SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBY sat on the front porch of the First Presbyterian
parsonage with an arched framing of green vines above his head. His
broad form reposed in a yet broader porch chair--his bare feet, in a
foot-tub of cold water.
The sergeant wore his reunion regalia, consisting, in the main, of an
ancient fatigue jacket with an absurdly high collar and an even more
absurdly short and peaked tail. About his generous middle was girthed a
venerable leather belt that snaffled at the front with a broad buckle
of age-darkened brass and supported an old cartridge box, which perched
jauntily upon a fold of the wearer's plump hip like a birdbox on a
crotch. Badges of resplendent new satin, striped in alternate bars
of red and white, flowed down over his foreshortened bosom, partly
obscuring the scraps of rotted and faded braid and the big round ball
buttons of dulled brass, which adhered intermittently to the decayed
front of his uniform coat. Against a veranda post leaned the sergeant's
rusted rifle, the same he had carried to the war and through the war and
home again after the war, and now reserved for occasions of high state,
such as the present one.
The sergeant's trousers were turned high up on his shanks; his shoes
reposed side by side alongside him on the floor, each with a white
yarn sock crammed into and overflowing it. They were new shoes, but
excessively dusty and seamed with young wrinkles; and they bore that
look of total disrepute which anything new in leather always bears after
its first wearing. With his elbows on his thighs and his hands clasped
loosely between his knees, Sergeant Bagby bent forward, looking first up
the wide street and then down it. Looking this way he saw four old
men, three of them dressed in grey and one in black, straggle limpingly
across the road; and one of them carried at a droopy angle a flag upon
which were white-scrolled letters to tell the world that here was Lyon's
Battery, or what might be left of it. Looking that way he saw a group of
ten or fifteen grey heads riding through a cross street upon bay horses;
and at a glance he knew them for a detachment of Forrest's men, who
always came mounted to reunions. Once they rode like centaurs; now, with
one or two exceptions, they rode like sacks or racks. It depended on
whether, with age, the rider had grown stout or stayed thin.
Having looked both ways, the sergeant addressed himself to a sight
nearer home. He considered his feet. Viewed through sundry magnifying
and misleading inches of water they seemed pinky white; but when,
groaning gently, he lifted one foot clear, it showed an angry chafed
red upon toe and heel, with large blis-tery patches running across the
instep. With a plop he lowered it back into the laving depths. Then,
bending over sideways, he picked up one of his shoes, shaking the
crumpled sock out of it and peering down its white-lined gullet to read
the maker's tag:
“Fall River, Mass.,” the sergeant spelled out the stamped
letters--“Reliance Shoe Company, Fall River, Mass.”
He dropped the shoe and in tones of reluctant admiration addressed empty
space:
“Well, now, ain't them Yankees the persistent devils! Waitin' forty-odd
years fur a chance to cripple me up! But they done it!” Judge Priest
turned in at the front gate and came up the yard walk. He was in
white linens, severely and comfortably civilian in cut, but with a
commandant's badge upon his lapel and a short, bobby, black ostrich
feather in the brim of his hat. He advanced slowly, with a slight
outward skew to his short, round legs.
“Aha!” he said understandingly. “Whut did I tell you, Jimmy Bagby, about
tryin' to parade in new shoes? But no, you wouldn't listen--you would be
one of these here young dudes!”
“Judge,” pleaded the sergeant, “don't rub it in! I'm about ruint--I'm
ruint for life with these here feet of mine.”
Still at a somewhat stiff and straddle-legged gait, the judge mounted
the porch, and after a quick appraisal of all the chairs in sight eased
his frame into one that had a cushioned seat. A small involuntary moan
escaped him. It was the sergeant's time to gloat.
“I'm wearin' my blisters on my feet,” he exulted, “and you're wearin'
yourn--elsewhere. That's whut you git at your age fur tryin' to ride a
strange horse in a strange town.”
“Jimmy,” protested the judge, “age ain't got nothin' a'tall to do with
it; but that certainly was a mighty hard-rackin' animal they conferred
on me. I feel like I've been straddlin' a hip roof durin' an earthquake.
How did you make out to git back here?”
“That last half mile or so I shore did think I was trampin' along on
red-hot ploughshears. If there'd been one more mile to walk I reckin I'd
'a' been listed amongst the wounded and missin'. I jest did about manage
to hobble in. And Mizz Grundy fetched me this here piggin of cold water
out on the porch, so's I could favour my feet and watch the boys passin'
at the same time.”
Judge Priest undertook to cross one leg over the other, but uncrossed it
again with a wince of sudden concern on his pink face.
