"Oh, nothing," he smiled back at her bitterly, "except—" and his jaw hardened as he snapped—"except that Neal Ward is a damned informer—and I've sent him about his business, and Jeanette's got to do the same."
Mollie Brownwell looked at him with hard eyes for a moment, and then asked, "What did Neal do?"
"Well," replied Barclay, "under cross-examination, I'll admit without incriminating myself that he gave the testimony which indicted me."
"Was it that or lie, John?" He did not reply. A silence fell, and the woman broke it with a cry: "Oh, John Barclay, John Barclay, must your traffic in souls reach your own flesh and blood? Haven't you enough without selling her into Egypt, too? Haven't you enough money now?" And without waiting for answer, Molly Brownwell turned and left him staring into nothing, with his jaw agape.
It was noon and a band was playing up the street, and as he stood by the stove in McHurdie's shop, he remembered vaguely that he had seen banners flying and some "Welcome" arches across the street as he walked through the town that morning. He realized that some lodge or conclave or assembly was gathering in the town, and that the band was a part of its merriment. It was playing a gay tune and came nearer and nearer. But as he stood leaning upon his chair, with his heart quivering and raw from its punishment, he did not notice that the band had stopped in front of the harness shop. His mind went back wearily to the old days, fifty years before, when as a toddling child in dresses he used to play on that very scrap-heap outside the back door, picking up bits of leather, and in his boyhood days, playing pranks upon the little harness maker, and braiding his whips for the town herd. Then he remembered the verses Watts had written about Bob Hendricks and him in that very room, and the music he and Watts had played together there. The old song Watts had made in his presence in the hospital at St. Louis came back to his mind. Did it come because outside the band had halted and was playing that old song to serenade Watts McHurdie? Or did it come because John Barclay was wondering if, had he made a poet of himself, or a man of spiritual and not of material power, it would have been better for him?
Heaven knows why the old tune came into his head. But when he recognized that they were serenading the little harness maker, and that so far as they thought of John Barclay and his power and his achievements, it was with scorn, he had a flash of insight into his relations with the world that illumined his soul for a moment and then died away. The great Mr. Barclay, alone, sitting in the dingy little harness shop, can hear the band strike up the old familiar tune again, and hear the crowd cheer and roar its applause at the little harness maker, who stands shamefaced and abashed, coatless and aproned, before the crowd. And he is only a poet—hardly a poet, would be a better way to say it; an exceedingly bad poet who makes bad rhymes, and thinks trite thoughts, and says silly and often rather stupid things, but who once had his say, and for that one hour of glorious liberty of the soul has moved millions of hearts to love him. John Barclay does not envy Watts McHurdie—not at all; for Barclay, with all his faults, is not narrow-gauged; he does not wish they would call for him—not to-day—not at all; he could not face them now, even if they cheered him. He says in his heart of pride, beneath his stiff neck, that it is all right; that Watts,—poor little church-mouse of a Watts, whom he could buy five times over with the money that has dropped into the Barclay till since he entered the shop—that Watts should have his due; but only—only—only—that is it—only, but only—!
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 fashion 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.