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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 circumstance 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 passing 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 passion for Rachel Albaugh; and his passion 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 Saturday, 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 Saturday 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 molasses 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 butter 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 titter 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' shore 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 repetition; any event with a parabolic or hyperbolic orbit which intrudes into this system is a godsend; 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 scrape, 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?"

"Nobody," said Ike, feeling some compunction that he had gone so far. "I just heard it."

"Who'd you hear it from?"

"George Lockwood kind uh let 't out without 'xactly sayin' 't wuz Tom. But he didn't deny it wuz Tom."

Having thus relieved himself from the uncomfortable pressure of his secret, Ike got up and went out whistling, leaving Rachel to think the matter over. It was not the moral aspect of the question that presented itself to her. If Tom had beaten Sovine she would not have cared. It was Tom's cleverness as well as his buoyant spirit that had touched her, and now her hero had played the fool. She had the wariness of one who had known many lovers; her wit was not profound, and she saw rather than contrived the course most natural to one of her prudent and ease-loving temperament; she would hold Tom in check, and postpone the disagreeable necessity for final decision.

V
THE MITTEN

Next to Tom's foreboding about his uncle was the dread of the effect of his bad conduct on Rachel. On that rainy Saturday afternoon he thought much about the possibility of making shipwreck with Rachel; and this led him to remember with a suspicion, foreign to his temper, the part that Lockwood had taken in his disgrace. By degrees he transferred much of his indignation from Sovine to George Lockwood. He resolved to see Rachel on his way back to town, and if possible by a frank confession to her to forestall and break the force of any reports that might get abroad. The bold course was always the easiest to one of so much propulsiveness. He remembered that there was a "singin'," as it was called in the country, held every Sunday afternoon in the Timber Creek school-house, half-way between his mother's house and the Albaugh's. This weekly singing-school was attended by most of the young people of the neighborhood, and by Rachel Albaugh among the rest. Tom planned to stop, as though by chance, at the gathering and ride home with the ever adorable Rachel.

When Tom reached the school-house, Bryant, the peripatetic teacher of vocal music, was standing in front of his class and leading them by beating time with his rawhide riding-whip. Esteeming himself a leader in the musical world, he was not restricted to the methods used by musicians of greater renown. It is easy for ignorance to make innovation, – the America of a half century ago was seriously thinking of revising everything except the moral law. While Noah Webster in Connecticut was proposing single-handed to work over the English tongue so as to render it suitable to the wants of a self-complacent young nation, other reformers as far west as St. Louis were engaged in improving the world's system of musical notation. Of the new method Bryant was an ardent propagator; he made much of the fact that he was a musical new light, and taught the "square notes," a system in which the relative pitch was not only indicated by the position of the notes upon the clef, but also by their characteristic shapes. Any simpleton could here tell "do" from "me" at sight.

In the "Missouri Harmonist" the lines and spaces were decorated with quavers and semi-quavers whose heads were circles, squares, and triangles; Old Hundred becoming a solemn procession of one-legged and no-legged geometric figures. But Bryant understood his business too well to confine his Sunday classes of young people to Sunday tunes. When Tom, after tying his horse to the inner corner of a rail-fence, pushed back the school-house door, creaking on its wooden hinges, the four divisions of the class were chasing one another through a "round," the words of which ran:

 
"Now, Lawrence, take your bag,
And go right straight to mill,
And see, m – y b – o – y,
That not a bit you spill!"
 

This kind of music was naturally popular. Such a service relieves the tedium of a Sunday afternoon, and has something of the charm a dog finds in pursuing his own tail.

Some of the members of the class turned their heads and their vocal mouths towards the door when Tom came in, but in the midst of this jangle of voices singing different portions of the same air most of them had all they could do to keep their time by waving their heads or thumping their toes on the puncheon floor, while they alternately looked at their books and at Bryant, who thrashed away with his whip, his lips seeming to say, though the words were inaudible in the general din:

"Up, down, right, left, up," as he perpetually made right angles in the air. Rachel was in the act of drawing the word "boy" to the full length of a long note with a hold after it, but she looked up long enough to recognize the new arrival; then she dropped her eyes to the book again and gave the most severe attention to Bryant and the square notes thereafter, not once looking at Tom to the end. From this unwonted absorption in her music, Tom inferred that Rachel had somehow heard of his misconduct and was offended. But her charms enchanted him more than ever now that they were receding from him, and with a characteristic resolution he determined not to give her up without a sharp endeavor to regain his lost ground.

