_By_ WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY
From _The Pictorial Review_
_Copyright, 1918, by The Pictorial Review Company._
_Copyright, 1919, by William Dudley Pelley._
In this little Vermont town of Paris, on the top floor of the red-brick
post-office block, over half a century have been located the quarters of
Farrington Post, Paris Chapter, G. A. R.
In the rooms of Farrington Post—under a glass case filled with countless
other relics belonging to Captain Jonathan Farrington’s company, that
marched away one hundred and seven strong that forenoon in ’61—has been
kept a bottle of rare old wine.
That wine was old when those stalwart young Vermonters who followed
Captain John Farrington were children. Through half a century it has
occupied its place in that glass case; during that long time it has been
viewed by many visitors to our town; over and over again has the story
of “The Toast to Forty-five” been told until that double-quart of
priceless vintage has become one of our chief sights of interest to the
stranger within the gates. It was not through accident or chance that
this bottle of wine was saved. Up to last August there was a pretty
sentiment connected with that bottle of wine and why it should have been
preserved thus throughout the years.
Up to last August, indeed! Because that bottle is no longer under the
glass case in the Grand Army rooms in the post-office block. It has been
taken from among those relics of yesterday; the seal has been broken;
the contents have been poured out. Glistening red as the blood which
those lads of ’61 shed for the principles in which they believed, that
liquor was consumed in the pledging of a toast.
――――
When the homefolks suggested that the county give a dinner to the
returned heroes on the sixteenth day of August, 1866—Bennington Battle
Day and a holiday in Vermont always—Dashing Captain Jack Fuller was not
the one to quash the suggestion. “Dashing Jack” had been the man to take
John Farrington’s place when John lost his life at Gettysburg. He was a
great dude, was Captain Jack; a lover of the dramatic and the
spectacular; with the pomp of soldiering verily in his blood and the
vanity of many generations of Fullers in his fiber.
On the night of August 16, 1866, “The Toast to Forty-five Banquet” was
held on the top floor of the old Vermont House. It took place in the big
room with the spring dance-floor. That old Paris hostelry was burned in
’73. In the course of that affair, Dashing Jack arose and made a
speech—likewise a proposal.
The flower of Vermont of the Sixties was gathered about those tables.
There were young men to whom fame and fortune afterward would come.
There were sturdy beautiful girls in quaint dresses that in succeeding
years would mother sons and daughters who are the pride and glory of
Vermont of the present. The lights shone on gloriously happy faces. Two
hundred voices turned the room into vocal pandemonium. It was several
minutes before Dashing Captain Jack could gain their attention and make
himself heard.
When finally all eyes were turned upon him, they saw that he was holding
high in his right hand a bottle of wine.
“Ye gallant sons and daughters of Vermont! Tonight is a great night!”
cried Jack in ringing, self-confident, magnetic tones. “We are attending
a dinner tonight that will be remembered in the history of our town and
State long after the last comrade now within sound of my voice has gone
to make his bivouac with the illustrious Company Forty-five—the name
which we have given the forty-five brave lads who marched away with us
but who were not destined by a higher providence to march back. On this
night, therefore, beholding this wine before me, it has occurred to me
to propose the inauguration of a rite—almost a sacred rite—the like of
which no Post has ever heard.”
The room was now very quiet. And Captain Jack reveled in the drama of
the scene.
“In this room,” he cried, “—in sound of my voice at this moment, are two
boys who will be the very last to join Company Forty-five. Sooner or
later we shall all be called to answer to our names in the Great Muster;
but some will be called sooner than others. There will certainly come a
day in the years which lie ahead when there will be only two remaining
of this company of sixty-two here to-night. Think of it, boys! Just
_two_! Look into one another’s faces and ask yourselves—who are those
two—which of you will they be?”
The room was strangely silent. The smiles died on the faces of many
women. Dashing Captain Jack indicated the wine he held in his hand.
“Here is the thing which I propose; to make the annual dinners of
Farrington Post different from any other reunions which shall ever be
held:
“I hold in my hand the last unsealed bottle of the vintage which we have
tasted to-night in our first toast in peace to the missing lads that
have made that peace possible. Let this last bottle be saved. Year after
year we will have our annual dinners. Year after year, as we gather
round the board, familiar faces will be missing. Many will fall by the
way. At last—will be only two comrades—of this roomful here to-night.
