the penitentiary wear a ring.”
Then she had gone forth with the child from what had been her home.
It was the old sad story.
She had taken the baby and laid it tenderly, gently on a seat in the
park. Then she walked rapidly away. A few minutes after a man had
chased after Caroline with the little bundle in his arms. “I beg your
pardon,” he said, panting, “I think you left your baby in the park.”
Caroline thanked him.
Next she took the baby to the Grand Central Waiting-room, kissed it
tenderly, and laid it on a shelf behind the lunch-counter.
A few minutes an official, beaming with satisfaction, had brought it
back to her.
“Yours, I think, madame,” he said, as he handed it to her. Caroline
thanked him.
Then she had left it at the desk of the Waldorf Astoria, and at the
ticket-office of the subway.
It always came back.
Once or twice she took it to the Brooklyn Bridge and threw it into the
river, but perhaps something in the way it fell through the air touched
the mother’s heart and smote her, and she had descended to the river
and fished it out.
Then Caroline had taken the child to the country. At first she thought
to leave it on the wayside and she had put it down in the snow, and
standing a little distance off had thrown mullein stalks at it, but
something in the way the little bundle lay covered in the snow appealed
to the mother’s heart.
She picked it up and went on. “Somewhere,” she murmured, “I shall find
a door of kindness open to it.” Soon after she had staggered into the
homestead.
Anna, with true woman’s kindness, asked no questions. She put the baby
carefully away in a trunk, saw Caroline safely to bed in the best room,
and returned to her seat by the fire.
The old clock struck twenty minutes past eight.
Again a knock sounded at the door.
There entered the familiar figure of the village lawyer. His astrachan
coat of yellow dogskin, his celluloid collar, and boots which reached
no higher than the ankle, contrasted with the rude surroundings of the
little room.
“Enderby,” he said, “can you pay?”
“Lawyer Perkins,” said the farmer, “give me time and I will; so help
me, give me five years more and I’ll clear this debt to the last cent.”
“John,” said the lawyer, touched in spite of his rough (dogskin)
exterior, “I couldn’t, if I would. These things are not what they were.
It’s a big New York corporation, Pinchem & Company, that makes these
loans now, and they take their money on the day, or they sell you up. I
can’t help it. So there’s your notice, John, and I am sorry! No, I’ll
take no buttermilk, I must keep a clear head to work,” and with that he
hurried out into the snow again.
Illustration: “No, I’ll take no buttermilk, I must keep a clear head to
work”
John sat brooding in his chair.
The fire flickered down.
The old clock struck half-past eight, then it half struck a quarter to
nine, then slowly it struck striking.
Presently Enderby rose, picked a lantern from its hook, “Mortgage or no
mortgage,” he said, “I must see to the stock.”
He passed out of the house, and standing in the yard, looked over the
snow to the cedar swamp beyond with the snow winding through it, far in
the distance the lights of the village far away.
He thought of the forty years he had spent here on the homestead—the
rude, pioneer days—the house he had built for himself, with its plain
furniture, the old-fashioned spinning-wheel on which Anna had spun his
trousers, the wooden telephone and the rude skidway on which he ate his
meals.
He looked out over the swamp and sighed.
Down in the swamp, two miles away, could he have but seen it, there
moved a sleigh, and in it a man dressed in a sealskin coat and silk
hat, whose face beamed in the moonlight as he turned to and fro and
stared at each object by the roadside as at an old familiar scene.
Round his waist was a belt containing a million dollars in gold coin,
and as he halted his horse in an opening of the road he unstrapped the
belt and counted the coins.
Beside him there crouched in the bushes at the dark edge of the swamp
road, with eyes that watched every glitter of the coins, and a hand
that grasped a heavy cudgel of blackthorn, a man whose close-cropped
hair and hard lined face belonged nowhere but within the walls of Sing
Sing.
When the sleigh started again the man in the bushes followed doggedly
in its track.
Meanwhile John Enderby had made the rounds of his outbuildings. He
bedded the fat cattle that blinked in the flashing light of the
lantern. He stood a moment among his hogs, and, farmer as he was,
forgot his troubles a moment to speak to each, calling them by name. It
smote him to think how at times he had been tempted to sell one of the
hogs, or even to sell the cattle to clear the mortgage off the place.
Thank God, however, he had put that temptation behind him.
As he reached the house a sleigh was standing on the roadway. Anna met
him at the door. “John,” she said, “there was a stranger came while you
were in the barn, and wanted a lodging for the night; a city man, I
reckon, by his clothes. I hated to refuse him, and I put him in
Willie’s room. We’ll never want it again, and he’s gone to sleep.”
“Ay, we can’t refuse.”
John Enderby took out the horse to the barn, and then returned to his
vigil with Anna beside the fire.
The fumes of the buttermilk had died out of his brain. He was thinking,
as he sat there, of midnight and what it would bring.
In the room above, the man in the sealskin coat had thrown himself
down, clothes and all, upon the bed, tired with his drive.
“How it all comes back to me,” he muttered as he fell asleep, “the same
old room, nothing changed—except them—how worn they look,” and a tear
started to his eyes. He thought of his leaving his home fifteen years
ago, of his struggle in the great city, of the great idea he had
conceived of making money, and of the Farm Investment Company he had
instituted—the simple system of applying the crushing power of capital
to exact the uttermost penny from the farm loans. And now here he was
back again, true to his word, with a million dollars in his belt.
