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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 2 |
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_ BOOK I. FAIR WEATHER AT KINGSBOROUGH CHAPTER II A facetious stranger once remarked that Kingsborough dozed through the present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare. Had he been other than a stranger, he would, perhaps, have added that Kingsborough's proudest boast was that she had been and was not--a distinction giving her preeminence over certain cities whose charters were not received from royal grants--cities priding themselves not only upon a multiplicity of streets, but upon the more plebeian fact that the feet of their young men followed the offending thoroughfares to the undignified music of the march of progress. But, whatever might be said of places that shall be nameless, it was otherwise with Kingsborough. Kingsborough was the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. She who had feasted royal governors, staked and lost upon Colonial races, and exploded like an ignited powder-horn in the cause of American independence, was still superbly conscious of the honours which had been hers. Her governors were no longer royal, nor did she feast them; her races were run by fleet-footed coloured urchins on the court-house green; her powder-magazine had evolved through differentiation from a stable into a church; but Kingsborough clung to her amiable habits. Travellers still arrived at the landing stage some several miles distant and were driven over all but impassable roads to the town. The eastern wall of the court-house still bore the sign "England Street," though the street had vanished beneath encroaching buttercups, and the implied loyalty had been found wanting. Kingsborough juries still sat in their original semicircle, with their backs to the judge and their faces, presumably, to the law; Kingsborough farmers still marketed their small truck in the street called after the Duke of Gloucester; and Kingsborough cows still roamed at will over the vaults in the churchyard. In time trivial changes would come to pass. Tourists would arrive with the railroad; the powder-magazine would turn from a church into a museum; gardens would decay and ancient elms would fall, but the farmers and the cows would not be missed from their accustomed haunts. On the hospitable thresholds of "general" stores battle-scarred veterans of the war between the States dealt in victorious reminiscences of vanquishment. They had fought well, they had fallen silently, and they had risen without bitterness. For the people of Kingsborough had opened their doors to wounded foes while the battle raged through their streets, succouring while they resisted. They lived easily and they died hard, but when death came they met it, not in grim Puritanism, but with a laugh upon the lips. They made a joy of life while it was possible, and when that ceased to be, they did the next best thing and made a friend of death. Long ago theirs had been the first part in Virginia, and, as they still believed, theirs had been also the centre of all things. Now the high places were laid low, and the greatness had passed as a trumpet that is blown. Kingsborough persisted still, but it persisted evasively, hovering, as it were, upon the outskirts of modern advancement. And the outside world took note only when it made tours to historic strongholds, or sent those of itself that were adjudged insane to the hospitable shelter of the asylum upon the hill. It was afternoon, and Kingsborough was asleep. Along the verdurous, gray lanes the houses seemed abandoned, shuttered, filled with shade. From the court-house green came the chime of cow-bells rising and falling in slow waves of sound. A spotted calf stood bleating in the crooked footpath, which traversed diagonally the waste of buttercups like a white seam in a cloth of gold. Against the arching sky rose the bell-tower of the grim old church, where the sparrows twittered in the melancholy gables and the startled face of the stationary clock stared blankly above the ivied walls. Farther away, at the end of a wavering lane, slanted the shadow of the insane asylum. Across the green the houses were set in surrounding gardens like cards in bouquets of mixed blossoms. They were of frame for the most part, with shingled roofs and small, square windows hidden beneath climbing roses. On one of the long verandas a sleeping girl lay in a hammock, a gray cat at her feet. No sound came from the house behind her, but a breeze blew through the dim hall, fluttering the folds of her dress. Beyond the adjoining garden a lady in mourning entered a gate where honeysuckle grew, and above, on the low-dormered roof, a white pigeon sat preening its feathers. Up the main street, where a few sunken bricks of a vanished pavement were still visible, an old negro woman, sitting on the stone before her cabin, lighted her replenished pipe with a taper, and leaned back, smoking, in the doorway, her scarlet handkerchief making a spot of colour on the dull background. The sun was still high when the judge came out upon his porch, a smile of indecision on his face and his hat in his hand. Pausing upon the topmost step, he cast an uncertain glance sideways at the walk leading past the church, and then looked straight ahead through the avenue of maples, which began at the smaller green facing the ancient site of the governor's palace and skirted the length of the larger one, which took its name from the court-house. At last he descended the steps with his leisurely tread, turning at the gate to throw a remonstrance to an old negro whose black face was framed in the library window. "Now, Caesar, didn't I--" "Lord, Marse George, dis yer washed-out blue bowl, wid de little white critters sprawlin' over