A Certain Rich Man Part 28

"They did?" asked Barclay, from his chair behind the stove.

"Sure," replied Mr. Mercheson; "roasted him good and brown. There wasn't a man in the smoker but me to stand up for him."

"So you stood up for the old scoundrel, did you?" asked Barclay.

"Sure," answered the travelling man. "Anything to get up an argument, you know," he went on, beginning to see which way sentiment lay in the shop. "I've been around town this morning, and I find the people here don't approve of him for a minute, any more than they did on the train."

"What do they say?" asked Barclay, braiding a four-strand whip, and finding that his cunning of nearly fifty years had not left his fingers.

"Oh, it isn't so much what they say--but you can tell, don't you know; it's what they don't say; they don't defend him. I guess they like him personally, but they know he's a thief; that's the idea--they simply can't defend him and they don't try. The government has got him dead to rights. Say," he went on, "just to be arguing, you know last evening I took a poll of the train--the limited--the Golden State Limited--swell train, swell crowd--all rich old roosters; and honest, do you know that out of one hundred and twenty-three votes polled only four were for him, and three of those were girls who said they knew his daughter at the state university, and had visited at his house. Wasn't that funny?"

Barclay laughed grimly, and answered, "Well, it was pretty funny considering that I'm John Barclay."

The suspense of the group in the shop was broken, and they laughed, too.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," said Mr. Mercheson, "come off!" Then he turned to McHurdie and tried to talk trade to him. But Watts was obdurate, and the man soon left the shop, eying Barclay closely. He stood in the door and said, as he went out of the store, "Well, you do look some like his pictures, Mister."

There was a silence when the stranger went, and Barclay, whose face had grown red, cried, "d.a.m.n 'em--d.a.m.n 'em all--kick a man when he is down!"

Again the bell tinkled, and McHurdie went into the shop. Evidently a customer was looking at a horse collar, for through the gla.s.s door they could see Watts' hook go up to the ceiling and bring one down.

"John," said the colonel, when Barclay had spoken, "John, don't mind it. Look at me, John--look at me! They had to put me in jail, you know; but every one seems to have forgotten it but me--and I am a dog that I don't."

John Barclay looked at the old, broken man, discarded from the playing-cards of life, with the hurt, surprised look always in his eyes, and it was with an effort that the suave Mr. Barclay kept the choke in his throat out of his voice as he replied:--

"Yes, Colonel, yes, I know I have no right to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks."

Watts was saying: "Yes, he's in there now--with the boys; you better go in and cheer him up."

And then at the upper right-hand entrance entered Gabriel Carnine, president of the State Bank, unctuous as a bishop. He ignored the others, and walking to Barclay, put out his hand. "Well, well, John, glad to see you; just came up from the mill--I was looking for you.

Couldn't find Neal, either. Where is he?"

The general answered curtly, "Neal is in Chicago, working on the _Record-Herald_."

"Oh," returned Carnine, and did not pursue the subject further. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "fine winter weather we're having."

"Is that so?" chipped in Dolan. "Mr. Barclay was finding it a little mite warm."

Carnine ignored Dolan, and Barclay grinned. "Well, John," Carnine hesitated, "I was just down to see you--on a little matter of business."

"Delighted, sir, delighted," exclaimed Dolan, as he rose to go; "we were going, anyway--weren't we, General?" The veterans rose, and Colonel Culpepper said as he went, "I told Molly to call for me here about noon with the buggy--if she comes, tell her to wait."

All of life may not be put on the stage, and this scene has to be cut; for it was at the end of half an hour's aimless, footless, foolish talk that Gabriel Carnine came to the business in hand. Round and round the bush he beat the devil, before he hit him a whack. Then he said, as if it had just occurred to him, "We were wondering--some of the directors--this morning, if under the circ.u.mstances--oh, say just for the coming six months or such a matter--it might not be wise to reorganize our board; freshen it up, don't you know; kind of get some new names on it, and drop the old ones--not permanently, but just to give the other stockholders a show on the board."

