FROM time to time persons of an inquiring turn of mind have been moved
audibly to speculate--I might even say to ponder--regarding the enigma
underlying the continued presence in the halls of our National Congress
of the Honourable Dabney Prentiss. All were as one in agreeing that
he had a magnificent delivery, but in this same connection it has
repeatedly been pointed out that he so rarely had anything to deliver.
Some few among this puzzled contingent, knowing, as they did, the habits
and customs of the people down in our country, could understand that in
a corner of the land where the gift of tongue is still highly revered
and the golden chimings of a full-jewelled throat are not yet entirely
lost in the click of cash registers and the whir of looms, how the
Honourable Dabney within his limitations might have been oratorically
conspicuous and politically useful, not alone to himself but to others.
But as a constructive statesman sent up to Washington, District of
Columbia, and there engaged in shaping loose ends of legislation into
the welded and the tempered law, they could not seem to see him at all.
It was such a one, an editorial writer upon a metropolitan daily, who
once referred to Representative Prentiss as The Human Voice. The title
stuck, a fact patently testifying to its aptness. That which follows
here in this chapter is an attempt to explain the mystery of this
gentleman's elevation to the high places which he recently adorned.
To go back to the very start of things we must first review briefly the
case of old Mr. Lysander John Curd, even though he be but an incidental
figure in the narrative. He was born to be incidental, I reckon,
heredity, breeding and the chance of life all conspiring together to fit
him for that inconsequential rôle. He was born to be a background. The
one thing he ever did in all his span on earth to bring him for a moment
into the front of the picture was that, having reached middle age, he
took unto himself a young wife. But since he kept her only long enough
to lose her, even this circumstance did not serve to focus the attention
of the community upon his uncoloured personality for any considerable
period of time.
Considering him in all his aspects--as a volunteer soldier in the
Great War, as a district schoolteacher, as a merchant in our town, as a
bachelor of long standing, as a husband for a fleeting space, and as a
grass widower for the rest of his days--I have gleaned that he never did
anything ignoble or anything conspicuous. Indeed, I myself, who knew him
as a half-grown boy may know a middle-aged man, find it hard after the
lapse of years to describe him physically for you. I seem to recall
that he was neither tall nor short, neither thick nor thin. He had the
customary number of limbs and the customary number of features arranged
in the customary way--I know that, of course. It strikes me that his
eyes were mild and gentle, that he was, as the saying runs, soft-spoken
and that his whiskers were straggly and thin, like young second growth
in a new clearing; also that he wore his winter overcoat until the hot
suns of springtime scorched it, and that he clung to his summer alpaca
and his straw hat until the frosts of autumn came along and nipped them
with the sweet-gum and the dogwood. That lets me out. Excusing these
things, he abides merely as a blur in my memory.
On a certain morning of a certain year, the month being April, Judge
Priest sat at his desk in his chamber, so-called, on the right-hand
side of the long hall in the old courthouse, as you came in from the
Jefferson Street door. He was shoulders deep down in his big chair, with
both his plump legs outstretched and one crossed over the other, and
he was reading a paper-bound volume dealing in the main with certain
inspiring episodes in the spectacular life of a Western person known as
Trigger Sam. On his way downtown from home that morning he had stopped
by Wilcox & Powell's bookstore and purchased this work at the price of
five cents; it was the latest production of the facile pen of a popular
and indefatigable author of an earlier day than this, the late Ned
Buntline. In his hours of leisure and seclusion the judge dearly loved
a good nickel library, especially one with a lot of shooting and some
thrilling rescues in it. Now he was in the middle of one of the most
exciting chapters when there came a mild rap at the outer door. Judge
Priest slid the Trigger Sam book into a half-open drawer and called out:
“Come right on in, whoever 'tis.”
The door opened and old Mr. Lysander John Curd entered, in his overcoat,
with his head upon his chest.
“Good morning, Judge Priest,” he said in his gentle halting drawl;
“could I speak with you in private a minute? It's sort of a personal
matter and I wouldn't care to have anybody maybe overhearing.”
“You most certainly could,” said Judge Priest. He glanced through into
the adjoining room at the back, where Circuit Clerk Milam and Sheriff
Giles Birdsong, heads together, were busy over the clerical details
of the forthcoming term of circuit court. Arising laboriously from his
comfortable place he waddled across and kicked the open door between the
two rooms shut with a thrust of a foot clad in a box-toed, low-quartered
shoe. On his way back to his desk he brushed an accumulation of old
papers out of a cane-bottomed chair. “Set down here, Lysandy,” he said
in that high whiny voice of his, “and let's hear whut's on your mind.
Nice weather, ain't it?”
An eavesdropper trained, mayhap, in the psychology of tone and gesture
might have divined from these small acts and this small utterance that
Judge Priest had reasons for suspecting what was on his caller's mind;
as though this visit was not entirely unexpected, even though he had
had no warning of it. There was in the judge's words an intangible
inflection of understanding, say, or sympathy; no, call it
compassion--that would be nearer to it. The two old men--neither of them
would ever see sixty-five again--lowered themselves into the two chairs
and sat facing each other across the top of the judge's piled and dusty
desk. Through his steel-rimmed glasses the judge fixed a pair of kindly,
but none-the-less keen, blue eyes on Mr. Lysander Curd's sagged and
slumped figure. There was despondency and there was embarrassment in all
the drooping lines of that elderly frame. Judge Priest's lips drew up
tightly, and unconsciously he nodded--the brief nod that a surgeon might
employ on privately confirming a private diagnosis.
The other did not detect these things--neither the puckering of the lips
nor the small forward bend of the judge's head. His own chin was in his
collar and his own averted eyes were on the floor. One of his hands--a
gnarly, rather withered hand it must have been--reached forth absently
and fumbled at a week-old copy of the _Daily Evening News_ that rested
upon a corner of the desk. The twining fingers tore a little strip loose
from the margin of a page and rolled it up into a tiny wad.
For perhaps half a minute there was nothing said. Then Judge Priest bent
forward suddenly and touched the nearermost sleeve of Mr. Curd with a
gentle little half-pat.
“Well, Lysandy?” he prompted.
“Well, Judge.” The words were the first the visitor had uttered since
his opening speech, and they came from him reluctantly. “Well, sir, it
would seem like I hardly know how to start. This is a mighty personal
matter that I've come to see you in regards to--and it's just a little
bit hard to speak about it even to somebody that I've known most of my
life, same as I've always known you. But things in my home have finally
come to a head, and before the issue reaches you in an official capacity
as the judge on the bench I sort of felt like it might help some--might
make the whole thing pass off easier for all concerned--if I could have
a few words with you privately, as a friend and as a former comrade in
arms on the field of battle.”
“Yes, Lysandy, go ahead. I'm listenin',” stated Judge Priest, as the
other halted.
Old Mr. Curd raised his face and in his faded eyes there was at once a
bewildered appeal and a fixed and definite resolution. He spoke on
very slowly and carefully, choosing his words as he went, but without
faltering:
“I don't know as you know about it, Judge Priest--the chances are you
naturally wouldn't--but in a domestic way things haven't been going
very smoothly with me--with us, I should say--for quite a spell back. I
reckon after all it's a mistake on the part of a man after he's reached
middle age and got set in his ways to be taking a young wife, more
especially if he can't take care of her in the way she's been used to,
or anyhow in the way she'd like to be taken care of. I suppose it's only
human nature for a young woman to hanker after considerable many things
that a man like me can't always give her--jewelry and pretty things, and
social life, and running round and seeing people, and such as that. And
Luella--well, Luella really ain't much more than a girl herself yet, is
she?”
