"Yes, and he's made Bob resign from the board of commissioners, and

won't let him come home Christmas, and keeps him on fifty dollars a

month there in New York--all the same," returned the girl.

The colonel looked at his daughter a moment in sympathetic silence;

then he put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest and tilted back in

his chair and answered: "Oh, well, my dear,--when you are living in a

brown-stone house on Fifth Avenue down in New York, stepping on a

nigger every which way you turn, you'll thank John that he did keep

Bob at work, and not bring him back here to pin on a buffalo tail,

drink crick water, eat tumble weeds, and run wild. I say, and I fear

no contradiction when I say it, that John Barclay is a marvel--a

living wonder in point of fact. And if Bob Hendricks wants to come

back here and live on the succulent and classic bean and the luscious,

and I may say tempting, flapjack, let him come, Molly Farquhar

Culpepper, let him come." The colonel, proud of his language, looked

around the family circle. "And we at our humble board, with our plain

though--shall I say nutritive--yes, nutritive and wholesome fare,

should thank our lucky stars that John Barclay keeps the Golden Belt

Wheat Company going, and your husband and father can make a more or

less honest dollar now and then to supply your simple wants."

The colonel had more in his mind, for he rose and began to pace the

floor in a fine frenzy. But Mrs. Culpepper looked up for an instant

from her tea, and said, "You know you forgot the mail to-day, father,"

and he replied, "Yes, that's so." Then added: "Molly dear, will you

bring me my overcoat--please?"

The girl bundled her father into his threadbare blue army overcoat

with the cape. He stood for a moment absently rattling some dimes in

his pocket. Then the faintness of their jingle must have appealed to

him, for he drew a long breath and walked majestically away. He was a

tall stout man in the midst of his forties, with a military goatee and

black flowing mustaches, and he wore his campaign hat pinned up at the

side with the brass military pin and swayed with some show of swagger

as he walked. His gift of oratory he did not bring to the flower of

its perfection except at lodge. He was always sent as a delegate to

Grand Lodge, and when he came home men came from all over the county

to see the colonel exemplify the work. But as he marched to funerals

under his large white plume and with his sword dangling at his side,

Colonel Martin Culpepper, six feet four one way and four feet two the

other, was a regal spectacle, and it will be many years before the

town will see his like again.

The colonel walked over to the post-office box and got his mail, then

took a backless chair and drew it up to the sand box in which the

stove sat, and the conversation became general in its nature, ranging

from Emerson's theory of the cosmos and the whiskey ring to the

efficacy of a potato in the pocket for rheumatism. Finally when they

had come to their "don't you remembers" about the battle of Wilson's

Creek, General Ward, with his long coat buttoned closely about him,

came shivering into the store to get some camphor gum and stood

rubbing his cold hands by the stove while the clerk was wrapping up

the package. His thin nose was red and his eyes watered, and he had

little to say. When he went out the colonel said, "What's he going to

run for this year?"

"Haven't you heard?" replied McHurdie, and to the colonel's negative

Watts replied, "Governor--the uprising's going to nominate him."

"Yes," said Frye, "and he'll go off following that foolishness and

leave his wife and children to John or the neighbours."

"Do you suppose he thinks he'll win?" asked the Colonel.

"Naw," put in McHurdie; "I was talking to him only last week in the

shop, and he says, 'Watts, you boys don't understand me.' He says, 'I

don't want their offices. What I want is to make them think. I'm

sowing seed. Some day it will come to a harvest--maybe long after I'm

dead and gone.' I asked him if a little seed wouldn't help out some

for breakfast, and he didn't answer. Then he said: 'Watts--what you

need is faith--faith in God and not in money. There are no

Christians; they don't believe in God, or they'd trust Him more. They

don't trust God; they trust money. Yet I tell you it will work. Go

ahead--do your work in the world, and you won't starve nor your

children beg in the streets.'" McHurdie stopped a moment to gnaw his

plug of tobacco. "The general's gitting kind of a crank--and I told

him so."

"What did he say?" inquired the colonel.

"Oh, he just laughed," replied McHurdie; "he just laughed and said if

he was a crank I was a poet, and neither was much good at the note

window of the bank, and we kind of made it up."

And so the winter evening grew old, and one by one the cronies rose

and yawned and went their way. Evening after evening went thus, and

was it strange that in the years that came, when the sunset of life

was gilding things for Watts McHurdie, he looked through the golden

haze and saw not the sand in the pit under the stove, not the rows of

drugs on the wall, not the patent medicine bottles in their faded

wrappers, but as he wrote many years after in "Autumn Musing":--

"Those nights when Wisdom was our guide

And Friendship was the glow,

That warmed our souls like living coals,

Those nights of long ago."

Nor is it strange that Martin Culpepper, his commentator, conning

those lines through the snows of many winters, should be a little

misty as to details, and having taken his pen in hand to write, should

set down this note:--

"These lines probably refer to the evenings which the poet passed in a

goodly company of choice spirits during the early seventies. E'en as I

write, Memory, with tender hand, pushes back the sombre curtain, and I

see them now--that charmed circle; the poet with the brow of Jove and

Minerva's lips; the rugged warrior at his side, with the dignity of

Mars himself; perhaps some Croesus with his gold, drawn by the spell

of Wisdom's enchantment into the magic circle; and this your humble

disciple of Thucydides, sitting spellbound under the drippings of the

sacred font, getting the material for these pages. That was the Golden

Age; there were giants in those days."

And so there were, Colonel Martin Culpepper of the Great Heart and the

"large white plumes"--so there were.

CHAPTER X

It was a cold raw day in March, 1874. Colonel Culpepper was sitting in

the office of Ward and Barclay over the Exchange National Bank waiting

for the junior member of the firm to come in; the senior member of the

firm, who had just brought up an arm load of green hickory and dry

hackberry stove wood, was standing beside the box-shaped stove,

abstractedly brushing the sawdust and wormwood from his sleeves and

coat front. The colonel was whistling and whittling, and the general

kept on brushing after the last speck of dust had gone from his shiny

coat. He walked to the window and stared into the ugly brown street.

Two or three minutes passed, and Colonel Culpepper, anxious for the

society of his kind, spoke. "Well, General, what's the trouble?"

"Nothing in particular, Martin. I was just questioning the reality of

matter and the existence of the universe as you spoke; but it's not

important." The general shivered, and turned his kind blue eyes on his

friend in a smile, and then bethought him to put the wood in the

stove.

While he was jamming in a final stick, Colonel Culpepper inquired,

"Well, am I an appearance or an entity?"

The general put the smoking poker on the floor, and turned the damper

in the pipe as he answered: "That's what I can't seem to make out. You

know old Emerson says a man doesn't amount to much as a thinker until

he has doubted the existence of matter. And I just got to thinking

about it, and wondering if this was a real world after all--or just

my idea of one." The two men smiled at the notion, and Ward went on:

"All right, laugh if you want to, but if this is a real world, whose

world is it, your world or my world? Here is John Barclay, for

instance. Sometimes I get a peek at his world." Ward picked up the

poker and sat down and hammered the toe of a boot with it as he went

on: "John's world is the Golden Belt Wheat Company, wheat pouring a

steady stream into boundless bins, and money flowing in golden ripples

over it all. Sometimes Bob Hendricks' head rises above the tide long

enough to gasp or cry for help and beg to come home, but John's golden

flood sweeps over him again, and he's gone. And here's your world,

Martin, wherein every one is kind and careless, and generous and good,

and full of smiles and gayety. And there's Lige Bemis' world, full of

cunning and hypocrisy, and meanness and treachery and plotting--a

hell of a world it is, with its foundations on hate and deceit--but

it's his world, and he has the same right to it that I have to mine.

And there's old Watts' world--" The general sighted along the poker

over his toe to the stove side whereon a cornucopia wriggled out of

nothing and poured its richness of fruit and grain into nothing.

"There's Watts' world, full of stuffed Personifications, Virtue,

Pleasure, Happiness, Sin, Sorrow, and God knows what of demigods, with

the hay of his philosophy sticking out of their eyeholes. You know

about his maxims, Mart; he actually lives by 'em, and no matter how

common sense yells at him to get off the track, old Watts just goes on

following his maxims, and gets butted into the middle of next week."

The colonel was making a hole in the stick in his hands, and his

attention was fixed on the whittling, but he added, "And your own

world, General--how about your own world?"

"My world," replied the general, as he pulled at the bows of his

rather soiled white tie, and evened them, "My world--" the general

jabbed the poker spear-like into the floor, "I guess I'm a kind of a

transcendentalist!"

The colonel blew the chips through the hole in his stick; he bored it

round in the pause that followed before he spoke.

"A transcendentalist, eh? Well, pintedly, General, that is what I may

call a soft impeachment, as the poet says--a mighty soft impeachment.

I've heard you called a lot worse names than that--and I may say,"

here the crow's-feet began scratching for a smile around the colonel's

eyes, "proved, sir, with you as the prosecuting witness."

The two men chuckled. Then the general, balancing himself, with the

poker point on the floor, as he tilted back went on: "My world, Mart

Culpepper, is a world in which the ideal is real--a world in a state

of flux with thoughts of to-day the matter of to-morrow; my world is a

world of faith that God will crystallize to-day's aspirations into

to-morrow's justice; my world," the general rose and waved his poker

as if to beat down the forces of materialism about him, "my world is

the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not

seen." He paused. "As I was saying," he continued at last, "if this is

a real world, if matter actually exists and this world is not a dream

of my consciousness, whose world is it, my world, your world, Watts

McHurdie's world, Lige's world, or John's world? It can't be all of

'em." He put the poker across the stove hearth, and sank his hands

deeply into his pockets as he continued: "The question that philosophy

never has answered is this: Am I a spectre and you an essence, or are

you a spectre and am I an essence? Is it your world or mine?"

The two men looked instinctively at the rattling doorknob, and John

Barclay limped into the room. His face was red with the cold and the

driving mist. He walked to the stove and unbuttoned his ulster, while

the colonel put the subject of the debate before him. The general

amended the colonel's statement from time to time, but the young man

only smiled tolerantly and shook his head. Then he went to his desk

and pulled a letter from a drawer.

"Colonel, I've got a letter here from Bob. The thing doesn't seem to

be moving. He only sold about a thousand dollars' worth of stock last

month--a falling off of forty per cent, and we must have more or we

can't take up our leases. He's begging like a dog to come home for a

week, but I can't let him. We need that week." He limped over to the

elder and put his hand on the tall man's arm as he said: "Now,

Colonel, that was what I sent for you about. You kind of speak to

Molly and have her write him and tell him to hold on a little while.

It's business, you know, and we can't afford to have sentiment

interfere with business."

The colonel, standing by the window, replied, after a pause: "I can

see where you are right, John. Business is business. You got to

consider that." He looked into the street below and saw General

Hendricks come shuddering into the cold wind. "How's he getting on?"

asked Culpepper, nodding towards Hendricks, who seemed unequal to the

gale.

"Oh, I don't know, Colonel,--times are hard."

"My, how he's aging!" said the colonel, softly.

After a silence Barclay said: "There's one thing sure--I've got it

into his hard old head that Bob is doing something back there, and he

couldn't earn his salt here. Besides," added Barclay, as if to justify

himself against an accusing conscience, "the old man does all the work

in the bank now, with time to spare."

