Now and then he would give me a mild
and drawling word or two, not brilliantly illuminative, it may be
remarked. "Well--about that--" he began once, and came immediately to a
full stop.
"Yes?" I said, hopefully, my pencil poised.
"About that--I guess--"
"Yes, Mr. Beasley?" I encouraged him, for he seemed to have dried up
permanently.
"Well, sir--I guess--Hadn't you better see some one else about THAT?"
This with the air of a man who would be but too fluent and copious upon
any subject in the world except the one particular point.
I never met anybody else who looked so pleasantly communicative and
managed to say so little. In fact, he didn't say anything at all; and I
guessed that this faculty was not without its value in his political
career, disastrous as it had proved to his private happiness. His habit
of silence, moreover, was not cultivated: you could see that "the secret
of it" was just that he was BORN quiet.
My note-book remained noteless, and finally, at some odd evasion of his,
accomplished by a monosyllable, I laughed outright--and he did, too! He
joined cachinnations with me heartily, and with a twinkling
quizzicalness that somehow gave me the idea that he might be thinking
(rather apologetically) to himself: "Yes, sir, that old Beasley man is
certainly a mighty funny critter!"
When I went away, a few moments later, and left him still intermittently
chuckling, the impression remained with me that he had had some such
deprecatory and surreptitious thought.
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