VII
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN
There was a sound, heard in the early hours of a Sunday morning, thatused to bother strangers in our town until they got used to it. Itstarted usually along about half past five or six o'clock and it kept upinterminably--so it seemed to them--a monotonous, jarring thump-thump,thump-thump that was like the far-off beating of African tomtoms; but atbreakfast, when the beaten biscuits came upon the table, throwing off asteamy hot halo of their own goodness, these aliens knew what it wasthat had roused them, and, unless they were dyspeptics by nature, feltamply recompensed for the lost hours of their beauty sleep.
In these degenerate latter days I believe there is a machine thataccomplishes the same purpose noiselessly by a process of rolling andcrushing, which no doubt is efficacious; but it seems somehow to takethe poetry out of the operation. Old Judge Priest, our circuit judge,and the reigning black deity of his kitchen, Aunt Dilsey Turner, wouldhave naught of it. So long as his digestion survived and her good rightarm held out to endure, there would be real beaten biscuits for thejudge's Sunday morning breakfast. And so, having risen with the dawn ora little later, Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of whittledwood, would pound the dough with rhythmic strokes until it was asplastic as sculptor's modeling clay and as light as eiderdown, full oftiny hills and hollows, in which small yeasty bubbles rose and spreadand burst like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets. Then,with her master hand, she would roll it thin and cut out the small rounddisks and delicately pink each one with a fork--and then, if you werelistening, you could hear the stove door slam like the smacking of aniron lip.
On a certain Sunday I have in mind, Judge Priest woke with the firstpremonitory thud from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed in hiswhite linens and out upon the wide front porch while the summer day wasyoung and unblemished. The sun was not up good yet. It made a red glow,like a barn afire, through the treetops looking eastward. Lie-abedblackbirds were still talking over family matters in the maples thatclustered round the house, and in the back yard Judge Priest's big redrooster hoarsely circulated gossip in regard to a certain little brownhen, first crowing out the news loudly and then listening, with his headon one side, while the rooster in the next yard took it up and repeatedit to a rooster living farther down the road, as is the custom amongmale scandalizers the world over. Upon the lawn the little gossamerhammocks that the grass spiders had seamed together overnight werespangled with dew, so that each out-thrown thread was a glitteringrosary and the center of each web a silken, cushioned jewel casket.Likewise each web was outlined in white mist, for the cottonwood treeswere shedding down their podded product so thickly that across openspaces the slanting lines of the drifting fiber looked like snow. Itwould be hot enough after a while, but now the whole world was sweet andfresh and washed clean.
It impressed Judge Priest so. He lowered his bulk into a rustic chairmade of hickory withes that gave to his weight, and put his thoughtsupon breakfast and the goodness of the day; but presently, as he satthere, he saw something that set a frown between his faded blue eyes.
He saw, coming down Clay Street, upon the opposite side, an old man--avery feeble old man--who was tall and thin and dressed in somber black.The man was lame--he dragged one leg along with the hitching gait of theparalytic. Traveling with painful slowness, he came on until he reachedthe corner above. Then automatically he turned at right angles and leftthe narrow wooden sidewalk and crossed the dusty road. He passed JudgePriest's, looking neither to the right nor the left, and so kept onuntil he reached the corner below. Still following an invisible path inthe deep-furrowed dust, he crossed again to the other side. Just as hegot there his halt leg seemed to give out altogether and for a minute ortwo he stood holding himself up by a fumbling grip upon the slats of atree box before he went laboriously on, a figure of pain and weakness inthe early sunshine that was now beginning to slant across his path anddapple his back with checkerings of shadow and light.
This maneuver was inexplicable--a stranger would have puzzled to make itout. The shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay Street as upon theother; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brotherover the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles andbalsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the oppositeside of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home,had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to thislone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labor. Astranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understoodit--he had seen that same thing repeated countless times in the yearsthat stretched behind him. Always it had distressed him inwardly, but onthis particular morning it distressed him more than ever. The toilinggrim figure in black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and old.
Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you would call young. With aneffort he heaved himself up out of the depths of his hickory chair andstood at the edge of his porch, polishing a pink bald dome of foreheadas though trying to make up his mind to something. Jefferson Poindexter,resplendent in starchy white jacket and white apron, came to the door.
"Breakfus' served, suh!" he said, giving to an announcement touching onfood that glamour of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys thesplendid secret.
"Hey?" asked the judge absently.
"Breakfus'--hit's on the table waitin', suh," stated Jeff. "Mizz Polkssent over her houseboy with a dish of fresh razberries fur yorebreakfus'; and she say to tell you, with her and Mistah Polkses'compliments, they is fresh picked out of her garden--specially fur you."
The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had reference were named Polk, butin speaking of white persons for whom he had a high regard Jeff always,wherever possible within the limitations of our speech, tacked on thatfinal s. It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment, implyingthat the person referred to was worthy of enlargement and pluralization.
Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled dining room, Judge Priestate his breakfast mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads ofsweetness; the young fried chicken was a poem in delicate and flakybrowns; the spoon bread could not have been any better if it had tried;and the beaten biscuits were as light as snowflakes and as ready to melton the tongue; but Judge Priest spoke hardly a word all through themeal. Jeff, going out to the kitchen for the last course, said to AuntDilsey:
"Ole boss-man seem lak he's got somethin' on his mind worryin' him thismawnin'."
When Jeff returned, with a turn of crisp waffles in one hand and apitcher of cane sirup in the other, he stared in surprise, for thedining room was empty and he could hear his employer creaking down thehall. Jeff just naturally hated to see good hot waffles going to waste.He ate them himself, standing up; and they gave him a zest for hisregular breakfast, which followed in due course of time.
