THEY were on their way back from Father Minor's funeral. Going to the
graveyard the horses had ambled slowly; coming home they trotted along
briskly so that from under their feet the gravel grit sprang up, to
blow out behind in little squills and pennons of yellow dust. The black
plumes in the headstalls of the white span that drew the empty hearse
nodded briskly. It was only their colour which kept those plumes
from being downright cheerful. Also, en route to the cemetery, the
pallbearers, both honorary and active, had marched in double file at
the head of the procession. Now, returning, they rode in carriages
especially provided for them.
The first carriage--that is to say, the first one following the
hearse--held four passengers: firstly, the widowed sister of the dead
man, from up state somewhere; secondly and thirdly, two strange priests
who had come over from Hopkinsburg to conduct the services; finally
and fourthly, the late Father Minor's housekeeper, a lean and elderly
spinster whose devoutness made her dour; indeed, a person whom piety
beset almost as a physical affliction. Seeing her any time at all, the
observer went away filled with the belief that in her particular case
the more certain this woman might be of blessedness hereafter, the more
miserable she would feel in the meantime. Now, as her grief-drawn
face and reddened eyes looked forth from the carriage window upon the
familiar panorama of Buckner Street, all about her bespoke the profound
conviction that this world, already lost in sin, was doubly lost since
Father Minor had gone to take his reward.
In the second carriage rode four of the honorary pallbearers, and
each of them was a veteran, as the dead priest had been: Circuit Judge
Priest, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, Doctor Lake, and Mr. Peter J. Galloway,
our leading blacksmith and horseshoer. Of these four Mr. Galloway was
the only one who worshipped according to the faith the dead man had
preached. But all of them were members in good standing of the Gideon K.
Irons Camp.
As though to match the changed gait of the undertaker's horses,
the spirits of these old men were uplifted into a sort of tempered
cheerfulness. So often it is that way after the mourners come away from
the grave. All that kindly hands might do for him who was departed out
of this life had been done. The spade had shaped up and smoothed
down the clods which covered him; the flowers had been piled upon the
sexton's mounded handiwork until the raw brown earth was almost hidden.
Probably already the hot morning sun was wilting the blossoms. By
to-morrow morning the petals would be falling--a drifting testimony to
the mortality of all living things.
On the way out these four had said mighty little to one another, but
in their present mood they spoke freely of their departed comrade--his
sayings, his looks, little ways that he had, stories of his early life
before he took holy orders, when he rode hard and fought hard, and very
possibly swore hard, as a trooper in Morgan's cavalry.
“It was a fine grand big turnout they gave him this day,” said Mr.
Galloway with a tincture of melancholy pride in his voice. “Almost as
many Protestants as Catholics there.”
“Herman Felsburg sent the biggest floral design there was,” said Doctor
Lake. “I saw his name on the card.”
“That's the way Father Tom would have liked it to be, I reckin,” said
Judge Priest from his corner of the carriage. “After all, boys, the best
test of a man ain't so much the amount of cash he's left in the bank,
but how many'll turn out to pay him their respects when they put him
away.”
“Still, at that,” said the sergeant, “I taken notice of several
absentees--from the Camp, I mean. I didn't see Jake Smedley nowheres
around at the church, or at the graveyard neither.”
“Jake's got right porely,” explained Judge Priest. “He's been lookin'
kind of ga'nted anyhow, lately. I'm feared Jake is beginnin' to break.”
“Oh, I reckin tain't ez bad ez all that,” said the sergeant. “You'll see
Jake comin' round all right ez soon ez the weather turns off cool ag'in.
Us old boys may be gittin' along in years, but we're a purty husky crew
yit. It's a powerful hard job to kill one of us off. I'm sixty-seven
myself, but most of the time I feel ez peart and skittish ez a colt.”
He spoke for the moment vaingloriously; then his tone altered: “I'm
luckier, though, than some--in the matter of general health. Take Abner
Tilghman now, for instance. Sence he had that second stroke Abner jest
kin make out to crawl about. He wasn't there to-day with us neither.”
“Boys,” said Doctor Lake, “I hope it's no reflection on my professional
abilities, but it seems to me I've been losing a lot of my patients here
recently. I'm afraid Ab Tilghman is going to be the next one to make a
gap in the ranks. Just between us, he's in mighty bad shape. Did it ever
occur to any of you to count up and see how many members of the Camp
we've buried this past year, starting in last January with old Professor
Reese and winding up to-day with Father Minor?”
None of them answered him in words. Only Judge Priest gave a little
stubborn shake of his head, as though to ward away an unpleasant
thought. Tact inspired Sergeant Bagby to direct the conversation into a
different channel.
