The Voice of the People Part 22

"I want a blue ribbon for my hair, it's--it's so worrisome."

She shook her auburn locks, and Nicholas realised suddenly that she must be very good to look at--to men who were only in a Scriptural sense her brothers. He felt a vague pride in her.

"Why, of course I will," he answered. "Blue let it be."

And he opened the gate and went on his way, leaving Nannie, still flushed, in the path.

When he took down Jerry Pollard's shutters a half-hour later he stood for an instant looking thoughtfully down upon the a.s.sortment in the window. Then he leaned over and conscientiously set upright a blue-gla.s.s vase before going behind the counter to unpin the curtains hanging across the dry-goods shelves.

After breakfast Bessie Pollard came in and stood with her elbow resting on the showcase as she flirted a small feather duster. She had just released her hair from curl paper, and it hung in golden ringlets over her forehead. Her face was ripe and red, like a well-sunned peach, and the firm curves of her bosom swelled the gathers of her gown.

"You look real spry this morning," she said coquettishly; but he turned from her in sudden distaste. Her tawdry refinement irritated the more serious manner of his mood.

Presently she went back to her dusting, and he completed his daily setting to rights of the shop before he drew up to the desk and made out the bills that were due for the month. It was not until some hours later that he looked up upon hearing a step on the threshold. At first he stood up mechanically at the sight of a girl in a riding-habit. Then he started and drew back, for the girl lifted her head, and he saw that it was Eugenia Battle. In the same glance he saw also that there was a keen surprise in her face.

"Why, Nick Burr!" she said breathlessly. She tripped over her long riding-skirt and caught it hastily in one hand; in the other she carried a small switch. She had grown tall and straight, and her hair was gathered up from her shoulders.

For a moment they were both silent. In Eugenia's face the surprise gave place to gladness, and the warmth of her personality gathered to her eyes. She held out her ungloved hand.

"Why, Nick Burr!" she said again.

But Nicholas looked at her in silence. All the dogged bitterness of the last six months welled to his lips--all his new-found philosophy evaporated at the sting of wounded pride. He remembered with a start the gray road on the afternoon in November, the sullen cast of the sky, the hopeless trend of the wind among the trees, the leaping of the light into Eugenia's face. She laughed now as she had laughed then--a hearty little burst of surprise in the suddenness of the meeting.

He turned quickly from the outstretched hand.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, and his tone was like Jerry Pollard's.

Eugenia's hand fell to her side, closing upon the folds of her skirt.

She caught her lip between her teeth with a petulant twitch. Then she came forward and laid a small brown bit of cloth upon the counter.

"A spool of silk this shade," she said briskly. "Please match it very carefully."

Nicholas pulled open the small drawers containing the silk, and compared the sample with the row of spools. He made his selection, showing it to Eugenia before wrapping it in brown paper.

"Is that all?" he asked grimly.

Eugenia nodded. He gave her the spool, and she lifted her skirt and went out of the shop. A moment more, and she pa.s.sed the door swiftly on the brown mare. Nicholas closed the drawer and laid the torn sheet of wrapping paper back in its place. A little girl came in for a card of hooks and eyes for her mother, a dressmaker, and he gave them to her and dropped the nickel in the till. When she went out he followed her to the door and stood looking out into the gray dust of the street.

Across the way a lady was gathering roses from a vine that clambered over her piazza, and the sunlight struck straight at her gracious figure. From afar off came the sound of children laughing. Down the street several mild-eyed Jersey cows were driven by a little negro to the court-house green. In a near tree a wood-bird sang a score of dreamy notes. Gradually the quiet of the scene wrought its spell upon him--the insistent languor drugged him like a narcotic. On the wide, restless globe there is perhaps no village of three streets, no settlement that has been made by man, so utterly the cradle of quiescence. From the listless battlefields, where gra.s.s runs green and wild, to the little whiter washed gaol, where roses bloom, it is a petrified memory, a perennial day dream.

The lady across the street pa.s.sed under her rose vine, her basket filled with creamy cl.u.s.ters. The cows filed lazily on the court-house green.

The wood-bird in the near tree sang over its dreamy notes. The clear black shadows in the street lay like full-length figures across the vivid sunlight.