From the old walnut hatrack, with its white-tipped knobs that stood justinside the front door, Judge Priest picked up a palmleaf fan; and heheld the fan slantwise as a shield for his eyes and his bare headagainst the sun's glare as he went down the porch steps and passed outof his own yard, traversed the empty street and strove with the stubborngate latch of the little house that faced his own. It was a poor-lookinglittle house, and its poorness had extended to its surroundings--as ifpoverty was a contagion that spread. In Judge Priest's yard, now, thegrass, though uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but here, in thissmall yard, there were bare, shiny spots of earth showing through thegrass--as though the soil itself was out at elbows and the nap worn offits green-velvet coat; but the vines about the porch were thick enoughfor an ambuscade and from behind their green screen came a voice inhospitable recognition.
"Is that you, judge? Well sir, I'm glad to see you! Come right in; takea seat and sit down and rest yourself."
The speaker showed himself in the arched opening of the vine barrier--anold man--not quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He was in hisshirtsleeves. There was a patch upon one of the sleeves. His shoes hadbeen newly shined, but t
he job was poorly done; the leather showed adulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides andheels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down--the voice of a deaf personwho cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in afalse key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean andslightly tremulous hand cupped behind his ear.
The other hand he extended in greeting as the old judge mounted the stepof the low porch. The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers thatstood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute ortwo he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighborlycalls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy thecommunion of silence together without embarrassment.
The town clocks struck--first the one on the city hall struck eighttimes sedately; and then, farther away, the one on the countycourthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment,struck eleven times with great vigor, hesitated again, struck once witha big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could curethe courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept itaccording to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased thebell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells,began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamoring had diedaway.
"Goin' to be good and hot after while," he said, raising his voice.
"What say?"
"I say it's goin' to be mighty warm a little later on in the day,"repeated Judge Priest.
"Yes, suh; I reckon you're right there," assented the host. "Just aminute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she'd find itmiddlin' close in church this morning. She's going, though--runawayhorses wouldn't keep her away from church! I'm not going myself--seemsas though I'm getting more and more out of the church habit herelately."
Judge Priest's eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of thisadmission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of hissecond wife, had been a regular attendant at services--going twice onSundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wifehad been dead going on four years now--or was it five? Time sped so!
The deaf man spoke on:
"So I just thought I'd sit here and try to keep cool and wait for thatLedbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read lastSunday's paper, judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty finepiece on those Northern money devils. It's round here somewhere--I cutit out to keep it. I'd like to have you read it and pass your opinion onit. These young fellows do pretty well, but there's none of them canwrite like the colonel, in my judgment."
Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him.
"Ed Tilghman," he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seemedabsurdly out of place, coming from his round frame, "you and me havelived neighbors together a good while, haven't we? We've been rightacros't the street from one another all this time. It kind of jolts mesometimes when I git to thinkin' how many years it's really been;because we're gittin' along right smartly in years--all us old fellowsare. Ten years from now, say, there won't be so many of us left." Heglanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. "You'reyounger than some of us; but, even so, you ain't exactly what I'd call ayoung man yourself."
Avoiding the direct, questioning gaze that his companion turned on himat this, the judge reached forward and touched a ripe balsam apple thatdangled in front of him. Instantly it split, showing the gummed redseeds clinging to the inner walls of the sensitive pod.
"I'm listening to you, judge," said the deaf man.
For a moment the old judge waited. There was about him almost an air ofembarrassment. Still considering the ruin of the balsam apple, he spoke,and it was with a sort of hurried anxiety, as though he feared he mightbe checked before he could say what he had to say.
"Ed," he said, "I was settin' on my porch a while ago waitin' forbreakfast, and your brother came by." He shot a quick, apprehensiveglance at his silent auditor. Except for a tautened flickering of themuscles about the mouth, there was no sign that the other had heard him."Your brother Abner came by," repeated the judge, "and I set over thereon my porch and watched him pass. Ed, Abner's gittin' mighty feeble! Hejest about kin drag himself along--he's had another stroke lately, theytell me. He had to hold on to that there treebox down yonder, steadyin'himself after he crossed back over to this side. Lord knows what he wasdoin' draggin' down-town on a Sunday mornin'--force of habit, I reckin.Anyway he certainly did look older and more poorly than ever I saw himbefore. He's a failin' man if I'm any judge. Do you hear me plain?" heasked.
"I hear you," said his neighbor in a curiously flat voice. It wasTilghman's turn to avoid the glances of his friend. He stared straightahead of him through a rift in the vines.
"Well, then," went on Judge Priest, "here's what I've got to say to you,Ed Tilghman. You know as well as I do that I've never pried into yourprivate affairs, and it goes mightily against the grain for me to bedoin' so now; but, Ed, when I think of how old we're all gittin' to be,and when the Camp meets and I see you settin' there side by side almost,and yet never seemin' to see each other--and this mornin' when I sawAbner pass, lookin' so gaunt and sick--and it sech a sweet, ca'm mornin'too, and everything so quiet and peaceful----" He broke off and startedanew. "I don't seem to know exactly how to put my thoughts intowords--and puttin' things into words is supposed to be my trade too.Anyway I couldn't go to Abner. He's not my neighbor and you are; andbesides, you're the youngest of the two. So--so I came over here to you.Ed, I'd like mightily to take some word from you to your brother Abner.I'd like to do it the best in the world! Can't I go to him with amessage from you--today? Tomorrow might be too late!"
He laid one of his pudgy hands on the bony knee of the deaf man; but thehand slipped away as Tilghman stood up.