The question remained unanswered. It was plain, too, that Mr. Curd had
expected no answer to it, for he went straight on:
“So I feel as if the blame for what's happened is most of it mine. I
reckon I was too old to be thinking about getting married in the first
place. And I wasn't very well off then either--not well enough off to
have the money I should've had if I expected to make Luella contented.
Still, all that part of it's got nothing to do with the matter as it
stands--I'm just telling it to you, Judge, as a friend.”
“I understand, Lysandy,” said Judge Priest almost in the tone which he
might have used to an unhappy child. “This is all a strict confidence
between us two and this is all the further it'll ever go, so fur ez I'm
concerned, without you authorise me to speak of it.”
He waited for what would come next. It came in slow, steady sentences,
with the regularity of a statement painfully rehearsed beforehand:
“Judge Priest, I've never been a believer in divorce as a general thing.
It seemed to me there was too much of that sort of thing going on round
this country. That's always been my own private doctrine, more or less.
But in my own case I've changed my mind. We've been talking it over
back and forth and we've decided--Luella and me have--that under the
circumstances a divorce is the best thing for both of us; in fact we've
decided that it's the only thing. I want that Luella should be happy
and I think maybe I'll feel easier in my own mind when it's all over and
done with and settled up according to the law. I'm aiming to do what's
best for both parties--and I want that Luella should be happy. I want
that she should be free to live her own life in her own way without
me hampering her. She's young and she's got her whole life before
her--that's what I'm thinking of.”
He paused and with his tongue he moistened his lips, which seemed dry.
“I don't mind telling you I didn't feel this way about it first-off. It
was a pretty tolerably hard jolt to me--the way the proposition first
came up. I've spent a good many sleepless nights thinking it over. At
least I couldn't sleep very much for thinking of it,” he amended with
the literal impulse of a literal mind to state things exactly and
without exaggeration. “And then finally I saw my way clear to come to
this decision. And so--”
“Lysandy Curd,” broke in Judge Priest, “I don't aim to give you any
advice. In the first place, you ain't asked fur it; and in the second
place, even ef you had asked, I'd hesitate a monstrous long time before
I'd undertake to advice any man about his own private family affairs.
But I jest want to ask you one thing right here: It wasn't you, was it,
that first proposed the idea of this here divorce?”
“Well, no, Judge, I don't believe 'twas,” confessed the old man whose
misery-reddened eyes looked into Judge Priest's from across the littered
desk. “I can't say as it was me that first suggested it. But that's
neither here nor there. The point I'm trying to get at is just this:
“The papers have all been drawn up and they'll be bringing them in here
sometime to-day to be filed--the lawyers in the case will, Bigger
& Quigley. Naturally, with me and Luella agreeing as to everything,
there's not going to be any fight made in your court. And after it's all
over I'm aiming to sell out my feed store--it seems like I haven't been
able to make it pay these last few months, the same as it used to pay,
and debts have sort of piled up on me some way. I reckon the fellow that
said two could live as cheap as one didn't figure on one of them being
a young woman--pretty herself and wanting pretty things to wear and have
round the house. But I shouldn't say that--I've come to see how it's
mainly my fault, and I'm figuring on how to spare Luella in every way
that it's possible to spare her. So as I was saying, I'm figuring, when
it's all over, on selling out my interests here, such as they are, and
going back to live on that little farm I own out yonder in the Lone Elm
district. It's got a mortgage on it that I put on it here some months
back, but I judge I can lift that and get the place clear again, if I'm
given a fair amount of time to do it in.
“And now that everything's been made clear to you, I want to ask you,
Judge, to do all in your power to make things as easy as you can for
Luella. I'd a heap rather there wouldn't be any fuss made over this case
in the newspapers. It's just a straight, simple divorce suit, and after
all it's just between me and my present wife, and it's more our business
than 'tis anybody else's. So, seeing as the case is not going to be
defended, I'd take it as a mighty big favour on your part if you'd shove
it up on the docket for the coming term of court, starting next Monday,
so as we could get it done and over with just as soon as possible.
That's my personal wish, and I know it's Luella's wish too. In fact
she's right anxious on that particular point. And here's one more thing:
I reckon that young Rawlings boy, that's taken a job reporting news
items for the Daily Evening News, will be round here in the course of
the day, won't he?”
“He likely will,” said Judge Priest; “he comes every day--purty near it.
Why?”
“Well,” said Mr. Curd, “I don't know him myself except by sight, and I
don't feel as if I was in a position to be asking him to do anything for
me. But I thought, maybe, if you spoke to him yourself when he came, and
put it on the grounds of a favour to you, maybe he'd not put any
more than just a little short piece in the paper saying suit had been
filed--Curd against Curd--for a plain divorce, or maybe he might leave
it out of his paper altogether. I'd like to see Luella shielded from any
newspaper talk. It's not as if there was a scandal in it or a fight was
going to be made.” He bent forward in his eagerness. “Do you reckon you
could do that much for me, Judge Priest--for old times' sake?”
“Ah-hah,” assented Judge Priest. “I reckin part of it kin be arranged
anyway. I kin have Lishy Milam set the case forward on the docket at the
head of the list of uncontested actions. And I'll mention the matter
to that there young Rawlings ef you want me to. Speaking personally, I
should think jest a line or two ought to satisfy the readers of the
_Daily Evenin' News_. Of course him bein' a reporter and all that, he'll
probably want to know whut the facts are ez set forth in your petition--
whut allegations are made in--”
He stopped in mid-speech, seeing how the other had flinched at this
last. Mr. Curd parted his lips to interrupt, but the old judge, having
no wish to flick wounds already raw, hurried on: “Don't you worry,
Lysandy, I'll be glad to speak to young Rawlings. I jedge you've got
no call to feel uneasy about whut's goin' to be said in print. You
was sayin' jest now that the papers would be filed sometime to-day?”
“They'll be filed to-day sure.”
“And no defence is to be made?” continued Judge Priest, tallying off
the points on his fingers. “And you've retained Bigger & Quigley to
represent you--that's right, ain't it?”
“Hold on a minute, Judge,” Mr. Curd was shaking his whity-grey head in
dissent. “I've taken up a lot of your valuable time already, and still
it would seem like I haven't succeeded in getting this affair all
straight in your mind. Bigger & Quigley are not going to represent me.
They're going to represent Luella.”
He spoke as one stating an accepted and easily understood fact, yet at
the words Judge Priest reared back as far as his chair would let him go
and his ruddy cheeks swelled out with the breath of amazement.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, “that you ain't the plaintiff
here?”
“Why, Judge Priest,” answered Mr. Curd, “you didn't think for a minute,
did you, that I'd come into court seeking to blacken my wife's good
name? She's been thoughtless, maybe, but I know she don't mean any harm
by it, and besides look how young she is. It's her, of course, that's
asking for this divorce--I thought you understood about that from the
beginning.” Still in his posture of astonishment, Judge Priest put
another question and put it briskly: “Might it be proper fur me to ask
on what grounds this lady is suin' you fur a divorce?”
