and fortify himself for the desultory labors in which he was engaged. He
liked the society of young men for several reasons. For one thing, they
were more free with their purses than his older cronies. The
association, he also thought, threw a sort of glamour of youth about his
own person. Finally, they listened to the disquisitions and artistic
rhapsodies in which he was fond of indulging, with an attention by no
means accorded by his compeers.
Barwood was of a speculative turn of mind, and had also by nature a
strong leaning towards whatever was curious and out of the common. These
proclivities Megilp's conversation, pursuits, and studio full of
trumpery were calculated to gratify. A moderate sort of friendship had
in consequence sprung up between them.
They made mutual protestations of pleasure at this meeting. Barwood
considered it an occasion worthy of a bottle of Dry Verzenay, which was
not demurred to by Megilp.
The payment of specie was so entire a novelty that, when the inquiries
and explanations natural after a long separation were concluded, it was
among the first topics touched upon.
"Sure it's the first hard money I've seen these ten years, so it is,"
said Megilp.
"That is my case also," said Barwood. "I took as little interest in the
matter as any boy of fourteen might be expected to; but I remember very
well how rapidly specie disappeared at the beginning of the war."
"And where has it been?" said Megilp. "There's many fine points of
interest about it, do you see. Consider the receptacles in which it has
been hoarded--the secret places in chimneys, under floors and under
ground, the vaults, old stockings, cabinets, and caskets that have
teemed and glittered with it. Then there's the characters again, of all
its various owners: the timid doubters about the government, the
speculators, the curiosity hunters, the misers"--
"Yes," said Barwood, "the history of a single one of these pieces for
the period would probably make a story full of interest." It did not
detract from the value of Megilp's conversation, in Barwood's view, that
the worthy artist said "foine" and "hoorded" instead of adopting the
more conventional pronunciation.
"But what I'm after telling you isn't the singular part of it at all,"
resumed Megilp, taking some silver from his pocket and evidently
settling down to the subject. "What is ten years to it? According to the
mint reports a coin of the precious metals loses by wear and tear but
one twenty-four hundredth of its bulk in a year. These pieces I hold in
my hand, coined forty years ago, are scarcely defaced. In another forty
they will be hardly more so. What, for instance, has been the career of
this Mexican dollar? Perhaps it was struck from bullion fresh from a
Mexican mine. In that case I have nothing to say. But just as likely it
was struck from old Spanish plate or from former coin, and then it takes
us back to the earliest times, and its origin is lost in obscurity. The
same metal is time after time re-melted, re-cast, re-stamped, and thus
maintained in perpetual youth. This gold piece upon my watch-chain was
perchance coined from the sands of the Pactolus, and once bore
Chaldaean characters. And to what uses has it come?
'Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;'
and so the pieces paid for the ransom of the Inca of Peru or Richard the
Lion-hearted, the material of the spurs of Agincourt, the rings of
Cleopatra and Zenobia, the golden targets of Solomon, fashioned from the
treasures of Ophir, may purchase soap and candles and mutton-chops for
John Smith. And yet why not? We ourselves have come down to commonplace
usages; why should not the works of our hands? You with your
conventional hat and English walking-coat, I with my spectacles and
Irish brogue, have had ancestors that wore coats of mail in the first
crusade, or twanged cross-bows with Robin Hood, sailed in the ships of
Tarshish, and traded to Tyre and Sidon."
"You think, then," said Barwood, "that some part of the coinage of
antiquity is still in circulation."
"To be sure I do, don't I tell you? I say the precious metals are
indestructible. All the coins that have figured prominently in history
are in some shape or other among us still. Twenty-four hundred years of
active use are needed to wear out a coin completely. How long will it
last with moderate use, and with intervals of lying buried for hundreds
of years, as much of the coinage of antiquity now extant in its
original condition has done? We have among us the rings, bolts, chains
bracelets, drinking-vessels, and vases that glitter in the narratives of
all the chroniclers, and embody the pomp and luxury of all the ages.