"Judge Priest," said Tilghman, looking down at him, "I've listened towhat you've had to say; and I didn't stop you, because you are my friendand I know you mean well by it. Besides, you're my guest, under my ownroof." He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines of the porch.Otherwise he gave no sign of any emotion that might be astir within him,his face being still set and his voice flat. "What's between me andmy--what's between me and that man you just named always will be betweenus. He's satisfied to let things go on as they are. I'm satisfied to letthem go on. It's in our breed, I guess. Words--just words--wouldn't helpmend this thing. The reason for it would be there just the same, andneither one of us is going to be able to forget that so long as we bothlive. I'd just as soon you never brought this--this subject up again. Ifyou went to him I presume he'd tell you the same thing. Let it be, JudgePriest--it's past mending. We two have gone on this way for fifty yearsnearly. We'll keep on going on so. I appreciate your kindness, JudgePriest; but let it be--let it be!"
There was finality miles deep and fixed as basalt in his tone. Hechecked his walk and called in at a shuttered window.
"Liddie," he said in his natural up-and-down voice, "before you put offfor church, couldn't you mix up a couple of lemonades or something?Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me."
"No," said Judge Priest, getting slowly up, "I've got to be gittin' backbefore the sun's up too high. If I don't see you again meanwhile beshore to come to the next regular meetin' of the Camp--on Friday night,"he added.
"I'll be there," said Tilghman. "And I'll try to find that piece ofColonel Watterson's and send it over to you. I'd like mightily for youto read it."
He stood at the opening in the vines, with one slightly palsied handfumbling at a loose tendril as the judge passed down the short yard-walkand out at the gate. Then he went back to his chair and sat down again.All those little muscles in his jowls were jumping.
Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking down its dusty length frombeneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and theregroups of children--the little girls in prim and starchy white, thelittle boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; andall of them were moving toward a common center--Sunday school. Twiceagain tha
t day would the street show life--a little later when grown-upswent their way to church, and again just after the noonday dinner, whenyoung people and servants, carrying trays and dishes under napkins,would cross and recross from one house to another. The Sundayinterchange of special dainties between neighbors amounted in our townto a ceremonial and a rite; but after that, until the cool of theevening, the town would simmer in quiet, while everybody took Sundaynaps.
With his fan, Judge Priest made an angry sawing motion in the air, asthough trying to fend off something disagreeable--a memory, perhaps, orit might have been only a persistent midge. There were plenty of gnatsand midges about, for by now--even so soon--the dew was dried. Theleaves of the silver poplars were turning their white under sides uplike countless frog bellies, and the long, podded pendants of theInjun-cigar trees hung dangling and still. It would be a hot day, sureenough; already the judge felt wilted and worn out.
In our town we had our tragedies that endured for years and, in thesmall-town way, finally became institutions. There was the case of theBurnleys. For thirty-odd years old Major Burnley lived on one side ofhis house and his wife lived on the other, neither of them ever crossingan imaginary dividing line that ran down the middle of the hall, havingfor their medium of intercourse all that time a lean, spinster daughter,in whose gray and barren life churchwork and these strange home dutiestook the place that Nature had intended to be filled by a husband and bybabies and grandbabies.
There was crazy Saul Vance, in his garb of a fantastic scarecrow, whowas forever starting somewhere and never going there--because, as sureas he came to a place where two roads crossed, he could not make up hismind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted him, or a bankhad failed on him, or a horse had kicked him in the head--or maybe itwas all three of these things that had addled his poor brains. Anyhow hewent his pitiable, aimless way for years, taunted daily by small boyswho were more cruel than jungle beasts. How he lived nobody knew, butwhen he died some of the men who as boys had jeered him turned out to behis volunteer pallbearers.
There was Mr. H. Jackman--Brother Jackman to all the town--who had beenour leading hatter once and rich besides, and in the days of hisaffluence had given the Baptist church its bells. In his old age, whenhe was dog-poor, he lived on charity, only it was not known by thatword, which is at once the sweetest and bitterest word in our tongue;for Brother Jackman, always primped, always plump and well clad, wouldgo through the market to take his pick of what was there, and to theRichland House bar for his toddies, and to Felsburg Brothers for newgarments when his old ones wore shabby--and yet never paid a cent foranything; a kindly conspiracy on the part of the whole town enabling himto maintain his self-respect to the last. Strangers in our town used totake him for a retired banker--that's a fact!
And there was old man Stackpole, who had killed his man--had killed himin fair fight and had been acquitted--and yet walked quiet back streetsat all hours, a gray, silent shadow, and never slept except with abright light burning in his room.
The tragedy of Mr. Edward Tilghman, though, and of Captain Abner G.Tilghman, his elder brother, was both a tragedy and a mystery--thebiggest tragedy and the deepest mystery our town had ever known or everwould know probably. All that anybody knew for certain was that forupward of fifty years neither of them had spoken to the other, nor bydeed or look had given heed to the other. As boys, back in sixty-one,they had gone out together. Side by side, each with his arm over theother's shoulder, they had stood up with a hundred others to be sworninto the service of the Confederate States of America; and on themorning they went away Miss Sally May Ghoulson had given the olderbrother her silk scarf off her shoulders to wear for a sash. Both thebrothers had liked her; but by this public act she made it plain whichof them was her choice.
Then the company had marched off to the camp on the Tennessee border,where the new troops were drilling; and as they marched some watcherswept and others cheered--but the cheering predominated, for it was to beonly a sort of picnic anyhow--so everybody agreed. As the orators--whomainly stayed behind--had pointed out, the Northern people would notfight. And even if they should fight could not one Southerner whip fourYankees? Certainly he could; any fool knew that much. In a month or twomonths, or at most three months, they would all be tramping home again,covered with glory and the spoils of war, and then--this by commonreport and understanding--Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghmanwould be married, with a big church wedding.
