OLD JUDGE PRIEST
which no doubt is efficacious; but it seems
somehow to take the poetry out of the opera
tion. 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 eider
down, full of tiny hills and hollows, in which
small yeasty bubbles rose and spread and burst
like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wave
lets. 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 black
birds were still talking over family matters
in the maples that clustered round the house,
and in the back yard Judge Priest's big red
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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.
[363]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
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 fumb
ling 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 side
walk 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
[364]
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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, polish
ing 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 glam
our 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 limi
tations of our speech, tacked on that final s.
It was in the nature of a delicate verbal com
pliment, implying that the person referred to
was worthy of enlargement and pluralisation.
Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white- walled
[365]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
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 snow-
flakes 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 Auni>
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 em
ployer creaking down the hall. Jeff just natu
rally 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
[366]
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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 el
bows 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.
[467]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
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. Evi
dently these neighbourly calls between these
two old men were not uncommon; they could
enjoy the communion of silence together with
out 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 court
house. 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
[368]
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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 hi 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*
[369]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
along right smartly in years all us old fel
lows 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'f."
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
[370]
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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 f ailin' 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
whutf 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 sup
posed 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
[371]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
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 con
fines 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 be
tween 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 mend
ing. 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!"
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
There was finality miles deep and fixed as
basalt in his tone. He checked his walk and
called in at a shuttered window.
"Liddie," 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 cen
tre Sunday school. Twice again that day
would the street show life a little later when
grown-ups went their way to church, and again
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
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 en
dured for years and, in the small-town way,
finally became institutions. There was the
case of the Burnley s. 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
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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 Jack-
man to all the town who had been our lead
ing 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 sweet
est 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 Bichland 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
[375]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
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
[376]
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
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 Tilgh-
man would be married, with a big church
wedding.
The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought,
and it was not a ninety-day picnic after all.
It was not any kind of a picnic. And when it
was over, after four years and a month, Miss
Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghman did
not marry. It was just before the battle of
Chickamauga when the other men in the com
pany first noticed that the two Tilghmans had
become as strangers, and worse than strangers,
to each other. They quit speaking to each
other then and there, and to any man's knowl
edge they never spoke again. They served
the war out, Abner rising just before the end to
a captaincy, Edward serving always as a private
in the ranks. In a dour, grim silence they took
the fortunes of those last hard, hopeless days
[377]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
and after the surrender down in Mississippi
they came back with the limping handful that
was left of the company; and in age they were
all boys still but in experience, men, and in
suffering, grandsires.
Two months after they got back Miss Sally
May Ghoulson was married to Edward, the
younger brother. Within a year she died, and
after a decent period of mourning Edward
married a second time only to be widowed
again after many years. His second wife bore
him children and they died all except one,
a daughter, who grew up and married badly;
and after her mother's death she came back to
live with her deaf father and to minister to him.
As for Captain Abner Tilghman, he never
married never, so far as the watching eyes
of the town might tell, looked with favour
upon any woman. And he never spoke to
his brother or to any of his brother's family
or his brother to him.
With years the wall of silence they had
builded up between them turned to ice and the
ice to stone. They lived on the same street,
but never did Edward enter Captain Abner's
bank, never did Captain Abner pass Edward's
house always he crossed over to the opposite
side. They belonged to the same Veterans'
Camp indeed there was only the one for
them to belong to; they voted the same ticket
straight Democratic; and in the same church,
the old Independent Presbyterian, they wor-
1378]
A BEAUTIFUL EVENING
shipped the same God by the same creed, the
older brother being an elder and the younger a
plain member and yet never crossed looks.
The town had come to accept this dumb and
bitter feud as unchangeable and eternal; in
time people ceased even to wonder what its
cause had been, and in all the long years only