One of Life's Slaves Part 13

Barbara continued more eagerly to build up in her own mind, and emphasising now and then with a smack of her hand, how everything was to be.

But as she waxed warmer and more elated over her visions of the future, Nikolai sat doubtful, and softly beating a measure with his foot. All this about the shop might be right enough. His mother must surely understand it, she who had been at the Veyergangs', and had now, moreover, talked to the Consul himself. But the more she initiated him into her plans, and in them appropriated him entirely to herself, and talked away as if there could be no obstacle in any corner of the heavens, the wider did the gulf between their wills and interests open before him. She came with a mother's long-dispensed-with right, and just now he knew in his heart that he belonged still more to another, and must go his own way.

She could not know that she was coming upon nails the whole time in the wall, so he would have to speak out.

"Well, you see, mother"--he looked down at the floor--"you're welcome to my money, if only it's certain I get it back again by the new year, so there's nothing to hinder that. But, you know, why I must have it again is--is because I and Mrs. Holman's Silla have agreed to marry and settle down. And I'm quite determined about it, for I've worked and toiled for that, ever since Holman died; and it would be ill for me if I had to be without her."

His sharp, grey eyes shot a glance up at her, and the mother instinctively felt that here was a will that had escaped from her hands.

This was something that had never entered into her plans.

In order to remove her dissatisfaction, he let her have his thirty dollars before she went.

There is a branch of trade in the narrow streets and outskirts, whose position is one storey higher than the stall-woman. It sells its wares from a house, comprises, according to legislation, a great many more effects, and allows the individual concerned to lead a more comfortable existence, with a step farther from hand to mouth; that is to say, it gains, instead of a day's credit or a weekly settlement, a week's credit or a monthly settlement.

It was in this small trade that Barbara wanted to start, and if it can be said of America that whole towns and undertakings arise in a moment of time, something of the same kind might well be said of Barbara's shop.

Barely a week later she was in her house, and had in the window an exhibition of b.a.l.l.s of cotton, bread, twists, sweets, stay-laces, needle-cases, snuff, clay pipes, steel pens, matches, etc., etc., while she herself sat behind the counter--which was a packing-case disguised under some print--and ground coffee, which she roasted in the kitchen beyond. In a drawer that would lock, which Nikolai had overlooked, stood the cigar-box that did duty as a cash-box, with a few coppers in it.

The acquaintance between Mrs. Holman and Barbara, too, was already renewed, with the secret about Silla preserved on Barbara's side.

Mrs. Holman--she lived only in the street below--had come up, while Barbara was standing on her steps in the evening, to look at her new surroundings by the light of the just completed shop-window. And then she must not pa.s.s an old acquaintance's door. She must come in and have a cup of coffee--it was standing clearing on the hob, if she would condescend.

Mrs. Holman might very well have had her own opinion about a good deal that she saw in there, but she preferred, while she drank her coffee, to give Barbara some idea of the series of dispensations which she had pa.s.sed through since Holman died.

"Oh no, don't turn your cup up yet! _One_ more, Mrs. Holman."

Mrs. Holman drank a third cup too, without becoming at all less melancholy. Her quiet, cold grey eyes had looked and explored while she talked, and sucked in observations of Barbara's open-handed, profuse management, like pipe-clayed fat. But when she left, she had, with many cautious reservations, and in the hope that Barbara's wares would stand the test in the long run, expressed her inclination to remove her custom to Barbara.

Mrs. Holman's Silla was just standing at the counter--she wanted a pint of groats to take home with her--when Barbara, who was measuring them out, suddenly saw Ludvig Veyergang at the door.

He had seen Barbara before, and as he pa.s.sed the door twice a day now, he nodded to her whenever she showed herself on the steps. But so friendly as he was to-day! Barbara was quite softened, and very nearly called him Ludvig, he was so lively and playful about her shop. He stood looking with half-closed eyes, and laughing at Silla, who grew redder and more bashful, and only tried in her confusion to get the bag of groats out of Barbara's hand. He had taken his straw hat off his curly hair for the heat, and looked so nice and handsome.

Silla hardly dared look up at him, and only heard something about freckles not being anything to mind when one had such dark eyes, when, with head in advance, she rushed out of the door.

Barbara's opinion afterwards about Silla's behaviour--her having all at once turned crimson, and rushed away at a few innocent words from such a well-meaning and handsome man as Ludvig Veyergang--her son heard the same evening. A young girl ought to stand modestly, and not go on like that: if she did, it was a sure way of getting all that could be called man-folk at her heels.

Was she anything for Nikolai--that awkward, dark, long girl, who ran about in that bodice that was too short for her, looking like a half-peeled, bent prawn in the back, and went balancing along the edge of the gutter, as if she were going to be a tightrope dancer--without any education? Upon her word, if it had been any other than Ludvig Veyergang, she would have had him peeping after her at every corner.

