Westover of Wanalah: A story of love and life in Old VirginiaEggleston, George Cary
General
Westover of Wanalah: A story of love and life in Old Virginia
Eggleston, George Cary
Virginia -- Fiction
"Tell me 'bout your campaign, William Wilberforce Webb," she said after
he had had a third or fourth helping of apple jack. Then she changed
her mind--or perhaps the change had been in her mind all the while--and
said: "No, don't bother 'bout that yit. Tell me, instid o' that, what
you's a luggin' all that name around for. I s'pose when you was a boy
they called you jes' Billy Webb. Why ain't that a good 'nough name for
you now? You see us folks up here in the mountings ain't got much
respec' nor patience like with names bigger'n the men what wears 'em.
They was wunst a feller come up here what called hisself James Augustus
de Forrest Hyde, an' we run him out'n the mountings. He come back arter
a while a callin' hisself plain Jim Hyde, an' he's been a breedin'
mules successful, like, ever since. You see when he fust come he
brought more name along than he could tote, an' that's jest what you's
a doin' with your William Wilberforce Webb. It sounds well down 'mong
the stuck ups, but 'tain't no go up here in the mountings. Us folks
likes somethin' plainer--somethin' like Boyd Westover."
"Of course you're right, Judy," answered Webb flinching a little at the
name of his antagonist, "but when a man's parents have given him a long
name what's he to do but wear it? A man's name's a part of him."
"Yes, an' it's that part us folks up here in the mountings don't like.
It's the fool part. Why ain't 'W. W. Webb' a good enough name fer a
one-horse vehicle like you?"
It was the epithet rather than the question that staggered Webb, but
that it did stagger him was indicated to Judy's shrewd observation by
the fact that he took three deep draughts of the apple brandy before
answering. At last he said:
"Well, you see, Judy--"
"No, I don't see," she interrupted, "an' you ain't a goin' to make me
see sense in a thing what ain't got no sense in it."
"I was going to say--" he began again.
"Yes, I know you was. Never mind a sayin' it. Listen to me. Ef I'm to
help you in your canvass up here in the mountings, you's got to shorten
your name somehow. Mind I don't say I's a goin' to help you,"--Judy's
sturdy love of truth in the abstract prompted this qualification of
what was essentially a lie in the concrete--"but _ef_ I'm to help you,
you's got to give me a shorter name 'n William Wilberforce Webb to call
you by. You see every time I try to say anything 'bout you my mouth
gits so choked up, like, with that durned worm fence of a name that the
rest o' the words won't come out nohow."
"I'm sorry, Judy, awfully sorry that my name offends you. Just call me
Billy hereafter."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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