And when at last those two shall face one another and think back to this
first banquet in the dim and sacred past—when they alone remain—when
sixty have gone to join old Forty-five and they realize that perhaps
before another year is passed, they will have joined that illustrious
company also—let them break the seal on this bottle. Let them fill their
glasses. Let them clink those crystal rims together and drink the last
toast to those who have gone. And when the seal on this bottle thus is
broken, let our reunions be held no more.”
They drank, and the next morning the banquet was a thing of history.
――――
Year after year those veterans have gathered about the board and gazed
on that rare old vintage, wondering whether he was to be one of the two
to drink that final toast to Forty-five—and under what circumstances.
Each has realized that before another August sixteenth came around,
certain familiar faces were to be missing. Dashing Captain Jack started
something far more dramatic than he realized.
Poor Captain Jack! He married one of the Kingsley girls that year and a
little son was born to them. A month and a day after the birth of that
son he was killed in an accident on the old New York Railroad. He was
the first to join Forty-five!
Sixty-two men sat down to that first banquet. In 1900 the number was
thirty—less than half. In 1910 there were eleven veterans. Since 1910
the old soldiers have been going rapidly.
At the Post dinner of August 16, 1912, the ranks of Captain Jack’s
company had dwindled to four old men. There was Uncle Joe Fodder, the
commander; Martin Chisholm, who made his money in the grist-mill; Henry
Weston, who for seven years had been an inmate of the State Soldier’s
Home; and—old Wilbur Nieson, who spent his days hanging around the
street corners and stores.
The reunion ended as forty-six other reunions had ended, excepting that
they did not talk their battles over again so vehemently as on former
occasions. Indeed, they had talked themselves out. They were “waiting”
now, and the old bottle of wine set in the center of their table was a
symbol of fatalism, mute testimony to the inexorable law of human life.
Next day we reported it as usual in our local paper.
At about ten-thirty o’clock of the following evening—to be exact, the
seventeenth day of August, 1912—Mrs. Samuel Hod, wife of the
_Telegraph’s_ editor, while working in her kitchen, heard a frightful
scream come from somewhere in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Hod rushed to the door. Outside was a clear, warm summer night.
Across the picket fence that separated the Hod yard from the rear yards
of the houses facing on Pleasant Street, she could see a light in the
kitchen of the Fuller boy’s house—young Jack Fuller, grandson of Dashing
Captain Jack of years gone by. The neighborhood was very quiet during
those two minutes she stood there listening in her fright.
Then suddenly that scream was repeated—sharp, clear, terrible! It came
from the home across the picket fence. It was Betty Fuller screaming.
From the agony in the cries something ghastly had happened. Mrs. Hod ran
through her house and called to her husband. Sam helped his wife over
the back fence and they made their way under the Fuller clothes-line,
through the back shed, and into the little sitting-room.
Betty Fuller was down on the floor. She was face downward, her head
protected by her arm. Two feet from her, between the reading-table and
the door into the dining-room, was her nine-months-old baby. Holding
himself unsteadily between the casings of the hall door was young Jack,
his face the color of cold ashes, his lips parched, drops of sweat,
heavy as glycerin, standing on his forehead.
“What’s happened?” demanded Sam.
But he saw what had happened; and his wife saw; and so did the
neighbors. The baby’s crib was mute witness to what had occurred. It was
overturned—between Jack and his little family.
“Betty! Betty!” cried Mrs. Hod, kneeling down to the young mother’s
assistance.
“My baby! My only, only, little baby!” moaned the girl.
“Tell me,” roared Sam to the father, “how did this happen?”
“I came in—sick—I guess—I guess—I didn’t see the kid’s crib. I fell over
against it! I knocked it over—”
The neighbor woman had picked up the little body.
“It’s—dead!” she whispered hoarsely.
Sam whirled on Jack.
“Sick!” he roared. “Sick! The h—— you was sick! You was drunk! You’re
drunk now! See what you’ve done? You’ve killed your own kid—!”
At his words the girl shrieked again, that long agonizing terrible
shriek that brought more neighbors.
