A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

He laughed for want of any words to express his hopelessness, and the two—the youth in despair, and the woman full of hope—sat in silence.

"Neal," she asked finally, "what do you put in those letters? Why do you write them at all?"

The young man with his eyes upon the floor began, "Well—they're just letters, Aunt Molly—just letters—such as I used to write before—don't you know." His voice was dull and passionless, and he went on: "I can't tell you more about them. They're just letters." He drew in a quick long breath and exclaimed: "Oh, you know what they are—I want to talk to some one and I'm going to. Oh, Aunt Molly," he cried, "I'm not heart-broken, and all that—I'm infinitely happy. Because I still hold it—it doesn't die. Don't you see? And I know that always it will be with me—whatever may come to her. I don't want to forget—and it is my only joy in the matter, that I never will forget. I can be happy this way; I don't want to give any other woman a warmed-over heart, for this would always be there—I know it—and so I am just going to keep it." He dropped his voice again after a sigh, and went on: "There, that's all there is to it. Do you think I'm a fool?" he asked, as the colour came into his face.

"No, Neal, I don't," said Molly Brownwell, as she stood beside him. "You are a brave, manly fellow, Neal, and I wish I could help you. I don't see how now—but the way will come—sometime. Now," she added, "tell me about the paper."

And then they went into business matters which do not concern us; for in this story business conjures up the face of John Barclay—the tanned, hard face of John Barclay, crackled with a hundred wrinkles about the eyes, and scarred with hard lines about the furtive crafty mouth; and we do not wish to see that face now; it should be hidden while the new soul that is rising in his body struggles with that tough, bronzed rind, gets a focus from the heart into those glaring brass eyes, and teaches the lying lips to speak the truth, and having spoken it to look it. And so while John Barclay in the City is daily slipping millions of his railroad bonds into the market,—slipping them in quietly yet steadily withal, mixing them into the daily commerce of the country, so gently that they are absorbed before any one knows they have left his long grasping fingers,—while he is trading to his heart's content, let us forget him, and look at this young man, that September night, after he left Molly Brownwell, sitting at his desk in the office with the telephone at his elbow, with the smell of the ink from the presses in his nostrils, with the silence of the deserted office becalming his soul, and with his heart—a clean, strong, manly heart—full of the picture of a woman's face, and the vision without a hope. In his brain are recorded a thousand pictures, and millions of little fibres run all over this brain, conjuring up those pictures, and if there are blue eyes in the pictures, and lips in the pictures, and the pressure of hands, and the touch of souls in the pictures,—they are Neal Ward's pictures,—they are Mr. Higgin's pictures, and Mrs. Wiggin's pictures, and Mr. Stiggin's pictures, my dears, and alack and alas, they are the pictures of Miss Jones and Miss Lewis and Miss Thomas and Miss Smith, for that matter; and so, my dears, if we would be happy we should be careful even if we can't be good, for it is all for eternity, and whatever courts may say, and whatever churches may say, and whatever comes back with rings and letters and trinkets,—there is no divorce, and the pictures always stay in the heart, and the sum of the pictures is life.

So that September night Neal Ward went back over the old trail as lovers always will, and then his pen began to write. Now in the nature of things the first three words are not for our eyes, and to-night we must not see the first three lines nor the first thirty, nor the last three words nor the last three lines nor the last thirty lines. But we may watch him write; we may observe how longingly he looks at the telephone, as if tempted to go to it, and tell it what is in his breast. There it sits, all shiny and metallic; and by conjuring it with a number and a word, he could have her with him. Yet he does not take it up; because—the crazy loon thinks in the soul of him, that what he writes, some way, in the great unknown system of receivers and recorders and transmitters of thought that range through this universe, is pouring into her heart, and so he writes and smiles, and smiles and writes—no bigger fool than half the other lovers on the planet who, talking to their sweethearts, holding their hands and looking squarely into their eyes, deceive themselves that what they say is going to the heart, and not going in one ear and out of the other.

And now let us put on our seven-league boots and walk from September's green and brown, through October's gold and crimson, into that season of the year 1906 when Nature is shifting her scenery, making ready for the great spring show. It is bleak, but not cold; barren, but not ugly,—for the stage setting of the hills and woods and streams, even without the coloured wings and flies and the painted trees and grass, has its fine simplicity of form and grouping that are good to look upon. Observe in the picture a small man sitting on a log in a wood, looking at the stencil work of the brown and gray branches, as its shadows waver and shimmer upon the gray earth. He is poking reflectively in the earth with his cane. His boat is tied to some tree roots, and he doesn't breathe as regularly as a man should breathe who is merely thinking of his next dinner or his last dollar. He delves into himself and almost forgets to breathe at all, so deep is his abstraction. And so he sits for five minutes—ten minutes—half an hour—and save that he edges into the sun as the shadow of the great walnut tree above catches him, an hour passes and he does not move. Poking, poking, poking his stick into the mould, he has dug up much litter in an hour, and he has seen his whole life thrown up before him. In those leaves yonder is a battle—a bloody battle, and things are blistered into his boyish heart in that battle that never heal over; that tuft of sod is a girl's face—a little girl's face that he loved as a boy; there is his first lawsuit—that ragged pile of leaves by the twig at the log's end; and the twig is his first ten thousand dollars. All of it lies there before him, his victories and his defeats, his millions come, and his millions going—going?—yes, all but gone. Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the left hides a woman's face—pale, wasted, dead on her pillow; and that clean black streak on the ebony cane—that is a tear, and in the tear is a girl's face and back of hers shimmers a boy's countenance. All of John Barclay's life and hopes and dreams and visions are spread out before him on the ground. So he closes his eyes, and braces his soul, and then, having risen, whistles as he limps lightly—for a man past fifty—down to the boat. He rows with a clean manly stroke—even in an old flat-bottomed boat—through the hazy sunset into the dusk.

"Jeanette," he said to his daughter that evening at dinner, "I wish you would go to the phone, pretty soon, and tell Molly Culpepper that I want her to come down this evening. I am anxious to see her. The colonel isn't at home, or I'd have him, mother," explained Mr Barclay.

And that is why Miss Barclay called "876, Please—yes, 8-7-6;" and then said: "Hello—hello, is this 876? Yes—is Mrs. Brownwell in? Oh, all right." And then, "54, please; yes, 5-4. Is this you, Aunt Molly? Father is in town—he came in this morning and has spent the afternoon on the river, and he told me at dinner to ask you if you could run down this evening. Oh, any time. I didn't know you worked nights at the office. Oh, is Mr. Ward out of town?—I didn't know. All right, then—about eight o'clock—we'll look for you."

And that is why at the other end of the telephone, a pretty, gray-haired woman stood, and looked, and looked, and looked at a plain walnut desk, as though it was enchanted, and then slipped guiltily over to that black walnut desk, unlocked a drawer, and pulled out a whole apronful of letters.