"So you want me to get off, do you?" blurted Barclay. "You're afraid of my name--now?"

The screams of Mr. Carnine, the protesting screams of that oleaginous gentleman, if they could have been vocalized in keeping with their m.u.f.fled, low-voiced, whispering earnestness, would have been loud enough to be heard a mile away, but Barclay talked out:--

"All right, take my name off; and out comes my account. I don't care."

And thereupon the agony of Mr. Carnine was unutterable. If he had been a natural man, he would have howled in pain; as it was, he merely purred. But Barclay's skin was thin that day, sensitive to every touch, and he felt the rough hand of Carnine and winced. He let the old man whine and pur and stroke his beard awhile, and then Barclay said wearily, "All right, just as you please, Gabe--I'll not move my account. It's nothing to me."

In another minute the feline foot of Mr. Carnine was pattering gently toward the front door. Barclay sat looking at the stove, and Watts went on working. Barclay sighed deeply once or twice, but McHurdie paid no heed to him. Finally Barclay rose and went over to the bench.

"Watts," cried Barclay, "what do you think about it--you, your own self, what do you think way down in your heart?"

Watts sewed a st.i.tch or two without speaking, and then put down his thread and put up his gla.s.ses and said, "That's fairly spoken, John Barclay, and will have a fair answer."

The old man paused; Barclay cried impatiently, "Oh, well, Watts, don't be afraid--nothing can hurt me much now!"

"I was just a-thinking, lad," said Watts, gently, "just a-thinking."

"What?" cried Barclay.

"Just a-thinking," returned the old man, as he put his hand on the younger man's shoulder, "what a fine poet you spoiled in your life, just to get the chance to go to jail. But the Lord knows His business, I suppose!" he added with a twinkle in his eye, "and if He thinks a poet more or less in jail would help more than one out--it is all for the best, John, all for the best. But, my boy," he cried earnestly, "if you'll be going to jail, don't whine, lad. Go to jail like a gentleman, John Barclay, go to jail like a gentleman, and serve your Lord there like a man."

"d.a.m.n cheerful you are, Watts," returned Barclay. "What a lot of Job's comforters you fellows have been this morning." He went on half bitterly and half jokingly: "Beginning with the general, continuing with your travelling salesman friend, and following up with Gabe, who wants me to get off the board of directors of his bank for the moral effect of it, and coming on down to you who bid me G.o.dspeed to jail--I have had a--a--a rather gorgeous morning."

The door-bell tinkled, and a woman's voice called, "Father, father!"

"Yes, Molly," the harness maker answered; "he'll be here pretty soon.

He said for you to wait."

"Come in, for heaven's sake, Molly," cried Barclay, "come back here and cheer me up."

"Oh, all right--it's you, John? What are you doing back here? I'm so glad to find you. I've just got the dearest letter from Jane. We won't talk business or anything--you know how I feel, and how sorry I am--so just let's read Jane's letter; it has something in it to cheer you. She said she was going to write it to you the next day--but I'll read it to you." And so Mrs. Brownwell took from her pocketbook the crumpled letter and unfolded it. "It's so like Jane--just good hard sense clear through." She turned the pages hastily, and finally the fluttering of the sheets stopped. "Oh, yes," she said, "here's the place--the rest she's told you. Let me see--Oh: 'And, Molly, what do you think?--there's a duke after Jeanette--a miserable, little, dried-up, burned-out, poverty-stricken Italian duke. And oh, how much good it did us both to cut him, and let him know how ill-bred we considered him, how altogether beneath any wholesome honest girl we thought such a fellow.' And now, John, isn't this like Jane?"

