The Bondboy. George W. Ogden

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СКАЧАТЬ did not appear to know Isom, any more than Isom knew him, but there was the surliness of authority, the inhospitality of ownership, in Isom’s mien, and it was the business of the man in the buggy to know men at a glance. He saw that Isom was the landlord, and he gave him a nod and smile.

      “I’d like to get shelter for my horse and buggy for the night, and lodging for myself,” said he.

      “Well, if you pay for it I reckon you can git it,” returned Isom. “Pile out there and open that gate.”

      That was the way that Curtis Morgan, advance agent of the divine light of literature, scout of knowledge, torch-bearer of enlightenment into the dark places of ignorance, made his way into the house of Isom Chase, and found himself in due time at supper in the low-ceiled kitchen, with pretty Ollie, like a bright bead in a rusty purse, bringing hot biscuits from the oven and looking him over with a smile.

      Curtis Morgan was a slim and limber man, with a small head and a big mouth, a most flexible and plastic organ. Morgan wore a mustache which was cut back to stubs, giving his face a grubby look about the nose. His light hair was short and thick, curling in little love-locks about his ears. 68

      Morgan sold books. He would put you in a set of twenty-seven volumes of the History of the World for fifty-three dollars, or he would open his valise and sell you a ready-reckoner for six bits. He carried Household Compendiums of Useful Knowledge and Medical Advisers; he had poultry guides and horse books, and books on bees, and if he couldn’t sell you one thing he would sell you another, unless you were a worm, or a greased pig, and able, by some extraordinary natural or artificial attribute, to slip out of his hands.

      As has been the case with many a greater man before him, Morgan’s most profitable business was done in his smallest article of trade. In the country where men’s lives were counted too short for all the work they had to do, they didn’t have any time for histories of the world and no interest in them, anyhow. The world was to them no more than they could see of it, and the needs of their lives and their longings–save in some adventurer who developed among them now and then–went no farther than the limit of their vision.

      The ready-reckoner was, therefore, the money-maker for Morgan, who seemed to carry an inexhaustible supply. It told a farm-hand what his pay amounted to by days and hours down to the fraction of a cent; it told the farmer what the interest on his note would be; it showed how to find out how many bushels of corn there were in a crib without measuring the contents, and how many tons of hay a stack contained; it told how to draw up a will and write a deed, and make liniment for the mumps.

      Isom drew all this information out of his guest at supper, and it did not require much effort to set the sap flowing.

      Morgan talked to Isom and looked at Ollie; he asked Joe a question, and cocked his eye on Ollie’s face as if he expected to find the answer there; he pronounced shallow platitudes of philosophy aiming them at Isom, but looking at Ollie for approval or dissent. 69

      Isom appeared to take rather kindly to him, if his unusual volubility indicated the state of his feelings. He asked Morgan a great deal about his business, and how he liked it, and whether he made any money at it. Morgan leaned back on the hinder legs of his chair, having finished his supper, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for his goose-quill pick. He winked at Isom on the footing of one shrewd man to another as he applied the quill to his big white teeth.

      “Well, I pay my way,” said he.

      There was a great deal back of the simple words; there was an oily self-satisfaction, and there was a vast amount of portentous reserve. Isom liked it; he nodded, a smile moving his beard. It did him good to meet a man who could get behind the sham skin of the world, and take it by the heels, and turn it a stunning fall.

      Next morning, the sun being out again and the roads promising to dry speedily, Morgan hitched up and prepared to set out on his flaming path of enlightenment. Before going he made a proposal to Isom to use that place as headquarters for a week or two, while he covered the country lying about.

      Anything that meant profit to Isom looked good and fitting in his eyes. The feeding of another mouth would entail little expense, and so the bargain was struck. Morgan was to have his breakfast and supper each day, and provender for his horse, at the rate of four dollars a week, payable in advance.

      Morgan ran over his compendiums and horse books, but Isom was firm for cash; he suggested at least one ready-reckoner on account, but Isom had no need of that. Isom could guess to a hundredweight the contents of a stack of hay, and there never was a banker in this world that could outfigure him on interest. He had no more need for a ready-reckoner than a centipede has of legs. Morgan, seeing that nothing but money would talk there, produced the week’s 70 charge on the spot, and drove off to his day’s canvassing well satisfied.

      Morgan had not been a paying guest in that house two days before the somber domestic tragedy that it roofed was as plain to him as if he had it printed and bound, and in his valise along with the compendiums of his valuable assortment.

      He found it pleasant to return to the farm early of an afternoon and sit in the kitchen door with his pipe, and watch Ollie’s face clear of clouds as he talked. Consolation and cheer were strangers to her heart; it required no words from her to tell Morgan that.

      Her blushing gratitude for small offices of assistance, such as fetching a pail of water or a basket of garden greens, repaid Morgan all that he missed in sales by cutting short his business day just for the pleasure of returning and talking with her.

      Isom was too self-centered, and unconscious of his wife’s uncommon prettiness, to be jealous or suspicious of Morgan’s late goings or early returns. If a man wanted to pay him four dollars a week for the pleasure of carrying up water, cutting stove-wood or feeding the calves, the fool was welcome to do it as long as his money held.

      So it was that old Isom, blind and deaf and money-mad, set with his own hand and kindled with his own breath, the insidious spark which trustful fools before his day have seen leap into flame and strip them of honor before the eyes of men.

      Morgan made a long stay of it in that section, owing to the density of the population, he claimed, and the proximity of several villages which he could reach in a few miles’ drive. He was in his third week when Isom was summoned on jury service to the county seat.

      Twelve dollars had passed from the book agent’s hands into Isom’s, and Isom grinned over it as the easiest money 71 that it ever had been his pleasure to collect. He put it away with his savings, which never had earned interest for a banker, and turned the care of the farm over to Joe.

      Jury service at the county seat was an uncertain thing. It might last a day, and then it might tie a man up for two or three weeks, but Isom was able to leave home with a more comfortable feeling than ever before. He had a trustworthy servant to leave behind him, one in whose hands everything would be safe, under whose energy and conscientious effort nothing would drag or fall behind.

      Isom felt that he could very well afford to spread on a little soft-soap, as flattery was provincially called, and invest Joe with a greater sense of his responsibility, if possible. When occasion required, Isom could rise to flattery as deftly as the best of them. It was an art at which his tongue was wonderfully facile, considering the fact that he mingled so seldom with men in the outside doings of life. His wits had no foil to whet against and grow sharp, save the hard substance of his own inflexible nature, for he was born with that shrewd faculty for taking men “on the blind side,” as they used to call that trick in Missouri.

      “I’m turnin’ the whole farm over to you to look after like it was your СКАЧАТЬ