He looked about for a change of subject.
"Where"s Bob McCord?" he asked.
"It was a rainy day, and he"s gone off to the grocery, I guess," said Mrs. Grayson. "I"m afeerd he won"t come home in time to cut us wood to do over Sunday."
Tom had intended to ride back to Moscow and pay his debt this very evening. But here was a chance to show some little grat.i.tude--a chance to make a beginning of amendment. He did not want to stay at home, where the faces of his mother and Barbara and the pinching economy of the household arrangements would reproach him, but for this very reason he would remain until the next day; it would be a sort of penance, and any self-imposed suffering was a relief. The main use that men make of penitence and the wearing of sackcloth is to restore the balance of their complacency. Tom announced his intention to see to the Sunday wood himself; putting his uncle"s horse in the stable, he went manfully to chopping wood in the rain and attending to everything else that would serve to make his mother and sister more comfortable.
IV
LOCKWOOD"S PLAN
George Lockwood, being only mildly malicious, felt something akin to compensation at having procured for Tom so severe a loss. But he was before all things a man secretive and calculating; the first thing he did with any circ.u.mstance was to take it into his intellectual backroom, where he spent most of his time, and demand what advantage it could give to George Lockwood. When he had let all the boys out of the store at a quarter past twelve, he locked and barred the door. Then he put away the boxes and all other traces of the company, and carried his tallow candle into his rag-carpeted bedroom, which opened from the rear of the store and shared the complicated and characteristic odors of the shop with a dank smell of its own; this last came from a habit Lockwood had when he sprinkled the floor of the store, preparatory to sweeping it, of extending the watering process to the rag-carpet of the bedroom. His mind gave only a pa.s.sing thought of mild exultation, mingled with an equally mild regret, to poor Tom Grayson"s misfortune. He was already inquiring how he might, without his hand appearing in the matter, use the occurrence for his own benefit. Tom had had presence of mind enough left to beg the whole party in the store to say nothing about the affair; but notwithstanding the obligation which the set felt to protect one another from the old fogies of their families, George Lockwood thought the matter would probably get out. He was not the kind of a man to make any bones about letting it out, if he could thereby gain any advantage. The one feeling in his tepid nature that had ever attained sufficient intensity to keep him awake at night was his pa.s.sion for Rachel Albaugh; and his pa.s.sion was quite outside of any interest he might have in Rachel"s reversionary certainty of the one-half of John Albaugh"s lands. This, too, he had calculated, but as a subordinate consideration.
He reflected that Rachel might come to town next Sat.u.r.day, which was the general trading-day of the country people. If she should come, she would be sure to buy something of him. But how could he tell her of Tom"s unlucky gambling? To do so directly would be in opposition to all the habits of his prudent nature. Nor could he bethink him of a ruse that might excuse an indirect allusion to it; and he went to sleep at length without finding a solution of his question.
But chance favored him, for with the Sat.u.r.day came rain, and Rachel regretfully gave over a proposed visit to the village. But as some of the things wanted were quite indispensable, Ike Albaugh was sent to Moscow, and he came into Wooden & Snyder"s store about 4 o"clock in the afternoon. George Lockwood greeted him cordially, and weighed out at his request three pounds of ten-penny nails to finish the new corn-crib, a half-pound of cut tobacco to replenish the senior Albaugh"s pipe from time to time, a dollar"s worth of sugar, and a quarter of a pound of Epsom salts,--these last two for general use. He also measured off five yards of blue cotton drilling, six feet of half-inch rope for a halter, and two yards of inch-wide ribbon to match a sample sent by Rachel. Then he filled one of the Albaugh jugs with mola.s.ses and another with whisky, which last was indispensable in the hay harvest. These articles were charged to John Albaugh"s account; he was credited at the same time with the ten pounds of fresh b.u.t.ter that Isaac had brought. George Lockwood also wrapped up a paper of "candy kisses," as they were called, which he charged Ike to give to Rachel from him, but which he forgot to enter to his own account on the day-book.
"By the way, Ike," he said, "did you know that Dave Sovine got back last week?"
"Yes," said Ike; "I hear the Sovine folks made a turrible hullabaloo over the returned prodigal,--killed the fatted calf, and all that."
"A tough prodigal _he_ is!" said Lockwood, with a gentle smile of indifference. "You"d better look out for him."
"Me? Why?" asked Ike. "He never had any grudge ag"inst me, as I know of."
"No," said Lockwood, laughing, "not that. But he"s cleaned all the money out of all the boys about town, and he"ll be going after you country fellows next, I guess. He"s the _darnedest_ hand with cards!"
"Well, he won"t git a-holt of _me_," said Ike, with boyish exultation.
"I don"t hardly more "n know the ace f"um the jack. I never played but on"y just once; two or three games weth one of the harvest hands, four years ago. He was showin" me how, you know, one Sunday in the big hay-mow, an" jus" as I got somethin" "t he called high low jack, the old man took "t into his head to come up the ladder to see what was goin"
on. You know father"s folks was Dunkers, an" he don"t believe in cards.
I got high low jack that time, an" I won"t fergit it the longest day I live." Ike grinned a little ruefully at the recollection. "Could n" draw on my roundabout fer a week without somebody helpin" me, I was so awful sore betwixt the shoulders. Not any more fer me, thank you!"