It was the day of army overcoats, and the hard times had brought

hundreds of them from closets and trunks. General Hendricks,

fluttering down the street in his faded blue, made a rather pathetic

figure. The winter had whitened his hair and withered his ruddy face.

His unequal struggle with the wind seemed some way symbolical of his

life, and the two men watched him out of sight without a word. The

colonel turned toward his own blue overcoat which lay sprawling in a

chair, and Barclay said as he helped the elder man squeeze into it,

"Don't forget to speak to Molly, Colonel," and then ushered him to the

door. For a moment Colonel Culpepper stood at the bottom of the

stairs, partly hesitating to go into the windy street, and partly

trying to think of some way in which he could get the subject on his

mind before his daughter in the right way. Then as he stood on the

threshold with his nose in the storm, he recalled General Ward's

discourse about the different worlds, and he thought of Molly's world

of lovers' madness, and that brought up his own youth and its

day-dreams, and Molly flew out of his mind and her mother came in, and

he saw her blue-eyed and fair as she stood before him on their

wedding-day. With that picture in his heart he breasted the storm and

went home whistling cheerfully, walking through his world like a

prince.

When the colonel left the office of Ward and Barclay, the partners

retired into their respective worlds and went sailing through space,

each world upon its own axis. The general in a desultory way began

writing letters to reformers urging them to prepare for the coming

struggle; but John was head over heels in the business of the Golden

Belt Wheat Company, and in an hour had covered two sheets of foolscap

with figures and had written a dozen letters. The scratch, scratch of

his pen was as regular as the swish of a piston. On the other hand,

the general often stopped and looked off into space, and three times

he got up to mend the fire. At the end of the afternoon Mrs. Ward came

in, her cheeks pink with the cold; she had left the seven-year-old to

care for the one-year-old, and the five-year-old to look after the

three-year-old, and had come scurrying through the streets in a brown

alpaca dress with a waterproof cape over her shoulders. She and the

general spoke for a few moments in their corner, and she hurried out

again. The general finished the letter he was writing and wrote

another, and then backed up to the stove with his coat tails in front

of him and stood benignly watching Barclay work. Barclay felt the

man's attention, and whirling about in his chair licking an envelope

flap, he said, "Well, General--what's on your mind?"

"I was just thinking of Lucy--that's all," replied the general.

Barclay knew that the Wards had gone through the winter on less than

one hundred dollars, and it occurred to the younger man that times

might be rather hard in the Ward household. So he asked, "Are you

worried about money matters, General?"

The general's smile broadened to a grin. "Well, to be exact, Lucy and

I just counted cash--it's in her pocketbook, and we find our total

cash assets are eight dollars and thirty-nine cents, and it's got to

tide us over till grass." He stroked his lean chin, and ran his hands

through his iron-gray hair and went on, "That's plenty, the way we've

figured it out--Lucy and I only eat one meal a day anyway, and the

children seem to eat all the time and that averages it up." He smiled

deprecatingly and added: "But Lucy's got her heart set on a little

matter, and we've decided to spend eighty-seven cents, as you might

say riotously, and get it. That's what we were talking about."

Barclay entered into the spirit of Ward's remarks and put in: "But the

National debt, General--if you have all that money to spare, why

don't you pay it off? Practise what you preach, General."

The smile faded from Ward's face. He was not a man to joke on what he

regarded as sacred things. He replied: "Yes, yes, that's just it. My

share of the interest on that debt this winter was just seventy-five

cents, and if it wasn't for that, we would have had enough to get

them; as it is, we are going to cut out meat for a week--we figured

it all out just now--and get them anyway. She's down at the store

buying them."

"Buying what?" asked Barclay.

The general's face lighted up again with a grin, and he replied: "Now

laugh--dog-gone you--buying flower seeds!" They heard a step at the

bottom of the stairs, and the general strode to the door, opened it,

and called down, "All right, Lucy--I'm coming," and buttoning up his

coat, he whisked himself from the room, and Barclay, looking out of

the window, watched the two forms as they disappeared in the dusk. But

appearances are so deceptive. The truth is that what he saw was not

there at all, but only appeared on his retina; the two forms that he

seemed to see were not shivering through the twilight, but were

walking among dahlias and coxcombs and four-o'clocks and petunias and

poppies and hollyhocks on a wide lawn whereon newly set elm trees were

fluttering their faint green foliage in the summer breeze. Yet John

Barclay would have sworn he saw them there in the cold street, with

the mist beating upon them, and curiously corroborative of this

impression is a memory he retained of reflecting that since the

general's blue overcoat had disappeared the winter before, he had

noticed that little Thayer had a blue Sunday suit and little Elizabeth

Cady Stanton had appeared wrapped in a blue baby coat. But that only

shows how these matter-of-fact people are fooled. For though the

little Wards were caparisoned in blue, and though the general's blue

overcoat did disappear about that time, the general and Lucy Ward have

no recollection of shivering home that night, but instead they know

that they walked among the flowers.

And John, looking into the darkening street, must have seen something

besides the commonplace couple that he thought he saw; for as he

turned away to light his lamp and go to work again, he smiled. Surely

there was nothing to smile at in the thing he saw. Perhaps God was

trying to make him see the flowers. But he did not see them, and as it

was nearly an hour before six o'clock, he turned to his work under the

lamp and finished his letter to Bob Hendricks. When it was written, he

read it over carefully, crossing his "t's" and dotting his "i's," and

as no one was in the room he mumbled it aloud, thus:--

"DEAR BOB:--Don't get blue; it will be all right. Stick to it. I am

laying a wire that will get you an audience with Jay Gould. Make the

talk of your life there. You may be able to interest him--if just

for a few dollars. Offer him anything. Give him the stock if he will

let us use his name.

"Don't get uneasy about Molly, Bob. Jane and I see that she goes to

everything, and we've scared her up a kind of brevet beau--an old

rooster named Brownwell--Adrian Pericles Brownwell, who has blown in

here and bought the _Banner_ from Ezra Lane. Brownwell is from

Alabama. Do you remember, Bob, that day at Wilson's Creek after we

got separated in the Battle I ran into a pile of cavalry writhing in

a road? Well, there was one face in that awful struggling mass that

I always remembered--and I never expect to see such a look of fear

on a man's face again--he was a young fellow then, but now he's

thirty-five or so. Well--that was this man Brownwell. I asked him

about it the other day. How he ever got out alive, I don't know; but

the fact that he should turn up here proves that this is a small

world. Brownwell also is a writer from Writersville. You should see

the way he paints the lily in the _Banner_ every week. You remember

old Cap Lee--J. Lord Lee of the Red Legs--and Lady Lee, as they

called her when she was a sagebrush siren with the 'Army of the

Border' before the War? Well, read this clipping from the _Banner_

of this week: 'The wealth, beauty, and fashion of Minneola--fairest

village of the plain--were agog this week over the birth of a

daughter to Lord and Lady Lee, whose prominence in our social

circles makes the event one of first importance in our week's

annals. Little Beatrix, for so they have decided to christen her,

will some day be a notable addition to our refined and gracious

circles. Welcome to you, little stranger.'

"Now you know the man! You needn't be jealous of him. However, he

has frozen to the Culpeppers because they are from the South, and

clearly he thinks they are the only persons of consequence in town.

So he beaus Molly around with Jane and me to the concerts and

sociables and things. He is easily thirty-five, walks with a cane,

struts like a peacock, and Molly and Jane are having great sport

with him. Also he is the only man in town with any money. He brought

five thousand dollars in gold, real money,--his people made it on

contraband cotton contracts during the War, they say,--and he has

been the only visible means of support the town has had for three

months. But in the meantime don't worry about Molly, Bob, she's all

right, and business is business, you know, and you shouldn't let

such things interfere with it. But in another six months we'll be

out of the woods and on our way to big money."

Now another strange thing happened to John Barclay that evening, and

this time it was what he saw, not what he failed to see, that puzzled

him. For just as he sealed the letter to his friend, and thumped his

lean fist on it to blot the address on the envelope and press the

mucilage down, he looked around suddenly, though he never knew why,

and there, just outside the rim of light from his lampshade, trembled

the image of Ellen Culpepper with her red and black checked flannel

dress at her shoe tops and his rubber button ring upon her finger. She

smiled at him sweetly for a moment and shook her head sadly, and her

curls fluttered upon her shoulders, and then she seemed to fade into

the general's desk by the opposite wall. John was pallid and

frightened for a moment; then as he looked at the great pile of

letters before him he realized how tired and worn he was. But the face

and the eyes haunted him and brought back old memories, and that night

he and Jane and Molly Culpepper went to Hendricks', and he played the

piano for an hour in the firelight, and dreamed old dreams. And his

hands fell into the chords of a song that he sang as a boy, and Molly

came from the fire and stood beside him while they hummed the words in

a low duet:--

"Let me believe that you love as you loved

Long, long ago--long ago."

But when he went out into the drizzling night, and he and Jane left

Molly at home, he stepped into the whirling yellow world of gold and

grain, and drafts and checks, and leases and mortgages, and Heaven

knows what of plots and schemes and plans. So he did not heed Jane

when she said, "Poor--poor little Molly," but replied as he latched

the Culpepper gate, "Oh, Molly'll be all right. You can't mix business

and pleasure, you know. Bob must stay."

And when Molly went into the house, she found her mother waiting for

her. The colonel's courage had failed him. The mother took her

daughter's hand, and the two walked up the broad stairs together.

"Molly," said the mother, as the girl listlessly went about her

preparations for bed, "don't grieve so about Bob. Father and John need

him there. It's business, you know."

The daughter answered, "Yes, I know, but I'm so lonesome--so

lonesome." Then she sobbed, "You know he hasn't written for a whole

week, and I'm afraid--afraid!"

When the paroxysm had passed, the mother said: "You know, my dear,

they need him there a little longer, and he wants to come back. Your

father told me that John sent word to-day that you must not let him

come." The girl's face looked the pain that struck her heart, and she

did not answer. "Molly dear," began the mother again, "can't you write

to Bob to-morrow and urge him to stay--for me? For all of us? It is

so much to us now--for a little while--to have Bob there, sending

back money for the company. I don't know what father would do if it

wasn't for the company--and John."

The daughter held her mother's hand, and after gasping down a sob,

promised, and then as the sob kept tilting back in her throat, she

cried: "But oh, mother, it's such a big world--so wide, and I am so

afraid--so afraid of something--I don't know what--only that I'm

afraid."

But the mother soothed her daughter, and they talked of other things

until she was quiet and drowsy.

But when she went to sleep, she dreamed a strange dream. The next day

she could not untangle it, save that with her for hours as she went

about her duties was the odour of lilacs, and the face of her lover,

now a young eager face in pain, and then, by the miracle of dreams,

grown old, bald at the temples and brow, but fine and strong and

clean--like a boy's face. The face soon left her, but the smell of

the lilacs was in her heart for days--they were her lilacs, from the

bushes in the garden. As days and weeks passed, the dream blurred into

the gray of her humdrum life and was gone. And so that day and that

night dropped from time into eternity, and who knows of all the

millions of stars that swarmed the heavens, what ones held the

wandering souls of the simple people of that bleak Western town as

they lay on their pillows and dreamed. For if our waking hours are

passed in worlds so wide apart, who shall know where we walk in

dreams?

