There was only one way. Should he make Richards suffer or suffer himself? Did a man have to grind other people or be ground himself? Meanwhile they had reached the town.
The stir of a festival was in the air. On every side bunting streamed in the breeze or was draped across brick or wood.
Arches spanned some of the streets, with inscriptions of welcome on them, and swarms of colored lanterns glittered against the sunlight almost as gayly as they would show when they should be lighted at night. Little children ran about waving flags.
Grocery wagons and butchers' wagons trotted by with a flash of flags dangling from the horses' harness. The streets were filled with people in their holiday clothes. Everybody smiled.
The shopkeepers answered questions and went out on the sidewalks to direct strangers. From one window hung a banner inviting visitors to enter and get a list of hotels and boarding-houses. The crowd was entirely good-humored and waited outside restaurants, bandying jokes with true Western philosophy. At times the wagons made a temporary blockade in the street, but no one grumbled.
Bands of music paraded past them, the escort for visitors of especial consideration. In a window belonging, the sign above declared, to the Business Men's Association, stood a huge doll clad in blue satin, on which was painted a device of Neptune sailing down the Mississippi amid a storm of fireworks.
The doll stood in a boat arched about with lantern-decked hoops, and while Nelson halted, unable to proceed, he could hear the voluble explanation of the proud citizen who was interpreting to strangers.
This, Nelson thought, was success. Here were the successful men.
The man who had failed looked at them. Eve roused him by a shrill cry, "There they are. There's May and the girls.
Let me out quick, Uncle!"
He stopped the horse and jumped out himself to help her.
It was the first time since she came under his roof that she had been away from it all night. He cleared his throat for some advice on behavior. "Mind and be respectful to Mrs. Arlington.
Say yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am ----" He got no further, for Eve gave him a hasty kiss and the crowd brushed her away.
"All she thinks of is wearing fine clothes and going with the fellers!"said her brother, disdainfully. "If I had to be born a girl, I wouldn't be born at all!""Maybe if you despise girls so, you'll be born a girl the next time,"said Nelson. "Some folks thinks that's how it happens with us.""Do YOU, Uncle?" asked Tim, running his mind forebodingly over the possible business results of such a belief.
"S'posing he shouldn't be willing to sell the pigs to be killed, 'cause they might be some friends of his!" he reflected, with a rising tide of consternation. Nelson smiled rather sadly.
He said, in another tone: "Tim, I've thought so many things, that now I've about given up thinking. All I can do is to live along the best way I know how and help the world move the best I'm able.""You bet _I_ ain't going to help the world move," said the boy;"I'm going to look out for myself!"
"Then my training of you has turned out pretty badly, if that's the way you feel."A little shiver passed over the lad's sullen face; he flushed until he lost his freckles in the red veil and burst out passionately:
"Well, I got eyes, ain't I? I ain't going to be bad, or drink, or steal, or do things to git put in the penitentiary; but I ain't going to let folks walk all over me like you do; no, sir!"Nelson did not answer; in his heart he thought that he had failed with the children, too; and he relapsed into that dismal study of the face of Failure.
He had come to the city to show Tim the sights, and, therefore, though like a man in a dream, he drove conscientiously about the gay streets, pointing out whatever he thought might interest the boy, and generally discovering that Tim had the new information by heart already.
All the while a question pounded itself, like the beat of the heart of an engine, through the noise and the talk: "Shall I give up Richards or be turned out myself?"When the afternoon sunlight waned he put up the horse at a modest little stable where farmers were allowed to bring their own provender.
The charges were of the smallest and the place neat and weather-tight, but it had been a long time before Nelson could be induced to use it, because there was a higher-priced stable kept by an ex-farmer and member of the Farmers' Alliance. Only the fact that the keeper of the low-priced stable was a poor orphan girl, struggling to earn an honest livelihood, had moved him.
They had supper at a restaurant of Tim's discovery, small, specklessly tidy, and as unexacting of the pocket as the stable.
It was an excellent supper. But Nelson had no appetite;in spite of an almost childish capacity for being diverted, he could attend to nothing but the question always in his ears:
"Richards or me--which?"
Until it should be time for the spectacle they walked down the hill, and watched the crowds gradually blacken every inch of the river-banks.
Already the swarms of lanterns were beginning to bloom out in the dusk.
Strains of music throbbed through the air, adding a poignant touch to the excitement vibrating in all the faces and voices about them.
Even the stolid Tim felt the contagion. He walked with a jaunty step and assaulted a tune himself. "I tell you, Uncle," says Tim, "it's nice of these folks to be getting up all this show, and giving it for nothing!""Do you think so?" says Nelson. "You don't love your book as Iwish you did; but I guess you remember about the ancient Romans, and how the great, rich Romans used to spend enormous sums in games and shows that they let the people in free to--well, what for?
Was it to learn them anything or to make them happy?
Oh, no, it was to keep down the spirit of liberty, Son, it was to make them content to be slaves! And so it is here.
