A Man of Honor Part 6

_Mr. Pagebrook Meets an Acquaintance._

Mr. Robert left the house on his way to The Oaks in an excellent humor with himself and with everybody else. His cousin Billy and his uncle Col. Barksdale were both absent, in attendance upon a court in another county, and so Mr. Robert had recently been left almost alone with Miss Sudie, and now that they had become the very best of friends our young man enjoyed this state of affairs right heartily. In truth Miss Sudie was a young lady very much to Mr. Robert's taste, in saying which I pay that young gentleman as handsome a compliment as any well regulated man could wish.

Mr. Robert walked briskly out of the front gate and down the road, enjoying the bright sun and the rich coloring of the October woodlands, and making merry in his heart by running over in his memory the chats he had been having of late with the little woman who carried the keys at s.h.i.+rley. If he had been forced to tell precisely what had been said in those conversations, it must be confessed that a stranger would have found very little of interest in the repet.i.tion, but somehow the recollection brought a frequent smile to our young friend's face and put an additional springiness into his step. His intercourse with this cousin by brevet may not have been especially brilliant or of a nature calculated to be particularly interesting to other people, but to him it had been extremely agreeable, without doubt.

"Mornin' Mas' Robert," said Phil, as Robert pa.s.sed the place at which the old negro was working. "How is ye dis mornin'?"

"Good morning, Phil. I am very well, I thank you. How are you, Phil?"

"Poorly, thank G.o.d. Ha! ha! ha! Dat's de way Bro' Joe and all de folks always says it. Dey never will own up to bein' rale well. But I tell ye now Mas' Robert, Phil's a well n.i.g.g.e.r _always_. I keeps up my eend de row all de time. I kin knock de spots out de work all day, daunce jigs till two o'clock, an' go 'possum huntin' till mornin' comes. Is ye ever been 'possum huntin', Mas' Robert?"

"No; I believe I never hunted opossums, but I should greatly like to try it, Phil."

"Would ye? Gim me yer han' Mas' Robert. You jes set de time now, and if Phil don't show you de sights o' 'possum huntin' you ken call me a po'

white folkses n.i.g.g.e.r. Dat's a fac'."

Robert promised to make the necessary appointment in due time, and was just starting off again on his tramp, when Phil asked:

"Whare ye boun' dis mornin', Mas' Robert?"

"I'm going over to dine at The Oaks, Phil."

"Yer jest out de house in time. Dar comes Mas' Charles Harrison."

"I do not understand you, Phil. Why do you say I am out of the house just in time?"

"Mas' Robert, is you got two good eyes? Mas' Charles is a doctor you know, but dey a'n't n.o.body sick at s.h.i.+rley. May be he's afraid Miss Sudie's gwine to get sick. Hi! git up Roley! dis a'n't plowin' mauster's field: g'long I tell ye!"

As Phil turned away Dr. Harrison rode up.

"Good morning, Mr. Pagebrook. On your way to The Oaks?"

"I was, but if you are going to s.h.i.+rley I will walk back with you!"

"O no! no! I am only going to stop there a moment. I am on my way to see some patients at Exenholm, and as I had to go past s.h.i.+rley I brought the mail, that's all. I'll not be there ten minutes, and I know they're expecting you at The Oaks. I brought Ewing along with me from the Court House. Foggy had been too much for him again."

"Why the boy promised me he would not gamble again."

"Oh! it's hardly gambling. Only a little game of loo. Every gentleman plays a little. I take a hand myself, now and then; but Foggy is a pretty old bird, you know, and he's too much for your cousin. Ewing oughtn't to play with _him_, of course, and that's why I brought him away with me. By the way, we're going to get a fox up in a day or two and show you some sport. The tobacco's all cut now, and the dogs are in capital order--as thin as a lath. You must be with us, of course. We'll get up one in pine quarter, and he's sure to run towards the river; so you can come in as the hounds pa.s.s s.h.i.+rley."

"I should like to see a fox hunt, certainly, but I have no proper horse," said Robert.

"Why, where's Graybeard? Billy told me he had turned him over to you to use and abuse."

"So he did, and he is riding his bay at present. But Graybeard is quite lame just now."

"Ride the bay then. Billy will be back from court to-night, won't he?"

"Yes; but he will want to join in the chase, I suppose."

"I reckon he will, but he can ride something else. He don't often care to take the tail, and he can see as much as he likes on one of his 'conestogas.' I'll tell you what you can do. Winger's got a splendid colt, pretty well broken, and you can get him for a dollar or two if you a'n't afraid to ride him. You must manage it somehow, so as to be 'in at the death!' I want you to see some riding."

Mr. Robert promised to see what he could do. He greatly wanted to ride after the hounds for once at least, though it must be confessed he would have been better pleased had the hounds to be ridden after belonged to somebody else besides the gentleman familiarly known as "Foggy," a personage for whom Mr. Robert had certainly not conceived a very great liking. That the reader may know whether his prejudice was a well-founded one or not it will be necessary for me to go back a little and gather up some of the loose threads of my story, while our young man is on his way to The Oaks. I have been so deeply interested in the ripening acquaintances.h.i.+p between Mr. Rob and Miss Sudie that I have neglected to introduce some other personages, less agreeable perhaps, but not less important to the proper understanding of this history.

Leaving young Pagebrook on the road, therefore, let me tell the reader, in a new chapter, something about the people he had met outside the hospitable s.h.i.+rley mansion.

CHAPTER X.