“It was an accident,” whispered the Fuller boy thickly.
“It wouldn’t have been an accident if you’d behaved yourself and cut out
this coming home drunk.”
The woman picked up the girl and got her to the sofa. Over and over she
kept moaning: “My baby! My only, only, little baby!”
The place filled with neighbors. After a while came Doctor Johnson—who
was our coroner—and Mike Hogan, our chief of police.
Mike was at a loss whether to arrest the father or not. Sam dispelled
his doubts.
“When the boy comes to himself and gets the stuff out of his brain,
he’ll feel bad enough, Mike,” the fatherly old editor said. “The memory
of it will be enough punishment. After all, he didn’t do it
intentionally.”
“He’s no good, sorr,” stormed Mike, indicating the young father while he
grew husky-throated at the pathos of the little mother’s grief.
“Yes, he is, Mike. This is really Dick Fuller’s—his father’s—fault. He
shouldn’t ever have left the lad ten thousand dollars and no
balance-wheel. Let these two children alone. It’s for them to settle
between themselves. Jack’s got the Fuller blood in him from away back;
and I think this will bring out his manhood. It’s a fearful price for a
young father to have to pay, Mike. But maybe, after all, it’s for the
best.”
The neighbors left the boy and girl to their tragedy.
The marriage of old Wilbur Nieson’s daughter Elisabeth to young Jack
Fuller had been talked of in our town for a month and a day. Richard
Fuller, son of Dashing Captain Jack, had grown to manhood, made
considerable money and died, leaving it to his boy, whereupon the lad
started straight for the devil.
Before he had come into his inheritance, he had been “keeping company”
with little Betty Nieson, who worked in the box-factory and lived with
her derelict father in the scrubby old Nieson place out Cedar Street on
the edge of town. The boy drank considerably and the rumor found its way
into our newspaper office that, despite his money, Betty would not marry
him until he had conquered the habit.
A town’s mind is a child’s mind and it readily sympathized with the
struggle that the Nieson girl was making in her poor blind handicapped
way to climb out of the environment which she had always known, and make
something of herself. Then suddenly one day Jack Fuller sold his racy
automobile. He and Betty were married and they furnished a modest home
on Pleasant Street. One-half of the town said it was because Jack had
gone through his inheritance. The other half said that it was his wife’s
influence over him. Certainly to all appearances the girl was making a
desperate and commendable struggle not only to raise herself up but to
compel Jack to be a man. Then the half of the home-folks which had
claimed the way Jack squandered his money had been at the bottom of his
marriage, were apparently in the right. For shortly after the pitiful
little marriage the boy was seen frequenting the Whitney House bar as
much as ever.
Now came this additional sorrow into the girl’s life. She had married
the lad trying to get away from the hereditary taint of the Nieson
blood. It had come to her now that there appeared to be a taint also in
the Fuller blood. She had lost her baby. The Hods said that there was a
light burning in the Fuller tenement all that night.
The baby was buried the next day. It was a pathetic little funeral, just
a prayer or two by Doctor Dodd of the Methodist Church, and then Blake
Whipple, the undertaker, took care of the interment.
The evening of the day that the poor little shaver was laid underground,
Mrs. Hod entered the tenement to console the bereaved girl. She entered
without knocking. She paused at the threshold, made rigid by the sight
before her.
For Jack Fuller was down on his knees before the girl he had married.
His finely-shaped head was buried in her lap. He was sobbing freakishly,
for men do not know how to weep. And the girl seated there on the sofa
was staring into unseeing space with a holy look upon her beautifully
plain face; her slender shapely fingers toying with the boy’s wavy hair.
“Never, never, never—will I touch a drop of the stuff as long as I live,
Betty,” he choked between his tears. “I don’t care—what the provocation
is—I won’t ever do it. I’ve been a cad, Betty. I haven’t been a Fuller
at all—but I’ll show you I can be. I’ll make up for this. We’ve lost the
baby, Betty—but it’s brought me to my senses. I’m—done! I swear it
before God, Betty. I’m—done!”
The girl never knew a neighbor was looking on, unable to withdraw
without disclosing her presence.
