Part 14
Then he would excuse himself and leave the table and enter the library for a moment, returning with a polished rosewood case borne reverently in his two hands and he would put the case down and dust it with a handkerchief and unlock it with a brass key which he carried upon his watch chain and from their bed of faded velveteen within, bring forth two old duelling pistols with long barrels, and carved scrolls on their butts and hammers that stood up high like the ears of a startled colt. And he would bid you to decipher for yourself the name of his grandfather inscribed upon the brass trigger guards. You were given to understand that in a day of big men, Braxton Montjoy towered as a giant amongst them.
Aside from following the profession of being a grandson, Quintus Q. had no regular business. There was a sign reading _Real Estate and Loans_ upon the glass door of his one-room suite in the Planters' Bank building, but he didn't keep regular hours there. With the help of an agent, he looked after the collecting of the rents for his town property and the letting upon shares or leaseholds of his river-bottom farms; but otherwise you might say his chief occupation was that of being a sincere and conscientious descendant of a creditable forebear.
So much for the grandfather. So much, at this moment, for the grandson. Now we are going to get through the rind into the meat of our tale:
As may be recalled, State Senator Horace K. Maydew, of our town and county, being a leader of men and of issues, once upon a time hankered mightily to serve the district in Congress and in the moment that he could almost taste of triumph accomplished had the cup dashed from his lips through the instrumentality of one who, locally, was fancied as being rather better than a dabster at politics, himself. During the months which succeeded this defeat, the mortified Maydew nursed a sharpened grudge toward the enemy, keeping it barbed and fletched against the time when he might let fly with it. Presently an opportunity for reprisals befell. Maydew's term as State Senator neared its close. For personal reasons, which he found good and sufficient, the incumbent did not offer as a candidate to succeed himself. But quite naturally, and perhaps quite properly, he desired to name his successor. Privily he began casting about him for a likely and a suitable candidate, which to the senator's understanding meant one who would be biddable, tractable and docile. Before he had quite agreed with himself upon a choice, young Tobias Houser came out into the open as an aspirant for the Democratic nomination, and when he heard the news Senator Maydew re-honed his hate to a razor-edge. For young Tobe Houser, who had been a farmer-boy and then a country school teacher and who now had moved to town and gone into business, was something else besides: He was the nephew of Judge Priest, the only son of the judge's dead sister. It was the judge's money that had helped the young man through the State university. Undoubtedly--so Maydew read the signs of the times--it was the judge's influence which now brought the youngster forth as an aspirant for public office. In the Houser candidacy Maydew saw, or thought he saw, another attack upon his fiefship on the party organisation and the party machinery.
On an evening of the same week in which Tobe Houser inserted his modestly-worded announcement card in the _Daily Evening News_, Senator Maydew called to conference--or to concurrence--two lieutenants who likewise had cause to be stalwart supporters of his policies. The meeting took place in the living room of the Maydew home. When the drinks had been sampled and the cigars had been lighted Senator Maydew came straight to the business in hand:
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I've got a candidate--a man none of us ever thought of before. How does the name of Quintus Q. Montjoy seem to strike you?”
Mr. Barnhill looked at Mr. Bonnin, and Mr. Bonnin looked back at Mr. Barnhill. Then both of them looked at Maydew.
“Montjoy, eh?” said Barnhill, doubtfully, seeming not to have heard aright.
“Quintus Q. Montjoy you said, didn't you?” asked Bonnin as though there had been any number of Montjoys to choose from. He spoke without enthusiasm.
“Certainly,” answered Maydew briskly, “Quintus Q. Montjoy, Esquire. Any objections to him that you can think of, off-hand?”
“Well,” said Mr. Barnhill, who was large of person and slow of speech, “he ain't never done anything.”
“If I'm any judge he never will do anything--much,” supplemented Mr. Bonnin, who was by way of being small and nervous.
