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The Voice of the People, a novel by Ellen Glasgow |
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Book 1. Fair Weather At Kingsborough - Chapter 1 |
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_ BOOK I. FAIR WEATHER AT KINGSBOROUGH CHAPTER I The last day of Circuit Court was over at Kingsborough. The jury had vanished from the semicircle of straight-backed chairs in the old court-house, the clerk had laid aside his pen along with his air of listless attention, and the judge was making his way through the straggling spectators to the sunken stone steps of the platform outside. As the crowd in the doorway parted slightly, a breeze passed into the room, scattering the odours of bad tobacco and farm-stained clothing. The sound of a cow-bell came through one of the small windows, from the green beyond, where a red-and-white cow was browsing among the buttercups. "A fine day, gentlemen," said the judge, bowing to right and left. "A fine day." He moved slowly, fanning himself absently with his white straw hat, pausing from time to time to exchange a word of greeting--secure in the affability of one who is not only a judge of man but a Bassett of Virginia. From his classic head to his ill-fitting boots he upheld the traditions of his office and his race. On the stone platform, just beyond the entrance, he stopped to speak to a lawyer from a neighbouring county. Then, as a clump of men scattered at his approach, he waved them together with a bland, benedictory gesture which descended alike upon the high and the low, upon the rector of the old church up the street, in his rusty black, and upon the red-haired, raw-boned farmer with his streaming brow. "Glad to see you out, sir," he said to the one, and to the other, "How are you, Burr? Time the crops were in the ground, isn't it?" Burr mumbled a confused reply, wiping his neck laboriously on his red cotton handkerchief. "The corn's been planted goin' on six weeks," he said more distinctly, ejecting his words between mouthfuls of tobacco juice as if they were pebbles which obstructed his speech. "I al'ays stick to plantin' yo' corn when the hickory leaf's as big as a squirrel's ear. If you don't, the luck's agin you." "An' whar thar's growin' corn thar's a sight o' hoein'," put in an alert, nervous-looking countryman. "If I lay my hoe down for a spell, the weeds git so big I can't find the crop." Amos Burr nodded with slow emphasis: "I never see land take so natural to weeds nohow as mine do," he said. "When you raise peanuts you're raisin' trouble." He was a lean, overworked man, with knotted hands the colour of the soil he tilled and an inanely honest face, over which the freckles showed like splashes of mud freshly dried. As he spoke he gave his blue jean trousers an abrupt hitch at the belt. "Dear me! Dear me!" returned the judge with absent-minded, habitual friendliness, smiling his rich, beneficent smile. Then, as he caught sight of a smaller red head beneath Burr's arm, he added: "You've a right-hand man coming on, I see. What's your name, my boy?" The boy squirmed on his bare, brown feet and wriggled his head from beneath his father's arm. He did not answer, but he turned his bright eyes on the judge and flushed through all the freckles of his ugly little face. "Nick--that is, Nicholas, sir," replied the elder Burr with an apologetic cough, due to the insignificance of the subject. "Yes, sir, he's leetle, but he's plum full of grit. He can beat any nigger I ever seed at the plough. He'd outplough me if he war a head taller." "That will mend," remarked the lawyer from the neighbouring county with facetious intention. "A boy and a beanstalk will grow, you know. There's no helping it." "Oh, he'll be a man soon enough," added the judge, his gaze passing over the large, red head to rest upon the small one, "and a farmer like his father before him, I suppose." He was turning away when the child's voice checked him, and he paused. "I--I'd ruther be a judge," said the boy. He was leaning against the faded bricks of the old court-house, one sunburned hand playing nervously with the crumbling particles. His honest little face was as red as his hair. The judge started. "Ah!" he exclaimed, and he looked at the child with his kindly eyes. The boy was ugly, lean, and stunted in growth, browned by hot suns and powdered by the dust of country roads, but his eyes caught the gaze of the judge and held it. Above his head, on the brick wall, a board was nailed, bearing in black marking the name of the white-sand street which