A Certain Rich Man Part 4

And, pa, be sure don't forget the eggs for breakfast. I declare since we've moved up here so far from the stores, we nearly starve."

The colonel waited a second while a glare melted into a smile, and then backed meekly into the arms stretched high to hold his alpaca coat. As he turned toward the group, he was beaming. "If it were not,"

exclaimed the colonel, addressing the young men with a quizzical smile, "that there is a lady present--a very important lady in point of fact,--I might be tempted to say, 'I will certainly be d.a.m.ned!'"

And with that the colonel lifted Mrs. Culpepper off her feet and kissed her, then lumbered down the steps and strode away. He paused at the gate to gaze at the valley and turned to look back at the great unfinished house, then swung into the street and soon his hat disappeared under the hill.

As he went Mrs. Culpepper said, "Let them say what they will about Mart Culpepper, I always tell the girls if they get as good a man as their pa, they will be doing mighty well."

Then the girls appeared bulging in hoops, and ruffles, with elbow sleeves, with a hint of their shoulders showing and with pink ribbons in their hair. Clearly it was a state occasion. The mother beamed at them a moment, and walked around Molly, saying, "I told you that was all right," and tied Ellen's hair ribbon over, while the young people were chattering, and before the boys knew it, she had faded into the dusk of the hall, and the clattering of dishes came to them from the rear of the house. John fancied he felt the heavy step of Buchanan Culpepper, and then he heard: "Don't you talk to me, Buck Culpepper, about woman's work. You'll do what I tell you, and if I say wipe dishes--" the voice was drowned by the rattle of a pa.s.sing wagon. And soon the young people on the front porch were so busy with their affairs that the house behind them and its affairs dropped to another world. They say, who seem to know, that when any group of boys and girls meet under twenty-five serious years, the recording angel puts down his pen with, a sigh and takes a needed nap. But when the group pairs off, then Mr. Recorder p.r.i.c.ks up his ears and works with both hands, one busy taking what the youngsters say, and the other busy with what they would like to say. And shame be it upon the courage of youth that what they would like to say fills the larger book. And marvel of marvels, often the book that holds what the boys would say is merely a copy of what the girls would like to hear, and so much of the work is saved to the angel.

It was nine o'clock when the limping boy and the slender girl followed the tall youth and the plump little girl down the walk from the Culpepper home through the gate and into the main road. And the couple that walked behind took the opposite direction from that which they took who walked ahead. Yet when John and Ellen reached the river and were seated on the mill-dam, where the roar of the falling water drowned their voices, Ellen Culpepper spoke first: "That looks like them over on the bridge. I can see Molly, and Bob's hat about three feet above her."

"I guess so," returned the boy. He was reaching behind him for clods and pebbles to toss into the white foaming flood below them. The girl reached back and got one, then another, then their hands met, and she pulled hers away and said, "Get me some stones." He gave her a handful, and she threw the pebbles away slowly and awkwardly, one at a time. There was a long gap in their talk while they threw the pebbles.

The girl closed it with, "Ma made old Buck wipe the dishes." Then she giggled, "Poor Buckie."

John managed to say, "Yes, I heard him." Then he added, "What does your mother think of Bob?"

"Oh, she likes him fine. But she's glad you're all going away."

The boy asked why and the girl returned, "Watch me hit that log." She threw, and missed the water.

"Why?" persisted the boy.

The girl was digging in a crevice for a stone and said, "Can you get that out?"

John worked at it a moment and handed it to her with, "Why?"

She threw it, standing up to give her arm strength. She sat down and folded her hands and waited for another "why." When it came she said, "Oh, you know why." When he protested she answered, "Ma thinks Molly's too young."

"Too young for what?" demanded the boy, who knew.

"Too young to be going with boys."

There was a long pause, then he managed to say it, "She's no younger than you were--nor half as old."

"When?" returned the girl, giving him the broadside of her eyes for a second, and letting them droop. The eyes bewitched the boy, and he could not speak. At length the girl s.h.i.+vered, "It's getting cold--I must go home."

The boy found voice. "Aw no, Bob and Molly are still up there."

She started to rise, he caught her hand, but she pulled it away and resigned herself for a moment. Then she looked at him a long second and said, "Do you remember years ago at the Frye boy's party--when we were little tots, and I chose you?"

