A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

"Neal, I was wrong—dead wrong—and I've been too proud and mean all this time—to say so."

Neal stared open-eyed at Barclay and moistened his lips before language came to him. Finally he said: "Well, Mr. Barclay—that's all right. I never blamed you. You needn't have bothered about—that is, to tell me."

Barclay gazed at the young man abstractedly for a minute that seemed interminable, and then broke out, "Damn it, Neal, I can't propose to you—but that's about what I've got you out here to-night for."

He laughed nervously, but the young face showed his obtuseness, and John Barclay having broken the ice in his own heart put his hands in his pockets and threw back his head and roared, and then cried merrily: "All we need now is a chorus in fluffy skirts and an orchestra with me coming down in front singing, 'Will you be my son-in-law?' for it to be real comic opera."

The young man's heart gave such a bound of joy that it flashed in his face, and the father, seeing it, was thrilled with happiness. So he limped over to Neal's chair and stood beaming down upon the embarrassed young fellow.

"But, Mr. Barclay—" the boy found voice, "I don't know—the money—it bothers me."

And John Barclay again threw his head back and roared, and then they talked it all out. He told Neal the story of his year's work. It was midnight when they heard the telephone ringing, and Barclay, curled up like an old gray cat in his chair before the fire, said for old times' sake, "Neal, go see who is ringing up at this unholy hour."

And while Neal Ward steps to the telephone, let us go upstairs on one last journey with our astral bodies and discover what Jeanette is doing. After Molly's departure, Jeanette stooped to pick up what Molly had left. She saw her own name, "Jeanette Barclay," and her address written on an envelope. She picked it up. It was dated: "Written December 28," and she saw that the package was filled with letters in envelopes similarly addressed in Neal Ward's handwriting. She dropped the letter on her dressing-table and began to undo her hair. In a few minutes she stopped and picked up another, and laid it down unopened. But in half an hour she was sitting on the floor reading the letters through her tears. The flood of joy that came over her drowned her pride. For an hour she sat reading the letters, and they brought her so near to her lover that it seemed that she must reach out and touch him. She was drawn by an irresistible impulse to her telephone that sat on her desk. It seemed crazy to expect to reach Neal Ward at midnight, but as she rose from the floor with the letters slipping from her lap and with the impulse like a cord drawing her, she saw, or thought she saw, standing by the desk, a part of the fluttering shadows, a girl—a quaint, old-fashioned girl in her teens, with—but then she remembered the dream girl her lover had described in the letter she had just been reading, and she understood the source of her delusion. And yet there the vision moved by the telephone, smiling and beckoning; then it faded, and there came rushing back to her memory a host of recollections of her childhood, and of some one she could not place, and then a memory of danger,—and then it was all gone and there stood the desk and the telephone and the room as it was.

She shuddered slightly, and then remembered that she had just been through two great nervous experiences—the story of her father's changed life, and the return of her lover. And she was a level-headed, strong-nerved girl. So the joy of love in her heart was not dampened, and the cord drawing her to the desk in the window did not loosen, and she did not resist. With a gulp of nervous fear she rang the telephone bell and called, "54, please!" She heard a buzzing, and then a faint stir in the receiver, and then she got the answer. She sat a-tremble, afraid to reply. The call was repeated in her ear, and then she said so faintly that she could not believe it would be heard, "Oh, Neal—Neal—I have come back."

The young man standing in the dimly lighted hall was startled. He cried, "Is it really you, Jeanette—is it you?"