it, done come ter pieces--" "Now, Caesar, haven't I told you twenty times to let Delilah wash my Wedgwood?" "Fo' de Lord, Marse George, I ain't breck hit. I uz des' hol'n it in bofe my han's same es I'se hol'n dis yer broom, w'en it come right ter part. I declar 'twarn my fault, Marse George, 'twarn nobody's fault 'cep'n hit's own." The judge closed the gate and waved the face from the window. "Go about your business, Caesar," he said, "and keep your hands off my china--" Then his tone lost its asperity as he held out his hands to a pretty girl who was coming across the green. "So you are back from school, Miss Juliet," he said gallantly. "I was telling your mother only yesterday that I didn't approve of sending our fairest products away from Kingsborough. It wasn't done in my day. Then the prettiest girls stayed at home and gave our young fellows a chance." The girl shook her head until the blue ribbons on her straw hat fluttered in the wind, and blushed until her soft eyes were like forget-me-nots set in rose leaves. She possessed a serene, luminous beauty, which became intensified beneath the gaze of the beholder. "I have come back for good, now," she answered in a serious sweetness of voice; "and I am out this afternoon looking up my Sunday-school class. The children have scattered sadly. You will let me have Tom again, won't you?" "Have Tom! Why, you may have him every day and Sunday too--the lucky scamp! Ah, I only wish I were a boy again, with a soul worth saving and such a pair of eyes in search of it." The girl dimpled into a smile and flushed to her low, white forehead, on which the soft hair was smoothly parted before it broke into sunny curls about the temples. She exhaled an atmosphere of gentleness mixed with a saintly coquetry, which produced an impression at once human and divine, such as one receives from the sight of a rose in a Bible or a curl in the hair of a saint. The judge looked at her warmly, sighing half happily, half regretfully. "And to think that the young rogues don't realise their blessings," he said. "There's not one of them that wouldn't rather be off fishing than learn his catechism. Ah, in my day things were different--things were different." "Were you very pious, sir?" asked the girl with a flash of laughter. The judge shook his stick playfully. "I can't tell tales," he answered, "but in my day we should have taken more than the catechism at your bidding, my dear. When your father was courting your mother--and she was like you, though she hadn't your eyes, or your face, for that matter--he went into her Bible class, though he was at least five and twenty and the others were small boys under ten. She was a sad flirt, and she led him a dance." "He liked it," said the girl. "But, if you will give my message to Tom, I won't come in. I am looking for Dudley Webb, and I see his mother at her gate. Good-bye! Be sure and tell Tom to come Sunday." She nodded brightly, lifted her muslin skirts, and recrossed the street. The judge watched her until the flutter of her white dress vanished down the lane of maples; then he turned to speak to the occupants of a carriage that had drawn up to the sidewalk. The vehicle was of an old-fashioned make, bare of varnish, with rickety, mud-splashed wheels and rusty springs. It was drawn by an ill-matched pair of horses and driven by a lame coloured boy, who carried a peeled hickory branch for a whip. "Ah, General Battle," said the judge to a stout gentleman with a red face and an expansive shirt front from which the collar had wilted away; "fine afternoon! Is that Eugenia?" to a little girl of seven or eight years, with a puppy of the pointer breed in her arms, and "How are you, Sampson?" to the coloured driver. The three greeted him simultaneously, whereupon he leaned forward, resting his hand upon the side of the carriage. "The young folks are growing up," he said. "I have just seen Juliet Burwell, and, on my life, she gets prettier every day. We shan't keep her long." "Keep her!" replied the general vigorously, wiping his large face with a large pocket handkerchief. "Keep her! If I were thirty years younger, you shouldn't keep her a day--not a day, sir." The little girl looked up gravely from the corner of the seat, tossing her short, dark plait from her shoulder. "What would you do with her, papa?" she asked. "We've got no place to put her at home." The general threw back his great head and laughed till his wide girth shook like a bag of meal. "Oh, you needn't worry, Eugie," he said. "I'm not the man I used to be. She wouldn't look at me. Bless your heart, she wouldn't look at me if I asked her--" Eugenia clasped her puppy closer and turned her eyes upon her father's jovial face. "I don't see how she could help it if you stood in front of her," she answered gravely, in a voice rich with the blending of negro intonations. The general shook again until the carriage creaked on its rusty springs, and the coloured boy, Sampson, let the reins fall and joined in the hilarity. "She won't let me so much as look at a girl!" exclaimed the general delightedly, stooping to recover the brown linen lap robe which had slipped from his knees. "She's as jealous as if I were twenty and had a score of sweethearts." The little girl did not reply, but she flushed angrily. "Don't, precious," she said to the puppy, who was licking her cheek with his warm, red tongue. "What have you named him, Eugie?" asked the judge, changing the subject with that gracious tact which was mindful of the least emergency. "He is nicely marked, I see." "I call him Jim," replied Eugenia. She spoke gravely, and the gravity contrasted oddly with the animation of her features. "But his real name is James Burwell Battle. Bernard and I christened him in the spring-house--so he'll go to heaven." "Cap'n Burwell gave him to her, you