A wave of dull red ran up old Mr. Curd's throat and flooded his shamed
face to the hair line.
“On two grounds,” he said--“non-support and drunkenness.”
“Non-support?”
“Yes; I haven't been able to take care of her lately as I should like
to, on account of my business difficulties and all.”
“But look here at me, Lysandy Curd--you ain't no drunkard. You never was
one. Don't tell me that!”
“Well, now, Judge Priest,” argued Mr. Curd, “you don't know about my
private habits, and even if I haven't been drinking in public up to now,
that's no sign I'm not fixing to start in doing so. Besides which my
keeping silent shows that I admit to everything, don't it? Well, then?”
He stood up. “Well, I reckon that's all. I won't be detaining you any
longer. I'm much obliged to you, Judge, and I wish you good-day, sir.”
For once Judge Priest forgot his manners. He uttered not a syllable, but
only stared through his spectacles in stunned and stricken silence while
Mr. Curd passed out into the hallway, gently closing the door behind
him. Then Judge Priest vented his emotions in a series of snorts.
In modern drama what is technically known as the stage aside has gone
out of vogue; it is called old-fashioned. Had a latter-day playwright
been there then, he would have resented the judge's thoughtlessness in
addressing empty space. Nevertheless that was exactly what the judge
did.
“Under the strict letter of the law I ought to throw that case out of
court, I s'pose. But I'm teetotally dam' ef I do any sech thing!... That
old man's heart is broke now, and there ain't no earthly reason that
I kin think of why that she-devil should be allowed to tromp on the
pieces. And that's jest exactly whut she'll do, shore ez shootin',
unless she's let free mighty soon to go her own gait.... Their feet take
hold on hell.... I'll bet in the Kingdom there'll be many a man that
was called a simple-minded fool on this earth that'll wear the biggest,
shiniest halo old Peter kin find in stock.”
He reached for the Trigger Sam book, but put it back again in the
drawer. He reached into a gaping side pocket of his coat for his corncob
pipe, but forgot to charge the fire-blackened bowl from the tobacco
cannister that stood handily upon his desk. Chewing hard upon the
discoloured cane stem of his pipe, he projected himself toward the back
room and opened the door, to find Mr. Milam, the circuit clerk, and Mr.
Birdsong, the sheriff, still engaged together in official duties there.
“Lishy,” he said from the doorway, “young Rawlings generally gits round
here about two o'clock in the evenin', don't he?”
“Generally about two or two-thirty,” said Mr. Milam.
“I thought so. Well, to-day when he comes tell him, please, I want to
see him a minute in my chambers.”
“What if you're not here? Couldn't I give him the message?”
“I'll be here,” promised the judge. “And there's one thing more: Bigger
& Quigley will file a divorce petition to-day--Curd versus Curd is the
title of the suit. Put it at the head of the list of undefended actions,
please, Lishy, ez near the top of the docket ez you kin.”
“Curd? Is it the Lysander Curds, Judge?”, asked Mr. Milam.
“You guessed right the very first pop--it's the Lysandy Curds,” said
Judge Priest grimly.
“Well, for one I'm not surprised,” said Mr. Milam. “If poor old Lysander
hadn't stayed blind for about two years after the rest of this town got
its eyes wide open this suit would have been filed long before now.”
But Judge Priest didn't hear him. He had closed the door.
Mr. Milam looked meaningly at Mr. Birdsong. Mr. Birdsong felt in his
pocket for his plug and helped himself to a copious chew, meanwhile
looking meaningly back at Mr. Milam. With the cud properly bestowed in
his right jaw Mr. Birdsong gave vent to what for him was a speech of
considerable length: '“Jedge said Bigger & Quigley, didn't he? Well,
they're a good smart team of lawyers, but ef I was in Lysander John
Curd's shoes I think I'd intrust my interests in this matter to a
different firm than them.”
“Who's that?” inquired Mr. Milam.
“It's a Yankee firm up North,” answered Mr. Birdsong, masticating
slowly. “One named Smith and the other'n named Wesson.”
It will be noted that our worthy sheriff fell plump into the same error
over which Judge Priest's feet had stumbled a few minutes earlier--he
assumed offhand, Sheriff Birdsong did, that in this cause of Curd
against Curd the husband was to play the rôle of the party aggrieved.
Indeed, we may feel safe in assuming that at first blush almost anybody
in our town would have been guilty of that same mistake. The real truth
in this regard, coming out, as it very shortly did--before sunset of
that day, in fact--gave the community a profound shock. From house to
house, from street to street and from civic ward to civic ward the tale
travelled, growing as it went. The _Daily Evening News_ carried merely
the barest of bare statements, coupled with the style of the action
and the names of the attorneys for the plaintiff; but with spicy added
details, pieced out from surmise and common rumour, the amazing tidings
percolated across narrow roads and through the panels of partition
fences with a rapidity which went far toward proving that the tongue is
mightier than the printed line, or at least is speedier.
When you see a woman hasten forth from her house with eyes that burn and
hear her hail her neighbour next door; when you see their two heads meet
above the intervening pickets and observe that one is doing the talking
and the other is doing the listening, sucking her breath in, gaspingly,
at frequent intervals; and when on top of this you take note that,
having presently parted company with the first, the second woman speeds
hot-foot to call her neighbour upon the other side, all men may know by
these things alone that a really delectable scandal has been loosed upon
the air. Not once but many times this scene was enacted in our town that
night, between the going-down of the sun and the coming-up of the moon.
Also that magnificent adjunct of modern civilisation, the telephone,
helped out tremendously in spreading the word.
Hard upon the heels of the first jolting disclosure correlated incidents
eventuated, and these, as the saying goes, supplied fuel to the flames.
Just before supper-time old Mr. Ly-sander Curd went with dragging feet
and downcast head to Mrs. Teenie Morrill's boarding house, carrying in
one hand a rusty valise, and from Mrs. Morrill he straightway engaged
board and lodging for an indefinite period. And in the early dusk of the
evening Mrs. Lysander Curd drove out in the smart top-phaeton that her
husband had given her on her most recent birthday--she sitting very
erect and handling the ribbons on her little spirited bay mare very
prettily, and seemingly all oblivious to the hostile eyes which stared
at her from sidewalks and porch fronts. About dark she halted at the
corner of Clay and Contest, where a row of maples, new fledged with young
leaves, made a thick shadow across the road.
Exactly there, as it so chanced, State Senator Horace K. Maydew happened
to be loitering about, enjoying the cooling breezes of the spring night,
and he lifted his somewhat bulky but athletic forty-year-old form into
the phaeton alongside of the lady. In close conversation they were seen
to drive out Contest and to turn into the Towhead Road; and--if we may
believe what that willing witness, old Mrs. Whitridge, who lived at
the corner of Clay and Contest, had to say upon the subject--it was ten
minutes of eleven o'clock before they got back again to that corner.
Mrs. Whitridge knew the exact hour, because she stayed up in her front
room to watch, with one eye out of the bay window and the other on the
mantel clock. To be sure, this had happened probably a hundred times
before--this meeting of the pair in the shadows of the water maples,
this riding in company over quiet country roads until all hours--but by
reason of the day's sensational developments it now took on an enhanced
significance. Mrs. Whitridge could hardly wait until morning to call up,
one by one, the members of her circle of intimate friends. I judge the
telephone company never made much money off of Mrs. Whitridge even in
ordinary times; she rented her telephone by the month and she used it by
the hour.
