Part 12 (2/2)

They worked along for a while, and the general stopped and put his foot on his spade and cried: ”That boy--that boy--that boy! Isn't he selling his soul to the devil by bits? A little chunk goes every day.

And oh, my dear, my dear--” he broke out, ”what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Poor, poor John.” He fell to his work again, sighing, ”Poor John, poor John!” So they talked on until the afternoon grew old.

And while they were talking, John and General Hendricks were in Barclay's office going over matters, and seeing where they stood.

”So he says seventy thousand is too much for the company and me to owe?” said John, at the end of half an hour's conference.

The general was drumming his fingers on the table nervously. ”Yes--he says we've got to reduce that in thirty days, or he'll close us up.

Haven't you got any political influence, somewhere in the East, John,--some of those stockholders,--that will hold this matter up till you can harvest your crop next June?”

Barclay thought a moment, with his hand in his chin, and then slowly shook his head. A bank inspector from Was.h.i.+ngton was several degrees higher in the work of politics than Barclay had gone.

”Let me see--” droned Barclay; ”let me see. We can at least try scattering it out a little; cut off, say, fifty thousand from me and the company and put it in the name of Lige--”

”He's on to Lige, we've got a hat full of Lige's notes in there,”

interrupted the general.

”All right, then, drop Lige and put in the colonel--he'll do that for me, and I'll see if I can't get the colonel to get Brownwell to accommodate us. He's burning a good bit of the colonel's stove wood these nights.” Barclay smiled, and added, ”And I'll just put Bob in for a few thousand.”

”But what'll we do about those taxes?” asked the general, anxiously.

”You know they've got to be paid before the first of the year, and that's only six weeks off.”

Barclay rose and paced the rug, and replied: ”Yes, that's so. I was going to make another note for them. But I suppose we oughtn't to do it even under cover; for if he found out you had exceeded our loan right now--you know those fellows get ugly sometimes.” The young man screwed up his face and stood looking out of the window in silence for a long minute. Then he limped over to his chair and sat down as one who has a plan. ”Say now, General; you know Gabe Carnine's coming in as county treasurer right after the first of the year, and we will make him help us. You make your personal check for the nine thousand, and give it to the old cuss who's in the county treasurer's office now, with the descriptions of the land, and get the tax receipts; he'll bring the check back to the bank; you give him credit on his pa.s.s-book with the other checks, and just hold your own check out in the drawer as cash. If my check was in there, the inspector might drop in and see it, and cause a disturbance. When Gabe comes in, I'll make him carry the matter over till next summer.”

The transaction would cover only a few days, Barclay explained; and finally he had his way. So the Larger Good was accomplished.

And later Adrian Brownwell came into the office to say:--

”Mr. Barclay, our friend, Colonel Culpepper, confessed to me after some transparent attempts at subterfuge that my signing an accommodation note would help you, and do I understand this also will help our young friend, Robert Hendricks, whom I have never seen, and enable him to remain at his post during the winter?”

John Barclay took a square hard look at Brownwell, and got a smile and a faint little shrug in return, whereupon, for the Larger Good, he replied ”Yes,” and for the Larger Good also, perhaps, Adrian Brownwell answered:

”Well, I shall be delighted--just make my note for thirty days--only thirty days, you understand; and then--well, of course if circ.u.mstances justify it, I'll renew it.” Barclay laughed and asked, ”Well, Mr. Brownwell, as between friends may I ask how 'circ.u.mstances'

are getting on?”

Brownwell shrugged his shoulders and smiled blandly as he answered: ”Just so-so; I go twice a week. And--” he waved his gloves airily and continued, ”What is it the immortal Burns says: 'A man's a man, for a'

that and a' that!' And I'm a man, John Barclay, and she's a woman. And I go twice a week. You know women, sir, you know women--they're mostly all alike. So I think--” he smirked complacently as he concluded--”I think what I need is time--only time.”

”Luck to you,” said Barclay. ”I'll just make the note thirty days, as you say, and we can renew it from time to time.”

Then Brownwell put on his hat, twirled his cane effusively, and bade Barclay an elaborate adieu.

And ten days later, Molly Culpepper, loathing herself in her soul, and praying for the day of deliverance when it should be all over, walked slowly from the post-office up the hill to the house, the stately house, with its impressive pillars, reading this: ”My darling Girl: John has sent me some more mortgages to sell, and they have to be sold now. He says that father has to have the money, and he and father have laid out work for me that will keep me here till the middle of January. John says that the government inspector has been threatening us with serious trouble in the bank lately, and we must have the money. He says the times have forced us to do certain things that were technically wrong--though I guess they were criminally wrong from what he says, and we must have this money to make things good. So I am compelled to stay here and work. Father commands me to stay in a way that makes me fear that my coming home now would mean our ruin. What a brick John is to stay there and shoulder it all. But, oh, darling, darling, darling, I love you.”

There was more, of course, and it was from a man's heart, and the strange and sad part of this story is that when Molly Culpepper read the rest of the letter, her heart burned in shame, and her shame was keener than her sorrow that her lover was not coming home.

So it happened naturally that Molly Culpepper went to the Christmas dance with Adrian Brownwell, and when Jane Barclay, seeing the proprietary way the Alabaman hovered over Molly, and his obvious jealousy of all the other men who were civil to her, asked John why he did not let Bob come home for the holidays, as he had promised, for the Larger Good John told her the facts--that there were some mortgages that had just come in, and they must be sold, so that the company could reduce its indebtedness to the bank. But the facts are not always the truth, and in her heart, which did not reason but only felt, Molly Culpepper, knowing that Brownwell and John Barclay were in some kind of an affair together, feared the truth. And from her heart she wrote to her lover questioning John's motives and pleading with him to return, and he, having merely the facts, did not see the truth, and replied impatiently--so impatiently that it hurt, and there was temper in her answer, and then for over a week no letter came, and for over a week no reply went back to that. And so the Larger Good was doing its fine work in a wicked world.

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