Part 15 (1/2)
”No,” cried Barclay, in a loud voice. ”Come off your high horse and take the profits we'll make on our wheat, pay off old Brownwell and marry her.”
”And let the bank bust and the farmers slide?” asked Hendricks, ”and buy back Molly with stolen money? Is that your idea?”
”Well,” Barclay snapped, ”you have your choice, so if you think more of the bank and your old hayseeds than you do of Molly, don't come blubbering around me about selling her.”
”John,” sighed Hendricks, after a long wrestle--a final contest with his demon, ”I've gone all over that. And I have decided that if I've got to swindle seventy-five or a hundred farmers--most of them old soldiers on their homesteads--out of their little all, and cheat five hundred depositors out of their money to get Molly, she and I wouldn't be very happy when we thought of the price, and we'd always think of the price.” His demon was limp in the background of his soul as he added: ”Here are some papers I brought over. Let's get back to the settlement--fix them up and bring them over to the bank this morning, will you?” And laying a package carefully on the table, Hendricks turned and went quickly out of the room.
After Hendricks left the office that May morning, Barclay sat whistling the air of the song of the ”Evening Star,” looking blankly at a picture of Wagner hanging beside a picture of Jay Gould. The tune seemed to restore his soul. When he had been whistling softly for five minutes or so, the idea flashed across his mind that flour was the one thing used in America more than any other food product and that if a man had his money invested in the manufacture and sale of flour, he would have an investment that would weather any panic. The idea overcame him, and he shut his eyes and his ears and gripped his chair and whistled and saw visions. Molly Culpepper came into the room, and paused a moment on the threshold as one afraid to interrupt a sleeper.
She saw the dapper little man kicking the chair rounds with his dangling heels, his flushed face reflecting a brain full of blood, his eyes shut, his head thrown far back, so that his Adam's apple stuck up irrelevantly, and she knew only by the persistence of the soft low whistle that he was awake, clutching at some day-dream. When she cleared her throat, he was startled and stared at her foolishly for a moment, with the vision still upon him. His wits came to him, and he rose to greet her.
”Well--well--why--h.e.l.lo, Molly--I was just figuring on a matter,”
he said as he put her in a chair, and then he added, ”Well--I wasn't expecting you.”
Even before she could speak his lips were puckering to pick up the tune he had dropped. She answered, ”No, John, I wanted to see you--so I just came up.”
”Oh, that's all right, Molly--what is it?” he returned.
”Well--” answered the young woman, listlessly, ”it's about; father.
You know he's badly in debt, and some way--of course he sells lots of land and all, but you know father, John, and he just doesn't--oh, he just keeps in debt.”
Barclay had been lapsing back into his revery as she spoke, but he pulled himself out and replied: ”Oh, yes, Molly--I know about father all right. Can't you make him straighten things out?”
”Well, no. John, that's just it. His money comes in so irregularly, this month a lot and next month nothing, that it just spoils him. When he gets a lot he spends it like a prince,” she smiled sadly and interjected: ”You know he is forever giving away--and then while he's waiting he gets in debt again. Then we are as poor as the people for whom he pa.s.ses subscription papers, and that's just what I wanted to see you about.”
Barclay took his eyes off Jay Gould's picture long enough to look at the brown-eyed girl with an oval face and a tip of a chin that just fitted the hollow of a man's hand; there were the smallest brown freckles in the world across the bridge of her nose, and under her eyes there was the faintest suggestion of dark shading. Youth was in her lips and cheeks, and when she smiled there were dimples. But John's eyes went back to Jay Gould's solemn black whiskers and he said from his abstraction, ”Well, Molly, I wish I could help you.”
”Well, I knew you would, John, some way; and oh, John, I do need help so badly.” She paused a moment and gazed at him piteously and repeated, ”So badly.” But his eyes did not move from the sacred whiskers of his joss. The vision was flaming in his brain, and with his lips parted, he whistled ”The Evening Star” to conjure it back and keep it with him. The girl went on:--
”About that money Mr. Brownwell loaned father, John.” She flushed and cried, ”Can't you find some way for father to borrow the money and pay Mr. Brownwell--now that your wheat is turning out so well?”