“I reckin Mrs. Herman Felsburg won't know whut to do now with that extry
fish she always fries of a Friday,” said the sergeant.
“That's right too, Jimmy,” said Mr. Galloway. “Well, God bless her
anyway for a fine lady!”
Had you, reader, enjoyed the advantage of living in our town and of
knowing its customs, you would have understood at once what this last
reference meant. You see, the Felsburgs, in their fine home, lived
diagonally across the street from the little priest house behind the
Catholic church. Mrs. Felsburg was distinguished for being a rigid
adherent to the ritualistic laws of her people. Away from home her
husband and her sons might choose whatever fare suited their several
palates, but beneath her roof and at the table where she presided they
found none of the forbidden foods.
On Fridays she cooked with her own hands the fish for the cold
_Shabbath_ supper and, having cooked them, she set them aside to cool.
But always the finest, crispest fish of all, while still hot, was spread
upon one of Mrs. Felsburg's best company plates and covered over with
one of Mrs. Felsburg's fine white napkins, and then a servant would run
across the street with it, from Mrs. Felsburg's side gate to the front
door of the priest house, and hand it in to the dour-faced housekeeper
with Mrs. Felsburg's compliments. And so that night, at his main meal
of the day, Father Minor would dine on prime river perch or fresh lake
crappie, fried in olive oil by an orthodox Jewess. Year in and year out
this thing had happened once a week regularly. Probably it would not
happen again. Father Minor's successor, whoever he might be, might
not understand. Mr. Galloway nodded abstractedly, and for a little bit
nothing was said.
The carriage bearing them twisted out of the procession, leaving a gap
in it, and stopped in front of Doctor Lake's red-brick residence. The
old doctor climbed down stiffly and, leaning heavily on his cane, went
up the walk to his house. Next Mr. Galloway was dropped at his shabby
little house, snug in its ambuscade behind a bushwhacker's paradise of
lilac bushes; and pretty soon after that it was Sergeant Bagby's turn to
get out. As the carriage slowed up for the third stop Judge Priest laid
a demurring hand upon his companion's arm.
“Come on out to my place, this evenin', Jimmy,” he said, “and have a
bite of supper with me. There won't be nobody there but jest you and me,
and after supper we kin set a spell and talk over old times.”
The sergeant shook his whity-grey head in regretful dissent.
“I wish't I could, Judge,” he said, “but it can't be done--not
to-night.”
“Better come on!” The judge's tone was pleading. “I sort of figger that
there old nigger cook of mine has killed a young chicken. And she kin
mix up a batch of waffle batter in less'n no time a-tall.”
“Not to-night, Billy; some night soon I'll come, shore. But to-night my
wife is figurin' on company, and ef I don't show up there'll be hell to
pay and no pitch hot.”
“Listen, Jimmy; listen to me.” The judge spoke fast, for the sergeant
was out of the carriage by now. “I've got a quart of special licker that
Lieutenant Governor Bosworth sent me frum Lexington. Thirty-two years
old, Jimmy--handmade and run through a gum log. Copper nor iron ain't
never teched it. And when you pour a dram of it out into a glass it
beads up same ez ef it had soapsuds down in the bottom of it--it does
fur a fact. There ain't been but two drinks drunk out of that quart.”
“Judge, please quit teasin' me!” Like unto a peppercorn, ground between
the millstones of duty and desire, the sergeant backed reluctantly away
from between the carriage wheels.
“You know yourse'f how wimmin folks are. It's the new Campbellite
preacher that's comin' to-night, and there won't be a drop to drink on
the table exceptin' maybe lemonade or ice tea. But I've jest natchelly
got to be on hand and, whut's more, I've got to be on my best behaviour
too. Dem that new preacher! Why couldn't he a-picked out some other
night than this one?”
“Jimmy, listen----”
But the sergeant had turned and was fleeing to sanctuary, beyond reach
of the tempter's tongue.
So for the last eighth-mile of the ride, until the black driver halted
his team at the Priest place out on Clay Street, the judge rode alone.
Laboriously he crawled out from beneath the overhang of the carriage
top, handed up two bits as a parting gift to the darky on the seat, and
waddled across the sidewalk.