“You've said it--both of you,” stated their leader, catching them up with a snap. “He never has done anything. That gives him a clean record to run on. He never will do anything--on his own hook, I mean. That'll make him a safe, sound, reliable man to have representing this district up yonder at Frankfort. Last session they licked the Stickney warehouse bill for us. This season it'll come up again for passage. I guarantee here and now that Quint Montjoy will vote right on that proposition and all other propositions that'll come up. He'll vote right because we'll tell him how to vote. I know him from the skin out.”
“He's so powerfully pompious and bumpious--so kind of cocksure and high-an'-mighty,” said Mr. Barnhill. “D'ye reckin, Hod, as how he'll stand without hitchin'?”
“I'll guarantee that, too,” said Senator Maydew, with his left eyelid flickering down over his left eye in the ghost of a wink. “He don't know yet that he's going to be our candidate. Nobody knows it yet but you and me. But when he finds out from us that he's going to have a chance to rattle round in the same seat that his revered granddaddy once ornamented--well, just you watch him arise and shine. There's another little thing that you've overlooked. He's got money,--plenty of it; as much money as any man in this town has got. He's not exactly what I'd call a profligate or a spendthrift. You may have noticed that except when he was spending it on himself he's very easy to control in money matters. But when we touch a match to his ambition and it flares up, he'll dig down deep and produce freely--or I miss my guess. For once we'll have a campaign fund with some real money behind it.”
His tone changed and began to drip rancour:
“By Judas, I'll put up some of my own money! This is one time when I'm not counting the cost. I'm going to beat that young lummox of a Houser, if it's the last thing I do. I'm going to rub his nose in the mud. You two know without my telling you why I'd rather see Houser licked than any other man on earth--except one. And you know who that one is. We can't get at Priest yet--that chance will come later. But we can get his precious nephew, and I'm the man that's going to get him. And Quint Montjoy is the man I'm going to get him with.”
“Well, Hod, jest ez you say,” assented Mr. Barnhill dutifully. “I was only jest askin', that's all. You sort of tuck me off my feet at fust, but the way you put it now, it makes ever'thing look mighty promisin'. How about you, Wilbur?” and he turned to Mr. Bonnin.
“Oh, I'm agreeable,” chimed Mr. Bonnin. “Only don't make any mistake about one thing--Houser's got a-plenty friends. He'll give us a fight all right. It won't be any walkover.”
“I want it to be a fight, and I don't want it to be a walk-over, either,” said Senator Maydew. “The licking we give him will be all the sweeter, then.”
He got up and started for the telephone on the wall.
“I'll just call up and see if our man is at home. If he is, we'll all three step over there right now and break the news to him, that the voice of the people has been lifted in an irresistible and clamorous demand for him to become their public servant at his own expense.” The Senator was in a good humour again. “And say, Hod, whilst I'm thinkin' of it,” put in Mr. Barnhill sapiently, “ef he should be at home and ef we should go over there, tell him for Goddle Midey's sake not to drag in that late lamentable grandpaw of his'n, more'n a million times durin' the course of the campaign. It's all right mebbe to appeal to the old famblies. I ain't bearin' ary grudge ag'inst old famblies, 'though I ain't never found the time to belong to one of 'em myself. But there's a right smart chance of middle-aged famblies and even a few toler'ble new famblies in this here community. And them's the kind that does the large bulk of the votin' in primary elections.”
We've had campaigns and campaigns and then more and yet other campaigns in our county. We had them every year--and we still do. Being what they were and true to their breeding the early settlers started running for office, almost before the Indians had cleared out of the young settlements. Politics is breath to the nostrils and strong meat to the bellies of grown men down our way. Found among us are persons who are office-seekers by instinct and office-holders by profession. Whole families, from one generation to another, from father to son and from that son to his son and his son's son become candidates almost as soon as they have become voters. You expect it of them and are not disappointed. Indeed, this same is true of our whole state. Times change, party lines veer and snarl, new issues come up and flourish for awhile and then are cut down again to make room for newer crops of newer issues still, but the Breckinridges and Clays, the Hardins and Helms, the Breathitts and Trimbles, the Crittendons and Wickliffes, go on forever and ever asking the support of their fellow-Ken-tuckians at the polls and frequently are vouchsafed it. But always the winner has cause to know, after winning, that he had a fight.
