In Banbridge no one in trade was considered in polite society, with
one exception. The exception was Randolph Anderson. Anderson had
studied for the law. He had set up his office over the post-office,
hung out his innocent and appealing little sign, and sat in his new
office-chair beside his new desk, surrounded by the majesty of the
lettered law, arranged in shelves in alphabetical order, for several
years, during which his affairs were constantly on a descending
scale. Then at last came a year when scarcely one client had darkened
his doors except Tappan, who wanted to sue a delinquent customer and
attach some of his personal property. After ascertaining that the
personal property had been cannily transferred to the debtor's wife,
he had told Anderson, upon the presentation of a modest bill, that he
was a fraud and he could have done better himself. Beside this
backward stroke of business, Anderson had that year a will to draw
up, for which he was never paid, and had married a couple who had
reimbursed him in farm produce. At the expiration of that year the
lawyer, having to all intents and purposes been given up by the law,
gave it up in his turn. Every cent of the money which he had
inherited from his father had been expended. Nothing remained except
his mother's small property, which barely sufficed to support her.
Anderson then borrowed money from his uncle, who was well-to-do,
giving him his note for three years, rented a store on Main Street,
purchased a stock of groceries, and went into trade. His course made
quite a sensation. He was the first Anderson in the memory of
Banbridge, where the name was an old one, to be outside the genteel
pale of a profession. His father had been a physician, his
grandfather a clergyman.
"If my son had studied medicine instead of law, he could have at
least subsisted upon the proceeds of his profession," his mother
said, with the gentle and dignified dissent which was her attitude
with regard to her son's startling move. "People are simply obliged
by the laws of the flesh to go through measles and whooping-coughs
and mumps, and they have to be born and die, and when they get in the
way of microbes they have to be ill and they have to call in a
physician, and some few of them pay him, so he can manage at least to
live. Of course law is different. If people haven't any money they
can forego quarrels, unless they are forced upon them. Quarrels are
luxuries. It really began to seem to me that all the opportunity for
a lawyer in Banbridge was in the simple line of suing some one for
debt, and there is always that way, which does seem to me rather
dishonest, of putting the property out of one's hands."
There was undoubtedly much truth in what Mrs. Sylvia Anderson said.
She was a shrewd old woman, with such a softly feminine manner that
she misled people into thinking the contrary. Banbridge folk rather
pitied Randolph Anderson for having such a sweetly helpless and
incapable mother, albeit very pretty and very much of a lady.
Mrs. Anderson was a large woman, but delicately articulated, with
small hands, and such tiny feet that she toppled a little when she
walked. Her complexion was like a child's, and she fluffed her thick
white locks over her ears and swathed her throat high in soft laces,
concealing all the aged lines in face and figure with innocent
feminine arts.
Randolph adored his mother. He had never cared for any other woman.
He had sat at his mother's little feet all his life, although he had
at times his own masculine way, as in the matter of the deserting of
his profession for trade. He had remained firm, although his mother
had said much against it.
"Frankly, I do not approve of it, dear," she said. "I agree, but I do
not approve. I do not like it, that you should desert the trodden
path of your forebears. It is not so much that I am proud, but I am
conservative. I believe there is a certain harmony between the man
and the road his race have travelled. I believe he is a very sorry
figure on another, especially if it be on a lower level."
"I don't think it is a question of level," said Randolph. "A road is
simply a question of progress."
"Well, perhaps," said his mother, "but in that case the state of
things is the same. A grocer would cut a sorry figure on your road,
even if it ran parallel towards the same goal, and a lawyer would cut
a sorry figure on a grocer's. Frankly, dear, I really doubt if you
will make a good grocer."
Randolph laughed. "At least I hope I can earn our bread-and-butter,"
he said. Then he went on seriously. "It is just here," he said--"you
and I are not sordid. Neither of us cares about money for itself, but
here we are on this earth, with that existence which has its money
price, and obligations imposed upon us. We cannot shirk it. We must
live, and in order to live we must have a certain amount of money.
