Bill Garner, as brainy as he was, while he was always welcome at his father's house in the country, a mile from town, seemed to love the company of this noisy set. Through the day it was said of him that he could read and saturate himself with more law than any man in the State, but at night his recreation was a cheap cigar, his old bulging carpet slippers, a cosey chair in Keith's room, and—who would think it?—the most thrilling Indian dime novel on the market. He could quote the French, German, Italian, and Spanish classics by the page in a strange musical accent he had acquired without the aid of a master or any sort of intercourse with native foreigners. He knew and loved all things pertaining to great literature—said he had a natural ear for Wagner's music, had comprehended Edwin Booth's finest work, knew a good picture when he saw it; and yet he had to have his dime novel. In it he found mental rest and relaxation that was supplied by nothing else. His bedfellow was Bob Smith, the genial, dapper, ever daintily clad clerk at the Johnston House. Garner said he liked to sleep with Bob because Bob never—sleeping or waking—took anything out of him mentally. Besides dressing to perfection, Bob played rag-time on the guitar and sang the favorite coon songs of the day. His duties at the hotel were far from arduous, and so the gang usually looked to him to arrange dances and collect toll for expenses. And Bob was not without his actual monetary value, as the proprietor of the hotel had long since discovered, for when Bob arranged a dance it meant that various socially inclined drummers of good birth and standing would, at a hint or a telegram from the clerk, “lay over” at Darley for one night anyway.
If Bob had any quality that disturbed the surface of his uniform equanimity it was his excessive pride in Carson Dwight's friendship. He interlarded his talk with what Carson had said or done, and Carson's candidacy for the Legislature had become his paramount ambition. Indeed, it may as well be stated that the rest of the gang had espoused Dwight's political cause with equal enthusiasm.
It was the Sunday morning following the night Pole Baker had prevented the meeting between Dwight and Dan Willis, and most of the habitual loungers were present waiting for Skelt to black their boots, and deploring the turn of affairs which looked so bad for their favorite. Wade Tingle was shaving at one of the windows before a mirror in a cracked mahogany frame, when they all recognized Carson's step on the balcony and a moment later Dwight stood in the doorway.
“Hello, boys, how goes it?” he asked.
“Oh, right side up, old man,” Tingle replied, as he began to rub the lather into his face with his hand to soften his week-old beard before shaving. “How's the race?”
“It's all right, I guess,” Dwight said, wearily, as he came in and sat down in a vacant chair against the wall. “How goes it in the mountains? I understand you've been over there.”
“Yes, trying to rake in some ads, stir up my local correspondents, and take subscriptions. As to your progress, old man, I'm sorry to say Wiggin's given it a sort of black eye. There was a meeting of farmers over in the tenth, at Miller's Spring. I was blamed sorry you were not there. Wiggin made a speech. It was a corker—viewed as campaign material solely. That chap's failed at the law, but he's the sharpest, most unprincipled manipulator of men's emotions I ever ran across. He showed you up as Sam Jones does the ring-tailed monster of the cloven foot.”
“What Carson said about the Willis and Johnson mob was his theme, of course?” said Garner, above the dog-eared pages of his thriller.
“That and ten thousand things Carson never dreamed of,” returned Tingle. “Here's the way it went. The meeting was held under a bush-arbor to keep the sun off, and the farmers had their wives and children out for a picnic. A long-faced parson led in prayer, some of the old maids piped up with a song that would have ripped slits in your musical tympanum, Garner, and then a raw-boned ploughman in a hickory shirt and one gallus introduced the guest of honor. How they could have overlooked the editor-in-chief and proprietor of the greatest agricultural weekly in north Georgia and picked out that skunk was a riddle to me.”
“Well, what did he say?” Garner asked, as sharply as if he were cross-examining a non-committal witness of importance.