When the "singing" "let out," Tom availed himself of the first moment of confusion, while Rachel stood apart, to ask permission to go home with her, in the well-worn formula which was the only polite and proper word to use for the purpose; for it is strange how rigidly certain exact forms were adhered to among people where intercourse was for the most part familiar and unconventional.

"May I see you safe home?" he asked, as he had often asked before, but never before with trepidation.

"No," said Rachel, with an evident effort, and without looking at Tom's face.

Such an answer is technically known as "the sack" and "the mitten," though it would take a more inventive antiquary than I to tell how it got these epithets. But it was one of the points on which the rural etiquette of that day was rigorous and inflexible, that such a refusal closed the conversation and annihilated the beau without allowing him to demand any explanations or to make any further advances at the time. Tom was not of the sort easily snuffed out. He had to ride past Rachel's house, and it would be an addition to his disappointment that everybody would see his discomfiture. So he answered.

"Well, I'll lead up your horse for you anyhow," and he went out before she could make up her mind to refuse him, and brought the sorrel filly alongside a tree-stump left standing in front of the school-house for a horse-block. The rest had by this time either mounted and gone, or were walking away afoot. Rachel felt a secret admiration for his audacity as she sprang into her saddle, while Tom held her bridle and adjusted the stirrup to her foot.

"What have I done, Rachel?"

"You know, well enough." Her voice was low and tremulous. She had dismissed other favorites, but never before had she found in herself so much reluctance.

"Do you mean my gambling with Dave Sovine?" said Tom, driving, as usual, point-blank at the very center of things.

"Yes."

"Who told you?" He still held on to her bridle-rein with his left hand, – somewhat as a highwayman does in romances.

"Oh! I guess everybody knows. Ike heard it yesterday, from George Lockwood or somebody."

"It was Lockwood got me into it," said Tom, shutting his teeth hard. "If you'd let me go home with you, I could explain things a little."

But those who are enervated by the balmy climate of flattery naturally dread a stiff breeze of ridicule. Rachel Albaugh did not like to bear any share of the odium that must come on Tom when his recklessness, and, above all, his bad luck, should become known. She drew the rein that Tom held, until he felt obliged to let it go, and said "No."

"I have got what I needed," said Tom, making the best of his defeat.

"What?" asked Rachel.

"Oh! one mitten isn't of any use alone; you've given me a pair of them."

Tom felt now the exhilaration of desperation. He gayly mounted his horse, and bade Rachel a cheerful good-bye as he galloped past her; then, when he had overtaken a group of those ahead of Rachel, he reined up and turned in the saddle, leaning his left hand on the croup, while he joked and bantered with one and another. Then he put his horse into a gallop again.

When he was well out of hearing, Henry Miller, who was one of the party, remarked to his companions that he didn't know what was up, but it seemed to him as though Tom Grayson had got something that looked like a mitten without any thumb. "That's one more that Rache's shed," he remarked. "But when she gets a chance to shed me she'll know it."

As Tom rode onward toward the village his spirits sank again, and he let his horse break down into an easy trot and then into a slow walk.

It was no longer Sovine that he cursed inwardly. George Lockwood, he reflected, had called him away from the Law of Common Carriers to play a little game with Dave, and it was Lockwood who had reported his discomfiture to the Albaughs. He put these things together by multiplication rather than by addition, and concluded that Lockwood, from the first, had planned his ruin in order to destroy his chances with Rachel, which was giving that mediocre young man credit for a depth of forethinking malice he was far from possessing.

Monday morning Tom went into Wooden & Snyder's store on the way to his office above. Lockwood had just finished sweeping out; the sprinkling upon the floor was not dry; it yet showed the figure 8s which he had made in swinging the sprinkler to and fro as he walked. The only persons in the store were two or three villagers; the country people rarely came in on Monday, and never at so early an hour. One frisky young man of a chatty temperament had stopped to exchange the gossip of the morning with George; but meaning to make his halt as slight as possible, he had not gone farther than the threshold, on which he now balanced himself, with his hands in his pockets, talking as he rocked nervously to and fro, like a bird on a waving bough in a wind. Another villager had slouched in to buy a pound of nails, with which to repair the damage done to his garden fence by the pigs during Sunday; but as he was never in a hurry, he stood back and gave the first place to a carpenter who wanted a three-cornered file, and who was in haste to get to his day's work. When Lockwood had attended to the carpenter, Tom beckoned him to the back part of the store, and without saying a word counted out to him the money he had borrowed.

