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THE GRAYSONS
A STORY OF ILLINOIS
BY EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER," "ROXY,"
"THE CIRCUIT RIDER," ETC., ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ALLEGRA EGGLESTON
THE CENTURY CO.
NEW-YORK.
COPYRIGHT, 1887,
BY EDWARD EGGLESTON.
THE DEVINNE PRESS.
[Illustration: TURNING THE BIBLE.]
PREFACE.
_I had thought to close up the cycle of my stories of life in the
Mississippi Valley with "Roxy" which was published in 1878. But when I
undertook by request of the editor to write a short story for "The
Century Magazine," and to found it on a legendary account of one of
President Lincoln's trials, the theme grew on my hands until the present
novel was the result. It was written mostly at Nervi, near Genoa, where
I could not by any possibility have verified the story I had received
about 1867 from one of Lincoln's old neighbors. To have investigated the
accuracy of my version of the anecdote would have been, indeed, to fly
in the face and eyes of providence, for popular tradition is itself an
artist rough-hewing a story to the novelist's hands. During the
appearance of this novel in serial form I have received many letters
from persons acquainted in one way or another with the actors and
sufferers in the events, of which these here related are the ideal
counterparts. Some of these letters contain information or relate
incidents of so much interest that I have it in mind to insert them in
an appendix to some later edition of this book._
_EDWARD EGGLESTON._
_Joshua's Rock, Lake George, 1888._
This Book is respectfully inscribed to the Hon. Jonathan Chace, United
States Senator from Rhode Island; the Hon. Joseph Hawley, United States
Senator from Connecticut; the Hon. W. C. P. Breckenridge, Representative
from Kentucky; and the Hon. Patrick A. Collins, Representative from
Massachusetts, who have recently introduced or had charge of
International Copyright Bills, and to those Members of both Houses of
Congress who have cooperated with them in the effort to put down
literary buccaneering.
E. E.
To my friend, Mabel Cooke,
I Dedicate the Ideals of
which these Illustrations
are the Faint and Awkward
Shadows.
THE ILLUSTRATOR.
CONTENTS.
I TURNING THE BIBLE
II WINNING AND LOSING
III PAYING THE FIDDLER
IV LOCKWOOD'S PLAN
V THE MITTEN
VI UNCLE AND NEPHEW
VII LOCKWOOD'S REVENGE
VIII BARBARA'S PRIVATE AFFAIRS
IX BY THE LOOM
X THE AFFAIR AT TIMBER CREEK CAMP-MEETING
XI FRIENDS IN THE NIGHT
XII A TRIP TO BROAD RUN
XIII A BEAR HUNT
XIV IN PRISON
XV ABRAHAM LINCOLN
XVI THE CORONER'S INQUEST
XVII A COUNCIL OF WAR
XVIII ZEKE
XIX THE MYTH
XX LINCOLN AND BOB
XXI HIRAM AND BARBARA
XXII THE FIRST DAY OF COURT
XXIII BROAD RUN IN ARMS
XXIV FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED
XXV LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD
XXVI CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
XXVII LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE
XXVIII FREE
XXIX THE CLOSE OF A CAREER
XXX TOM AND RACHEL
XXXI HIRAM AND BARBARA
XXXII THE NEXT MORNING
XXXIII POSTSCRIPTUM
List of Illustrations
TURNING THE BIBLE.
BARBARA AND HIRAM BY THE LOOM.
MR. BRITTON AND BIG BOB.
"TELL ME TRULY, TOM, DID YOU DO IT?"
JANET AT THE WINDOW.
"WHERE'S THAT PIECE OF CANDLE GONE TO?"
ZEKE AND S'MANTHY'S OLDEST SON.
"'WHERE IS HE?' ASKED THE JUDGE."
"SAY, TOM, WON'T YOU WAIT FOR ME?"
THE GRAYSONS
I
TURNING THE BIBLE
The place of the beginning of this story was a country neighborhood on a
shore, if one may call it so, that divided a forest and prairie in
Central Illinois. The date was nearly a lifetime ago. An orange-colored
sun going down behind the thrifty orchard of young apple-trees on John
Albaugh's farm, put into shadow the front of a dwelling which had stood
in wind and weather long enough to have lost the raw look of newness,
and to have its tints so softened that it had become a part of the
circumjacent landscape. The phebe-bird, locally known as the pewee, had
just finished calling from the top of the large barn, and a belated
harvest-fly, or singing locust, as the people call him, was yet filling
the warm air with the most summery of all summery notes--notes that seem
to be felt as well as heard, pushing one another faster and yet faster
through the quivering atmosphere, and then dying away by degrees into
languishing, long-drawn, and at last barely audible vibrations.