As we are following the course of things with some regard for their
chronological sequence, perhaps I should state here that on the next
day but one the Lysander John Curd hay and feed store was closed on
executions sworn out by a coterie of panic-stricken creditors. It is a
mistake, I think, to assume that rats always leave a sinking ship. It
has been my limited observation that, if they are commercial rats, they
stay aboard and nibble more holes in the hull. However, that is neither
here nor there.
In less than no time at all following this--in less than two weeks
thereafter, to be exact--the coils which united Mr. Lysander Curd and
Luella his wife in the bonds of matrimony were by due process of the
statutory law unloosed and slackened off. Being free, the ex-husband
promptly gathered together such meagre belongings as he might call his
own and betook himself to that little mortgage-covered farm of his out
Lone Elm way. Being free also, the ex-wife with equal celerity became
the bride of State Senator Horace K. Maydew, with a handy justice of
the peace to officiate at the ceremony. It was characteristic of State
Senator Maydew that he should move briskly in consummating this, the
paramount romance of his life. For he was certainly an up-and-coming
man.
There was no holding him down, it seemed. Undoubtedly he was a rising
light, and the lady who now bore his name was bound and determined that
she rise with him. She might have made one matrimonial mistake, but this
time she had hitched her wagon to a star--a star which soared amain
and cast its radiance afar. Soon she was driving her own car--and a
seven-passenger car at that. They sent to Chicago for an architect to
design their new home on Flournoy Boulevard and to Louisville for a
decorator to decorate it. It wasn't the largest house in town, but it
was by long odds the smartest.
The Senator willed that she should have the best of everything, and
she had it. For himself he likewise desired much. His was an uneasy
ambition, which ate into him like a canker and gave him no peace.
Indeed, peace was not of his craving. He watered his desire with the
waters of self-appreciation and mulched it with constant energy, and
behold it grew like the gourd and bourgeoned like the bay. He had been
mayor; at this time he was state senator; presently it was to transpire
that he would admire to be more than that.
Always his handclasp had been ardent and clinging. Now the inner flames
that burned its owner made it feverish to the touch. His smile was as
warming as a grate fire and almost as wide. Shoulders were made for him
to slap, and children had been created into the world to the end that he
might inquire regarding their general health and well doing. Wherefore
parents--and particularly young parents--were greatly drawn to him. If
there was a lodge he joined it; if there was a church fair he went to
it; if there was an oration to be made he made it. His figure broadened
and took on a genial dignity. Likewise in the accumulation of worldly
goods he waxed amazingly well. His manner was paternal where it was
not fraternal. His eye, though, remained as before--a sharp, greedy,
appraising eye. There is no alibi for a bad eye. Still, a lot of
people never look as high as the eyes. They stop at the diamond in the
scarfpin.
When a vacancy occurred in the district chairmanship it seemed quite
in keeping with the trend of the political impulses of the times that
Senator Maydew should slip into the hole. Always a clever organiser, he
excelled his past record in building up and strengthening the district
organisation. It wasn't long before he had his fences as they should
be--hog-tight, horse-high and bull-strong.
Yet in the midst of manifold activities he found time to be an attentive
and indulgent husband. If the new Mrs. Maydew did not enjoy the aloof
society of those whom we fondly call down our way The Old Families, at
least she had her fine new home, and her seven-passenger car, and her
generous and loving husband. And she was content; you could tell that by
her air and her expression at all times. Some thought there was just a
trace of defiance in her bearing.
It was just about a year after her marriage to him that the Senator, in
response to the demands of a host of friends and admirers--so ran the
language of his column-long paid-for card in the _Daily Evening News_
and other papers--announced himself as a candidate for the Democratic
nomination for congressman. Considering conditions and everything, the
occasion appeared to be propitious for such action on his part. The
incumbent, old Major J. C. C. Guest, had been congressman a long, long
time--entirely too long a time, some were beginning to say. He had never
been a particularly exciting personage, even back yonder in those remote
dim days of his entry into public life. At the beginning his principal
asset and his heaviest claim upon the support of his fellow-citizens had
been an empty trouser-leg.
In eighty-four, a cross-roads wag had said he didn't believe Major Guest
ever lost that leg in battle--it was his private opinion that the Maje
wore it off running for office. At the time this quip was thought almost
to border upon the sacrilegious, and nobody had laughed at it except the
utterer thereof. But fully sixteen lagging years had dragged by since
then; and for the old-soldier element the times were out of joint. Maybe
that was because there weren't so very many of the old soldier element
left. A mouse-coloured sleeve without an arm inside of it, no longer
had the appeal upon the popular fancy that once it had, and the same was
true of the one-time sentimental and vote-catching combination of a pair
of hickory crutches and an amputation at the hip joint.
Nevertheless, Major Guest was by no means ready to give up and
quit. With those who considered him ripe for retirement he disagreed
violently. As between resting on his laurels and dying in the harness
he infinitely preferred the chafe of the leather to the questionable
softness of the laurel-bed. So the campaign shaped itself to be a
regular campaign. Except for these two--Maydew and Guest--there were
no openly avowed candidates, though Dabney Prentiss, who dearly loved
a flirtation with reluctant Destiny, was known to have his ear to the
ground, ready to qualify as the dark horse in the event a deadlock
should develop and a cry go forth for a compromise nominee. Possibly it
was because Dabney Prentiss generally kept his ear to the ground that he
had several times been most painfully trampled upon. From head to foot
he was one big mental bruise.
Since he held the levers of the district machinery in the hollows of
his two itching hands, Senator Maydew very naturally and very properly
elected to direct his own canvass. Judge Priest, quitting the bench
temporarily, came forth to act as manager for his friend, Major Guest.
At this there was rejoicing in the camp of the clan of Maydew. To Maydew
and his lieutenants it appeared that providence had dealt the good cards
into their laps. Undeniably the judge was old and, moreover, he was
avowedly old-fashioned. It stood to reason he would conduct the affairs
of his candidate along old-fashioned lines. To be sure, he had his
following; so much was admitted. Nobody could beat Judge Priest for his
own job; at least nobody ever had. But controlling his own job and his
own county was one thing. Engineering a district-wide canvass in behalf
of an aging and uninspiring incumbent was another. And if over the bent
shoulders of Major Guest they might strike a blow at Judge Priest, why,
so much the better for Maydew now, and so much the worse for Priest
hereafter. Thus to their own satisfaction the Maydew men figured it out.
The campaign went forward briskly and not without some passing show of
bitterness. In a measure, Judge Priest justified the predictions of the
other side by employing certain timehallowed expedients for enlisting
the votes of his fellow Democrats for Major Guest. He appealed, as it
were, to the musty traditions of a still mustier past. He sent the Major
over the district to make speeches. He organised school-house rallies
and brush-arbour ratifications. He himself was mighty in argument and
opulent in the use of homely oratory.
