Читать книгу The Graysons - Eggleston Edward - Страница 19

Table of Contents

When Tom, after his violent speech on that unlucky Monday morning, had gone out of Wooden & Snyder's store, George Lockwood turned to Snyder, the junior partner, and said, with his face a little flushed:

"What a fool that boy is, anyhow! He came in here the other night after the store was shut up and played cards with Dave Sovine till he lost all the money he had. I tried my best to stop him, but I couldn't do it. He went on and bet all the clo'es he could spare and lost 'em. I had to lend him the money to get 'em back. It seems Tom's girl—John Albaugh's daughter—heard of it, and now he will have it that I went in partnership with Sovine to get his money, and that I wanted to get Rachel Albaugh away from 'im."

"You oughtn't to have any card-playing here," said Snyder.

"I told the boys then that if they come in here again they mustn't bring any cards."

"Tom's a fool to threaten you that way. You could bind him over on that, I suppose," said Snyder.

"I s'pose I could," said George.

But he did nothing that day. He prided himself on being a man that a body couldn't run over, but he had his own way of resisting aggression; he was not Esau, but Jacob. He could not storm and threaten like Tom; there was no tempest in him. Cold venom will keep, and Lockwood's resentments did not lose their strength by exposure to the air. The day after Tom's outburst, Lockwood, having taken time to consider the alternatives, suggested to Snyder, that while he wasn't afraid of Tom, there was no knowing what such a hot-head might do. Lockwood professed an unwillingness to bind Tom over to keep the peace, but thought some influence might be brought to bear on him that would serve the purpose. Snyder proposed that Lockwood should go to see Tom's uncle, but George objected. That would only inflame Tom and make matters worse. Perhaps Snyder would see Blackman, so that Lockwood need not appear in the matter? Then Blackman could speak to Grayson the elder, if he thought best.

The calculating temper, and the touch of craftiness, pliancy, and tact in Lockwood served the ends of his employers in many ways, and Snyder was quite willing to put his clerk under obligations of friendship to him. Therefore, when he saw Tom go out of the office, Snyder mounted the stairs and had an interview with Blackman. As the lawyer was intrusted with all the bad debts and pettifogging business of Wooden & Snyder, any suggestion from a member of the firm was certain to receive attention. Snyder told the lawyer that Lockwood didn't want to drag Tom before a squire, and suggested that Blackman could settle it by getting the uncle to give the fellow a good admonition. He offered the suggestion as though it were quite on his own motion, he having overheard Tom's threat. The hand of George Lockwood was concealed; but it was only Lockwood who knew how exceedingly vulnerable Tom's fortunes were on the side of his relations with his uncle. That evening Blackman sat in Grayson's sitting-room. He was a man with grayish hair, of middle height, and rather too lean to fill up his clothes, which hung on his frame rather than fitted it; and if one regarded his face, there seemed too little substance to quite fill out his skin, which was not precisely wrinkled, but rather wilted. Grayson had turned around in his writing-chair and sat with one leg over the arm, but Blackman had probably never lolled in his life: he was possessed by a sort of impotent uneasiness that simulated energy and diligence. He sat, as was his wont, on the front rail of the chair-seat, as though afraid to be comfortable, and he held in his hand a high hat half full of papers, according to the custom of the lawyers of that day, who carried on their heads that part of their business which they could not carry in them. Blackman told the story of Tom's gambling as he had heard it, and of his threatening Lockwood, while the brows of Tom's uncle visibly darkened. Then the lawyer came to what he knew would seem to Grayson the vital point in the matter.

"You know," he said, "if George Lockwood was a-mind to, he could bind Tom to keep the peace; though I don't s'pose Tom meant anything more than brag by talking that way. But it wouldn't be pleasant for you to have Tom hauled up, and to have to go his bail. I told Snyder I thought you could fix it up without going before the squire." Blackman passed his heavily laden hat from his right hand to his left, and then with the right he nervously roached up his stiff, rusty hair, which he habitually kept standing on end. After which he took a red silk handkerchief from his hat and wiped his face, while Grayson got up and walked the floor.

