Old Judge Priest

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!”