Very different was the way of State Senator Maydew. The speeches that he
made were few as to number and brief as to their length, but they were
not bad speeches. He was a ready and a frequent purchaser of newspaper
space; and he shook hands and slapped shoulders and inquired after
babies without cessation. But most of all he kept both of his eyes
and all of his ten nimble fingers upon the machine, triggering it and
thimbling it and pulling at secret wires by day and by night. It was,
perhaps, a tribute to his talents in this direction that the method that
he inaugurated was beginning to be called Maydewism--by the opposition,
of course--before the canvass was a month old. In an unusually
vociferous outburst of indignation at a meeting in the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows' hall at Settleville, Major Guest referred to it as
“the fell blight of Maydewism.” When a physician discovers a new and
especially malignant disease his school of practice compliments him
by naming the malady after him; when a political leader develops
a political system of his own, his opponents, although actuated by
different motives, do the same thing, which may be taken as an absolute
sign that the person in question has made some sincere enemies at least.
But if Maydew made enemies he made friends too; at any rate he made
followers. As the campaign drew near to its crackling finish it was
plain that he would carry most of the towns; Major Guest's strength
apparently was in the country--among the farmers and the dwellers in
small villages.
County conventions to name delegates to the district conventions which,
in turn, would name the congressional nominee were held simultaneously
in the nine counties composing the district at two P. M. of the first
Tuesday after the first Monday in August. A week before, Senator Maydew,
having cannily provided that his successor should be a man after his own
heart, resigned as district chairman. Although he had thrown overboard
most of the party precedents, it seemed to him hardly ethical that he
should call to order and conduct the preliminary proceedings of the body
that he counted upon to nominate him as its standard bearer--standard
bearer being the somewhat ornamental phrase customarily used among us
on these occasions. He was entirely confident of the final outcome. The
cheering reports of his aides in the field made him feel quite sure that
the main convention would take but one ballot. They allowed, one and
all, it would be a walk-over.
Howsoever, these optimists, as it developed, had reckoned without one
factor: they had reckoned without a certain undercurrent of disfavour
for Maydew which, though it remained for the most part inarticulate
during the campaign, was to manifest itself in the county conventions.
Personalities, strictly speaking, had not been imported into the
fight. Neither candidate had seen fit to attack the private life of his
opponent, but at the last moment there came to the surface an unexpected
and, in the main, a silent antagonism against the Senator which could
hardly be accounted for on the ground of any act of his official and
public career.
So, late in the afternoon of the first Tuesday after the first Monday,
when the smoke cleared away and the shouting and the tumult died, the
complete returns showed that of the nine counties, totalling one hundred
and twenty delegate votes, Maydew had four counties and fifty-seven
votes. Guest had carried four counties also, with fifty-one votes,
while Bryce County, the lowermost county of the district, had failed
to instruct its twelve delegates for either Maydew or Guest, which, to
anybody who knew anything at all about politics, was proof positive that
in the main convention Bryce County would hold the balance of power. It
wouldn't be a walkover; that much was certain, anyhow. May-dew's jaunty
smile lost some of its jauntiness, and anxious puckers made little seams
at the corners of those greedy eyes of his, when the news from Bryce
County came. As for Judge Priest, he displayed every outward sign of
being well content as he ran over the completed figures. Bryce was
an old-fashioned county, mainly populated by a people who clung to
old-fashioned notions. Old soldiers were notably thick in Bryce, too.
There was a good chance yet for his man. It all depended on those twelve
votes of Bryce County.
To Marshallville, second largest town in the district, befell the honour
that year of having the district convention held in its hospitable
midst; and, as the _Daily Evening News_ smartly phrased it, to
Marshallville on a Thursday All Roads Ran. In accordance with the rote
of fifty years it had been ordained that the convention should meet
in the Marshallville courthouse, but in the week previous a fire of
mysterious origin destroyed a large segment of the shingled roof of that
historic structure. A darky was on trial for hog stealing upon the day
of the fire, and it may have been that sparks from the fiery oratory of
the prosecuting attorney, as he pleaded with the jury for a conviction,
went upward and lodged among the rafters. As to that I am not in a
position to say. I only know this explanation for the catastrophe was
advanced by divers ribald-minded individuals who attended the trial.
In this emergency the local committee on arrangements secured for the
convention the use of the new Marshallville opera house, which was the
pride of Marshallville--a compact but ornate structure having on its
first floor no less than one hundred and fifty of those regular theatre
chairs magnificently upholstered in hot red plush, and above, at the
back, a balcony, and to crown all, two orthodox stage boxes of
stucco, liberally embossed with gold paint, which clung, like gilded
mud-daubers' nests, at either side of the proscenium arch, overhanging
the stage below.
In one of these boxes, as the delegates gathered that very warm August
afternoon, a lady sat in solitary state. To the delegates were assigned
the plush-enveloped grandeurs of the main floor. The spectators,
including a large number of the male citizens of Marshallville with
a sprinkling of their women-folk, packed the balcony to the stifling
point, but this lady had a whole box to herself. She seemed fairly well
pleased with herself as she sat there. Certainly she had no cause to
complain of a lack of public interest in her and her costume. To begin
with, there was a much beplumed hat, indubitably a thing of great cost
and of augmented size, which effectively shaded and set off her plump
face. No such hat had been seen in Marshallville before that day.
The gown she wore was likewise of a fashion new to the dazzled gaze
of her more plainly habited sisters in the balcony. I believe in the
favoured land where they originated they call them princesse gowns. Be
its name what it may, this garment ran in long, well-nigh un wrinkled
lines from the throat of its wearer to her ankles.
It was of some clinging white stuff, modelled seemingly with an intent
to expose rather than to hide the curves of the rounded figure which it
covered. It was close at the neck, snug at the bust, snugger still at
the hips, and from there it flowed on tightly yet smoothly to where it
ended, above a pair of high-heeled, big-buckled slippers of an amazing
shininess. The uninitiated might well have marvelled how the lady ever
got in her gown unless she had been melted and poured into it; but there
was no mystery concerning the manner in which she had fastened it, once
she was inside of it, for, when she turned away from the audience, a
wondrously decorative finishing touch was to be seen: straight down the
middle of her back coursed a close row of big, shiny black jet buttons,
and when she shifted her shoulders these buttons undulated glisteningly
along the line of her spinal column. The effect was snaky but striking.
The lady, plainly, was not exactly displeased with herself. Even a rear
view of her revealed this. There was assurance in the poise of her head;
assuredly there was a beaming as of confidence in her eyes. Indeed, she
had reasons other than the satisfaction inspired by the possession of a
modish and becoming garb for feeling happy. Things promised to go well
with her and what was hers that afternoon. Perhaps I should have stated
sooner that the lady in question was Mrs. Senator Maydew, present to
witness and to glorify the triumph of her distinguished husband.
For a fact, triumph did seem near at hand now--nearer than it had been
any time these past forty-eight hours. A quarter of an hour earlier
an exultant messenger had come from her husband to bring to her most
splendid and auspicious tidings. Luck had swung his way, and no mistake
about it: of the doubtful delegates from Bryce County only two had
arrived. The other ten had not arrived. Moreover there was no apparent
possibility that they would arrive before the following day, and by
then, if the Senator's new-born scheme succeeded, it would be all over
but the shouting. A Heavensent freshet in Little River was the cause.
Sitting there now in her stage box, Mrs. Senator Maydew silently blessed
the name of Little River.