Now all we have in this world for material goods is this old house
and your little pittance. We have not a cent besides. If we were to
try living on that, it would not last out your lifetime. If it would,
I should not combat your prejudices, but we could lie on our oars and
eat up the old place, and later on I would hustle for myself. But it
will not. Now, I have demonstrated that I cannot earn anything by my
profession. I have tried it faithfully and well. Last year I did not
earn enough to pay my office rent. I never shall in Banbridge, and
there is no sense whatever in my striking out in a new place with no
prestige and no money. You and I simply want enough to live on,
enough money to buy the wherewithal to keep the flame of life
comfortably burning, and I can think of no other way than this
grocery business. People must eat. You are certainly sure of earning
something, if you offer people something they want. In my profession
there is nothing that they do want."
"But your education," said his mother. She thought of the rows of
law-books of whose contents she fondly believed her son a master.
"Oh, that is mine still," said Randolph, "but other people don't want
it. There is no use, mother, in evading the question. We live in an
age of market values. We must consider them. Butter and cheese have a
sure market value, and the knowledge of the law in my head has not.
Nobody wants it enough to pay anything for it, to give us a moneyed
equivalent wherewith we may buy the things we need. Therefore, if
nobody wants that, we must offer them something else. When it comes
to the rights of our fellow-men to spend their own money as they
choose, that is inalienable. It is about the most firmly established
right in the country. No; people cannot be coerced into buying my
little store of knowledge, therefore I will try them with my little
store of butter and cheese and eggs and molasses."
Randolph Anderson laughed. Aside from regard for his mother's
feelings, he had not the slightest scruple against his business
venture. On the contrary, it rather amused him. He must have had a
latent taste for business, for he quite enjoyed studying the markets
and purchasing his stock in trade. He purchased wisely, too. He
offered a choice stock of goods, or, rather, his two salesmen did. He
himself did not sell much over his own counters, except in the case
of a great rush of business. But it was not from the least sensation
of superiority. It was merely because of a distrust of his own
ability to acquit himself well in such a totally different branch of
industry. Anderson was cast on unusually simple and ingenuous lines.
Nobody would have believed it, but he was actually somewhat modest
and shy before his own clerks, and realized sensitively his own lack
of experience. So he had a way of subsiding when customers appeared,
and retreating to his office in the rear of the building. He spent
most of his time in this office. It was a very pleasant one,
overlooking the river, on which steamboats and canal-boats travelled
to the city. From Anderson's office the bank of red clay soil sloped
to the water's edge. He could see the gleam of the current through
the shag of young trees which found root in the unpromising soil. Now
and then the tall mast of a sailing-vessel glided by, now the
smoke-stack of a steamer. Often the quiet was broken by the panting
breath of a tug. Often into his field of vision flapped the wet
clothes from the line strung along the deck of a canal-boat. The
canal ran along beside the regular current of the river, separated
from it by a narrow tow-path. Farther down, the great railroad bridge
crossed the stream, and at all hours he could catch the swift glisten
of the train-windows as they shot past.
Anderson's office was about twelve by fourteen, and lined with
shelves on two sides. On these he had books, not law-books. Those he
had relegated to the library at home. He had probably in the depths
of his consciousness a sensation of melancholy at the contemplation
of those reminders of his balked career. No man, no matter how
gracefully he may yield to it, cares to contemplate failures. He had
filled these shelves with books of which he was fond, for daily
reading. They were most of them old. He had little money with which
to purchase new ones. He had been forced to rely upon those which his
father and grandfather had accumulated. There were, however, a few
recent and quite valuable books which he had acquired since his
venture in trade, upon entomology, especially books upon butterflies.
Since his retreat from the law he had developed suddenly, perhaps by
the force of contrast, or the opposite swing of the pendulum, an
overwhelming taste for those airy flowers of animated life. The two
walls of the office not occupied with books were hung with framed
specimens. He had also under the riverward window a little table
equipped with the necessary paraphernalia for mounting them. Many a
sunny day in the season he spent in the fields on this gentle hunt.
There was a broad sill to the window, and upon it stood a box filled
with green plants. When the season was enough advanced and the window
always open, the trailing vines rooted in the box hung far down
outside, and the women on the passing canal-boats looked up at them.