It is thirty years and more now since John Barclay dreamed of himself

as the Wheat King of the Sycamore Valley, and in that thirty years he

had considerable time to reflect upon the reasons why pride always

goeth before destruction. And he figured it out that in his particular

case he was so deeply engrossed in the money he was going to make that

first year, that he did not study the simple problem of wheat-growing

as he should have studied it. In those days wheat-growing upon the

plains had not yet become the science it is to-day, and many Sycamore

Valley farmers planted their wheat in the fall, and failed to make it

pay, and many other Sycamore Valley farmers planted their wheat in the

spring, and failed, while many others succeeded. The land had not been

definitely staked off and set apart by experience as a winter wheat

country, and so the farmers operating under the Golden Belt Wheat

Company, in the spring of 1874, planted their wheat in March.

That was a beautiful season on the plains. April rains came, and the

great fields glowed green under the mild spring sun. And Bob

Hendricks, collecting the money from his stock subscriptions, poured

it into the treasury of the company, and John Barclay spent the money

for seed and land and men to work the land, and so confident was he of

the success of the plan that he borrowed every dollar he could lay his

hands on, and got leases on more land and bought more seed and hired

more men, in the belief that during the summer Hendricks could sell

stock enough to pay back the loans. To Colonel Culpepper, Barclay gave

a block of five thousand dollars' worth of the stock as a bonus in

addition to his commission for his work in securing options, and the

colonel, feeling himself something of a capitalist, and being in funds

from the spring sale of lots in College Heights addition, invested in

new clothes, bought some farm products in Missouri, and went up and

down the earth proclaiming the glories of the Sycamore Valley, and in

May brought two car-loads of land seekers by stages and wagons and

buggies to Sycamore Ridge, and located them in Garrison County. And in

his mail when he came home he found a notice indicating that he had

overdrawn his account in the bank five hundred dollars, and that his

note was due for five hundred more on the second mortgage which he had

given the previous fall.

For two days he was plunged in gloom, and Barclay, observing his

depression and worming out of the colonel the cause, persuaded General

Hendricks to put the overdraft and the second mortgage note into one

note for a thousand dollars plus the interest for sixty days until the

colonel could make a turn, and after that the colonel was happy again.

He forgot for a moment the responsibility of wealth and engaged

himself in the task of making the Memorial Day celebration in Sycamore

Ridge the greatest event in the history of the town. Though there were

only five soldiers' graves to decorate, the longest procession

Garrison County had ever known wound up the hill to the cemetery, and

Colonel Martin Culpepper in his red sash, with his Knights Templar hat

on, riding up and down the line on an iron-gray stallion, was easily

the most notable figure in the spectacle. Even General Hendricks,

revived by the pomp of the occasion, heading the troop of ten veterans

of the Mexican War, and General Ward, in his regimentals, were

inconsequential compared with the colonel. And his oration at the

graves, after the bugles had blown taps, kept the multitude in tears

for half an hour. John Barclay's address at the Opera House that

afternoon--the address on "The Soldier and the Scholar"--was so

completely overshadowed by the colonel's oratorical flight that Jane

teased her husband about the eclipse for a month, and never could make

him laugh. Moreover, the _Banner_ that week printed the colonel's

oration in full and referred to John's address as "a few sensible

remarks by Hon. John Barclay on the duty of scholarship in times of

peace." But here is the strange thing about it--those who read the

colonel's oration were not moved by it; the charm of the voice and the

spell of the tall, handsome, vigorous man and the emotion of the

occasion were needed to make the colonel's oratory move one. Still,

opinions differ even about so palpable a proposition as the ephemeral

nature of the colonel's oratory. For the _Banner_ that week pronounced

it one of the classic oratorical gems of American eloquence, and the

editor thereof brought a dozen copies of the paper under his arm when

he climbed the hill to Lincoln Avenue the following Sunday night, and

presented them to the women of the Culpepper household, whom he was

punctilious to call "the ladies," and he assured Miss Molly and

Mistress Culpepper--he was nice about those titles also--that their

father and husband had a great future before him in the forum.

It may be well to pause here and present so punctilious a gentleman as

Adrian Pericles Brownwell to the reader somewhat more formally than he

has been introduced. For he will appear in this story many times. In

the first place he wore mustaches--chestnut-coloured mustaches--that

drooped rather gracefully from his lip to his jaw, and thence over his

coat lapels; in the second place he always wore gloves, and never was

without a flower in his long frock-coat; and thirdly he clicked his

cane on the sidewalk so regularly that his approach was heralded, and

the company was prepared for the coming of a serious, rather nervous,

fiery man, a stickler for his social dues; and finally in those days,

those sombre days of Sycamore Ridge after the panic of '73, when men

had to go to the post-office to get their ten-dollar bills changed,

Brownwell had the money to support the character he assumed. He had

come to the Ridge from the South,--from that part of the South that

carried its pistol in its hip pocket and made a large and serious

matter of its honour,--that was obvious; he had paid Ezra Lane two

thousand dollars for the _Banner_, that was a matter of record; and he

had marched with some grandeur into General Hendricks' bank one

Saturday and had clinked out five thousand dollars in gold on the

marble slab at the teller's window, and that was a matter attested to

by a crowd of witnesses. Watts McHurdie used to say that more people

saw that deposit than could be packed into the front room of the bank

with a collar stuffer.

But why Adrian Brownwell had come to the Ridge, and where he had made

his money--there myth and fable enter into the composition of the

narrative, and one man's opinion is as good as another's. Curiously

enough, all who testify claim that they speak by the authority of Mr.

Brownwell himself. But he was a versatile and obliging gentleman

withal, so it is not unlikely that all those who assembled him from

the uttermost parts of the earth into Sycamore Ridge for all the

reasons in the longer catechism, were telling the simple truth as they

have reason to believe it. What men know of a certainty is that he

came, that he hired the bridal chamber of the Thayer House for a year,

and that he contested John Barclay's right to be known as the glass of

fashion and the mould of form in Garrison County for thirty long

years, and then--but that is looking in the back of the book, which

is manifestly unfair.

It is enough to know now that on that Sunday evening after Memorial

Day, in 1874, Adrian P. Brownwell sat on the veranda of the Culpepper

home slapping his lavender gloves on his knee by way of emphasis, and

told the company what he told General Beauregard and what General

Beauregard told him, at the battle of Shiloh; also what his maternal

grandfather, Governor Papin, had said to General Jackson, when his

grandmother, then Mademoiselle Dulangpré, youngest daughter of the

refugee duke of that house, had volunteered to nurse the American

soldiers in Jackson's hospital after the battle of New Orleans; also,

and with detail, what his father, Congressman Brownwell, had said on

the capitol steps in December, 1860, before leaving for Washington to

resign his seat in Congress; and also with much greater detail he

recounted the size of his ancestral domain, the number of the

ancestral slaves and the royal state of the ancestral household, and

then with a grand wave of his gloves, and a shrug of which Madam Papin

might well have been proud, "But 'tis all over; and we are

brothers--one country, one flag, one God, one very kind but very busy

God!" And he smiled so graciously through his great mustaches, showing

his fine even teeth, that Mrs. Culpepper, Methodist to the heart,

smiled back and was not so badly shocked as she knew she should have

been.

"Is it not so?" he asked with his voice and his hands at once. "Ah,"

he exclaimed, addressing Mrs. Culpepper dramatically, "what better

proof would you have of our brotherhood than our common bondage to

you? However dark the night of our national discord--to-day, North,

South, East, West, we bask in the sunrise of some woman's eyes." He

fluttered his gloves gayly toward Molly and continued:--

"'O when did morning ever break,

And find such beaming eyes awake.'"

And so he rattled on, and the colonel had to poke his words into the

conversation in wedge-shaped queries, and Mrs. Culpepper, being in due

and proper awe of so much family and such apparent consequence, spoke

little and smiled many times. And if it was "Miss Molly" this and

"Miss Molly" that, when the colonel went into the house to lock the

back doors, and "Miss Molly" the other when Mrs. Culpepper went in to

open the west bedroom windows; and even if it was "Miss Molly, shall

we go down town and refresh ourselves with a dish of ice-cream?" and

even if still further a full-grown man standing at the gate under the

May moon deftly nips a rose from Miss Molly's hair and holds the rose

in both hands to his lips as he bows a good night--what then? What

were roses made for and brown eyes and long lashes and moons and May

winds heavy with the odour of flowers and laden with the faint sounds

of distant herd bells tinkling upon the hills? For men are bold at

thirty-five, and maidens, the best and sweetest, truest, gentlest

maidens in all the world, are shy at twenty-one, and polite to their

elders and betters of thirty-five--even when those elders and betters

forget their years!

As for Adrian P. Brownwell, he went about his daily task, editing the

_Banner_, making it as luscious and effulgent as a seed catalogue,

with rhetorical pictures about as florid and unconvincing. To him the

town was a veritable Troy--full of heroes and demigods, and

honourables and persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective

of praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige Bemis once

complained that the least offensive epithet he saw in the _Banner_

tacked after his name for two years was miscreant. As for John

Barclay, he once told General Ward that a man could take five dollars

in to Brownwell and come out a statesman, a Croesus or a scholar, as

the exigencies of the case demanded, and for ten dollars he could

combine the three.

Yet for all that Brownwell ever remained a man apart. No one thought

of calling him "Ade." Sooner would one nickname a gargoyle on a tin

cornice. So the editor of the _Banner_ never came close to the real

heart of Sycamore Ridge, and often for months at a time he did not

know what the people were thinking. And that summer when General

Hendricks was walking out of the bank every hour and looking from

under his thin, blue-veined hand at the strange cloud of insects

covering the sky, and when Martin Culpepper was predicting that the

plague of grasshoppers would leave the next day, and when John Barclay

was getting that deep vertical crease between his eyes that made him

look forty while he was still in his twenties, Adrian P. Brownwell was

chirping cheerfully in the _Banner_ about the "salubrious climate of

Garrison County," and writing articles about "our phenomenal prospects

for a bumper crop." And when in the middle of July the grasshoppers

had eaten the wheat to the ground and had left the corn stalks

stripped like beanpoles, and had devoured every green thing in their

path, the _Banner_ contained only a five-line item referring to the

plague and calling it a "most curious and unusual visitation." But

that summer the _Banner_ was filled with Brownwell's editorials on

"The Tonic Effect of the Prairie Ozone," "Turn the Rascals Out," "Our

Duty to the South," and "The Kingdom of Corn." As a writer Brownwell

was what is called "fluent" and "genial." And he was fond of copying

articles from the Topeka and Kansas City papers about himself, in

which he was referred to as "the gallant and urbane editor of the

_Banner_."

But then we all have our weaknesses, and be it said to the everlasting

credit of Adrian Brownwell that he understood and appreciated Watts

McHurdie and Colonel Culpepper better than any other man in town, and

that he printed Watts' poems on all occasions, and never referred to

him as anything less than "our honoured townsman," or as "our talented

and distinguished fellow-citizen," and he never laughed at General

Ward. But the best he could do for John Barclay--even after John had

become one of the world's great captains--was to wave his gloves

resignedly and exclaim, "Industry, thy name is Barclay." And Barclay

in return seemed never to warm up to Brownwell. "Colonel," replied

John to some encomium of his old friend's upon the new editor, "I'll

say this much. Certainly your friend is a prosperous talker!"

