Part 29 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXVI
And now as we go out into the busy world, after this act in the dawning of John Barclay's life, let the court convene, and the reporters gather, and the honourable special counsel for the government rage, and the defendant sit nervous and fidgety as the honourable counsel reads the indictment; let the counsel for the defendant swell and strut with indignation that such indignities should be put upon honest men and useful citizens, and let the court frown, and ponder and consider; for that is what courts are for, but what do we care for it all? We have left it all behind, with the ragged programmes in the seats. So if the honourable court, in the person of the more or less honourable Elijah Westlake Bemis, after the fas.h.i.+on of federal judges desiring to do a questionable thing, calls in a judge from a neighbouring court--what do we care? And if the judge of the neighbouring court, after much legal hemming and judicial hawing, decides in his great wisdom--that the said defendant Barclay has been charged in the indictment with no crime, and instructs the jury to find a verdict of not guilty for said defendant John Barclay, upon the mere reading of the indictment,--what are the odds? What do we care if the men in the packed courtroom hiss and the reporters put down the hisses in their note-books and editors write the hisses in headlines, and presses print the hisses all over the world? For the fidgety little man is free now--entirely free save for fifty-four years of selfish life upon his shoulders.
In the trial of nearly every cause it becomes necessary at some point in the proceedings to halt the narrative and introduce certain exhibits, records, and doc.u.ments, upon which foregone evidence has been based, and to which coming testimony may properly be attached.
That point has been reached in the case now before the reader. And as ”Exhibit A” let us submit a letter written by John Barclay, January seventh, nineteen hundred and four, to Jane, his wife, at Naples.
”As I cabled you this afternoon, the case resulted exactly as I said it would the day after the indictment. I had not seen or talked with Lige since that day I talked with him over the telephone, before the indictment was made public, but I knew Lige well enough to know how he would act under fire. I had him out to dinner this evening, and we talked over old times, and he tells me he wants to retire from the bench. Jane, Lige has been my mainstay ever since this company was organized. Sometimes I feel that without his help in politics--looking to see that pernicious legislation was killed, and that the right men were elected to administrative offices, and appointed to certain judicial places--we never would have been able to get the company to its present high standing. I feel that he has been so valuable to us that we should settle a sum on him that will make him a rich man as men go in the Ridge. Heaven knows that is little enough, considering all that he has done. He may have his faults, Jane, but he has been loyal to me.
”I hope, my dear, that Jeanette has ceased to worry about the other matter; he is not worth her tears. Don't come home for a month or two yet. The same conditions prevail that I spoke of in my first cable the day of the indictment. The press and the public are perfectly crazy. America is one great howling mob, and it would make you and Jennie unhappy. As for me, I don't mind it. You know me.”
And that the reader may know how truthful John Barclay is, let us append herewith a letter written by Mrs. Mary Barclay, of Sycamore Ridge, to her granddaughter at Naples, January 15, 1904. She writes among other things:--
”Well, dear, it is a week now since your father's case was settled, and he was at home for the first time last night. I expected that his victory--such as it was--would cheer him up, but some way he seems worse in the dumps than he was before. He does not sleep well, and is getting too nervous for a man of his age. I have the impression that he is forever battling with something. Of course the public temper is bitter, dearie. You are a woman now, and should not be s.h.i.+elded and pampered with lies, so I am going to tell you the truth. The indignation of the people of this nation at your father, as he represents present business methods, is past belief. And frankly, dearie, I can't blame them. Your father and my son is a brave, sweet, loving man; none could be finer in this world, Jennie.
But the head of the National Provisions Company is another person, dear; and of him I do not approve, as you know so well. I am sending you Neal Ward's statement which was published by the government the day after the case was dismissed. I have not sent it to you before, because I wanted to ask your father if it was true. Jennie, he admits that Neal told the truth, and nothing but the truth--and did not make it as bad as it was. You are ent.i.tled to the facts. You are a grown woman now, dear, and must make your own decisions. But oh, my dear little girl, I am heartsick to see your father breaking as he is. He seems to be fighting--fighting--fighting all the time; perhaps it is against the flames of public wrath, but some way I think he is fighting something inside himself--fighting it back; fighting it down--whatever it is.”
Counsel also begs indulgence while he introduces and reads two clippings from the Sycamore Ridge _Daily Banner_, of February 12, 1904. The first one reads:--
”Judge Bemis Retires
”Hon. E. W. Bemis has retired from the federal bench, and rumour has it that he is soon to return with his estimable wife to our midst.
Our people will welcome the judge and Mrs. Bemis with open arms. He retires from an honourable career, to pa.s.s his declining years in the peace and quiet of the town in which he began his career over fifty years ago. For as every one knows, he came West as a boy, and before having been admitted to the bar dealt largely in horses and cattle. He has always been a good business man, having with his legal ac.u.men the acquisitive faculty, and now he is looking for some place to invest a modest competence here in the Ridge, and rumour has it again that he is negotiating for the purchase of the Sycamore Ridge Waterworks bonds, which are now in litigation. If so, he will make an admirable head of that popular inst.i.tution.”
