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The Voice of the People, a novel by Ellen Glasgow |
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Book 4. The Man And The Times - Chapter 1 |
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_ BOOK IV. THE MAN AND THE TIMES CHAPTER I The Democratic State Convention had taken an hour's recess. From the doors of the opera house of Powhatan City the assembled delegates emerged, heated, clamorous, out of breath. The morning session, despite its noise, had not been interesting--awaiting the report of the Committee on Credentials, the panting body had fumed away the opening hours. Of the fifteen hundred representatives of absent voters, the favoured few who had held the floor had been needlessly discursive and undeniably dull. There had been overmuch of the party platform, and an absence of the wit which is the soul of political speaking; and, though the average Virginia Convention is able to breast triumphantly the most encompassing wave of oratory, the present one had shown unmistakable signs of suffocation. At the end of the third speech, metaphor had failed to move it, and alliteration had ceased to evoke applause. It had heard without emotion similes that concerned the colour of Cleopatra's hair, and had yawned through perorations that ranged from Socrates to the Senior Senator, who sat upon the stage. Attacks upon the "cormorants and harpies that roost in Wall Street" had roused no thrill in the mind of the majority that knew not rhetoric. The most patient of the silent members had observed that "after all, their business was to nominate a candidate for governor," while the unruly spirits, as they brandished palm-leaf fans, had wished "that blamed committee would come on." Now, after hours of restless waiting, they emerged, stiff-kneed and perspiring, into the blazing sunshine that filled the little street. Once outside, they opened their lungs to the warm air in an attempt to banish the tainted atmosphere of the interior; but the original motive of expansion was lost in a flow of words. On the sidewalk the crowd divided into streams, pulsing in opposite directions. Heated, noisy, pervasive, it surged to dinners in hotels and boarding-houses, and overflowed where Moloney's restaurant displayed its bill of fare. It came out talking, it divided talking; still talking, it swept, a roaring sea of flesh, into the far-off buzz of the distance. In a group of three men passing into the lobby of the largest hotel, there was a slender man of fifty years, with a well-knit figure, half closed, indifferent eyes, and an emphatic mouth. In the insistent hum of words about him, his voice sounded in a brisk utterance that carried a hint of important issues. "Oh, I don't think Hartley's much account," he was saying. "I'd bet on a close shave between Webb and Crutchfield, with Webb in the lead. Small will get the lieutenant-governorship, of course. Davis ought to be attorney-general, but he'll be beaten by Wray. It's the party reward. Davis is the better lawyer, by long odds, but Wray has stuck to the party like a burr--I don't mean a pun, if you please." The younger of his two companions, a spirited youth with high-standing auburn hair, laughed uproariously. "The trouble is they're afraid Burr won't stick to the party," he protested. "Major Simms, who is marshalling Crutchfield's forces, you know, said to me last night--'Oh, Burr's all right when you let him lead, but he's damned mulish if you begin to pull the other way.'" The third man, a sunburned farmer, with a dogged mouth overhung by a tobacco-stained mustache, assented with a nod. "There's not a better Democrat in Virginia than Nick Burr," he said. "If the party's got anything against him it had better out with it at once. He made the most successful chairman the State ever had--and he's honest--there's not a more honest man in politics or out." "Oh, I know all that," broke in the auburn-haired young fellow, whose name was Dickson; "I'd back Burr against any candidate in the field, and I'm sorry he kept out of it. I hoped he'd come forward with you to manage his campaign, Mr. Galt," he said to the first speaker. Galt waived the remark. "Perhaps he thought his chances too slim for a walkover," he said in non-committal fashion, as Burr's best friend. "I hear, by the way, that the delegation from his old home is instructed to vote for him on the first ballot, whether or not." "He has a great name down in my parts," put in the farmer. "The people think he has the agricultural interests at heart. They wanted to send him to Congress in Webb's place, you know." "Yes, I know," said Galt. "Hello, Bassett," as Tom Bassett joined him. "Where've you been? Lost sight of you this morning." "Oh, I was out with the Committee on Credentials. A member? I should say not. I wanted to hear that Madison County case, so I got made sergeant-at-arms. By the way, Dick," to Dickson, "I hear you held the floor for five minutes this morning and got off five distinct stories that landed with Columbus." "Nonsense. I didn't open my mouth--except to call 'time' on the men who did. There's our orator now." He bowed to an elderly