The latch on the gate was broken. It had been broken for weeks. The old
man slammed the gate to with a passionate jerk. The infirm latch clicked
weakly, then slipped out of the iron nick and the gate sagged open--an
invitation to anybody's wandering livestock to come right on in and
feast upon the shrubs, which from lack of pruning had become thick,
irregular little jungles. Clumps of rank grass, like green scalp locks,
were sprouting in the walk, and when the master had mounted the creaking
steps he saw where two porch planks had warped apart, leaving a gap
between them. In and out of the space ran big black ants. The house
needed painting, too, he noticed; in places where the rain water had
dribbled out of a rust-hole in the tin gutter overhead, the grain of
the clapboarding showed through its white coating. Mentally the judge
promised himself that he would take a couple of days off sometime soon
and call in workmen and have the whole shebang tidied and fixed up. Once
a place began to run down it seemed to break out with neglect all over,
as with a rash.
Halfway through his supper that evening the judge, who had been
strangely silent in the early part of the meal, addressed his house boy,
Jeff Poindexter, in the accents of a marked disapproval.
“Look here, Jeff,” he demanded, “have I got to tell you ag'in about
mendin' the ketch on that front gate?”
“Yas, suh--I means no, suh,” Jeff corrected himself quickly. “Ise aimin'
to do it fust thing in de mawnin', suh,” added Jeff glibly, repeating a
false pledge for perhaps the dozenth time within a month. “I got so
many things to do round yere, Jedge, dat sometimes hit seems lak I can't
think whut nary one of 'em is.”
“Huh!” snorted his employer crossly. Then he went on warningly: “Some of
these days there's goin' to be a sudden change in this house ef things
ain't attended to better--whole place goin' to rack and ruin like it
is.”
Wriggling uneasily Jeff found a pretext for withdrawing himself, the
situation having become embarrassing. It wasn't often that the judge
gave way to temper. Not that Jeff feared the covert threat of discharge.
If anybody quit it wouldn't be Jeff, as Jeff well knew. Usually Jeff had
an excuse ready for any accusation of shortcomings on his part; thinking
them up was his regular specialty. But this particular moment did not
seem a propitious one for offering excuses. Jeff noiselessly evaporated
out of sight and hearing.
In silence the master hurried through the meal, eating it with what for
him was unusual speed. He was beset with an urge to be out of the big
high-ceiled dining room. Looking about it he told himself it wasn't a
dining room at all--just a bare barracks, full of emptiness and mighty
little else.
After supper he sat on the porch, while the long twilight gloomed into
dusk and the dusk into night. He was half-minded to walk downtown in the
hope of finding congenial company at Soule's drug store, the favoured
loafing place of his dwindling set of cronies. But he changed his mind.
Since Mr. Soule, growing infirm, had taken a younger man for a partner,
the drug store was changed. Its old-time air of hospitality and comfort
had somehow altered.
The judge smoked on, rocking back and forth in his chair. The bull bats,
which had been dodging about in the air as long as the daylight lasted,
were gone now, and their shy cousin, the whippoorwill, began calling
from down in the old Enders orchard at the far end of the street. Two
or three times there came to Judge Priest's ears the sound of footsteps
clunking along the plank sidewalk on his side of the road, and at that
he sat erect, hoping each time the gate hinges would whine a warning
of callers dropping in to bear him company. But the unseen pedestrians
passed on without turning in. The whippoorwill moved up close to Judge
Priest's side fence. A little night wind that had something on its mind
began with a mournful whispering sound to swish through the top of the
big cedar alongside the porch.
The judge stood it until nearly half-past nine o'clock. Even under the
most favourable circumstances a whippoorwill and a remorseful night
wind, telling its troubles to an evergreen tree, do not make what one
would call exhilarating company. He closed and locked the front door,
turned out the single gas light which burned in the hall and went up the
stairs. In its main design the house was Colonial--Southern Colonial.
But his bedroom was in an ell, above a side porch overlooking the
croquet ground, and this ell was adorned with plank curlicues under its
gables, and a square, ugly, useless little balcony, like a misplaced
wooden moustache, adhered to its most prominent elevation on the side
facing the front. The judge frequently said that, as nearly as he could
figure it out, the extension belonged to the Rutherford B. Hayes period
of American architecture.
Except for him the house was empty. Aunt Dilsey didn't stay on the place
at night and Jeff's sleeping quarters were over the stable at the back.
As Judge Priest felt his way through the upper hall and made a light
in his bedchamber, the house was giving off those little creaking,
complaining sounds from its joints that an old tired house always gives
off when it is lonely for a fuller measure of human occupancy.
His own room, revealed now in its homely contour and its still homelier
furnishings, was neat enough, with Jeff's ideas of neatness, but all
about it indubitably betrayed the fact that only male hands cared for
it. The tall black-walnut bureau lacked a cover for its top; the mantel
was littered with cigar boxes and old law reports; the dead asparagus
ferns, banked in the grate, were faded to a musty yellow; and some
of the fronds had fallen out across the hearth so that remotely the
fireplace suggested the mouth of a big cow choking on an overly large
bite of dried hay. In places the matting on the floor was frayed almost
through.