"I shouldn't like to have to go anybody's bail," said the latter after awhile; "it's against my principles to go security. I suppose the best thing would be to send him back to the country to cool off."

Blackman nodded a kind of half assent, but did not venture any further expression of opinion. He rose and deposited his silk handkerchief in a kind of coil on the papers in his hat, and then bent his head forward and downward so as to put on the hat without losing its contents; once it was in place he brought his head to a perpendicular position, so that all the mass of portable law business settled down on the handkerchief, which acted as a cushion between Blackman's affairs and his head.

Tom came in as Blackman went out, and something in the manner of the latter gave him a feeling that he had been the subject of conversation between the lawyer and his uncle. He went directly to his room, and debated within himself whether or not he should go down and interrupt by a frank and full confession the discussion which he thought was probably taking place between Mr. and Mrs. Grayson. But knowing his uncle's power of passive resistance, he debated long—so long that it came to be too late, and he went to bed, resolved to have the first of it with his uncle in the morning.

There was a very serious conference between the two members of the Grayson firm that evening. Mrs. Grayson again presented to her husband the consideration that, if Tom should go away, she didn't see what she was to do with Janet. The child would cry her eyes out, and there'd be no managing her. Grayson sat for some time helpless before this argument.

"I don't see," he said at length, "but we've got to face Janet. We might as well teach her to mind first as last." It was a favorite theory with both of them that some day Janet was to be taught to mind. So long as no attempt was made to fix the day on which the experiment was to begin, the thought pleased them and did no harm. But this proposition to undertake the dreadful task at once was a spurt of courage in Thomas Grayson that surprised his wife.

"Well, Mr. Grayson," she said, with some spirit, "the child's as much yours as she's mine; and if she's to be taught to mind to-morrow, I only hope you'll stay at home and begin."

To this suggestion the husband made no reply. He got up and began to look under the furniture for the boot-jack, according to his custom of pulling off his boots in the sitting-room every night before going to bed.

"You see, Charlotte," he said deprecatingly, when he had fished his boot-jack out from under the bureau, "I don't know what to do. If I keep Tom, Lockwood'll have him before the squire, and I'll have to pay costs and go bail for him."

"I wouldn't do it," said Mrs. Grayson promptly. "We can't afford to have the little we've got put in danger for him. I think you'll have to send him home, and we'll have to get on with Janet. I'm sure we haven't any money to waste. People think we're rich, but we don't feel rich. We're always stinted when we want anything."

The consideration of the risk of the bail settled the matter with both of them. But, like other respectable people, they settled such questions in duplicate. There are two sets of reasons for any course: the one is the real and decisive motive at the bottom; the other is the pretended reason you impose on yourself and fail to impose on your neighbors. The minister accepts the call to a new church with a larger salary; he tells himself that it is on account of opportunities for increased usefulness that he changes. The politician accepts the office he didn't want out of deference to the wishes of importunate friends. A widower marries for the good of his children. These are not hypocrites imposing on their neighbors; that is a hard thing to do, unless the neighbors really wished to be humbugged in the interest of a theory. But we keep complacency whole by little impostures devised for our private benefit. It is pleasant to believe that we are acting from Sunday motives, but we always keep good substantial week-day reasons for actual service. These will bear hard usage without becoming shiny or threadbare, and they are warranted not to lose their colors in the sunshine.

"I'm sure," said Grayson, "Tom gets no good here. If anything will do him any good, it will be sending him to the country to shift for himself. It'll make a man of him, maybe." No better Sunday reason for his action could have been found.

"I think it's your duty to send him home," said his wife, who was more frightened the more she thought of the possible jeopardy of a few hundred dollars from the necessity her husband would be under of going Tom's bail. "A boy like Tom is a great deal better off with his mother," she went on; "and I'm sure we've tried to do what we could for him, and nobody can blame us if he will throw away his chance."