Rachel, the daughter of the prosperous owner of the farm, was tying some
jasmine vines to the upright posts that supported the roof of a porch,
or veranda, which stretched along the entire front of the house. She
wore a fresh calico gown, and she had something the air of one expecting
the arrival of guests. She almost always expected company in the evening
of a fine day. For the young person whose fortune it is to be by long
odds the finest-looking woman in a new country where young men abound,
and where women are appreciated at a rate proportioned to their
scarcity, knows what it is to be a "reigning belle" indeed. In the
vigorous phrase of the country, Rachel was described as "real knock-down
handsome"; and, tried by severer standards than those of Illinois, her
beauty would have been beyond question. She had the three essentials:
eyes that were large and lustrous, a complexion rich and fresh, yet
delicately tinted, and features well-balanced and harmonious. Her blonde
hair was abundant, and, like everything about her, vital. Her hands and
feet were not over-large, and, fortunately, they were not
disproportionately small; but just the hands and feet of a
well-developed country girl used to activity and the open air. Without
being more than ordinarily clever, she had a certain passive
intelligence. Her voice was not a fine one, nor had her manners any
particular charm except that which comes from the repose of one who
understands that she is at her best when silent, and who feels herself
easily ahead of rivals without making any exertion. Hers was one of
those faces the sight of which quickens the pulses even of an old man,
and attracts young men with a fascination as irresistible as it is
beyond analysis or description. Many young men were visitors at John
Albaugh's hospitable house, and where the young men came the young women
were prone to come, and thus Albaugh's became a place of frequent and
spontaneous resort for the young people from all the country round.
But it had happened with this much-courted girl, as it has happened to
many another like her, that with all the world to choose from, she had
tarried single longer than her companions. Rachel was now past
twenty-three, in a land where a woman was accounted something of an old
maid if unmarried at twenty. Beauties such as she find a certain
pleasure in playing with their destiny, as pussy loves the excitement of
trifling with the mouse that can hardly escape her in any way. Prey that
comes too easily in reach is not highly valued. Every bid for such a
woman's hand leads her to raise her estimation of her own value.
Rachel's lovers came and went, and married themselves to young women
without beauty. Lately, however, Rachel Albaugh's neighbors began to
think that she had at length fallen in love "for keeps," as the country
phrase expressed it.
"I say, Rache," called her brother Ike, a youth of fifteen, who was just
then half-hidden in the boughs of the summer apple-tree by the garden
gate, "they's somebody coming."
"Who is it, Ike?"
"Henry Miller and the two Miller girls."
"Oh! is that all?" said Rachel, in a teasing tone.
"Is that _all_?" said Ike. "You don't care for anybody but Tom Grayson
these days. I'll bet you Tom'll be here to-night."
"What makes you think so?" asked Rachel, trying not to evince any
interest in the information.
"Don't you wish you knew?" he answered, glad to repay her teasing in
kind.
"Did you see him to-day?"
"Say, Sis," said Ike, affecting to dismiss the subject, "here's an awful
nice apple. Can you ketch?"
Rachel held up her hands to catch the apple, baring her pretty arms by
the falling back of her loose sleeves. The mischievous Ike threw a swift
ball, and Rachel, holding her hands for it, could not help shrinking as
the apple came flying at her. She shut her eyes and ducked her head, and
of course the apple went past her, bowling away along the porch and off
the other end of it into the grass.
"That's just like a girl," said Ike. "Here's a better apple. I won't
throw so hard this time." And Rachel caught the large striped apple in
her two hands.
"I say, Ike," she said, coaxingly, "where did you see Tom?"
"Oh! I met him over on the big road as I went to mill this morning; he
was going home to his mother's, an' he said he was coming over to see
you to-night. An' I told him to fetch Barbara, so 's I'd have somebody
to talk to, 'cause you wouldn't let me get a word in ageways with him.
An' Tom laughed an' looked tickled."
"I guess you won't talk much to Barbara while Ginnie Miller's here,"
Rachel said; and by this time Henry Miller and his two sisters were
nearing the white gate which stood forty feet away from the cool front
porch of the house.
"Howdy, Rachel!" said Henry Miller, as he reached the gate, and "Howdy!
Howdy!" came from the two sisters, to which Rachel answered with a
cordial "Howdy! Come in!" meant for the three. When they reached the
porch, she led the way through the open front door to the "settin' room"
of the house, as the living-room was always called in that day. The
fire-place looked like an extinct crater; curtains of narrow green slats
hung at the windows, and the floor was covered by a new rag-carpet in
which was imbedded a whole history of family costume; a patient
geologist might have discovered in it traces of each separate garment
worn in the past five years by the several members of the Albaugh
family. The mantel-piece was commonplace enough, of "poplar" wood--that
is, tulip-tree--painted brown. The paint while fresh had been scratched
in rhythmical waves with a common coarse comb. This graining resembled
that of some wood yet undiscovered. The table at the side of the room
farthest from the door had a cover of thin oil-cloth decorated with
flowers; most of them done in yellow. A tall wooden clock stood against
the wall at the right of the door as you entered, and its slow ticking
seemed to make the room cooler. For the rest, there was a black
rocking-chair with a curved wooden seat and uncomfortable round slats in
the back; there were some rank-and-file chairs besides,--these were
black, with yellow stripes; and there was a green settee with three
rockers beneath and an arm at each end.
Henry Miller was a square-set young fellow, without a spark of romance
in him. He had plowed corn all day, and he would have danced all night
had the chance offered, and then followed the plow the next day. His
sisters were like him, plain and of a square type that bespoke a certain
sort of "Pennsylvania Dutch" ancestry, though the Millers had migrated
to Illinois, not from Pennsylvania, but from one of the old German
settlements in the valley of Virginia. Ike jumped out of the apple-tree
to follow Virginia, the youngest of the Millers, into the house; there
was between him and "Ginnie," as she was called, that sort of adolescent
attachment, or effervescent reaction, which always appears to the
parties involved in it the most serious interest in the universe, and to
everybody else something deliciously ridiculous; a sort of burlesque of
the follies of people more mature.