“To-morrow,” he had murmured, “I will tell them. It will be Xmas.” Then
William—yes, reader, it was William (see line 503 above) had fallen
asleep.
The hours passed, and kept passing.
It was 11.30.
Then suddenly Anna started from her place.
“Henry!” she cried as the door opened and a man entered. He advanced
gladly to meet her, and in a moment mother and son were folded in a
close embrace. It was Henry, the man from Sing Sing. True to his word,
he had slipped away unostentatiously at the height of the festivities.
“Alas, Henry,” said the mother after the warmth of the first greetings
had passed, “you come at an unlucky hour.” They told him of the
mortgage on the farm and the ruin of his home.
“Yes,” said Anna, “not even a bed to offer you,” and she spoke of the
strangers who had arrived; of the stricken woman and the child, and the
rich man in the sealskin coat who had asked for a night’s shelter.
Henry listened intently while they told him of the man, and a sudden
light of intelligence flashed into his eye.
“By Heaven, father, I have it!” he cried. Then, dropping his voice, he
said, “Speak low, father. This man upstairs, he had a sealskin coat and
silk hat?”
“Yes,” said the father.
“Father,” said Henry, “I saw a man sitting in a sleigh in the cedar
swamp. He had money in his hand, and he counted it, and chuckled,—five
dollar gold pieces—in all, 1,125,465 dollars and a quarter.”
The father and son looked at one another.
“I see your idea,” said Enderby sternly.
“We’ll choke him,” said Henry.
“Or club him,” said the farmer, “and pay the mortgage.”
Anna looked from one to the other, joy and hope struggling with the
sorrow in her face. “Henry, my Henry,” she said proudly, “I knew he
would find a way.”
“Come on,” said Henry; “bring the lamp, mother, take the club, father,”
and gaily, but with hushed voices, the three stole up the stairs.
The stranger lay sunk in sleep. The back of his head was turned to them
as they came in.
“Now, mother,” said the farmer firmly, “hold the lamp a little nearer;
just behind the ear, I think, Henry.”
“No,” said Henry, rolling back his sleeve and speaking with the quick
authority that sat well upon him, “across the jaw, father, it’s quicker
and neater.”
“Well, well,” said the farmer, smiling proudly, “have your own way,
lad, you know best.”
Henry raised the club.
But as he did so—stay, what was that? Far away behind the cedar swamp
the deep booming of the bell of the village church began to strike out
midnight. One, two, three, its tones came clear across the crisp air.
Almost at the same moment the clock below began with deep strokes to
mark the midnight hour; from the farmyard chicken coop a rooster began
to crow twelve times, while the loud lowing of the cattle and the soft
cooing of the hogs seemed to usher in the morning of Christmas with its
message of peace and goodwill.
The club fell from Henry’s hand and rattled on the floor.
The sleeper woke, and sat up.
“Father! Mother!” he cried.
“My son, my son,” sobbed the father, “we had guessed it was you. We had
come to wake you.”
“Yes, it is I,” said William, smiling to his parents, “and I have
brought the million dollars. Here it is,” and with that he unstrapped
the belt from his waist and laid a million dollars on the table.
“Thank Heaven!” cried Anna, “our troubles are at an end. This money
will help clear the mortgage—and the greed of Pinchem & Co. cannot harm
us now.”
“The farm was mortgaged!” said William, aghast.
“Ay,” said the farmer, “mortgaged to men who have no conscience, whose
greedy hand has nearly brought us to the grave. See how she has aged,
my boy,” and he pointed to Anna.
“Father,” said William, in deep tones of contrition, “I am Pinchem &
Co. Heaven help me! I see it now. I see at what expense of suffering my
fortune was made. I will restore it all, these million dollars, to
those I have wronged.”
“No,” said his mother softly. “You repent, dear son, with true
Christian repentance. That is enough. You may keep the money. We will
look upon it as a trust, a sacred trust, and every time we spend a
dollar of it on ourselves we will think of it as a trust.”
“Yes,” said the farmer softly, “your mother is right, the money is a
trust, and we will restock the farm with it, buy out the Jones’s
property, and regard the whole thing as a trust.”
At this moment the door of the room opened. A woman’s form appeared. It
was Caroline, robed in one of Anna’s directoire nightgowns.
“I heard your voices,” she said, and then, as she caught sight of
Henry, she gave a great cry.
“My husband!”
“My wife,” said Henry, and folded her to his heart.
“You have left Sing Sing?” cried Caroline with joy.
“Yes, Caroline,” said Henry. “I shall never go back.”
Gaily the reunited family descended. Anna carried the lamp, Henry
carried the club. William carried the million dollars.
The tamarack fire roared again upon the hearth. The buttermilk
circulated from hand to hand. William and Henry told and retold the
story of their adventures. The first streak of the Christmas morn fell
through the door-pane.
“Ah, my sons,” said John Enderby, “henceforth let us stick to the
narrow path. What is it that the Good Book says: ‘A straight line is
that which lies evenly between its extreme points.’”
X.
The Man in Asbestos:
An Allegory of the Future
To begin with let me admit that I did it on purpose. Perhaps it was
partly from jealousy.
It seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop into
a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge head-first into a
distant future and be a witness of its marvels.