Part 36 (1/2)

He paused for the effect of his declaration to sink in. Jeanette asked, ”Where was the car?”

”What car?” teased the little gray cat.

”Why, our car?”

”My dear, we have no car,” he smiled, with the cream of mystery on his lips. Then he licked it off. ”I sold the car three weeks ago, when I left the Ridge the last time.” He dropped into an eloquent silence, and then went on: ”I rode in the chair car to save three dollars. I need it in my business.”

His mother's blue eyes were watching him closely. She exclaimed, ”John, quit your foolishness. What have you done?”

He laughed as he said: ”Mother, I have returned to you poor but honest. My total a.s.sets at this minute are seventy-five million dollars' worth of stock of the National Provisions Company, tied up in this bundle on the floor here, and five thousand dollars in the Exchange National Bank of Sycamore Ridge which I have held for thirty years. I sold my State Bank stock last Monday to Gabe Carnine. I have thirty-four dollars and seventy-three cents in my pocketbook, and that is all.”

The women were puzzled, and their faces showed it. So the little gray cat made short work of the mice.

”Well, now, to be brief and plain,” said Barclay, pulling himself forward in his chair and thrusting out an arm and hand, as if to grip the attention of his hearers, ”I have always owned or directly controlled over half the N.P.C. stock--representing a big pile of money. I am trying to forget how much, and you don't care. But it was only part of my holdings--about half or such a matter, I should say.

The rest were railroad bonds on roads necessary to the company, mortgages on mills and elevators whose stock was merged in the company, and all sorts of gilt-edged stuff, bank stock and insurance company stock--all needed to make N.P.C. a dominant factor in the commercial life of the country. You don't care about that, but it was all a sort of commercial blackmail on certain fellows and interests to keep them from fighting N.P.C.” Barclay hitched himself forward to the edge of his chair, and still held out his grappling-hook of a hand to hold them as he smiled and went on: ”Well, I've been kind of swapping horses here for six months or so--trading my gilt-edged bonds and stuff for cash and buying up N.P.C. stock. I got a lot of it quietly--an awful lot.” He grinned. ”I guess that was square enough.

I paid the price for it--and a little better than the price--because I had to.” He was silent a few moments, looking at the fire. He meditated pleasantly: ”There was some good in it--a lot of good when you come to think of it--but a fearful lot of bad! Well--I've saved the good. I just reorganized the whole concern from top to bottom--the whole blame rebate hopper. We had some patents, and we had some contracts with mills, and we had some good ideas of organization. And I've kept the good and chucked the bad. I put N.P.C.

out of business and have issued stock in the new company to our minority whose stock I couldn't buy and have squeezed the water out of the whole concern. And then I took what balance I had left--every cent of it, went over the books for thirty years, and made what rest.i.tution I could.” He grinned as he added: ”But I found it was nearly whittlety whet. A lot of fellows had been doing me up, while I had been doing others up. But I made what rest.i.tution I could and then I got out. I closed up the City office, and moved the whole concern to St. Paul, and turned it over to the real owners--the millers and elevator men--and I have organized an industry with a capitalization small enough to make it possible for them to afford to be honest for thirty years--while our patents and contracts last, anyway.” He put an elbow in the hollow of his hand, and the knuckles on his knee as he sat cross-legged, and drawled: ”I wonder if it will work--” and repeated: ”I wonder, I wonder. There's big money in it; she's a dead monopoly as she stands, and they have the key to the whole thing in the Commerce Department at Was.h.i.+ngton. They can keep her straight if they will.” He paused for a while and went on: ”But I'm tired of it.

The great hulk of a thing has ground the soul out of me. So I ducked.

Girls,” he cried, as he turned toward them, ”here's the way it is; I never did any real good with money. I'm going to see what a man can do to help his fellows with his bare hands. I want to help, not with money, but just to be some account on earth without money. And so yesterday I cleaned up the whole deal forever.”

He paused to let it sink in. Finally Jeanette asked, ”And are we poor, father--poor?”

”Well, my dear,” he expanded, ”your grandmother Barclay has always owned this house. An Omaha syndicate owns the mill. I own $5,000 in bank stock, and the boy who marries you for your money right now is going to get badly left.”

”You aren't fooling me, are you, John?” asked his mother as she rose from her chair.

”No, mother,” answered the son, ”I've got rid of every dirty dollar I have on earth. The bank stock I bought with the money the Citizens'

Committee subscribed to pay me for winning the county-seat lawsuit. As near as I can figure it out, that was about the last clean money I ever earned.”

The mother walked toward her son, and leaned over and kissed him again and again as she sobbed: ”Oh, John, I am so happy to-night--so happy.”

In a moment he asked, ”Well, Jeanette, what do you think of it?”

”You know what I think, father--you know very well, don't you?”

He sighed and nodded his head. Then he reached for the package on the floor and began cutting the strings. The bundle burst open and the stock of the National Provisions Company, issued only in fifty-thousand-dollar and one-hundred-thousand-dollar shares, littered the floor.

”Now,” cried Barclay, as he stood looking at the litter, ”now, Molly, here's what I want you to do: Burn it up--burn it up,” he cried. ”It has burned the joy out of your life, Molly--burn it up! I have fought it all out to-day on the river--but I can't quite do that. Burn it up--for G.o.d's sake, Molly, burn it up.”

When the white ashes had risen up the chimney, he put on another log.

”This is our last extravagance for some time, girls--but we'll celebrate to-night,” he cried. ”You haven't a little elderberry wine, have you, mother?” he asked. ”Riley says that's the stuff for little boys with curvature of the spine--and I'll tell you it put several kinks in mine to watch that burn.”

And so they sat for an hour talking of old times while the fire burned. But Molly Brownwell's mind was not in the performance that John Barclay had staged. She could see nothing but the package lying on her cloak in the girl's room upstairs. So she rose to go early, and the circle broke when she left it. She and Jeanette left John standing with his arms about his mother, patting her back while she wept.

As she closed the door of Jeanette's room behind her, Molly Brownwell knew that she must speak. ”Jeanette,” she said, ”I don't know just how to say it, dear; but, I stole those--I mean what is in that package--I took it and Neal doesn't know I have it. It's for you,”

she cried, as she broke the string that tied it, and tore off the wrapping.