Chapter XX: The Satisfaction of W. W. Webb

When William Wilberforce Webb found that he had to fight for an election which he had supposed to be securely his by virtue of his regular nomination as the candidate of the dominant party, he hastily called his friends and advisers together for consultation.

In the course of the discussion it was decided that the weak spot in Webb's campaign lay in his neglect to do anything to secure the mountain vote.

"We'll divide about even down here," said the shrewdest politician among Webb's following. "You see the whole Democratic vote is just so much withdrawn from Westover's strength among the planters, and the Democrats seem to be in earnest this year. That leaves us with a small but secure majority in this part of the district. The decision will rest with the mountain vote, and so far as I can see we've done nothing to secure that."

"I haven't thought it necessary," answered Webb, "until now. You see the mountain people have seemed entirely indifferent, and they seem so now. As they gave me a big majority at the last election, I have reckoned upon party lines to give me a like majority this time."

"Have you seen Judy Peters?" asked one of the advisers.

"No. I have taken the mountain vote for granted, as about three-fourths Whig and one-fourth Democratic. You see none of us expected this intrusion of Boyd Westover into the campaign."

"No, none of us expected it," answered another, "but we've run up against the unexpected, and we've got to meet it. Webb, you've got to go up and see Judy Peters. If you please her she'll settle the election out of hand, but if you offend her, then God save us, for no lesser power can!"

"I'll go," answered Webb, "but I really don't think it necessary. I had a talk with Edgar Coffey the other day--in fact I had him dine with me at the hotel--and he assured me that Judy Peters was taking no interest in the campaign. He said Judy cares so little about it that even he hadn't heard an expression of opinion from her lips. So I have taken the normal Whig majority in the mountains for granted."

Thereupon "Foggy"--he had some other name but nobody ever remembered it--arose and walked twice across the floor before speaking. He was barkeeper, constable, jailor, livery man, faro dealer, hound-master, money lender, note shaver, and pretty nearly everything else that was disreputable, whether official or unofficial, at the county seat, and in his various capacities he was rightly supposed to know politics and men as nobody else in the county did. At last he turned to Webb and asked:

"Was it yesterday or the day before, that you were born? Because if it was longer ago than yesterday there really can be no excuse for your faith in Edgar Coffey. Don't you know he was never caught telling the truth but once in his life, and that time he was talking in his sleep after too heavy a load of apple jack, and took it all back as soon as he waked up? Now my advice to you is to get your walking boots on as quick as ever you can, and go up to Judy Peters's for a consultation as to the mountain vote. And you want to mind your eye with Judy, for if you offend her your goose is cooked and your cake's dough."

In accordance with this suggestion, Webb prepared himself for a journey up the mountain road, but as he had a speaking engagement to keep, he could not make the proposed visit until a day later. In the meanwhile, and by way of placation, he sent a messenger with a note to Judy, in which he wrote:

"I feel that I have neglected my duty in not visiting you before, but I have had my days and nights so full of work that it has really seemed impossible until now. I am going up to-morrow to enjoy one of your matchless suppers and have a talk with you about whatever interests you. As for my campaign for the Senate, I know your loyalty too well to doubt that it has your approval; and now that the intrusion of a third candidate has rendered the result somewhat insecure in the piedmont part of the district, I hope to interest you so far that you will help me stir up a rousing vote in the mountains."

Judy's sole comment on the letter was:

"They'll be a rousin' vote in the mountings sure enough."

Then she turned to Sapphira and with a relish in her tone, said:

"Say, Sapphiry, you an' me's got to lay ourselves out on tomorry night's supper. They's a candidate a comin'."

"Is he one you's a goin' to 'lect?"

"Yes--to stay at home. But may be you's noticed, Sapphiry, that whenever I picks out a shoat to be turned into victuals next day, I always gives that shoat fust chanst at the buttermilk, an' see to it as how he kin jes' lay down all night, 'longside o' more corn 'n he could eat in a week. They ain't much difference 'twix' candidates an' shoats I reckon,--leastways some candidates. So you an' me's jes' got to git up a supper fer to-morry night sich as the candidate never seen in his life before. You go to the smoke house an' git the ham that hangs wrong end up on the third row o' hooks, three hams from the left end. Wash it an' put it on to bile right away so's that it'll have time to git firm cold. They's half a shoat in the spring house, an' we'll wring the necks o' some fryin'-size chickens to-night so's to have 'em ready. To-morry's the reg'lar twice a week churnin' day, so's that they'll be fresh butter an' plenty o' buttermilk ef the candidate happens to like buttermilk. I'll set a bakin' o' bread to-morry mornin' so's we kin have a hot loaf fer supper. As fer beat biscuit an' batter bread, we kin make 'em when the time comes. Say, Sapphiry, le's surprise the candidate!"