stretched like a chalk-drawn line from the grass-grown battlefields to the pale old buildings of King's College. The street had been called in honour of a duke of Gloucester. It was now "Main" Street, and nothing more, though it was still wide and white and placidly impressed by the slow passage of Kingsborough feet. Beyond the court-house the breeze blew across the green, which was ablaze with buttercups. Beneath the warm wind the yellow heads assumed the effect of a brilliant tangle, spreading over the unploughed common, running astray in the grass-lined ditch that bordered the walk, hiding beneath dusty-leaved plants in unsuspected hollows, and breaking out again under the horses' hoofs in the sandy street. "Ah!" exclaimed the judge, and a good-natured laugh ran round the group. "Wall, I never!" ejaculated the elder Burr, but there was no surprise in his tone; it expressed rather the helplessness of paternity. The boy faced them, pressing more firmly against the bricks. "There ain't nothin' in peanut-raisin'," he said. "It's jest farmin' fur crows. I'd ruther be a judge." The judge laughed and turned from him. "Stick to the soil, my boy," he advised. "Stick to the soil. It is the best thing to do. But if you choose the second best, and I can help you, I will--I will, upon my word--Ah! General," to a jovial-faced, wide-girthed gentleman in a brown linen coat, "I'm glad to see you in town. Fine weather!" He put on his hat, bowed again, and went on his way. He passed slowly along in the spring sunshine, his feet crunching upon the gravel, his straight shadow falling upon the white level between coarse fringes of wire-grass. Far up the town, at the street's sudden end, where it was lost in diverging roads, there was visible, as through a film of bluish smoke, the verdigris-green foliage of King's College. Nearer at hand the solemn cruciform of the old church was steeped in shade, the high bell-tower dropping a veil of English ivy as it rose against the sky. Through the rusty iron gate of the graveyard the marble slabs glimmered beneath submerging grasses, long, pale, tremulous like reeds. The grass-grown walk beside the low brick wall of the churchyard led on to the judge's own garden, a square enclosure, laid out in straight vegetable rows, marked off by variegated borders of flowering plants--heartsease, foxglove, and the red-lidded eyes of scarlet poppies. Beyond the feathery green of the asparagus bed there was a bush of flowering syringa, another at the beginning of the grass-trimmed walk, and yet another brushing the large white pillars of the square front porch--their slender sprays blown from sun to shade like fluttering streamers of cream-coloured ribbons. On the other side there were lilacs, stately and leafy and bare of bloom, save for a few ashen-hued bunches lingering late amid the heavy foliage. At the foot of the garden the wall was hidden in raspberry vines, weighty with ripening fruit. The judge closed the gate after him and ascended the steps. It was not until he had crossed the wide hall and opened the door of his study that he heard the patter of bare feet, and turned to find that the boy had followed him. For an instant he regarded the child blankly; then his hospitality asserted itself, and he waved him courteously into the room. "Walk in, walk in, and take a seat. I am at your service." He crossed to one of the tall windows, unfastening the heavy inside shutters, from which the white paint was fast peeling away. As they fell back a breeze filled the room, and the ivory faces of microphylla roses stared across the deep window-seat. The place was airy as a summer-house and odorous with the essence of roses distilled in the sunshine beyond. On the high plastered walls, above the book-shelves, rows of bygone Bassetts looked down on their departed possessions--stately and severe in the artificial severity of periwigs and starched ruffles. They looked down with immobile eyes and the placid monotony of past fashions, smiling always the same smile, staring always at the same spot of floor or furniture. Below them the room was still hallowed by their touch. They asserted themselves in the quaint curves of the rosewood chairs, in the blue patterns upon the willow bowls, and in the choice lavender of the old Wedgwood. Their handiwork was visible in the laborious embroideries of the fire-screen near the empty grate, and the spinet in one unlighted corner still guarded their gay and amiable airs. "Sit down," said the judge. "I am at your service." He seated himself before his desk of hand-carved mahogany, pushing