Old Judge Priest

IX. A BEAUTIFUL EVENING *

* Publisher’s Note – Under a different title this story was printed originally in another volume of Mr. Cobb’s. It is included here in order to complete the chronicles of Judge Priest and his people as begun in the book called “Back Home” and continued in this book.

THERE was a sound, heard in the early hours of a Sunday morning, that used to bother strangers until they got used to it. It started usually along about half past five or six o’clock and it kept up interminably – so it seemed to them – a monotonous, jarring thump-thump, thump-thump that was like the far-off beating of African tomtoms; but at breakfast, when the beaten biscuits came upon the table, throwing off a steamy hot halo of their own goodness, the aliens knew what it was that had roused them, and, unless they were dyspeptics by nature, felt amply recompensed for those lost hours of beauty sleep.

In these degenerate days I believe there is a machine that accomplishes the same purpose noiselessly by a process of rolling and crushing, which no doubt is efficacious; but it seems somehow to take the poetry out of the operation. Judge Priest, and the reigning black deity of his kitchen, would have naught of it. So long as his digestion survived and her good right arm held out to endure, there would be real beaten biscuits for the judge’s Sunday morning breakfast. And so, having risen with the dawn, Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of whittled wood, would pound the dough with rhythmic strokes until it was as plastic as sculptor’s modelling clay and as light as eiderdown, full of tiny hills and hollows, in which small yeasty bubbles rose and spread and burst like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets. Then, with her master hand, she would roll it thin and cut out the small round disks and delicately pink each one with a fork – and then, if you were listening, you could hear the stove door slam like the smacking of an iron lip.

On a Sunday morning I have in mind, Judge Priest woke with the first premonitory thud from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed in his white linens and out upon the wide front porch while the summer day was young and unblemished. The sun was not up good yet. It made a red glow, like a barn afire, through the treetops looking eastward. Lie-abed blackbirds were still talking over family matters in the maples that clustered round the house, and in the back yard Judge Priest’s big red rooster hoarsely circulated gossip in regard to a certain little brown hen, first crowing out the news loudly and then listening, with his head on one side, while the rooster in the next yard took it up and repeated it to a rooster living farther along, as is the custom among male scandalisers the world over. Upon the lawn the little gossamer hammocks that the grass spiders had seamed together overnight were spangled with dew, so that each out-thrown thread was a glittering rosary and the centre of each web a silken, cushioned jewel casket. Likewise each web was outlined in white mist, for the cottonwood trees were shedding down their podded product so thickly that across open spaces the slanting lines of drifting fibre looked like snow. It would be hot enough after a while, but now the whole world was sweet and fresh and washed clean.

It impressed Judge Priest so. He lowered his bulk into a rustic chair made of hickory withes that gave to his weight, and put his thoughts upon breakfast and the goodness of the day; but presently, as he sat there, he saw something that set a frown between his eyes.

He saw, coming down Clay Street, upon the opposite side, an old man – a very feeble old man – who was tall and thin and dressed in sombre black. The man was lame – he dragged one leg along with the hitching gait of the paralytic. Travelling with painful slowness, he came on until he reached the corner above.

Then automatically he turned at right angles and left the narrow wooden sidewalk and crossed the dusty road. He passed Judge Priest’s, looking neither to the right nor the left, and so kept on until he reached the corner below. Still following an invisible path in the deep-furrowed dust, he crossed again to the far side. Just as he got there his halt leg seemed to give out altogether and for a minute or two he stood holding himself up by a fumbling grip upon the slats of a tree box before he went laboriously on, a figure of pain and weakness in the early sunshine that was now beginning to slant across his path and dapple his back with checkerings of shadow and light.

This manoeuvre was inexplicable – a stranger would have puzzled to make it out. The shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay Street as upon the other; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brother over the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles and balsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the opposite side of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest’s roomy, rambling old home, had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to this lone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labour. A stranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understood it – he had seen that same thing repeated countless times in the years that stretched behind him. Always it had distressed him inwardly, but on this particular morning it distressed him more than ever. The toiling grim figure in black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and old.

Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you would call young. With an effort he heaved himself up out of the depths of his hickory chair and stood at the edge of his porch, polishing a pink dome of forehead as though trying to make up his mind to something. Jefferson Poindexter, resplendent in starchy white jacket and white apron, came to the door.