Just from the careless skew of the coverlid and the set of the pillows
against the white bolster, you would have known at a glance that a man
had made up the bed that morning.
Barring one picture the walls were bare. This lone picture hung in a
space between the two front windows, right where the occupant of the
room, if so minded, might look at it the last thing at night and the
first thing in the morning. Beyond any doubt a lover of the truly
refined in art would have looked at it with a shudder, for it was one
of those crayon portraits--a crayon portrait done in the most crayonsome
and grewsome style of a self-taught artist working by the day rather
than by the piece. Plainly it had been enlarged, as the trade term goes,
from a photograph; the enlarger thereof had been lavish with his black
leads; that, too, was self-evident. The original photographer had done
his worst with the subject; the retoucher had gone him one better.
It was a likeness--you might call it a likeness--of a woman dressed in
the abominable style of the late seventies--with heavy bangs down in her
eyes, and a tight-fitting basque with enormous sleeves, and long
pendent eardrops in her ears. The artist, whoever he was, had striven
masterfully to rob the likeness of all expression. There alone his
craftsmanship had failed him. For even he had not altogether taken away
from the face a certain suggestion of old-fashioned wistfulness and
sweetness. In all other regards, though, he had had his reckless way
with it. The eyes were black and staring, the lines of the figure stiff
and artificial, and the background for the head was a pastel nightmare.
For so long had Judge Priest been wifeless and childless that many of
the younger generation in our town knew nothing of the tragedy in this
old man's life--which was that the same diphtheria epidemic that took
both his babies in one week's time had widowed him too. We knew he loved
other people's children; some of us never suspected that once upon a
time he had had children of his own to love. Except in his memory no
images of the dead babies endured, and this crayon portrait was the sole
sentimental reminder left to him of his married life. And so, to him, it
was a perfect and a matchless thing. He wouldn't have traded it for all
the canvases of all the old masters in all the art galleries in this
round big world.
This night, before he undressed, he went over and stood in front of it
and looked at it for a while. There was dust in the grooves of the heavy
tarnished gilt frame. From the top bureau drawer he took a big silk
handkerchief and carefully he wiped the dust away. Then, before he put
the handkerchief back in its place, he straightened the thing upon the
nail which held it, and gave the glass front an awkward little caress
with his pudgy old hand.
“It's been a long, long time, honey, since you went away and left me,”
he said slowly, in the voice of one addressing a hearer very near at
hand; “but I still miss you and the babies powerfully. And sometimes
it's sorter lonesome here without you.”
A little later, when the light had been turned out, a noise like a long,
deep sigh sounded out in the darkness. That, though, might have been the
wheeze of the afflicted bedsprings as the old judge let his weight down
in the bed.
An hour passed and there was another small sound there--a muffled
nibbling sound. Behind the wainscoting, between bedroom and bathroom, a
young, adventuresome rat gnawed at a box of matches which he had found
on the floor in the hall and had dragged to his nest in the wall. From
within the box a strangely tantalising aroma escaped; the rat, being
deluded thereby into the belief that phosphorus might be an edible
dainty, was minded to sample the contents. Presently his teeth met
through the cover of the box. There was a sharp flaring pop, followed by
a swift succession of other pops, and the rat gave a jump and departed
elsewhere in great haste, with a hot bad smell in his snout and his
adolescent whiskers quite entirely singed away.
The Confederates, in ragged uniforms of butternut jeans, were squatted
in a clump of pawpaw bushes on the edge of a stretch of ploughed ground.
From the woods on the far side of the field Yankee skirmishers were
shooting toward them. A shell from the batteries must have fallen nearby
and set fire to the dried leaves and the fallen brush, for the smoke
kept blowing in a fellow's face, choking him and making him cough.
Captain Tip Meldrum, the commander of Company B, was just behind the
men, giving the order to fire back. High Private Billy Priest aimed
his musket at the thickets where the Yankees were hidden and pulled
the trigger, but the cap on the nipple of his piece was defective or
something, and the charge wouldn't explode. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” yelled
Captain Tip Meldrum over and over again, and then he yanked out his
own horse-pistol and emptied it into the hostile timber. But Private
Priest's gun still balked. He flung it down--and found himself sitting
up in bed, gasping.
The dream hadn't been altogether a dream at that. For there was indeed
smoke in the judge's eyes and his nostrils--plenty of it. A revolver
was cracking out its shots somewhere near at hand; somebody outside his
window was shrieking “Fire!” at the top of a good strong voice. In the
distance other voices were taking up the cry.