This was destined to be one of Rachel's "company evenings"; she had not
more than seated the Millers and taken the girls' bonnets to a place of
security, when there was a knock on the door-jamb. It was Mely McCord,
who had once been a hired help in the Albaugh family. There were even in
that day wide differences in wealth and education in Illinois, but
class demarcations there were not. Nothing was more natural than that
Mely, who had come over from Hubbard township to visit some cousin in
the neighborhood, should visit the Albaughs. Mely McCord was a girl--she
was always called a girl, though now a little in the past tense--with a
stoop in the shoulders, and hair that would have been better if it had
been positively and decoratively red. As it was, her head seemed always
striving to be red without ever attaining to any purity of color.
Half an hour later, Magill, an Irish bachelor of thirty-five, who, being
county clerk, was prudently riding through the country in order to keep
up his acquaintance with the voters, hitched his horse at the fence
outside of the Albaugh gate, and came in just as Rachel was bringing a
candle. Though he had no notion of cumbering himself with a family or
with anything else likely to interfere with the freedom or pleasure of
"an Irish gentleman," Magill was very fond of playing at gallantry, and
he affected a great liking for what he called "faymale beauty," and
plumed himself on the impression his own sprucely dressed person and
plump face--a little overruddy, especially toward the end of the
nose--might make on the sex. He could never pass Albaugh's without
stopping to enjoy a platonic flirtation with Rachel. George Lockwood
arrived at the same time; he was a clerk in Wooden's store, at the
county-seat village of Moscow, and he could manage, on his busiest days
even, to spend half an hour in selling a spool of cotton thread to
Rachel Albaugh. He had now come five miles in the vain hope of finding
her alone. The country beauty appreciated the flattery of his long ride,
and received his attention with a pleasure undisguised.
George Lockwood's was no platonic sentiment. He watched intently every
motion of Rachel's arms only half-hidden in her open-sleeved dress; even
the rustling of the calico of her gown made his pulses flutter. He made
a shame-faced effort to conceal his agitation; he even tried to devote
himself to Mely McCord and the "Miller girls" now and then; but his eyes
followed Rachel's tranquil movements, as she amused herself with
Magill's bald flatteries, and Lockwood could not help turning himself
from side to side in order to keep the ravishing vision in view when he
was talking to some one else.
"You had better make the most of your chance, Mr. Lockwood," said pert
little Virginia Miller, piqued by his absent-minded pretense of talking
with her.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Oh, talk to Rachel while you can, for maybe after a while you can't!"
"Why can't I?"
"She's glad enough to talk to you now, but just you wait till Tom
Grayson comes. If he should happen in to-night, what do you think would
become of you?"
"Maybe I'm not so dead in love as you think," he answered.
"You? You're past hope. Your eyes go round the room after her like a
sunflower twistin' its neck off to see the sun."
"Pshaw!" said George. "You know better than that."
But Virginia noted with amusement that his smile of affected
indifference was rather a forced one, and that he was "swallowing his
feelings," as she put it. He took her advice as soon as he dared and
crossed to where Rachel was sitting with the back of her chair against
the jamb of the mantel-piece. Rachel was smiling a little foolishly at
the shameless palaver of Magill, who told her that there was a ravishing
perfiction about her faychers that he'd niver sane surpassed, though
he'd had the exquisite playsure of dancing with many of the most
beautiful faymales in Europe. Rachel, a little sick of unwatered
sweetness, was glad to have George Lockwood interrupt the frank
criticisms of an appreciative connoisseur of loveliness.
"I hear Tom Grayson outside now," said Mely McCord, in a half-whisper to
Henry Miller. "George Lockwood won't be nowhere when he gits here"; and
Mely's freckled face broke into ripples of delight at the evident
annoyance which Lockwood began to show at hearing Grayson's voice on the
porch. Tom Grayson was preceded by his sister Barbara, a rather petite
figure, brunette in complexion, with a face that was interesting and
intelligent, and that had an odd look hard to analyze, but which came
perhaps, from a slight lack of symmetry. As a child, she had been called
"cunning," in the popular American use of the word when applied to
children; that is to say, piquantly interesting; and this characteristic
of quaint piquancy of appearance she retained, now that she was
a young woman of eighteen. Her brother Tom was a middle-sized,
well-proportioned man, about two years older than she, of a fresh,
vivacious countenance, and with a be-gone-dull-care look. He had a knack
of imparting into any company something of his own cheerful
heedlessness, and for this his society was prized. He spoke to everybody
right cordially, and shook hands with all the company as though they had
been his first cousins, looking in every face without reserve or
suspicion, and he was greeted on all hands with a corresponding
heartiness. But while Tom saluted everybody, his eye turned toward
Rachel, and he made his way as quickly as possible to the farther corner
of the room where she was standing in conversation with George Lockwood.
He extended his hand to her with a hearty,
"Well, Rache, how are you? It would cure fever and ague to see you"; and
then turning to Lockwood he said: "Hello, George! you out here! I
wouldn't 'ave thought there was any other fellow fool enough to ride
five miles and back to get a look at Rachel but me." And at that he
laughed, not a laugh that had any derision in it, or any defiance, only
the outbreaking of animal spirits that were unchecked by foreboding or
care.
"I say, George," he went on, "let's go out and fight a duel and have it
over. There's no chance for any of us here till Rachel's beaux are
thinned out a little. If I should get you killed off and out of the way,
I suppose I should have to take Mr. Magill next."