"But, do you know, Nikolai, it suddenly came into my head while he stood there, that here was the person who both could and would help me with those fifteen dollars I still want so badly. But he was gone before I could collect myself."

"Him? N--no, mother! I'll get them for you, if you'll only wait a little; and I think you can use my money as well as his."

"Well, if I hadn't got you, Nikolai!" sighed Barbara, moved; "and now you shall have some coffee that's good, and new cinnamon-sticks with it, that I didn't get sold to-day."

"No, thanks all the same, mother," he answered, gloomily: he was already at the door.

Later in the evening he succeeded in meeting Silla. She was so merry and laughing this evening.

"I ran away; didn't look at him at all. Would you have liked me to stay, perhaps?" she said, playfully.

He was disarmed for the moment, she laughed so confidingly.

But as he went down, he still saw Veyergang's insolent, half-closed eyes, and the curl coming out beneath his hat, and--he could not help it--he felt as if it were twined round his finger!

That she chattered so gaily did not please him, nor yet that whenever he made time to go up in the evening she came down breathless from the garden, and was always full of whether young Veyergang had been there or not, what he had said, and what she had thought, and whether Kristofa had afterwards agreed or disagreed with her. It was as if she could not talk of anything else!

Yet it was not so bad, he supposed, so long as it was she herself who chattered and talked about it to him.

But the perspiration would stream from him in the smithy, when he stood and thought about it all up there. He felt as though he were under a screw.

Why should not the poor man's possession be left in peace? Here he was toiling away, and would give every drop of blood in his body to be able to marry; and that other one, who had his pockets full, and could have any fine lady for the asking--they were worse than wild beasts and murderers! And amidst all this the time was pa.s.sing.

He had blessed both the autumn mud and darkness, which put an end to all the running about in the evening; and now winter days and snow had come.

When he reckoned up--and he was always reckoning--he found that by the New Year he would be worth seventy-five specie-dollars--what he had almost starved himself to save--and of these his mother had had forty-five, and since then thirteen more. He had made a half bargain about a room with a kitchen at a fair price per month, and what he wanted for the house, too. The last time he had lent his mother money, she had said that he need not be afraid, she was selling the goods and sweeping in the profits.

Everything was in order, so the battle with Mrs. Holman had better be fought at once. And when he laid before her his journeyman's credentials, his seventy-five dollars, and his regular earnings, with the advance he was to have from the New Year at Haegberg's, she would have to be so kind as to give in.

It was on one of the days between Christmas and the New Year that he went up to his mother to let her know that he must have his money out in February. Then he would go to Mrs. Holman.

It struck him that his mother was rather confused and forgetful while she made the coffee.

She thought she was half crazy to-day, she said; but he should have his coffee, and Christmas should not pa.s.s without his having something good; it had not been the custom where she was brought up.

Oh, dear! So Nikolai wanted his money back already. She had grown so forgetful, that she had not remembered that it was so soon. And just before Christmas she had had to settle a bill for coffee and sugar which, upon her word, she had not thought or known would come in until after the fair or at Midsummer! But he need not be afraid; she knew well enough where she could get the money, if she liked to tie on her bonnet and go out after it.

"So drink, Nikolai; it's as strong as a rock. It isn't Christmas more than once a year, as they say in the country. I believe you're afraid.

For your money? Oh, no; never you fear! If your mother, Barbara, has promised anything, she'll keep it; so you may be easy. So nice as Ludvig was to me the last time he was in here--it was only the afternoon of Little Christmas Eve.[4] Barbara needn't be at a loss for a few pence when I say my son wants them. Oh, dear no! Now, Nikolai, don't look like that. Don't you hear you shall have it? My goodness, how you do look at me!"

[Footnote 4: The day before Christmas Eve proper.]

He said nothing, only sat still a long time, and Barbara thought it was getting oppressively quiet. She tried first one thing and then another.

"I'll try it directly after New Year. I would never have borrowed your money if I'd known it would be like this."

"No, mother. You must pay me the money when you can; I won't press you for it. But if you try to beg it from Ludvig Veyergang, we are parted for this world, and as far as I get into the next, too! So now you know, mother. And many thanks for the wedding this time, both from me and Silla!" and he pulled open the door.

CHAPTER IX

AN IMPORTANT STEP TAKEN

If Silla had not come like a wedge between the bark and the wood, how comfortably and free from care Barbara could have lived now. She had no one but Silla to thank that she was now deprived of all the help she might and--it was her firm conviction--ought to have had in her son Nikolai, with the regular earnings he might have put, every single week, into the till; which, for some reason or other, never would exhibit the amount it ought to have done.

It was not improbable that Barbara, after the fas.h.i.+on of country people, forgot to take into account the articles that went towards the nourishment of her own weighty person. On the other hand her ever ready hospitality with the coffee-pot was not without its savour of trade-policy--what she gave away was only to be looked upon as seed which would bring forth a hundredfold in the shape of customers.