Barclay

“ Day after day, until the days and nights became a week and the week repeated itself until nearly a month was gone, John Barclay, dry-eyed and all but dumb, paced the terrace before his house by night, and by day roamed through the noisy mill or wandered through his desolate house, seeking peace that would not come to him. The whole foundation of his scheme of life was crumbling beneath him. He had built thirty-five years of his manhood upon the theory that the human brain is the god of things as they are and as they must be. ”

“ God, that he may prove his own wisdom and nothing more."
"Mother," cried Barclay, petulantly, "I can't stand this—that you should turn on me—now." He broke away from her, and stood alone. "When I need you most, you reproach me. When I need sympathy, you scorn all that I have done. You can't prove your God. Why should I accept Him?"
The gaunt old woman stretched out her arms and cried: "Oh, John Barclay, prove your god. Tell him to come and give you a moment's happiness—set him to work to restore your good name; command him to make Jeanette happy. These things my God can do! ”

“ They had a serious conversation about the state of affairs, and Barclay, like Penn, sincerely sympathised with the royal culprit in his troubles. "Being with him near a window, the king looked out and observed that 'the wind was then fair for the Prince of Orange to come over.' Robert Barclay replied, 'it was hard that no expedient could be found to satisfy the people.' The king declared he would do anything becoming a gentleman, except parting with liberty of conscience, which he never would whilst he lived." ”

“ We do not always say what we mean, do we?’ said Barclay, raising his eyebrows facetiously.
‘Whiles a’ do,’ replied the Queen of the Cadgers, with some truth.
‘You speak your mind plainly enough to Mr. Speid, I believe,’ said Barclay.
‘Wha tell’t ye that?’
‘Aha! everything comes round to me in time, I assure you, my good soul; my business is confidential—very confidential. You see, as a lawyer, I am concerned with all the estates in this part of the country.’
‘Where the money is, there will the blayguards be gathered together,’ said Granny, resenting the patronage in his tone. ”

“ A red bird was calling in the woods near by, and the soft south wind had spring in it as it blew across the veil of waters that hid the dam. John Barclay's head was full of music, and he was lounging across the bridge from the mill on his way home to try his new pipe organ. He had spent four hours the day before at his organ bench, [Pg 320] trying to teach his lame foot to keep up with his strong foot. So when General Ward overhauled him, Barclay was annoyed. He was not the man to have his purposes crossed, even when they were whims. ”

“ John Barclay as he reached for the rose on his broad mahogany desk across forty long years, and looking through a wide window, saw on the blank wall of a great hulk of a building half a mile away, the fine strong figure of a man with black shaggy hair on his young leonine head rise and wave his handkerchief to a woman with tears running down her face and anguish in her eyes, standing in a swarm of children. What indeed are sordid thorns when the "large white plumes are dancing"—what indeed? ”

“ Forty years before, when John was playing in the dust of the road leading up from the Sycamore, no king in all the world knew so much of the day's doings as John knows now, sitting there at the polished mahogany table with the green blotting paper upon it, under the green vase adorned with the red rose. A blight may threaten the wheat in Argentine, and John Barclay knows every cloud that sails the sky above that wheat, and when the cloud bursts into rain he sighs, for it means something to him, though heaven only knows what, and we and heaven do not care. ”

“ Barclay's strength was inherited. His ancestor, the first Barclay of Ury, was one of the strongest men in the kingdom, and his sword, too heavy for ordinary men, was preserved in the family; his grandfather (great-grandson of this first Barclay and grandson of the apologist) was known as ‘the strong;’ and his father was a ‘noted pedestrian,’ who walked from Ury to London (510 miles) in 10 days, and had also walked 210 miles in three days, and 81 miles in about 16 hours. ”

“ However Barclay urges and pleads with her, her reply still is "I must go by my light." "I cannot submit to the opinions or practice of others, though they have more light than myself." [24]
[24] Not that Barclay aimed at proselytising, but he wished her to take the course which seemed to him the necessary outcome of her views. "I pretend to be no sect master," he writes, "and disgust all such."
At Herford, Barclay left his friends and returned to Amsterdam. In September we find him in London, using his influence with the Duke of York to procure liberty for Friends in Scotland. ”