aside the papers that littered its baize-covered lid. In the half-gloom of the high-ceiled room his face assumed the look of a portrait in oils, and he seemed to have descended from his allotted square upon the plastered wall, to be but a boldly limned composite likeness of his race, awaiting the last touches and the gilded frame. "What can I do for you?" he asked again, his tone preserving its unfailing courtesy. He had not made an uncivil remark since the close of the war--a line of conduct resulting less from what he felt to be due to others than from what he believed to be becoming in himself. The boy shifted on his bare feet. In the old-timed setting of the furniture he was an alien--an anachronism--the intrusion of the hopelessly modern into the helplessly past. His hair made a rich spot in the colourless atmosphere, and it seemed to focus the incoming light from the unshuttered window, leaving the background in denser shadow. The animation of his features jarred the serenity of the room. His profile showed gnome-like against the nodding heads of the microphylla roses. "There ain't nothin' in peanut-raisin'," he said suddenly; "I--I'd ruther be a judge." "My dear boy!" exclaimed the judge, and finished helplessly, "my dear boy--I--well--I--" They were both silent. The regular droning of the old clock sounded distinctly in the stillness. The perfume of roses, mingling with the musty scent from the furniture, borrowed the quality of musk. The child was breathing heavily. Suddenly he dug the dirty knuckles of one fist into his eyes. "Don't cry," began the judge. "Please don't. Perhaps you would like to run out and play with my boy Tom?" "I warn't cryin'," said the child. "It war a gnat." His hand left his eyes and returned to his hat--a wide-brimmed harvest hat, with a shoestring tied tightly round the crown. When the judge spoke again it was with seriousness. "Nicholas--your name is Nicholas, isn't it?" "Yes, sir." "How old are you?" "Twelve, sir." "Can you read?" "Yes, sir." "Write?" "Y-e-s, sir." "Spell?" The child hesitated. "I--I can spell--some." "Don't you know it is a serious thing to be a judge?" "Yes, sir." "You must be a lawyer first." "Yes, sir." "It is hard work." "Yes, sir." "And sometimes it's no better than farming for crows." The boy shook his head. "It's cleaner work, sir." The judge laughed. "I'm afraid you are obstinate, Nicholas," he said, and added: "Now, what do you want me to do for you? I can't make you a judge. It took me fifty years to make myself one--a third-rate one at that--" "I--I'd l-i-k-e to take a bo-b-o-o-k," stammered the boy. "Dear me!" said the judge irritably, "dear me!" He frowned, his gaze skimming his well-filled shelves. He regretted suddenly that he had spoken to the child at the court-house. He would never be guilty of such an indiscretion again. Of what could he have been thinking? A book! Why didn't he ask for food--money--his best piece of fluted Royal Worcester? Then a loud, boyish laugh rang in from the garden, and his face softened suddenly. In the sun-scorched, honest-eyed little figure before him he saw his own boy--the single child of his young wife, who was lying beneath a marble slab in the churchyard. Her face, mild and Madonna-like, glimmered against the pallid rose leaves in the deep window-seat. He turned hastily away. "Yes, yes," he answered, "I will lend you one. Read the titles carefully. Don't let the books fall. Never lay them face downwards--and don't turn down the leaves!" The boy advanced timidly to the shelves between the southern windows. He ran his hands slowly along the lettered backs, his lips moving as he spelled out the names. "The F-e-d-e-r-a-l-i-s-t," "B-l-a-c-k-s-t-o-n-e-'s C-o-m-m-e-n-t-a-r-i-e-s," "R-e-v-i-s-e-d Sta-tu-tes of the U-ni-ted Sta-tes." The judge drew up to his desk and looked over his letters. Then he took up his pen and wrote several replies in his fine, flowing handwriting. He had forgotten the boy, when he felt a touch upon his arm. "What is it?" he asked absently. "Ah, it is you? Yes, let me see. Why! you've got Sir Henry Maine!" The boy was holding the book in both hands. As the judge laughed he flushed nervously and turned towards the door. The judge leaned back in his chair, watching the small figure cross the room and disappear into the hall. He saw the tracks of dust which the boy's feet left upon the smooth, bare floor, but he was not thinking of them. Then, as the child went out upon the porch, he started up. "Nicholas!" he called, "don't turn down the leaves!" _ |
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