Ordinarily Little River is a stream not calculated to attract the
attention of historians or geographers--a torpid, saffron-coloured
thread of water meandering between flat yellow banks, and owing its
chief distinction to the fact that it cuts off three-quarters of Bryce
County from the remaining quarter and from the adjoining counties on the
north. But it has its moods and its passions. It is temperamental, that
river. Suddenly and enormously swollen by torrential summer rains in the
hills where it has its rise, it went, the night before, on a rampage,
over-flooding its banks, washing away fences and doing all manner of
minor damage in the low grounds.
At dawn the big bridge which spanned the river at the gravel road had
gone out, and at breakfast time Ferris' Ford, a safe enough crossing
place in times of low water, was fifteen feet deep under a hissing brown
flood. Two of Bryce County's delegates, who chanced to live in the upper
corner of the county, had driven through hub-deep mud to the junction and
there caught the train for Marshallville; but their ten compatriots were
even now somewhere on the far bank, cut off absolutely from all prospect
of attending the convention until the roiled and angry waters should
subside.
Senator Maydew, always fertile in expedient, meant to ride to victory,
as it were, on the providential high tide in Little River. Immediately
on hearing what had happened, he divined how the mishap of the
washed-out bridge and the flooded ford might be made to serve his ends
and better his fortunes. He was keeping the plan secret for the moment;
for it was a very precious plan. And this, in effect, was the word that
his emissary brought to his wife just before the convention met. He
could not bring it himself; custom forbade that a candidate show himself
upon the floor in the early stages, but she was told to wait and watch
for what would presently ensue, and meanwhile be of good cheer. Which,
verily, she was.
She did not have so very long to wait. The convention assembled on the
hour--a block of ten vacant seats in the second aisle showing where the
missing ten of Bryce should have been--and was called to order by the
new district chairman. Up rose Judge Priest from his place in the middle
of the house, flanking the centre aisle, and addressed the chair. He had
just learned, he stated, that a considerable quota of the number of duly
chosen delegates had not yet reached Marshallville. It appeared that
the elements were in conspiracy against the extreme lower end of the
district. In justice to the sovereign voters of the sovereign County
of Bryce he moved that a recess of twenty-four hours be taken. The
situation which had arisen was unforeseen and extraordinary, and time
should be granted for considering it in all its aspects. And so on and
so forth for five minutes or more, in Judge Priest's best ungrammatical
style. The chairman, who, as will be recalled, was Maydew's man, ruled
the motion out of order.
I shall pass over as briefly as possible the proceedings of the next
half hour. To go fully into those details would be to burden this
narrative with technicalities and tiresomeness. For our purposes it is
sufficient, I think, to say that the Maydew machine, operating after
the fashion of a well-lubricated, well-steered and high-pow-ered steam
roller, ran over all obstacles with the utmost despatch. These painful
crunching operations began early and continued briskly.
On the first roll call of the counties, as the County of Bryce--second
on our list after Bland--was reached, one of those two lone delegates
from the upper side of Little River stood up and, holding aloft his own
credentials and the credentials of his team-mate, demanded the right to
cast the votes of the whole Bryce County delegation--twelve in all.
The district chairman, acting with a promptness that bespoke priming
beforehand for just such a contingency, held that the matter should be
referred to the committee on credentials. As floor leader and spokesman
for the Guest faction, old Judge Priest appealed from the ruling of the
chair. A vote was taken. The chairman was sustained by fifty-seven to
fifty-one, the two indignant delegates from Bryce not being permitted,
under a ruling from the chair, to cast any votes whatsoever, seeing as
their own status in the convention was the question at issue. Disorder
ensued; in the absence of a sergeant-at-arms the services of volunteer
peacemakers were required to separate a Maydew delegate from Bland
County and a Guest delegate from Mims County.
Dripping with perspiration, his broad old face one big pinky-red flare,
his nasal whine rising to heights of incredible whininess under the
stress of his earnestness, the judge led the fight for the minority. The
steam roller went out of its way to flatten him. Not once, but twice and
thrice it jounced over him, each time leaving him figuratively squashed
but entirely undismayed. He was fighting a losing but a valiant fight
for time.
A committee on resolutions was named and went forth to an ante-room to
draw up a platform. Nobody cared much about that. A set of resolutions
pointing with pride to everything that was Democratic and viewing with
alarm everything even remotely Republican in aspect would be presently
forthcoming, as was customary. It was the committee on credentials upon
which everything depended. Being chosen, it likewise retired, returning
in a miraculously short space of time with its completed report.
And this in brief was what the majority of the committee on
credentials--all reliable Maydew men--had to report:
There being no contests, it was recommended that the sitting delegates
from the eight counties fully represented upon the floor be recognised
as properly accredited delegates. But in respect to the ninth county,
namely Bryce, an unprecedented situation had arisen. Two of Bryce's
delegates were present, bearing credentials properly attested by their
county chairman; unfortunately ten others were absent, through no fault
of their own or of the convention. As a majority of the credentials
committee viewed the matter, it would be a manifest injustice to deprive
these two delegates of their right to take a hand in the deliberations;
on the other hand, the committee held it to be equally unfair that those
two should be permitted to cast the ballots of their ten associates,
inasmuch as they could have no way of knowing what the personal
preferences of the absentees might be. However, to meet the peculiar
condition the committee now made the following recommendation, to wit as
follows: That the secretary of the convention be instructed to prepare
an alphabetical list of such delegates as were present in person,
and that only such delegates as answered to their own names upon roll
call--and no others whatsoever--be permitted to vote upon any question
or questions subsequently arising in this convention. Respectfully
submitted.
For a period of time to be measured by split seconds there was silence.
Then a whirlwind of sound whipped round and round that packed little
martin-box of an opera house and, spiraling upward, threatened the
integrity of its tin roof. Senator Maydew had delivered his king-stroke,
and the purport of it stood clearly betrayed to the understanding of
all. With Bryce's voting strength reduced from twelve votes to two, and
with all possibility of voting by proxy removed, the senator was bound
to win the nomination on the first ballot. The Maydew men foresaw
the inevitable result, once the recommendation of the committee had
prevailed and they reared up in their places and threw their hats
aloft and yelled. The Guest forces saw it, and they howled their
disapprobation until they were hoarse.
The tumult stilled down to a ground breeze of mutterings as Judge Priest
got upon his feet. To him in this dire emergency the Guest forces, now
neck-deep in the last ditch, looked hopefully for a counterfire that
might yet save them from the defeat looming so imminent. There and then,
for once in his life the judge failed to justify the hopes and the faith
of his followers. He seemed strangely unable to find language in which
effectively to combat the proposition before the house. He floundered
about, making no headway, pushing no points home. He practically
admitted he knew of nothing in party usage or in parliamentary law that
might serve as a bar to the adoption of the proposed rule. He proposed
to vote against it, he said, but in the event that it be adopted he now
moved that immediately thereafter the convention take an adjournment,
thus giving the secretary time and opportunity in which to prepare the
alphabetical list. With that he broke off suddenly and quit and sat
down; and then the heart went out of the collective body of the
Guest adherents and they quit, too, waiting in sullen, bewildered,
disappointed silence for the inevitable.
After this it was felt that any further opposition to the Maydew
programme would be but perfunctory opposition. The majority report of
the committee on credentials was adopted by fifty-seven to fifty-three,
the two Bryce delegates voting in the negative, as was to be expected.
