A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

But so far as Barclay is concerned the colonel never reached the bottom of the stairs, for Barclay had his desk covered with law-books and was looking up contracts. In an hour he had a draft of a mortgage and option to buy the mortgaged land written out, and was copying it for the printer. He took it to the Banner office and asked Brownwell to put two men on the job, and to have the proof ready by the next morning.

Brownwell waved both hands magnificently and with much grace, and said: "Mr. Barclay, we will put three men on the work, sir, and if you will do me the honour, I will be pleased to bring the proof up Lincoln Avenue to the home of our mutual friend, Colonel Culpepper, where you may see it to-night." Barclay fancied that a complacent smile wreathed Brownwell's face at the prospect of going to the Culpeppers', and the next instant the man was saying: "Charming young lady, Miss Molly! Ah, the ladies, the ladies—they will make fools of us. We can't resist them." He shrugged and smirked and wiggled his fingers and played with his mustaches. "Wine and women and song, you know—they get us all. But as for me—no wine, no song—but—" he finished the sentence with another flourish.

Barclay did what he could to smile good-naturedly and assent in some sort of way as he got out of the room. That night, going up the hill, he said to Jane: "Brownwell is one of those fellows who regard all women—all females is better, probably—as a form of vice. He's the kind that coos like a pouter pigeon when he talks to a woman."

Jane replied: "Yes, we women know them. They are always claiming that men like you are not gallant!" She added, "You know, John, he's the jealous, fiendish kind—with an animal's idea of honour." They walked on in silence for a moment, and she pressed his arm to her side and their eyes met in a smile. Then she said: "Doubtless some women like that sort of thing, or it would perish, but I don't like to be treated like a woman—a she-creature. I like to be thought of as a human being with a soul." She shuddered and continued: "But the soul doesn't enter even remotely into his scheme of things. We are just bodies."

The Barclays did not stay late at the Culpeppers' that night, but took the proofs at early bedtime and went down the hill. An hour later they heard Molly Culpepper and Brownwell loitering along the sidewalk. Brownwell was saying:—

"Ah, but you, Miss Molly, you are like the moon, for—

"'The moon looks on many brooks,
The brook can see no moon but this.'

"And I—I am—"

The Barclays did not hear what he was; however, they guessed, and they guessed correctly—so far as that goes. But Molly Culpepper did hear what he was and what he had been and what he would be, and the more she parried him, the closer he came. There were times when he forgot the "Miss" before the "Molly," and there were other times when she had to slip her hand from his ever so deftly. And once when they were walking over a smooth new wooden sidewalk coming home, he caught her swiftly by the waist and began waltzing and humming "The Blue Danube." And at the end of the smooth walk, she had to step distinctly away from him to release his arm. But she was twenty-one, and one does not always know how to do things at twenty-one—even when one intends to do them, and intends strongly and earnestly—that one would do at forty-one, and so as they stood under the Culpepper elm by the gate that night,—under the elm, stripped gaunt and naked by the locusts,—and the July moon traced the skeleton of the tree upon the close-cropped sod, we must not blame Molly Culpepper too much even if she let him, hold her hand a moment too long after he had kissed it a formal good night; for twenty-one is not as strong as its instincts. It is such a little while to learn all about a number of important things in a big and often wicked world that when a little man or a little woman, so new to this earth as twenty-one years, gets a finger pinched in the ruthless machinery, it is a time for tears and mothering and not for punishment. And so when Adrian Brownwell pulled the little girl off her feet and kissed her and asked her to marry him all in a second, and she could only struggle and cry "No, no!" and beg him to let her go—it is not a time to frown, but instead a time to go back to our twenty-ones and blush a little and sigh a little, and maybe cry and lie a little, and in the end thank God for the angel He sent to guard us, and if the angel slept—thank God still for the charity that has come to us.

The next day John Barclay had Colonel Martin Culpepper and Lige Bemis in his office galvanizing them with his enthusiasm and coaching them in their task. They were to promise three dollars an acre, August 15, to every farmer who would put a mortgage on his land for six dollars an acre. The other three dollars was to cover the amount paid by Barclay as rent for the land the year before. They were also to offer the landowner a dollar and a half an acre to plough and plant the land by September 15, and another dollar to cultivate it ready for the harvest, and the company was to pay the taxes on the land and furnish the seed. Barclay had figured out the seed money from the sale of the mortgages. The man was a dynamo of courage and determination, and he charged the two men before him until they fairly prickled with the scheme. He talked in short hard sentences, going over and over his plan, drilling them to bear down on the hard times and that there would be no other buyers or renters for the land, and to say that the bank would not lend a dollar except in this way. Long after they had left his office, Barclay's voice haunted them. His face was set and his eyes steady and small, and the vertical wrinkle in his brow was as firm as an old scar. He limped about the room quickly, but his strong foot thumped the floor with a thud that punctuated his words.