CHAPTER XI

The twenty-fifth of July, 1874, is a memorable day in the life of John

Barclay. For on that day the grasshoppers which had eaten off the

twenty thousand acres of wheat in the fields of the Golden Belt Wheat

Company, as though it had been cropped, rose and left the Missouri

Valley. They will never come back, for they are ploughed under in the

larva every year by the Colorado farmers who have invaded the plains

where once the "hoppers" had their nursery; but all this, even if he

had known it, would not have cheered up John that day. For he knew

that he owed one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Eastern

stockholders of the company, and he had not a dollar to show for it.

He had expected to borrow the money needed for the harvesting in the

fall, and over and over and over again he had figured with paper and

pencil the amount of his debt, and again and again he had tried to

find some way to pay even the interest on the debt at six per cent,

which the bank had guaranteed. While the locusts were devouring the

vegetation, he walked the hemp carpet that ran diagonally across his

office, and chased phantom after phantom of hope that lured him up to

the rim of a solution of the problem, only to push him back into the

abyss. He walked with his hands deep in his trousers pockets and his

head down, and as General Ward was out organizing the farmers in a

revolt against the dominant party in the state, Barclay was alone most

of the time. The picture of that barren office, with its insurance

chromos, with its white, cobweb-marked walls, with its dirty floor

partly covered with an "X" of red-bordered hemp carpet reaching from

the middle to the four corners, the picture of the four tall unwashed

windows letting in the merciless afternoon sun to fade the grimy black

and white lithograph of William Lloyd Garrison above the general's

desk, never left John Barclay's memory. It was like a cell on a

prisoner's mind.

As he paced the room that last day of the visit of the grasshoppers,

General Hendricks came in. His hair had whitened in the summer. The

panic and the plague of the locusts had literally wrung the sap out of

his nerves. Old age was pressing inexorably upon him, palsying his

hands on its rack, tripping his feet in its helpless mazes. His dimmed

eyes could see only ruin coming, coming slowly and steadily toward

him. In the panic, it came suddenly and inspired fight in him. But

this year there was something diabolical in its resistless approach.

So he shrank from his impending fate as a child trembles at some

unknown terror. But Barclay did not swerve. He knew the affairs of the

bank fairly well. He was a director who never signed the quarterly

statement without verifying every item for himself. He had dreaded the

general's visit, yet he knew that it must come, and he pulled toward

the general a big hickory chair. The old man sank into it and looked

helplessly into the drawn hard face of the younger man and sighed,

"Well, John?"

Barclay stood before him a second and then walked down one arm of the

"X" of the carpet and back, and up another, and then turned to

Hendricks with: "Now, don't lose your nerve, General. You've got to

keep your nerve. That's about all the asset we've got now, I guess."

The general replied weakly: "I--I, I--I guess you're right, John. I

suppose that's about it."

"How do you figure it out, General?" asked Barclay, still walking the

carpet.

The general fumbled for a paper in his pocket and handed it to

Barclay. He took it, glanced at it a moment, and then said: "I'm no

good at translating another man's figures--how is it in

short?--Right down to bed-rock?"

Hendricks seemed to pull himself together and replied: "Well,

something like ten thousand in cash against seventy thousand in

deposits, and fifty thousand of that time deposits, due next October,

you know, on the year's agreement. Of the ten thousand cash, four

thousand belongs to Brownwell, and is on check, and you have two

thousand on check."

"All right. Now, General, what do you owe?"

"Well, you know that guarantee of your and Bob's business--that nine

thousand. It's due next week."

"And it will gut you?" asked Barclay.

The old man nodded and sighed. Barclay limped carefully all over his

"X," swinging himself on his heels at the turns; his mouth was

hardening, and his eyes were fixed on the old man without blinking as

he said: "General--that's got to come. If it busts you--it will save

us, and we can save you after. That has just absolutely got to be

paid, right on the dot."

The old man could not have turned paler than he was when he entered

the room, but he rose halfway in his chair and shook his leonine head,

and then let his hands fall limply on his knees as he cried: "No--no,

John--I can't. I can't."

Barclay put his hand on the back of the old man's chair, and he could

feel the firm hard grip of the boy through his whole frame. Then after

a moment's pause Barclay said: "General, I'm in earnest about that.

You will either mail those dividend certificates according to your

guarantee on the first, or as sure as there is a God in heaven I'll

see that you won't have a dollar in your bank on the night of the

second."

The old man stood gasping. The eyes of the two men met. Barclay's were

bold and green and blazing.

"Boy! Boy! Boy!--" the old man faltered. "Don't ruin me! Don't ruin

me--" he did not finish the sentence, but sank into his chair, and

dropped his face to his breast and repeated, "Don't, don't, don't,"

feebly for a few times, without seeming to realize what he was saying.

From some outpost of his being reinforcements came. For he rose

suddenly, and shaking his haggard fist at the youth, exclaimed in a

high, furious, cracking voice as he panted and shook his great hairy

head: "No--by God, no, by God, no! You damned young cut-throat--you

can break my bank, but you can't bulldoze me. No, by God--no!" He

started to leave the room. Barclay caught the old man and swung him

into a chair. The flint that Barclay's nature needed had been struck.

His face was aglow as with an inspiration.

"Listen, man, listen!" Barclay cried. "I'm not going to break your

bank, I'm trying to save it." He knew that the plan was ripe in his

head, and as he talked it out, something stood beside him and

marvelled at its perfection. As its inherent dishonesty revealed

itself, the old man's face flinched, but Barclay went on unfolding his

scheme. It required General Hendricks to break the law half a dozen

ways, and to hazard all of the bank's assets, and all of its cash. And

it required him to agree not to lend a dollar to any man in the county

except as he complied with the demands of the Golden Belt Wheat

Company and mortgaged his farm to Barclay. The plan that Barclay set

forth literally capitalized the famine that had followed the

grasshopper invasion, and sold the people their own need at Barclay's

price. Then for an hour the two men fought it out, and at the end

Barclay was saying: "I am glad you see it that way, and I believe, as

you do, that they will take it a little better if we also agree to pay

this year's taxes on the land they put under the mortgage. It would be

a great sweetener to some of them, and I can slip in an option to sell

the land to us outright as a kind of a joker in small type." His

brassy eyes were small and beady as his brain worked out the details

of his plan. He put his hands affectionately on General Hendricks'

shoulders as he added, "You mustn't forget to write to Bob, General;

hold him there whatever comes."

At the foot of the stairs the two men could hear the heavy tread of

Colonel Culpepper. As Hendricks went down the stairs John heard the

colonel's "Mornin', General," as the two men passed in the hallway.

"Mornin', Johnnie--how does your corporocity sagashiate this

mornin'?" asked the colonel.

Barclay looked at the colonel through little beady green eyes and

replied,--he knew not what. He merely dipped an oar into the talk

occasionally, he did not steer it, and not until he emerged from his

calculations twenty minutes after the colonel's greeting did Barclay

realize that the colonel was in great pain. He was saying when

Barclay's mind took heed: "And now, sir, I say, now, having forced his

unwelcome and, I may say, filthy lucre upon me, the impudent scalawag

writes me to-day to say that I must liquidate, must--liquidate, sir;

in short, pay up. I call that impertinence. But no matter what I call

it, he's going to foreclose." Barclay's eyes opened to attention. The

colonel went on. "The original indebtedness was a matter of ten

thousand--you will remember, John, that's what I paid for my share of

the College Heights property, and while I have disposed of some,--in

point of fact sold it at considerable profit,--yet, as you know, and

as this scoundrel knows, for I have written him pointedly to that

effect, I have been temporarily unable to remit any sum substantial

enough to justify bothering him with it. But now the scamp, the

grasping insulting brigand, notifies me that unless I pay him when the

mortgage is due,--to be plain, sir, next week,--he proposes to

foreclose on me."

The colonel's brows were knit with trouble. His voice faltered as he

added: "And, John--John Barclay, my good friend--do you realize that

that little piece of property out on the hill is all I have on earth

now, except the roof over my head? And may--" here his voice slid

into a tenor with pent-up emotion--"maybe the contemptible

rapscallion will try to get that." The colonel had risen and was

pacing the floor. "What a damn disreputable business your commerce is,

anyway! John, I can't afford to lose that property--or I'd be a

pauper, sir, a pauper peddling organs and sewing-machines and maybe

teaching singing-school." The colonel's face caught a rift of sunshine

as he added, "You know I did that once before I was married and came

West--taught singing-school."

"Well, Colonel--let's see about it," said Barclay, absently. And the

two men sat at the table and figured up that the colonel's liabilities

were in the neighbourhood of twelve thousand, of which ten thousand

were pressing and the rest more or less imminent. At the end of their

conference, Barclay's mind was still full of his own affairs. But he

said, after looking a moment at the troubled face of the big

black-eyed man whose bulk towered above him, "Well, Colonel, I don't

know what under heavens I can do--but I'll do what I can."

The colonel did not feel Barclay's abstraction. But the colonel's face

cleared like a child's, and he reached for the little man and hugged

him off his feet. Then the colonel broke out, "May the Lord, who

heedeth the sparrow's fall and protects all us poor blundering

children, bless you, John Barclay--bless you and all your household."

There were tears in his eyes as he waved a grand adieu at the door,

and he whistled "Gayly the Troubadour" as he tripped lightly down the

stairs. And in another moment the large white plumes were dancing in

his eyes again. This time they waved and beckoned toward a

subscription paper which the colonel had just drawn up when the

annoying letter came from Chicago, reminding him of his debt. The

paper was for the relief of a farmer whose house and stock had been

burned. The colonel brought from his hip pocket the carefully folded

sheet of foolscap which he had put away when duty called him to

Barclay. He paused at the bottom of the stair, backed the paper on the

wall, and wrote under the words setting forth the farmer's

destitution, "Martin Culpepper--twenty-five dollars." He stood a

moment in the stairway looking into the street; the day was fair and

beautiful; the grasshoppers were gone, and with them went all the

vegetation in the landscape; but the colonel in his nankeen trousers

and his plaited white shirt and white suspenders, under his white

Panama hat, felt only the influence of the genial air. So he drew out

the subscription paper again and erased the twenty-five dollars and

put down thirty-five dollars. Then as Oscar Fernald and Daniel Frye

came by with long faces the colonel hailed them.

"Boys," he said, "fellow named Haskins down in Fairview, with nine

children and a sick wife, got burnt out last night, and I'm kind of

seeing if we can't get him some lumber and groceries and things. I

want you boys," the colonel saw the clouds gathering and smiled to

brush them away, "yes, I want you boys to give me ten dollars apiece."

"Ten dollars!" cried Fernald.

"Ten dollars!" echoed Frye. "My Lord, man, there isn't ten dollars in

cash between here and the Missouri River!"

"But the man and his children will starve, and his wife will die of

neglect."

"That's the Lord's affair--and yours, Mart," returned Fernald, as he

broke away from the colonel's grasp; "you and He brought them here."

Frye went with Oscar, and they left the colonel with his subscription

paper in his hand. He looked up and down the street and then drew a

long breath, and put the paper against the wall again and sighed as he

erased the thirty-five dollars and put down fifty dollars after his

name. Then he started for the bank to see General Hendricks. The large

white plumes were still dancing in his eyes.