In an earlier day, when a fire started in town, the man who discovered
it drew his pistol if he were on the highway, or snatched it up if he
chanced to be at home, and pointing its barrel at the sky emptied it
into the air as fast as the cylinder would turn. The man next door
followed suit and so on until volleys were rattling all over the
neighbourhood. Thus were the townspeople aroused and, along with the
townspeople, the members of the volunteer fire department. Now we had a
paid department and a regular electric-alarm system, predicated on
boxes and gongs and wires and things; but in outlying districts the
pistol-shooting fashion of spreading the word still prevailed to a
considerable extent, and more especially did it prevail at nighttime. So
it didn't take the late dreamer longer than the shake of a sheep's tail
to separate what was fancy from what was reality.
As Judge Priest, yet half asleep but waking up mighty fast, shoved his
stout legs into his trousers and tucked the tails of his nightshirt down
inside the waistband, he decided it must be his barn and not his house
that was afire. The smoke which filled the room seemed to be eddying in
through the side window, from across the end of the ell structure. He
thought of his old white mare, Mittie May, fast in her stall under
the hay loft, and of Jeff, who was one of the soundest sleepers in the
world, in his room right alongside the mow. There was need for him to
move, and move fast. He must awaken Jeff first, and then get Mittie May
out of danger. Barefooted, he felt his way across the room and along the
hall and down the stairs, mending his gait as he went. And then, as he
jerked the front door open and stumbled out upon the porch, he came into
violent collision with Ed Tilghman, Junior, who lived across the street,
and who had just bounded up the porch steps with the idea of hammering
on the front-door panels. Tilghman was a young man and the judge an
old one; it was inevitable the judge should suffer the more painful
consequences of the sudden impact of their two bodies together. He went
down sideways with a great hard thump, his forehead striking against a
sharp corner of the door jamb. He was senseless, and a little stream
of blood was beginning to trickle down his face as Tilghman dragged him
down off the porch into the yard and stretched him on his back in the
grass, and then ran to fetch water.
In that same minute the big bell in the tower of fire headquarters,
half a mile away, began sounding in measured beats, and a small
hungry-looking tongue of flame licked up across the sill and flickered
for a moment through the smoke which was pouring forth out of the
bathroom window and rolling across the flat top of the extension. The
smoke gushed out still thicker, smothering down the red pennon, but in a
second or two it showed again, and this time it brought with it two more
like it. The bathroom window became a frame for a cloudy pink glare, and
the purring note of the fire became a brisk and healthy crackle as it
ate through the seasoned clapboards of the outer wall.
All of a sudden, so it seemed, the yard and the street were full of
people. Promptly there began to happen most of the things that do happen
at a fire. As for instance: Mr. Milus Miles, who arrived among the very
first and who had a commandingly loud voice, mounted a rustic bench
alongside the croquet ground and called for volunteers to form a bucket
brigade. That his recruits would have no buckets to pass after they
had enrolled themselves for service was with Mr. Miles a minor
consideration. It was the spirit of the thing, the forethought, the
responsibility, the aptitude for leadership in a work of succour--all
these inspired him.
Mr. Ulysses Rice, who lived in the next street, climbed the side
fence--under the circumstances it somehow to him seemed a more resolute
thing to scale the fence than to enter by the gate in the regular
way--and ran across the yard, inspired with a neighbourly and
commendable desire to save something right away. He put his toe in a
croquet wicket and fell headlong. This was to be expected of Mr. Rice.
He had a perfect genius for getting into accidents. All Nature was ever
in a conspiracy with all the inanimate objects in the world to do
him bodily hurt. If he went skiff riding and fell overboard, as he
customarily did, it was not because he had rocked the boat. The boat
rocked itself. He was the only man in town who had ever succeeded in
gashing his throat with a safety razor.
He now disentangled his foot from the wicket and scrambled up and, still
actuated by the best motives imaginable, he dashed toward the back of
the Priest homestead, being minded to seek entrance by a rear door. But
a wire clothesline, swinging at exactly the right height to catch him
just under the nose, did catch him just under the nose and almost
sawed the tip of that useful organ off Mr. Rice's agonised face.
Coincidentally, citizens of various ages and assorted sizes ran into
the house and dragged out the furnishings of the lower floor, bestowing
their salvage right where other citizens might fall over it. Through all
the joints between the shingles the roof of the ell leaked smoke, until
it resembled a sloped bed of slaking lime. This fire was rapidly getting
to be a regular fire.
With a great clattering the department came tearing up the street.