_Chiefly Concerning "Foggy."_

Dr. Charles Harrison was a young man of twenty-five or six, a distant relative of the Barksdales--so distant indeed that he would never have known himself as a relative at all, if he and they had not been Virginians. He was a young man of good parts, fond of field sports, reasonably well behaved in all external matters, but without any very fixed moral principles. He was a gentleman, in the strict Virginian sense of the term. That is to say he was of a good family, was well educated, and had never done anything to disgrace himself; wherefore he was received in all gentlemen's houses as an equal. He drank a little too freely on occasion, and played bluff and loo a trifle too often, the elderly people thought; but these things, it was commonly supposed, were only youthful follies. He would grow out of them--marry and settle down after awhile. He was on the whole a very agreeable person to be with, and very much of a gentleman in his manner.

"Foggy" Raves was an anomaly. His precise position in the social scale was a very difficult thing to discover, and is still more difficult to define. His father had been an overseer, and so "Foggy" was certainly not a "gentleman." Other men of parentage similar to his knew their places, and when business made it necessary for them to visit the house of a gentleman they expected to be received in the porch if the weather were tolerable, and in the dining-room if it were not. They never dreamed of being taken into the parlor, introduced to the family, or invited to dinner. All these things were well recognized customs; the line of demarkation between "gentlemen" and "common people" was very sharply drawn indeed. The two cla.s.ses lived on excellent terms with each other, but they never mixed. The gentleman was always courteous to the common people out of respect for himself; while the common people were very deferential to every gentleman as a matter of duty. Now this man Raves was not a "gentleman." That much was clear. And yet, for some inscrutable reason, his position among the people who knew him was not exactly that of a common man. He was never invited into gentlemen's houses precisely as a gentleman would have been, it is true; and yet into gentlemen's houses he very often went, and that upon invitation too. When young men happened to be keeping bachelors' establishments, either temporarily or permanently, "Foggy" was sure to be invited pretty frequently to see them. As long as there were no ladies at home "Foggy"

knew himself welcome, and he had played whist and loo and bluff in many genteel parlors, into which he never thought of going when there were ladies on the plantation. He kept a fine pack of hounds too, and was clearly at the head of the "fox-hunting interest" of the county; and this was an anomaly also, as fox-hunting is an eminently aristocratic sport, in which gentlemen engage only in company with gentlemen--except in "Foggy's" case.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FOGGY."]

Precisely what "Foggy's" business was it is difficult to say. He was constable, for one thing, and _ex-officio_ county jailor. One half the jail building was fitted up as his residence, and there he lived, a bachelor some fifty years old. He hired out horses and buggies in a small way now and then, but his earnings were princ.i.p.ally made at "bluff" and "loo." Once or twice Colonel Barksdale and some other gentlemen had tried to oust "Foggy" from the jail, believing that his establishment there was ruining a good many of the young men, as it certainly was. Failing in this they had him indicted for gambling in a public place, but the prosecution failed, the court holding that the jailor's private rooms in the jail could not be called a public place, though all rooms in a hotel had been held public within the meaning of the statute.

This man's Christian name was not "Foggy," of course, though hardly anybody knew what it really was. He had won his sobriquet in early life by paying the professional gambler, Daniel K. Foggy, to teach him "how to beat roulette," and then winning his money back by putting his purchased knowledge to the proof at Daniel's own roulette table.

Everybody agreed that "Foggy" was a good fellow. He would go far out of his way to oblige anybody, and, as was pretty generally agreed, had a good many of the instincts of a gentleman. He was not a professional gambler at all. He never kept a faro bank. He played cards merely for amus.e.m.e.nt, he said, and there was a popular tendency to believe his statement. The betting was simply to "make it interesting," and sometimes the play did grow very "interesting" indeed--interesting to the extent of several hundred dollars frequently.

Now only about a week before the morning on which Mr. Robert met Dr.

Harrison, he had gone to the Court House for the purpose of calling upon the doctor. While there young Harrison had proposed that they go up to Foggy's, explaining that Foggy was "quite a character, whom you ought to know; not a gentleman, of course, but a good fellow as ever lived."

Upon going to Foggy's, Robert had found his cousin Ewing Pagebrook there playing cards. The boy--for he was not yet of age--was flushed and excited, and Robert saw at a glance that he had been losing heavily. On Robert's entrance he threw down his cards and declared himself tired of play.

"I'll arrange that, Foggy," said the boy, with a nod.

"O any time will do!" replied the other. "How d'ye do, Charley? Come in."

Dr. Charley introduced Robert, and the latter, barely recognizing Foggy's greeting, turned to Ewing and asked:

"What have you been doing, Ewing? Not gambling, I hope."

"O no! certainly not," said Foggy; "only a little game of draw-poker, ten cents ante."

"Well, but how much have you lost, Ewing?" asked Robert. "How much more than you can pay in cash, I mean? I see you haven't settled the score."

Ewing was inclined to resent his cousin's questioning, but his rather weak head was by no means a match for his cousin's strong one. This great hulking Robert Pagebrook was "big all over," Billy Barksdale had said. His will was law to most men when he chose to a.s.sert it strongly.

He now took his cousin in hand, and made him confess to a debt of fifty dollars to the gambler. Then turning to Foggy he said:

"Mr. Raves, you have won all of this young man's money and fifty dollars more, it appears. Now, as I understand the matter, this fifty dollars is 'a debt of honor,' in gambling parlance, and so it must be paid. But you must acknowledge that you are more than a match for a mere boy, and you ought to 'give him odds.' I believe that is the correct phrase, is it not?"

"Yes, that's right; but how can you give odds in draw-poker?"