As goes the state at large, so goes the district and the precinct and the ward. As I was saying just now, we have had warm campaigns before now; but rarely do I recall a campaign of which the early stages showed so feverishly high a temperature as this campaign between Quintus Q. Montjoy and young Tobias Houser for the Democratic nomination for State Senator. You see, beneath the surface of things, a woman's personality ran in the undercurrents, roiling the waters and soiling the channel. Her name of course, was not spoken on the hustings or printed in the paper, but her influence was manifest, nevertheless.
There was one woman--and perhaps only one in all that community--who felt she had abundant cause to dislike Judge Priest and all that pertained to him by ties of blood, marriage, affection or a common interest. And this person was the present wife of the Hon. Horace K. Maydew, and by that same token the former wife of old Mr. Lysander John Curd. Every time she saw Congressman Dabney Prentiss passing by, grand and glorious in his longtailed coat and his broad black hat and his white tie, which is ever the mark of a statesman who is working at the trade, she harked back to that day when Judge Priest had obtruded his obstinate bulk between her husband and her husband's dearest ambition; and she remembered that, except for him, she might now be Mrs. Congressman Maydew, going to White House receptions and giving dinners for senators and foreign diplomats and cabinet officers and such. And her thoughts grew bitter as aloes; and with rancour and rage the blood throbbed in her wrists until her bracelets hurt her. Being minded to have a part and a parcel in the undoing of the Priest plans, she meddled in this fight, giving to Mr. Montjoy the benefit of her counsel and her open, active advocacy.
Perhaps it was because he inclined a flattered ear to the lady's admonitions rather than to her husband's subtler chidings that Mr. Montjoy confirmed the astute Mr. Barnhill's forebodings and refused to stand without hitching. He backed and he filled; he kicked over the traces and got tangled in the gears. He was, as it turned out, neither bridle-wise nor harness-broken. In short he was an amateur in politics, with an amateur's faults. He took the stump early, which was all well and good, because in Red Gravel county if a candidate can't talk to the voter, and won't try, he might just as well fold up his tents like the Arab and take his doll rags and go on about his business, if he has any business. But against the guidance and the best judgment of the man who had led him forth as a candidate, he accepted a challenge from young Houser for a series of joint debates; and whilst Mr. Barnhill and Mr. Bonnin wagged their respective heads in silent disapproval, he repeatedly and persistently made proclamation in public places and with a loud voice, of the obligation which the community still owed his illustrious grandparent, the inference being that he had inherited the debt and expected to collect it at the polls.
It is likewise possible that Candidate Montjoy listened over-much to the well meant words of Mr. Calhoun Tabscott. This Mr. Calhoun Tabscott esteemed himself a master hand at things political. He should have been, at that. One time or another he had been on opposite sides of every political fence; other times he bestraddled it. He had been a Greenbacker, a Granger, and a Populist and once, almost but not quite, a Republican. Occasions were when, in rapid succession, he flirted with the Single Taxers, and then, with the coy reluctance of one who is half-converted, harkened to the blandishments of the Socialists. Had he been old enough he would have been either a Know-Nothing or a Whig--either or perhaps both. In 1896 he quit the Silver Democrats cold, they having obtusely refrained from sending him as a delegate to their national convention. Six weeks later he abandoned the Gold Democrats to their fate because they failed to nominate the right man for president. It was commonly believed he voted the straight Prohibition ticket that year--for spite.
In the matter of his religious convictions, Mr. Tabscott displayed the same elasticity and liberality of choice. In the rival fields of theology he had ranged far, grazing lightly as he went. When the Cumberland Presbyterians put chime bells in their spire, thereby interfering with his Sunday morning's rest, for he lived just across the street, he took his letter out of the church and thereafter for a period teetered on the verge of agnosticism, even going so far as to buy the works of Voltaire, Paine and Ingersol combined and complete in six large volumes. He worshipped a spell with the Episcopalians and once during a space of months, the Baptists had hopes of him. Rumour had it that he finally went over to the Methodists, because old Mr. Leatheritt, of the Traders National Bank, who was a Baptist, called one of his loans.