The boy nodded his head and turned full toward her with serious eyes.

He devoured her feature by feature with his gaze in the starlight. The moon was just rising at the end of the mill-dam behind them, and its light fell on her profile. He cried out, "Yes, Ellen, do you--do you?"

She nodded her head and spoke quickly, "That was the time you got your hands stuck in the taffy and had to be soaked out."

They laughed. John tried to get the moment back. "Do you remember the rubber ring I gave you?"

She grew bold and turned to him with her heart in her face: "Yes--yes, John, and the coffee-bean locket. I've got them both in a little box at home." Then, scampering back to her reserve, she added, "You know ma says I'm a regular rat to store things away." She felt that the sudden reserve chilled him, for in a minute or two she said, looking at the bridge: "They're going now. We mustn't stay but a minute." She put her hand on the rock between them, and said, "You remember that night when you went away before?" Before he answered she went on: "I was counting up this afternoon, and it's six years ago. We were just children then."

Again the boy found his voice: "Ellen Culpepper, we've been going together seven years. Don't you think that's long enough?"

"We were just children then," she replied.

The boy leaned awkwardly toward her and their hands met on the rock, and he withdrew his as he asked, "Do you--do you?"

She bent toward him, and looked at him steadily as she nodded her head again and again. She rose to go, saying, "We mustn't stay here any longer."

He caught her hand to stop her, and said, "Ellen--Ellen, promise me just one thing." She looked her question. He cried, "That you won't forget--just that you won't forget."

She took his hand and stood before him as he sat, hoping to stay her.

She answered: "Not as long as I live, John Barclay. Oh, not as long as I live." Then she exclaimed: "Now--" and her voice changed, "we just must go, John; Molly's gone, and it's getting late." She helped him limp over the rocks and up the steep road, but when they reached the level, she dropped his hand, and they walked home slowly, looking back at the moon, so that they might not overtake the other couple. Once or twice they stopped and sat on lumber piles in the street, talking of nothing, and it was after ten o'clock when they came to the gate. The girl looked anxiously up the walk toward the house. "They've come and gone," she said. She moved as if to go away.

"I wish you wouldn't go right in," he begged.

"Oh--I ought to," she replied. They were silent. The roar of the water over the dam came to them on the evening breeze. She put out her hand.

"Well," he sighed as he rested his lame foot, and started, "well--good-by."

She turned to go, and then swiftly stepped toward him, and kissed him, and ran gasping and laughing up the walk.

The boy gazed after her a moment, wondering if he should follow her, but while he waited she was gone, and he heard her lock the door after her. Then he limped down the road in a kind of swoon of joy. Sometimes he tried to whistle--he tried a bar of Schubert's "Serenade," but consciously stopped. Again and again under his breath as loud as he dared, he called the name "Ellen" and stood gazing at the moon, and then tried to hippety-hop, but his limp stopped that. Then he tried whistling the "Miserere," but he pitched it too high, and it ran out, so he sang as he turned across the commons toward home, and that helped a little; and he opened the door of his home singing, "How can I leave thee--how can I bear to part?" The light was burning in the kitchen, and he went to his mother and kissed her. His face was aglow, and she saw what had happened to him. She put him aside with, "Run on to bed now, sonny; I've got a little work out here." And he left her.

In the sitting room only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands fell on the major chord of "G," and without knowing what he was playing he began "Largo." He played his soul into his music, and looking up, whispered the name "Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music mounted to its climax the whole world's mystery, and his personal thought of the meaning of life revelled through his brain, and he played on, not stopping at the close but wandering into he knew not what mazes of harmony. When his hands dropped, he was playing "The Long and Weary Day," and his mother was standing behind him humming it. When he rose from the bench, she ran her fingers through his hair and spoke the words of the song, "'My lone watch keeping,' John, 'my lone watch keeping.' But I think it has been worth while."

Then she left him and he went to bed, with the moon in his room, and the murmur of waters lulling him to sleep. But he looked out into the sky a long time before his dream came, and then it slipped in gently through the door of a nameless hope. For he wished to meet her in the moon that night, but when they did meet, the white veil of the falling waters of the dam blew across her face and he could not brush it away.

For one is bold in dreams.