Dropping down from their perches on the running boards of the wagons,
certain of its members began unreeling the hose, then ran back with it
to couple it to the nearest fire hydrant, nearly two blocks away down
Clay Street. Others brought a ladder and reared it against the side of
the house, with its uppermost rounds projecting above the low eaves.
While many hands steadied the ladder in place, Captain Bud Gorman of
Station No. 1--there was also a Station No. 2, but Bud skippered Station
No. 1--mounted it and, with an axe, started chopping a hole in the roof
at a point where there seemed as yet to be no immediate peril. Under his
strokes the shingles flew in showers. It was evident that if the flames
should spread to this immediate area Captain Bud Gorman would have a
rough but practicable flue ready for their egress into the open air,
against the moment when they had burst through the ceiling and the
rafters below.
More people and yet more kept coming. The rubber piping, which
perversely had kinked and twisted as it came off the spinning drum of
hose reel No. 1, was fairly straight now, and from his station just
inside the gate the fire chief bellowed the command down the line to
turn 'er on! They turned her on, but somewhere in the coupled sections
of hose a stricture had developed. All that happened was that from the
brass snout of the nozzle a languid gush of yellow water arose in a fan
shape to an elevation of perhaps fifteen feet, thence descending in a
cascade, not upon the particular spot at which the nozzle was aimed,
but full upon the ill-starred Mr. Rice as he tugged to uproot a wooden
support of the little grape arbor which flanked the house on the
endangered side. Somewhat disfigured by the clothesline but still
resolute to lend a helping hand somewhere, Mr. Rice had but a moment
before become possessed of an ambition to remove the grape vines,
trellis and all, to a place of safety. His reward for this kindly
attempt was a sudden soaking.
As though the hiss of the water had aroused him, Judge Priest sat up in
the grass, where he had been lying during these tumultuous and crowded
five minutes. He was still half dazed. As his eyesight cleared, he saw
that the bathroom was as good as gone and that his bedroom was about to
go. Some one helped him to his unsteady feet and kept him upright. He
shook himself free from the supporting grasp of the person who held him,
and advanced toward the porch steps, wavering a little on his legs as he
went.
Then, before anybody sensed what he meant to do, before anybody could
make a move to stop him, he had mounted the steps and was at the front
door.
Out of the door, bumping into him, backed a coughing, gasping squad,
their noses smarting and their eyes streaming from the acrid reek,
towing after them the big horsehair sofa which was the principal piece
of furniture in the judge's sitting room. The sofa had lost two of its
casters in transit, and it took all their strength to drag it over the
lintel.
“It's no use, Judge Priest,” panted one of these workers, recognising
him; “we've got pretty nearly everything out that was downstairs and you
couldn't get upstairs now if you tried.”
Then seeing that the owner meant to disregard the warning, this man
threw out an arm forcibly to detain the other. But for all his age and
size, the judge was wieldy enough when he chose to be. With an agile
twist of his body he dodged past, and as the man, astounded and
horrified, glared across the threshold he saw Judge Priest running down
the murky hall and, with head bent and his mouth and nose buried in
the crook of one elbow, starting up the stairs into the thickest and
blackest of the smoke. To this man's credit, be it said, he made a
valiant effort to overtake the old man. The pursuer darted in behind
him, but at the foot of the steps fell back, daunted and unable to
breathe. He staggered out again into the open, gagging with the smoke
that was in his throat and down in his lungs.
“He's gone in there!” he shouted, pointing behind him. “He's gone right
in there! He's gone upstairs!”
“Who is it? Who's gone in there?” twenty voices demanded together.
“The judge--just a second ago! I tried to stop him--he got by me! He
ain't got a chance!” Even as he spoke the words, a draught of fire came
roaring through the crater in the roof which Captain Bud Gorman's axe
had dug for its free passage. An outcry--half gasp, half groan--went up
from those who knew what had happened. They ran round in rings wasting
precious time.
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, half dressed, trotted across the lawn. He had just
arrived. He grabbed young Ed Tilghman by the arm.
“How'd she start, boy?” demanded the sergeant. “Where's the judge? Did
they git everything out?”
“Everything out--hell!” answered Tilghman, sobbing in his distress.
“The old judge is in there. He got a lick on the head and it must have
made him crazy. He just ran back in there and went upstairs. He'll never
make it--and nobody can get him out. He'll smother to death sure!”
Down on his knees dropped Sergeant Bagby and shut his eyes, and for the
first, last and only time in his life he prayed aloud in public.
“Oh, Lord,” he prayed, “fur God's sake git Billy Priest out of there!