“If that’s the price, Jack,” she replied softly, divinely, “—if that’s
the price—and you’ll keep your word—I’ll pay it! Jackie dear—I love you.
I’ve loved you all along. But this has always been the way with me.
There was Dad. Rum got him—rum stole him away from me. When he was
himself he was all right. But he drank and then beat me—he made me want
to kill myself just because I was a Nieson—because his blood half
saturated with rum—was in my veins. I married you, Jackie—because I
hoped to pull myself up from being a Nieson. I hoped to show folks what
I wanted to be—what I tried so hard to be. Every one knows the Niesons
are worthless trash, the scum of the town. And I thought—being your
wife—the wife of a Fuller—things would be different. The liquor seemed
robbing me of you too, Jack. But if this—has given you back to
me—yes—I’ll pay the price. It’s all right, Jack. I’ll take your word
that you’ll never, never take a drop of the stuff again.”
Mrs. Hod succeeded in getting out without being discovered. She went
home and told her husband. Sam shook his head sadly.
“I hope so,” commented the worldly wise old newspaper man, who
frequently understood two-legged human folks better than they understood
themselves. “I hope so, indeed. I’d do anything under God’s heaven to
help him. But I’m afraid for him—afraid for him and the girl. It sure
will be hell for her if the lad breaks his promise—just _once_!”
But to his everlasting credit, let it be set down that the Fuller blood
came uppermost in Jack. He did not break his promise. But what the poor
boy went through in that succeeding six months only a reticent God in
His heaven knows.
Jack had sold his automobile for two hundred dollars. Now he transferred
what was left of his legacy from a checking account in the corner bank
to the savings department. He went to work for Will Pease mending
automobiles in the Paris Garage.
He grew thin and haggard with the struggle he was making. Some brainless
young roustabouts in our town tried to get him to drink again just for
the sake of winning him back to his old habits. They actually did get
him into a bar one night with a glass of liquor before him. Then I guess
it came to him what he was doing. The Fuller blood in him made a great
convulsion for the upper hand—and won! He smashed the glass into the
tempter’s eyes and stumbled out into the raw cold night—and home.
The boy came home to his childless wife one night and said:
“Betty—it’s hell!” he said. “I’m all burned out inside, Betty—”
“Jack,” she cried piteously, “you’re not going to give way after—after
the price—we paid.”
“Not if I can help it, Betty,” he replied. “But I need help, girl. I
need some sort of discipline that’ll straighten me out and help me
physically. Betty—I’ve got a chance—to get into the quartermaster’s
department of the Vermont National Guard—”
“You mean—be a soldier?” she cried.
“And why not, Betty?” he said. “My grandfather was a soldier. You know
what he did in the Civil War; what he means to the Grand Army men. It’s
in my blood, I guess, Betty—”
“Jack!” she cried. “Don’t leave me now! Don’t leave me alone! Don’t!
Don’t! There’s too many memories, Jack. I ain’t—brave enough, Jack!”
He sank down on the sofa and hid his burning face in his hands.
“God help me!” he groaned. “I want to win out, but I’m all wrong inside.
Oh, Betty!”
She tried in her poor pitiful way to help him. She did help him—a little
bit. But Jack was nearer right than he knew. He joined the Y. M. C. A.
that winter and went in for athletics. But two nights a week “on the
floor” wasn’t rigorous enough for him.
Pinkie Price, our star reporter, came into the newspaper office one
forenoon and exclaimed, “Hey, you know that Fuller chap that killed his
kid when he come home stewed? Well, what do you suppose he’s up to? You
know the preparedness scare and the trouble with Mexico and everything?
Well, he’s startin’ to raise a company right here in Paris—a company o’
real soldiers—so’s to have ’em ready in case we get into the Europe
scrap. They’re goin’ to drill four nights a week and Sundays in Academy
Hall.”
“It isn’t surprising,” commented Sam Hod. “He comes from a family of
soldiers. Well, I hope he does. If he’s captain of a company of men like
his grandaddy was in ’63 he’ll have his position to maintain and that
won’t mean flirting with whisky. Good for the boy! I said he had the
right stuff in him. Go see him and write his scheme up, Pinkie. The
_Telegraph_’ll give it all the preferred position it deserves.”