Even so, Maydew had a lead of four votes, which was not very many--but
enough. To the accompaniment of a few scattering and spiritless _Nays_
the convention took a recess of one hour. This meant a mighty busy hour
for the secretary, but Maydew, from his temporary abiding place in
the wings, sent orders to his floor managers to permit no more than an
hour's delay at most. He was famishing for the taste of his accomplished
triumph. Besides, there was no trusting so mercurial a stream as Little
River. It might go down with the same rapidity that had marked its
coming up. So an hour it was.
The delegates flowed out of the Marshallville opera house into the
public square of Marshallville, and half of them, or a little more than
half, were openly, jubilant; and half of them, or a little less than
half, were downcast, wearing the look upon their faces of men who were
licked and who knew it, good and well. Moving along through the crowded
aisle, a despondent delegate from Mims, a distant kinsman of Major
Guest, found himself touching shoulders with Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who
was a delegate from our own county.
The Mims County man, with a contemptuous flirt of his thumb, indicated
the broad back of Judge Priest as the judge ambled deliberately along
toward the door.
“I knowed it,” he said in the tones of bitter recapitulation; “I knowed
it frum the start and I told 'em so; but no, they wouldn't listen to me.
I knowed old Priest yonder was too old to be tryin' to run a campaign
ag'inst a smart feller like Maydew, dem his slick hide! When the real
test come, whut did your Jedge Priest do? Why, he jest natchelly curled
up and laid flat down--that's whut he done. I reckin they'll listen to
me next time.”
For once in his life, and once only, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby teetered just
the least bit in his unquestioning allegiance to his life-long friend.
“Well, I don't know,” he said, shaking his head; “I don't know. You
might be right in what you say, and then ag'in you might be wrong. It
shore did look like he slipped a little, awhile ago, but you can't jest
always tell whut's on Jedge Priest's mind,” he added, pluckily renewing
his loyalty.
The Mims County man grunted his disgust. “Don't be foolin' yourself,”
he stated morosely. “You take it frum me--when old men start goin' they
don't never come back. And your old Jedge is plumb gone. A baby could
'a' seen that frum the way he acted jest now.” The object of this
criticism ploughed his slow way outdoors, all the while shaking his head
with the air of one who has abandoned hope. In the street he gently but
firmly disengaged himself from those who would have speech with him,
and with obvious gloom in his manner made a way across the square to
the Mansard House, where he and Major Guest had adjoining rooms on
the second floor. His gait briskened, though, as soon as he had passed
through the lobby of the Mansard House and was hidden from the eyes of
friend and enemy alike.
From the privacy of his room he sent out for certain men. With Cap'n
Buck Owings, a small, greyish, resolute gentleman, and with Sheriff
Giles Birdsong, a large, reddish, equally resolute gentleman, he was
closeted perhaps ten minutes. They went away saying nothing to any
one, for the gift of silence was an attribute that these two shared in
common. Then the judge had brief audience with Major Guest, who emerged
from the conference a crushed and diminished figure. Finally he asked
to speak with Sergeant Bagby. The sergeant found him sitting in his
shirt-sleeves, with his feet on a window ledge, looking out into the
square and gently agitating a palm-leaf fan.
“_Jimmy_,” he said, “I want you to run an errand fur me. Will you go
find Dabney Prentiss--I seen him down there on the street a minute
ago--and tell him I say to git a speech ready?”
“Whut kind of a speech?” inquired Sergeant Bagby.
“Jimmy Bagby,” reproved Judge Priest, “ain't you knowed Dab Prentiss
long enough to know that you don't have to tell him whut kind of a
speech he's to make? He's got all kinds of speeches in stock at all
times. I'll confide this much to you though--it'll be the kind of a
speech that he would 'specially prefer to make. Jest tell him I say be
ready to speak out and utter a few burnin' words when the proper time
comes, ef it does come, which I certainly hope and trust it may.”
Not greatly informed in his mind by this somewhat cryptic explanation,
the Sergeant withdrew, and Judge Priest, getting up on his feet,
actually began humming a little wordless, tuneless tune which was a
favourite of his. However, a thought of the melancholy interview that
he had just had with Major Guest must have recurred to him almost
immediately, for when he appeared in the open a bit later on his return
to the opera house his head was bent and his form was shrunken and his
gait was slow. He seemed a man weighed down with vain repinings and
vainer regrets.
It would appear that the secretary in the interim had completed his
appointed task, for no sooner had the convention reassembled than the
chairman mounted to the stage and took his place alongside a small table
behind the footlights and announced that nominations would now be in
order; which statement was a cue for Attorney-at-Law Augustus Tate, of
the County of Emmett, to get gracefully upon his feet and toss back his
imposing sable mane and address the assemblage.
Attorney Tate was an orator of parts, as he now proceeded to prove
beyond the slightest peradventure of a doubt. He was known as the Black
Eagle of Emmett, for it had been said of him that he had an eye like
that noble bird, the eagle. He had a chin like one, too; but that, of
course, had no bearing upon his talents as displayed upon the stump,
on the platform and in the forum, and in truth only a few malicious
detractors had ever felt called upon to direct attention to the fact.
In flowing and sonorous periods he placed in nomination the name of the
Honourable Horace K. Maydew, concluding in a burst of verbal pin wheels
and metaphorical skyrockets, whereat there was a great display of
enthusiasm from floor and balcony.
When quiet had been restored Judge Priest got slowly up from where he
sat and took an action which was not entirely unexpected, inasmuch as
rumours of it had been in active circulation for half an hour or more.
In twenty words he withdrew the name of the Honourable J. C. C. Guest as
a candidate before the convention.
Only a rustle of bodies succeeded this announcement--that and an
exhalation of breath from a few delegations, which attained to the
volume of a deep joint sigh.
The chairman glanced over the house with a brightening eye. It was
almost time to begin the jubilation. As a matter of fact several ardent
souls among the Maydewites could hardly hold themselves in until the
few remaining formalities had been complied with. They poised themselves
upon the edges of their chairs, with throats tuned to lead in the
yelling.
“Are there any other nominations?” asked the chairman, turning this
way and that. He asked it as a matter of form merely. “If not, the
nominations will be closed and the secretary will--”
“Mister Cheerman, one minute, ef you please.”
The interrupting voice was the high-piped voice of Judge Priest, and the
chairman straightened on his heels to find Judge Priest still upon his
feet.
“The chair recognises Judge Priest again,” said the chairman blandly.
He assumed the judge meant to accept his beating gracefully and, in
the interest of party harmony, to move the nomination of Maydew by
acclamation. On his part that would have been a fair enough presumption,
but the first utterances that came now from the old judge jerked open
the eyes and gaped the mouth of the presiding officer. However, he was
not alone there; nearly everybody was stunned.
“It was my painful duty a minute ago to withdraw the candidate that I
had been privileged to foller in this campaign,” said Judge Priest in
his weedy notes. “It is now my pleasure to offer in his stead the
name of another man as a suitable and a fittin' representative of this
district in the National Halls of Congress.” He glanced about him as
though enjoying the surprised hush that had fallen upon the place, and
for just a fraction of a second his eyes focused upon the lone occupant
of the right-hand stage box, almost above his head. Then he went on,
deliberately prolonging his syllables:
“The man whom I would nominate has never so fur as I know been active in
politics. So fur as I know he has never aspired to or sought fur public
office at the hands of his feller-citizens; in fact, he does not now
seek this office. In presentin' his name for your consideration I am
doin' so solely upon my own responsibility and without consultin' any
one on this earth.