The window-ledge was wide enough, moreover, for an old red cushion
upon which slept in the sun when he was not afield for love or war or
prey, a great cat striped like a tiger, with fierce green eyes, and a
mighty purr of comfort, and a rounding back of affection for
Anderson's legs when he talked to him.
Anderson had two comfortable old chairs in his office, and a goodly
assortment of pipes, for he was a great smoker. He made tobacco a
part of his grocery business, and had a strong sense of comfort in
reflecting upon the unlimited supply. He had been forced, in the last
days of his law-practice, to stint himself even in this creature
comfort. On the whole, he was much happier when fairly established in
trade than he had ever been before. He was so absorbed in his
business (all the details of which he mastered), in his books, and
his butterflies, that he saw very little of the people, and knew very
little of what was going on in Banbridge, except through his mother.
Mrs. Anderson, in spite of her years, and a certain lack of strength
which had always hampered her, was quite prominent in Banbridge
society. She was one of the old women whom young girls adore, even
when the adoration is not increased by the existence of a
marriageable son. Sometimes the old lady would regard an unmarried
female-caller with a soft suspicion of ulterior motives, but she
never whispered them to her son. Sylvia Anderson had a lovely, fine
delicacy where the foibles of her own sex were concerned. She was so
essentially feminine herself that she was never quite rid of her
maiden sense of alienation even with her son. She would have been
much happier with a daughter, although she was very fond of her son.
One afternoon in May, a short time after Mrs. Van Dorn and Mrs. Lee
had made their circuit of calls which had included her, some other
ladies were making the rounds in the calling-coach, which drew up
before her door. There were three ladies, two of them unmarried. They
were an elder aunt, her young unmarried niece, and a married lady who
had been the girl friend of the aunt. They made a long call, and Mrs.
Anderson entertained them with tea in her pink-and-gold china cups,
with cream in the little family silver cream-jug, and with slices of
pound-cake. It was an old custom of Mrs. Anderson's which she had
copied all through her married life from Madam Anderson, Randolph's
grandmother, the widow of old Dr. Anderson, the clergyman.
"I always make it a custom, my dear, to keep pound-cake on hand, and
have some of the best green tea in the caddy, and then when callers
come of an afternoon I can offer them some refreshment," she had said
when her son's wife first came to live with her. So Mrs. Anderson had
antedated the modern fashion in Banbridge, but she did not keep a
little, ornate tea-table in her parlor. The cake and tea were brought
in by the one maid on a tray covered with a polka-dotted damask.
This afternoon the callers had their cake and tea, and lingered long
afterwards. Now and then Mrs. Anderson glanced imperceptibly at the
window, thinking her son might pass. She regarded the unmarried aunt
and the young niece with asides of reflection even while she talked
to them. The niece was not pretty, but her bloom of youth under the
roses of her spring hat was ravishing. The aunt had never been
pretty; and, moreover, her bloom had gone, but she was well dressed,
and her thin figure was full of grace. She sat in her chair with
delicate erectness, the folds of her gray gown was disposed over her
supple length of limb with charming effect. She also had a sort of
eager, almost appealing amiability. It was as if she said:
"Yes, I know I am no longer young. I am not fair to see, but indeed I
mean well by you. I would do much for you. I even love you. Cannot
you love me for that?" and that was softly compelling.
Mrs. Anderson reflected that a man might easily admire either of
these women. Her manner, in spite of herself, cooled towards them.
She did not think of the third woman, who was married, except to ply
her with cake and tea and inquire for her husband and children. The
woman, after she had finished her cake and tea, sat sunken in her
corsets, under her loosely fitting black silk, and looked stupidly
amiable. She rose with a slight sigh of relief when at last the
others made a motion to go. She thought of her supper at home, and
the children long out of school. It was past supper-time for
Banbridge. The sun was quite low. An hour ago a little herd of cows
had pelted by in a cloud of dust, with great udders swinging
perilously, going home to be milked.
"That Flannigan boy always runs those cows home," said the aunt,
disapprovingly, as she passed the window.