“Hey,” said Pinkie, shifting suddenly to another subject through the
association of ideas, “—d’yer know that old Martin Chisholm kicked off
last night? Yep; heart disease!”
Sam looked around the office at our faces.
“So ‘The Toast to Forty-five’ has narrowed down to Henry Weston, Uncle
Joe Fodder, and Wilbur Nieson! Too bad, too bad!”
Jack Fuller, out of regard for the little wife’s feelings, did not take
the quartermaster’s job. But he did organize the Paris Home Guard.
Soldier blood ran in his veins. The “Fuller Fire-eaters” as our town
named them, was a crack company. The place Jack held as head of that
company was as a tonic to the lad; it gave him something to think about,
to interest himself in when the hankering for the fellowship of our
three saloons became too powerful. When the trouble with Mexico became
acute there were weeks when the local boys, catching his enthusiasm,
drilled six nights in succession in their rooms up-stairs in the Cedar
Street Engine-house. They had regular army uniforms and were connected
somehow with the State National Guard—we never could just understand the
connection.
As for “The Toast to Forty-five,” the climax didn’t come in August,
1916. When Bennington Battle Day rolled around that year all three men
were still living who had been alive the reunion before.
In February the United States severed relations with Germany. In April
the United States declared war. In June ten million young Americans
enrolled themselves for the draft. And in July, when all the confusion
of the draft had cleared away, it was found that half of “Fuller’s
Fire-eaters” had been called upon to fill the Paris quota of Vermont’s
two thousand.
But Jack Fuller’s name was not drawn.
On a certain July night in the little tenement which they still kept on
Pleasant Street, the Fuller boy stood beside the table in the same room
where his small son had been killed in the overturning of the cradle a
while before, with his face as white as chalk and Betty before him on
her knees where she had sunk down in her misery, clutching him
convulsively.
“Don’t go and leave me, Jack,” she moaned. “Oh, Jack, don’t do it.
You’re all I’ve got, Jack—and there are so many unmarried men to go—!”
“My grandfather led the Paris boys in ’63, Betty,” he said hoarsely. “My
great-great-grandfather led a company in the battle of Bennington. The
country’s calling again, Betty. It’s up to a Fuller to take his place at
the head of the Paris lads once more. I’ve got the company, Betty.
They’re wild to enlist as a body and I can get the regular appointment
as their captain—”
“Wait till your turn comes in the draft, Jack. Don’t leave me, now,
Jack. There are so many unmarried men to go. If the country wants you so
bad that they call all the married men, I’ll try to be brave and give
you up, Jack. But wait for that—tell me you will!”
“I can’t stand it to see the boys I’ve drilled march away with another
chap at their head, Betty.”
“Jack!” she cried hysterically, “it was _you_ that took little Edward
away from me! And now—you’re taking yourself. You don’t have to go—yet.
You’re taking yourself—yourself—because—you don’t love me—”
It was the first time in two or three years that she had taunted him
with what he had done to their child. It reacted upon him as though she
had struck him a blow.
“Betty!” he cried hoarsely. “Don’t say that, Betty. You’re mad over this
thing—you’re asking me to hide behind the skirts of women—”
“Jack—I’ve had so much sorrow—first with Mother, then with Father, then
losing the baby so—now with you going away and leaving me—that I can’t
stand much more, Jack. I’ll go mad—really mad, Jack! I can’t go back and
live again with Father, and see his stumbling footsteps when he comes
home drunk, and hear his talk, and see him gibber—I’ll have nobody,
nobody, to live for! Oh, Jack!”
“You can be as brave as millions of other childless wives all over
America, able for a while to care for themselves. You told me once that
you hated the Nieson blood in you even if your father was a soldier. You
said after we were married that you were trying to pull yourself up and
be somebody. You said you were happy because our kids would have Fuller
blood in them. And now instead of coming up to the scratch in a real
crisis, Betty, you’re showing yellow and groveling round like a Nieson.
If I’m willing to run the chance of getting shot—”
But he did not go on. Her screams of hysteria began. And the little wife
who had stood so much broke down at last.
Doctor Johnson was called. He attended the girl for eight days. During
that time, only regard for Jack made the boys hold off in enlisting as a
unit altogether for France. Doctor Johnson said that if Jack volunteered
with them, and Betty heard he was going, the shock would kill her. So
the boy went around town, torn between love and duty.
