Shelby

“ Shelby, on the Mississippi river, October 20th, 1839.
Why do I stand so silently,
With folded arms and tearful eye?
Hour after hour thus I spend,
Immers’d in thoughts which know no end.
It was not thus in days gone by,
When heart and hands found full employ,
When earth’s attachments warm’d my breast,
And earth’s engagements shared my rest. ”

“ He was lured the farther into this quagmire by the guileless questioning of one of his listeners, who lingered in obvious fascination after his fellows had departed, and, in happy ignorance that the cherubic youth was the son of an artist of distinction, and himself no mean critic of things artistic, Shelby voiced opinions more vigorous than discreet.
"There was a time," he confessed apropos of the nymphs, "when I thought those ladies the best ever. Young eyes won't hesitate between a plump Venus and a lean Madonna." ”

“ Mr. Shelby was fairly overcome, and the tears rose to his eyes.
"My good boy," said he, "the Lord knows you say but the truth; and if I was able to help it, all the world shouldn't buy you."
"And sure as I am a Christian woman," said Mrs. Shelby, "you shall be redeemed as soon as I can any way bring together means. Sir," she said to Haley, "take good account of who you sell him to, and let me know."
"Lor, yes, for that matter," said the trader, "I may bring him up in a year, not much the wuss for wear, and trade him back." ”

“ With his great physical handicap, the admiration was all the more intense, for the spirit and the grit of the man who was undertaking one of the most dangerous and difficult expeditions of the war. Shelby’s body was subordinated to the beckonings of glory and the splendor of the opportunity which had now come in obedience to his pleadings to serve his State, his cause, his country. Other men, less brave or determined, would have hesitated. Some men, possibly equally chivalrous, would have taken a furlough rather than have sought new dangers and more difficult service. ”

“ But Graves was of no mind to cause him the lifting of a finger, and to the watcher's bewilderment cut directly behind the great rudder into the swirling wake, headed for the heel-path, which he attained with a dozen vigorous strokes, and clambering the sloping embankment, disappeared in a clump of willows.
The autumn frosts nip Tuscarora betimes, but Shelby sat staring in his sodden clothes, till he fathomed his rival's motive, and chattered forth a laugh. Then he hurried across the dock to the little tin-roofed office of the Eureka. ”

“ He went back to the hotel lonelier than before, in a greater loneliness than Ulysses felt ending his Odyssey in Ithaca. For, at least, Ulysses was remembered by an old dog that licked his hand.
Once in his room, Shelby sank into a patent rocker of most uncomfortable plush. The inhospitable garishness of a small-town hotel's luxury expelled him from the hateful place, and he resumed the streets, taking, as always, determination from rebuff and vowing within himself:
"I'll make 'em remember me. I'll make the name of Shelby the biggest name in town." ”

“ Shelby, "if you wish to communicate with me, you must observe something of the decorum of a gentleman. Andy, take Mr. Haley's hat and riding-whip. Take a seat, sir. Yes, sir; I regret to say that the young woman, excited by overhearing, or having reported to her, something of this business, has taken her child in the night, and made off."
"I did expect fair dealing in this matter, I confess," said Haley.
"Well, sir," said Mr. Shelby, turning sharply round upon him, "what am I to understand by that remark? If any man calls my honor in question, I have but one answer for him." ”

“ Now, I venture to say, your niggers would be quite chop-fallen in a place where some of your plantation niggers would be singing and whooping like all possessed. Every man, you know, Mr. Shelby, naturally thinks well of his own ways; and I think I treat niggers just about as well as it's ever worth while to treat 'em."
"It's a happy thing to be satisfied," said Mr. Shelby, with a slight shrug, and some perceptible feelings of a disagreeable nature.
"Well," said Haley, after they had both silently picked their nuts for a season, "what do you say?" ”

