Old Judge Priest

by Irvin S. Cobb

The cash was counted. He carried it into the depths of the ancient and cumbersome vault, which blocked off a section of the wall behind the cashier's desk, and in their appointed niches bestowed, also, certain large ledgerlike tomes. He closed and locked the inner steel door and was in the act of swinging to the heavy outer door.

“Look here a minute!” came sharply from Mr. Caruthers.

It was like a command. Obeying involuntarily, Emanuel faced about. From under his coat, where it had been hidden against his left side, Mr. Caruthers, still standing at the wicket, was drawing forth something long and black and slim, and of a most exceeding shininess—something with silver trimmings on it and a bell mouth—a clarinet that was all a clarinet should be, and yet a half brother to a saxophone.

“I sort of thought you'd be wanting to get a flash at it right away,” said Mr. Caruthers, holding the magnificent instrument up in plain sight. “So I brought it along—for a surprise.”

With joy Emanuel Moon's round eyes widened and moistened. After the fashion of a rabbit suddenly confronted with lettuce his lower face twitched. His overhanging upper lip quivered to wrap itself about that virgin mouthpiece, as his fingers itched to fondle that slender polished fountain of potential sweet melodies. And he forgot other things.

He came out from behind the counter and almost with reverence took the splendid thing from the smiling Mr. Caruthers. He did remember to lock the street door as they issued to the sidewalk; but from that juncture on, until he discovered himself with Caruthers in Caruthers' room on the third floor of the hotel, diagonally across the street and down the block from the bank, and was testing the instrument with soft, tentative toots and finding to his extreme gratification that this clarinet bleated, not in sheeplike bleats, as his old one did, but rather mooed in a deep bass voice suggestive of cows, all that passed was to Mr. Moon but a confused blur of unalloyed joyousness.

Indeed, from that point thenceforward he was not quite sure of anything except that, over his protests, Mr. Caruthers declined to accept any reimbursement whatsoever for the cost of the new clarinet, he explaining that, thanks to the generosity of that kindly soul, Izzy Gottlieb, the requisite outlay had amounted to so trifling a sum as not to be worthy of the time required for further discussion; and that, following this, he played Annie Laurie all the way through, and essayed the first bars of The Last Rose of Summer, while Mr. Caruthers sat by listening and smoking, and seemingly gratified to the utmost at having been the means of bringing this pleasure to Mr. Moon.

If Mr. Caruthers was moved, in chance intervals, to ask certain questions touching upon the banking business, with particular reference to the methods employed in conducting and safeguarding the Commonwealth Bank, over the way, Emanuel doubtlessly answered him full and truthfully, even though his thoughts for the moment were otherwise engaged.

In less than no time at all—so it appeared to Emanuel—six o'clock arrived, which in our town used to mean the hour for hot supper, except on Sunday, when it meant the hour for cold supper; and Emanuel reluctantly got up to go. But Caruthers would not listen to any suggestions of their parting for yet a while. Exigencies of business would carry him on his lonesome way the next morning; he had just stopped over to see Emanuel, anyway, and naturally he wished to enjoy as much of his society as was possible during a sojourn so brief.

“Moon,” he ordered, “you stay right where you are. We'll have something to eat together here. I'll call a waiter and we'll have it served up here in this room, so's we can be sort of private and sociable, and afterward you can play your clarinet some more. How does that little programme strike you?”