A little after sunrise the next morning John rode away from his mother's door, on one of his horses, leading the other one. He was going up the hill to get Bob Hendricks, and the two were to ride to Lawrence. He had been promised work, carrying newspapers, and the Yankee in him made him believe he could find work for the other horse.

As the boy turned into Main Street waving his mother good-by, he saw the places where he and Ellen Culpepper had stopped the night before, and they looked different some way, and he could not realize that he was in the same street.

As he climbed the hill, he pa.s.sed General Ward, working in his flower garden, and the man sprang over the fence and came into the road, and put his hand on the horse's bridle, saying, "Stop a minute, John: I just wanted to say something." He hesitated a moment before going on: "You know back where I came from--back in New England--the name of John Barclay stands for a good deal--more than you can realize, John.

Your father was one of the first martyrs of our cause. I guess your mother never has told you, but I'm going to--your father gave up a business career for this cause. His father was rich--very rich, and your grandfather was set on your father going into business." John looked up the hill toward the Hendricks home, and Ward saw it, and mistook the glance for one of impatience. "Johnnie," said the man, his fine thin, features glowing with earnestness, "Johnnie--I wish I could get to your heart, boy. I want to make you hear what I have to say with your soul and not with your ears, and I know youth is so deaf. Your grandfather was angry when your father entered the ministry and came out here. He thought it was folly. The old man offered to give fifty thousand dollars to the Kansas-Nebraska cause, and that would have sent a good many men out here. But your father said no. He said money wouldn't win this cause. He said personal sacrifice was all that would win it. He said men must give up themselves, not their money, to make this cause win--and so he came; and there was a terrible quarrel, and that is why your mother has stayed. She had faith in G.o.d, too--faith that her life some way in His Providence would prove worth something. Your father and mother, John, believed in G.o.d--they believed in a G.o.d, not a Moloch; your father's faith has been justified. The death he died was worth millions to the cause of liberty. It stirred the whole North, as the miserable little fifty thousand dollars that Abijah Barclay offered never could have done.

But your mother's sacrifice must find its justification in you. And she, not your father, made the final decision to give up everything for human freedom. She has endured poverty, Johnnie--" the man's voice was growing tense, and his eyes were ablaze; "you know how she worked, and if you fail her, if you do not live a consecrated life, John, your mother's life has failed. I don't mean a pious life; G.o.d knows I hate sanctimony. But I mean a life consecrated to some practical service, to an ideal--to some actual service to your fellows--not money service, but personal service. Do you understand?"

Ward leaned forward and looked into the boy's face. He took hold of John's arm as he pleaded, "Johnnie--boy--Johnnie, do you understand?"

The boy answered, "Yes, General--I think I get your meaning." He picked up his bridle, and Ward relaxed his hold on the boy's arm. The man's hand dropped and he sighed, for he saw only a boy's face, and heard a boy's politeness in the voice that went on, "Thank you, General, give my love to Miss Lucy." And the youth rode on up the hill.

In a few minutes the boys were riding down the steep clay bank that led to the new iron bridge across the ford of the Sycamore, and for half an hour they rode chattering through the wood before they came into the valley and soon were Climbing the bluff which they had seen the night before from the Culpepper home. On the brow of the bluff Bob said, "Hold on--" He turned his horse and looked back. The sun was on the town, and across on the opposite hill stood the colonel's big house with its proud pillars. No trees were about it in those days, and it and the Hendricks house stood out clearly on the horizon. But on the top of the Culpepper home were two little figures waving handkerchiefs. The boys waved back, and John thought he could tell Ellen from her sister, and the night and its joy came back to him, and he was silent.

They had ridden half an hour without speaking when Bob Hendricks said, "Awful fine girls--aren't they?"

"That's what I've always told you," returned John.

After another quarter of a mile Bob tried it again. "The colonel's a funny old rooster--isn't he?"

"Well, I don't know. That day at the battle of Wilson's Creek when he walked out in front of a thousand soldiers and got a Union flag and brought it back to the line, he didn't look very funny. But he's windy all right."

Again, as they crossed a creek and the horses were drinking, Bob said: "Father thinks General Ward's a crank. He says Ward will keep harping on about those war bonds, and quarrelling because the soldiers got their pay in paper money and the bondholders in gold, until people will think every one in high places is a thief."

"Oh, Ward's all right," answered John. "He's just talking; he likes an argument, I guess. He's kind of built that way."