A Certain Rich Man Part 11

"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 a.s.sembled 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? G.o.d 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 a.s.sertion.

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 ba.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 tw.a.n.ging 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion. 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 ent.i.tled "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 n.o.blest 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 finis.h.i.+ng a campaign for the Fifth Parallel bonds. He picked up the _Banner_ one evening at twilight in a house in Pleasant towns.h.i.+p, 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 towns.h.i.+p 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 partners.h.i.+p 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 partners.h.i.+p, "John," the elder man repeated, "if I could always maintain such a faith in G.o.d 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.