The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought, and it was not a ninety-daypicnic after all. It was not any kind of a picnic. And when it was over,after four years and a month, Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghmandid not marry. It was just before the battle of Chickamauga when theother men in the company first noticed that the two Tilghmans had becomeas strangers, and worse than strangers, to each other. They quitspeaking to each other then and there, and to any man's knowledge theynever spoke again. They served the war out, Abner rising just beforethe end to a captaincy, Edward serving always as a private in the ranks.In a dour, grim silence they took the fortunes of those last hard,hopeless days and after the surrender down in Mississippi they came backwith the limping handful that was left of the company; and in age theywere all boys still--but in experience, men, and in suffering,grandsires.
Two months after they got back Miss Sally May Ghoulson was married toEdward, the younger brother. Within a year she died, and after a decentperiod of mourning Edward married a second time--only to be widowedagain after many years. His second wife bore him children and theydied--all except one, a daughter, who grew up and married badly; andafter her mother's death she came back to live with her deaf father andminister to him. As for Captain Abner Tilghman, he never married--never,so far as the watching eyes of the town might tell, looked with favorupon another woman. And he never spoke to his brother or to any of hisbrother's family--or his brother to him.
With years the wall of silence they had builded up between them turnedto ice and the ice to stone. They lived on the same street, but neverdid Edward enter Captain Abner's bank, never did Captain Abner passEdward's house--always he crossed over to the opposite side. Theybelonged to the same Veterans' Camp--indeed there was only the one forthem to belong to; they voted the same ticket--straight Democratic; andin the same church, the old Independent Presbyterian, they worshiped thesame God by the same creed, the older brother being an elder and theyounger a plain member--and yet never crossed looks.
The town had come to accept this dumb and bitter feud as unchangeableand eternal; in time people ceased even to wonder what its cause hadbeen, and in all the long years only one man had tried, before now, toheal it up. When old Doctor Henrickson died, a young and ardentclergyman, fresh from the Virginia theological school, came out to takethe vacant pulpit; and he, being filled with a high sense of his holycalling, thought it shameful that such a thing should be in thecongregation. He went to see Captain Tilghman about it. He never wentbut that once. Afterward it came out that Captain Tilghman hadthreatened to walk out of church and never darken its doors again if theminister ever dared to mention his brother's name in his presence. Sothe young minister sorrowed, but obeyed, for the captain was rich and agenerous giver to the church.
And he had grown richer with the years, and as he grew richer hisbrother grew poorer--another man owned the drug store where EdwardTilghman had failed. They had grown from young to middle-aged men andfrom middle-aged men to old, infirm men; and first the grace of youthand then the solidness of maturity had gone out of them and thegnarliness of age had come upon them; one was halt of step and the otherwas dull of ear; and the town through half a century of schooling hadaccustomed itself to the situation and took it as a matter of course. Soit was and so it always would be--a tragedy and a mystery. It had notbeen of any use when the minister interfered and it was of no use now.Judge Priest, with the gesture of a man who is beaten, dropped the fanon the porch floor, went into his darkened sitting room, stretchedhimself wearily on a creaking horsehide sofa and cal
led out to Jeff tomake him a mild toddy--one with plenty of ice in it.
* * * * *
On this same Sunday--or, anyhow, I like to fancy it was on this sameSunday--at a point distant approximately nine hundred and seventy milesin a northeasterly direction from Judge Priest's town, Corporal JacobSpeck, late of Sigel's command, sat at the kitchen window of thecombined Speck and Engel apartment on East Eighty-fifth Street in theBorough of Manhattan, New York. He was in his shirtsleeves; his tenderfeet were incased in a pair of red-and-green carpet slippers. In theangle of his left arm he held his youngest grandchild, aged one and ahalf years, while his right hand carefully poised a china pipe, with abowl like an egg-cup and a stem like a fishpole. The corporal's blueHanoverian eyes, behind their thick-lensed glasses, were fixed upon acomprehensive vista of East Eighty-fifth Street back yards andclothespoles and fire escapes; but his thoughts were very muchelsewhere.
Reared back there at seeming ease, the corporal none the less was nothappy in his mind. It was not that he so much minded being left at hometo mind the youngest baby while the rest of the family spent theafternoon amid the Teutonic splendors of Smeltzer's Harlem River Casino,with its acres of gravel walks and its whitewashed tree trunks, itsstraggly flower beds and its high-collared beers. He was used to thatsort of thing. Since a plague of multiplying infirmities of the bodyhad driven him out of his job in the tax office, the corporal had notdone much except nurse the babies that occurred in the Speck-Engelestablishment with such unerring regularity. Sometimes, it is true, hedid slip down to the corner for maybe zwei glasses of beer and a game ofpinocle; but then, likely as not, there would come inopportunely atowheaded descendant to tell him Mommer needed him back at the flatright away to mind the baby while she went marketing or to the movies.
He could endure that--he had to. What riled Corporal Jacob Speck on thiswarm and sunny Sunday was a realization that he was not doing his shareat making the history of the period. The week before had befallen thefiftieth anniversary of the marching away of his old regiment to thefront; there had been articles in the daily papers about it. Also, inpatriotic commemoration of the great event there had been a parade ofthe wrinkled survivors--ninety-odd of them--following their tattered andfaded battle flag down Fifth Avenue past apathetic crowds, nine-tenthsof whom had been born since the war--in foreign lands mainly; and atleast half, if one might judge by their looks, did not know what theparading was all about, and did not particularly care either.