"My silver dollar here, which I ring upon Gruyère's table, and with
which, had it not been for your amiable politeness, I should have paid
for my frugal lunch, has haply been moulded in Cellini's dagger-hilts or
crucifixes, or formed part of a pirate's booty from a scuttled galleon
on the Spanish Main. For aught I know, it was current money in Nineveh
and Babylon. Perhaps it is one of the pieces paid by Abraham to the
children of Heth for the double cave that looked towards Mamre."
"Or one of the pieces for which Judas betrayed the Master," suggested
Barwood.
Megilp looked startled, and involuntarily pushed the money away from
him. "That is a singular fancy of yours."
"It came to me quite spontaneously this moment," said Barwood. "I don't
know but it is, and yet it was a very natural sequence from what
preceded."
Both were abstracted for some moments, and contemplated in silence the
bubbles twisting up the stems of the delicate wine-glasses.
"Do you suppose," finally said Barwood, "that those coins, if extant,
carry with them an enduring curse?"
"There's no good in them, you may depend," said the other. By this time
both bottle and plates were empty. The train of thought they had been
pursuing seemed to have found its climax in the turn given it by
Barwood. Over their coffee and dessert they discussed more cheerful
topics.
"Come around to my place before you leave town," said Megilp, as they
shook hands at parting. "I have a one-legged bronze Hercules from
Pompeii. I think ye'll enjoy it."
As he hobbled away he muttered to himself more than once, "It's the
divil's own fancy, so it is."
* * * * *
II.
ETHEREAL CLAIMS.
The business of the Bureau of Ethereal Claims at Washington was
conducted by a moderate force of clerks, under the direction of General
Bellwether. The general had been a little of everything in his time. At
the outbreak of the war he abandoned an unprofitable insurance agency to
raise a company. He displayed considerable courage and strategic talent
in his campaigning, came out a brevet brigadier, and had been making a
good thing of it ever since in the government service. The office
bristled with military titles. Everybody except Barwood and Judge
Montane was either colonel, major, or captain. As to the judge, a
middle-aged, uncommunicative man who was known to be supporting a large
family, he confessed one day over a bottle, ordered in by the bureau
during the general's absence, that his title was chiefly honorary.
"What court did you used to be judge of, Montane?" inquired young Mars
Brown.
"I'll tell you, boys," replied the judge, yielding to the genial
influences of the occasion; "I'm just no judge at all, do you see,
except may be as I'd be a good judge of whiskey or the like."
It was doubtful whether the claims of some others of the number could
have been much better established.
Mars Brown, son of the senator of that name,--a man whose influence few
generals or bureaus of claims could afford to disregard,--was naturally
the most privileged character in the office. He chatted familiarly with
the general when that irregular chief was present, absented himself for
several days at a time with perfect unconcern, came late in the morning,
and went early, as he explained, to make up for it. He was a handsome
fellow, thoroughly confident of himself, and companionable. He
displayed, among other accomplishments, an acquaintance with the manners
and customs of horses and dogs, and a facility in the management of
boats, guns, and fishing tackle that made him an indisputable authority
on all matters of the sort. His stock of stories was immense, his wit
always ready and very comical. He could convulse a dinner-party when
everything else failed, by making ridiculous faces. Among ladies of all
ages he was a sort of conquering hero. He was consequently in general
social demand as the life of the company.
Such was Mars Brown, whom Barwood, shortly after his return to
Washington, began to regard with distrust and dislike, as a possible
rival in the quarter where his affections were chiefly centred.
It might have been expected, from the general's excessive preoccupation
with lobbyists and politicians, that the business of the bureau should
languish, and so it did. The brunt of it was borne by a few clerks--of
whom Barwood was not one--whose tenure of office depended upon efficient
work rather than upon influential backing. Government work must be
performed by somebody, and it happens that, in spite of the great
principle of rotation, the heads of men of undeniable usefulness rest
firm upon their shoulders while hundreds are toppling all about them.
