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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, no, by G.o.d, no! You d.a.m.ned young cut-throat--you can break my bank, but you can"t bulldoze me. No, by G.o.d--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 a.s.sets, 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 gra.s.shopper 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 bra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.n 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 dest.i.tution, "Martin Culpepper--twenty-five dollars." He stood a moment in the stairway looking into the street; the day was fair and beautiful; the gra.s.shoppers 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 a.s.sent 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 G.o.d for the angel He sent to guard us, and if the angel slept--thank G.o.d 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 p.r.i.c.kled 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 d.a.m.n 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 a.s.saulted 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?"