A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

When Jacob Dolan finished his letter, he addressed the envelope and hurried away to mail it. And so long as we are here in the court-house, and the custodian is gone, would you like to step in and see Martin Culpepper across the hall? It is still in the basement now, and if you are quiet, so quiet that the slipping patter of a rat's foot on the floor comes to you, a sound as of a faint whining will come to you also. There—now it comes again. No, it is not a dog; it is a man—a man in his agony. Shall we open the great iron door, and go into the cell room? Why, not even you, Miss Nancy—not even you, who love tears so? You would not see much—only a man, with his coat and vest off, an old man with a rather shaggy, ill-kept chin whisker and not the cleanest shirt in the world—though it is plaited, and once was a considerable garment. And the man wearing it, who lies prostrate upon his face, once was a considerable man. But he is old now, old and broken, and if he should look up, as you stepped in the corridor before him, you would see a great face ripped and scarred by fear and guilt, and eyes that look so piteously at you—eyes of a man who cannot understand why the blow has fallen, surprised eyes with a horror in them; and if he should speak, you will find a voice rough and mushy with asthma. The heart that has throbbed so many nights in fear and the breath that has been held for so many footsteps, at last have turned their straining into disease. No—let's not go in. He bade his daughter go, and would not see his wife, and they have sent to the City for his son,—so let us not bother him, for to-morrow he will be out on bail. But did you hear that fine, trembling, animal whine—that cry that wrenched itself out of set teeth like a living thing? Come on—let us go and find Jake, and if he is taking a drink, don't blame him too much, Miss Nancy—how would you like to sleep in that room across the corridor?

At nine o'clock the next morning two hundred men had signed the bond the judge required, and Martin Culpepper shambled home with averted eyes. They tried to carry him on their shoulders, thinking it would cheer him up; and from the river wards of the town scores came to give him their hands. But he shook himself away from them, like a great whipped dog, and walked slowly up the hill, and turned into Lincoln Avenue alone.

John Barclay heard the news of the colonel's trouble as he stepped from his private car in the Sycamore Ridge yards that morning, and Jane went to the Culpepper home without stopping at her own. That afternoon, Molly Brownwell knocked at Barclay's office door in the mill, and went in without waiting for him to open it. She was pale and haggard, and she sat down before he could speak to her.

"John," she said in a dead voice that smote his heart, "I have come for my reward now. I never thought I'd ask it, John, but last night I thought it all out, and I don't believe it's begging."

"No," he replied quietly, "it's not. I am sure—"

But she did not let him finish. She broke in with: "Oh, I don't want any of your money; I want my own money—money that you got when you sold me into bondage, John Barclay—do you remember when?" She cried the last words in a tremulous little voice, and then caught herself, and went on before he could put into words the daze in his face. "Let me tell you; do you remember the day you called me up into your office and asked me to hold Adrian in town to save the wheat company? Yes, you do—you know you do! And you remember that you played on my love for Bob, and my duty to father. Well, I saved you, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, Molly," Barclay replied.

She stared a moment at the framed pictures of mill designs on the wall, and at the wheat samples on the long table near her, and did not speak; nor did he. She finally broke the silence: "Well, I saved you, but what about father—" her voice broke into a sob—"and Bob—Jane has told you what Bob and I have been—and what about me—what have you taken from me in these twenty years? Oh, John, John, what a fearful wreck we have made of life—you with your blind selfishness, and I with my weakness! Did you know, John, that the money that father borrowed that day, twenty years ago, of Adrian, to lend to you, is the very money that sent him to jail last night? I guess he—he took what wasn't his to pay it back." Her face twitched, and she was losing control of her voice. Barclay stepped to the door and latched it. She watched him and shook her head sadly. "You needn't be afraid, John—I'm not going to make a scene."

"It's all right, Molly," said Barclay. "I want to help you—you know that. I'm sorry, Molly—infinitely sorry."

She looked at him for a moment in silence, and then said: "Yes, John, I'll give you credit for that; I think you're as sorry as a selfish man like you can be. But are you sorry enough to go to jail a pauper, like father, or wander over the earth alone, like Bob, or come and beg for money, like me?" Then she caught herself quickly and cried: "Only it's not begging, John—it's my own; it's the price you got when you sold me into bondage; it's the price of my soul, and I need it now. Those people only want their money—that is all."