The corporal had not participated in the march of the veterans; he hadnot even attended the banquet that followed it. True, the youngestgrandchild was at the moment cutting one of her largest jaw teeth and sohad required, for the time, an extraordinary and special amount ofminding; but the young lady's dental difficulty was not the sole reasonfor his absence. Three weeks earlier the corporal had taken part inDecoration Day, and certainly one parade a month was ample strain upon apair of legs such as he owned. He had returned home with his game legbehaving more gamely then usual and with his sound one full of new andpainful kinks. Also, in honor of the occasion he had committed the errorof wearing a pair of stiff and inflexible new shoes; wherefore he hadworn his carpet slippers ever since.
Missing the fiftieth anniversary was not the main point with thecorporal--that was merely the fortune of war, to be accepted withfortitude and with no more than a proper and natural amount of grumblingby one who had been a good soldier and was now a good citizen; but fordays before the event, and daily ever since, divers members of the oldregiment had been writing pieces to the papers--the German papers andthe English-printing papers too--long pieces, telling of the trip toWashington, and then on into Virginia and Tennessee, speaking of thiscampaign and that and this battle and that. And because there was justnow a passing wave of interest in Civil War matters, the papers hadprinted these contributions, thereby reflecting much glory on thewriters thereof. But Corporal Speck, reading these things, had marveleddeeply that sane men should have such disgustingly bad memories; for hisown recollection of these stirring and epochal events differed mostwidely from the reminiscent narration of each misguided chronicler.
It was, indeed, a shameful thing that the most important occurrences ofthe whole war should be so shockingly mangled and mishandled in theretelling. They were so grievously wrong, those other veterans, and hewas so absolutely right. He was always right in these matters. Only thenight before, during a merciful respite from his nursing duties, hehad, in Otto Wittenpen's back barroom, spoken across the rim of a tallstein with some bitterness of certain especially grievous misstatementsof plain fact on the part of certain faulty-minded comrades. In replyOtto had said, in a rather sneering tone the corporal thought:
"Say, then, Jacob, why don't you yourself write a piece to the papertelling about this regiment of yours--the way it was?"
"I will. Tomorrow I will do so without fail," he had said, the ambitionof authorship suddenly stirring within him. Now, however, as he sat atthe kitchen window, he gloomed in his disappointment, for he had triedand he knew he had not the gift of the written line. A good soldier hehad been--yes, none better--and a good citizen, and in his day a capableand painstaking doorkeeper in the tax office; but he could not write hisown story. That morning, when the youngest grandchild slept and hisdaughter and his daughter's husband and the brood of his oldergrandchildren were all at the Lutheran church over in the next block, hesat himself down to compose his article to the paper; but the wordswould not come--or, at least, after the first line or two they would notcome.
The mental pictures of those stirring great days when he marched off onhis two good legs--both good legs then--to fight for the country whoselanguage he could not yet speak was there in bright and living colors;but the sorry part of it was he could not clothe them in language. Inthe trash box under the sink a dozen crumpled sheets of paper testifiedto his failure, and now, alone with the youngest Miss Engel, he broodedover it and got low in his mind and let his pipe go smack out. And rightthen and there, with absolutely no warning at all, there came to him, asyou might say from the clear sky, a great idea--an idea so magnificentthat he almost dropped the youngest Miss Engel off his lap at thesplendid shock of it.
With solicitude he glanced down at the small, moist, pink, lumpy bundleof prickly heat and sore gums. Despite the sudden jostle the young ladyslept steadily on. Very carefully he laid his pipe aside and verycarefully he got upon his feet, jouncing his charge soothingly up anddown, and with deftness he committed her small person to the crib thatstood handily by. She stirred fretfully, but did not wake. The corporalsteered his gimpy leg and his rheumatic one out of the kitchen, whichwas white with scouring and as clean as a new pin, into the rearmost andsmallest of the three sleeping rooms that mainly made up the Speck-Engelapartment.
The bed, whereon of nights Corporal Speck reposed with a bucking broncoof an eight-year-old grandson for a bedmate, was jammed close againstthe plastering, under the one small window set diagonally in a jog inthe wall, and opening out upon an airshaft, like a chimney. Time hadbeen when the corporal had a room and a bed all his own; that was beforethe family began to grow so fast in its second generation and while hestill held a place of lucrative employment at the tax office.
As he got down upon his knees beside the bed the old man uttered alittle groan of discomfort. He felt about in the space underneath anddrew out a small tin trunk, rusted on its corners and dented in itssides. He made a laborious selection of keys from a key-ring he got outof his pocket, unlocked the trunk and lifted out a heavy top tray. Thetray contained, among other things, such treasures as his naturalizationpapers, his pension papers, a photograph of his dead wife, and a smallbethumbed passbook of the East Side Germania Savings Bank. Underneathwas a black fatigue hat with a gold cord round its crown, a neatlyfolded blue uniform coat, with the G. A. R. bronze showing in itsuppermost lapel, and below that, in turn, the suit of neat black thecorporal wore on high state occasions and would one day wear to beburied in. Pawing and diggi
ng, he worked his hands to the very bottom,and then, with a little grunt, he heaved out the thing he wanted--theone trophy, except a stiffened kneecap and an honorable record, this oldman had brought home from the South. It was a captured Confederateknapsack, flattened and flabby. Its leather was dry-rotted with age andthe brass C. S. A. on the outer flap was gangrened and sunken in; theflap curled up stiffly, like an old shoe sole.
The crooked old fingers undid a buckle fastening and from the musty andodorous interior of the knapsack withdrew a letter, in a queer-lookingyellowed envelope, with a queer-looking stamp upon the upper right-handcorner and a faint superscription upon its face. The three sheets ofpaper he slid out of the envelope were too old even to rustle, but theclose writing upon them in a brownish, faded ink was still plainly to bemade out.