The bitterness pa.s.sed slowly from his lips. He turned, and was reentering the shop, when his name was called sharply.

"Why, Nick Burr!"

The words were Eugenia's, but the voice was Tom Ba.s.sett's. He had come up suddenly with the judge, and as Nicholas turned he caught his hand in a hearty grasp.

"Well, I call this luck!" he cried. "I say, Nick, you haven't grown bald since I saw you. Do you remember the time you shaved every strand of hair off your head so we'd stop calling you 'Carrotty'?"

"I remember you called me 'Baldy,'" said Nicholas, running his hand through his thick, red hair. Then he looked at the judge. "I hope you are well, sir," he added.

The judge bowed with his fine-flavoured courtesy. "As I trust you are,"

he returned graciously.

"Well, all I've got to say," put in Tom, as his father finished, "is that it's a shame--a confounded shame. What good will Nick's brains do him in old Pollard's store? Old Pollard's a skinflint, anyway, and he cuffed me once when I was a small chap."

Nicholas glanced back uncertainly into the shop.

"Oh, he isn't so bad when you know him," he said. "Most folks aren't."

"He seems to value Nicholas's services," added the judge politely.

Nicholas flushed. "I don't know about that," he returned awkwardly.

"I know one thing, though," said Tom with slow wrath, "and that is that I'm not green enough to be fooled by Nick Burr, if other people are.

Father told me last night that it was Nick's own choice that took him to Jerry Pollard's. Choice, the d.i.c.kens! Why, it's those blasted people of his that put him here."

Tom was very red in the face, so was Nicholas. They looked at the judge, and the judge looked back at them with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.

"My dear Tom," he said at last, "I never gave you credit for being a Solomon, but some day your wit may put your father to shame."

Then he held out his hand to Nicholas.

"When you're a little older, my boy," he remarked, "you may learn that, though an old fool may be the biggest fool, he's not the only one. Come to see us when you feel like it, eh, Tom?"

They pa.s.sed on together, and Nicholas stood looking after them until a man came in to exchange a pair of shoes.

"They're a leetle too skimpy 'cross the toes," he said deprecatingly.

"The heels air first-rate, but the toes sorter seem to be made fur a three-toed somebody. 'Tain't as if I could jest set aroun' in 'em, of course; then they'd be a fine fit, but when I go ter stan' up they pinches."

Nicholas gave him a larger size and put the box back upon the shelf. He was thinking of Tom Ba.s.sett and the twinkle in the judge's eyes, and he did not hear the man's rambling speech. It seemed to him that his friends.h.i.+p with Tom and his father had been restored--that he might once more go freely in and out of the judge's house.

When the day was over he walked slowly homeward along the deserted road, his mind still busy with recollections of the morning. Yes, life was decidedly endurable at worst. If he might not become celebrated, he might at least become content. He was _not_ Tom Ba.s.sett, but he had Tom Ba.s.sett's friends.h.i.+p. He would live a simple life in his own cla.s.s among his own people, and he would grow to be respected by those who were above him.

He had entered the wood, when he remembered suddenly that he had forgotten the ribbon for his sister Nannie. He turned quickly and retraced his steps through the thickening twilight.

V

So Nicholas's first fight for his manhood was fought and won. He went back to his books--went back because his intellect ordained it, and the ordinance of intellect is fate--but bitterness had gone out of him, and he had come into his own. From the stress of the last year he had found security in acceptance. His life might not be such as he had planned it--whose was?--his work might not be the thing he wanted--again, whose was?--but life and work were with him, and it remained for him to make the best of them. Fate might make him a shopkeeper; he would see to it that it made him a successful one. Success read backwards spelt work, and work was his inheritance--a heritage of sweat and labour.

He went to Jerry Pollard's an hour earlier that he might rearrange to advantage the shelves. His employer had secured, below cost, a supply of dry goods, and preparations were in the making for the first summer sale in Kingsborough. Nicholas conducted the arrangements as conscientiously as he might have conducted a legal argument. It was the thing before him, and it must not fail.

But at night he found his greater hour. When supper was over and he had helped his father with the odd jobs of the farm, he would take the smoky kerosene lamp to his room and plunge into the pages of "The Federalist."