But so far as Barclay is concerned the colonel never reached the

bottom of the stairs, for Barclay had his desk covered with law-books

and was looking up contracts. In an hour he had a draft of a mortgage

and option to buy the mortgaged land written out, and was copying it

for the printer. He took it to the _Banner_ office and asked Brownwell

to put two men on the job, and to have the proof ready by the next

morning.

Brownwell waved both hands magnificently and with much grace, and

said: "Mr. Barclay, we will put three men on the work, sir, and if you

will do me the honour, I will be pleased to bring the proof up Lincoln

Avenue to the home of our mutual friend, Colonel Culpepper, where you

may see it to-night." Barclay fancied that a complacent smile wreathed

Brownwell's face at the prospect of going to the Culpeppers', and the

next instant the man was saying: "Charming young lady, Miss Molly! Ah,

the ladies, the ladies--they will make fools of us. We can't resist

them." He shrugged and smirked and wiggled his fingers and played with

his mustaches. "Wine and women and song, you know--they get us all.

But as for me--no wine, no song--but--" he finished the sentence

with another flourish.

Barclay did what he could to smile good-naturedly and assent in some

sort of way as he got out of the room. That night, going up the hill,

he said to Jane: "Brownwell is one of those fellows who regard all

women--all females is better, probably--as a form of vice. He's the

kind that coos like a pouter pigeon when he talks to a woman."

Jane replied: "Yes, we women know them. They are always claiming that

men like you are not gallant!" She added, "You know, John, he's the

jealous, fiendish kind--with an animal's idea of honour." They walked

on in silence for a moment, and she pressed his arm to her side and

their eyes met in a smile. Then she said: "Doubtless some women like

that sort of thing, or it would perish, but I don't like to be treated

like a woman--a she-creature. I like to be thought of as a human

being with a soul." She shuddered and continued: "But the soul doesn't

enter even remotely into his scheme of things. We are just bodies."

The Barclays did not stay late at the Culpeppers' that night, but took

the proofs at early bedtime and went down the hill. An hour later they

heard Molly Culpepper and Brownwell loitering along the sidewalk.

Brownwell was saying:--

"Ah, but you, Miss Molly, you are like the moon, for--

"'The moon looks on many brooks,

The brook can see no moon but this.'

"And I--I am--"

The Barclays did not hear what he was; however, they guessed, and they

guessed correctly--so far as that goes. But Molly Culpepper did hear

what he was and what he had been and what he would be, and the more

she parried him, the closer he came. There were times when he forgot

the "Miss" before the "Molly," and there were other times when she had

to slip her hand from his ever so deftly. And once when they were

walking over a smooth new wooden sidewalk coming home, he caught her

swiftly by the waist and began waltzing and humming "The Blue Danube."

And at the end of the smooth walk, she had to step distinctly away

from him to release his arm. But she was twenty-one, and one does not

always know how to do things at twenty-one--even when one intends to

do them, and intends strongly and earnestly--that one would do at

forty-one, and so as they stood under the Culpepper elm by the gate

that night,--under the elm, stripped gaunt and naked by the

locusts,--and the July moon traced the skeleton of the tree upon the

close-cropped sod, we must not blame Molly Culpepper too much even if

she let him, hold her hand a moment too long after he had kissed it a

formal good night; for twenty-one is not as strong as its instincts.

It is such a little while to learn all about a number of important

things in a big and often wicked world that when a little man or a

little woman, so new to this earth as twenty-one years, gets a finger

pinched in the ruthless machinery, it is a time for tears and

mothering and not for punishment. And so when Adrian Brownwell pulled

the little girl off her feet and kissed her and asked her to marry him

all in a second, and she could only struggle and cry "No, no!" and beg

him to let her go--it is not a time to frown, but instead a time to

go back to our twenty-ones and blush a little and sigh a little, and

maybe cry and lie a little, and in the end thank God for the angel He

sent to guard us, and if the angel slept--thank God still for the

charity that has come to us.

The next day John Barclay had Colonel Martin Culpepper and Lige Bemis

in his office galvanizing them with his enthusiasm and coaching them

in their task. They were to promise three dollars an acre, August 15,

to every farmer who would put a mortgage on his land for six dollars

an acre. The other three dollars was to cover the amount paid by

Barclay as rent for the land the year before. They were also to offer

the landowner a dollar and a half an acre to plough and plant the land

by September 15, and another dollar to cultivate it ready for the

harvest, and the company was to pay the taxes on the land and furnish

the seed. Barclay had figured out the seed money from the sale of the

mortgages. The man was a dynamo of courage and determination, and he

charged the two men before him until they fairly prickled with the

scheme. He talked in short hard sentences, going over and over his

plan, drilling them to bear down on the hard times and that there

would be no other buyers or renters for the land, and to say that the

bank would not lend a dollar except in this way. Long after they had

left his office, Barclay's voice haunted them. His face was set and

his eyes steady and small, and the vertical wrinkle in his brow was as

firm as an old scar. He limped about the room quickly, but his strong

foot thumped the floor with a thud that punctuated his words.

They left, and he sat down to write a letter to Bob Hendricks telling

him the plan. He had finished two pages when General Hendricks came in

a-tremble and breathless. The eyes of the two men met, and Hendricks

replied:--

"It's Brownwell--the fat's in the fire, John. Brownwell's going!"

"Going--going where?" asked the man at the desk, blankly.

"Going to leave town. He's been in and given notice that he wants his

money in gold day after to-morrow."

"Well--well!" exclaimed Barclay, with his eyes staring dumbly at

nothing on the dingy white wall before him. "Well--don't that beat

the Jews? Going to leave town!" He pulled himself together and gripped

his chair as he said, "Not by a damn sight he ain't. He's going to

stay right here and sweat it out. We need that four thousand dollars

in our business. No, you don't, Mr. Man--" he addressed a

hypothetical Brownwell. "You're roped and tied and bucked and gagged,

and you stay here." Then he said, "You go on over to the bank,

General, and I'll take care of Brownwell." Barclay literally shoved

the older man to the door. As he opened it he said, "Send me up a boy

if you see one on the street."

In ten minutes Brownwell was running up the stairs to Barclay's office

in response to his note. He brought a copy of the mortgage with, him,

and laid it before Barclay, who went over it critically. He found a

few errors and marked them, and holding it in his hands turned to the

editor.

"Hendricks says you are going to leave town. Why?" asked Barclay,

bluntly. He had discovered even that early in life that a circuitous

man is generally knocked off his guard by a rush. Brown well blinked

and sputtered a second or two, scrambling to his equilibrium. Before

he could parry Barclay assaulted him again with: "Starving to death,

eh? Lost your grip--going back to Alabama with the banjo on your

knee, are you?"

"No, sir--no, sir, you are entirely wrong, sir--entirely wrong, and

scarcely more polite, either." Brown well paused a minute and added:

"Business is entirely satisfactory, sir--entirely so. It is another

matter." He hesitated a moment and added, with the ghost of a smirk,

"A matter of sentiment--for--

"'The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers,

Is always the first to be touched by the thorns.'"

Brownwell sat there flipping his gloves, exasperatingly; Barclay

screwed up his eyes, put his head on one side, and suddenly a flash

came into his face and he exclaimed, "Come off, you don't mean

it--not Molly!"

The rejected one inclined his head. Barclay was about to laugh, but

instead he said, "Well, you are not a quitter; why don't you go ahead

and get her?" He glanced instinctively at his letter to Bob Hendricks,

and as if to shield what he was going to say, put a paper over the

page, and then the seriousness of the situation came over him. "You

know women; cheer up, man--try again. Stick to it--you'll win,"

cried Barclay. The fool might go for so small a reason. It was no time

for ribaldry. "Let me tell you something," he went on. His eyes opened

again with a steady ruthless purpose in them, that the man before him

was too intent on his own pose to see. Barclay put a weight upon the

white sheet of paper that he had spread over his letter to Bob

Hendricks and then went on. "Say, Brownwell, let me tell you

something. This town is right in the balance; you can help." Something

seemed to hold Barclay back, but he took the plunge. "You can stay

here and help. We need men like you." Then he took a blind shot in the

dark before going on--perhaps to give himself another chance. "Have

you got any more of that buried money--I mean more than you gave

General Hendricks--the kind that you dug up after the war and

scratched the mould off the eagles?"

Brownwell flushed and replied, as he put one hand in his coat and the

other, with his stick and hat and gloves, behind him: "That is my

affair, sir. However, I will say that I have."

"I thought so," retorted Barclay. "Now look here, bring it to the

Ridge. Here's the place to invest it and now's the everlasting time.

You jump in here and help us out, help build up the town, and there's

nothing too good for you." Barclay was ready for it now. He did not

flinch, but went on: "Also here's your chance to help Colonel

Culpepper. He's to be closed out, and ten thousand would save him. You

know the kind of a man the colonel is. Stay with the game, Mr. Man,

stay with the game." He saw Brownwell's eyes twitch. Barclay knew he

had won. He added slowly, "You understand?"

Brownwell smiled benignly. Barclay looked nervously at the unfinished

letter on the table. Brownwell waved his arms again dramatically, and

replied: "Ah, thank you--thank you. I shall play my hand out--and

hearts are trumps--are they not?" And he went out almost dancing for

joy.

When the man was gone Barclay shuddered; his contempt for Brownwell

was one of the things he prided himself on, and the intrigue revolted

him. He stood a moment at the window looking into the street absently.

He became conscious that some one was smiling at him on the crossing

below. Then automatically he heard himself say, "Oh, Molly, can you

run up a minute?" And a moment later she was in the room. She was a

bewitching little body in her wide skirts and her pancake of a hat

with a feather in it as she sat there looking at her toes that

morning, with her bright eyes flashing up into his like rockets. But

there were lines under the eyes, and the rims of the eyelids were

almost red--as red as pretty eyelids ever may be. Barclay went right

to the midst of the matter at once. He did not patronize her, but told

her in detail just the situation--how the Golden Belt Wheat Company's

interest must be met by the bank under its guarantee, or Bob and his

father would be worse than bankrupts, they would be criminals. He put

Bob always in the foreground. Barclay unfolded to her all the plans

for going ahead with the work, and he told her what they were doing

for her father by giving him employment. He marched straight up to the

matter in hand without flinching.

"Molly," he began without batting his eyes, "here is where you come

in. That fellow Brownwell was up here this morning. Oh, you needn't

shiver--I know all about it. You had the honour of refusing him last

night." To her astonished, hurt face he paid no heed, but went on:

"Now he's going to leave town on account of you and pull out four

thousand dollars he's got in the bank. If he does that, we can't pay

our guarantee. You've got to call him back." She flared up as if to

stop him, but he went on: "Oh, I know, Molly Culpepper--but this is

no game of London Bridge. It's bad enough, but it's business--cold

clammy business, and sometimes we have to do things in this world for

the larger good. That roan simply can't leave this town and you must

bold him. It's ruin and perhaps prison to Bob and his father if he

goes; and as for your own father and mother--it makes them paupers,

Molly. There's no other way out of it." He paused a moment.

The girl's face blanched, and she looked at the floor and spoke, "And

Bob--when can he come back?"