The young man pulled himself out of his day-dream and said, ”Well--why--you see, Molly--I--Well now, to be entirely frank with you, Molly, I'm going into a business that will take all of my credit--and every cent of my money.”
He paused a moment, and the girl asked, ”Tell me, John, will the wheat straighten things up at the bank?”
”Well, it might if Bob had any sense--but he's got a fool notion of considering a straight mortgage that those farmers gave on their land as rent, and isn't going to make them redeem their land,--his share of it, I mean,--and if he doesn't do that, he'll not have a cent, and he couldn't lend your father any money.” Barclay was anxious to get back to his ”Evening Star” and his dream of power, so he asked, ”Why, Molly, what's wrong?”
”John,” she began, ”this is a miserable business to talk about; but it is business, I guess.” She stopped and looked at him piteously. ”Well, John, father's debt to Mr. Brownwell--the ten-thousand-dollar loan on the house--will be due in August.” The young man a.s.sented. And after a moment she sighed, ”That is why I'm to be married in August.” She stood a moment looking out of the window and cried, ”Oh, John, John, isn't there some way out--isn't there, John?”
Barclay rose and limped to her and answered harshly: ”Not so long as Bob is a fool--no, Molly. If he wants to go mooning around releasing those farmers from their mortgages--there's no way out. But I wouldn't care for a man who didn't think more of me than he did of a lot of old clodhoppers.”
The girl looked at the hard-faced youth a moment in silence, and turned without a word and left the room. Barclay floated away on his ”Evening Star” and spun out his dream as a spider spins his web, and when Hendricks came into the office for a mislaid paper half an hour later, Barclay still was figuring up profits, and making his web stronger. As Hendricks, having finished his errand, was about to go, Barclay stopped him.
”Bob, Molly's been up here. As nearly as I can get at it, Brownwell has promised to renew the colonel's mortgage in August. If he and Molly aren't married by then--no more renewals from him. Don't be a fool, Bob; let your sod-busters go hang. If you don't get their farms, some one else will!”
Hendricks looked at his partner a minute steadily, grunted, and strode out of the room. And the incident slipped from John Barclay's mind, and the web of the spider grew stronger and stronger in his brain, but it cast a shadow that was to reach across his life.
After Hendricks went from his office that morning, Barclay bounded back, like a boy at play, to the vision of controlling the flour market. He saw the waving wheat of Garrison County coming to the railroad, and he knew that his railroad rates were so low that the miller on the Sycamore could not s.h.i.+p a pound of flour profitably, and Barclay's mind gradually comprehended that through railroad rates he controlled the mill, and could buy it at his leisure, upon his own terms. Then the whole scheme unfolded itself before his closed eyes as he sat with his head tilted back and pillowed in his hands. If his railroad concession made it possible for him to underbid the miller at the Ridge, why could he not get other railroad concessions and underbid every miller along the line of the Corn Belt road, by dividing profits with the railroad officials? As he spun out his vision, he could hear the droning voices of General Ward and Colonel Culpepper in the next room; but he did not heed them.
They were discussing the things of the day,--indeed, the things of a fortnight before, to be precise,--the reception given by the Culpeppers to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. The windows were open, and Barclay could hear the men's voices, and he knew vaguely that they were talking of Lige Bemis. For Barclay had tactfully asked the colonel as a favour to invite Mr. and Mrs. Bemis to the silver wedding reception. So the Bemises came. Mrs. Bemis, who was rather stout, even for a woman in her early forties, wore black satin and jet ornaments, including black jet ear bobs of tremendous size. And Watts McHurdie was so touched by the way ten years under a roof had tamed the woman whom he had known of old as ”Happy Hallie,”