And during those days something happened in our community. Wilbur Nieson
and Henry Weston died—within a few days of one another. Henry Weston
succumbed to kidney trouble which had afflicted him for years. And old
Wilbur Nieson—Wilbur Nieson had the “tremors” as we say up here in New
England—delirium tremens—one night in the rear of the Whitney House. The
boys in the livery found him. The Sons of Veterans buried him. So much
for the carefully cherished plans of humankind. For a half-century the
members of Farrington Post had saved that rare old Vintage for “The
Toast to Forty-five.” And there were not even two old soldiers left of
that original company to observe the sentiment. “The Toast to
Forty-five” could never be pledged, after all!
A couple of weeks slipped away. August sixteenth approached. The boy
came into the office of our little local paper one morning and said:
“I’ve made up my mind; I’m going to France. Instead of having our ranks
broken by the draft, all the ‘Fire-eaters’ are enlisting as a body in
the National Guard. And I—am going—with them.”
“But your wife?”
“It won’t be any harder for her to stay behind than it is for me to
leave. But I’ve got to get into this thing. Something inside of me is
firing me to do it. She’ll bear it—somehow.”
“When are you boys going?” asked Sam.
“We’ll be leaving somewhere around the twentieth.”
“The twentieth!” exclaimed Sam. In that moment something occurred to
him. “The twentieth!” he exclaimed over again. “And on the sixteenth—the
old army men were going to hold their last reunion if only those two
hadn’t died. Jack—!”
“Yes.”
“Why not—why not—why not have Paris give you boys a royal send-off on
that night—the night of the sixteenth—a dinner for you fellows the
sixteenth; a dinner for you fellows in place of the old Grand Army
reunion!”
“I guess the boys would be willing,” replied Jack with a sad smile.
We printed a long piece in our little local paper about it, that night.
Again the Vermont boys were going to war. Again a Fuller was to lead
them. Tickets for the farewell dinner were on sale at the Metropolitan
Drug-store, five dollars apiece, the proceeds to go to the Red Cross.
――――
Bennington Battle Day came. All preparations for the greatest banquet
Paris ever saw were completed. The time-worn custom of having the dinner
in the rooms of Farrington Post was abandoned. The Post rooms would
never hold the crowd. The dinner was to be held in the assembly hall of
the new high school. That was the largest floor-space procurable in
Paris.
Sam Hod had three sons in Captain Jack’s company—more than any other
father in Paris. He was designated as toastmaster for that epochal
dinner. At a long table at the head of the hall he was to sit with Uncle
Joe Fodder on his right and young Captain Jack Fuller on his left.
Beyond, on either side there were grouped officers of the company. Then
the rest of the places were filled up with the privates of Fuller’s
Fire-eaters and the public. The dinner was set for eight o’clock and by
ten minutes of eight there were hundreds of Parisians in the hallways
and on the sidewalk unable to get standing room in the dining-room, to
say nothing of obtaining a seat and a plate.
Promptly on the dot of eight, Otis Hawthorne, leader of the Paris Band,
tapped his baton on his music-stand.
With a great crash the apartment was filled to the furthermost crevices
with the thunderous tumult of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Every man and woman in that hall rose to his feet. They sang that song.
They sang it as they had never sung it before. Because in that moment
the real meaning of the words came home to them.
“—Oh, say, does the Star Spangled Banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave?”
Sam Hod looked at his three lean boys in khaki, that in another week
would be only a memory. And his face shone with an emotion he had never
known the meaning of before. Women wept like—women. As the chorus died
away, cheer on cheer arose and floated out the lowered windows into the
soft summer night.
They resumed their chairs. Jack Fuller turned to the editor.
“Who’s this empty chair for on my left?” he demanded.
“Your wife, my son,” the editor replied simply, and Mrs. Hod brought the
girl in.
She was white and weak. How the editor’s wife had broken the news to
her—persuaded her to come to the hall and sit in the place of honor
beside her husband—has been something that we bewhiskered males in the
office of our little local paper have never been able to explain.