“ Barclay, sat looking at their star while the terror in their hearts made their lips mute. God makes men brave who stand where bullets fly, yet always they can run away. But God seems to give no alternative to women at home who have to wait and dread.
Forty years later John Barclay took from a box in a safety vault back of his office in the city a newspaper. It was the Sycamore Ridge Banner, yellow and creased and pungent with age. "This," he said to Senator Myton, spreading the wrinkled sheet out on the mahogany table, "this is my enlistment paper." ”

“ Barclay was as cordial and as kind as her husband; Irving began to feel more than satisfied with his surroundings.
“Pity you’re not married, Upton,” Barclay said, half jokingly. “You’d escape keeping dormitory if you were—which you’ll find the meanest of all possible jobs. And then if your wife’s the right kind—the boys have to be pretty decent to you in order to keep on her good side.”
Mrs. Barclay laughed. “I suppose that’s the only reason they’re pretty decent to you, William!—You’ll find it easy, Mr. Upton,—for the reason that they’re a pretty decent lot of boys.” ”

“ Barclay, alone, sitting in the dingy little harness shop, can hear the band strike up the old familiar tune again, and hear the crowd cheer and roar its applause at the little harness maker, who stands shamefaced and abashed, coatless and aproned, before the crowd. And he is only a poet—hardly a poet, would be a better way to say it; an exceedingly bad poet who makes bad rhymes, and thinks trite thoughts, and says silly and often rather stupid things, but who once had his say, and for that one hour of glorious liberty of the soul has moved millions of hearts to love him. ”

“ It seems so far creditable to a government which has a good many sins at its charge, that, when this case came before the Duke of York and the Privy Council, on John Barclay’s petition, and both sides had been heard—namely, the uncle on one side, and the Lady Rowallan, with the three curators, Montgomery younger of Skelmorley, the Laird of Dunlop, and Mr John Stirling, minister of Irvine, on the other—they decided that the young Barclay was of age to act and choose curators for himself, and that the defenders were not bound to produce him in court ”

“ Barclay shrugged his shoulders.
"A dying woman——? I can grant you that much."
But even in the midst of his brutal self-assertiveness, a merciless flash of intuition showed him himself as they saw him. His power slipped through his fingers. He looked from Sigrid to Tristram, and knew their immeasurable indifference to all that he could threaten. They were not afraid—almost—they were glad. He could not penetrate their mood—he only felt it as an intolerable hurt—a frustration of that madly aching desire in him. ”

“ Tightly clenched in her hands were fragments of her torn veil.
She beat her knuckles upon the stones with rhythmic regularity; then, when her arms would lift no longer, took up the measure with her toes, in wild imitation of a galloping horse.
As she lay, she repeated with monotonous reiteration: "Trappings of crimson, and silver bells: mane and tail, like foam of the waves; a palfrey as white as snow!"
The Prioress entered, closed the door behind her, and looked searchingly at the prostrate figure; then, lifting the master-key which hung from her girdle, locked the door on the inside. ”

“ But the people of Sycamore Ridge and of the Mississippi Valley did not indulge in any fine speculations upon the meaning of life when they thought of John Barclay. He had become considerable of a figure in the world, and the Middle West was proud of him. For those were the days of tin cornices, false fronts, vain pretences, and borrowed plumes bought with borrowed money. Other people's capital was easy to get, and every one was rich. ”

“ Here it came to pass that a brother laird thought the old Quaker could be easily done, and began to encroach upon his marches. Barclay, a strong man, with the iron sinews of his race, and their fierce spirit still burning in his eyes, strode up to the encroacher, and, with a grim smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest that I have become a man of peace and have relinquished strife, and therefore thou art endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine, because thou believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I cannot hinder thee. ”

“ Barclay no longer called to it. His eyes were clouded and stupid-looking. He glanced up at Vahana and found that he was being watched. Between the old man and the uncannily moving adder there had developed an affinity. The Fakir's face seemed to have narrowed and sharpened. From the wide cheek-bones down to the chin there were two straight converging lines between which ran the cruel curve of the mouth. The eyes were hard and dead as a basilisk's. But, like the reptile's, they expressed something—a sinister amusement, a soulless, ageless wisdom.
Barclay made a fumbling gesture. ”