Corporal Speck replaced the knapsack in its place at the very bottom,put the tray back in its place, closed the trunk and locked it andshoved it under the bed. The trunk resisted slightly and he lost onecarpet slipper and considerable breath in the struggle. Limping back tothe kitchen and seeing that little Miss Engel still slumbered, he easedhis frame into a chair and composed himself to literary composition, notin the least disturbed by the shouts of roistering sidewalk comediansthat filtered up to him from down below in front of the house, or by thedistant clatter of intermittent traffic over the cobbly spine of SecondAvenue, half a block away. For some time he wrote, with a most scratchypen; and this is what he wrote:
"TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN, CITY.
"_Dear Sir:_ The undersigned would state that he served two years and nine months--until wounded in action--in the Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York Infantry, and has been much interested to see what other comrades wrote for the papers regarding same in connection with the Rebellion War of North and South respectively. I would state that during the battle of Chickamauga I was for a while lying near by to a Confederate soldier--name unknown--who was dying on account of a wound in the chest. By his request I gave him a drink of water from my canteen, he dying shortly thereafter. Being myself wounded--right knee shattered by a Minie ball--I was removed to a field hospital; but before doing so I brought away this man's knapsack for a keepsake of the occasion. Some years later I found in said knapsack a letter, which previous to then was overlooked by me. I inclose herewith a copy of said letter, which it may be interesting for reading purposes by surviving comrades.
"Respectfully yours,
"JACOB SPECK,
"Late Corporal L Company,
"Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York, U. S. A."
With deliberation and squeaky emphasis the pen progressed slowly acrossthe paper, while the corporal, with his left hand, held flat the deadman's ancient letter before him, intent on copying it. Hard wordspuzzled him and long words daunted him, and he was making a long job ofit when there were steps in the hall without. There entered breezilyMiss Hortense Engel, who was the oldest of all the multiplying Engels,pretty beyond question and every inch American, having the gift ofwearing Lower Sixth Avenue stock designs in a way to make them seemUpper Fifth Avenue models. Miss Engel's face was pleasantly flushed; shehad just parted lingeringly from her steady company, whose name was Mr.Lawrence J. McLaughlin, in the lower hallway, which is the trystingplace and courting place of tenement-dwelling sweethearts, and now shehad come to make ready the family's cold Sunday night tea. At sight ofher the corporal had another inspiration--his second within the hour.His brow smoothed and he fetched a sigh of relief.
"'Lo, grosspops!" she said. "How's every little thing? The kiddo allright?"
She unpinned a Sunday hat that was plumed like a hearse and slipped ona long apron that covered her from Robespierre bib to hobble hem.
"Girl," said her grandfather, "would you make tomorrow for me at theoffice a copy of this letter on the typewriter machine?"
He spoke in German and she answered in New-Yorkese, while her nimblefingers wrestled with the task of back-buttoning her apron.
"Sure thing! It won't take hardly a minute to rattle that off.Funny-looking old thing!" she went on, taking up the creased and fadedoriginal. "Who wrote it? And whatcher goin' to do with it, grosspops?"
"That," he told her, "is mine own business! It is for you, please, tomake the copy and bring both to me tomorrow, the letter and also thecopy."
So on Monday morning, when the rush of taking dictation at the office ofthe Great American Hosiery Company, in Broome Street, was well abated,the competent Miss Hortense copied the letter, and that same evening hergrandfather mailed it to the Sun, accompanied by his own introduction.The Sun straightway printed it without change and--what was stillbetter--with the sender's name spelled out in capital letters; and thatnight, at the place down by the corner, Corporal Jacob Speck was aprophet not without honor in his own country--much honor, in fact,accrued.
If you have read certain other stories of mine you may remember that,upon a memorable occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest made a trip toNew York and while there had dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, apromoter of gas and other hot-air propositions; and that during thecourse of his stay in the metropolis he made the acquaintance of oneMalley, a Sun reporter. This had happened some years back, but Malleywas still on the staff of the Sun. It happened also that, going throughthe paper to clip out and measure up his own space, Malley came upon thecorporal's contribution. Glancing over it idly, he caught the name,twice or thrice repeated, of the town where Judge Priest lived. So hebundled together a couple of copies and sent them South with a shortletter; and therefore it came about in due season, through the goodoffices of the United States Post-office Department, that theseenclosures reached the judge on a showery afternoon as he loafed uponhis wide front porch, waiting for his supper.
First, he read Malley's letter and was glad to hear from Malley. With aquickened interest he ran a plump thumb under the wrappings of the twoclose-rolled papers, opened out one of them at page ten and read theopening statement of Corporal Jacob Speck, for whom instantly the judgeconceived a long-distance fondness. Next he came to the letter that MissHortense Engel had so accurately transcribed, and at the very firstwords of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and gratified littlegrunt; for he had known them both--the writer of that letter and itsrecipient. One still lived in his memory as a red-haired girl with apert, malicious face, and the other as a stripling youth in a raggedgray uniform. And he had known most of those whose names studded theprinted lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew--only nowthey were old men and old women--faded, wrinkled bucks and belles of afar-distant day.
As he read the first words it came back to the judge, almost with thejolting emphasis of a new and fresh sensation, that in the days of hisown youth he had never liked the girl who wrote that letter or the manwho received it. But she was dead this many and many a year--why, shemust have died soon after she wrote this very letter--the date provedthat--and he, the man, had fallen at Chickamauga, taking his death infront like a soldier; and surely that settled everything and made allthings right! But the letter--that was the main thing. His old blue eyesskipped nimbly behind the glasses that saddled the tip of his plump pinknose, and the old judge read it--just such a letter as he himself hadreceived many a time; just such a wartime letter as uncounted thousandsof soldiers North and South received from their sweethearts and read andreread by the light of flickering campfires and carried afterward intheir knapsacks through weary miles of marching.
