Читать книгу Mam' Linda - Will N. Harben - Страница 12

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HE young men in Carson Dwight's set had an odd sort of lounging-place. It was Keith Gordon's room above his father's bank in an old building which had withstood the shot and shell of the Civil War. “The Den,” as it was called by its numerous hap-hazard occupants, was reached from the street on the outside by a narrow flight of worm-eaten and rickety stairs and a perilous little balcony or passage that clung to the brick wall, twenty feet from the ground, along the full length of the building. It was here in one of the four beds that Keith slept, when there was room for him. After a big dance or a match game of baseball, when there were impecunious visitors from neighboring towns left over for various and sundry reasons, Keith had to seek the sanctimonious solitude of his father's home or go to the hotel.

The den was about twenty-five feet square. It was not as luxurious as such bachelor quarters went in Augusta, Savannah, or even Atlanta, but it answered the purpose of “the gang” which made use of it. Keith frankly declared that he had overhauled and replenished it for the last time. He said that it was absolutely impossible to keep washbasins and pitchers, when they were hurled out of the windows for pure amusement of men who didn't care whether they washed or not. As for the laundry bill, he happened to know that it was larger than that of the Johnston House or the boarding department of the Darley Female College. He said, too, that he had warned the gang for the last time that the room would be closed if any more clog-dancing were indulged in. He said his father complained that the plastering was dropping down on his desk below, and sensible men ought to know that a thing like that could not go on forever.

The rules concerning the payment for drinks were certainly lax. No accounts were kept of any man's indebtedness. Any member of the gang was at liberty to stow away a flask of any size in the bureau or wash-stand drawer, or under the mattresses or pillows of his or anybody else's bed, where Skelt, the negro who swept the room, and loved stimulants could not find it.

Bill Garner, as brainy as he was, while he was always welcome at his father's house in the country, a mile from town, seemed to love the company of this noisy set. Through the day it was said of him that he could read and saturate himself with more law than any man in the State, but at night his recreation was a cheap cigar, his old bulging carpet slippers, a cosey chair in Keith's room, and—who would think it?—the most thrilling Indian dime novel on the market. He could quote the French, German, Italian, and Spanish classics by the page in a strange musical accent he had acquired without the aid of a master or any sort of intercourse with native foreigners. He knew and loved all things pertaining to great literature—said he had a natural ear for Wagner's music, had comprehended Edwin Booth's finest work, knew a good picture when he saw it; and yet he had to have his dime novel. In it he found mental rest and relaxation that was supplied by nothing else. His bedfellow was Bob Smith, the genial, dapper, ever daintily clad clerk at the Johnston House. Garner said he liked to sleep with Bob because Bob never—sleeping or waking—took anything out of him mentally. Besides dressing to perfection, Bob played rag-time on the guitar and sang the favorite coon songs of the day. His duties at the hotel were far from arduous, and so the gang usually looked to him to arrange dances and collect toll for expenses. And Bob was not without his actual monetary value, as the proprietor of the hotel had long since discovered, for when Bob arranged a dance it meant that various socially inclined drummers of good birth and standing would, at a hint or a telegram from the clerk, “lay over” at Darley for one night anyway.

If Bob had any quality that disturbed the surface of his uniform equanimity it was his excessive pride in Carson Dwight's friendship. He interlarded his talk with what Carson had said or done, and Carson's candidacy for the Legislature had become his paramount ambition. Indeed, it may as well be stated that the rest of the gang had espoused Dwight's political cause with equal enthusiasm.

It was the Sunday morning following the night Pole Baker had prevented the meeting between Dwight and Dan Willis, and most of the habitual loungers were present waiting for Skelt to black their boots, and deploring the turn of affairs which looked so bad for their favorite. Wade Tingle was shaving at one of the windows before a mirror in a cracked mahogany frame, when they all recognized Carson's step on the balcony and a moment later Dwight stood in the doorway.

“Hello, boys, how goes it?” he asked.

“Oh, right side up, old man,” Tingle replied, as he began to rub the lather into his face with his hand to soften his week-old beard before shaving. “How's the race?”

“It's all right, I guess,” Dwight said, wearily, as he came in and sat down in a vacant chair against the wall. “How goes it in the mountains? I understand you've been over there.”

“Yes, trying to rake in some ads, stir up my local correspondents, and take subscriptions. As to your progress, old man, I'm sorry to say Wiggin's given it a sort of black eye. There was a meeting of farmers over in the tenth, at Miller's Spring. I was blamed sorry you were not there. Wiggin made a speech. It was a corker—viewed as campaign material solely. That chap's failed at the law, but he's the sharpest, most unprincipled manipulator of men's emotions I ever ran across. He showed you up as Sam Jones does the ring-tailed monster of the cloven foot.”

“What Carson said about the Willis and Johnson mob was his theme, of course?” said Garner, above the dog-eared pages of his thriller.