“ On reaching the back hall Barclay moved down toward the servants’ staircase. “I stood here,” he said. “Norcross, just crouch down under the light and balance yourself as if you were going to topple forward on your face; yes, that’s about right, now, hold the position—steady”—Barclay raised his right arm, hand closed as if he grasped a revolver butt. “See, the window at the curve of the hall is just in line—the bullet passed directly through it.” ”

“ Barclay's father was a Scottish Catholic who in the reign of Mary had settled at Pont-á-Mousson as professor of law in a Jesuit college, and who as a Catholic had attracted attention in 1600 by a treatise defending the rights of kings against the Pope. [21] Father and son paid a short visit to England in 1603, and in 1606 the son was again in London, seeking patronage in the usual fashion by the composition of adulatory verses in Latin. ”

“ And so as the century is old the booming tide is full, and John Barclay in his power—a bubble in the Divine consciousness, a mere vision in the real world—stands stark mad before his phantasm, dreaming that it is all real, and chattering to his soul, "Hanno is a god." ”

“ The syce made no answer. He stroked the velvet nose of his charge and the stranger became aware from his attitude that they were no longer alone. She turned sharply, and the woman standing at the head of the steps immediately behind her returned her stare with a faint smile.
"Do you want Mr. Barclay?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, I do." The Eurasian hesitated. The fair-haired fragile-looking woman in the dark riding-habit seemed to frighten her.
"I've come all the way from Calcutta," she stammered.
"That's a long way. I'm sorry—Mr. Barclay is away—has been away for many weeks. ”

“ Brownwell sat there flipping his gloves, exasperatingly; Barclay screwed up his eyes, put his head on one side, and suddenly a flash came into his face and he exclaimed, "Come off, you don't mean it—not Molly!"
The rejected one inclined his head. Barclay was about to laugh, but instead he said, "Well, you are not a quitter; why don't you go ahead and get her?" He glanced instinctively at his letter to Bob Hendricks, and as if to shield what he was going to say, put a paper over the page, and then the seriousness of the situation came over him. "You know women; cheer up, man—try again. ”

“ Barclay was called into the royal closet, and received his orders from the royal lips. He was directed to steal across the Channel and to repair to London. He was told that a few select officers and soldiers should speedily follow him by twos and threes. That they might have no difficulty in finding him, he was to walk, on Mondays and Thursdays, in the Piazza of Covent Garden after nightfall, with a white handkerchief hanging from his coat pocket. ”

“ Everybody cheer for Barclay!”
And everybody did, many, many times. More wood leaped from out the darkness and fell upon the flaming heap, which now rose to the fellows’ shoulders and crackled right merrily. The vicinity of the bonfire was black with yelling, laughing students; and every moment their number grew, as the light was seen at distant dormitories or the shouting was heard across the avenue.
“Speech!” cried the throng. “Speech! Speech!” And Barclay was quickly elevated to the shoulders of Cobb and another, and from there spoke feelingly of the inception and growth of the Checkers Club ”

“ After attending the Yearly Meeting in London, Robert Barclay went on a mission to the Continent. Of this visit, unfortunately, we have no record. Probably, one object for which he made it was to see to the publication of his Apology in Amsterdam. But one incident of the journey is full of interest. He visited Elizabeth, Princess Palatine of the Rhine, granddaughter of James I. and aunt of George I.; an accomplished lady and a most exemplary ruler. ”

“ And underneath these high voices was the gruff bass voice of Gabriel Carnine and the baritone of Jake Dolan. And when Mrs. Barclay heard the piping treble of her son, and the tinkle of his guitar, her eyes filled with tears of pride.
The serenaders waked the chickens, and the crowing roosters roused Mrs. Barclay, and in the hurry of the hour she forgot to look for her son. As "the gray dawn was breaking," a hundred men came into the room, and found the smoking breakfast on the table. It was a good breakfast as breakfasts go when men are hungry. ”