It was crammed with the small-town gossip of a small town that was butlittle more than a memory now--telling how, because he would notvolunteer, a hapless youth had been waylaid by a dozen high-spiritedgirls and overpowered, and dressed in a woman's shawl and a woman'spoke bonnet, so that he left town with his shame between two suns;how, since the Yankees had come, sundry faithless females werefriendly--actually friendly, this being underscored--with the morepersonable of the young Yankee officers; how half the to
wn was inmourning for a son or brother dead or wounded; how a new and sweetlysentimental song, called Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, was being muchsung at the time--and had it reached the army yet? how old Mrs. Hobbshad been exiled to Canada for seditious acts and language and haddeparted northward between two files of bluecoats, reviling the Yankeeswith an unbitted tongue at every step; how So-and-So had died or marriedor gone refugeeing below the enemy's line into safely Southernterritory; how this thing had happened and that thing had not.
The old judge read on and on, catching gladly at names that kindled atenderly warm glow of half-forgotten memories in his soul, until he cameto the last paragraph of all; and then, as he comprehended the intent ofit in all its barbed and venomed malice, he stood suddenly erect, withthe outspread paper shaking in his hard grip. For now, coming back tohim by so strange a way across fifty years of silence andmisunderstanding, he read there the answer to the town's oldest, biggesttragedy and knew what it was that all this time had festered, likeburied thorns, in the flesh of those two men, his comrades and friends.He dropped the paper, and up and down the wide, empty porch he stumpedon his short stout legs, shaking with the shock of revelation and withindignation and pity for the blind and bitter uselessness of it all.
"Ah hah!" he said to himself over and over again understandingly. "Ahhah!" And then: "Next to a mean man, a mean woman is the meanest thingin this whole created world, I reckin. I ain't sure but what she's themeanest of the two. And to think of what them two did between 'em--shewritin' that hellish black lyin' tale to 'Lonzo Pike and he puttin' offhotfoot to Abner Tilghman to poison his mind with it and set him like aflint against his own flesh and blood! And wasn't it jest like Lon Piketo go and git himself killed the next day after he got that thereletter! And wasn't it jest like her to up and die before the truth couldbe brought home to her! And wasn't it like them two stubborn, set,contrary, close-mouthed Tilghman boys to go 'long through all theseyears, without neither one of 'em ever offerin' to make or take anexplanation!" His tone changed. "Oh, ain't it been a pitiful thing! Andall so useless! But--oh, thank the Lord--it ain't too late to mend itpart way anyhow! Thank God, it ain't too late for that!"
Exulting now, he caught up the paper he had dropped, and with itcrumpled in his pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk, bound forthe little cottage snuggled in its vine ambush across Clay Street beforea better and a bigger inspiration caught up with him and halted himmidway of an onward stride.
Was not this the second Friday in the month? It certainly was. And wouldnot the Camp be meeting tonight in regular semimonthly session atKamleiter's Hall? It certainly would. For just a moment Judge Priestconsidered the proposition. He slapped his linen clad flank gleefully,and his round old face, which had been knotted with resolution, broke upinto a wrinkly, ample smile; he spun on his heel and hurried back intothe house and to the telephone in the hall. For half an hour, more orless, Judge Priest was busy at that telephone, calling in a high,excited voice, first for one number and then for another. While he didthis his supper grew cold on the table, and in the dining room Jeff, thewhite-clad, fidgeted and out in the kitchen Aunt Dilsey, the turbaned,fumed--but, at Kamleiter's Hall that night at eight, Judge Priest'sindustry was in abundant fulness rewarded.
Once upon a time Gideon K. Irons Camp claimed a full two hundredmembers, but that had been when it was first organized. Now there werein good standing less than twenty. Of these twenty, fifteen sat on thehard wooden chairs when Judge Priest rapped with his metal spectaclecase for order, and that fifteen meant all who could travel out atnights. Doctor Lake was there, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, the faithfuland inevitable. It was the biggest turnout the Camp had had in a year.
Far over on one side, cramped down in a chair, was Captain AbnerTilghman, feeble and worn-looking. His buggy horse stood hitched by thecurb downstairs. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby had gone to his house for him andon the plea of business of vital moment had made him come with him.Almost directly across the middle aisle on the other side sat Mr. EdwardTilghman. Nobody had to go for him. He always came to a regular meetingof the Camp, even though he heard the proceedings only in broken bits.
The adjutant called the roll and those present answered, each one to hisname; and mainly the voices sounded bent and sagged, like the bodies oftheir owners. A keen onlooker might have noticed a sort of tremulous,joyous impatience, which filled all save two of these old, gray men,pushing the preliminaries forward with uncommon speed. They fidgeted intheir places.
Presently Judge Priest cleared his throat of a persistent huskiness andstood up.
"Before we proceed to the regular routine," he piped, "I desire topresent a certain matter to a couple of our members." He came down offthe little platform, where the flags were draped, with a step that wasalmost light, and into Captain Abner Tilghman's hand he put a copy of acity paper, turned and folded at a certain place, where a column ofprinted matter was scored about with heavy pencil bracketings. "Cap'n,"he said, "as a personal favor to me, suh, would you please read thishere article?--the one that's marked"--he pointed with his finger--"notaloud--read it to yourself, please."
