Part 25 (2/2)
”John, John, isn't it fine that Jennie has escaped the curse of your millions?”
Barclay's heart was melted. He could not answer, so he nodded an a.s.senting head. The mother stooped to kiss her son's forehead, as she went on, ”Not with all of your millions could you buy that simple little ring for Jennie, John.” And the father pressed his lips to the ring, and his daughter snuggled tightly into his heart and the three mingled their joy together.
Two hours later Barclay and General Ward met on the bridge by the mill. It was one of those warm midwinter days, when nature seems to be listening for the coming of spring. A red bird was calling in the woods near by, and the soft south wind had spring in it as it blew across the veil of waters that hid the dam. John Barclay's head was full of music, and he was lounging across the bridge from the mill on his way home to try his new pipe organ. He had spent four hours the day before at his organ bench, trying to teach his lame foot to keep up with his strong foot. So when General Ward overhauled him, Barclay was annoyed. He was not the man to have his purposes crossed, even when they were whims.
”I was just coming over to the mill to see you,” said the general, as he halted in Barclay's path.
”All right, General--all right; what can I do for you?”
The general was as blunt a man as John Barclay. If Barclay desired no beating around the bush, the general would go the heart of matters. So he said, ”I want to talk about Neal with you.”
Barclay knew that certain things must be said, and the two men sat in a stone seat in the bridge wall, with the sun upon them, to talk it out then and there. ”Well, General, we like Neal--we like him thoroughly. And we are glad, Jane and I, and my mother too--she likes him; and I want to do something for him. That's about all there is to say.”
”Yes, but what, John Barclay--what?” exclaimed the general. ”That's what I want to know. What are you going to do for him? Make him a devil wors.h.i.+pper?”
”Well now, General, here--don't be too fast,” Barclay smiled and drawled. He put his hands on the warm rocks at his sides and flapped them like wing-tips as he went on: ”Jeanette and Neal have their own lives to live. They're sensible--unusually sensible. We didn't steal Neal, any more than you stole Jeanette, General, and--”
”Oh, I understand that, John; that isn't the point,” broke in the general. ”But now that you've got him, what are you going to do with him? Can't you see, John, he's my boy, and that I have a right to know?”
”Now, General, will you let me do a little of this talking?” asked Barclay, impatiently. ”As I was saying, Jeanette and Neal are sensible, and money isn't going to make fools of them. When the time comes and I'm gone, they'll take the divine responsibility--”
”The divine tommyrot!” cried the general; ”the divine fiddlesticks!
Why should they? What have they done that they should have that thrust upon them like a curse; in G.o.d's name, John Barclay, why should my Neal have to have that blot upon his soul? Can't they be free and independent?”
Barclay did not answer; he looked glumly at the floor, and kicked the cement with his heel. ”What would you have them do with the money when they get it,” he growled, ”burn it?”
”Why not?” snapped the general.
”Oh--I just thought I'd ask,” responded Barclay.
The two men sat in silence. Barclay regarded conversation with the general in that mood as arguing with a lunatic. Presently he rose, and stood before Ward and spoke rather harshly: ”What I am going to do is this--? and nothing more. Neal tells me he understands shorthand: I know the boy is industrious, and I know that he is bright and quick and honest. That's all he needs. I am going to take him into our company as a stockholder--with one share--a thousand-dollar share, to be explicit; I'm going to give that to him, and that's all; then he's to be my private secretary for three years at five thousand a year, so long as you must know, and then at the end of that time, if he and Jennie are so minded, they're going to marry; and if he has any business sense--of course you know what will happen. She is all we have, General--some one's got to take hold of things.”
As Barclay spoke General Ward grew white--his face was aquiver as his trembling voice cried out: ”Oh, G.o.d, John Barclay, and would you take my boy--my clean-hearted, fine-souled boy, whom I have taught to fear G.o.d, and callous his soul with your d.a.m.ned money-making? How would you like me to take your girl and blacken her heart and teach her the wiles of the outcasts? And yet you're going to teach Neal to lie and steal and cheat and make his moral guide the penal code instead of his father's faith. Shame on you, John Barclay--shame on you, and may G.o.d d.a.m.n you for this thing, John Barclay!” The old man trembled, but the sob that shook his frame had no tears in it. He looked Barclay in the eyes without a tremor for an angry moment, and then broke: ”I am an old man, John; I can't interfere with Neal and Jeanette; it's their life, not mine, and some way G.o.d will work it out; but,” he added, ”I've still got my own heart to break over it--that's mine--that's mine.”
He rose and faced the younger man a moment, and then walked quickly away. Barclay limped after him, and went home. There he sat on his bench and made the great organ scream and howl and bellow with rage for two hours.
When Neal Ward went to the City to live, he had a revelation of John Barclay as a man of moods. The Barclay Neal Ward saw was an electric motor rather than an engine. The power he had to perceive and to act seemed transmitted to him from the outside. At times he dictated letters of momentous importance to the young man, which Neal was sure were improvised. Barclay relied on his instincts and rarely changed a decision. He wore himself out every day, yet he returned to his work the next day without a sign of f.a.g. The young man found that Barclay had one curious vanity--he liked to seem composed. Hence the big smooth mahogany table before him, with the single paper tablet on it, and the rose--the one rose in the green vase in the centre of the table. Visitors always found him thus accoutred. But to see him limping about from room to room, giving orders in the great offices, dictating notes for the heads of the various departments, to see him in the room where the mail was received, worrying it like a pup, was to see another man revealed. He liked to have people from Sycamore Ridge call upon him, and the man who kept door in the outer office--a fine gray-haired person, who had the manners of a brigadier--knew so many people in Sycamore Ridge that Neal used to call him the City Directory. One day Molly Brownwell called. She was the only person who ever quelled the brigadier; but when a woman has been a social leader in a country town all of her life, she has a social poise that may not be impressed by a mere brigadier. Mrs. Brownwell realized that her call was unusual, but she refused to acknowledge it to him. Barclay seemed glad to see her, and as he was in one of his mellow moods he talked of old times, and drew from a desk near the wall, which he rarely opened, an envelope containing a tintype picture of Ellen.
Culpepper. He showed it to her sister, and they both sat silent for a time, and then the woman spoke.
”Well, John,” she said, ”that was a long time ago.”
”Forty years, Molly--forty years.”
When they came back to the world she said: ”John, I am up here looking for a publisher. Father has written a Biography of Watts, and collected all of his poems and things in it, and we thought it might sell--Watts is so well known. But the publishers won't take it. I want your advice about it.”
<script>