"No, Tom, it's not with me you'd foight, me boy. I've sane too many
handsome girls to fight over them, though I have never sane such
transcindent----"
"Ah, hush now, Mr. Magill," entreated Rachel.
"Faymale beauty's always adorned by modesty, Miss Albaugh. I'll only
add, that whoever Miss Rachel stoops to marry"--and Magill laughed a
slow, complacent laugh as he put an emphasis on stoops--"I'll be a thorn
in his soide, d'yeh mark that; fer to the day of me death, I'll be her
most devoted admoirer"; and he made a half-bow at the close of his
speech, with a quick recovery, which expressed his sense of the
formidable character of his own personal charms.
But if Magill was a connoisseur of beauty he was also a politician too
prudent to slight any one. He was soon after this paying the closest
heed to Mely McCord's very spontaneous talk. He had selected Mely in
order that he might not get a reputation for being "stuck up."
"Tom Grayson a'n't the leas' bit afeerd uh George Lockwood nur nobody
else," said Mely rather confidentially to Magill, who stood with hands
crossed under the tail of his blue-gray coat. "He all-ays wuz that away;
a kind'v a high-headed, don't-keer sort uv a feller. He'd better luck
out, though. Rache's one uh them skittish kind uh critters that don't
stan' 'thout hitchin', an' weth a halter knot at that. Tom Grayson's not
the fust feller that's felt shore she wuz his'n an' then found out kind
uh suddently't 'e wuzn't so almighty shore _arter_ all. But, lawsee
gracious! Tom Grayson a'n't afeerd uv nothin', nohow. When the master
wuz a-lickin' him wunst, at school, an' gin 'im three cuts, an' then
says, says he, 'You may go now,' Tom, he jes lucks at 'im an' says uz
peart 's ever you see, says he, 'Gimme another to make it even
numbers.'"
"An' how did the master fale about that?" asked Magill, who had been a
schoolmaster himself.
"W'y he jes let him have it good an' tight right around his legs. Tom
walked off an' never wunst said thank yeh, sir. He did n' wear uz good
close in them days 's 'e does now, by a long shot. His mother's farm 's
in the timber, an' slow to open; so many stumps and the like; an' 'f 'is
uncle down 't Moscow had n't a' tuck him up, he 'd 'a' been a-plowin' in
that air stickey yaller clay 'v Hubbard township yit. But you know _ole_
Tom Grayson, his father's brother, seein' 's Tom wuz named arter him,
an' wuz promisin' like, an' had the gift of the gab, he thought 's how
Tom mought make 'n all-fired smart lawyer ur doctor, ur the like; an'
seein' 's he had n' got no boy to do choores about, he takes Tom an'
sends him to school three winters, an' now I believe he's put him to
readin' law."
"Yis, I know he went into Blackman's office last May," said Magill.
"Ole Tom Grayson 's never done nothin' fer the old woman nur little
Barb'ry, there, an' little Barb'ry 's the very flower of the flock,
accordin' to _my_ tell," Mely went on. "Mrs. Grayson sticks to the ole
farm, yeh know, an' rents one field to pap on the sheers, an' works the
rest uv it by hirin'. She sets a mighty sight uv store by Tom. Talks
about 'im by the hour. She 'lows he'll be a-gittin' to Congress nex'
thing. But I d' know"--and here Mely shook her head. "High nose stumped
his toes," says _I_. "Jes look how he's a-carryin' on with Rache, now."
"She's older 'n he is," said the clerk, knowing that even this half
unfavorable comment would be a comfort to one so far removed from
rivalry with her as Mely.
"Three years ef she's a day," responded Mely promptly. "Jest look at
that Lockwood. He's like a colt on the outside of a paster fence,
now,"--and Mely giggled heartily at Lockwood's evident discomfiture.
In gossip and banter the time went by, until some one proposed to "turn
the Bible." I do not know where this form of sortilege originated; it is
probably as old as Luther's Bible. One can find it practiced in Germany
to-day as it is in various parts of the United States.
"Come, Sophronia, you and me will hold the key," said Lockwood, who was
always quick to seize an advantage.
These two, therefore, set themselves to tell the fortunes of the
company. The large iron key to the front door and a short, fat little
pocket-Bible were the magic implements. The ward end of the key was
inserted between the leaves of the Bible at the first chapter of Ruth;
the book was closed and a string bound so tightly about it as to hold it
firmly to the key. The ring end of the key protruded. This was carefully
balanced on the tips of the forefingers of Lockwood and Sophronia
Miller, so that the Bible hung between and below their hands. A very
slight motion, unconscious and invisible, of either of the supporting
fingers would be sufficient to precipitate the Bible and key to the
floor.
"Who can say the verse?" asked Lockwood.
"I know it like a book," said Virginia Miller.
"You say it, Ginnie," said her sister; "but whose turn first?"
The two amateur sorcerers, with fingers under the key-ring, sat face to
face in the dim light of the candle, their right elbows resting on their
knees as they bent forward to hold the Bible between them. The others
stood about with countenances expressing curiosity and amusement.
"Rachel first," said Henry Miller; "everybody wants to know who in
thunderation Rache _will_ marry, ef she ever marries anybody. I don't
believe even the Bible can tell that. Turn fer Rachel Albaugh, and let's
see how it comes out. Say the verse, Ginnie."
"Letter A," said Virginia Miller, solemnly; and then she repeated the
words like a witch saying a charm:
"'Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will
I die, and there will I be buried.'"