“How do you aim, then, to git to the big doin's this evenin'?” he asked,
and shifted his position slightly where he sat.
“I ain't aimin' to git there,” said Sergeant Bagby. “I aim to stay right
here and take my ease. Besides, ef I don't git these feet of mine shrunk
down some by milkin' time, I'm shore goin' to have to pull my pants off
over my head this night.”
“Well, now, ain't that too bad!” commiserated his friend and commander.
“I wouldn't miss hearin' Gen'l Gracey's speech fur a purty.”
“Don't you worry about me,” the sergeant was prompt to tell him.. “You
and Lew Lake and Hector Woodward and the other boys kin represent Gideon
K. Irons Camp without me fur oncet anyway. And say, listen, Judge,” he
added with malice aforethought, “you'd better borrow a goosehair
cushion, or a feather tick, or somethin' soft, to set on out yonder.
Them plain pine benches are liable to make a purty hard roostin' place,
even fur an old seasoned cavalryman.”
Judge Priest's retort, if he had one in stock, remained unbroached,
because just then their hostess bustled out to announce dinner was on
the table. It was to be an early dinner and a hurried one, because,
of course, everybody wanted to start early, to be sure of getting good
seats for the speaking. The sergeant ate his right where he was, his
feet in his tub, like a Foot-washing Baptist.
There were servants aplenty within, but the younger Miss Grundy elected
to serve him; a pretty girl, all in snowy white except for touches of
red at her throat and her slender belted waist, and upon one wrist was a
bracelet of black velvet with old soldiers' buttons strung thickly upon
it. On a tray, daintily tricked out, she brought the sergeant fried
chicken and corn pudding and butter beans, and the like, with cornpones
hot-buttered in the kitchen; and finally a slice carved from the
blushing red heart of the first home-grown watermelon of the season.
Disdaining the false conventions of knife and fork the sergeant bit into
this, full face.
Upon the tub bottom his inflamed toes overlapped and waggled in a gentle
ecstasy; and between bites, while black seeds trickled from the corners
of his lips, he related to the younger Miss Grundy the beginning of
his story of that memorable passage of words upon a certain memorable
occasion, between General John C. Breckinridge and General Simon Bolivar
Buckner. The young lady had already heard this same beginning thrice,
the sergeant having been a guest under the parental roof since noon of
the day before, but, until interruption came, she listened with
unabated interest and laughed at exactly the right places, whereupon the
gratified narrator mentally catalogued her as about the smartest young
lady, as well as the prettiest, he had met in a coon's age.
All good things must have an end, however--even a watermelon dessert
and the first part of a story by Sergeant Jimmy Bagby; and so a
little later, rejecting all spoken and implied sympathy with a jaunty
indifference that may have been slightly forced, the sergeant remained,
like another Diogenes, in the company of his tub, while the rest of
the household, including the grey-haired Reverend Doctor Grundy, his
white-haired wife, Judge Priest and the two Misses Grundy, departed in
a livery-stable carryall for a given point half a mile up the street,
where a certain large skating rink stretched its open doors hospitably,
so disguised in bunting and flags it hardly knew itself by its grand yet
transient title of Reunion Colosseum. Following this desertion, there
was for a while in all directions a pleasurable bustle to keep the
foot-fast watcher bright as to eye and stirred as to pulse.
“Why, shuckins, there ain't a chance fur me to git lonely,” he bade
himself--“not with all this excitement goin' on and these here hoofs of
mine to keep me company!”
Crowds streamed by afoot, asaddle and awheel, all bound for a common
destination. Every house within sight gave up its separate group
of dwellers and guests; for during reunion week everybody takes in
somebody. Under the threshing feet the winnowed dust mounted up in
scrolls from the roadway, sifting down on the grass and powdering the
chinaberry trees overhead. No less than eight brass bands passed within
sight or hearing. And one of them played Maryland, My Maryland; and one
of them played The Bonnie Blue Flag--but the other six played Dixie, as
was fitting.
A mounted staff in uniform clattered grandly by, escorting the
commanding general of some division or other, and an open carriage
came along, overflowing with a dainty freightage of state sponsors and
maids-of-honour. As it rolled grandly past behind its four white horses,
a saucy girl on the back seat saw an old man sitting alone on the Grundy
porch, with his feet in a tub, and she blew a kiss at him off the
tips of her fingers; and Sergeant Bagby, half rising, waved back most
gallantly, and God-blessed her and called her Honey!
