Part 21 (1/2)
Only this is sure, that however remote, however separated by time and s.p.a.ce, the tragedy of life has its root in the weakness of men, and of all the heart-breaking phantasms that move across the panorama of the day, somewhere deep-rooted in our own souls' weakness is the ineradicable cause. Even G.o.d's mercy cannot separate the punishment that follows sin, and perhaps it is the greatest mercy of His mercy that it cannot do so. For when we leave this world, our books are clear. If our souls grow--we pay the price in suffering; if they shrivel, we go into the next world, poorer for our pilgrimage.
So do not pity Molly Brownwell nor Robert Hendricks when you learn that as she left the station at Sycamore Ridge that night, Lige Bemis went to a gas lamp and read the note from Robert Hendricks that in her confusion she had dropped upon the floor. Only pity the miserable creature whose soul was so dead in him that he could put that note away to bide his time. In this wide universe, wherein we are growing slowly up to G.o.dhood, only the poor leprous soul, whitened with malice and hate, deserves the angels' tears. The rest of us,--weak, failing, frail, to whom life deals its sorrows and its tears, its punishments and its anguish,--we leave this world nearer to G.o.d than when we came here, and the journey, though long and hard, has been worth the while.
CHAPTER XIX
Back in the days when John Barclay had become powerful enough to increase the price of his door strips to the railroad companies from five dollars to seven and a half, he had transferred the business of the factory that made the strips from Hendricks' Exchange National to the new Merchants' State Bank which Gabriel Carnine was establis.h.i.+ng.
For Carnine and Barclay were more of a mind than were Barclay and Hendricks; Carnine was bent on getting rich, and he had come to regard Barclay as the most remarkable man in the world. Hendricks, on the other hand, knew Barclay to the core, and since the quarrel of the seventies, while they had maintained business relations, they were merely getting along together. There were times when Barclay felt uncomfortable, knowing that Hendricks knew much about his business, but the more Carnine knew, the more praise Barclay had of him; and so, even though Jane kept her own account with Hendricks, and though John himself kept a personal account with Hendricks, the Economy Door Strip Company and the Golden Belt Wheat Company did business with Carnine, and Barclay became a director of the Merchants' State Bank, and greatly increased its prestige thereby. And Bob Hendricks sighed a sigh of relief, for he knew that he would never become John Barclay's fence and be called upon to dispose of stolen goods. So Hendricks went his way with his eyes on a level and his jaw squared with the world.
And when he knew that Jane knew the secret of his soul, about the only comfort he had in those black days was the exultation in his heart that John--whatever he might know--could not turn it into cash at the Exchange National Bank.
As he walked alone under the stars that first night after Molly Brownwell's note came to him, he saw his life as it was, with things squarely in their relations. Of course this light did not stay with him always; at times in his loneliness the old cloud of wild yearning would come over him, and he would rattle the bars of his madhouse until he could fight his way out to the clean air of Heaven under the stars. And at such times he would elude Dolan, and walk far away from the town in fields and meadows and woods struggling back to sanity--sometimes through a long night. But as the years pa.s.sed, this truth came to be a part of his consciousness--that in some measure the thing we call custom, or law, or civilization, or society, with all its faults, is the best that man, endowed as he is to-day, can establish, and that the highest service one can pay to man or to G.o.d is found in conforming to the social compact, at whatever cost of physical pain, or mental anguish, if the conformation does not require a moral breach. That was the faith he lived by, that by service to his fellows and by sacrifice to whatever was worthy in the social compact, he would find a growth of soul that would pay him, either here or hereafter. So he lent money, and sold light, and traded in merchandise, and did a man's work in politics--playing each game according to the rules.
But whatever came to him, whatever of honour or of influence, or of public respect, in his own heart there was the cloud--he knew that he was a forger, and that once he had offered to throw everything he had aside and take in return--But he was not candid enough even in his own heart to finish the indictment. It made him flush with shame, and perhaps that was why on his face there was often a curious self-deprecating smile--not of modesty, not of charity, but the smile of the man who is looking at a pa.s.sing show and knows that it is not real. As he went into his forties, and the flux of his life hardened, he became a man of reserves--a kind, quiet, strong man, charitable to a fault for the weaknesses of others, but a man who rarely reflected his impulses, a listener in conversation, a dreamer amid the tumult of business, whose success lay in his industry and caution, and who drew men to him not by what he promised, but by the faith we chattering daws have in the man who looks on and smiles while we prattle.
His lank bones began to take on flesh, and his face rounded at the corners, and the eagerness of youth pa.s.sed from him. He always looked more of a man than John Barclay. For Barclay was a man of enthusiasms, who occasionally liked to mouth a hard jaw-breaking ”d.a.m.n,” and who followed his instincts with womanly faith in them--so that he became known as a man of impulse. But Hendricks' power was in repression, and in Sycamore Ridge they used to say that the only reason why Bob Hendricks grew a mustache was to chew it when people expected him to talk. It wasn't much of a mustache--a little blond fuzz about as heavy as his yellow eyebrows over his big inquiring blue eyes, and he once told Dolan that he kept it for a danger signal. When he found himself pulling at it, he knew he was nervous and should get out into the open. They tell a story in the Ridge to the effect that Hendricks started to run to a fire, and caught himself pulling at his mustache, and turned around and went out to the power-house instead.
