Part 32 (1/2)
When Neal Ward came to the office the next morning, he found Dolan waiting for him. Ward opened the envelope that Dolan gave him, and found in it the mortgage Hendricks had owned on the _Banner_ office, a.s.signed to Ward, and around the mortgage was a paper band on which was written: ”G.o.d bless you, my boy--keep up the fight; never say die.”
Then Ward read Adrian Brownwell's valedictory that was hanging on a copy spike before him. It was the heart-broken sob of an old man who had run away from failure and sorrow, and it need not be printed here.
On Memorial Day, when they came to the cemetery on the hill to decorate the soldiers' graves, men saw that the great mound of lilacs on Robert Hendricks' grave had withered. The seven days' wonder of his pa.s.sing was ended. The business that he had left prospered without him, or languished and died; within a week in all but a dozen hearts Hendricks' memory began to recede into the past, and so, where there had been a bubble on the tide, that held in its prism of light for a brief bit of eternity all of G.o.d's spectacle of life, suddenly there was only the tide moving resistlessly toward the unknown sh.o.r.e. And thus it is with all of us.
CHAPTER XXVIII
In the summer of 1904, following the death of Robert Hendricks, John Barclay spent much time in the Ridge, more time than he had spent there for thirty years. For in the City he was a marked man. Every time the market quivered, reporters rushed to get his opinion about the cause of the disturbance; the City papers were full of stories either of his own misdeeds, or of the wrong-doings of other men of his caste. His cronies were dying all about him of broken hearts or wrecked minds, and it seemed to him that the word ”indictment” was in every column of every newspaper, was on every man's lips, and literally floated in the air.
So he remained in Sycamore Ridge much of the time, and every fair afternoon he rowed himself up the mill-pond to fish. He liked to be alone; for when he was alone, he could fight the battle in his soul without interruption. The combat had been gathering for a year; a despair was rising in him, that he concealed from his womenkind--who were his only intimate a.s.sociates in those days--as if it had been a crime. But out on the mill-pond alone, casting minnows for ba.s.s, he could let the melancholy in his heart rage and battle with his sanity, without let or hindrance. His business was doing well; the lawsuits against the company in a dozen states were not affecting dividends, and the department in charge of his charities was forwarding letters of condolence and consolation from preachers and college presidents, and men who under the old regime had been in high walks of life.
Occasionally some conservative newspaper or magazine would praise him and his company highly; but he knew the shallowness of all the patter of praise. He knew that he paid for it in one way or another, and he grew cynical; and in his lonely afternoons on the river, often he laughed at the whole mockery of his career, smiled at the thought of organized religion, licking his boots for money like a dog for bones, and then in his heart he said there is no G.o.d. Once, to relieve the pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, who is G.o.d, anyway, and then laughed as he thought that the ba.s.s nibbling at his minnow would soon think he, John Barclay, was G.o.d. The a.n.a.logy pleased him, and he thought that his own G.o.d, some devilish fate, had the string through his gills at that moment and was preparing to cast him into the fire.
Up in the office in the city, they went on making senators and governors, and slipping a federal judge in where they could, but he had little hand in it, for his power was a discarded toy. He sat in his boat alone, rowing for miles and miles, from stump to stump, and from fallen tree-top to tree-top, hating the thing he called G.o.d, and distrusting men.
But when he appeared in the town, or at home, he was cheerful enough; he liked to mingle with the people, and it fed his despair to notice what a hang-dog way they had with him. He knew they had been abusing him behind his back, and when he found out exactly what a man had said, he delighted in facing the man down with it.
”So you think John Barclay could have saved Bob Hendricks' life, do you, Oscar?” asked Barclay, as he overhauled Fernald coming out of the post-office.
”Who said so?” asked Fernald, turning red.
”Oh,” chuckled Barclay, ”I got it from the hired girls' wireless news agency. But you said it all right--you said it, Oscar; you said it over to Ward's at dinner night before last.” And Barclay grinned maliciously.
Fernald scratched his head, and said, ”Well, John, to be frank with you, that's the talk all over town--among the people.”
