"And was your business to consult me about it?" said Stacy bluntly.
"No," said Barker, "it's too late to consult you now, though I wish I had. I've given my word to take it, and I can't back out. But I haven't the ten thousand dollars, and I came to you."
Stacy slowly settled himself back in his chair, and put both hands in his pockets. "Not a cent, Barker, not a cent."
"I'm not asking it of the BANK," said Barker, with a smile, "for I could have gone to the bank for it. But as this was something between us, I am asking you, Stacy, as my old partner."
"And I am answering you, Barker, as your old partner, but also as the partner of a hundred other men, who have even a greater right to ask me. And my answer is, not a cent!"
Barker looked at him with a pale, astonished face and slightly parted lips. Stacy rose, thrust his hands deeper in his pockets, and standing before him went on:--
"Now look here! It's time you should understand me and yourself.
Three years ago, when our partnership was dissolved by accident, or mutual consent, we will say, we started afresh, each on our own hook. Through foolishness and bad advice you have in those three years hopelessly involved yourself as you never would have done had we been partners, and yet in your difficulty you ask me and my new partners to help you out of a difficulty in which they have no concern."
"Your NEW partners?" stammered Barker.
"Yes, my new partners; for every man who has a share, or a deposit, or an interest, or a dollar in this bank is my PARTNER--even you, with your securities at the Branch, are one; and you may say that in THIS I am protecting you against yourself."
"But you have money--you have private means."
"None to speculate with as you wish me to--on account of my position; none to give away foolishly as you expect me to--on account of precedent and example. I am a soulless machine taking care of capital intrusted to me and my brains, but decidedly NOT to my heart nor my sentiment. So my answer is, not a cent!"
Barker's face had changed; his color had come back, but with an older expression. Presently, however, his beaming smile returned, with the additional suggestion of an affectionate toleration which puzzled Stacy.
"I believe you're right, old chap," he said, extending his hand to the banker, "and I wish I had talked to you before. But it's too late now, and I've given my word."
"Your WORD!" said Stacy. "Have you no written agreement?"
"No. My word was accepted." He blushed slightly as if conscious of a great weakness.
"But that isn't legal nor business. And you couldn't even hold the Ditch Company to it if THEY chose to back out."
"But I don't think they will," said Barker simply. "And you see my word wasn't given entirely to THEM. I bought the thing through my wife's cousin, Henry Spring, a broker, and he makes something by it, from the company, on commission. And I can't go back on HIM.
What did you say?"
Stacy had only groaned through his set teeth. "Nothing," he said briefly, "except that I'm coming, as I said before, to dine with you to-night; but no more BUSINESS. I've enough of that with others, and there are some waiting for me in the outer office now."
Barker rose at once, but with the same affectionate smile and tender gravity of countenance, and laid his hand caressingly on Stacy's shoulder. "It's like you to give up so much of your time to me and my foolishness and be so frank with me. And I know it's mighty rough on you to have to be a mere machine instead of Jim Stacy. Don't you bother about me. I'll sell some of my Wide West Extension and pull the thing through myself. It's all right, but I'm sorry for you, old chap." He glanced around the room at the walls and rich paneling, and added, "I suppose that's what you have to pay for all this sort of thing?"
Before Stacy could reply, a waiting visitor was announced for the second time, and Barker, with another hand-shake and a reassuring smile to his old partner, passed into the hall, as if the onus of any infelicity in the interview was upon himself alone. But Stacy did not seem to be in a particularly accessible mood to the new caller, who in his turn appeared to be slightly irritated by having been kept waiting over some irksome business. "You don't seem to follow me," he said to Stacy after reciting his business perplexity.
"Can't you suggest something?"
"Well, why don't you get hold of one of your board of directors?" said Stacy abstractedly. "There's Captain Drummond; you and he are old friends. You were comrades in the Mexican War, weren't you?"