It was the only anecdote ever told of Hendricks after he was forty--for he was not a man about whom anecdotes would hang well, though the town is full of them about John Barclay. So Hendricks lived a strong reticent man, who succeeded in business though he was honest, and who won in politics by choosing his enemies from the kind of noisy men who make many mistakes, and let every one know it. The time came when he did not avoid Molly Brownwell; she felt that he was not afraid to see her in any circ.u.mstances, and that made her happy. Sometimes she went to him in behalf of one of her father's charges,--some poor devil who could not pay his note at the bank and keep the children in school, or some clerk or workman at the power-house who had been discharged. At such times they talked the matter in hand over frankly, and it ended by the man giving way to the woman, or showing her simply that she was wrong.
Only once in nearly a score of years did a personal word pa.s.s between them. She had come to him for his signature to a pet.i.tion for a pardon for a man whose family suffered while he was in the penitentiary.
Hendricks signed the paper and handed it back to her, and his blue eyes were fixed impersonally upon her, and he smiled his curious, self-deprecatory smile and sighed, ”As we forgive our debtors.” Then he reached for a paper in his desk and seemed oblivious to her presence. No one else was near them, and the woman hesitated a moment before turning to go and repeated, ”Yes, Bob--as we forgive our debtors.” She tried to show him the radiance in her soul, but he did not look up and she went away. When she had gone, he pushed aside his work and sat for a moment looking into the street; he began biting his mustache, and rose, and went out of the bank and found some other work.
That night as Hendricks and Dolan walked over the town together, Dolan said: ”Did you ever know, Robert”--that was as near familiarity as the elder man came with Hendricks--”that Mart Culpepper owed his son-in-law a lot of money?”
”Well,” returned Hendricks, ”he borrowed a lot fifteen years ago or such a matter; why?”
”Well,” answered Dolan, ”I served papers on Mart to-day in a suit for--I dunno, a lot of money--as I remember it about fifteen thousand dollars. That seems like a good deal.”
Hendricks grunted, and they walked on in silence. Hendricks knew from Brownwell's overdraft that things were not going well with him, and he believed that matters must have reached a painful crisis in the Culpepper family if Brownwell had brought suit against the colonel.
The next morning Colonel Martin Culpepper came into the bank. He had grown into a large gray man--with gray hair, gray mustaches of undiminished size, and chin whiskers grayed and broadened with the years. His fine black eyes were just beginning to lose their l.u.s.tre, and the spring was going out of his stride. As he came into the bank, Hendricks noticed that the colonel seemed to shuffle just a little. He put out his fat hand, and said:--
”Robert, will you come into the back room with me a moment? It isn't business--I just want to talk with you.” He smiled apologetically and added, ”Just troubles, Robert--just an old man wants to talk to some one, in point of fact.”
Hendricks followed the colonel into the directors' room, and without ceremony the colonel sank heavily into a fat leather chair, facing the window, and Hendricks sat down facing the colonel. The colonel looked at the floor and fumbled his triangular watch-charm a moment, and cleared his throat, as he spoke, ”I don't know just how to begin--to get at it--to proceed, as I may say, Robert.” Hendricks did not reply, and the colonel went on, ”I just wanted to talk to some one, that's all--to talk to you--just to you, sir, to be exact.”
Hendricks looked kindly at the colonel, whose averted eyes made the younger man feel uncomfortable. Then he said gently, ”Well, Colonel, don't be backward about saying what you want to to me.” It was a long speech for Hendricks, and he felt it, and then qualified it with, ”But, of course, I don't want to urge you.”
The colonel's face showed a flush of courage to Hendricks, but the courage pa.s.sed, and there was a silence, and then a little twitch under his eyes told Hendricks that the colonel was contemplating a flank attack as he spoke, ”Robert, may I ask you in confidence if Adrian Brownwell is hard up?”
Hendricks believed the truth would bring matters to a head, and he answered, ”Well, I shouldn't wonder, Colonel.”
”Very hard up?” pressed the colonel.
Hendricks remembered Brownwell's overdraft and half a dozen past due notes to cover other overdrafts and answered, ”Well, Colonel, not desperate, but you know the _Index_ has been getting the best of the _Banner_ for two or three years.”
There was a pause, and then the colonel blurted out, ”Well, Bob, he's sued me.”
”I knew that, Colonel,” returned Hendricks, anxious to press the matter to its core. ”Jake told me yesterday.”
”I was going to pay him; he's spoken about it several times--dunned me, sir, in point of fact, off and on for several years. But he knew I was good for it. And now the little coward runs off up to Chicago to attend the convention and sues me while he's gone. That's what I hate.”