It was characteristic of the paralytic to say nothing. Without a word headjusted his glasses and without a word he began to read. So instantlyintent was he that he did not see what followed next--and that was JudgePriest crossing over to Mr. Edward Tilghman's side with another copy ofa paper in his hand.
"Ed," he bade him, "read this here article, won't you? Read it clearthrough to the end--it might interest you maybe." The deaf man looked upat him wonderingly, but took the paper in his slightly palsied hand andbent his head close above the printed sheet.
Judge Priest stood in the middle aisle, making no move to go back to hisown place. He watched the two silent readers. All the others watchedthem too. They read on, making slow progress, for the light was poor andtheir eyes were poor. And the watchers could hardly contain themselves;they could hardly wait. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby kept bobbing up and downlike a pudgy jack-in-the-box that is slightly stiff in its joints. Asmall, restrained rustle of bodies accompanied the rustle of the foldednewspapers held in shaky hands.
Unconscious of all scrutiny, the brothers read on. Perhaps because hehad started first--perhaps because his glasses were the more expensiveand presumably therefore the more helpful--Captain Abner Tilghman cameto the concluding paragraph first. He read it through--and then JudgePriest turned his head away, for a moment almost regretting he hadchosen so public a place for this thing.
He looked back again in time to see Captain Abner getting upon his feet.Dragging his dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the bare floorto where his brother's gray head was bent to his task. And at his sidehe halted, making no sound or sign, but only waiting. He waited there,trembling all over, until the sitter came to the end of the column andread what was there--and lifted a face all glorified with a perfectunderstanding.
"Eddie!" said the older man--"Eddie!" He uttered a name of boyhoodaffection that none there had heard uttered for fifty years nearly; andit was as though a stone had been rolled away from a tomb--as though outof the grave of a dead past a voice had been resurrected. "Eddie!" hesaid a third time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving forforgiveness.
"Brother Abner!" said the other man. "Oh, Brother Abner!" he said--andthat was all he did say--all he had need to say, for he was on his feetnow, reaching out with wide-spread, shaking arms.
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer, but could not make it comeout of his throat--only a clicking, squeaking kind of sound came. As acheer it was a miserable failure.
Side by side, each with his inner arm tight gripped about the other, thebrothers, bareheaded, turned their backs upon their friends and wentaway. Slowly they passed out through the doorway into the darkness ofthe stair landing, and the members of the Gideon K. Irons Camp were allup on their feet.
"Mind that top step, Abner!" they heard the younger man say. "Wait! I'llhelp you down."
That was all that was heard, except a
scuffling sound of uncertainlyplaced feet, growing fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed downthe long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and out into the night--that wasall, unless you would care to take cognizance of a subdued little chorussuch as might be produced by twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling ina large bare room. As commandant of the Camp it was fitting, perhaps,that Judge Priest should speak first.
"The trouble with this here Camp is jest this," he said: "it's got a lotof snifflin' old fools in it that don't know no better than to bust outcryin' when they oughter be happy!" And then, as if to show how deeplyhe felt the shame of such weakness on the part of others, Judge Priestblew his nose with great violence, and for a space of minutesindustriously mopped at his indignant eyes with an enormous pockethandkerchief.
* * * * *
In accordance with a rule, Jeff Poindexter waited up for his employer.Jeff expected him by nine-thirty at the latest; but it was actuallygetting along toward ten-thirty before Jeff, who had been dozing lightlyin the dim-lit hall, oblivious to the fanged attentions of some largemosquitoes, roused suddenly as he heard the sound of a rambling butfamiliar step clunking along the wooden sidewalk of Clay Street. Thelatch on the front gate clicked, and as Jeff poked his nose out of thefront door he heard, down the aisle of trees that bordered the gravelwalk, the voice of his master uplifted in solitary song.
In the matter of song the judge had a peculiarity. It made no differencewhat the words might be or the theme--he sang every song and all songsto a fine, high, tuneless little tune of his own. At this moment JudgePriest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide range of selection. Onesecond he was announcing that his name it was Joe Bowers and he was allthe way from Pike, and the next he was stating, for the benefit of allwho might care to hear these details, that they--presumably certainhorses--were bound to run all night--bound to run all day; so you couldbet on the bobtailed nag and he'd bet on the bay. Nearer to the porchsteps it boastingly transpired that somebody had jumped aboard thetelegraf and steered her by the triggers, whereat the lightnin' flew and'lectrified and killed ten thousand niggers! But even so general acatastrophe could not weigh down the singer's spirits. As he put afumbling foot upon the lowermost step of the porch, he threw his headfar back and shrilly issued the following blanket invitation to ladiesresident in a far-away district:
_Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight? Won't you come out tonight? Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight, And dance by the light of the moon? I danced with a gal with a hole in her stockin'; And her heel it kep' a-rockin'--kep' a-rockin'! She was the purtiest gal in the room!_
Jeff pulled the front door wide open. The song stopped and Judge Prieststood in the opening, teetering a little on his heels. His face was alla blushing pinky glow.
"Evenin', jedge!" greeted Jeff. "You're late, suh!"
"Jeff," said Judge Priest slowly, "it's a beautiful evenin'."
Amazed, Jeff stared at him. As a matter of fact, the drizzle of theafternoon had changed, soon after dark, to a steady downpour. Thejudge's limpened hat brim dripped raindrops and his shoulders weresopping wet, but Jeff had yet to knowingly and wilfully contradict aprominent white citizen.
"Yas, suh!" he said, half affirmatively, half questioningly. "Is it?"
"It is so!" said Judge Priest. "Every star in the sky shines like adiamond! Jeff, it's the most beautiful evenin' I ever remember!"
The Escape of Mr. Trimm Page 7