The key did not turn. It was manifest, therefore, that Rachel would
never marry any man whose name began with the first letter of the
alphabet. The letter B was called, and again the solemn charm was
repeated; the company resting breathless to the end. The Bible and key
refused to respond for B, or C, or D, or E, or F. But when Ginnie Miller
announced "Letter G," it was with a voice that betrayed a consciousness
of having reached a critical point in her descent of the alphabet; there
was a rustle of expectation in the room, and even McGill, standing
meditatively with his hands behind his back, shifted his weight from his
left foot to his right so as to have a better view of any antics the
Bible might take a notion to perform. Just as Virginia Miller reached
the words "and where thou diest will I die," the key slipped off
Sophronia's fingers first, and the book fell to the floor.
"G stands for Grayson," said Magill gravely, but he pronounced his "G"
so nearly like "J" that a titter went around the room.
"Don't you know better than to spell Grayson with a J, Mr. Magill?"
asked Rachel.
Magill did not see the drift of the question, and before he could reply,
Lockwood, without looking up, broke in with: "What are you talking
about, all of you? It's not the last name, it's the given name you go
by."
"Oh!" cried Mely McCord, in mild derision, "George begins with G. I
didn't think of that."
"Yis," said Magill, reflectively, "that's a fact; George does begin with
jay too."
"I tell you it's the last name," said Tom, laughing.
"I tell you it isn't," said Lockwood, doggedly; but Henry Miller, seeing
a chance for disagreeable words, made haste to say: "Come, boys, it's
the good-natured one that'll win. Hang up the Bible once more and let's
see if it 'll drop for Lockwood when it gets to L, or for Tom when we
come to T. I don't more than half believe in the thing. It never will
turn for me on anything but Q, and they a'n't no girl with Q to her name
this side of Jericho except Queen Brooks, an' she lives thirteen miles
away an' 's engaged to another feller, and I would n't look at her
twiste if she wuz n't, nur she 't me like 's not. Come, Ginnie, gee-up
your oxen. Let's have H."
The Bible refused to turn at H.
"Rachel won't marry you, Henry Miller," said the county clerk.
"No," said Henry, "Rache an' me 's always been first-rate friends, but
she knows me too well to fall in love with me, an' I'm the only feller
in this end of the county that's never made a fool of myself over
Rachel."
Neither would the Bible turn at I, J, or K. But at L it turned.
"Of course it'll turn at L, when Lockwood 's got hold of the key," said
Tom with another laugh. "That 's what he took hold for."
"That's the same as saying I don't play fair," said Lockwood, with
irritation.
"Fair and square a'n't just your way, George. But there's no use being
cross about it."
"Come, boys, if you 're going to quarrel over the Bible you can't have
it," said Rachel, who loved tranquillity. "As for me, I'm going to marry
whoever I please, and I won't get married _till_ I please, Bible or no
Bible"; and she untied the string, put the rusty key in the door, and
laid the plump little book in its old place on the mantel-piece, until
it should be wanted again for religious disputation or fortune-telling.
Grayson went rattling on with cheerful and good-natured nonsense, but
George Lockwood, pushed into the shade by Tom's ready talk and by
Rachel's apparent preference for him, was not in a very good humor, and
departed early in company with Magill. After all the rest had gone,
Barbara Grayson had to remind Tom more than once of the lateness of the
hour, for nine o'clock was late in that day.
"Send him home, Rachel," she said, "at half-past nine; he'll never go
while you look good-natured." Then, taking her brother by the arm,
Barbara led him to the gate. Rachel followed, almost as reluctant to
close the evening as Tom himself.
II
WINNING AND LOSING
The next Friday evening Grayson and Lockwood were again brought
together; this time in the miscellaneous store of Wooden & Snyder, in
which George Lockwood was the only clerk. Here after closing-time the
young men of the village were accustomed to gratify their gregarious
propensities; this was a club-room, where, amid characteristic odors of
brown sugar, plug tobacco, new calico, vinegar, whisky, molasses, and
the dressed leather of boots and shoes, social intercourse was carried
on by a group seated on the top of nail-kegs, the protruding ends of
shoe-boxes, and the counters that stretched around three sides of the
room. Here were related again all those stock anecdotes which have come
down from an antiquity inconceivably remote, but which in every village
are yet told as having happened three or four miles away, and three or
four years ago, to the intimate friend of the narrator's uncle. The
frequency of such assemblies takes off something of their zest; where
everybody knows all his neighbor's history and has heard everybody
else's favorite story, a condition of mental equilibrium ensues, and
there is no exchange of electricities. The new-comer, or the man who has
been away, is a heaven-send in a village; he stirs its stagnant
intellect as a fresh breeze, and is for the time the hero of every
congregation of idlers.
Such a man on this evening was Dave Sovine, the son of a settler from
one of the Channel Islands. Four years ago, when but sixteen years old,
Dave had unluckily waked up one summer morning at daybreak. Looking out
of the little window in the end of the loft of his father's house, he
had contemplated with disgust a large field of Indian corn to be "plowed
out" that day under a June sun. So repulsive to his nature was the
landscape of young maize and the prospect of toil, that he dressed
himself, tied up his spare clothes in a handkerchief, and, taking his
boots in his hand, descended noiselessly the stairway which was in the
outside porch of the house. Once on the ground, he drew on his boots and
got away toward the Wabash, where he shipped as cook on a flat-boat
bound for New Orleans. No pursuit or inquiry was made by his family, and
the neighbors suspected that his departure was not a source of regret.
