Part 10 (1/2)
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 sagas.h.i.+ate 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+rt 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.