“Breakfus’ served, suh!” he said, giving to an announcement touching on food that glamour of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys the splendid secret.

“Hey?” asked the judge absently.

“Breakfus’ – hit’s on the table waitin’, suh,” stated Jeff. “Mizz Polks sent over her house-boy with a dish of fresh razberries fur yore breakfus’; and she say to tell you, with her and Mistah Polkses’ compliments, they is fresh picked out of her garden – specially fur you.”

The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had reference were named Polk, but in speaking of white persons for whom he had a high regard Jeff always, wherever possible within the limitations of our speech, tacked on that final s. It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment, implying that the person referred to was worthy of enlargement and pluralisation.

Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled dining room, Judge Priest ate his breakfast mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads of sweetness; the young fried chicken a poem in delicate and flaky browns; the spoon bread could not have been any better if it had tried; and the beaten biscuits were as light as snowflakes and as ready to melt on the tongue; as symmetrical too as poker-chips, and like poker-chips, subject to a sudden disappearance from in front of one; but Judge Priest spoke hardly a word all through the meal. Jeff, going out to the kitchen for the last course, said to Aunt Dilsey:

“Ole boss-man seem lak he’s got somethin’ on his mind worryin’ him this mawnin’.”

When Jeff returned, with a turn of crisp waffles in one hand and a pitcher of cane sirup in the other, he stared in surprise, for the dining room was empty and he could hear his employer creaking down the hall. Jeff just naturally hated to see good hot waffles going to waste. He ate them himself, standing up; and they gave him a zest for his regular breakfast, which followed in due course of time.

From the old walnut hatrack, with its white-tipped knobs that stood just inside the front door, the judge picked up a palmleaf fan; and he held the fan slantwise as a shield for his eyes and his bare head against the sun’s glare as he went down the porch steps and passed out of his own yard, traversed the empty street and strove with the stubborn gate latch of the little house that faced his own. It was a poor-looking little house, and its poorness had extended to its surroundings – as if poverty was a contagion that spread. In Judge Priest’s yard, now, the grass, though uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but here, in this small yard, there were bare, shiny spots of earth showing through the’ grass – as though the soil itself was out at elbows and the nap worn off its green-velvet coat; but the vines about the porch were thick enough for an ambuscade and from behind their green screen came a voice in hospitable recognition.

“Is that you, Judge? Well, suh, I’m glad to see you! Come right in; take a seat and sit down and rest yourself.”

The speaker showed himself in the arched opening of the vine barrier – an old man – not quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He was in his shirtsleeves. There was a patch upon one of the sleeves. His shoes had been newly shined, but the job was poorly done; the leather showed a dulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides and heels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down – the voice of a deaf person who cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in a false key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean and slightly tremulous hand cupped behind his ear.

The other hand he extended in greeting as the old judge mounted the step of the low porch.

The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers that stood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute or two he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighbourly calls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy the communion of silence together without embarrassment.

The town clocks struck – first the one on the city hall struck eight times sedately, and then, farther away, the one on the county courthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment, struck eleven times with great vigour, hesitated again, struck once with a big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could cure the courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept it according to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased the bell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells, began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamouring had died away.

“Goin’ to be good and hot after ‘while,” he said, raising his voice.

“What say?”

“I say it’s goin’ to be mighty warm a little later on in the day,” repeated Judge Priest.

“Yes, suh; I reckon you’re right there,” assented the host. “Just a minute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she’d find it middlin’ close in church this morning. She’s going, though – runaway horses wouldn’t keep her away from church! I’m not going myself – seems as though I’m getting more and more out of the church habit here lately.”

Judge Priest’s eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of this admission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of his second wife, had been a regular attendant at services – going twice on Sundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wife had been dead going on four years now – or was it five? Time sped so!

The deaf man spoke on:

“So I just thought I’d sit here and try to keep cool and wait for that little Ledbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read last Sunday’s paper, Judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty fine piece on those Northern money devils. It’s round here somewhere – I cut it out to keep it. I’d like to have you read it and pass your opinion on it. These young fellows do pretty well, but there’s none of them can write like the colonel, in my judgment.”

Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him. “Ed Tilghman,” he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seemed absurdly out of place, coming from his round frame, “you and me have lived neighbours together a good while, ain’t we? We’ve been right acros’t the street frum one another all this time. It kind of jolts me sometimes when I git to thinkin’ how many years it’s really been; because we’re gittin’ along right smartly in years – all us old fellows are. Ten years frum now, say, there won’t be so many of us left.” He glanced side-wise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. “You’re younger than some of us; but, even so, you ain’t exactly whut I’d call a young man yourse.”

Avoiding the direct questioning gaze that his companion turned on him at this, the judge reached forward and touched a ripe balsam apple that dangled in front of him. Instantly it split, showing the gummed red seeds clinging to the inner walls of the sensitive pod.

“I’m listening to you, Judge,” said the deaf man.

For a moment the old judge waited. There was about him almost an air of diffidence. Still considering the ruin of the balsam apple, he spoke, and it was with a sort of hurried anxiety, as though he feared he might be checked before he said what he had to say:

“Ed, I was settin’ on my porch a while ago waitin’ fur breakfast, and your brother came by.” He shot a quick, apprehensive glance at his silent auditor. Except for a tautened flickering of the muscles about the mouth, there was no sign that the other had heard him. “Your brother Abner came by,” repeated the judge, “and I set over yonder on my porch and watched him pass. Ed, Abner’s gittin’ mighty feeble! He jest about kin drag himself along – he’s had another stroke lately, they tell me. He had to hold on to that there treebox down yonder, stiddyin’ himself after he cross’t back over to this side. Lord knows what he was doin’ draggin’ downtown on a Sunday mornin’ – force of habit, I reckin. Anyway he certainly did look older and more poorly than ever I saw him before. He’s a failin’ man ef I’m any judge. Do you hear me plain?” he asked.

“I hear you,” said his neighbour in a curiously flat voice. It was Tilghman’s turn to avoid the glances of his friend. He stared straight ahead of him through a rift in the vines.

“Well, then,” went on Judge Priest, “here’s whut I’ve got to say to you, Ed Tilghman. You know as well as I do that I’ve never pried into your private affairs, and it goes mightily ag’inst the grain fur me to be doin’ so now; but, Ed, when I think of how old we’re all gittin’ to be, and when the Camp meets and I see you settin’ there side by side almost, and yit never seemin’ to see each other – and this mornin’ when I saw Abner pass, lookin’ so gaunted and sick – and it sech a sweet, ca’m mornin’ too, and everythin’ so quiet and peaceful-” He broke off and started anew. “I don’t seem to know exactly how to put my thoughts into words – and puttin’ things into words is supposed to be my trade too. Anyway I couldn’t go to Abner. He’s not my neighbour and you are; and besides, you’re the youngest of the two. So – so I came over here to you. Ed, I’d like mightily to take some word frum you to your brother Abner. I’d like to do it the best in the world! Can’t I go to him with a message frum you – to-day? To-morrow might be too late!”

He laid one of his pudgy hands on the bony knee of the deaf man; but the hand slipped away as Tilghman stood up.

“Judge Priest,” said Tilghman, looking down at him, “I’ve listened to what you’ve had to say; and I didn’t stop you, because you are my friend and I know you mean well by it. Besides, you’re my guest, under my own roof.”

He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines of the porch. Otherwise he gave no sign of any emotion that might be astir within him, his face being still set and his voice flat. “What’s between me and my – what’s between me and that man you just named always will be between us. He’s satisfied to let things go on as they are. I’m satisfied to let them go on. It’s in our breed, I guess. Words – just words – wouldn’t help mend this thing. The reason for it would be there just the same, and neither one of us is going to be able to forget that so long as we both live. I’d just as lief you never brought this – this subject up again. If you went to him I presume he’d tell you the same thing. Let it be, Judge Priest – it’s past mending. We two have gone on this way for fifty years nearly. We’ll keep on going on so. I appreciate your kindness, Judge Priest; but let it be – let it be!”

There was finality miles deep and fixed as basalt in his tone. He checked his walk and called in at a shuttered window.

“Laddie,” he said in his natural up-and-down voice, “before you put off for church, couldn’t you mix up a couple of lemonades or something? Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me.”

“No,” said Judge Priest, getting slowly up, “I’ve got to be gittin’ back before the sun’s up too high. Ef I don’t see you ag’in meanwhile be shore to come to the next regular meetin’ of the Camp – on Friday night,” he added.

