Book 2. A Rainy Season - Chapter 3

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_ BOOK II. A RAINY SEASON
CHAPTER III

The next morning Nicholas went into the judge's study and declined the offer of the day before.

"I shan't read law, after all," he said slowly. "There is a business opening for me here, and I'll take advantage of it." He spoke in set phrases, as if he had rehearsed the sentences many times.

"Business!" echoed the judge incredulously. "Why, what business is going on in Kingsborough?"

Nicholas flushed a deep red, but his glance did not waver.

"Jerry Pollard wants me in his store, sir."

The judge removed his glasses, wiped them deliberately on his silk handkerchief, put them on again, and regarded the younger man attentively.

"And you wish to go into Jerry Pollard's store?" he inquired.

"I think it is the best thing I can do."

"The best paying thing, I presume?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the judge testily. "What is the world coming to? I suppose Tom will be writing me next that he intends to keep a stall in market. Well, you know best, of course. You may do as you please; but may I ask if you are going to bargain in Latin and multiply by criminal law in Jerry Pollard's store?"

"No, sir."

"Then, what in the--what in the--I really feel the need of a strong expression--what in the world did you take the trouble to educate yourself for?"

Nicholas was looking at the floor, and he did not raise his eyes. His face was hard and set.

"Because I was a fool," he answered shortly.

"And now, if I may ask?"

"A fool still--but I've found it out."

The judge leaned back in his chair and tapped the ledge of his desk meditatively.

"Have you fully decided?" he asked.

Nicholas nodded.

"I have thought it over," he said quietly.

"Then there's nothing to be done, I suppose. I hope the compensation will satisfy you. Jerry Pollard is said to be somewhat tight-fisted, but your business instincts may be equal to his acquirements. Now, I have a number of letters, so, if you don't mind, I will bid you good-day."

He bowed, and Nicholas left the study and went out of the house.

Rain was still falling, and small pools of water had formed on the palace green. Straight ahead the lane of maples stretched like a line of half-extinguished fires, and the ground beneath was strewn with wet, red leaves. The slanting sheets of rain gave a sombre aspect to the town--to the time-beaten buildings along the unpaved streets and to the commons, where the water stood in grassy hollows. Beneath the gray sky the scene assumed a spectre-like suggestion of death and decay--the death of laughter that seemed still to echo faintly from the vanished stones--the decay of royal charters and of kingly grants. The very air was reminiscent of a yesterday that was perished; the red, wet leaves painted the brown earth in historic colours.

Nicholas turned the corner at the church and passed on to Jerry Pollard's store--a long, low structure fronting on the main street--and entered by a single step from the sidewalk. The show windows on either side the entrance displayed a motley selection from the varied assortment of a "general" store--cheap silks and high-coloured calicos, men's shirts and women's shoes, cravats and hairpins, suspenders and corsets. On the sidewalk near the doorway there was a baby carriage, a saddle, and a collection of farming implements. As Nicholas crossed the threshold a pink-cheeked girl passed him, her arms filled with bundles, and at the counter an old negro woman was pricing red flannel.

Jerry Pollard, a coarse-featured, full-bearded man of sixty years, was behind the counter. Nicholas caught his persuasive tones as he leaned over, holding the end of the bolt of flannel in his hands.

"Now, look here, Aunty, you ain't going to find such a bargain as this anywhere else in town. Take my oath on that. Every thread wool and forty-four inches wide. Only thirty cents a yard, too. I got it at an auction in Richmond, or I couldn't let it go at double that price. How much? All right."

The flannel was measured off with skilful manipulations of the yardstick and the scissors, the parcel was handed to the old negro woman, and the change was dropped into the till. Then Jerry Pollard came from behind the counter and slapped Nicholas upon the shoulder.

"Hello, my boy!" he said. "So your pa has taken me at my word, and here you are. Well, Jerry Pollard's word's his bond, and he ain't going back on it. So, when you feel like it, you can step right in and get to business. When'll you begin? To-day? No time like the present time's my motto."

"To-morrow!" returned Nicholas hastily. "I've got some things to wind up. I'll come to-morrow."

"All right. I'm your man. To-morrow at seven sharp?"

Then a purchaser appeared, and Jerry Pollard went forward, his business smile returning to his face.

The purchaser was Mrs. Burwell, and, as Nicholas passed out, she looked up from a pair of waffle-irons she was selecting and nodded pleasantly.

"I am glad to see you, Nicholas," she said. "Juliet was asking after you in her last letter. You were always a favourite of Juliet's. I was telling Mr. Burwell so only last night."

"She was very kind," returned Nicholas, and added: "Is Miss Juliet--Mrs. Galt well?"

Juliet Burwell had married five years before, and he had not seen her since.

