Part 8 (1/2)
Days that came after this, on through the midsummer, were, with variations, but repet.i.tions of the day I have just described. Each morning Peep O'Day would go to either the courthouse or Judge Priest's home to turn over to the Judge the unopened mail which had been delivered to him at Gafford's stables; then he would secure from the Judge a loan of money against his inheritance. Generally the amount of his daily borrowing was a dollar; rarely was it so much as two dollars; and only once was it more than two dollars.
By nightfall the sum would have been expended upon perfectly useless and absolutely childish devices. It might be that he would buy toy pistols and paper caps for himself and his following of urchins; or that his whim would lead him to expend all the money in tin flutes. In one case the group he so incongruously headed would be for that one day a gang of make-believe banditti; in another, they would const.i.tute themselves a fife-and-drum corps--with barreltops for the drums--and would march through the streets, where scandalised adults stood in their tracks to watch them go by, they all the while making weird sounds, which with them pa.s.sed for music.
Or again, the available cash resources would be invested in provender; and then there would be an outing in the woods. Under Peep O'Day's captaincy his chosen band of youngsters picked dewberries; they went swimming together in Guthrie's Gravel Pit, out by the old Fair Grounds, where his spare naked shanks contrasted strongly with their plump freckled legs as all of them splashed through the shallows, making for deep water. Under his leaders.h.i.+p they stole watermelons from Mr. d.i.c.k Bell's patch, afterward eating their spoils in thickets of grapevines along the banks of Perkins' Creek.
It was felt that mental befuddlement and mortal folly could reach no greater heights--or no lower depths--than on a certain hour of a certain day, along toward the end of August, when O'Day came forth from his quarters in Gafford's stables, wearing a pair of boots that M.
Biederman's establishment had turned out to his order and his measure--not such boots as a sensible man might be expected to wear, but boots that were exaggerated and monstrous counterfeits of the red-topped, scroll-fronted, bra.s.s-toed, stub-heeled, squeaky-soled bootees that small boys of an earlier generation possessed.
Very proudly and seemingly unconscious of or, at least, oblivious to the derisive remarks that the appearance of these new belongings drew from many persons, the owner went clumping about in them, with the rumply legs of his trousers tucked down in them, and ballooning up and out over the tops in folds which overlapped from his knee joints halfway down his attenuated calves.
As Deputy Sheriff Quarles said, the combination was a sight fit to make a horse laugh. It may be that small boys have a lesser sense of humour than horses have, for certainly the boys who were the old man's invariable shadows did not laugh at him, or at his boots either.
Between the whiskered senior and his small comrades there existed a freemasonry that made them all sense a thing beyond the ken of most of their elders. Perhaps this was because the elders, being blind in their superior wisdom, saw neither this thing nor the communion that flourished. They saw only the farcical joke. But His Honour, Judge Priest, to cite a conspicuous exception, seemed not to see the lamentable comedy of it.
Indeed, it seemed to some almost as if Judge Priest were aiding and abetting the befogged O'Day in his demented enterprises, his peculiar excursions and his weird purchases. If he did not actually encourage him in these constant exhibitions of witlessness, certainly there were no evidences available to show that he sought to dissuade O'Day from his strange course.
At the end of a fortnight one citizen, in whom patience had ceased to be a virtue and to whose nature long-continued silence on any public topic was intolerable, felt it his duty to speak to the Judge upon the subject. This gentleman--his name was S. P. Escott--held, with others, that, for the good name of the community, steps should be taken to abate the infantile, futile activities of the besotted legatee.
Afterward Mr. Escott, giving a partial account of the conversation with Judge Priest to certain of his friends, showed unfeigned annoyance at the outcome.
”I claim that old man's not fittin' to be runnin' a court any longer,”
he stated bitterly. ”He's too old and peevish--that's whut ails him! Fur one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank on the street and put a civil question to him--that's whut's the matter!”
”What happened, S. P.?” inquired someone.
”Why, here's whut happened!” exclaimed the aggrieved Mr. Escott. ”I hadn't any more than started in to tell him the whole town was talkin'
about the way that daffy Old Peep O'Day was carryin' on, and that somethin' had oughter be done about it, and didn't he think it was beholdin' on him ez circuit judge to do somethin' right away, sech ez havin' O'Day tuck up and tried fur a lunatic, and that I fur one was ready and willin' to testify to the crazy things I'd seen done with my own eyes--when he cut in on me and jest ez good ez told me to my own face that ef I'd quit tendin' to other people's business I'd mebbe have more business of my own to tend to.
”Think of that, gentlemen! A circuit judge bemeanin' a citizen and a taxpayer”--he checked himself slightly--”anyhow, a citizen, thataway! It shows he can't be rational his own self. Personally I claim Old Priest is failin' mentally--he must be! And ef anybody kin be found to run against him at the next election you gentlemen jest watch and see who gits my vote!”
Having uttered this threat with deep and significant emphasis Mr.
Escott, still muttering, turned and entered the front gate of his boarding house. It was not exactly his boarding house; his wife ran it.
But Mr. Escott lived there and voted from there.
But the apogee of Peep O'Day's carnival of weird vagaries of deportment came at the end of two months--two months in which each day the man furnished c.u.mulative and piled-up material for derisive and jocular comment on the part of a very considerable proportion of his fellow townsmen.
Three occurrences of a widely dissimilar nature, yet all closely interrelated to the main issue, marked the climax of the man's new role in his new career. The first of these was the arrival of his legacy; the second was a one-ring circus; and the third and last was a nephew.
In the form of certain bills of exchange the estate left by the late Daniel O'Day, of the town of Kilmare, in the island of Ireland, was on a certain afternoon delivered over into Judge Priest's hands, and by him, in turn, handed to the rightful owner, after which sundry indebtednesses, representing the total of the old Judge's day-to-day cash advances to O'Day, were liquidated.
The ceremony of deducting this sum took place at the Planters' Bank, whither the two had journeyed in company from the courthouse. Having, with the aid of the paying teller, instructed O'Day in the technical details requisite to the drawing of personal checks, Judge Priest went home and had his bag packed, and left for Reelfoot Lake to spend a week fis.h.i.+ng. As a consequence he missed the remaining two events, following immediately thereafter.
The circus was no great shakes of a circus; no grand, glittering, gorgeous, glorious pageant of education and entertainment, travelling on its own special trains; no vast tented city of world's wonders and world's champions, heralded for weeks and weeks in advance of its coming by dead walls emblazoned with the finest examples of the lithographer's art, and by half-page advertis.e.m.e.nts in the _Daily Evening News_. On the contrary, it was a shabby little wagon show, which, coming overland on short notice, rolled into town under horse power, and set up its ragged and dusty canvases on the vacant lot across from Yeiser's drug store.
Compared with the street parade of any of its great and famous rivals, the street parade of this circus was a meagre and disappointing thing.
Why, there was only one elephant, a dwarfish and debilitated-looking creature, worn mangy and slick on its various angles, like the cover of an old-fas.h.i.+oned haircloth trunk; and obviously most of the closed cages were weather-beaten stake wagons in disguise. Nevertheless, there was a sizable turnout of people for the afternoon performance. After all, a circus was a circus.
Moreover, this particular circus was marked at the afternoon performance by happenings of a nature most decidedly unusual. At one o'clock the doors were opened: at one-ten the eyes of the proprietor were made glad and his heart was uplifted within him by the sight of a strange procession, drawing nearer and nearer across the scuffed turf of the common, and heading in the direction of the red ticket wagon.