know," explained the general, who laughed whenever his daughter spoke, as if the fact of her talking at all was a source of amazement to him, "and she hasn't let go of him since she got him. By the way, Judge, you have a first-rate garden spot. I hear your asparagus is the finest in town. Ours is very poor this year. I must have a new bed made before next season. Ah, what is it, daughter?" "You've forgotten to buy the sugar," said Eugenia, "and Aunt Chris can't put up her preserves. And you told me to remind you of the whip--" "Bless your heart, so I did. Sampson lost that whip a month ago, and I've never remembered it yet. Well, good-day--good-day." The judge raised his hat with a stately inclination; the general nodded good-naturedly, still grasping the linen robe with his plump, red hand; and the carriage jolted along the green and disappeared behind the glazed brick walls of the church. The judge regarded his walking-stick meditatively for a moment, and continued his way. The smile with which he had followed the vanishing figure of Juliet Burwell returned to his face, and his features softened from their usual chilly serenity. He had gone but a short distance and was passing the iron gate of the churchyard, when the droning of a voice came to him, and looking beyond the bars, he saw little Nicholas Burr lying at full length upon a marble slab, his head in his hands and his feet waving in the air. Entering the gate, the judge followed the walk of moss-grown stones leading to the church steps, and paused within hearing of the voice, which went on in an abstracted drawl. "The most cel-e-bra-ted sys-tem of juris-pru-dence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a code--" He was not reading, for the book was closed. He seemed rather to be repeating over and over again words which had been committed to memory. "With a code. From the commencement to the close of its history, the ex-posi-tors of Ro-man Law con-sistently em-ployed lan-guage which implied that the body of their sys-tem rested on the twelve De-cem-viral Tables--Dec-em-vi-ral--De-cem-vi-ral Tables." "Bless my soul!" said the judge. The boy glanced up, blushed, and would have risen, but the judge waved him back. "No--no, don't get up. I heard you as I was going by. What are you doing?" "Learnin'." "Learning! Dear me! What do you mean by learning?" "I'm learnin' by heart, sir--and--and, if you don't mind, sir, what does j-u-r-i-s-p-r-u-d-e-n-c-e mean?" The judge started, returning the boy's eager gaze with one of kindly perplexity. "Bless my soul!" he said again. "You aren't trying to understand that, are you?" The boy grew scarlet and his lips trembled. "No, sir," he answered. "I'm jest learnin' it now. I'll know what it means when I'm bigger--" "And you expect to remember it?" asked the judge. "I don't never forget," said the boy. "Bless my soul!" exclaimed the judge for the third time. For a moment he stood looking silently down upon the marble slab with its defaced lettering. Of the wordy epitaph which had once redounded to the honour of the bones beneath there remained only the words "who departed," but he read these with a long abstracted gaze. "Let me see," he said at last, speaking with his accustomed dignity. "Did you ever go to school, Nicholas?" "Yes, sir." "When?" "I went 'most three winters, sir, but I had to leave off on o'count o' pa's not havin' any hand 'cep'n me." The judge smiled. "Ah, well," he returned. "We'll see if you can't begin again. My boy has a tutor, you know, and his playmates come to study with him. He's about your age, and it will give you a start. Come in to-morrow at nine, and we'll talk it over. No, don't get up. I am going." And he passed out of the churchyard, closing the heavy gate with a metallic clang. Nicholas lay on the marble slab, but the book slipped from his hands, and he gazed straight before him at the oriel window, where the ivy was tremulous with the shining bodies and clamorous voices of nesting sparrows. They darted swiftly from gable to gable, filling the air with shrill sounds of discord, and endowing with animation the inanimate pile, wrapping the dead bricks in a living shroud. On the other side swept the long, colourless grasses, rippling in faint waves like a still lake that reflects the sunshine and swaying lightly beneath myriads of gauzy-winged bees that flashed with a droning noise from blade to blade, to find rest in the yellow hearts of the damask roses. Across the white vaults and the low-lying marble slabs innumerable shadows chased, and from above the gnarled old locust trees swept a fringe of vivid green, the slender blossoms hanging in tassels from the branches' ends, and filling the air with a soft and ceaseless rain of fragrant petals. Pale as the ghosts of dead leaves, they fell always, fluttering night and day from the twisted boughs, settling in creamy flakes upon the bending grasses, and outlining in delicate tracery the epitaphs upon the discoloured marbles. Nicholas lay with wide-open eyes, looking up at the oriel window where the sparrows twittered. On a near vault a catbird poised for an instant, surveying him with bright, distrustful eyes. Then, with an impetuous flutter of slate-gray wings, it fled to the poisonous oak on the far brick wall. A red-and-white cow, passing along the lane outside, stopped before the closed gate, and stood philosophically chewing the cud as she looked within through impeding bars. From the judge's garden came the faint sound of a negro voice as the old gardener weeded the vegetables. Nicholas rolled over again and faced the outstretched wings of the noseless angel on the nearest tombstone. The loss of the nose had distorted the marble smile into a grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer joy of discord. _ |
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