"I have always heard it was bad for the milk," assented Mrs. Anderson.
Now that her callers were on the move, Mrs. Anderson was exceedingly
cordial. She said something further about the quality of the cream
obtained from the cows, and the aunt said yes, it was very good,
although so dear. The old lady kissed both the aunt and the niece
when they at last went out of the door, and said she was so glad that
she was at home, and begged them to come again. She stood in the door
watching them get into the coach. The young girl's face in the
window, with her beflowered hat, a rose crowned with roses, in the
dark setting of the window, was beautiful. Even the aunt's face,
older and more colorless, except for an unlovely flush of excitement,
was pathetically compelling and charmed. Mrs. Anderson, filling up
the doorway with her stately bulk, swept around by her soft black
draperies, her fair old face rising from a foam of lace, and
delicately capped with lace, on which was a knot of palest lavender,
stood in a frame of luxuriant Virginia-creeper, and smiled and nodded
graciously to her departing guests, while wondering if they would
meet her son coming home. After that followed a reflection as to the
undesirability of either of them as a possible daughter-in-law.
Just as she was turning to enter the house, after the coach had
rolled out of sight, she saw her son coming down the street under the
green shade of the maples which bordered it. The mother went toddling
on her tiny feet down the steps to the gate to meet her son. The
house stood quite close to the road; indeed, only a little
bricked-path separated it from the sidewalk. All the ground was at
the sides and back. The house was a square old affair with a row of
half-windows in the third-story, or attic, and considerable good old
panel-work and ornamentation about it. On the right side of the house
was a large old flower-garden, now just beginning to assert itself
anew; on the left were the stable and some out-buildings, with a
grassy oval of lawn in the centre of a sweep of drive; in the rear
was a kitchen-garden and a field rising to the railroad, for
railroads circled all Banbridge in their vises of iron arms. A
station was only a short distance farther up this same street. As
Mrs. Anderson stood waiting and her son was advancing down the street
a train from the city rumbled past. When Randolph had come up, and
they had both entered the house, a carriage passed swiftly and both
saw it from the parlor window.
"Do you know who's carriage that is?" asked Mrs. Anderson. "It is
something new in Banbridge, isn't it?"
"It belongs to those new people who have moved into the Ranger
place," replied Randolph. He wore a light business-suit which suited
him, and he looked like a gentleman, as much so as when he had come
from a law-office instead of a grocery-store. Indeed, he had been
much shabbier in the law-office and had not held his head so high. In
the law-office he had constantly been confronted with the possibility
of debt. Here he was free from it. He had been smoking, as usual, and
there was about his garments an odor of mingled coffee and tobacco.
He had been selling coffee, and grinding some. One of his two
salesmen was ill, and that was why he was so late. The new carriage
rolled silently on its rubber tires along the macadamized road; the
high black polish and plate-glass flashed in the sunlight, the
coachman in livery sat proudly erect and held his whip stylishly, the
sleek horses pranced, seeming scarcely to touch the road with their
dainty hoofs.
"Those are fine horses," said Randolph.
"Yes," assented his mother. "They must be very wealthy people, I
suppose."
"It looks so," replied Randolph.
His mother, still staring out of the window, started. "Why," she
said, "the coachman is turning around!"
"Perhaps he has forgotten something at the station," said Randolph.
"Why, it is stopping here!" cried Mrs. Anderson, wonderingly. The
carriage indeed stopped just before the Anderson gate, and remained
there perfectly still. The coachman gazed intently at the house, but
made no motion to get down. At a window was seen a gentleman's face;
past him the fresh face of a girl, also gazing. Randolph looked out,
and the gentleman in the carriage made an imperious beckoning motion.
"Why, he is beckoning you!" said Mrs. Anderson, amazedly and
indignantly.
Anderson moved towards the door.
"You are not going out when you are beckoned to in that way?" cried
his mother.
Anderson laughed. "You forget, mother," he said, "that a grocer is at
the beck and call of his patrons."