Thus the question was doubly settled; and as by this time Mr. Grayson's boots were off, and he had set them in the corner and pushed the boot-jack into its place under the bureau with his foot, there was no reason why they should not take the candle and retire.

But when morning came Grayson was still loth to face the matter of getting rid of Tom, and especially of contending with Janet. Tom found no chance to talk with him before breakfast, for the uncle did not come out of his bedroom till the coffee was on the table, and he was so silent and constrained that Tom felt his doom in advance. Janet tried to draw her father and then her mother into conversation, but failing, she settled back with the remark, "This is the crossest family!" Then she made an attempt on Tom, who began by this time to feel that exhilaration of desperation that was usually the first effect of a catastrophe on his combative spirit, for no man could be more impudent to fate than he. When Janet playfully stole a biscuit from his plate, he pretended to search for it everywhere, and then set in a breakfast-table romp between the two which exasperated the feelings of Grayson and his wife. When they rose from the table the uncle turned severely on his nephew, and said: "Tom——"

But before he could speak a second word, the nephew, putting Janet aside, interrupted him with:

"Uncle, I should like to speak with you alone a minute."

They went into the sitting-room together, and Tom closed the door. Tom was resolved to have the first of it.

"Uncle, I think I had better go home." Tom was looking out of the window as he spoke. "I got into a row last week through George Lockwood, who persuaded me to play cards for money with Dave Sovine. I don't want to get you into any trouble, so I'm off for Hubbard Township, if you don't object. There's no use of crying over spilt milk, and that's all there is about it."

"I'm very sorry, Tom, that you won't pay attention to what I've said to you about card-playing." The elder Grayson had seated himself, while Tom now stood nervously listening to his uncle's voice, which was utterly dry and business-like; there was not the slightest quiver of feeling in it. "I've got on in the world without anybody to help me, but I never let myself play cards, and I've always kept my temper. You never make any money by getting mad, and if you're going to make any money, it's better to have people friendly. Now, I have to stand a good deal of abuse. People try to cheat me, and if I take the law they call me a skinflint; but I shouldn't make a cent more by quarreling, and I might lose something. I can't keep you, and have you go on as you do. I've told you that before. You'd better go home. Town will ruin you. A little hard work in the country'll be better, and you won't be gambling away the last cent you've got with a loafer like Dave Sovine, and then threatening to shoot somebody, as you did young Lockwood day before yesterday. Just think what you are coming to, Tom. I've done my best for you, and you'll never be anything but a gambler and a loafer, I'm afraid."

These hard words sounded harder in the level and self-complacent voice of the senior Grayson, who spoke slowly and with hardly more intensity than there would have been in his depreciation of a horse he was trying to buy. "Just think what you're coming to," he repeated, because he felt that the proper thing to do under the circumstances was to give Tom a good "talking to," and he couldn't think of anything more to say.

"I don't need you to tell me what I'm coming to," replied Tom, tartly; "I'm coming to the plow-handle and the grubbing-hoe. I'm sorry to give you trouble, but what I feel meanest about is mother and poor Barbara. I know what a fool I've been. But I'm no more a gambler and a loafer than you are. It'll take me longer to work into the law by myself, but I'll get there yet, and you'll see it."

This was Tom's only adieu to his uncle, on whom confessions of wrong and expressions of gratitude, had he felt like uttering them, would have been wasted. Tom went to his room, thumping his feet defiantly on the stairs. He made a bundle of his clothes, while his uncle sneaked out of the house to avoid a collision with his little daughter, the only person of whom he was afraid.

Tom told his Aunt Charlotte good-bye with a high head; but when it came to Janet, he put both arms about the child and drew her to him with a fond embrace.

"You shan't go away, Tom," she said, disengaging herself. "What are you going for? Did they say you must?" By "they" Janet meant her parents, whom she regarded as the allied foes of poor Tom. She looked indignantly at her mother, who had turned her back on this scene of parting.

"I'm going to help my mother," said Tom; "she's poor, and I oughtn't to have left her."