Soon, though, the crowds thinned away. Where multitudes had been, only
an occasional straggler was to be seen. The harried and fretted dust
settled back. A locust in a tree began to exercise his talents in song,
and against the green warp of the shrubbery on the lawn a little blue
bobbin of an indigo bird went vividly back and forth. Lonesome? No,
nothing like that; but the sergeant confessed to himself that possibly
he was just a trifle drowsy. His head dropped forward on his badged
chest, and as the cool wetness drew the fever out of his feet his toes,
under water, curled up in comfort and content.
Asked about it afterward, Sergeant Bagby would have told you that he had
no more than closed his eyelids for a wink or two. But the shadows had
appreciably lengthened upon the grass before a voice, lifted in a hail,
roused him up. Over the low hedge that separated the parsonage yard from
the yard adjoining on the left a man was looking at him--a man somewhere
near his own age, he judged, in an instantaneous appraisal.
“Cumrud,” said this person, “howdy-do?”
“Which?” inquired Sergeant Bagby.
“I said, Cumrud, howdy?” repeated the other.
“No,” said the sergeant; “my name is Bagby.”
“I taken it fur granted that you was to home all alone,” said the man
beyond the hedge. “Be you?”
“At this time of speakin',” said the sergeant, “there's nobody at
home exceptin' me and a crop of blisters. Better come over,” he added
hospitably.
“Well,” said the stranger, as though he had been considering the
advisability of such a move for quite a period of time, “I mout.”
With no further urging he wriggled through a gap in the hedge and
stood at the foot of the steps, revealing himself as a small, wiry,
rust-coloured man. Anybody with an eye to see could tell that in his
youth he must have been as redheaded, as a pochard drake. Despite
abundant streakings of grey in his hair he was still redheaded, with
plentiful whiskers to match, and on his nose a pair of steel-rimmed
spectacles, and on his face and neck a close sowing of the biggest,
intensest freckles Sergeant Bagby had ever beheld. They spangled his
skin as with red asterisks, and the gnarled hand he extended in greeting
as he mounted the porch looked as though in its time it had mixed at
least one million bran mashes.
Achieving a somewhat wabbly standing posture in his keeler, the sergeant
welcomed him in due form.
“I don't live here myself,” he explained, “but I reckin you might say
I'm in full charge, seein' ez I crippled myself up this mornin' and
had to stay behind this evenin'. Come in and take a cheer and rest
yourself.”
“Thanky!” said the freckly one. “I mout do that too.” He did. His voice
had a nasal smack to it which struck the sergeant as being alien. “I
didn't ketch the name,” he said. “Mine's Bloomfield---Christian name,
Ezra H.”
“Mine's Bagby,” stated the sergeant--“late of King's Hell Hounds. You've
probably heard of that command--purty nigh everybody in these parts
has.”
“Veteran myself,” said Mr. Bloomfield briskly. “Served four years and
two months. Enlisted at fust call for volunteers.”
“Started in kind of early myself,” said the sergeant, mechanically
catching for the moment the other's quality of quick, clipped speech.
“But say, look here, pardner,” he added, resuming his own natural tone,
“whut's the reason you ain't out yonder at that there Colosseum with all
the other boys this evenin'?”
A whimsical squint brought the red eyelashes dose together.
“Well,” stated Mr. Bloomfield, rummaging with a deliberate hand in the
remote inner fastnesses of his whiskers, “I couldn't scursely say that I
b'long out there.” Then he halted, as if there was no more to be said.
“You told me you served all the way through, didn't you?” asked the
sergeant, puzzled.
“So I told you and so I did,” said Mr. Bloomfield; “but I didn't tell
you which side it was I happened to be a-servin' on. Twentieth Indiana
Infantry--that's my regiment, and a good smart one it was too.”
“Oh!” said Sergeant Bagby, slightly shocked by the suddenness of this
enlightenment--“Oh! Well, set down anyway, Mr. Bloomfield. Excuse
me--you're already settin', ain't you?”
For a fraction of a minute they contemplated each other, Sergeant Bagby
being slightly flustered and Mr. Bloomfield to all appearances perfectly
calm. The sergeant cleared his throat, but it was the visitor who spoke:
“I've got a fust-rate memory for faces, and the like; and when I
fust seen you settin' here you had a kind of familiar cut to your jib
someway. That's one reason why I hailed you. I wonder now if we didn't
meet up with one another acrost the smoke back yonder in those former
days? I'd take my oath I seen you somewheres.”
“I shouldn't be surprised,” answered Sergeant Bagby. “All durin' that
war I was almost constantly somewheres.”
“Fust Bull Run--I wonder could it 'a' been there?” suggested Mr.
