I read about it in a Chicago Sunday paper three weeks ago.
But you knew before that there was a Company B down here in this town?
Without raising his head or baring his face, the other nodded. Judge Priest overturned his coffee cup as he got to his feet, but took no heed of the resultant damage to the cloth on the table and the fronts of his white trouser legs.
Boys, he cried out so shrilly, so eagerly, so joyously, that they all jumped, when you foller after Holy Writ you cant never go fur wrong. Youre liable to breed a miracle. A while ago we took a lesson from the Parable of the Rich Man that give a dinner; and lo and behold! another parable and a better parable yes, the sweetest parable of em all has come to pass and been repeated here mongst us without our ever knowin it or even suspectin it. The Prodigal Son didnt enjoy the advantage of havin a Chicago Sunday paper to read, but in due season he came back home that other Prodigal did; and it stands written in the text that he was furgiven, and that a feast was made fur him in the house of his fathers.
His tone changed to one of earnest demand: Lycurgus Reese, finish the roll call of this company finish it right now, this minute the way it oughter be finished!
Why, Judge Priest, said Professor Reese, still in the dark and filled with wonderment, it is already finished!
As though angered almost beyond control, the judge snapped back:
It aint finished, neither. It aint been rightly finished from the very beginnin of these dinners. It aint finished till you call the very last name thats on that list.
But, Judge
But nothin! You call that last name, Ly-curgus Reese; and you be almighty quick about it!
There was no need for the old professor, thus roughly bidden, to haul out his manuscript. He knew well enough the name, though wittingly it had not passed his lips for forty years or more. So he spoke it out:
Sylvester B. Washburn!
The man they had called Watts raised in his place and dropped his clenched hands to his sides, and threw off the stoop that was in his shoulders. He lifted his wetted eyes to the cracked, stained ceiling above. He peered past plaster and rafter and roof, and through a rift in the skies above he feasted his famished vision on a delectable land which others might not see. And then, beholding on his face that look of one who is confessed and shriven, purified and atoned for, the scales fell away from their own eyes and they marvelled not that they knew him now, but that they had not known him before now. And for a moment or two there was not a sound to be heard.
Sylvester B. Washburn! repeated Professor Reese.
And the prodigal answered:
Here!
III. JUDGE PRIEST COMES BACK
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 gentlemans 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 & Powells 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? Its sort of a personal matter and I wouldnt 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 lets hear whuts on your mind. Nice weather, aint 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 callers mind; as though this visit was not entirely unexpected, even though he had had no warning of it. There was in the judges 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 judges 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 Curds sagged and slumped figure. There was despondency and there was embarrassment in all the drooping lines of that elderly frame. Judge Priests 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 judges 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 Ive come to see you in regards to and its just a little bit hard to speak about it even to somebody that Ive known most of my life, same as Ive 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. Im 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 dont know as you know about it, Judge Priest the chances are you naturally wouldnt but in a domestic way things havent been going very smoothly with me with us, I should say for quite a spell back. I reckon after all its a mistake on the part of a man after hes reached middle age and got set in his ways to be taking a young wife, more especially if he cant take care of her in the way shes been used to, or anyhow in the way shed like to be taken care of. I suppose its only human nature for a young woman to hanker after considerable many things that a man like me cant 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 aint 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 whats happened is most of it mine. I reckon I was too old to be thinking about getting married in the first place. And I wasnt very well off then either not well enough off to have the money I shouldve had if I expected to make Luella contented. Still, all that part of its got nothing to do with the matter as it stands Im 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 itll ever go, so fur ez Im 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, Ive 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. Thats always been my own private doctrine, more or less. But in my own case Ive changed my mind. Weve been talking it over back and forth and weve decided Luella and me have that under the circumstances a divorce is the best thing for both of us; in fact weve decided that its the only thing. I want that Luella should be happy and I think maybe Ill feel easier in my own mind when its all over and done with and settled up according to the law. Im aiming to do whats 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. Shes young and shes got her whole life before her thats what Im thinking of.
He paused and with his tongue he moistened his lips, which seemed dry.
I dont mind telling you I didnt feel this way about it first-off. It was a pretty tolerably hard jolt to me the way the proposition first came up. Ive spent a good many sleepless nights thinking it over. At least I couldnt 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 dont aim to give you any advice. In the first place, you aint asked fur it; and in the second place, even ef you had asked, Id hesitate a monstrous long time before Id undertake to advice any man about his own private family affairs. But I jest want to ask you one thing right here: It wasnt you, was it, that first proposed the idea of this here divorce?
Well, no, Judge, I dont believe twas, confessed the old man whose misery-reddened eyes looked into Judge Priests from across the littered desk. I cant say as it was me that first suggested it. But thats neither here nor there. The point Im trying to get at is just this:
The papers have all been drawn up and theyll 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, theres not going to be any fight made in your court. And after its all over Im aiming to sell out my feed store it seems like I havent 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 didnt figure on one of them being a young woman pretty herself and wanting pretty things to wear and have round the house. But I shouldnt say that Ive come to see how its mainly my fault, and Im figuring on how to spare Luella in every way that its possible to spare her. So as I was saying, Im figuring, when its 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. Its 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 Im given a fair amount of time to do it in.