“Here's a pretty mess,” said the former as Stephen entered the room. “Tucker's wife seems to be missing.”
“Seems to be missing!” cried the innkeeper furiously. “I tell you, Bush, she's skipped clean out! Left me, do you hear? Left me! Well, I hope he'll trim the nonsense out of her—I do that!”
“What's this?” demanded Stephen, looking first from one to the other of the three men.
“He thinks Julia has run away,” said Benson quietly, but his face was rather white. Mrs. Tucker was his cousin.
“Thinks!” snorted the innkeeper contemptuously. “What sort of proofs may you be looking for, Jacob? Ain't I furnishing them by the cartloads? She's kin to you, and you don't want to think ill of her; but just hear me, all of you—”
“He's been drinking,” whispered Bushrod; but Tucker, whose senses appeared to be wonderfully acute all at once, heard him.
“Drinking!” he exploded, in a thin shriek of anguish. “Of course I been drinking. What was good, red licker made for if it wa'n'. for a time like this when you're publicly made a fool of by a trifling no-account woman, whose head never held an ounce of sense in all her born days! She's your cousin, Jake, I mind that, and my word! she's damn little credit to you—but she's worse shame to me.”
Stephen, with some difficulty, possessed himself of these facts. The night before, the faithful Jim had taken Mrs. Tucker out to her father's farm on the South Road. She had sent him back with the message that her father would drive her home when she should be ready to return. Midnight came, and she did not appear; Mr. Tucker, somewhat alarmed for her safety, dispatched Jim in quest of her. He had shortly returned with the information that Captain Gibbs had called at the farm early in the evening and had proposed driving her home, and they had ridden away together, behind a most excellent span of horses which the perfidious Gibbs had hired of Mr. Tucker. This was the last any one had seen of them.
The tavernkeeper told Stephen this between sobs, and oaths, and threats.
“Think of it, Steve—she's quit me for that infernal scalawag!”