The bureau was not without spasmodic attempts at discipline. The general
spent an occasional forenoon in lying in wait for delinquents, whose
shortcomings he made the text for some very forcible remarks. The
business of the office, he would state warmly, should be attended to, or
he would make unpleasant theological arrangements for himself if he
didn't know the reason why. With Brown he never went much further than
to request, as a personal favor, that he would try to be on hand a
little oftener and rather earlier, to which Brown always acceded quite
cordially.
Admirable punctuality of attendance and of office hours was almost
always observed for a couple of days after these formalities, and then
things resumed the even tenor of their way.
Whatever might be the effect of this state of affairs upon the other
employés of the office and upon the general public, it was certainly
disastrous to the private interests of Henry Barwood. Naturally of an
unpractical, somewhat morbid disposition, he needed the stimulus of a
business life in which the necessity for action and its results when
performed were constantly apparent. If engaged in his own ventures,
taking risks and devising plans, he might have abandoned his
speculations and fancies, and become a man of affairs. As it was, he
found too much opportunity for their indulgence.
Every day from nine to three he assorted, copied, and made abstracts of
applications and reports, the objects of which were remote, their
expediency questionable, and their ultimate fate problematical. Without
interest in the work and without any particular pressure for its
performance, he dreamed over it, and often awoke from his reveries to
find his figures inaccurate and his sentences meaningless.
Morbid people are probably as incomprehensible to themselves as to
others. The world is viewed by each through the medium of his own
ill-adjusted temperament. Objects are seen in a strangely tinted light,
which is more than suspected to be delusive, yet cannot be decolorized.
Barwood's vision was affected by such a distorting influence. He
discovered subtle meanings in ordinary things or circumstances, in the
manner of a nod from an acquaintance or the tone of a remark, and
brooded over them. He continually scrutinized and questioned his own
motives and those of others.
The mind of every human being is a puzzle to every other. With what is
it occupied when left to its own devices? There is, in Barwood's
handwriting,[1] proof that his brain was filled with a procession of
changing activities and impressions which were for the most part
melancholy,--aspirations for fame, distrust in his own powers,
forecasting of probabilities, repining for past sins and follies, rage
and epithets for imaginary meetings with enemies. In the midst of all
there were moments of perfect peace made up of reminiscences of a
high-porticoed house, the grass-grown wheel-tracks and the sandy beach
of the village on the Connecticut coast where his early home had been.
His fancies were rich and full, but slightly chaotic. So also his will
was strong and imperious at times, but vacillating.
It could not be said that he was not ambitious He would have desired
success in order to secure a kindly recognition and to obviate the jars
and harshness of life. But no one prevailing impulse had ever enlisted
his full powers. He saved money, with a general indefinite notion of
some day becoming a capitalist, and also gave much time to studies of
various sorts. He learned music among the rest, after coming of age, and
composed music of his own, using as an inspiration a favorite poem,
picture, or character. These compositions were marked by a quaintness
like that--if a comparison may be made to something tangible--, of a
Chinese vase or a broken bronze figure. His family, the Barwoods, had
been from the earliest times a race of shrewd and driving New England
storekeepers, the very antipodes of sentiment and dilettanteism. Such
incongruities are among the compensations of nature. The Holbrook farm
was the one locality, and Nina Holbrook the one figure, in the generally
sombre prospect which Barwood saw about him, that gleamed in sunshine.
By the interposition of Mars Brown these also were presently shadowed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: From entries in a carefully kept diary.]
* * * * *
III.
THE SEARCH.
It would have been strange, with Barwood's habits of retrospection and
continual casting about for the rare and curious, if the subject matter
of his conversation with the old painter at Gruyère's had not taken some
hold upon his imagination. But to explain the rapidity with which the
notion there suggested grew, and the absorbing interest with which it
finally held him, would be difficult. The influence of the mind upon the
body is known. By persistent direction of thought one can both create
and cure a pain in any specific spot of his organism. The mind has a
similar power over itself. By intense concentration upon one subject it
may suspend and finally destroy its faculty of interest in any and all
others.