“I’ll be there,” said Tilghman. “And I’ll try to find that piece of Colonel Watterson’s and send it over to you. I’d like mightily for you to read it.”

He stood at the opening in the vines, with one slightly palsied hand fumbling at a loose tendril as the judge passed down the short yard-walk and out at the gate. Then he went back to his chair and sat down again. All the little muscles in his jowls were jumping.

Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking down its dusty length from beneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and there groups of children – the little girls in prim and starchy white, the little boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; and all of them moving toward a common centre – Sunday school. Twice again that day would the street show life – a little later when grown-ups went their way to church, and again just after the noonday dinner, when young people and servants, carrying trays and dishes under napkins, would cross and recross from one house to another. The Sunday interchange of special dainties between neighbours amounted to a ceremonial; but after that, until the cool of the evening, the town would simmer in quiet, while everybody took a Sunday nap.

With his fan, Judge Priest made an angry sawing motion in the air, as though trying to fend off something disagreeable – a memory, perhaps, or it might have been only a persistent midge. There were plenty of gnats and midges about, for by now – even so soon – the dew was dried. The leaves of the silver poplars were turning their white under sides up like countless frog bellies, and the long, podded pendants of the Injun-cigar trees hung dangling and still. It would be a hot day, sure enough; already the judge felt wilted and worn out.

In our town we had our tragedies that endured for years and, in the small-town way, finally became institutions. There was the case of the Burnleys. For thirty-odd years old Major Burnley lived on one side of his house and his wife lived on the other, neither of them ever crossing an imaginary dividing line that ran down the middle of the hall, having for their medium of intercourse all that time a lean, spinster daughter, in whose grey and barren life churchwork and these strange home duties took the place that Nature had intended to be filled by a husband and by babies and grand-babies.

There was crazy Saul Vance, in his garb of a fantastic scarecrow, who was forever starting somewhere and never going there – because, so sure as he came to a place where two roads crossed, he could not make up his mind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted him, or a bank had failed on him, or a colt had kicked him in the head – or maybe it was all three of these things that had addled his poor brains. Anyhow he went his pitiable, aimless way for years, taunted daily by small boys who were more cruel than jungle beasts. How he lived nobody knew, but when he died some of the men who as boys had jeered him turned out to be his volunteer pallbearers.

There was Mr. H. Jackman – Brother Jackman to all the town – who had been our leading hatter once and rich besides, and in the days of his affluence had given the Baptist church its bells. In his old age, when he was dog-poor, he lived on charity, only it was not known by that word, which is at once the sweetest and the bitterest word in our tongue; for Brother Jackman, always primped, always plump and well clad, would go through the market to take his pick of what was there, and to the Richland House bar for his toddies, and to Felsburg Brothers for new garments when his old ones wore shabby – and yet never paid a cent for anything; a kindly conspiracy on the part of the whole town enabling him to maintain his self-respect to the last. Strangers in our town used to take him for a retired banker – that’s a fact!

And there was old man Stackpole, who had killed his man – killed him in fair fight and was acquitted – and yet walked quiet back streets at all hours, a grey, silent shadow, and never slept except with a bright light burning in his room.

The tragedy of Mr. Edward Tilghman, though, and of Captain Abner G. Tilghman, his elder brother, was both a tragedy and a mystery – the biggest tragedy and the deepest mystery the town had ever known or ever would know probably. All that anybody knew for certain was that for upward of fifty years neither of them had spoken to the other, nor by deed or look had given heed to the other. As boys, back in sixty-one, they had gone out together. Side by side, each with his arm over the other’s shoulder, they had stood up with more than a hundred others to be sworn into the service of the Confederate States of America; and on the morning they went away Miss Sally May Ghoulson had given the older brother her silk scarf off her shoulders to wear for a sash. Both the brothers had liked her; but by this public act she made it plain which of them was her choice.

Then the company had marched off to the camp below the Tennessee border, where the new troops were drilling; and as they marched some watchers wept and others cheered – but the cheering predominated, for it was to be only a sort of picnic anyhow – so everybody agreed. As the orators – who mainly stayed behind – pointed out, the Northern people would not fight. And even if they should fight could not one Southerner whip four Yankees? Certainly he could; any fool knew that much. In a month or two months, or at most three months, they would all be tramping home again, covered with glory and the spoils of war, and then – this by common report and understanding – Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghman would be married, with a big church wedding.