gentleman with a sharply pointed chin beard and the type of face that was once called clerical. "Some one defined oratory the other day," said Galt, "as the fringe with which the inhabitants of the Southern States still delighted to trim their politics--so I should call the gentleman of to-day 'a political tassel.' He's ornamental and he hangs by a thread." And he passed into the lobby arm-in-arm with Tom Bassett. The place was swarming with delegates: delegates from country districts, red-faced farmers in flapping linen coats and wide-brimmed hats; delegates from the cities, dapper, well-groomed, cordial-voiced; delegates of the true political type, shaven, obsequious, alert; delegates of the cast that belongs at home, outspoken, honest-eyed, remote; stout delegates, with half-bursting waistbands, thin delegates, with shrunken chests. In the animated throng there was but one condition held in common--they were all heated delegates. In one corner a stout gentleman in a thin coat, with a scarlet neck showing above his wilted collar, held a half-dozen listeners with his eyes, while he plied them with emphatic sentences in which the name of Crutchfield sounded like a refrain. Moving from group to group, portly, unctuous, insinuating, a man with an oily voice was doing battle in the cause of Webb. The throng that passed in and out of the lobby was continually shifting place and principles. One instant it would seem that Crutchfield triumphed in a majority sufficient to overwhelm the platform; a moment more and the Webb men were vociferously in the ascendant. At the time it resolved itself into a question of tongues. "This is thick," said Ben Galt, dodging the straw hat with which a perspiring politician was fanning himself and gently withdrawing himself from the arms of a scarlet individual in a wet collar to collide with his double. "Let's go to dinner. Ah! there's the Lion of Democracy--how are you, Judge?" The Lion, a striking figure, with a graceful, snow-white mane and a colossal memory, held out a tireless hand. "Well met, Ben," he exclaimed in effusive tones. "I've been on the outlook for you all day. One moment--your pardon--one moment--Ah, my dear sir! my dear sir!" to a countryman who approached him with outstretched hand, "I am delighted. Remember you? Why, of course--of course! Your name has escaped me this instant; but I was speaking of you only yesterday. No, don't tell me! don't tell me. I remember. Ah, now I have it--one moment, please--it was after the battle of Seven Pines. You lent me a horse after the battle of Seven Pines. Thank you--thank you, sir. And your charming lady, who made me the delicious coffee. My best regards to her." The great man was surrounded, and Galt and Bassett, leaving him to his assailants, passed into the dining-room. Glancing hastily down the long room filled with small, overcrowded tables, they joined several men who were seated near an open window. "Hello, Major. Glad to see you, Mr. Slate! How are things down your way, Colonel?" A tired negro waiter, with a napkin slung over his arm, drew back the chairs and deposited two plates of lukewarm soup before the newcomers, after which he lifted a brush of variegated tissue paper and made valiant assault upon the flies which overran the tables. Stale odours of over-cooked food weighted the atmosphere, and waiters bearing enormous trays above their heads jostled one another as they threaded their difficult ways. Occasionally the clamour of voices was lost in the clatter of breaking dishes. Tom Bassett pushed his plate away and mopped his large forehead. He appeared to have developed without aging in the last fifteen years--still presenting an aspect of invincible respectability. "It's ninety-two degrees in the shade, if it's anything," he declared, adding, "Has anybody seen Webb to-day?" The colonel, whose name was Diggs, nodded with his mouth full, and, having swallowed at his leisure, proceeded to reply, holding his knife and fork poised for service. He was fair to the point of insipidity, and his weak blue eyes bulged with joviality. "Shook hands with him at the train last night," he said. "Hall was a day ahead of time. Great politician, Hall. Working for Webb like a beaver. Here, waiter! More potatoes." "I went to sleep last night to the music of Webb's men," said Galt, "and I awoke to the tune of Crutchfield. I don't believe either side went to bed. My wonder is whom they found to work on." Slate, a muscular little man, with a nervous affection about the mouth that gave him an appearance of being continually on the point of a surprising utterance, hesitated over, caught, and finally landed his speech. "They're dead against Webb down my way," he said. "Our delegation is instructed to vote for anybody that favours retrenchment, unless it's Webb--they won't have Webb if he moves to run the State on the two-cent system. If we'd cast a quarter of a vote for him they'd drum us out of the district. It's all because he voted for that railroad bill in Washington last winter. We hate a railroad as a bull hates a red flag." Major Baylor, a courtly gentleman, with a face that bore traces of a survival of the old