Oh, Lord, that's all I'll ever ask You--fur God's sake git Billy Priest
out of there! Ez a favour to me, Lord, please, Suh, git Billy Priest out
of there!” From many throats at once a yell arose--a yell so shrill
and loud that it overtopped all lesser sounds; a yell so loud that the
sergeant ceased from his praying to look. Through the smoke, and over
the sloping peak of the roof from the rear, came a slim, dark shape
on its all-fours. Treading the pitch of the gable as swiftly and
surefootedly as a cat, it scuttled forward to the front edge of the
housetop, swung downward at arms' length from the eaves, and dropped
on a narrow ledge of tin-covered surface where the small ornamental
balcony, which was like a misplaced wooden moustache, projected from the
face of the building at the level of the second floor, then instantly
dived headfirst in at that window of the judge's bedchamber which was
farthest from the corner next the bathroom.
For a silent minute--a minute which seemed a year--those below stared
upward, with starting eyes and lumps in their throats. Then, all
together, they swallowed their several throat lumps and united in an
exultant joyous yell, which made that other yell they had uttered a
little before seem by comparison puny and cheap. Through the smoke which
bulged from the balcony window and out upon the balcony itself popped
the agile black figure. Bracing itself, it hauled across the window
ledge a bulky inert form. It wrestled its helpless burden over and eased
it down the flat, tiny railed-in perch just as a fire ladder, manned
by many eager hands, came straightening up from below, with Captain Bud
Gorman of Station No. 1 climbing it, two rounds at a jump, before it had
ceased to waver in the air.
Volunteers swarmed up the ladder behind Bud Gorman, forming a living
chain from the earth to the balcony. First they passed down the judge,
breathing and whole but unconscious, with his nightshirt torn off his
back and his bare right arm still clenched round a picture of some
sort in a heavy gilt frame. His grip on it did not relax until they had
carried him well back from the burning house, and for the second time
that night had stretched him out upon the grass.
The judge being safe, the men on the ladder made room for Jeff
Poindexter to descend under his own motive power, all of them cheering
mightily. Just as Jeff reached solid ground the stoppage in the hose
unstopped itself of its own accord and from the brazen gullet of the
nozzle there sprang up, like a silver sword, a straight, hard stream of
water which lanced into the heart of the fire, turning its exultant song
from a crackle to a croon and then to a resentful hiss.
In that same instant Sergeant Bagby found himself, for the first time
since he escaped from the kindly tyranny of a black mammy--nearly sixty
years before--in close and ardent embrace with a member of the African
race.
“Jeff,” clarioned the sergeant, hugging the blistered rescuer yet closer
to him and beating him on the back with hearty thumps--“Jeff, God bless
your black hide, how did you come to think of it?”
“Well, suh, Mr. Bagby,” wheezed Jeff, “hit wuz lak dis: I didn't wake
up w'en she fust started. I got so much on my mind to do daytimes 'at I
sleeps mighty sound w'en I does sleep. Presen'ly, tho', I did wake up,
an' I got my pants on, an' I come runnin' acrost de lot frum de stable,
an' I got heah jes' in time to hear 'em all yellin' out dat de jedge is
done went back into de house. I sees there ain't no chanc't of goin' in
after him de way he's done went, but jes' about that time I remembers
dat air little po'ch up yonder on de front of de house w'ich it seem lak
ever'body else had done furgot all 'bout hit bein' there a-tall. So I
runs round to de back right quick, an' I dim' up de lattice-work by
de kitchen, an' I comes out along over de roof, an' I drap down on
de little po'ch, an' after that, I reckin, you seen de rest of it fur
you'self, suh--all but whut happen after I gits inside dat window.”
“What did happen?” From the ring of men who hedged in the sergeant and
Jeff five or six asked the same question at once. Before an all-white
audience Jeff visibly expanded himself.
“W'y, nothin' a-tall happen,” he said, “'ceptin' that I found de ole
boss-man right where I figgered I'd find him--in his own room at de foot
of his baid. He'd done fell down dere on de flo', right after he grabbed
dat air picture offen de wall. Yas, suh, that's perzack-ly where I finds
him!”
“But, Jeff, how could you breathe up there?” Still in the sergeant's
cordial grasp, Jeff made direct answer:
“Gen'l'mens, I didn't! Fur de time bein' I jes' natchelly abandoned
breathin'!”
Again that night Judge Priest had a dream--only this time the dream
lacked continuity and sequence and was but a jumble of things--and he
emerged from it with his thoughts all in confusion. In his first drowsy
moment of consciousness he had a sensation of having taken a long
journey along a dark rough road. For a little he lay wondering where
he was, piecing together his impressions and trying to bridge the
intervening gaps.