"It"u"d be good for some other young fellows I know, if they"d had some of the same liniment," said Lockwood, beginning to see his way clear, and speaking in a languid tone with his teeth half closed. "Blam"d "f I didn"t see Sovine, a-settin" right there on that kag of sixp"ny nails the other night, win all a fellow"s money, and then his handkerchief and his knife. The fellow--you know him well--got so excited that he put up his hat and his coat and his boots, an" Dave took "em all. He"s got some cheatin" trick ur "nother, but I stood right over "im an" I can"t quite make it out yet. I tried to coax "im to give back the hat an" coat an"
boots; but no, sir, he"s a regular black-leg. He wouldn"t give up a thing till I lent the other fellow as much money as he"d staked ag"inst them."
"Who wuz the other fellow?" asked Ike Albaugh, with lively curiosity.
"Oh! I promised not to tell"; but as Lockwood said this he made an upward motion with his pointed thumb, and turned his eyes towards the office overhead.
"W"y, not Tom?" asked Ike, in an excited whisper.
"Don"t you say anything about it," said George, looking serious. "He don"t want his uncle"s folks to know anything about it. And besides, I haven"t mentioned any name, you know"; and he fell into a playful little t.i.tter between his closed teeth, as he shook his head secretively, and turned away to attend to a woman who, in spite of the rain, had brought on horseback a large "feed-basket" full of eggs, and three pairs of blue stockings of her own knitting, which she wished to exchange for a calico dress-pattern and some other things.
But Lockwood turned to call after the departing youth: "You won"t mention that to anybody, will you, Ike?"
"To b" sh.o.r.e not," said Ike, as he went out of the door thinking how much it would interest Rachel.
Ike Albaugh was too young and too light-hearted to be troubled with forebodings. Rachel might marry anybody she pleased "f"r all of him." It was her business, and she was of age, he reflected, and he wasn"t her "gardeen." At most, if it belonged to anybody to interfere, "it was the ole man"s lookout." But the story of Tom Grayson"s losing all his money, and even part of his clothes, was something interesting to tell, and it did not often happen to the young man to have the first of a bit of news. A farm-house on the edge of an unsettled prairie is a dull place, where all things have a monotonous, diurnal revolution and a larger annual repet.i.tion; any event with a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit which intrudes into this system is a G.o.dsend; even the most transient shooting-star of gossip is a relief. But this would be no momentary meteor, and Isaac saw in the newly acquired information something to "tease Rache with," and teasing one"s sister is always lawful sport. He owed her some good-natured grudges; here was one chance to be even with her.
Ike got home at half-past six, and Rachel had to spread for him a cold supper, chiefly of corn-bread and milk. He gave her the ribbon and the little package of square candy kisses from Lockwood. Rachel sat down at the table opposite her hungry brother, and, after giving him a part of the sweets, she amused herself with unfolding the papers that inclosed each little square of candy and reading the couplets of honeyed doggerel wrapped within.
"Did you hear anything of Tom?" Rachel asked.
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"Oh! I promised not to say anything about it."
"You needn"t be afraid of making me jealous," said the sister, with a good-natured, half-defiant setting of her head on one side.
"Jealous? No, it"s not anything like that. You ain"t good at guessin", Sis; girls never air."
"Not even Ginnie Miller," said Rachel. She usually met Ike"s hackneyed allusions to the inferiority of girls by some word about Ginnie. It was plain her brother was in a teasing mood, and that her baffled curiosity would not find satisfaction by coaxing. She knew well enough that Ike was not such a fool as to keep an interesting secret long enough for it to grow stale and unmarketable on his hands.
"Let it go,--I don"t care," she said, as she got up and moved about the kitchen.
"You would, if you knew," said Ike.
"But I don"t, and so there"s an end of it"; and she began to hum a sentimental song of the languishing sort so much in vogue in that day.
The melancholy refrain, which formed the greater part of this one, ran:
"Long, long ago, long ago."
It is one of the paradoxes of human nature that young women with all the world before them delight in singing retrospective melodies about an auld-lang-syne concerning which, in the very nature of the case, they cannot well know anything, but in regard to which they seem to entertain sentiments so distressful.
"It wasn"t so very long ago, nuther," said Ike, whose dialect was always intensified when there were harvest hands on the place.
"What wasn"t?" said Rachel, with her back to him.
"Why, Tom"s sc.r.a.pe, of course."
"Was it a very bad one? Did he get took up?" Rachel"s face was still averted, but Ike noted with pleasure that her voice showed a keen interest in his news.
"Oh, no, "t"s not him that ought to be took up; it"s Dave Sovine."
Rachel cleared her throat and waited a few seconds before speaking again.
"Did Dave hurt Tom much?" she asked, groping after the facts among the various conjectures that suggested themselves.
"Well, yes," said Ike, with a broad grin of delight at his sister"s wide guessing; but by this time he was pretty well exhausted by the strain put upon his feeble secretiveness. "Yes, hurt him? I sh"d say so!" he went on. "Hurts like blazes to have a black-leg like Dave win all yer money an" yer knife, "an yer hankercher, an" yer hat an" coat an" boots in the bargain. But you mus"n"t say anything about it, Sis. It"s a dead secret."
"Who told you?"