The idea that the price of the treason of Judas is still extant and
current in these every-day, commonplace times is at first sight utterly
incongruous and incredible, perhaps a little sacrilegious. Yet it is
evidently plausible. "The precious metals are indeed indestructible, as
Megilp has said," soliloquized Barwood. "They do not oxidize. The most
violent excesses of the elements have no effect upon them. If not still
extant, where then are the treasures of the ages?
"Buried under ground or in the ocean.
"What proportion of the whole has been thus disposed of?
"In the absence of statistics a definite amount cannot be stated, but
from the nature of the case it cannot be large. This form of wealth has
been too highly esteemed, too jealously guarded, and too rigorously
sought for when lost. In the wars and convulsions of society it has
changed hands but it could not be destroyed. Alexander and Tamerlane and
Timour the Tartar and Mahomet might overrun the world, burning and
destroying, and melting its more fragile riches like frost-work. But the
money of the vanquished was useful to the victor for his own purposes.
Rome took from Alexander, the barbarians from Rome, and modern
civilization from the barbarians. The waves of time roll over and engulf
all the monuments of men, all that gold and silver buy and sell, and, as
it were, create; but these irrepressible tokens themselves float and
glitter in the foam-crests upon those very billows. It cannot, then, be
doubted that the instruments and accompaniments of most of the pomp and
luxury, the war, treasons, and varied mercenary crimes of the world, are
still acting their part in it.
"And why not with the rest the fatal money which Judas cast down before
the chief priests in his remorse, going out to destroy himself?"
These were the reflections that recurred again and again to Barwood, and
possessed him with a strange fascination. All coins acquired a new and
intense interest. He saw in each the exponent of centuries of human
passions and activities. It is true that in a country like our own a
large part of the coinage is fresh from the mine. Yet his occasional
encounters with foreign, especially Mexican and Canadian pieces, and a
consideration of the immense sums received at the great ports of entry,
were, in his regard, sufficient to leaven the whole.
Is there anywhere in literature an account of the subsequent career of
the thirty pieces?
The Capitol library, one of the most complete collections in the world,
offers unlimited facilities for research. There Barwood was to be found
some part of every day for months.
The writer has seen a list of the works consulted by him in his singular
investigation. It numbers some hundreds, and includes commentaries of
all sorts upon the Gospels, lives of the apostles, collections of
apocryphal Gospels and Scriptural traditions, the works of the early
fathers, chronicles of the Middle Ages, treatises upon Oriental life and
customs, histories of symbolism and Christian art, a great number of
works upon numismatics, and, finally, accounts of great crimes and
calamities. For Barwood took a new view of history: he looked to find
that the great treasons, briberies, betrayals of trust, murders from
mercenary motives, and perhaps financial troubles, had been set in
motion by this fatal money, made the instrument of divine vengeance.
"It has mown a swath through history," he said, "like a discharge of
grape."
He believed it would appear, if the truth were known, in the bank
accounts of Manuel Comnenus, of Egmont, Benedict Arnold, and the
Hungarian Gorgey.
His progress was by no means rapid. Much of the literature among which
he delved, musty with age, written in mediaeval Latin and in obsolete
characters, gave up its secrets with reluctance. Nevertheless he found
definite replies to the questions which he propounded to himself. A
collection of apocryphal Gospels "printed," according to the quaint
title-page, "for Richard Royston at the Angle in Amen Corner, MDCLXX,"
relates particulars about Judas, among the rest, which do not appear in
the Scriptures. He was when young, it was said, a playmate of the boy
Jesus, who delivered him from a devil by which he was even then
possessed. The chief value of this book to Barwood was in a reference it
contained to a fuller Gospel of Judas Iscariot, not now extant with the
exception of some passages quoted in the writings of Irenaeus. But these
passages were upon the very subject of which he was in search. In a
treatise of Irenaeus's, therefore, of about the second century, Barwood
found the first definite mention of the coins.