”The people--the people,” snapped Barclay, impatiently, ”the people take my money for bridges and halls and parks and churches and statues and then call me a murderer--oh, d.a.m.n the people! Who started this story?”
”See Jake Dolan, John--it's up to him. He can satisfy you,” said Fernald, and turned, leaving Barclay in the street.
Up the hill trudged the gray-clad little man, with his pugnacious shoulders weaving and his bronzed face set hard and his mean jaw locked. On the steps of the court-house he found Jake Dolan, smoking a morning pipe with the loafers in the shade of the building.
”Here you, Jake Dolan,” called Barclay, ”what do you mean by accusing me of murdering Bob Hendricks? What did I have to do with it?”
”Easy, easy, Johnnie, my boy,” returned Dolan, knocking the ashes from his pipe on the steps between his feet. ”Gentlemen,” said Dolan, addressing the crowd, ”you've heard what our friend says. All right--come with me to my office, Johnnie Barclay, and I'll show you.” Barclay followed Dolan into the bas.e.m.e.nt of the court-house, with the crowd at a respectful distance. ”Right this way--” and Dolan switched on an electric light. ”Do you see that break in the foundation, Mr. Barclay? You do? And you know in your soul that it opens into the cave that leads to the cellar of your own house. Well, then, Mr. Johnnie Barclay--the book that contained the evidence against Bob Hendricks did not go out of this court-house by the front door, as you well know, but through that hole--stolen at night when I was out; and the man who stole it was the horse thief that used to run the cave--your esteemed friend, Lige Bemis.”
The crowd was gaping at the rickety place in the foundation, and one man pulled a loose stone out and let the cold air of the cave into the room.
”Lige Bemis came to your house, Mr. Johnnie Barclay, got into the cave from your cellar, broke through this wall, and stole the book that contained the forgery made to cover General Hendricks' disgrace. And who caused that disgrace but the overbearing, domineering John Barclay, who made that old man steal to pay John Barclay's taxes, back in the gra.s.shopper year, when the sheriff and the jail were almost as familiar to him as they are now,--by all counts. Ah, John Barclay,”
said the Irishman, turning to the crowd, ”John Barclay, John Barclay--you're a brave little man sometimes; I've seen you when I was most unG.o.dly proud of you; I've seen you do grand things, my little man, grand things. But you're a coward too, Johnnie; sitting in your own house while your horse-thief friend used your cellar to work out the disgrace of the man who gave his good name to save your own--that was a fine trick--a d.a.m.n fine trick, wasn't it, Mr.
Barclay?”
Barclay started to go, but the crowd blocked his way. Dolan saw that Barclay was trying to escape. ”Turn tail, will you, my little man?
Wait one minute,” cried Dolan. ”Wait one minute, sir. For what was you conniving against the big man? I know--to win your game; to win your miserable little game. Ah, what a pup a man can be, Johnnie, what a mangy, miserable, cowardly little pup a man can be when he tries--and a decent man, too. Money don't mean anything to you--you got past that, but it's to win the game. Why, man, look at yourself--look at yourself--you'd cheat your own mother playing cards with matches for counters--just to win the game.” Dolan waved for the crowd to break.
”Let him out of here, and get out yourselves--every one of you. This is public property you're desecrating.”
Dolan sat alone in his office, pale and trembling after the crowd had gone. Colonel Culpepper came puffing in and saw the Irishman sitting with his head in his hands and his elbows on the table.
”What's this, Jake--what's this I hear?” asked the colonel.
”Oh, nothing,” answered Dolan, and then he looked up at the colonel with sad, remorseful eyes. ”What a fool--what a fool whiskey in a man's tongue is--what a fool.” He reached under his cot for his jug, and repeated as he poured the liquor into a gla.s.s, ”What a fool, what a fool, what a fool.” And then, as he gulped it down and made a wry face, ”Poor little Johnnie at the mill; I didn't mean to hit him so hard--not half so hard. What a fool, what a fool,” and the two old men started off for the harness shop together.