Part 24

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 was 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; 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, Judge Priest 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 sir, 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 neighborly 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 vigor, 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 clamoring 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 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 neighbors together a good while, haven't we? We've been right acros't the street from 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 from now, say, there won't be so many of us left." He glanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. "You're younger than some of us; but, even so, you ain't exactly what I'd call a young man yourself."

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 embarrassment. 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 could say what he had to say.

"Ed," he said, "I was settin' on my porch a while ago waitin' for 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 there 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, steadyin' himself after he crossed back over to this side. Lord knows what he was doin' draggin' down-town 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 if I'm any judge. Do you hear me plain?" he asked.

"I hear you," said his neighbor 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 what 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 against the grain for 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 yet never seemin' to see each other--and this mornin' when I saw Abner pass, lookin' so gaunt and sick--and it sech a sweet, ca'm mornin' too, and everything 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 neighbor 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 from 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 from you--today? Tomorrow 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 soon 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.

"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. If I don't see you again meanwhile be shore to come to the next regular meetin' of the Camp--on Friday night," he added.