Mrs. Burwell nodded cheerily. She was still fresh and youthful, her pink cheeks and bright eyes giving the gray of her hair the effect of powder sprinkled on her brown fringe.

"Yes, Juliet is well," she answered. "They are living in Richmond now. Mr. Galt had to give up his practice in New York because the climate did not suit Juliet's health. I told him she couldn't stand transplanting to the north, and I was right. They had to move south again. Yes, Mr. Pollard, the middle-size irons, please. I think they'll fit my stove. If they don't, I'll exchange them for the small ones. What did you say, Nicholas? Oh! good-morning."

She turned away, and Nicholas stepped over her dripping umbrella and went out into the rain.

When he was once outside he shook the water from his shoulders and walked rapidly in the direction of the old brick court-house, isolated upon the larger green. The door and windows were closed, but he ascended the stone steps and stood beneath the portico, looking back upon the way that he had come.

The street was deserted, save for a solitary ox-cart rolling heavily through the mud. In the distance the gray drops made a sombre veil, through which the foliage of King's College showed in a blurred discolouration. From the branches of trees a double fall of water descended with a melancholy sound.

Presently the ox-cart neared him, and the driver nodded, eyeing him with apathetic interest.

When the cart had passed Nicholas came down the steps and started up the street at the same rapid walk. He was not thinking of his way, but the impulse of action had seized upon him, and he was walking down the ferment in his brain. He did not formulate the thought that with bodily fatigue would come mental indifference; he merely felt that when he was tired--dead tired--he would go home and sit down to dinner and face his father and discuss Jerry Pollard's terms. He would do that when he was too tired to care--not before.

When he reached the heavy iron gate of the college he swung it open and entered the grounds. In the centre of the walk stood the statue of a great Colonial governor, and he paused before it for an instant, staring up into the battered features of the marble face. He realised suddenly that he had never looked at it before. Daily, for twelve years, he had passed the college campus, sometimes crossing it so that he might have brushed the effigy of the great Englishman with a careless hand--but he had never seen the face before. Then he looked through the falling rain at the deserted archway of the old brick building. For the first time those grim walls, which had been thrice overthrown and had arisen thrice from their ashes, impressed him with the triumphant service they had rendered in the culture of his kind. He saw it as it was--a sacred skeleton, an honourable decay. The long line of illustrious hands that had procured its ancient charter seemed to wave a ghostly benediction over its ancient learning. Clergy and burgesses, council and governor, planters of Virginia and bishops of London had stood by its birth. It was the fruit of the union of the old world and the new, and it had waxed strong upon the milk of its mother ere it turned rebel. Later, to its younger country, it had sent forth its sons as statesmen who gave glory to its name. And through all its history it had overcome calamity and defied assault. Thrice it had fallen and thrice it had rearisen.

He recalled next the sheltered alcove in the dim library, where he had studied with the consumptive young instructor, who was dead. The creepers upon the wall were encroaching stealthily upon the alcove window. Scarlet tendrils, like forked flames, licked the narrow ledge. Several wet sparrows fluttered in and out among the leaves.

He turned hastily away, passed the great Englishman with unseeing eyes, clanged the iron gate heavily behind him, and went on towards the house of his father.

The family were at dinner when he entered, and he took his seat silently in the empty chair at his stepmother's right hand.

As he sat down she reached out and felt his coat sleeve.

"I declar, Nick, you air soaked clean through," she said. "Anybody'd think you'd been layin' out in the rain all night. You go up and change your clothes an' I'll keep your dinner hot on the stove."

Nicholas went upstairs mechanically, and when he came down his father had gone to the stable and his stepmother was alone in the kitchen.

She brought him his dinner, standing beside the table while he ate it, watching him with an intentness that was almost wistful.

"Would you like some molasses on your corn pone?" she asked as he finished and pushed his plate away. Then, as he shook his head, she added hesitatingly, "It come from Jerry Pollard's store."

But he only shook his head again, following with his eyes the wave-like design on the mahogany-coloured oilcloth that covered the table.

Marthy Burr set the jug aside, nervously clearing her throat.

"I reckon Jerry Pollard has got one of the finest stores anywhar 'bouts," she said suddenly.

Nicholas looked up quickly and met her eyes. She was holding a dish of baked potatoes in one hand and the other was resting for support upon the edge of the table. Her face was yellow and interlined, and a faint odour of camphor came from the bandage about her cheek.

"Yes," he replied indifferently. "He does a very good business."

His stepmother put the dish of potatoes back upon the table and took up the pitcher of buttermilk. Her hand was trembling nervously. There was a slight gasp in her voice when she spoke.

"I don't know but what it's as big a thing to be in a fine store like that as 'tis to be a lawyer," she said.