interposed Mrs. Brownwell. "Listen; she says, 'Molly, do you know, I am so happy about Jeanette and Neal. We run such an awful risk with this money--such a horrible risk of unhappiness and misery for the poor child--heaven knows she would be so much happier without it. And to think, dear, that she has found the one in the world for her, in the sweet simple way that a girl should always find him, and that the money--the menacing thing that hangs like a shadow over her--cannot by any possibility spoil her life! It makes me happy all the day, and I go singing through life with joy at the thought that the money won't hurt Jennie--that it can't take from her the joy that comes from living with her lover all her life, as I have lived.' Isn't that fine, John?" asked Mrs. Brownwell, and looking up, she saw John Barclay, white-faced, with trembling jaw, staring in pain at the stove. Watts had gone into the store to wait on a customer, and the woman, seeing the man's anguish, came to him and said: "Why, John, what is it? How have I hurt you?--I thought this would cheer you so."

The man rose heavily. His colour was coming back. "Oh, G.o.d--G.o.d," he cried, "I needed that to-day--I needed that."

The woman looked at him, puzzled and nonplussed. "Why--why--why?"

she stammered.

"Oh, nothing," he smiled back at her bitterly, "except--" and his jaw hardened as he snapped--"except that Neal Ward is a d.a.m.ned informer--and I've sent him about his business, and Jeanette's got to do the same."

Mollie Brownwell looked at him with hard eyes for a moment, and then asked, "What did Neal do?"

"Well," replied Barclay, "under cross-examination, I'll admit without incriminating myself that he gave the testimony which indicted me."

"Was it that or lie, John?" He did not reply. A silence fell, and the woman broke it with a cry: "Oh, John Barclay, John Barclay, must your traffic in souls reach your own flesh and blood? Haven't you enough without selling her into Egypt, too? Haven't you enough money now?"

And without waiting for answer, Molly Brownwell turned and left him staring into nothing, with his jaw agape.

It was noon and a band was playing up the street, and as he stood by the stove in McHurdie's shop, he remembered vaguely that he had seen banners flying and some "Welcome" arches across the street as he walked through the town that morning. He realized that some lodge or conclave or a.s.sembly was gathering in the town, and that the band was a part of its merriment. It was playing a gay tune and came nearer and nearer. But as he stood leaning upon his chair, with his heart quivering and raw from its punishment, he did not notice that the band had stopped in front of the harness shop. His mind went back wearily to the old days, fifty years before, when as a toddling child in dresses he used to play on that very sc.r.a.p-heap outside the back door, picking up bits of leather, and in his boyhood days, playing pranks upon the little harness maker, and braiding his whips for the town herd. Then he remembered the verses Watts had written about Bob Hendricks and him in that very room, and the music he and Watts had played together there. The old song Watts had made in his presence in the hospital at St. Louis came back to his mind. Did it come because outside the band had halted and was playing that old song to serenade Watts McHurdie? Or did it come because John Barclay was wondering if, had he made a poet of himself, or a man of spiritual and not of material power, it would have been better for him?

Heaven knows why the old tune came into his head. But when he recognized that they were serenading the little harness maker, and that so far as they thought of John Barclay and his power and his achievements, it was with scorn, he had a flash of insight into his relations with the world that illumined his soul for a moment and then died away. The great Mr. Barclay, alone, sitting in the dingy little harness shop, can hear the band strike up the old familiar tune again, and hear the crowd cheer and roar its applause at the little harness maker, who stands shamefaced and abashed, coatless and ap.r.o.ned, before the crowd. And he is only a poet--hardly a poet, would be a better way to say it; an exceedingly bad poet who makes bad rhymes, and thinks trite thoughts, and says silly and often rather stupid things, but who once had his say, and for that one hour of glorious liberty of the soul has moved millions of hearts to love him. John Barclay does not envy Watts McHurdie--not at all; for Barclay, with all his faults, is not narrow-gauged; he does not wish they would call for him--not to-day--not at all; he could not face them now, even if they cheered him. He says in his heart of pride, beneath his stiff neck, that it is all right; that Watts,--poor little church-mouse of a Watts, whom he could buy five times over with the money that has dropped into the Barclay till since he entered the shop--that Watts should have his due; but only--only--only--that is it--only, but only--!