He again embraced the child, who began to cry bitterly. "What shall I do when you're gone?" she sobbed on his shoulder. "This house won't be fit to live in. Such a lot of old pokes!" And she stamped her feet and looked poutingly at her mother.

Tom disengaged himself from her intermittent embraces, and went out with his bundle in his hand.

He went first to the law-office, and sat his bundle on a chair, and addressed himself to Blackman, who had already arrived, and who was apparently much preoccupied with his writing.

"Mr. Blackman, I've made a fool of myself by gambling, and Uncle Tom has concluded I can't stay with him any longer. I don't much wonder at it either. But I do hate to give up the study. Couldn't you give me something to do, so that I could earn my board at your house?"

"No," said the lawyer, looking off horizontally, but not at Tom. "I was just going to tell you I couldn't keep you in the office. You've got altogether too much gunpowder for a lawyer. Better get into the regular army, Tom; that would suit your temper better." Then, after a moment's pause, he added: "I've got young sons, and your example might ruin them if you should come to my house to live." And he leaned forward as though he would resume his writing. These were sound and logical reasons that Blackman gave for not keeping Tom, and the lawyer was sincere as far as he went. But had he discovered by this time that Tom's mind was clearer and more acute than his own, and that if Tom should come to the bar with his uncle's backing he would soon be a formidable rival?

"Besides," resumed the lawyer, as Tom turned reluctantly away, "it's better for you to go to the country. George Lockwood will have you bound over to keep the peace if you stay, and now you're out with your uncle, who's going your bail?"

"Always George Lockwood," Tom thought, as he took up his bundle.

"Good-bye, Mr. Blackman!" Tom's voice was husky now. But when he descended the stairs he went down the village street with a bold front, telling his old cronies good-bye, answering their questions frankly, and braving it out to the last. Put the best face upon it he could, his spirit was bitter, and to a group of old companions who followed him to the "corporation line," at the edge of the village, he said, almost involuntarily:

"George Lockwood got me into this scrape to upset me, and he's purty well done it. If he ever crosses my path, I'm going to get even with him."

Such vague threats do not bind one to any definite execution, and they are a relief to the spirit of an angry man.

Having broken with his uncle, Tom must walk the long ten miles to his mother's farm in Hubbard Township. Before he got there his head was down; the unwonted fatigue of his journey, the bitter sense of defeat, the dark picture his imagination made of his mother's disappointment and of the despair of the ambitious Barbara took all the heart out of him.

When he reached home he strode into the house and sat down without saying a word.

"Has Uncle Tom turned you off?" asked Barbara, faltering a little and putting down her knitting. She had been dreading this end of all her hopes.

"Yes," said Tom; "and I wish to the Lord I was dead and done for." And he leaned his head on his left hand.

"Oh, my poor boy!" began Mrs. Grayson, "and you didn't mean no harm neither. And you're the only boy I've got, too. All the rest dead and gone. They's no end of troubles in this world!"

Tom's shoulders were heaving with feeling. After a moment or two of silence, Barbara went over and put her hand on him.

"Pshaw, Tom! what's the use of giving up? You're a splendid fellow in spite of all, and you'll make your way yet. You only needed a settler, and now you've got it. It won't look so bad by next week. You'll take a school next winter, and after that go back to study law again."

Then she quietly went to the clothes-press by the chimney and got out a hank of yarn, and said to Tom:

"Here, hold this while I wind it. I was just wishing you were here when I saw my ball giving out. That's like you used to do for me. Don't you remember? Mother, get Tom something to eat; he's tired and hungry, I expect."

And choking down the disappointment which involved more than Tom suspected, the keen, black-eyed girl wound her yarn and made an effort to chat with Tom as though he had come home on a visit.

As the last strands were wound on the ball, Tom looked at his sister and said:

"Barbara, you're one of a thousand. But I know this thing's thundering hard on you. I'm going to try to make it up to you from this time. I wish to goodness I had half of your steady sense."