"I don't know, Molly--but not now--he never was needed there as he

is now. It's a life-and-death matter, Molly Culpepper, with every

creature on earth that's nearest and dearest to you--it makes or

breaks us. It's a miserable business, I know well--but your duty is

to act for the larger good. You can't afford to send Bob to jail and

your people to the poorhouse just because--"

The girl looked up piteously and then cried out: "Oh, John--don't,

don't--I can't. It's awful, John--I can't."

"But, Molly," he replied as gently as he could, "you must. You can't

afford to be squeamish about this business. This is a woman's job,

Molly, not a child's."

She rose and looked at him a fleeting moment as if in search of some

mercy in his face. Then she looked away. He stood beside her, barring

her way to the door. "But you'll try, Molly, won't you--you'll try?"

he cried. She looked at him again with begging eyes and stepped around

him, and said breathlessly as she reached the door: "Oh, I don't know,

John--I don't know. I must think about it."

She felt her way down the stairs, and stopped a minute to compose

herself before she crossed the street and walked wearily up the hill.

That night at supper Colonel Culpepper addressed the assembled family

expansively. "The ravens, my dears, the ravens. Behold Elijah fed by

the sacred birds. By Adrian P. Brownwell, to be exact. This morning I

went down town with the sheriff selling the roof over our heads. This

afternoon who should come to me soliciting the pleasure of lending, me

money--who, I say, but Adrian P. Brownwell?"

"Well, I hope you didn't keep him standing," put in Buchanan.

"My son," responded the colonel, as he whetted the carving knife on

the steel--a form which was used more for rhetorical effect than,

culinary necessity, as there were pork chops on the platter, "my son,

no true gentleman will rebuke another who is trying to lend him money.

Always remember that." And the colonel's great body shook with

merriment, as he proceeded to fill up the plates. But one plate went

from the table untouched, and Molly Culpepper went about her work with

a leaden heart. For the world had become a horrible phantasm to her, a

place of longing and of heartache, a place of temptation and trial,

lying under the shadow of tragedy. And whose world was it that night,

as she sat chattering with her father and the man she feared, whose

world was it that night, if this is a real world, and not the shadow

of a dream? Was it the colonel's gay world, or John's golden world, or

Ward's harmonious world, or poor little Molly's world--all askew with

miserable duties and racking heartaches, and grinning sneering fears,

with the relentless image of the Larger Good always before her? Surely

it was not all their worlds, for there is only one world. Then whose

was it? God who made it and set it in the heavens in His great love

and mercy only knows. Watts McHurdie once wrote some query like this,

and the whole town smiled at his fancy. In that portion of his

"Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works" called "Fragments" occur

these lines:--

"The wise men say

This world spins 'round the universe of which it is a part;

But anyway--

The only world I know about is spun from out my heart."

And perhaps Watts, sewing away in his harness shop, had deciphered one

letter in the riddle of the Sphinx.

CHAPTER XII

"If I ever get to be a Turk or anything like that," said Watts

McHurdie, in October, two months after the events recorded in the last

chapter had occurred, as he sat astraddle of his bench, sewing on a

bridle, "I'm going to have one red-headed wife--but not much more'n

one."

Colonel Culpepper dropped a "Why?" into the reflections of the poet.

Watts replied, "Oh, just to complete the set!"

The colonel did not answer and Watts chuckled: "I figure out that

women are a study. You learn this one and pat yourself on the

breast-bone and say, 'Behold me, I'm on to women.' But you ain't.

Another comes along and you have to begin at the beginning and learn

'em all over. I wonder if Solomon who had a thousand--more or

less--got all his wisdom from them."

The colonel shook his head, and said sententiously, "Watts--they

hain't a blame thing in it--not a blame thing." The creaking of the

treadle on Watt's bench slit the silence for a few moments, and the

colonel went on: "There can be educated fools about women, Watts

McHurdie, just as there are educated fools about books. There's

nothing in your theory of a liberal education in women. On the

contrary, in all matters relating to and touching on affairs of the

heart--beware of the man with one wife."

McHurdie flashed his yellow-toothed smile upon his friend and replied,

"Or less than one?"

"No, sir, just one," answered Colonel Culpepper. "A man with a raft of

wives, first and last, is like a fellow with good luck--the Lord

never gives him anything else. And I may say in point of fact, that

the man with no wife is like a man with bad luck--the Lord never

gives him anything else, either!" The colonel slapped his right hand

on his knee and exclaimed: "Watts McHurdie--what's the matter with

you, man? Don't you see Nellie's all ready and waitin'--just fairly

honin', and longin', I may say, for a home and a place to begin to

live?"

McHurdie gave his treadle a jam and swayed forward over his work and

answered, "Marry in haste--repent at leisure."

But nevertheless that night Watts sat with Nellie Logan on the front

porch of the Wards' house, watching the rising harvest moon, while

Mrs. Ward, inside, was singing to her baby. Nellie Logan roomed with

the Wards, and was bookkeeper in Dorman's store. It was nearly ten

o'clock and the man rose to go. "Well," he said, and hesitated a

moment, "well, Nellie, I suppose you're still waiting?" It was a

question rather than an assertion.

The woman put her hands gently on the man's arms and sighed. "I just

can't--not yet, Watts."

"Well, I thought maybe you'd changed your mind." He smiled as he

continued, "You know they say women do change sometimes."

She looked down at him sadly. "Yes, I know they do, but some way I

don't."

There was a long pause while Watts screwed up his courage to say,

"Still kind of thinking about that preacher?"

The woman had no animation in her voice as she replied, "You know that

by now--without asking."

The man sat down on the step, and she sat on a lower step. He was

silent for a time. Then he said, "Funny, ain't it?" She knew she was

not to reply; for in a dozen years she had learned the man's moods. In

a minute, during which he looked into his hat absent-mindedly, he went

on: "As far as I've been able to make it out, love's a kind of a

grand-right-and-left. I give my right hand to you, and you give yours

to the preacher, and he gives his to some other girl, and she gives

hers to some one else, like as not, who gives his to some one else,

and the fiddle and the horn and the piano and the bass fid screech and

toot and howl, and away we go and sigh under our breaths and break our

hearts and swing our partners, and it's everybody dance." He looked up

at her and smiled at his fancy. For he was a poet and thought his

remarks had some artistic value.

She smiled back at him, and he leaned on his elbows and looked up at

her as he said quietly: "I'd like awful well, Nellie--awful well if

you'd be my partner for the rest of this dance. It's lonesome down

there in the shop."

The woman patted his hand, and they sat quietly for a while and then

she said, "Maybe sometime, Watts, but not to-night."

He got up, and stood for a moment beside her on the walk. "Well," he

said at length, "I suppose I must be moving along--as the wandering

Jew said." He smiled and their eyes met in the moonlight. Watts

dropped his instantly, and exclaimed, "You're a terrible handsome

girl, Nellie--? did you know it?" He repeated it and added, "And the

Lord knows I love you, Nellie, and I've said it a thousand times." He

found her hand again, and said as he put on his hat, "Well, good-by,

Nellie--good-by--if you call that gone." His handclasp tightened and

hers responded, and then he dropped her hand and turned away.

The woman felt a desire to scream; she never knew how she choked her

desire. But she rushed after him and caught him tightly and sobbed,

"Oh, Watts--Watts--Watts McHurdie--are you never going to have any

more snap in you than that?"

As he kicked away the earth from under him, Watts McHurdie saw the

light in a window of the Culpepper home, and when he came down to

earth again five minutes later, he said, "Well, I was just a-thinking

how nice it would be to go over to Culpeppers' and kind of tell them

the news!"

"They'll have news of their own pretty soon, I expect," replied

Nellie. And to Watts' blank look she replied: "The way that man

Brownwell keeps shining around. He was there four nights last week,

and he's been there two this week already. I don't see what Molly

Culpepper can be thinking of."

So they deferred the visit to the Culpeppers', and in due time Watts

McHurdie flitted down Lincoln Avenue and felt himself wafted along

Main Street as far in the clouds as a mortal may be. And though it was

nearly midnight, he brought out his accordion and sat playing it,

beating time with his left foot, and in his closed eyes seeing visions

that by all the rights of this game of life should come only to youth.

And the guests in the Thayer House next morning asked, "Well, for

heaven's sake, who was that playing 'Silver Threads among the Gold'

along there about midnight?--he surely must know it by this time."

And Adrian Brownwell, sitting on the Culpepper veranda the next night

but one, said: "Colonel, your harness-maker friend is a musical

artist. The other night when I came in I heard him twanging his

lute--'The Harp that once through Tara's Hall'; you know, Colonel."

And John Barclay closed his letter to Bob Hendricks: "Well, Bob, as I

sit here with fifty letters written this evening and ready to mail,

and the blessed knowledge that we have 18,000 acres of winter wheat

all planted if not paid for, I can hear old Watts wheezing away on his

accordion in his shop down street. Poor old Watts, it's a pity that

man hasn't the acquisitive faculty--he could turn that talent into

enough to keep him all his days. Poor old Watts!"

And Molly Culpepper, sitting in her bedroom chewing her penholder,

finally wrote this: "Watts McHurdie went sailing by the house

to-night, coming home from the Wards', where he was making his regular

call on Nellie. You know what a mouse-like little walk he has,

scratching along the sidewalk so demurely; but to-night, after he

passed our place I heard him actually break into a hippety-hop, and as

I was sitting on the veranda, I could hear him clicking clear down to

the new stone walk in front of the post-office." Oho, Molly Culpepper,

you said "as I was sitting on the veranda"; that is of course the

truth, but not the whole truth; what you might have said was "as we

were sitting on the veranda," and "as we were talking of what I like"

and "what you like," and of "what I think" and "what you think," and

as "I was listening to war tales from a Southern soldier," and as "I

was finding it on the whole rather a tiresome business "; those things

you might have written, Molly Culpepper, but you did not. And was it a

twinge or a prick or a sharp reproachful stab of your conscience that

made you chew the tip of your penholder into shreds and then madly

write down this:--

"Bob, I don't know what is coming over me; but some way your letters

seem so far away, and it has been such a long time since I saw you, a

whole lonesome year, and Bob dear, I am so weak and so unworthy of

you; I know it, oh, I know it. But I feel to-night that I must tell

you something right from my heart. It is this, dear: no matter what

may happen, I want you to know that I must always love you better than

any one else in all the world. I seem so young and foolish, and life

is so long and the world is so big--so big and you are so far away.

But, Bob dear, my good true boy, don't forget this that I tell you

to-night, that through all time and all eternity the innermost part of

my heart must always be yours. No matter what happens to you and me in

the course of life in the big world--you must never forget what I

have written here to-night."

And these words, for some strange reason, were burned on the man's

soul; though she had written him fonder ones, which passed from him

with the years. The other words of the letter fell into his eyes and

were consumed there, so he does not remember that she also wrote that

night: "I have just been standing at my bedroom window, looking out

over the town. It is quiet as the graveyard, save for the murmur of

the waters falling over the dam. And I cannot tell whether it is fancy

or whether it is real, but now and then there comes to me a faint hint

of music,--it sounds almost like Watts' accordion, but of course it

cannot be at this unholy hour, and the tune it makes me think of some

way is 'Silver Threads among the Gold.' Isn't it odd that I should

hear that song, and yet not hear it, and have it running through my

mind?"