“ Zulus had captured him once, and he had come perilously close to death on so many occasions that it was a miracle that he should be sitting here now, sipping his champagne and smoking his cigarette.
On the way home—I had a habit of seeing Shelby to his doorstep during this period—he turned to me and said:
"Isn't it strange, Allison, that nothing of that kind has ever happened to me? I move about all the while, I look eagerly for excitement, I hope always for the supreme adventure—and I never find it. Yet I love romance. Why does it never come to me?" ”

“ No word of love had been spoken, but the two weeks had made over his life; and he went back to his work with a definite object, a hope stronger than ambition, and, set to it as music to words, came insistently another hope, a dream that he did not let himself dwell on—a longing to make enough money to pay off the mortgage and put Fairfield in order, and live and work there all his life—with Shelby. That was where the thrill of the thought came in, but the place was very dear to him in itself. ”

“ We've always prided ourselves on being prompt." He caught a flying sheet from the operator and groaned: "We are the last! By the Great Horn Spoon!" For Shelby's ear alone he muttered: "The last, Ross; New Babylon's the last, and the die by which you lose or win. Figure it yourself."
Shelby ran through his senior's calculations and nodded without speech. No one spoke now. Not a wine-glass tinkled. The room sensed a crisis. By telephone, special messenger, and the instrument at the table the belated story of New Babylon's vote pieced itself together under Bowers's pencil. ”

“ His eyes twinkled, and Shelby flickered a responsive grin. "Note a rule for candidates: When about to effect the spectacular rescue of one of the toiling masses which are the bone and sinew of this fair land of ours, pick a man who holds a block of the foreign vote right in the pocket of his jeans."
It was perhaps appreciation of this aphorism's significance, perhaps sheer abundance of the milk of human kindness, perhaps a harmonious blending of both, which inspired Shelby's warm welcome to Kiska as he was about to leave his office to join Ruth Temple. ”

“ Shelby fluttered his way through the corridors and drawing rooms of the rich, and his later work, if you will notice, always touches upon what is called smart society. We heard that he never mentioned his newspaper days—that he was not a little ashamed of having spent so many months bending over a typewriter in a dingy, cluttered office. ”

“ Shelby's optimism was not easily dashed and he laid an energetic shoulder to the lagging wheel. His associate's rebound from depression was less elastic, and the candidate's thoughts furrowed a channel they had frequently taken of late. It was plain to him that the older man was no longer equal to the requirements of his leadership. Sound in judgment, shrewd in the reading of men, vigorous in action as he once had been, and on occasion could be still, he was nevertheless of an earlier and more leisured school of politics than the present lively generation which knew not Joseph. ”

“ The drumming humble-bee [Transcriber's note: bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the Boss in New York City, with which the Tuscarora independents had felt themselves peculiarly in sympathy, had made good its claim for recognition. Shelby turned from the window with a laugh.
"Merely a little extra diplomacy for Old Silky," he said. "Within a twelvemonth each reformer will have a foreign mission." ”

“ Shelby, dryly; and, seeking to turn the conversation, he uncorked a bottle of fresh wine, and asked his companion's opinion of it.
"Capital, sir,—first chop!" said the trader; then turning, and slapping his hand familiarly on Shelby's shoulder, he added—
"Come, how will you trade about the gal?—what shall I say for her—what'll you take?"
"Mr. Haley, she is not to be sold," said Shelby. "My wife would not part with her for her weight in gold."
"Ay, ay! women always say such things, cause they ha'nt no sort of calculation. ”

“ Shelby smilingly watched the scramble to its speedy end, and turned to the giver of the feast, who sat in a sheltered corner of her veranda with a caller. The latter proved to be Bernard Graves, sunning himself with a cat's content.
"Industrious young man," Shelby observed with the irony of whole-souled dislike. "Inherits a comfortable property, goes to an expensive college, dawdles through Europe, and then comes home to play carpet knight and read poetry to girls. Why doesn't he go to work?"
Bowers made no reply to the gibe. He was watching Ruth. ”