At Shawneetown the flat-boat was suddenly left without a cook. Dave had
been sent up in the town with a little money to lay in supplies of
coffee and sugar; instead of coming back, he surreptitiously shipped as
cabin-boy on the steamboat _Queen of the West_, which was just leaving
the landing, bound also for the "lower country." Sovine had afterward
been in the Gulf, he had had adventures in Mexico, and he had contrived
to pick up whatever of evil was to be learned in every place he visited.
He had now come home ostensibly "to see the folks," but really to
gratify his vanity in astonishing his old acquaintances by an admirable
proficiency in deviltry. His tales of adventure were strange and
exciting, and not likely to shrink in the telling. The youth of Moscow
listened with open-mouthed admiration to one who, though born in their
village, had seen so much of the world and broken all of the
commandments. For his skill at cards they soon had not only admiration
but dread. He had emptied the pockets of his companions by a kind of
prestidigitation quite incomprehensible to them. He seemed to play
fairly, but there was not a loafer in Moscow who had not become timid
about playing with Dave; the long run of luck was ever on his side. It
was much more amusing to his companions to hear him, with ugly winks and
the complacent airs of a man who feels sure that he had cut his
eye-teeth, tell how he had plucked others in gambling than to furnish
him with new laurels at their own expense.
On this particular evening Dave Sovine lounged on one of the counters,
with a stack of unbleached "domestic" cloth for a bolster, while his
bright patent-leather shoes were posed so as to be in plain view. Thus
comfortably fixed, he bantered the now wary and rather impecunious
"boys" for a game of poker, euchre, seven-up, or anything to pass away
the time. George Lockwood, as representing the proprietors of the
store, sat on a ledge below the shelves with his feet braced on a box
under the counter. He was still smarting from his discomfiture with
Rachel Albaugh, and he was also desirous of investigating Dave Sovine's
play without risking his own "fips" and "bits" in the game. So, after
revolving the matter in his mind as he did every matter, he said to
Dave, with a half-sinister smile:
"Tom Grayson's upstairs in Blackman's office. Maybe you might get up a
game with him. He plays a stiff hand, and he a'n't afraid of the Ole Boy
at cards, or anything else, for that matter."
"You call him down," said Dave, winking his eye significantly, and
involuntarily disclosing a vein of exultant deviltry which made the
cool-blooded Lockwood recoil a little; however, George felt that it
would be a satisfaction to see Tom's pride reduced.
Lockwood got down off the ledge in a sluggish way, and walked around the
end of the counter to the stove-pipe which ran from the box-stove in the
store up through the office above.
"I say, Tom!" he called.
"What?" came out of the pipe.
"Dave Sovine says he can beat you at any game you choose. Come down and
try him."
Grayson was bending over a law-book with only a tallow candle for light.
Studying the law of common carriers was, in his opinion, dull business
for a fellow with good red blood in his veins. He heard the murmur of
conversation below, and for the last half-hour he had longed to put the
book up beside its sheepskin companions on the shelves and join the
company in the store. This banter decided him.
"I'll come down a little minute and try just three games and no more,"
he said. Then he closed the book with a thump and went down the outside
stairway, which was the only means of egress from the law-office, and
was let into the back door of the store by George Lockwood. He got an
empty soap-box and set it facing the nail-keg on which Dave Sovine had
placed himself for the encounter. A half-barrel with a board on top was
put between the players, and served for table on which to deal and throw
the cards; the candle rested on the rusty box-stove which stood, winter
and summer, midway between the counters. Lockwood snuffed the candle and
then, with an affectation of overlistlessness, placed himself behind
Sovine, so as to command a view of his cards and of all his motions.
Tom had prudence enough to insist on playing for small stakes of a
twelve-and-a-half-cent bit at a game;--his purse was not heavy enough
for him to venture greater ones. At first the larger number of games
fell to Grayson, and his winnings were considerable to one who had never
had more than money enough for his bare necessities. He naturally forgot
all about the law of common carriers and the limit of three games he had
prescribed himself.
Dave cursed his infernal luck, as he called it, and when the twelfth
round left Tom about a dollar ahead, he gave the cards a "Virginia
poke" whenever it came his turn to cut them; that is to say, he pushed
one card out of the middle of the pack, and put it at the back. By this
means Dave proposed to "change the luck," as he said; but George
Lockwood, who looked over Dave's shoulder, was not for a minute deceived
by this manoeuvre. He knew that this affectation of a superstition
about luck and the efficiency of poking the cards was only a blind to
cover from inexpert eyes the real sleight by which Dave, when he chose,
could deal himself strong hands. Even the Virginia poke did not
immediately bring a change, and when Tom had won a dozen games more than
Dave, and so was a dollar and a half ahead, and had got his pulses well
warmed up, Dave manifested great vexation, and asked Grayson to increase
the stakes to half a dollar, so as to give him a chance to recover some
of his money before it was time to quit. Tom consented to this, and the
proportions of winnings passed to the other side of the board. Dave won
sometimes two games in three, sometimes three in five, and Tom soon
found a serious inroad made in the small fund of thirteen dollars which
he had earned by odd jobs writing and even by harder and homelier work.