Perhaps Mrs. Hod’s sacrifice of those three tall Yankee lads in Fuller’s
Fire-eaters had something to do with it. Anyhow, Betty Fuller was
persuaded to come in.
She put out her hands blindly before her as she reached the head table
and heard them cheering her husband’s name—and her own. She felt her way
into her place. She glanced down into her husband’s surprised face and
gave a terrified semblance of a smile. Then the whole room seemed to
fuse before her. She has never been able to recollect connectedly the
events of that evening.
The dinner began, progressed, and, after the manner of all dinners, at
last ended. Sam Hod arose. He clinked on a water-glass with his knife.
The hallful saw him and gradually grew quiet.
It was a beautiful speech that the editor made. He began with the part
Vermont has played in every war in which America has ever engaged. He
told the story of the boys who marched away in ’61 behind John
Farrington. He recounted the story of Captain Farrington’s death; the
succession of “Jack Fuller the First” to the place of honor in the
Company, the brilliant war-record of the regiment. He told of the
home-coming; of the banquet fifty-two years before. He told smoothly of
the events leading up to America’s entry into the war. His quotation of
the President’s famous indictments against Germany brought ovation after
ovation from the home-folks, who were worked up to hysterical pitch. And
when it was over the editor said:
“To-night, before sitting down to this farewell banquet to our sons,
many of whom are going away from us never to return—to-night I was the
recipient of a strange request. It came from the last survivor of that
famous Company of Sixty-two who fifty-two years ago saw Dashing Captain
Jack Fuller of glorious memory, raise aloft this receptacle of rare
vintage and propose a dramatic thing.
“This was the request: By some strange fate the evening when the last
toast was to be given to the illustrious dead comes at the terrifically
tragic moment when the sons of many of these men are going forward to
offer their lives in a new democracy. It has been suggested that nothing
could have more approval from Dashing Captain Jack himself—or from all
of those one hundred and six brave men who have crossed from the
battlefields of earthly life into a blessed reward for their
altruism—than that this toast should be given after all—if not by the
two survivors, then by the leader of the local heroes who have
volunteered to go “Over There” and by their sacrifice make the earth a
finer, fairer, better place in which to dwell. “The Toast to
Forty-five,” famous for fifty-two years, will be given at last amid this
assembly of another quota of the Union’s soldiers about to go forth to
preserve the same great principle for which their fathers laid their all
upon the altar.”
There was silence for a time. Then came another attempt at another
ovation. But it died in the excitement of the thing transpiring at that
speaker’s table.
Sam Hod was opening the famous vintage.
The seal was broken. Out of that glass retainer came costly sparkling
liquor, fifty-two years the prize relic of Farrington Post. Sam reached
over. The two glasses of Uncle Joe Fodder and Captain Jack he filled to
the brim. He stepped back—back from between Uncle Joe and Captain
Jack—that they might click the rims of their slender goblets together.
“Gentlemen,” cried Uncle Joe in that breathless moment—“The
Toast—to—Forty-five!”
Every military man in that room arose to his feet.
Uncle Joe’s withered old lips moved in the sunken face. The skinny hand
holding the wine-glass trembled so that the beverage spilled over the
edge and splashed on the white table-cloth like a clot of blood.
“Here’s to the gallant Forty-five,” he cried in a high-pitched, crackly
voice. “Here’s to Captain John Farrington. And here’s to the men of
Company Sixty-two and their posterity. Here’s to—here’s to Captain Jack
Fuller and _his_ posterity—”
It was an unfortunate sentence at an unfortunate time.
_Jack Fuller’s posterity!_
Through the lad’s brain must have flashed a picture of a scene in his
sitting-room months before when he had paid a fearful price
for—something! He had promised— He had promised— He looked around the
room. Hundreds of eyes were upon him as he stood there, splendid and
erect in olive drab. He glanced around his own table, too. And in that
instant he saw—the pale, wan features of his wife!
His arm still holding awkwardly aloft the glass, Jack looked into the
faces of that crowd flanking the tables and walls of that great hall.
Something came to him—the scenes, the associations—reincarnation,
perhaps—the blood of his forefathers—heredity—in that great instant he
was prompted to do a great and dramatic thing for the joy of the
spectacular, the call of the dramatic.