For a moment Nicholas did not answer. His eyes grew darker as she stood before him, and a shadow closed upon his face. As in a frame, he saw the outline of her figure defined against the square of falling rain between the window sashes. Her shoulders, bent slightly forward as if crushed by the bearing of heavy burdens, reminded him of a domestic animal, full of years and labour.

His face softened and he smiled into her eyes.

"Yes, I don't know but what it is just as well," he responded cheerfully. The next day he went into Jerry Pollard's store and began his winter's work. He measured off unbleached cotton cloth for a servant girl; sold a pair of shoes to a farmer, a cravat to a young fellow from the grocery shop next door, and a set of garden tools to an elderly lady who lived in the street facing the asylum and had a greenhouse. At odd times he looked over Jerry Pollard's books, and after dark he dunned several debtors for unpaid bills. He did it quietly and thoroughly, neither shirking nor overelaborating the minutest detail. There are men who have an immense capacity for taking pains that is rarer than genius, and he was one of them. Whether he made a success or a failure of life, he would do it with a conscientious use of opportunities, good or bad. An eye that is trained to detect the values of circumstances, and a hand that is quick to adjust them, have produced the mental forces that make or unmake the race.

When the day was over he went home and ascended to his room in silence. The work had left him with a curious irritating sense of its distastefulness. The second day was as the first--the week was as the month. There were no variations, no difficulties, no advancement. With the round of monotony his irritation sharpened. When Jerry Pollard spoke he responded in monosyllables; when Jerry Pollard's pretty daughter, Bessie, smiled in from the doorway, he kept his eyes on the counter. At home he was even less responsive. The impulse which had prompted him to return a cheering falsehood to his stepmother passed quickly. He sacrificed himself to the family interests, but he sacrificed himself begrudgingly. His face assumed lines of sullen repression; the tones of his voice were full of subdued resentment. He found satisfaction in meeting their overtures with irony, their constraint with callousness. Since he had given the one thing they required and he valued, he justified himself in a series of petty tyrannies. He met his stepmother with avoidance, his father with aversion. The children he swore at or ignored. Amos Burr, gathering his slow wits together, regarded him with a chuckle of self-congratulation. His sensibilities were not susceptible to slight friction, and his son's attitude seemed to him of small significance. He had got what he wanted, and that was sufficient unto the hour.

After the first two months, Nicholas underwent a dogged and indifferent adaptation. He ceased to think of the judge, of Juliet, of Eugenia. He laughed at Jerry Pollard's jokes and he winked at Jerry Pollard's daughter. His horizon narrowed to the four walls of the shop; he told himself that he had a roof above his head and fuel for his stomach--that Bessie Pollard had skin that was fairer than Eugenia's and lips as red. What did it matter, after all?

Sometimes Mrs. Webb entered the store, sweeping him, as she swept the counter, with her clear, cold glance, and once Sally Burwell ran in to do an errand for her mother and nodded with distant pleasantness as she met his eyes. At such times he flushed and ground his teeth, but after Mrs. Webb came farmer Turner, who shook his hand and said:

"Wall, I'm proud of you, Nick Burr."

And after Sally Burwell pretty Bessie Pollard threw him a kiss from the doorway. It was not that he was ashamed of his work. He knew that at the close of the war better men than he sought and accepted gratefully such a livelihood as he disdained--that women in whose veins ran good old English blood left their wasted homes to teach in public schools, or turned their delicate hands to the needle for support. He was ashamed of his past ambition--of his vaunted aspiration--and he was ashamed of Jerry Pollard and his service.

The winter wore gradually to spring. A brilliant April melted into a watery May. Nicholas, coming to Kingsborough in the early mornings, would feel the long spring rains in his face as he splashed through the puddles in the road. In the wood the white blossoms of dogwood showed through interlacing branches like stars in a network of closely wrought iron. On their hardy shrubs the pale pink clusters of mountain laurel were beaten into shapeless colour-masses by the wind-blown rains. Sometimes, up above, where the fiery points of redbud trees shot skyward, a thrush sang or a blue jay scolded--and the bird-notes were laden, like the air, with the primal ripeness of spring.

Underfoot the earth was fecundating in dampness. Chill blue violets emerged from beneath the spread of rotting leaves, and where the washed-out sunlight had last shone it had left rays of wandering dandelions straying from the open roadside to the edges of the wood.

And the spring passed into Nicholas also. The wonderful renewal of surrounding life thrilled through the repression of his nature. With the flowing of the sap the blood flowed more freely in his veins. New possibilities were revealed to him; new emotions urged him into fresh endeavours. All his powerful, unspent youth spurred on to manhood. _

Read next: Book 2. A Rainy Season: Chapter 4

Read previous: Book 2. A Rainy Season: Chapter 2

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