This money had been hoarded toward a new suit of clothes. He began to
breathe hard; he put up his hard-earned half-dollars with a trembling
hand, and he saw them pass into Sovine's pocket with a bitter regret; he
took his few winnings with eagerness. Every lost half-dollar represented
a day's work, and after every loss he resolved to venture but one more,
if the luck did not change. But how could he endure to quit defeated? He
saw before him weeks of regret and self-reproach; he felt a desperate
necessity for recovering his ground. As the loss account mounted, his
lips grew dry, the veins in his forehead visibly swelled, and the
perspiration trickled from his face. He tried to hide his agitation
under an affectation of indifference and amusement, but when he essayed
to speak careless words for a disguise, his voice was husky and
unsteady, and he kept swallowing, with an effort as though something in
his throat threatened him with suffocation. Dave noted these signs of
distress in his adversary with a sort of luxurious pleasure; he had in
him the instincts of a panther, and the suffering inflicted on another
gave an additional relish to his victory.
Lockwood watched the play with a sharp curiosity, hoping to penetrate
the secret of Sovine's skill. He felt, also, a certain regret, for he
had not expected to see Tom quite so severely punished. At length Tom's
last dollar was reached; with a flushed face, he held the coin in his
trembling hand for a moment, and then he said bravely: "It might as well
go with the rest, if I lose this time," and he laid it down as a single
stake, hoping that luck would favor him.
When Dave had pocketed this he leaned back and smiled with that sort of
ruthless content that a beast of prey feels when he licks his chops
after having enjoyed a meal from his lawful prey.
Tom's losses were relatively great; it was a kind of small ruin that had
suddenly overtaken him. A month of writing, if he had it to do, would
not have replaced the money, nor was his a nature that could easily
brook defeat. The very courage and self-reliance that would have stood
him in admirable stead in another kind of difficulty, and that in other
circumstances would have been accounted a virtue, were a snare to him
now.
"Look here, Dave," he said, with a voice choked by mortification, "give
me a chance to win a little of that back," and he laid his pocket-knife
on the table.
"Tom, you'd better quit," said three or four voices at once. But Dave
rather eagerly laid a half-dollar by Tom's knife and won the knife. He
liked this chance to give a certain completeness to the job. Then Tom
laid out his silk handkerchief, which he also lost--for the games all
went one way now.
"Come, Tom, hold on now," said the chorus.
But Tom was in the torment of perdition. He glared at those who advised
him to desist. Then, in a mixture of stupor and desperation, he placed
his hat on the board against a dollar and lost that; then he stripped
the coat from his back and lost it, and at last his boots went the same
way. When these were gone, having nothing further to wager without
consigning himself to aboriginal nakedness, he sat in a kind of daze,
his eyes looking swollen and bloodshot with excitement.
"Come, Dave," said Lockwood, "give him back his clothes. You've won
enough without taking the clothes off his back."
"That's all you know about it," said Dave, who noted every token of
Tom's suffering as an additional element in his triumph. "That may be
your Illinois way, but that isn't the way we play in New Orleans.
Winnings is winnings where I learnt the game." And he proceeded to lay
Tom's things in a neat pile convenient for transportation.
"Aw! come now, Dave," said one and another, "'t a'n't the fair thing to
send a fellow home to his folks barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves."
But Dave smiled in supercilious contempt at this provincial view of
things, and cited the usages of the superior circles to which he had
gained admission.
Lockwood at length lent Tom the money to redeem his garments, and the
necessity which obliged him to borrow from the man who had got him into
the scrape was the bitterest of all the bitter elements in Tom's defeat.
He went out into the fresh air and walked home mechanically. His
dashing, headlong ways had already partly alienated his uncle, and the
only hope of Tom's retaining his assistance long enough to complete his
law studies lay in the chance that his relative might fail to hear of
this last escapade. It was clear to Tom without much canvassing of the
question that he could not borrow from him the money to replace what he
had gotten from Lockwood to redeem his clothes. He entered the garden by
the back gate, climbed up to the roof of the wood-shed by means of a
partition fence, and thence managed to pull himself into the window of
his own chamber as stealthily as possible, that his uncle's family might
not know that he had come home at half-past twelve. He stood a long
while in the breeze at the open window watching the shadows of clouds
drift over the moonlit prairie, which stretched away like a shoreless
sea from the back of his uncle's house. He could not endure to bring his
thoughts all at once to bear on his affairs; he stood there uneasily and
watched these flitting black shadows come and go, and he gnashed his
teeth with vexation whenever a full sense of his present misery and his
future perplexities drifted over him.
He shut the window and went to bed at last, and by the time daylight
arrived he had turned over every conceivable expedient. There was
nothing for him but to accept the most disagreeable of all of them. He
would have to draw on the slender purse of his mother and Barbara, for
Lockwood's was a debt that might not be put off, and he could see no
present means of earning money. He purposed to make some excuse to go
home again on Saturday. It would be dreadful to meet Barbara's
reproaches, and to see his mother's troubled face. How often he had
planned to be the support of these two, but he seemed doomed to be only
a burden; he had dreamed of being a source of pride to them, but again
and again he had brought them mortification. Had he been less generous
or more callous he would not have minded it so much. But as it was, his
intolerable misery drove him to castle-building. He comforted himself
with the reflection that he could make it all right with the folks at
home when once he should get into practice. Barbara should have an
easier time then. How often had he drawn drafts on the imaginary future
for consolation!
