A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

When Colonel Martin Culpepper left Robert Hendricks at the door of the directors' room of the Exchange National Bank, the colonel was persuaded in his heart that his daughter had married Adrian Brownwell to please her parents, and the colonel realized that day that her parents were pleased with Brownwell as a suitor for their daughter, because in time of need he had come to their rescue with money, and incidentally because he was of their own blood and caste—a Southern gentleman of family. The colonel went to the offices of the Culpepper Mortgage and Loan Company and went over his bank-book again. The check that he drew would take all but three hundred and forty-five dollars out of the accounts of his company, and not a dollar of it was his. The Culpepper Mortgage Company was lending other people's money. It had been lending money on farm mortgages for ten years. Pay-day on many mortgages was coming due, and of the fifteen thousand dollars he checked out to pay Adrian Brownwell's debt, thirteen thousand dollars was money that belonged to the Eastern creditors of the company—men and women who had sent their money to the company for it to lend; and the money checked out represented money paid back by the farmers for the release of their mortgages. Some of the money was interest paid by farmers on their mortgages, some of it was partial payments—but none of it was Colonel Culpepper's money.

"Molly," said the colonel, as his daughter came into the office, "I've given a check for that—that money, you know, to Adrian—paid it in full, my dear. But—" the colonel fumbled with his pencil a moment and added, "I'm a trifle shy—a few thousand in point of fact, and I just thought I'd ask—would you borrow it of Bob, if you were me?"

He looked at her closely, and she coloured and shook her head vehemently as she replied: "Oh, no, father—no, can't you get it somewhere else? Not from Bob—for that! I mean—oh—I'd much rather not."

The colonel looked at his daughter a moment and drew a deep breath, and sighed, and smiled across his sigh, and took her hand and put it around his neck and kissed it, and when she was close to him he put his arm about her, and their eyes met for a fleeting instant, and they did not speak. But in a moment from across his desk the daughter spoke, "Why don't you go to John or Carnine, father?"

"Well, Gabe—you know Gabe. I'm borrowed clear to the limit there, now. And John—you know John, Molly—and the muss, the disagreeable muss,—the row, in point of fact, we had over that last seventy-five dollars settling up the College Heights business—you remember? Well, I just can't go to John. But," he added cheerfully, "I can get it elsewhere, my dear—I have other resources, other resources, my dear." And the colonel smiled so gayly that he deceived even his daughter, and she went home as happy as a woman with eyelids as red as hers were that day might reasonably expect to be.

As for the colonel, he sat figuring for an hour upon a sheet of white paper. His figures indicated that by putting all of his property except his home into the market, and reserving all of his commissions on loans that would fall due during the three years coming, he could pay back the money he had taken, little by little, and be square with the company's creditors in three years—or four at the most. So he let the check stand, and did not try to borrow money of the banks to make it good, but trusted to to-morrow's receipts to pay yesterday's debts of the company. Knowing that several mortgages of more than three thousand each would fall due in a few weeks, and that the men carrying them, expected to pay them, the colonel wrote dilatory letters to the Eastern creditors whose money he had taken, explaining that there was some delay in the payment of the notes, and that the matter would be straightened out in a few weeks. When the money came in from the mortgages falling due the next month, he paid those already due, and delayed the payment of Peter until Paul paid up. It was a miserable business, and Colonel Culpepper knew that he was a thief. The knowledge branded him as one, and bent his eyes to the ground, and wrenched his proud neck so that his head hung loosely upon it. Always when he spoke in public, or went among his poor on errands of mercy, at his elbow stood the accusing spectre, and choked his voice, and unnerved his hand. And trouble came upon the Culpeppers, and the colonel's clothes, which, had always been immaculate, grew shabby. As that year and the next passed and mortgages began falling due, not only in the colonel's company but all over the county, all over the state, all over the Missouri Valley, men found they could not pay. The cycle of business depression moved across the world, as those things come and go through the centuries. Moreover, General Ward was riding on the crest of a wave of unrest which expressed in terms of politics what the people felt in their homes. Debts were falling due; crops brought small returns; capital was frightened; men in the mills lost their work; men on the farms burned their corn; and Colonel Martin Culpepper sank deeper and deeper into the mire.

Those years of the panic of the early nineties pressed all the youth out of his step, dimmed the lustre of his eyes, and slowly broke his heart. His keenest anguish was not for his own suffering, but because his poor, the people at the Mission, came trooping to him for help, and he had to turn so many away. The whole town knew that he was in trouble, though no one knew or even suspected just what it was. For the people had their own troubles in those days, and the town and the county and the state and the whole world grew shabby.

One day in the summer of '93, Colonel Culpepper was sitting in his office reading a letter from Vermont demanding a long-deferred interest payment on a mortgage. There were three hundred dollars due, and the colonel had but half that amount, and was going to send what he had. Jake Dolan came into the office and saw the colonel sitting with the letter crumpled in his hands, and with worry in the dull old eyes.

"Come in, Jake, come in," cried the colonel, a little huskily. "What's the trouble, comrade—what's wrong?"

But let Dolan tell it to Hendricks three days later, as the two are sitting at night on the stone bridge across the Sycamore built by John Barclay to commemorate the battle of Sycamore Ridge. "'Well, Mart,' says I, 'I'm in vicarious trouble,' says I. 'It's along of my orphan asylum,' says I. 'What orphan asylum?' says he. 'Well, it's this way, Mart,' says I. 'You know they found Trixie Lee guilty this afternoon in the justice court, don't you?' Mart sighs and says, 'Poor Trixie, I supposed they would sooner or later, poor girl—poor girl. An' old Cap Lee of the Red Legs was her father; did you know that, Jake?' he asks. 'Yes, Mart,' says I, 'and Lady Lee before her. She comes by it honestly.' Mart sat drumming with his fingers on the table, looking back into the years. 'Poor Jim,' he says, 'Jim was a brave soldier—a brave, big-hearted, generous soldier—he nursed me all that first night at Wilson's Creek when I was wounded. Poor Jim.' 'Yes,' says I, 'and Trixie has named her boy for him—Jim Lord Lee Young; that was her husband's name—Young,' says I. 'And it's along of the boy that I'm here for. The nicest bright-eyed little chap you ever saw; and he seems to know that something is wrong, and just clings to his mother and cries—seven years old, or maybe eight—and begs me not to put his mother in jail. And,' says I to Mart, 'Mart, I just can't do it. The sheriff he's run, and so has the deputy; they can't stand the boy crying, and damn it to hell, Mart, I can't, either; so I just left 'em in the office and locked the door and come around to see you. I'd 'a' gone to see Bob, only he's out of town this week,' I says. 'I can throw up the job, Mart—though I'd have to go on the county; but Mart, they ain't a soul for the boy to go to; and it ain't right to put him in jail with the scum that's in there.'"