And thus the town heard Watts McHurdie's song of triumph--the chortle

that every male creature of the human kind instinctively lets out when

he has found favour in some woman's eyes, that men have let out since

Lemech sang of victory over the young man to Adah and Zillah! And in

all the town no one knew what it meant. For the accordion is not

essentially an instrument of passion. So the episode ended, and

another day came in. And all that is left to mark for this world that

night of triumph--and that mark soon will bleach into oblivion--are

the verses entitled "Love at Sunset," of which Colonel Martin

Culpepper, the poet's biographer, writes in that chapter "At Hymen's

Altar," referred to before: "This poem was written October 14, 1874,

on the occasion of the poet's engagement to Miss Nellie Logan, who

afterward became his wife. By many competent critics, including no

less a personage than Hon. John Barclay, president of the National

Provisions Company, this poem is deemed one of Mr. McHurdie's noblest

achievements, ranking second only to the great song that gave him

national fame."

And it should be set down as an integral part of this narrative that

John Barclay first read the verses "Love at Sunset" in the _Banner_,

two weeks after the night of their composition, as he was finishing a

campaign for the Fifth Parallel bonds. He picked up the _Banner_ one

evening at twilight in a house in Pleasant township, and seeing Watts'

initials under some verses, read them at first mechanically, and then

reread them with real zest, and so deeply did they move the man from

the mooring of the campaign that seeing an accordion on the table of

the best room in which he was waiting for supper, Barclay picked it up

and fooled with it for half an hour. It had been a dozen years since

he had played an accordion, and the tunes that came into his fingers

were old tunes in vogue before the war, and he thought of himself as

an old man, though he was not yet twenty-five. But the old tunes

brought back his boyhood from days so remote that they seemed a long

time past. And that night when he addressed the people in the Pleasant

Valley schoolhouse, he was half an hour getting on to the subject of

the bonds; he dwelt on the old days and spoke of the drouth of '60 and

of the pioneers, and preached a sermon, with their lives for texts, on

the value of service without thought of money or hope of other reward

than the joy one has in consecrated work. Then he launched into the

bond proposition, and when the votes were counted Pleasant township

indorsed Barclay's plan overwhelmingly. For he was a young man of

force, if not of eloquence. His evident sincerity made up for what he

lacked in oratorical charm, and he left an impression on those about

him. So when the bonds carried in Garrison County, the firm of Ward

and Barclay was made local attorneys for the road, and General Ward,

smarting under the defeat of his party in the state, refused to accept

the railroad's business, and the partnership was dissolved.

"John," said Ward, as he put his hands on the young man's shoulders

and looked at him a kindly moment, before picking up his bushel basket

of letters and papers, to move them into another room and dissolve the

partnership, "John," the elder man repeated, "if I could always

maintain such a faith in God as you maintain in money and its power, I

could raise the dead."

Barclay blinked a second and replied, "Well, now, General, look

here--what I don't understand is how you expect to accomplish

anything without money."

"I can't tell you, John--but some way I have faith that I can--can

do more real work in this world without bothering to get money, than I

can by stopping to get money with which to do good."

"But if you had a million, you could do more good with it than you are

doing now, couldn't you?" asked Barclay.

"Yes, perhaps I could," admitted the general, as he eyed his miserable

little pile of worldly goods in the basket. "I suppose I could," he

repeated meditatively.

"All right then, General," cut in Barclay. "I have no million, any

more than you have; but I'm going to get one--or two, maybe a dozen

if I can, and I want to do good with it just as much as you do. When I

get it I'll show you." Barclay rose to lend the general a hand with

his basket. As they went awkwardly through the door with the load, the

general stopping to get a hold on the basket that would not twist his

hand, he put the load down in the hall and said: "But while you're

getting that million, you're wasting God's ten talents, boy. Can't you

see that if you would use your force, your keenness, and persistence

helping mankind in some way--teaching, preaching, lending a hand to

the poor, or helping to fight organized greed, you would get more of

God's work done than you will by squeezing the daylights out of your

fellow-men, making them hate money because of your avarice, and end by

doling it out to them in charity? That's my point, boy. That's why I

don't want your railroad job."

They had dropped the basket in the bare room. The general had not so

much as a chair or a desk. He looked it over, and Barclay's eyes

followed his. "What are you going to do for furniture?" asked the

younger man.

The general's thin face wrinkled into a smile. "Well," he replied, "I

suppose that if a raven can carry dry-goods, groceries, boots and

shoes and drugs, paints and oils,--and certainly the ravens have been

bringing those things to the Wards for eight years now, and they're

all paid for,--the blessed bird can hump itself a little and bring

some furniture, stoves, and hardware."

Barclay limped into his room, while the general rubbed the dust off

the windows. In a minute John came stumbling in with a chair, and as

he set it down he said, "Here comes the first raven, General, and now

if you'll kindly come and give the ravens a lift, they'll bring you a

table." And so the two men dragged the table into the office, and as

they finished, Ward saw General Hendricks coming up the stairs, and

when the new room had been put in order,--a simple operation,

--General Ward hurried home to help Mrs. Ward get in their dahlia

roots for the winter.

As they were digging in the garden, covering the ferns and wrapping

the magnolia tree they had lately acquired, and mulching the

perennials, Mrs. Mary Barclay came toward them buffeting the wind. She

wore the long cowlish waterproof cloak and hood of the period--which

she had put on during the cloudy morning. Her tall strong figure did

not bend in the wind, and the schoolbooks she carried in her hand

broke the straight line of her figure only to heighten the priestess

effect that her approaching presence produced.

"Well, children," she said, as she stood by the Wards at their work,

"preparing your miracles?" She looked at the bulbs and roots, and

smiled. "How wonderful that all the beauty of the flowers should be in

those scrawny brown things; and," she added as she brushed away the

brown hair of her forties from her broad brow, "God probably thinks

the same thing when He considers men and their souls."

"And when the gardener puts us away for our winter's sleep?" Ward

asked.

She turned her big frank blue eyes upon him as she took the words from

his mouth, "'And the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.'" Then

she smiled sadly and said, "But it is the old Adam himself that I seem

to be wrestling with just now."

"In the children--at school?" asked the Wards, one after the other.

She sighed and looked at the little troopers straggling along the

highway, and replied, "Yes, partly that, too," and throwing her

unnecessary hood back, turned her face into the wind and walked

quickly away. The Wards watched her as she strode down the hill, and

finally as he bent to his work the general asked:--

"Lucy, what does she think of John?"

Mrs. Ward, who was busy with a geranium, did not reply at once. But in

a moment she rose and, putting the plant with some others that were to

go to the cellar, replied: "Oh, Phil--you know a mother tries to hope

against hope. She teaches her school every day, and keeps her mind

busy. But sometimes, when she stops in here after school or for lunch,

she can't help dropping things that let me know. I think her heart is

breaking, Phil."

"Does she know about the wheat deal--I mean about the way he has

made the farmers sign that mortgage by cutting them off from borrowing

money at the bank?"

"Not all of it--but I think she suspects," replied the wife.

"Did you know, dear," said the general, as he put the plants in the

barrow to wheel them to the cellar, "that I ran across something

to-day--it may be all suspicion, and I don't want to wrong

John--but Mart Culpepper, God bless his big innocent heart, let

something slip--well, it was John, I think, who arranged for that

loan of ten thousand from Brownwell to Mart. Though why he didn't get

it at the bank, I don't know. But John had some reason. Things look

mighty crooked there at the bank. I know this--Mart says that

Brownwell lent him the money, and Mart lent it to the bank for a month

there in August, while he was holding the Chicago fellow in the air."

Mrs. Ward sat down on the front steps of the porch, and exclaimed:--

"Well, Phil Ward--that's why the Culpeppers are so nice to Brownwell.

Honestly, Phil, the last time I was over Mrs. Culpepper nearly talked

her head off to me and at Molly about what a fine man he is, and told

all about his family, and connections--he's related to the angel

Gabriel on his mother's side," she laughed, "and he's own cousin to

St. Peter through the Brownwells."

"Oh, I guess they're innocent enough about it--they aren't

mercenary," interrupted the general.

"Oh, no," replied Mrs Ward, "never in the world; but he's been good to

them and he's of their stock--and it's only natural."

"Yes, probably," replied the general, and asked, "Does she intend to

marry him, do you think?" Mrs. Ward was sorting some dahlia roots on

the wheelbarrow and did not reply at once. "Do you suppose they're

engaged?" repeated the general.

"I often wonder," she returned, still at her task. Then she rose,

holding a bulb in her hands, and said: "It's a funny kind of relation.

Her father and mother egging her on--and you know that kind of a man;

give him an inch and he'll take an ell. I wonder how far he has got."

She took the bulb to a pile near the rear of the house. "Those are the

nice big yellow ones I'm saving for Mrs. Barclay. But I'm sure of one

thing, Molly has no notion of marrying Brownwell." She continued:

"Molly is still in love with Bob. She was over here last week and had

a good cry and told me so."

"Well, why doesn't she send this man about his business?" exclaimed

the general.

Mrs. Ward sighed a little and replied, "Because--there is only one

perfect person in all the world, and that's you." She smiled at him

and continued: "The rest of us, dear, are just flesh and blood. So we

make mistakes. Molly knows she should; she told me so the other day.

And she hates herself for not doing it. But, dearie--don't you see

she thinks if she does, her father and mother will lose the big house,

and Bob will be involved in some kind of trouble? They keep that

before her all of the time. She says that John is always insisting

that she be nice to Brownwell. And you know the Culpeppers think

Brownwell is--well, you know what they think."

They worked along for a while, and the general stopped and put his

foot on his spade and cried: "That boy--that boy--that boy! Isn't he

selling his soul to the devil by bits? A little chunk goes every day.

And oh, my dear, my dear--" he broke out, "what profiteth a man if he

gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Poor, poor John." He fell

to his work again, sighing, "Poor John, poor John!" So they talked on

until the afternoon grew old.

And while they were talking, John and General Hendricks were in

Barclay's office going over matters, and seeing where they stood.

"So he says seventy thousand is too much for the company and me to

owe?" said John, at the end of half an hour's conference.

The general was drumming his fingers on the table nervously. "Yes--he

says we've got to reduce that in thirty days, or he'll close us up.

Haven't you got any political influence, somewhere in the East,

John,--some of those stockholders,--that will hold this matter up

till you can harvest your crop next June?"

Barclay thought a moment, with his hand in his chin, and then slowly

shook his head. A bank inspector from Washington was several degrees

higher in the work of politics than Barclay had gone.

"Let me see--" droned Barclay; "let me see. We can at least try

scattering it out a little; cut off, say, fifty thousand from me and

the company and put it in the name of Lige--"

"He's on to Lige, we've got a hat full of Lige's notes in there,"

interrupted the general.

"All right, then, drop Lige and put in the colonel--he'll do that for

me, and I'll see if I can't get the colonel to get Brownwell to

accommodate us. He's burning a good bit of the colonel's stove wood

these nights." Barclay smiled, and added, "And I'll just put Bob in

for a few thousand."

"But what'll we do about those taxes?" asked the general, anxiously.

"You know they've got to be paid before the first of the year, and

that's only six weeks off."