Then the light got better and he made out the anxious face of Doctor
Lake looking down at him and, just over Doctor Lake's shoulder, the face
of Sergeant Bagby. He opened his mouth then and spoke.
“Well, there's one thing certain shore,” said the judge: “this ain't
heaven! Because ef 'twas, there wouldn't be a chance of you and Jimmy
Bagby bein' here with me.”
Whereupon, for no apparent reason on earth that Judge Priest could
fathom, Doctor Lake, with a huskily affectionate intonation, called him
by many profane and improper names; and Sergeant Bagby, wiping his eyes
with one hand, made his other hand up into a fist and shook it in Judge
Priest's face, meanwhile emotionally denouncing him as several qualified
varieties of an old idiot.
Under this treatment the fogginess quit Judge Priest's brain, and he
became aware of the presence of a considerable number of persons about
him, including the two Edward Tilghmans--Senior and Junior--and the two
Tilghman girls; and Jeff Poindexter, wearing about half as many garments
as Jeff customarily wore, and with a slightly blistered appearance as
to his face and shoulders; and Mr. Ulysses Rice, with a badly
skinned nose and badly drenched shoulders; and divers others of his
acquaintances. Indeed, he was quite surrounded by neighbours and
friends. Also by degrees it became apparent to him that he was stretched
upon a strange bed in a strange room--at least he did not recall ever
having been in this room before--and that he had a bandage across the
baldest part of his head, and that he felt tired all over his body.
“Well, I got out, didn't I?” he inquired after a minute or two.
“Got out--thunder!” vociferated the sergeant with what the judge
regarded as a most unnecessary violence of voice and manner. “Ef this
here black boy of yourn hadn't a-risked his own life, climbin' down over
the roof and goin' in through a front window and draggin' you out of
that fire--the same ez ef you was a sack of shorts--you'd a-been a
goner, shore. Ain't you 'shamed of yourself, scarin' everybody half to
death that-a-way?”
“Oh, it was Jeff, was it?” said the old judge, disregarding Sergeant
Bagby's indignant interrogation. He looked steadfastly at his grinning
servitor and, when he spoke again, there was a different intonation in
his voice.
“Much obliged to you, Jeff.” That was all he said. It was the way he
said it.
“You is more'n welcome, thanky, suh,” answered Jeff; “it warn't scursely
no trouble a-tall, suh--'cep'in' dem ole shingles on dat roof suttin'y
wuz warm to de te'ch.”
“Did--did Jeff succeed in savin' anything else besides me?” The judge
put the question as though half fearing what the answer might be.
“Ef you mean this--why, here 'tis, safe and sound,” said Sergeant Bagby,
and he moved aside so that Judge Priest might see, leaning against
the footboard of the bed, a certain crayon portrait. “The glass ain't
cracked even and the frame ain't dented. You three come out of there
practically together--Jeff a-hang-in' onto you and you a-hangin' onto
your picture. So if that's whut you went chargin' back in there fur, I
hope you're satisfied!”
“I'm satisfied,” said the judge softly. Then after a bit he cleared his
throat and ventured another query:
“That old house of mine--I s'pose she's all burnt up by now?”
“Don't you ever believe it,” said the sergeant. “That there house of
yourn 'pears to be purty nigh ez contrary and set in its ways ez whut
you are. It won't burn up, no matter how good a chance you give it. Jest
about the time Jeff here drug you out on that little balcony outside
your window, the water works begun to work, and after that they had her
under control in less'n no time. She must be about out by now.”
“Your bathroom's a total loss and the extension on that side is pretty
badly scorched up, but the rest of the place, excusing damage by the
water and the smoke, is hardly damaged,” added the younger Tilghman.
“You'll be able to move back in, inside of a month, judge.”
“And in the meantime you're going to stay right here, Judge Priest, and
make my house your home,” announced Mr. Tilghman, Senior. “It's mighty
plain, but such as it is you're welcome to it, judge. We'll do our level
best to make you comfortable. Only I'm afraid you'll miss the things
you've been used to having round you.”
“Oh, I reckin not,” said Judge Priest. His glance travelled slowly
from the crayon portrait at the foot of the bed to Jeff Poindexter's
chocolate-coloured face and back again to the portrait. “I've got mighty
near everything I need to make me happy.”
“What I meant was that maybe you'd be kind of lonesome away from your
own house,” Mr. Tilghman said.
“No, I don't believe so,” answered the old man, smiling a little. “You
see, I taken the cure for lonesomeness to-night. You mout call it the
smoke cure.”