Judy uttered that sentence with enthusiasm and with a smile on her face. A happy thought had come to her.

"Tain't hog-killin' time yit, nor yit 'twon't be fer more'n a month to come, an' so nobody ain't seen no sassage sence last winter. Le's make some, out'n the trimmin's o' that half a shoat! You an' me kin chop it an' season it to-night an' it'll be extry superfine by supper time to-morrow."

"Well, you certainly is a layin' yourself out fer that there candidate, Mammy," said Sapphira in admiration of her mother's enthusiasm. "Is you a goin' to give him a chanst at your old peach and honey?"

"What! peach an' honey fer that miserable wild mustard patch of a candidate? Well, not ef I see it fust. Apple jack he'll drink, an' it'll come out o' that there bar'l as was made out o' last year's windfalls an' cullin's, at that. They ain't no fine flavor to that slop, but it'll make drunk come just the same, an' I reckon that's all a half breed like Webb's got any call to expect o' liquor. The best o' victuals ain't none too good fer anybody as sets down to Judy Peters's table, but politeness an' liquor goes by favor, an' I ain't got no favor to spare fer that doggoned counterfeit-copper cuss, Webb."

When Webb appeared, he found Judy arrayed in colors that the lilies of the field never dared assume and that Solomon in all his glory did not dream of. She had even put on her bracelets and her breast pin of green glass, simulating a setting of emeralds. She had borrowed Sapphira's earrings--great golden hoops that had cost a dollar and a quarter--and was wearing them in honor of the occasion.

Her gorgeousness of adornment and the barbaric lavishness of the supper she served him, convinced Webb at the outset that her favor was altogether his, that the mountain vote was secure, and that in spite of all alarms his triumphant election was as certain as any human event could be. Perhaps Judy had intended to create that impression on his mind. Certainly she did nothing to correct or remove it, and by the time supper was over Webb was so well satisfied with things as they were that he did not hesitate to indulge freely in the apple jack that Judy set out for his consumption.

When she had got his tongue "loosened up" to her liking, and not till then, she brought the conversation around to subjects connected with the political campaign. Webb had not ventured to introduce those subjects earlier. His instinct was keen enough to realize that in Judy Peters's house Judy Peters was herself the director of the conversation, and he had heard, till the fact was deeply impressed on his mind, that the person who forced the talk into channels of his own choosing was pretty sure to find himself snubbed and snuffed out by some caustic and high-flavored utterance of her majesty the Queen of the Mountains.

"Tell me 'bout your campaign, William Wilberforce Webb," she said after he had had a third or fourth helping of apple jack. Then she changed her mind--or perhaps the change had been in her mind all the while--and said: "No, don't bother 'bout that yit. Tell me, instid o' that, what you's a luggin' all that name around for. I s'pose when you was a boy they called you jes' Billy Webb. Why ain't that a good 'nough name for you now? You see us folks up here in the mountings ain't got much respec' nor patience like with names bigger'n the men what wears 'em. They was wunst a feller come up here what called hisself James Augustus de Forrest Hyde, an' we run him out'n the mountings. He come back arter a while a callin' hisself plain Jim Hyde, an' he's been a breedin' mules successful, like, ever since. You see when he fust come he brought more name along than he could tote, an' that's jest what you's a doin' with your William Wilberforce Webb. It sounds well down 'mong the stuck ups, but 'tain't no go up here in the mountings. Us folks likes somethin' plainer--somethin' like Boyd Westover."

"Of course you're right, Judy," answered Webb flinching a little at the name of his antagonist, "but when a man's parents have given him a long name what's he to do but wear it? A man's name's a part of him."

"Yes, an' it's that part us folks up here in the mountings don't like. It's the fool part. Why ain't 'W. W. Webb' a good enough name fer a one-horse vehicle like you?"