Now, having been twice with Judge Priest in his races for the Circuit Judgeship and twice against him, Mr. Tabscott espoused the Montjoy candidacy and sat in Mr. Montjoy's amen corner, which, indeed, was altogether natural and consistent, since the Tabscotts, as an old family, dated back almost as far and soared almost as high as the Montjoys. There had been a Tabscott who nearly fought a duel himself, once. He sent the challenge and the preliminaries were arranged but at the eleventh hour, a magnanimous impulse triumphed over his lust for blood, and for the sake of his adversary's wife and helpless children, he decided to spare him. Mr. Tabscott felt that as between him and Mr. Montjoy a sentimental bond existed. Mr. Montjoy felt it, too; and they confabbed much together regarding ways, means and measures somewhat to the annoyance of Senator Maydew who held fast to the principle that if a master have but one man, the man should have but one master.
The first of the joint debates took place, following a barbecue, at Gum Spring School-house in the northernmost corner of the county and the second took place three days later at the Old Market House in town, a large crowd attending. Acrimony tinctured Mr. Montjoy's utterances from the outset. Recrimination seemed his forte--that and the claims of honourable antiquity as expressed in the person of its posterity upon a grateful and remembering constituency. He bore heavily upon the fact--or rather the allegation--that Judge Priest was the head and the front of an office-holding oligarchy, who thought they owned the county and the county offices, who took what spoils of office and patronage they coveted for themselves, and sought to parcel the remainder out among their henchmen and their relatives. This political tyranny, this nepotism, must end, he said, and he, Quintus Q. Montjoy, was the instrument chosen and ordained to end it. “Nominate Montjoy and break up the County ring,” was the slogan he carried on his printed card. Therein, in especial, might be divined the undermining and capable hand of Senator Maydew. But when at the second meeting between the candidates Mr. Montjoy went still further and touched directly upon alleged personal failings of Judge Priest, one who knew the inner workings of the speaker's mind might have hazarded a guess that here a certain lady's suggestions, privately conveyed, found deliverance in the spoken word.
The issue being thus, by premeditated intent of one of the two gentlemen most interested, so clearly and so acutely defined, the electors took sides promptly, becoming not merely partisans but militant and aggressive partisans. Indeed, citizens who seldom concerned themselves in fights within the party, but were mainly content to vote the straight party ticket after the fighting was over, came out into the open and declared themselves. Perhaps the most typical exemplar of this conservative class, now turning radical, was offered in the person of Mr. Herman Felsburg. Until this time Mr. Felsburg had held to the view that needless interference in primary elections jibed but poorly with the purveying of clothing to the masses. Former patrons who differed with one politically were apt to go a-buying elsewhere. No matter what your own leanings might be, Mr. Felsburg, facing you across a showcase or a counter, without ever committing himself absolutely, nevertheless managed to convey the impression that, barring that showcase or that counter, there was nothing between him and you, the customer--that in all things you twain were as one and would so continue. Such had been his attitude until now.
When Mr. Montjoy speared at Judge Priest, Judge Priest remained outwardly quite calm and indifferent, but not so Mr. Felsburg. If he did not take the stump in defence of his old friend at least he frequented its base, in and out of business hours, and in the fervour of his championship he chopped his English finer and twisted his metaphors worse than ever he had done before, which was saying a good deal.
One afternoon, when he returned to the store, after a two-hours' absence spent in sidewalk argument down by the Square, his brother, Mr. Ike Felsburg, who was associated in the firm, ventured to remonstrate with him, concerning his activities in the curbstone forum, putting the objections on the grounds of commercial expediency. At that he struck an attitude remotely suggestive of a plump and elderly Israelitish Ajax defying the lightning.