Barclay rose and paced the rug, and replied: "Yes, that's so. I was

going to make another note for them. But I suppose we oughtn't to do

it even under cover; for if he found out you had exceeded our loan

right now--you know those fellows get ugly sometimes." The young man

screwed up his face and stood looking out of the window in silence for

a long minute. Then he limped over to his chair and sat down as one

who has a plan. "Say now, General; you know Gabe Carnine's coming in

as county treasurer right after the first of the year, and we will

make him help us. You make your personal check for the nine thousand,

and give it to the old cuss who's in the county treasurer's office

now, with the descriptions of the land, and get the tax receipts;

he'll bring the check back to the bank; you give him credit on his

pass-book with the other checks, and just hold your own check out in

the drawer as cash. If my check was in there, the inspector might drop

in and see it, and cause a disturbance. When Gabe comes in, I'll make

him carry the matter over till next summer."

The transaction would cover only a few days, Barclay explained; and

finally he had his way. So the Larger Good was accomplished.

And later Adrian Brownwell came into the office to say:--

"Mr. Barclay, our friend, Colonel Culpepper, confessed to me after

some transparent attempts at subterfuge that my signing an

accommodation note would help you, and do I understand this also will

help our young friend, Robert Hendricks, whom I have never seen, and

enable him to remain at his post during the winter?"

John Barclay took a square hard look at Brownwell, and got a smile and

a faint little shrug in return, whereupon, for the Larger Good, he

replied "Yes," and for the Larger Good also, perhaps, Adrian Brownwell

answered:

"Well, I shall be delighted--just make my note for thirty days--only

thirty days, you understand; and then--well, of course if

circumstances justify it, I'll renew it." Barclay laughed and asked,

"Well, Mr. Brownwell, as between friends may I ask how 'circumstances'

are getting on?"

Brownwell shrugged his shoulders and smiled blandly as he answered:

"Just so-so; I go twice a week. And--" he waved his gloves airily and

continued, "What is it the immortal Burns says: 'A man's a man, for a'

that and a' that!' And I'm a man, John Barclay, and she's a woman. And

I go twice a week. You know women, sir, you know women--they're

mostly all alike. So I think--" he smirked complacently as he

concluded--"I think what I need is time--only time."

"Luck to you," said Barclay. "I'll just make the note thirty days, as

you say, and we can renew it from time to time."

Then Brownwell put on his hat, twirled his cane effusively, and bade

Barclay an elaborate adieu.

And ten days later, Molly Culpepper, loathing herself in her soul, and

praying for the day of deliverance when it should be all over, walked

slowly from the post-office up the hill to the house, the stately

house, with its impressive pillars, reading this: "My darling Girl:

John has sent me some more mortgages to sell, and they have to be sold

now. He says that father has to have the money, and he and father have

laid out work for me that will keep me here till the middle of

January. John says that the government inspector has been threatening

us with serious trouble in the bank lately, and we must have the

money. He says the times have forced us to do certain things that were

technically wrong--though I guess they were criminally wrong from

what he says, and we must have this money to make things good. So I am

compelled to stay here and work. Father commands me to stay in a way

that makes me fear that my coming home now would mean our ruin. What a

brick John is to stay there and shoulder it all. But, oh, darling,

darling, darling, I love you."

There was more, of course, and it was from a man's heart, and the

strange and sad part of this story is that when Molly Culpepper read

the rest of the letter, her heart burned in shame, and her shame was

keener than her sorrow that her lover was not coming home.

So it happened naturally that Molly Culpepper went to the Christmas

dance with Adrian Brownwell, and when Jane Barclay, seeing the

proprietary way the Alabaman hovered over Molly, and his obvious

jealousy of all the other men who were civil to her, asked John why he

did not let Bob come home for the holidays, as he had promised, for

the Larger Good John told her the facts--that there were some

mortgages that had just come in, and they must be sold, so that the

company could reduce its indebtedness to the bank. But the facts are

not always the truth, and in her heart, which did not reason but only

felt, Molly Culpepper, knowing that Brownwell and John Barclay were in

some kind of an affair together, feared the truth. And from her heart

she wrote to her lover questioning John's motives and pleading with

him to return, and he, having merely the facts, did not see the truth,

and replied impatiently--so impatiently that it hurt, and there was

temper in her answer, and then for over a week no letter came, and for

over a week no reply went back to that. And so the Larger Good was

doing its fine work in a wicked world.

CHAPTER XIII

The spring sun of 1875 that tanned John Barclay's face gave it a

leathery masklike appearance that the succeeding years never entirely

wore off. For he lived in the open by day, riding among his fields in

three townships, watching the green carpet of March rise and begin to

dimple in April, and billow in May. And at night he worked in his

office until the midnight cockcrow. His back was bowed under a score

of burdens. But his greatest burden was the bank; for it gave him

worry; and worry weighed upon him more than work. It was in

April--early April when the days were raw and cloudy, and the nights

blustery and dreary--that Barclay sat in his office one night after a

hard day afield, his top-boots spattered with mud, his corduroy coat

spread out on a chair to dry, and his wet gray soft hat on his desk

beside him. Jane was with her parents in Minneola, and Barclay had

come to his office without eating, from the stable where he left his

team. The yellow lights in the street below were reflected on the

mists outside his window, and the dripping eaves and cornices above

him and about him seemed to mark the time of some eery music too fine

for his senses, and the footfalls in the street below, hurrying

footfalls of people shivering through the mists, seemed to be the drum

beats of the weird symphony that he could not hear.

Barclay drew a watch from, the pocket of his blue flannel shirt, and

looked at it and stopped writing and stood by the box-stove. He was

looking at the door when he heard a thud on the stairs. It was

followed by a rattling sound, and in a moment Adrian Brownwell and his

cane were in the room. After the rather gorgeous cadenza of

Brownwell's greeting had died away and Barclay had his man in a chair,

Barclay opened the stove door and let the glow of the flames fight the

shadows in the room.

"Well," said Barclay, turning toward his visitor brusquely, "why won't

you renew that accommodation paper for me again?"

The Papins and the Dulangprés shrugged their shoulders and waved

their hands through Brownwell rather nastily as he answered,

"Circumstances, Mr. Barclay, circumstances!"

"You're not getting along fast enough, eh?" retorted Barclay.

"Yes--and no," returned Brownwell.

"What do you mean?" asked Barclay, half divining the truth.

"Well--it is after all our own affair--but since you are a friend I

will say this: three times a week--sometimes four times a week I go

out to pay my respects. Until November I stayed until nine, at

Christmas we put on another hour; now it is ten-thirty. I am a man,

John Barclay--as you see. She--she is an angel. Very good. In that

way, yes. But," the Papins and Dulangprés came back to his face, and

he shook his head. "But otherwise--no. There we stand still. She will

not say it."

Barclay squinted at the man who sat so complacently in the glow of the

firelight, with his cane between his toes and his gloves lightly

fanning the air. "So I take it," said John, "that you are like the

Memorial Day parade, several hours passing a given point!"

"Exactly," smiled back Brownwell. He drew from his pocket a diamond

ring. "She will look at it; she will admire it. She will put it on a

chain, but she will not wear it. And so I say, why should I put my

head in a noose here in your bank--what's the use? No, sir, John

Barclay--no, sir. I'm done, sir."

Barclay knew wheedling would not move Brownwell. He was of the mulish

temperament. So Barclay stretched out in his chair, locked his hands

back of his head, and looked at the ceiling through his eyelashes.

After a silence he addressed the cobwebs above him: "Supposing the

case. Would a letter from me to you, setting forth the desperate need

of this accommodation paper, not especially for me, but for Colonel

Culpepper's fortunes and the good name of the Hendricks family--would

that help your cause--a letter that you could show; a letter,"

Barclay said slowly, "asking for this accommodation; a letter that you

could show to--to--well, to the proper parties, let us say,

to-night; would--that kind of a letter help--" Barclay rose suddenly

to an upright position and went on: "Say, Mr. Man, that ought to

pretty nearly fix it. Let's leave both matters open, say for two

hours, and then at ten o'clock or so--you come back here, and I'll

have the note for you to sign--if you care to. How's that?" he asked

as he turned to his desk and reached for a pen.

"Well," replied Brownwell, "I am willing to try."

And so Barclay sat writing for five minutes, while the glow of the

flames died down, and the shadows ceased fighting and were still.

"Read this over," said Barclay at length. "You will see," he added, as

he handed Brownwell the unfolded sheets, "that I have made it clear

that if you refuse to sign our notes, General Hendricks will be

compelled to close the bank, and that the examination which will

follow will send him to prison and jeopardize Bob, who has signed a

lot of improper notes there to cover our transactions, and that in the

crash Colonel Culpepper will lose all he has, including the roof over

his head--if you refuse to help us." ("However," snarled Barclay, at

his conscience, "I've only told the truth; for if you take your money

and go and shut down on the colonel, it would make him a pauper.")

With a flourishing crescendo finale Adrian Brownwell entered the dark

stairway and went down into the street. Barclay turned quickly to his

work as if to avoid meditation. The scratch of his pen and the murmur

of the water on the roof grew louder and louder as the evening waxed

old. And out on the hill, out on Lincoln Avenue, the rain descended,

and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that

house--that stately house of a father's pride and--

At ten o'clock John Barclay heard a light footstep and a rattling cane

upon the stair, and Brownwell, a human whirligig of gay gestures, came

tripping into the room. "A pen, a pen,"--he cried, "my kingdom for a

pen." He was tugging at his gloves as he spoke, and in the clatter

that he made, Barclay found the blank note and pushed it toward the

table's edge to Brownwell, who put his ornate copy-book signature upon

it with a flourish.

When he had gone, Barclay wrote a note to Jane telling her of Molly's

engagement to Brownwell, and then he sat posting his books, and

figuring up his accounts. It was after midnight when he limped down

the stairs, and the rain had ceased. But a biting wind like a cruel

fate came out of the north, and he hurried through the deserted

street, under lowering clouds that scurried madly across the stars.

But John Barclay could not look up at the stars, he broke into a

limping run and head downward plunged into the gale. And never in all

his life could he take a square look at Molly Culpepper's diamond

ring.

As the spring deepened Bob Hendricks felt upon him at his work the

pressure of two distinct troubles. One was his sweetheart's attitude

toward him, and the other was the increasing weakness of his father.

Molly Culpepper's letters seemed to be growing sad; also they were

failing in their length and frequency--the young man felt that they

were perfunctory. His father's letters showed a physical breakdown.

His handwriting was unsteady, and often he repeated himself in

successive letters. The sister wrote about her father's weakness, and

seemed to think he was working too hard. But the son suspected that it

was worry rather than work, and that things were not going right in

the bank. He did not know that the Golden Belt Wheat Company had

sapped the money of the bank and had left it a husk, which at any time

might crumble. The father knew this, and after the first of the year

every morning when he opened the bank he feared that day would be the

last day of its career.

And so it fell out that "those that look out of the windows" were

darkened, and General Hendricks rose up with the voice of the bird and

was "afraid of that which was high" and terrors were in the way. So on

his head, the white blossom of the almond tree trembled; and one noon

in March the stage bore to this broken, shaking old man a letter from

Kansas City that ran the sword of fear into his heart and almost

stopped it forever. It ran:--