It was the epithet rather than the question that staggered Webb, but that it did stagger him was indicated to Judy's shrewd observation by the fact that he took three deep draughts of the apple brandy before answering. At last he said:

"Well, you see, Judy--"

"No, I don't see," she interrupted, "an' you ain't a goin' to make me see sense in a thing what ain't got no sense in it."

"I was going to say--" he began again.

"Yes, I know you was. Never mind a sayin' it. Listen to me. Ef I'm to help you in your canvass up here in the mountings, you's got to shorten your name somehow. Mind I don't say I's a goin' to help you,"--Judy's sturdy love of truth in the abstract prompted this qualification of what was essentially a lie in the concrete--"but _ef_ I'm to help you, you's got to give me a shorter name 'n William Wilberforce Webb to call you by. You see every time I try to say anything 'bout you my mouth gits so choked up, like, with that durned worm fence of a name that the rest o' the words won't come out nohow."

"I'm sorry, Judy, awfully sorry that my name offends you. Just call me Billy hereafter."

"That's all right for me," answered Judy, "but you was enominated by the name of William Wilberforce Webb, an that's the way it'll be wrote on the pollin' books. How's the folks up here in the mountings to know as how Billy Webb an' William Wilberforce Webb is the same feller? The two don't sound much alike. Howsomever we'll try an' manage that. Now tell me 'bout how things is a goin' down plantation ways."

In the embarrassment created by Judy's critical reflections upon his name, Webb had filled his large tumbler again with the insidious intoxicant, forgetting to add water, and had taken several swigs of the "reverend spirits," which is what Virginians always called undiluted brandy or whiskey. Judy had observed the fact but had not discouraged it. Her son, Daniel Webster, was at home that night to put Webb to bed if need be, and meanwhile she wanted to find out from Webb's indiscretion what she had no hope of learning in any other way, namely, "all about the gal that's mixed up in the matter."

To that end she interrupted Webb many times, checking his tendency to indulge in generalities and holding him down to facts. He told her how greatly Boyd Westover's intrusive nomination had disturbed what had promised to be a "walk-over campaign"; how the refusal of Colonel Conway to sign Boyd's nomination paper was exciting suspicion, and much else of interest to which Judy paid no heed. She harked back instead to the Conway matter.

"What was the matter with Conway?" she asked. "Has him an' young Westover had any fallin' out?"

Webb had attained that condition of alcoholic indiscretion in which the impulse is to be confidential and to say things far better left unsaid. He unbosomed himself.

"Well, you see, Judy," he said, "there are some things we don't mention, but you're a friend of mine, Judy, and you're entitled to my confidence. You see it's this way. The talk is that Boyd Westover and Colonel Conway's daughter Margaret were engaged to be married, when Westover committed--or was accused of committing the crime of which he was convicted and for which he was sentenced to the penitentiary. Some say she stood by him and he threw her over; some suggest that he couldn't explain things to her satisfaction--that she asked him questions he couldn't answer; some say he went back to Wanalah eager to marry the girl, and she threw him over because she didn't believe in his innocence. You see, Judy, he is, after all's said and done, only a pardoned criminal, and his pardon was based only on the confession of a poor demented fellow who has since been sent to Staunton as a lunatic. Anyhow it's plain that Colonel Conway believes Boyd Westover to be guilty, just as I do and as a good many other folks down our way do. If he isn't guilty, why's he hiding himself? Why don't he come into the district and face the music, instead of leaving that little monkey, Carley Farnsworth, to do everything for him? You never saw Carley Farnsworth, did you, Judy? Of course you didn't. Well, he's a little jackanapes of a doctor that's equally ready to give his blue pills by the mouth or at the point of a pistol. Boyd Westover has put him forward to overawe and intimidate everybody; but the Democrats will hold their vote this year and with your help, Judy, we'll make this election memorable."

"I don't know jest what that last word means, Billy, but after what you's been a tellin' me you kin bet your next winter's meat I'll have a hand in this here 'lection."

Judy never made promises that she did not fulfil. But if a candidate misinterpreted the phrases she used in making promises, she stoutly held that the fault was his and not hers.

"My words is good for what they call fer," she was accustomed to say, "but good money don't stand fer no counterfeits."

When she had got all she wanted out of Webb, she sent that worthy to bed, satisfied in his soul with things as they were, and as confident of the mountain vote in his behalf as of the excellence of Judy's cookery and the exhilaration that resided in her apple jack.