"I am ashamed of you!" she said, hotly, her fair old face flushing,
"to have no more pride--"
Anderson laughed again. "I am too proud to have pride," he said, and
went out of the room. He went leisurely down the steps, and crossed
the little brick walk to the gate, and then approached the carriage.
The gentleman inside, with what seemed an unpremeditated movement,
raised his hat. Randolph bowed. Carroll smiled in the gentle,
admiring way which he had.
"Perhaps I have made a mistake," he said, "but I was directed here. I
was told that Anderson, who keeps the grocery, lives here."
"I am Anderson," replied Randolph, with dignity and a certain high
scorn, and purposely leaving off the Mr. from his name.
Arthur Carroll no longer smiled, but his voice had a certain
urbanity, although it rang imperiously. "Now, see here," he said. "I
want to know why you did not do as I left instructions at your shop?"
"To what do you refer?" inquired Anderson, quietly.
"I want to know why you did not send in your bill last Saturday
night, as I ordered." Carroll's voice was so loud that Mrs. Anderson,
in the house, heard him distinctly through the open windows.
"I did not know that you had so ordered," replied Anderson, still
quietly, with a slight emphasis on the ordered. He looked slightly
amused.
"Well, I did. I told your clerk to be sure to send in my bills
promptly every Saturday morning. I wish to settle weekly."
"The mistake was doubtless due to the fact that my clerk has been at
home ill for the last three days," said Anderson. "This is the first
time I have heard of your order."
"Well," said Carroll, "send it in at once now, and don't let it
happen again."
Although the tone was harsh and the words were imperious, still they
were not insolent. There was even an effect of _camaraderie_ about
them. At the last he flashed a quick smile at Anderson, which
Anderson returned. He was dimly conscious all the time of Charlotte's
very pretty face past her father's, peeping around his gray shoulder
with a large-eyed, rather puzzled expression. Carroll nodded slightly
after the smile, and told the coachman to go on, and the horses
sprang forward after a delicate toss of their curving forelegs.
Randolph re-entered the house, and his mother, who was waiting, faced
him with soft indignation.
"I must say, my son, that I am surprised that you submit to being
addressed in such a fashion as that," she said, her blue eyes
darkening at him.
Randolph laughed again. "There was no real insolence about it, after
all, mother," he replied.
"It sounded so," said she.
"That was because you could not see his face," said Randolph. "He
looked very amiable."
"He was angry because he did not get his bill Saturday?" said Mrs.
Anderson, interrogatively.
"Yes. He must have given the order to Sam Riggs the day before he
went home ill, I suppose."
"He must be a very wealthy man," said Mrs. Anderson. "It is rather
good of him to be so anxious to pay his bill every week."
"Yes, it is a very laudable desire," said Randolph. "I only hope his
ability may equal it."
His mother looked at him with quick surprise. "Why, you surely don't
think--" she said.
"I think nothing. The man is all right, so far as I know. He seems a
gentleman, and if he is well off he is a very desirable acquisition
to Banbridge."
"Who was that with him in the coach?" asked Mrs. Anderson.
"One of his daughters, I should judge. I hear he has two."
"Pretty?"
"Well, I hardly know. Have you had any callers?"
"Yes. I suppose you met them. They made a very long call."
"You mean the Egglestons?"
"Yes, Miss Josie and little Agnes Eggleston and Mrs. Monroe. They
stayed here over an hour. I thought you would meet them."
"Yes, I met them just as I turned from Main Street," replied
Randolph, soberly, but he was inwardly amused. He understood his
mother. But there was something which he did not tell her concerning
his experience with the new-comers, the Carrolls. Shortly, she went
out to give some directions about tea, and Randolph, sitting beside a
window in the parlor with an evening paper, drew from his pocket a
letter just received in the mail, and examined it again. It was from
a city bank, and it contained a repudiated check for ten dollars,
made out by Captain Arthur Carroll, and which Anderson had cashed a
few days previous at the request of the pretty young girl in the
carriage, who to-night had sat there looking at him and did not
speak, either because she had forgotten his face as he did her the
little favor, or because he was so far away from her social scale
that she was innocently unaware of any necessity for it.