“My present candidate is not an orator. He is not a mixer or an
organiser. I am constrained to admit that, measured by the standards of
commerce, he is not even a successful man. He is poor in this world's
goods. He is leadin' at this moment a life of retirement upon a little
barren hillside farm, where the gulleys furrow his tobacco patch and
the sassafras sprouts are takin' his cornfield, and the shadder of a
mortgage rests heavy upon his lonely roof tree.
“But he is an honest man and a God-fearin' man. Ez a soldier under the
stars and bars he done his duty to the sorrowful end. Ez a citizen he
has never wilfully harmed his feller-man. He never invaded the sanctity
of any man's home, and he never brought sorrow to any hearthstone. Ef
he has his faults--and who amongst us is without them?--he has been the
sole sufferer by them. I believe it has been charged that he drank some,
but I never seen him under the influence of licker, and I don't believe
anybody else ever did either.
“I nominate------” His voice took on the shrillness of a fife and
his right fist, pudgy and clenched, came up at arm's length above his
head--“I nominate--and on that nomination, in accordance with a rule but
newly framed by this body, I call here and now fur an alphabetical roll
call of each and every delegate--I offer as a candidate fur Congress
ag'inst the Honourable Horace K. Maydew the name of my friend, my
neighbour and my former comrade, Lysandy John Curd, of the voting
precinct of Lone Ellum and the County of Red Gravel.”
There was no applause. Not a ripple of approbation went up, nor a ripple
of hostility either. But a gasp went up--a mighty gasp, deep and sincere
and tremendously significant.
Of those upon the stage it was the chairman, I think, who got his wits
back first. He was naturally quick-witted, else his sponsor would never
have chosen him for chairman. In a mute plea for guidance he turned his
head toward the wing of the stage where he knew that sponsor should be,
and abruptly, at a distance from him to be measured by inches rather
than by feet, his gaze encountered the hypnotising stare of Cap'n Buck
Owings, who had magically materialised from nowhere in particular and
was now at his elbow.
“Stay right where you are,” counselled Cap'n Buck in a half whisper.
“We've had plenty of these here recesses--these proceedin's are goin'
right on.”
Daunted and bewildered, the chairman hesitated, his gavel trembling in
his temporarily palsied hand. In that same moment Sheriff Giles Birdsong
had got upon the stage, too; only he deemed his proper place to be
directly alongside the desk of the secretary, and into the startled ear
of the secretary he now spoke.
“Start your roll call, buddy,” was what Mr. Birdsong said, saying
it softly, in lullaby tones, yet imparting a profound meaning to his
crooning and gentle accents. “And be shore to call off the names in
alphabetical order--don't fur-git that part!”
Inward voices of prudence dictated the value of prompt obedience in the
brain of that secretary. Quaveringly he called the first name on the
list of the first county, and the county was Bland and the name was
Homer H. Agnew.
Down in the Bland County delegation, seated directly in front of the
stage, an old man stood up--the Rev. Homer H. Agnew, an itinerant
Baptist preacher.
“My county convention,” he explained, “instructed us for Maydew. But
under the law of this convention I vote now as an individual. As between
the two candidates presented I can vote only one way. I vote for Curd.”
Having voted, he remained standing. There were no cheers and no hisses.
Everybody waited. In a silence so heavy that it hurt, they waited.
And the secretary was constrained to call the second name on the Bland
County list: “Patrick J. Burke!”
Now Patrick J. Burke, as one might guess from his name, belonged to a
race that has been called sentimental and emotional. Likewise he was a
communicant of a faith which long ago set its face like a flint against
the practice of divorce.
“I vote for Curd,” said Patrick J. Burke, and likewise he stood up, a
belligerent, defiant, stumpy, red-haired man.
“Rufus Burnett!”
This was the first convention Rufus Burnett had ever attended in an
official capacity. In order that she might see how well he acquitted
himself, he had brought his wife with him and put her in the balcony. We
may figure Mrs. Burnett as a strong-minded lady, for before he answered
to his name Mr. Burnett, as though seeking higher guidance, cocked
a pestered eye aloft to where the lady sat, and she, saying nothing,
merely pointed a finger toward the spot where old Judge Priest was
stationed. Rufus knew.
“Curd,” he said clearly and distinctly. Somebody yelled then, and other
voices took up the yell.
There were eleven names on the Bland County list. The secretary had
reached the eighth and had heard eight voices speak the same word,
when an interruption occurred--perhaps I should say two interruptions
occurred.
The Black Eagle of Emmett darted out from the wings, bounded over the
footlights and split a path for himself to the seat of Judge Priest. For
once he forgot to be oratorical. “We'll quit, Judge,” he panted, “we're
ready to quit. Maydew will withdraw--I've just come from him. He can't
stand for this to go on; he'll withdraw if you'll take Curd's name down
too. Any compromise candidate will do. Only, for heaven's sake, withdraw
Curd before this goes any farther!”
“All right, son,” said Judge Priest, raising his voice to be heard,
for by now the secretary had called the ninth name and the cheering was
increasing in volume; “that suits me first rate. But you withdraw
your man first, and then I'll tell you who the nominee of this here
convention is goin' to be.”
Turning, he put a hand upon Sergeant Bagby's arm and shook him until the
sergeant broke a whoop in two and hearkened.
“Jimmy,” said Judge Priest with a little chuckle, “step down the aisle,
will you, and tell Dabney Prentiss to uncork himse'f and git his speech
of acceptance all ready. He don't know it yit, but he's goin' to move up
to Washington, D. C., after the next general election.”
Just as the sergeant started on his mission the other interruption
occurred. A lady fainted. She was conspicuously established in the stage
box on the right-hand side, and under the circumstances and with so many
harshly appraisive eyes fixed upon her there was really nothing else
for her to do, as a lady, except faint. She slipped out of her chair
and fell backward upon the floor. It must have been a genuine faint, for
certainly no person who was even partly conscious, let alone a tenderly
nurtured lady, could have endured to lie flat upon the hard planks, as
this lady did, with all those big, knobby jet buttons grinding right
into her spine.
Although I may have wandered far from the main path and taken the
patient reader into devious byways, I feel I have accomplished what I
set out to do in the beginning: I have explained how Dabney Prentiss
came to be our representative in the Lower House of the National
Congress. The task is done, yet I feel that I should not conclude the
chapter until I have repeated a short passage of words between Sergeant
Jimmy Bagby and that delegate from Mims County who was a distant kinsman
of Major Guest. It happened just after the convention, having finished
its work, had adjourned, and while the delegates and the spectators were
emerging from the Marshallville opera house.
All jubilant and excited now, the Mims County man came charging up and
slapped Sergeant Bagby upon the shoulder.
“Well, suh.” he clarioned, “the old Jedge did come back, didn't he?”
“Buddy,” said Sergeant Bagby, “you was wrong before and you're wrong
ag'in. He didn't have to come back, because he ain't never been gone
nowheres.”