“ Shelby was a fair average kind of man, good-natured and kindly, and disposed to easy indulgence of those around him, and there had never been a lack of anything which might contribute to the physical comfort of the negroes on his estate. ”

“ Shelby, as she continued brushing her hair, "that she was a little fool for her pains, and that you never had anything to do with that sort of persons. Of course, I knew you never meant to sell any of our people,—least of all, to such a fellow."
"Well, Emily," said her husband, "so I have always felt and said; but the fact is that my business lies so that I cannot get on without. I shall have to sell some of my hands."
"To that creature? Impossible! Mr. Shelby, you cannot be serious." ”

“ Her devotions at an end, she issued docilely to the pavement, saying,
"You can't know the comfort."
"It's a pity it isn't contagious," commented Shelby, grimly; but before they quitted the shadows for the lights of Fifth Avenue he added gently that he begrudged her nothing.
Directly he saw the elevator whisk her to her room, the man posted back to the music hall in search of Volney Sprague. What he should say to him was not clear, but see him he must. Out of the jumble of his thoughts that idea beset him like an obsession. ”

“ Finally Hastings leaned over and whispered, “We know, too, that Shelby Maddox, his brother, had met Paquita at the Harbor House just before the family conference which brought them all together.”
It was evident that, at least to Hastings, there was something in the affair that looked ugly to him as far as Shelby was concerned.
“It’s not at all strange,” he added, “that two men as unlike as Marshall and Shelby should disagree. Marshall was the dominating type, eager for power; Shelby easy-going, more interested in having a good time. ”

“ The rural citizen has elbow-room to take his politics sedately and order his going with temperate pulse and judicial mind. Of such mettle normally were the New Babylonians who took their leisured way beneath the fluted columns of the court-house into Shelby's rally; but this audience felt itself more than normally temperate and judicial. Despite Mrs. Hilliard, despite the Hon. Seneca Bowers, despite Shelby's own striving, it had come less to encourage than to try and weigh. ”

“ Her success was only partial, but they did hear a message to Shelby direct.
"Persevere, Kit," Peter said, "you're doing right in that matter. Go ahead, Kit."
"Your voice sounds queer, Peter," Shelby said, frowning a little. "It used to be pitched in a higher key."
"It's the medium," came a reply, and the pitch was higher. "I don't mean the human medium, but the medium through which I must talk—the ether, I suppose it is. Good-by, Kit." [Pg 95]
Madame Parlato then came out of her trance, or whatever term she used to designate her half-conscious state. ”

“ If ever he had needed a quiet hour it was now, and he had sought the smoking-compartment because with a carful of women and children it seemed to promise solitude.
"Shall miss you around Albany this winter," Krantz said feelingly, exploring the pockets of his horsey waistcoat for a cigar. "We always got along so well together."
Shelby was silent under this moving reminiscence.
"I'll have some of my Washington friends look you up," pursued the man.
"They're good fellows, all of 'em."
"Thanks," said Shelby, without enthusiasm. "Better wait till I'm elected." ”

“ Shelby did not wait to discuss the subject further; he stalked through the hall into the rose-garden, and took that way to the arbor because it was the path farthest from Madame's boudoir window.
He did not mean to ask Mary to marry him. For a singularly successful and popular young man, he was almost stupidly modest. He couldn't write plays and Operas, or sing like an angel, or paint pictures or make statues and speak several languages, as half the men of Mary's acquaintance could. He thought of himself as rather a lump of a fellow, with none of the admirable Louis Delenski's fascinations ”

“ A raw-boned horse whirled around the corner, just avoiding his toes. It was followed by a bouncing grocery-wagon on the side of whose seat dangled a shirt-sleeved youth who might have been Shelby himself a score of years ago.
Shelby paused to watch. The horse drew up at the home of Doctor Stillwell, the dentist. Before the wagon was at rest the delivery-boy was off and half-way around the side of the house. Mrs. Stillwell opened the screen door to take in the carrots and soap and washing-powder Shelby used to bring her. Shelby remembered that she used washing-powder then. ”