A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

"Is that all?" asked Hendricks.

"Well—" a pause and then finally—"yes," came the voice.

"Well, my answer is no," said Hendricks, and while he was trying to get central the voice called again and said:—

"Just one word more: if you still maintain your present decision, a copy of that letter you wrote will be put into the hands of Mr. Brownwell of the Banner before the meeting; I tell you this to protect you. He and Mrs. Brownwell and Mrs. Barclay will be in town to-morrow evening on the Barclay car from the West on No. 6; you will have until then to reconsider your decision; after that you act at your own risk."

Again the voice ceased, and Hendricks learned from central who had been talking with him. It was after banking hours, and he sat for a time looking the situation squarely in the face. The reckoning had come. He had answered "no" with much bravery over the telephone—but in his heart a question began to rise, and his decision was clouded.

Hendricks walked alone under the stars that night, and as he walked he turned the situation over and over as one who examines a strange puzzle. He saw that his "no" could not be his own "no." Molly must be partner in it. For to continue his fight for clean water he must risk her good name. He measured Bemis, and remembered the old quarrel. The hate in the face of the bribe-giver, thrown out of the county convention a quarter of a century before, came to Hendricks, and he knew that it was no vain threat he was facing. So he turned up the other facet of the puzzle. There was Adrian. For an hour he considered Adrian Brownwell, a vain jealous old man with the temper of a beast. To see Molly, tell her of their common peril, get her decision, and be with it at the meeting before Adrian saw the note, all in the two hours between the arrival of the train bearing the Brownwells and Mrs. Barclay, and the time of the meeting in Barclay Hall, was part of Hendricks' puzzle. He believed that by using the telephone to make an appointment he could manage it. Then he turned the puzzle over and saw that to save Molly Brownwell's good name and his father's, human lives must be sacrificed by permitting the use of foul water in the town. And in the end his mind set. He knew that unless she forbade it, the contest must go on to a righteous finish, through whatever perils, over any obstacles. Yet as he walked back to the bank, determined not to take his hand from the plough, he saw that he must prepare to go into the next day as though it were his last. For in his consciousness on the other side of the puzzle—always there was the foolish Adrian, impetuous at best, but stark mad in his jealousy and wrath.

And Elijah Westlake Bemis, keeping account of the man's movements, chuckled as he felt the struggle in the man's breast. For he was a wise old snake, that Lige Bemis, and he had seduced many another man after the brave impulsive "no" had roared in his face. Just before midnight when he saw the electric light flash on in the private office of the president of the Exchange National Bank, Lige Bemis, libertine with men, strolled home and counted the battle won. "He's writing his speech," he said to Barclay over the telephone at midnight. And John Barclay, who had fought the local contest in the election with Bemis to be loyal to a friend, and to help one who was in danger of losing the profit on half a million dollars' investment in the Sycamore Ridge waterworks, laughed as he walked upstairs in his pajamas, and said to himself, "Old Lige is a great one—there is a lot of fight in the old viper yet." It was nothing to Barclay that the town got its water from a polluted pond. That phase of the case did not enter his consciousness, though it was placarded on the bill-boards and had been printed in the Banner a thousand times during the campaign. To him it was a fight by the demagogues against property interests, and he was with property, even a little property—even a miserable little dribble of property like half a million dollars' worth of waterworks bonds.

And Robert Hendricks—playfellow of John Barclay's boyhood, partner of his youth—sat working throughout the night, a brave man, going into battle without a tremor. He went through his books, made out statements of his business relations, prepared directions for the heads of his different concerns, as a man would do who might be going on a long journey. For above everything, Robert Hendricks was foresighted. He prepared for emergencies first, and tried to avoid them afterwards. And with the thought of the smallness of this life in his soul, he looked up from his work to see the hard gray lines of the dawn in the street outside of his office, bringing the ugly details from the shadows that hid them during the day, and he sighed as he wondered in what bourne he should see the next dawn break.

It was a busy day for Robert Hendricks, that next day, and through it all his mind was planning every moment of the time how he could protect Molly Brownwell. Did he work in the bank, behind his work his mind was seeking some outlet from his prison. If he went over the power-house at the electric plant, always he was looking among the wheels for some way of refuge for Molly. When he spent an hour in the office of the wholesale grocery house, he despatched a day's work, but never for a second was his problem out of his head. He spent two hours with his lawyers planning the suit against the water company, pointing out new sources of evidence, and incidentally leaving a large check to pay for the work. But through it all Molly Brownwell's good name was ever before him, and when he thought how twenty years before he had walked through another day planning, scheming, and contriving, all to produce the climax of calamity that was hovering over her to-day, he was sick and faint with horror and self-loathing.

But as the day drew to its noon, Hendricks began to feel a persistent detachment from the world about him. It floated across his consciousness, like the shadow anchor of some cloud far above him. He began to watch the world go by. He seemed not to be a part of it. He became a spectator. At four o'clock he passed Dolan on the street and said, absently, "I want you to-night at the bank at seven o'clock sharp—don't forget, it's very important."