The main part of the story is that of the authorized version, but after
the account of the relinquishment of the coins by Judas, saying that he
had betrayed innocent blood, and of their use in the purchase of the
potter's field, occurs a passage translated[2] by Barwood as follows:--
"Now the shekels were of the coinage of Simon, the high priest, which
Antiochus authorized him to issue. They bore the pot of manna and the
flowering rod of Aaron, the high priest. But he to whom they were given
knew that they were the price of blood, and was afraid. And _he stamped
them with a mark in shape like a cross_. And great tribulations came
upon him, and tribulation came upon all that bought and sold with the
money of Judas." Later on, Leontinus, a Byzantine writer of the sixth
century, in a treatise devoted to showing the efficacy of certain forms
and processes in imparting virtue to inanimate matter, instances as well
known the malevolence inherent in the thirty pieces of silver of Judas,
which carry ruin wherever they go. From this time the legend is traced
down through successive periods. The Middle Ages, which so delighted in
the romantic, the mysterious, the portentous, received it implicitly.
Eginhard, abbot of Seligenstadt under Charlemagne, William of
Malmesbury, the English chronicler of the twelfth century, Roger Bacon
of the thirteenth, Malespini, the Italian chronicler of the same period,
and many others of equal note mention as fully established that the
coins of Judas were in circulation, and were inflicting serious injury
upon those into whose possession they came. It was said to be
impossible to amalgamate them with any other silver. They either would
not melt or in melting remained distinct. This, however, was a disputed
point. Some of the alchemists in their writings seem disposed to
attribute the ill success of their efforts at transmutation to the
presence of some taint of these pieces in the silver upon which they
were experimenting.
Matthew Paris, who first popularized the legend of the Wandering Jew, as
now received, strangely enough makes no mention of them.
The conclusions arrived at by Barwood were these:--
1. There was for hundreds of years a general belief in the existence and
active circulation of the thirty pieces paid to Judas.
2. They were supposed to be sent as a divine judgment, and to leave ruin
in their track.
3. The tradition gradually disappeared and cannot be traced in the
literature of modern times.
Here was a valuable pursuit for a young American treasury clerk of the
nineteenth century! It would have been interesting to have got the
general's opinion upon it, if it could have been sought in some hurried
interval of his confidential transactions with Richard Roe, claim agent
and brother-in-law, or his attention to addition and division with
Congressman Doublegame.
Barwood did not stop here. Now that his belief was put into tangible
shape, he felt impelled onward to its realization. He examined minutely
every coin collection in Washington. Then, as he could, he made journeys
to several of the great cities. Very seldom did he find a specimen of
Jewish money of any kind. Jewish coins are rare. "It is known that the
Jews had no coinage of their own until the time of Maccabeus. Simon
Maccabeus, by virtue of a decree of Antiochus (1 Macc. xv. 6) issued a
shekel and also a half-shekel. These with the exception of some brass
coins of the Herods, Archelaus, and Agrippa, and a doubtful piece
attributed to Bar Cochba, the leader in the last rising against the
Romans, are the only coins of Judea extant."
Barwood began to be affected by a nervous dread brought on by his too
close study and constant preoccupation with this subject. As he alone
had felt this interest and prosecuted this strange inquiry, might it not
be that he was being drawn in some mysterious way within the influence
of the fatal money? Perhaps he himself was to be involved in its
relentless course. He shuddered at the thought, and yet was borne
irresistibly on, as he believed, in his pursuit. He imagined at times
that he felt a peculiar influence from the touch of certain pieces. This
he held to be a clairvoyant sense that they had figured in crimes.
Perhaps contact with a hand affected by powerful passion had imparted to
them subtle properties capable of being detected by a sensitive
organization.
In such study and speculation Barwood passed the spring and summer of
1870. Towards the middle of August occurred the well-remembered flurry
in Wall Street consequent upon the breaking out of the French and
Prussian War. Gold jumped up to one hundred and twenty-three. Money was
loaned at ruinous rates. The whole financial system was disturbed.
Silver, then withdrawn from circulation, has not reappeared to this day.