“That and ten thousand things Carson never dreamed of,” returned Tingle. “Here's the way it went. The meeting was held under a bush-arbor to keep the sun off, and the farmers had their wives and children out for a picnic. A long-faced parson led in prayer, some of the old maids piped up with a song that would have ripped slits in your musical tympanum, Garner, and then a raw-boned ploughman in a hickory shirt and one gallus introduced the guest of honor. How they could have overlooked the editor-in-chief and proprietor of the greatest agricultural weekly in north Georgia and picked out that skunk was a riddle to me.”

“Well, what did he say?” Garner asked, as sharply as if he were cross-examining a non-committal witness of importance.

“What did he say?” Tingle laughed, as he wiped the lather from his face with a ragged towel and stood with it in his hand. “He began by saying that he had gone into the race to win, and that he was going to the Legislature as sure as the sun was on its way down in this country and on its way up in China. He said it was a scientific certainty, as easily demonstrated as two and two make four. Those hardy, horny-handed men before him that day were not going to the polls and vote for a town dude who parted his hair in the middle, wore spike-toed shoes that glittered like a new dash-board, and was the ringleader of the rowdiest set of young card-players and whiskey-drinkers that ever blackened the morals of a mining-camp. He said that about the gang, boys, and I didn't have a thing to shoot with. In fact, I had to sit there and take in more.”

“What did he say about his platform?” Garner asked, with a heavy frown; “that's what I want to get at. You never can hurt a politician by circulating the report that he drinks—that's what half of 'em vote for.”

“Oh, his platform seemed to be chiefly that he was out to save the common people from the eternal disgrace of voting for a man like Dwight. He certainly piled it on thick and heavy. It would have made Carson's own mother slink away in shame. Carson, Wiggin said, had loved niggers since he was knee high to a duck, and had always contended that a negro owned by the aristocracy of the South was ahead of the white, razor-back stock in the mountains who had never had that advantage. Carson was up in arms against the White Caps that had come to Darley and whipped those lazy coons, and was going to prosecute every man in the bunch to the full extent of the United States law. If he got into the Legislature he intended to pass laws to make it a penitentiary offence for a white man to shove a black buck off the sidewalk. 'But he's not going to take his seat in the Capitol of Georgia,' Wiggins said, with a yell—'if Carson Dwight went to Atlanta it would not be on a free pass.' And, boys, that crowd yelled till the dry leaves overhead clapped an encore. The men yelled and the women and children yelled.”

“He's a contemptible puppy!” Dwight said, angrily.

“Yes, but he's a slick politician among men of that sort,” said Tingle. “He certainly knows how to talk and stir up strife.”

“And I suppose you sat there like a bump on a log, and listened to all that without opening your mouth!” Keith Gordon spoke up from his bed, where he lay in his bath-robe smoking over the remains of the breakfast Skelt had brought from the hotel on a big black tray.

“Well, I did—get up,” Tingle answered, with a manly flush.

“Oh, you did!” Garner leaned forward with interest.

“Well, I'm glad you happened to be on hand, for your paper has considerable influence over there.”

“Yes, I got up. I waved my hands up and down like a buzzard rising, to keep the crowd still till I could think of something to say; but, Carson, old man, you know what an idiot I used to be in college debates. I could get through fairly well on anything they would let me write down and read off, but it was the impromptu thing that always rattled me. I was as mad as hell when I rose, but all those staring eyes calmed me wonderfully. I reckon I stood there fully half a minute swallowing—”

“You damned fool!” Garner exclaimed, in high disgust.

“Yes, that's exactly what I was,” Tingle admitted. “I stood there gasping like a catfish enjoying his first excursion in open air. It was deathly still. I've heard it said that dying men notice the smallest things about them. I remember I saw the horses and mules haltered out under the trees with their hay and fodder under their noses—the dinner-baskets all in a cluster at the spring guarded by a negro woman. Then what do you think? Old Jeff Condon spoke up.

“'Lead us in prayer, brother,' he said, in reverential tones, and since I was born I never heard so much laughing.”

“You certainly did play into Wiggin's hands,” growled the disgruntled Garner. “That's exactly what a glib-tongued skunk like him would want.”

“Well, it gave me a minute to try to get my wind, anyway,” said Tingle, still red in the face, “but I wasn't equal to a mob of baseball rooters like that. I started in to deny some of Wiggin's charges when another smart Alec spoke up and said: 'Hold on! tell us about the time you and your candidate started home from a ball at Catoosa Springs in a buggy, and were so drunk that the horse took you to the house of a man who used to own him sixteen miles from where you wanted to go. Of course, you all know, boys, that was a big exaggeration, but I had no idea it was generally known. Anyway, I thought the crowd would laugh their heads off. I reckon it was the way I looked. I felt as if every man, woman, and child there had mashed a bad egg on me and was chuckling over their marksmanship. I ended up by getting mad, and I saw by Wiggin's grin that he liked that. I managed to say a few things in denial, and then Wiggin got up and roasted me and my paper to a turn. He said that in supporting Dwight editorially the Headlight was giving sanction to Dwight's ideas in favor of the negro and against honest white people, and that every man there who had any family or State pride ought to stop taking the dirty sheet; and, bless your life, some of them did cancel their subscriptions when they met me after the speaking; but I'm going to keep on mailing it, anyway. It will be like sending free tracts to the heathen, but it may bear fruit.”