“Listen here, you Ike,” he stated. “Thirty years I have been building up this here Oak Hall Clothing Emporium, and also hats, caps and gents' furnishings goods. You--you can run around with your lodge meetings and your benevolence societies, and all this time I work here, sweating like rats in a trap, and never is a word said by me to you, vicer or verser. I ask you as brother to brother, ain't that so, or ain't it? It is,” continued Mr. Herman, answering his own question.
“But, Hermy,” interjected Mr. Ike, put on the defensive by the turn which the argument had taken, “but, Hermy, all what I have said to you is that maybe somebody who likes Montjoy would get mad at you for your words and take their custom up the street.”
“Let 'em!” proclaimed Mr. Herman with a defiant gesture which almost upset a glass case containing elastic garters and rubber armbands, “let 'em. Anybody which would be a sucker enough to vote for Montjoy against a fine young fellow like this here Houser would also be a sucker enough to let Strauss, Coleman & Levy sell him strictly guaranteed all-wool suitings made out of cotton shoddy, and I wouldn't want his custom under any circumstances whatsoever!”
“But, Hermy!” The protest was growing weaker.
“You wait,” shouted Mr. Herman. “You have had your say, and now I would have mine, if you please. I would prefer to get one little word in sideways, if you will be so good. You have just now seen me coming in out of the hot sun hoarse as a tiger from trying to convince a few idiots which they never had any more sense than a dog's hind leg and never will have any, neither. And so you stand there--my own brother--and tell me I am going too far. Going too far? Believe me, Mister Ike Felsburg, I ain't started yet.”
He swung on his heel and glared into the depths of his establishment. “Adolph,” he commanded, “come here!” Adolph came, he being head salesman in the clothing department, while Mr. Ike quivered in dumb apprehension, dreading the worst and not knowing what dire form it would assume.
“Adolph,” said Mr. Herman with a baleful side-glance at his offending kinsman. “To-day we are forming here the Oak Hall and Tobias J. Houser Campaign and Marching Club, made up of proprietors, clerks, other employees and well wishers of this here store, of which club I am the president therefrom and you are the secretary. So you will please open up a list right away and tell all the boys they are already members in good standing.”
“Well, now, Mr. Herman,” said Adolph, “I've always been good friends with Quintus Q. Montjoy and besides which, we are neighbours. No longer ago than only day before yesterday I practically as good as promised him my vote. I thought if you was coming out for Houser, some of us here in the store should be the other way and so----”
Mr. Herman Felsburg stilled him with a look and removed his hat in order to speak with greater emphasis.
“Adolph Dreifus,” he said with a deadly solemnity, “you been here in this store a good many years. I would assume you like your job here pretty well. I would consider that you have always been well treated here. Am I right, or am I wrong? I am right! I would assume you would prefer to continue here as before. Yes? No? Yes! You remember the time you wrote with a piece of chalk white marks on the floor so that that poor nearsighted Leopold Meyer, who is now dead and gone, would think it was scraps of paper and go round all day trying to pick those chalk marks up? With my own eyes I saw you do so and I said nothing. You remember the time you induced me to buy for our trade that order of strictly non-selling Ascot neckties because your own cousin from Cincinnati was the salesman handling the line which, from that day to this, we are still carrying those dam' Ascot ties in stock? Did I say anything to you then?
“No! Not a word did I say. All those things is years past and I have never spoken with you regarding them until to-day. But now, Adolph, I must say I am ashamed for you that you should pick on that poor Leopold Meyer, who was blind like a barn-door. I am ashamed for you that you should boost up that cousin of yours from Cincinnati and his bum lines. If I should get more ashamed for you than what already I now am, there is no telling what I should do. Adolph, you will please be so good as to remember that all persons that work in this here Oak Hall Clothing Emporium are for Tobe Houser for State Senator and no one else, whatsoever. Otherwise, pretty soon, I am afraid there will be some new faces selling garments around here. Do I make myself plain? I do!