A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

As he walked down Main Street to the bank, the shadow anchor of the cloud had ceased to flit across his consciousness. Life had grown all gray and dull, and he was apart from the world. He saw the handbills announcing the meeting that night as one who sees a curious passing show; the men he met on the street he greeted as creatures from another world. Yet he knew he smiled and spoke with them casually. But it was not he who spoke; the real Robert Hendricks he knew was separated from the pantomime about him. When he went into the bank at five o'clock, the janitor was finishing his work. Hendricks called up the depot on the telephone and found that No. 6 was an hour late. With the realization that a full hour of his fighting time had been taken from him and that the train would arrive only a scant hour before the meeting, the Adrian face of his puzzle turned insistently toward Hendricks. It was not fear but despair that seized him. The cloud was over him. And for want of something to do he wrote. First he wrote abstractedly and mechanically to John Barclay, then to Neal Ward—a note for the Banner—and as the twilight deepened in the room, he squared his chair to the table and wrote to Molly Brownwell; that letter was the voice of his soul. That was real. Six o'clock struck. Half-past six clanged on the town clock, and as Jake Dolan opened the bank door, Hendricks heard the roar of the train crossing at the end of Main Street.

"There goes Johnnie's private car, switching on the tail of her," said Dolan, standing in the doorway.

Hendricks sent Dolan to a back room of the bank, and at seven-twenty went to the telephone. "Give me 876, central," he called. "Hello—hello—hello," he cried nervously, "hello—who is this?" The answer came and he said, "Oh, I didn't recognize your voice." Then he asked in a low tone, as one who had fear in his heart: "Do you recognize me? If you do, don't speak my name. Where is Adrian?" Then Mr. Dolan, listening in the next room, heard this: "You say Judge Bemis phoned to him? Oh, he was to meet him at eight o'clock. How long ago did he leave?" After a moment Hendricks' answer was: "Then he has just gone; and will not be back?" Hendricks cut impatiently into whatever answer came with: "Molly, I must see you within the next fifteen minutes. I can't talk any more over the telephone, but I must come up." "Yes," in a moment, "I must have your decision in a matter of great importance to you—to you, Molly." There was a short silence, then Dolan heard: "All right, I'll be there in ten minutes." Then Hendricks turned from the telephone and called Dolan in. He unlocked a drawer in his desk, and began speaking to Dolan, who stood over him. Hendricks' voice was low, and he was repressing the agitation in his heart by main strength.

"Jake," he said, talking as rapidly as he could, "I must be ungodly frank with you. It doesn't make any difference whether he is right or not, but Adrian Brownwell may be fooled into thinking he has reason to be jealous of me." Hendricks was biting his mustache. "He's a raging maniac of jealousy, Jake, but I'm not afraid of him—not for myself. I can get him before he gets me, if it comes to that, but to do it I'll have to sacrifice Molly. And I won't do that. If it comes to her good name or my life—she can have my life." They were outside now and Dolan was unhitching the horse. He knew instinctively that he was not to reply. In a moment Hendricks went on, "Well, there is just one chance in a hundred that it may turn that way—her good name or my life—and on that chance I've written some letters here." He reached in his coat and said, "Now, Jake, put these letters in your pocket and if anything goes wrong with me, deliver them to the persons whose names are on the envelopes—and to no one else. I must trust everything to you, Jake," he said.

Driving up the hill, he met Bemis coming down town. He passed people going to the meeting in Barclay Hall. He did not greet them, but drove on. His jaw was set hard, and the muscles of his face were firm. As he neared the Culpepper home he climbed from the buggy and hitched the horse to the block in front of his own house. He hurried into the Culpepper yard, past the lilac bushes heavy with blooms, and up the broad stone steps with the white pillars looming above him. It was a quarter to eight, and at that minute Bemis was saying to Adrian Brownwell, "All right, if you don't believe it, don't take my word for it, but go home right now and see what you find."

Molly Brownwell met Hendricks on the threshold with trembling steps. "Bob, what is it?" she asked. They stood in the shadow of the great white pillars, where they had parted a generation ago.

"It's this, Molly," answered Hendricks, as he put his hand to his forehead that was throbbing with pain; "Lige Bemis has my letter to you. Yes," he cried as she gasped, "the note—the very note, and to get it I must quit the waterworks fight and go to the meeting to-night and surrender. I had no right to decide that alone. It is our question, Molly. We are bound by the old life—and we must take this last stand together."

The woman shrank from Hendricks with horror on her face, as he personified her danger. She could not reply at once, but stood staring at him in the dusk. As she stared, the feeling that she had seen it all before in a dream came over her, and the premonition that some awful thing was impending shook her to the marrow.

"Molly, we have no time to spare," he urged. "I must answer Bemis in ten minutes—I can do it by phone. But say what you think."

"Why—why—why—Bob—let me think," she whispered, as one trying to speak in a dream, and that also seemed familiar to her. "It's typhoid for my poor who died like sheep last year," she cried, "or my good name and yours, is it, Bob? Is it, Bob?" she repeated.