III
PAYING THE FIDDLER
"You didn't mean no harm, Tommy," said Mrs. Grayson, "I know you
didn't." She was fumbling in the drawer of a clothes-press, built by the
side of the chimney in the sitting-room of the Grayson farm-house in
Hubbard township. She kept her money in this drawer concealed under a
collection of miscellaneous articles.
Tom sat looking out of the window. Ever since his gambling scrape he had
imagined his mother's plaintive voice excusing him in this way. It was
not the first time that he had had to be pulled out of disasters
produced by his own rashness, and it seemed such an unmanly thing for
him to come home with his troubles; but he must pay Lockwood quickly,
lest any imprudent word of that not very friendly friend should reach
his uncle's ears. Nothing but the fear of bringing on them greater evil
could have scourged him into facing his mother and sister with the story
of his gambling. Once in their presence, his wretched face had made it
evident that he was in one of those tight places which were ever
recurring in his life. He made a clean breast of it; your dashing
dare-devil fellow has less temptation to lie than the rest of us. And
now he had told it all,--he made it a sort of atonement to keep back
nothing,--and he sat there looking out of the window at the steady
dropping of a summer rain which had pelted him ever since he had set out
from Moscow. He looked into the rain and listened to the quivering voice
of his disappointed mother as she rummaged her drawer to take enough to
meet his debt from the dollars accumulated by her own and Barbara's toil
and management--dollars put by as a sinking fund to clear the farm of
debt. But most of all he dreaded the time when Barbara should speak. She
sat at the other window of the room with her face bent down over her
sewing, which was pinned to her dress at the knee. She had listened to
his story, but she had not uttered a word, and her silence filled him
with foreboding. Tom watched the flock of bedraggled and down-hearted
chickens creeping about under the eaves of the porch to escape the rain,
and wondered whether it would not be better to kill himself to get rid
of himself. His mother fumbled long and irresolutely in the drawer,
looking up to talk every now and then, mostly in order to delay as long
as possible the painful parting with her savings.
"I know you didn't mean no harm, Tommy; I know you didn't; but it's
awful hard on Barb'ry an' me, partin' with this money. Dave Sovine's a
wicked wretch to bring such trouble on two women like us, that's had
such a hard time to git on, an' nobody left to work the place. Out uv
six children, you an' Barb'ry's all that's left alive. It's hard on a
woman to be left without her husband, an' all but the two youngest
children dead."
Here she stopped ransacking the drawer to wipe her eyes. She gave way to
her grief the more easily because she still lacked resolution to devote
her earnings to filling up the gap made by Tom's prodigality. And in
every trouble her mind reverted involuntarily to the greater
tribulations of her life; all rills of disappointment and all rivers of
grief led down to this great sea of sorrow.
"You're the only two't's left, you two. Ef you'd just keep out uv bad
comp'ny, Tommy. But," she said, recovering herself, "I know you're
feelin' awful bad, an' you're a good boy only you're so keerless an'
ventersome. You didn't mean no harm, an' you won't do it no more, I know
you won't."
By this time Mrs. Grayson's trembling hands, on whose hardened palms and
slightly distorted fingers one might have read the history of a lifetime
of work and hardship, had drawn out a cotton handkerchief in which were
tied up thirty great round cumbersome Spanish and Mexican dollars, with
some smaller silver. This she took to a table, where she proceeded
slowly to count out for Tom the exact amount he had borrowed to redeem
his clothes,--not a fi'-penny bit more did she spare him.
At this point Barbara began to speak. She raised her face from her work
and drew her dark eyes to a sharp focus, as she always did when she was
much in earnest.
"It don't matter much about us, Tom," she said, despondently. "Women are
made to give up for men, I suppose. I've made up my mind a'ready to quit
the school over at Timber Creek, though I do hate to."
"Yes," said her mother, "an' it's too bad, fer you did like that
new-fangled study of algebray, though I can't see the good of it."
"I don't want to hurt your feelings," Barbara went on, "but maybe it'll
do you good, Tom, to remember that I've got to give up the school, and
it's my very last chance, and I've got to spin and knit enough this
winter to make up the money you've thrown away in one night. You
wouldn't make us trouble a-purpose for anything,--I know that. And, any
way, we don't care much about ourselves; it don't matter about us. But
we do care about you. What'll happen if you go on in this
heels-over-head way? Uncle Tom'll never stand it, you know, and your
only chance'll be gone. That's what'll hurt us all 'round--to give up
all for you, and then you make a mess of it--in spite of all we've
done."
"You're awful hard on me, Barb," said Tom, writhing a little in his
chair. "I wish I'd made an end of myself, as I thought of doing, when I
was done playing that night."
"There you are again," said Barbara, "without ever stopping to think. I
suppose you think it would have made mother and me feel better about it,
for you to kill yourself!"
"Don't be so cuttin' with your tongue, Barb'ry," said her mother, "we
can stand it, and poor Tom didn't mean to do it."
"Pshaw!" said Barbara, giving herself a shake of impatience, "what a
baby excuse that is for a grown-up man like Tom! Tom's no fool if he
would only think; but he'll certainly spoil everything before he comes
to his senses, and then we'll all be here in the mud together;--the
family'll be disgraced, and there'll be no chance of Tom's getting on.
What makes me mad is that Tom'll sit there and let you excuse him by
saying that he didn't _mean_ any harm, and then he'll be just as gay as
ever by day after to-morrow, and just as ready to run into some new
scrape."