Something in Tom's manner gave Lockwood a sneaking feeling that his own share in this affair was not creditable. His was one of those consciences that take their cue from without. Of independent moral judgment he had little; but he had a vague desire to stand well in the judgment of others, and even to stand well in his own eyes when judged by other people's code. It was this half-evolved conscience that made him wish – what shall I say? – to atone for the harm he had but half-intentionally done to Tom? or, to remove the unfavorable impression that Tom evidently had of his conduct? At any rate, when he had taken his money again, he ventured to offer some confidential advice in a low tone. For your cool man who escapes the pitfalls into which better and cleverer men often go headlong is prone to rank his worldly wisdom, and even his sluggish temperament, among the higher virtues. Some trace of this relative complacency made itself heard perhaps in Lockwood's voice, when he said in an undertone:

"You know, Tom, if I were you, I'd take a solemn oath never to touch a card again. You're too rash."

This good counsel grated on the excited feelings of the recipient of it.

"I don't want any advice from you," said Tom in a bitter monotone.

I have heard it mentioned by an expert that a super-heated steam-boiler is likely to explode with the first escape of steam, the slight relief of pressure precipitating the catastrophe. Tom had resolved not to speak a word to Lockwood, but his wounded and indignant pride had brooded over Rachel's rejection the livelong night, and now the air of patronage in Lockwood drew from him this beginning; then his own words aggravated his feelings, and speech became an involuntary explosion.

"You called me down-stairs," he said, "and got me into this scrape. Do you think I don't know what it was for? You took pains to have word about it go where it would do me the most harm."

"I didn't do any such thing," said Lockwood.

"You did," said Tom. "You told Ike Albaugh Saturday. You're a cold-blooded villain, and if you cross my path again I'll shoot you."

By this time he was talking loud enough for all in the store to hear. The villager who wanted nails had sidled a little closer to the center of the explosion, the young man tilting to and fro on the threshold of the front door had come inside the store and was deeply engaged in studying the familiar collection of pearl buttons, colored sewing-silks, ribbons, and other knick-knacks in the counter showcase, while the carpenter had forgotten his haste, and turning about stood now with his tool-box under his arm, looking at Tom Grayson and Lockwood with blunt curiosity.

"That's a nice way to treat me, I must say," said Lockwood, in a kind of whine of outraged friendship. "You'd 'a' gone home bareheaded and in your shirt-sleeves and your stocking-feet, if 't hadn't 'a' been fer me."

"I'd 'a' gone home with my money in my pocket, if you and Dave Sovine hadn't fixed it up between you to fleece me. I 'xpect you made as much out of it as Dave did. You've got me out 'v your way now. But you look out! Don't you cross my track again, George Lockwood, or I'll kill you!"

In a new country, where life is full of energy and effervescence, it is much easier for an enraged man to talk about killing than it is in a land of soberer thinking and less lawlessness. The animal which we call a young man was not so tame in Illinois two generations ago as it is now. But Tom's threat, having given vent to his wrath, lowered the pressure: by the time he had made this second speech his violence had partly spent itself, and he became conscious that he was heard by the three persons in the store, as well as by Snyder, the junior proprietor, who stood now in the back door. Tom Grayson turned and strode out of the place, dimly aware that he had again run the risk of bringing down the avalanche by his rashness. For if Tom was quickly brought to a white-heat, radiation was equally rapid. Long before noon he saw clearly that he had probably rendered it impossible to keep the secret of his gambling from his uncle. All the town would hear of his quarrel with Lockwood, and all the town would set itself to know to the utmost the incident that was the starting-point of a wrath so violent.

If Tom had not known by many frosty experiences his uncle's unimpressionable temper, he would have followed his instinct and gone directly to him with a frank confession. But there was nothing to be gained by such a course with such a man.