In this connection, and before introducing the other clipping from the _Banner_, it would be entirely proper to introduce the ma.n.u.script for the above, in the typewriting of the stenographer of Judge Bemis's court, and a check for fifty dollars payable to Adrian Brownwell, signed by Judge Bemis aforesaid; but those doc.u.ments would only clog the narrative and would not materially strengthen the case, so they will be thrown out.
The second clipping, found in the personal column of the _Banner_ of the date referred to, February 12, 1904, follows:--
”Mrs. John Barclay and Miss Barclay are on the steamer _Etruria_ which was sighted off Fire Island to-day. They will spend a few weeks in New York, and early in March Miss Barclay will enter the state university to do some post-graduate work in English, and Mrs.
Barclay will return to Sycamore Ridge. Mr. Barclay will meet them at the pier, and they expect to spend the coming two weeks attending German opera. Mrs. Mary Barclay left to-day for the East to join them. She will remain a month visiting relatives near Haverhill, Ma.s.s.”
It becomes necessary to append some letters of Miss Jeanette Barclay's, and they are set down here in the order in which they were written, though the first one takes the reader back a few weeks to December 5, 1903. It was posted at Rome, and in the body of it are found these words:--
”My dear, I know you will smile when you hear I have been reading all the Italian scientific books I can find, dealing with the human brain--partly to help my Italian, but chiefly, I think, to see if I can find and formulate some sort of a definition for love. It is so much a part of my soul, dear heart, that I would like to know more about it. And I am going to write down for you what I think it is as we know it. I have been wearing your ring nearly three years, Neal, and if you had only known it, I would have been happy to have taken it a year sooner. In those four years I have grown from a girl to a woman, and you have become a man full grown. In that time all my thoughts have centred on you. In all my schoolbooks your face comes back to me as I open them in fancy. As I think of the old room at school, of my walk up the hill, as I think of home and my room there, some thought of you is always between me and the picture. All through my physical brain are little fibres running to every centre that bring up images of you. You are woven into my life, and I know in my heart that I am woven into your life. The thing is done; it is as much apart of my being as my blood--those million fibres of my brain that from every part of my consciousness bring thoughts of you. We cannot be separated now, darling--we are united for life, whether we unite in life or not. I am yours and you are mine. It is now as inexorable as anything we call material. More than that--you have made my soul. All the aspirations of my spiritual life go to you for beginning and for being as truly as the fibres of my brain thrill to the sound of your name or the mental image of your face.
My soul is your soul, because in the making the thought of you was uppermost. I know that my love for you is immortal, ineffaceable, and though I should live a hundred years, that love would still be as much a part of my life as my hands or my eyes or my body. And the best of it all is that I am so glad it is so. Divorce is as impossible with a love like that as amputation of the brain. It is big and vital in me, real and certain, and so long as I live on earth, or dwell in eternity, my soul and your soul are knit together.”
Three weeks later, on December 28, 1903, Miss Barclay wrote to Mr.
Ward as follows:--
”Your letter and father's letter were on my desk when we returned from our cruise. I have just finished writing to him, and I herewith return your ring and your pin.”
There was neither signature nor superscription--just those words. And a month later, Miss Barclay wrote this letter to her Grandmother Barclay in Sycamore Ridge:--
”MY DEAR, DEAR GRANNY: I have told mother what you wrote of father, and we are coming home just as soon as we can get a steamer. We are cabling him to-day, and hope to sail within a week or ten days at the very farthest. But I cannot wait until I see you, dear, to come close into your heart. And first of all I want you to know that I share your views about the heart-break of all this money and the miserable man-killing way it is being piled up. I know the two men you speak of--father and the president of the N.P.C. But he is my father, and I must stand by him, and brace him if I can. But, oh, Granny, I don't want the old money! It has never made me happy--never for one minute. The only happiness I have ever had was when he was at home with us all, away from business--and--but you know about that other happiness, and it hurts to speak of it now. I have not read what you sent me. I can't. But I will keep it. That it is true doesn't help me any. Nothing can help me. It is just one of those awful things that I have read of coming to people, but which I thought never could possibly come to me. Oh, Granny, Granny, you who pray so much for others, now pray for me. Granny, you can't cut something out of you--right out of the heart of you, by merely saying so; it keeps growing back; it hurts, and hurts, and keeps hurting; even if you know it is cut out and thrown away. They say that men who have had legs cut off can feel them for months and even years if they are cramped when they are buried. The nerves of the old dead body reach through s.p.a.ce and hurt. It is that way with me.
The old dead thing in my heart that is buried and gone keeps cramping and hurting. You are the only one I can come to, Granny. It hurts mother too much, and she is not strong this winter. I think it is worry. She is growing thin, and her heart doesn't act right. I am terribly worried about her; but she made me promise to say nothing to father, and you must not, either; for he will see for himself soon.”
A few letters from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay, and a doc.u.ment some twenty years old, which the reader may have forgotten, but which one person connected with this narrative has feared would come to light every day in that time--and then this tedious business of introducing doc.u.mentary evidence will be over. The letter from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay is one of hundreds that he wrote and never mailed.
They were dated, sealed, addressed, and put away. This one was written at midnight as the bells and whistles and pistols and fireworks were welcoming the year 1904. It begins:--