Virginian legal type, spoke for the first time. "Fauquier stands to a man for Dudley Webb," he said. "He has a large following in my section, and I understand, by the way, that if Hartley withdraws after the first ballot, it will mean a clear gain for Webb in the eighth district. He's safe, I think." "Oh, we're Crutchfield strong," laughed the colonel good-humouredly, reaching for a toothpick from the glass stand in the centre of the table. "We think a man deserves something who hasn't missed a convention for fourteen years." There was a spirit of ridicule tempered with good-humour about the group, which showed it to be, in the main, indifferent to the result--an attitude in vivid contrast to the effervescent partisanship of the leaders. With the exception of the colonel, whose heart was in his dinner, they appeared to be unconcerned spectators of the events of the day. "Hall was telling me a good story on Webb last week," said Diggs, as he waited for his dessert. "It was about the time he seconded the nomination of Reed for attorney-general--ever hear it?" "Fire away!" was Galt's reply, as he leaned back in his chair. The colonel's stories were the platform which had supported him throughout a not unsuccessful social career. "It was when Webb was a young fellow, you know, just beginning to be heard of as an advocate. He was at his first convention, eager to have his say, hard to keep silent; and he was asked to second the nomination of Reed, a boyish-looking chap of twenty-six. He didn't know Reed from Adam, but he was ambitious to be heard just then--and he'd have spoken for the devil if they'd have given him a chance. Well, he launched out on his speech in fine style. He began with Noah--as they all did in those days--glided down the centuries to Seneca and Caesar, touched upon Adam Smith and Jefferson, and finally landed in the arms of Monroe P. Reed. There he grew fairly ecstatic over his subject. He spoke of him as 'the lawyer sprung, full-armed, from the head of learning,' as the 'nonpareil Democrat who clove, as Ruth to Naomi, to the immortal principles of Virginia Democracy,' and in a glorious period, he rounded off 'the incomparable services which Monroe P. Reed had rendered the deathless cause of the Confederacy!' In an instant the house came down. There was a roar of laughter, and somebody in the gallery sang out: 'He was at his mother's breast!' "For a moment Webb quailed, but his wits never left him. He faced the man in the gallery like Apollo come to judgment, and his fine voice rang to the roof. 'I know it, sir, I know it,' he thundered, 'but Monroe P. Reed was one of the stoutest breastworks of the Confederacy. I have it from his mother, sir!' "Of course the house went wild. He was the youngest man on the floor, and they gave him an ovation. Since then, he's learned some things, and he's become the only orator left among us." The colonel finished hurriedly as his apple pie was placed before him, and did not speak again during dinner. "He is an orator," said Galt. "He doesn't use much clap-trap business either. I've never heard him drag in the Medes and Persians, and I could count his classical quotations on my fingers. Personally, I like Burr's way better--it's saner and it's sounder--but Webb knows how to talk, and he has a voice like a silver bell--Ah, here he is." As he spoke there was a stir in the crowd at the doorway and Dudley Webb entered and took the nearest vacant seat. The first impression of him at this time was one of extreme picturesqueness. A slight tendency to stoutness gave dignity to a figure which, had it been thin, would have been insignificant, and served to accentuate a peculiar grace of curve which prevented his weight from carrying any suggestion of the coming solidity of middle age. His rich, rather oily hair, worn longer than the fashion, fell in affected carelessness across his brow and lent to his candid eyes an expression of intensity and eloquence. His clear-cut nose and the firm, fleshy curve of his prominent chin modified the effect of instability produced by his large and somewhat loosely moulded lips. The salient quality of his personality, as of his appearance, was an ease of proportion almost urbane. His presence in the overcrowded room diffused an infectious affability. Though he spoke to few, he was at once, and irrepressibly, the friend of all. He did not go out of his way to shake a single hand, he confined his conversation, with the old absorption, to the men at his table--personal supporters, for the most part; but there was about him a pacific emanation--an atmosphere at once social and political, which extended to the far end of the room and to men whose names he did not know. He talked rapidly in a vibrant, low-toned voice, with frequent gestures of his shapely hands. His laugh was easy, full, and inspiriting--the laugh of a man with a vital sense of humour. As Galt watched him, he smiled in unconscious sympathy. "But for Burr, I think I'd like to see Webb governor," he said. "After all, it is something to have a man who looks well in a procession--and he has a charming wife." _ |
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