"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 Cæsar, 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."