There's no questioning the fact that two weeks of Radville had driven
Duncan to desperation; on the morning of the fifteenth day he wakened
in his room at Miss Carpenter's and lay for a time abed staring
vacantly at the gaudily papered ceiling, not through laziness remaining
on his back, but through sheer inertia. The prospect of rising to
ramble through another purposeless, empty day appalled his imagination;
it had been all very well when the humour of his project intrigued him,
when the village was a novelty and its inhabitants "types" to be
studied, watched, analysed and classified with secret amusement; but
now he felt that he had already exhausted its possibilities; he was a
foreigner in thought and instinct, had as little in common with
Radvillians as any newly imported Englishman would have had. In plain
language, he was bored to the point of extinction.
"Why," he reflected aloud, "it doesn't seem reasonable, but I'm
actually looking forward to the delirious dissipation of church next
Sunday!
"Me?...
"If Kellogg could only see me now!"
He laughed mirthlessly.
"I must have done something to deserve this in my misspent life...
"Wonder if nothing ever happens here?.... I'd give a whole lot, if I
had it, for a good rousing fire on Main Street--the Bigelow House, for
choice....
"And it's got me to the point of drooling to myself, like those fellows
you read about who get lost in the desert....
"Come! Get out of this! And, my boy, remember to 'count that day lost
whose low descending sun sees nothing accomplished, nothing done.'...
"Probably misquoted, at that."
Sullenly he rose and dressed.
He was late at the breakfast and silent and reserved throughout that
meal. Poor Miss Carpenter thought him dissatisfied and hung round his
chair, purring with a solicitude that almost maddened him. As soon as
possible he made his escape from the house.
The walk he indulged in that morning took him in a wide circle: south
on the road to the Gap, then eastwards, crossing the railroad and the
river, north through a smiling agricultural region, east to the Flats,
and so across the stone bridge to the Old Town once more. He was
trudging up Street toward Centre shortly after eleven--hot, a little
tired, and utterly disgusted. The exercise, instead of exhilarating,
had depressed him; the quickened flow of blood through his veins, the
vigour of the clean air he inhaled, demanded of him action of some
sort; and he had nothing whatever to do with himself all afternoon save
drowse over "The Law of Torts."
Recognition of Leonard and Call's familiar shop-front fired him with a
spirit of adventure and enterprise. He stopped short, thoughtfully
rubbing his small moustache the wrong way, his vision glued to the
embarrassingly candid window displays.
"It'd be an awful thing for me to do....
"Think of yourself, man, jumping counters in and out amongst all
hose--those _Things!_ like a lunatic monkey performing on a Monday
morning's clothes line!..."
He thought deeply, and sighed. "It ain't moral....
"But it's one of the rules, it must be did. Henry said a ribbon clerk
was a social equal....
"Come, now! No more shennanigan! Brace up! Be a man!...
"A man? That's the whole trouble: I am a man; I've got no business in a
place like that."
He turned and moved away slowly. But the idea had him by the heels. He
struggled against a growing resolution to return. Then enlightenment
came to him suddenly. He paused again, grappling with this amazing
revelation of self.
"Great Scott! Harry was right, damn him! He said this place would
reconstruct me from the inside out and vice versa, and by jinks! it
has. I actually _want_ to work!...
"Can you beat that--_me_!"
He swung back to Leonard and Call's, mentally reviewing his
instructions.
"Let's see. I was to wait at least a month, to let the shopkeepers get
accustomed to the sight of me.... _Hmm_.... Harry certainly has a
cute way of expressing his thought.... But it can't be helped; I can't
wait. If I do, I'll throw up the job....
"I'm to walk in and say, politely: '_I'm looking for employment. If
at any time you should have an opening here that you can offer me, I
shall endeavour to give satisfaction. Good-day_.'...
"But be careful not to press it. Just say it and get right out...."
With the air of a man who knows his own mind he pulled open the wire
screen-door and strode in.
Two minutes later he emerged, breathing hard, but with the glitter of
determination in his eye.
"I wouldn't 've believed I could get away with it. Here goes for the
next promising opening."
He headed for Sothern and Lee's drug-store.
"Wonder what that fellow would have said if I'd had the nerve to wait
and listen...."
In the drug-store he experienced less difficulty in making his speech
and exit; he flattered himself that he accomplished both gracefully,
even impressively. And indeed you may believe he left a gaping audience
behind him. So likewise at Godfrey's notions and stationery shop.
As he emerged from the latter the resonant clamour of the Methodist
Church clock drove him home for dinner, hungry and glowing with
self-approbation. At all events, no one had refused him: he had not
been set upon and incontinently kicked out. He felt that he was getting
on.
"Now this afternoon," he mused, "I'll wind up the job. By night
everyone in town will know I want work."
But if he had thought a moment he would have realised that he might
have spared himself the trouble; the consummation he so earnestly
desired was already being brought about by resident and recognised, if
unofficial, agents for the dissemination of news.
It was two o'clock or thereabouts, I gather, when, shaping his course
toward Radville's commercial centre, Duncan hesitated on the corner of
Beech Street, cocking an incredulous eye up at the weather-worn sign
which has for years adorned the side of Tuthill's grocery: a hand
indicating fixedly: