VIII
The six months which followed Richard's installment in the officeat Slocum's Yard were so crowded with novel experience that hescarcely noted their flight. The room at the Durgins, as willpresently appear, turned out an unfortunate arrangement; buteverything else had prospered. Richard proved an efficient aid to Mr.Simms, who quietly shifted the pay-roll to the younger man'sshoulders. This was a very complicated account to keep, involving asit did a separate record of each employee's time and special work. Anancient bookkeeper parts lightly with such trifles when he has acapable assistant. It also fell to Richard's lot to pay the hands onSaturdays. William Durgin blinked his surprise on the first occasion,as he filed in with the others and saw Richard posted at the desk,with the pay-roll in his hand and the pile of greenbacks lying infront of him.
"I suppose you'll be proprietor next," remarked Durgin, thatevening, at the supper table.
"When I am, Will," answered Richard cheerily, "you will be on theroad to foreman of the finishing shop."
"Thank you," said Durgin, not too graciously. It grated on him toplay the part of foreman, even in imagination, with Dick Shackford asproprietor. Durgin could not disconnect his friend from that seedy,half-crestfallen figure to whom, a few months earlier, he had givenelementary instruction on the Marble Workers' Association.
Richard did not find his old schoolmate so companionable as memoryand anticipation had painted him. The two young men moved ondifferent levels. Richard's sea life, now that he had got at asufficient distance from it, was a perspective full of pleasantcolor; he had a taste for reading, a thirst to know things, and hisworld was not wholly shut in by the Stillwater horizon. It was stilla pitifully narrow world, but wide compared with Durgin's, whichextended no appreciable distance in any direction from the Stillwaterhotel. He spent his evenings chiefly there, returning home late atnight, and often in so noisy a mood as to disturb Richard, who sleptin an adjoining apartment. This was an annoyance; and it was anannoyance to have Mrs. Durgin coming to him with complaints ofWilliam. Other matters irritated Richard. He had contrived toreplenish his wardrobe, and the sunburn was disappearing from hishands, which the nature of his occupation left soft and unscarred.Durgin was disposed at times to be sarcastic on these changes, butalways stopped short of actual offense; for he remembered thatShackford when a boy, amiable and patient as he was, had had atiger's temper at bottom. Durgin had seen it roused once or twice,and even received a chance sweep of the paw. Richard liked Durgin'srough wit as little as Durgin relished Richard's good-naturedbluntness. It was a mistake, that trying to pick up the droppedthread of old acquaintance.
As soon as the permanency of his position was assured, and hismeans warranted the step, Richard transported himself and his effectsto a comfortable chamber in the same house with Mr. Pinkham, theschool-master, the perpetual falsetto of whose flute was positivelysoothing after four months of William Durgin's bass. Mr. Pinkhamhaving but one lung, and that defective, played on the flute.
"You see what you've gone and done, William," remarked Mrs. Durginplaintively, "with your ways. There goes the quietest young man inStillwater, and four dollars a week!"
"There goes a swell, you'd better say. He was always a proudbeggar; nobody was ever good enough for him."
"You shouldn't say that, William. I could cry, to lose him and hischeerfulness out of the house," and Mrs. Durgin began to whimper.
"Wait till he's out of luck again, and he'll come back to us fastenough. That's when his kind remembers their friends. Blast him! hecan't even take a drop of beer with a chum at the tavern."
"And right, too. There's beer enough taken at the tavern withouthim."
"If you mean me, mother, I'll get drunk tonight."
"No, no!" cried Mrs. Durgin, pleadingly, "I didn't mean you,William, but Peters and that set."
"I thought you couldn't mean me," said William, thrusting hishands into the pockets of his monkey-jacket, and sauntering off inthe direction of the Stillwater hotel, where there was a choicecompany gathered, it being Saturday night, and the monthly meeting ofthe Union.
Mr. Slocum had wasted no time in organizing a shop for hisexperiment in ornamental carving. Five or six men, who had workedelsewhere at this branch, were turned over to the new department,with Stevens as foreman and Richard as designer. Very shortly Richardhad as much as he could do to furnish the patterns required. Theseconsisted mostly of scrolls, wreaths, and mortuary dove-wings forhead-stones. Fortunately for Richard he had no genius, but plenty ofa kind of talent just abreast with Mr. Slocum's purpose. As thecarvers became interested in their work, they began to show Richardthe respect and good-will which at first had been withheld, for theyhad not quite liked being under the supervision of one who had notserved at the trade. His youth had also told against him; butRichard's pleasant, off-hand manner quickly won them. He had come incontact with rough men on shipboard; he had studied their ways, andhe knew that with all their roughness there is no class so sensitive.This insight was of great service to him. Stevens, who had perhapsbeen the least disposed to accept Richard, was soon his warm ally.
"See what a smooth fist the lad has!" he said one day holding up anew drawing to the shop. "A man with a wreath of them acorns on hishead-stone oughter be perfectly happy, damn him!"
It was, however, an anchor with a broken chain pendent--a designfor a monument to the late Captain Septimius Salter, who had partedhis cable at sea--which settled Richard's status with Stevens.
"Boys, that Shackford is what _I_ call a born genei."
After all, is not the one-eyed man who is king among the blind themost fortunate of monarchs? Your little talent in a provincialvillage looms a great deal taller than your mighty genius in a city.Richard Shackford working for Rowland Slocum at Stillwater washappier than Michaelangelo in Rome with Pope Julius II. at his back.And Richard was the better paid, too!
One day he picked up a useful hint from a celebrated sculptor, whohad come to the village in search of marble for the base of asoldiers' monument. Richard was laboriously copying a spray of fern,the delicacy of which eluded his pencil. The sculptor stood a momentsilently observing him.
"Why do you spend an hour doing only passably well what you coulddo perfectly in ten minutes?"
"I suppose it is because I am stupid, sir," said Richard.
"No stupid man ever suspected himself of being anything butclever. You can draw capitally; but nature beats you out and out atdesigning ferns. Just ask her to make you a fac-simile in plaster,and see how handily she will lend herself to the job. Of course youmust help her a little."
"Oh, I am not above giving nature a lift," said Richard modestly.
"Lay a cloth on your table, place the fern on the cloth, and poura thin paste of plaster of Paris over the leaf,--do that gently, soas not to disarrange the spray. When the plaster is set, there's yourmold; remove the leave, oil the matrix, and pour in fresh plaster.When that is set, cut away the mold carefully, and there's yourspray of fern, as graceful and perfect as if nature had done it allby herself. You get the very texture of the leaf by this process."
After that, Richard made casts instead of drawings for thecarvers, and fancied he was doing a new thing, until he visited somemarble-works in the great city.
At this period, whatever change subsequently took place in hisfeeling, Richard was desirous of establishing friendly relations withhis cousin. The young fellow's sense of kinship was singularlystrong, and it was only after several repulses at the door of theShackford house and on the street that he relinquished the hope ofplacating the sour old man. At times Richard was moved almost to pityhim. Every day Mr. Shackford seemed to grow shabbier and morespectral. He was a grotesque figure now, in his napless hat andbroken-down stock. The metal button-holes on his ancient waistcoathad worn their way through the satin coverings, leaving here andthere a sparse fringe around the edges, and somehow suggesting littlebald heads. Looking at him, you felt that the inner man was asthreadbare and dilapidated as his outside; but in his lonely
old agehe asked for no human sympathy or companionship, and, in fact, stoodin no need of either. With one devouring passion he set the world atdefiance. He loved his gold,--the metal itself, the weight an colorand touch of it. In his bedroom on the ground-floor Mr. Shackfordkept a small iron-clamped box filled to the lid with bright yellowcoins. Often, at the dead of night, with door bolted and curtaindown, he would spread out the glittering pieces on the table, andbend over them with an amorous glow in his faded eyes. These were hisblond mistresses; he took a fearful joy in listening to theirrustling, muffle laughter as he drew them towards him with eagerhands. If at that instant a blind chanced to slam, or a footfall toecho in the lonely court, then the withered old sultan would hurryhis slaves back into their iron-bound seraglio, and extinguish thelight. It would have been a wasted tenderness to pity him. He wasvery happy in his own way, that Lemuel Shackford.