The Lake and Bayou Committee reaped the reward of a good action.
Crutch, the page, as they all called Uriel Basil, affected the
sensibility of the whole committee to the extent that profanity almost
ceased there, and vulgarity became a crime in the presence of a child.
Gentle words and wishes became the rule; a glimmer of reverence and a
thought of piety were not unknown in that little chamber.
"Dog my skin!" said Jeems Bee, "if I ever made a 'pintment that give me
sech satisfaction! I feel as if I had sot a nigger free!"
The youthful abstractionist, Lowndes Cleburn, expressed it even better.
"Crutch," he said, "is like a angel reduced to his bones. Them air
wings or pinions, that he might have flew off with, being a pair of
crutches, keeps him here to tarry awhile in our service. But,
gentlemen, he's not got long to stay. His crutches is growing too heavy
for that expandin' sperit. Some day we'll look up and miss him through
our tears."
They gave him many a present; they put a silver watch in his pocket,
and dressed him in a jacket with gilt buttons. He had a bouquet of
flowers to take home every day to that marvelous sister of whom he
spoke so often; and there were times when the whole committee, seeing
him drop off to sleep as he often did through frail and weary nature,
sat silently watching lest he might be wakened before his rest was
over. But no persuasion could take him off the floor of Congress. In
that solemn old Hall of Representatives, under the semicircle of gray
columns, he darted with agility from noon to dusk, keeping speed upon
his crutches with the healthiest of the pages, and racing into the
document-room, and through the dark and narrow corridors of the old
Capitol loft, where the House library was lost in twilight. Visitors
looked with interest and sympathy at the narrow back and body of this
invalid child, whose eyes were full of bright, beaming spirit. He
sometimes nodded on the steps by the Speaker's chair; and these spells
of dreaminess and fatigue increased as his disease advanced upon his
wasting system. Once he did not awaken at all until adjournment. The
great Congress and audience passed out, and the little fellow still
slept, with his head against the Clerk's desk, while all the other
pages were grouped around him, and they finally bore him off to the
committee-room in their arms, where, among the sympathetic watchers,
was old Beau. When Uriel opened his eyes the old mendicant was looking
into them.
"Ah! little Major," he said, "poor Beau has been waiting for you to
take those bad words back. Old Beau thought it was all bob with his
little cove."
"Beau," said the boy, "I've had such a dream! I thought my dear father,
who is working so hard to bring me home to him, had carried me out on
the river in a boat. We sailed through the greenest marshes, among
white lilies, where the wild ducks were tame as they can be. All the
ducks were diving and diving, and they brought up long stalks of celery
from the water and gave them to us. Father ate all his. But mine turned
into lilies and grew up so high that I felt myself going with them, and
the higher I went the more beautiful grew the birds. Oh! let me sleep
and see if it will be so again."
The outcast raised his gold-headed cane and hobbled up and down the
room with a laced handkerchief at his eyes.
"Great God!" he exclaimed, "another generation is going out, and here I
stay without a stake, playing a lone hand forever and forever."
"Beau," said Reybold, "there's hope while one can feel. Don't go away
until you have a good word from our little passenger."
The outstretched hand of the Northern Congressman was not refused by
the vagrant, whose eccentric sorrow yet amused the Southern
Committeemen.
"Ole Beau's jib-boom of a mustache '11 put his eye out," said Pontotoc
Bibb, "ef he fetches another groan like that."
"Beau's very shaky around the hams an' knees," said Box Izard; "he's
been a good figger, but even figgers can lie ef they stand up too
long."
The little boy unclosed his eyes and looked around on all those kindly,
watching faces.
"Did anybody fire a gun?" he said. "Oh! no. I was only dreaming that I
was hunting with father, and he shot at the beautiful pheasants that
were making such a whirring of wings for me. It was music. When can I
hunt with father, dear gentlemen?"
They all felt the tread of the mighty hunter before the Lord very near
at hand--the hunter whose name is Death.
"There are little tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They
twitter and run into the surf and back again, and I am one of them! I
must be, for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to
me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen!
Will the Speaker turn me out if I play with the beach birds just once?
I'm only a little boy working for my mother."
"Dear Uriel," whispered Reybold, "here's Old Beau, to whom you once
spoke angrily. Don't you see him?"
The little boy's eyes came back from far-land somewhere, and he saw the
ruined gamester at his feet.
"Dear Beau," he said, "I can't get off to go home with you. They Avon't
excuse me, and I give all my money to mother. But you go to the back
gate. Ask for Joyce. She'll give you a nice warm meal every day. Go
with him, Mr. Reybold! If you ask for him it will be all right; for
Joyce--dear Joyce!--she loves you."
The beach birds played again along the strand; the boy ran into the
foam with his companions and felt the spray once more. The Mighty
Hunter shot his bird--a little cripple that twittered the sweetest of
them all. Nothing moved in the solemn chamber of the committee but the
voice of an old forsaken man, sobbing bitterly.