Bloomfield.
“First Manassas, you mean,” corrected the sergeant gently, but
none-the-less firmly. “Was you there or thereabout by any chance?” Mr.
Bloomfield nodded. “Me too,” said Sergeant Bagby--“on detached service.
Mebbe,” he added it softly--“mebbe ef you'd turn round I'd know you by
your back.”
If the blow went home Mr. Bloomfield, like a Spartan of the Hoosiers,
hid his wounds. Outwardly he gave no sign.
“P'raps so,” he assented mildly; then: “How 'bout Gettysburg?”
The sergeant fell into the trap that was digged for him. The sergeant
was proud of his services in the East.
“You bet your bottom dollar I was there!” he proclaimed--“all three
days.”
“Then p'raps you'd better turn round too,” said Mr. Bloomfield in
honeyed accents, “and mebbe it mout be I'd be able to reckernise you by
the shape of your spinal colyum.”
Up rose Sergeant Bagby, his face puckering in a grin and his hand
outstretched. High up his back his coat peaked out behind like the tail
of a he-mallard.
“Pardner,” he announced, “I'm right glad I didn't kill you when I had
all them chances.”
“Cumrud,” replied Mr. Bloomfield, “on the whole and considerin' of
everything, I don't regret now that I spared you.”
If Sergeant Bagby had but worn a Confederate goatee, which he didn't,
being smooth-shaved; and if he hadn't been standing mid-shin-deep in
a foot-tub; and if only Mr. Bloomfield's left shirtsleeve, instead of
being comfortably full of freckled arm, had been empty and pinned to the
bosom of his waistcoat--they might have posed just as they stood then
for the popular picture entitled _North and South United_ which you
will find on the outer cover of the Memorial Day edition of every
well-conducted Sunday newspaper in the land. But that is ever the way
with real life--it so often departs from its traditional aspects. After
a bit the sergeant spoke.
“I was jest thinkin',” he said dreamily.
“So was I,” assented Mr. Bloomfield. “I wonder now if it could be so
that we both of us had our minds on the same pleasin' subject?”
“I was jest thinkin',” repeated the sergeant, “that merely because the
Bloody Chasm is bridged over ain't no fittin' reason why it shouldn't be
slightly irrigated frum time to time.”
“My idee to a jot,” agreed Mr. Bloomfield heartily. “Seems as if the
dust of conflict has been a-floatin' round loose long enough to stand a
little dampin' down.”
“Ef only I was at home now,” continued Sergeant Bagby, “I'd be able to
put my hand on somethin' handy for moistenin' purposes; but, seein' as
I'm a visitor here, I ain't in no position to extend the hospitalities
suitable to the occasion.”
“Sho, now! Don't let that fret you,” soothed Mr. Bloomfield--“not with
me livin' next door.” He nimbly descended the steps, but halted at the
bottom: “Cumrud, how do you take yours--straight or toddy?”
“Sugar and water don't hurt none--in moderation,” replied the sergeant.
“But look here, pardner, this here is a preacher's front porch. We don't
want to be puttin' any scandal on him.”
“I'd already figured that out too,” said the provident Mr. Bloomfield.
“I'll bring her over in a couple of chiny teacups.”
The smile which, starting from the centre, spread over the sergeant's
face like ripples over a pond had not entirely faded away when in a
miraculously short time Mr. Bloomfield returned, a precious votive
offering poised accurately in either hand. “Bagby,” he said, “that's
somethin' extry prime in the line of York-state rye!”
“Is it?” said the sergeant. “Well, I reckin the sugar comes frum
Newerleans and that oughter take the curse off. Bloomfield, here's
lookin' toward you!”
“Same to you, Bagby!”
China clicked pleasantly on china as teacup bottom touched teacup brim,
this sound being succeeded instantly by a series of soft sipping sounds.
Sitting thus, his eyes beaming softly over the bulge of his upturned cup
and his lips drawing in the last lingering drops of sirupy sweetness,
the sergeant became aware of a man clumping noisily along the
sidewalk--an old man in a collarless hickory shirt, with a mouse-grey
coat dangling over one arm and mouse-grey trousers upheld by home-made
braces. He was a tail, sparse, sinewy old man, slightly withered, yet
erect, of a build to remind one of a blasted pine; his brow was very
stormy and he talked to himself as he walked. His voice but not his
words came to the sergeant in a rolling, thundery mutter.
“Hey, pardner!” called Sergeant Bagby, holding his emptied cup
breast-high. “Goin' some-wheres or jest travellin' round?”
The passer-by halted and regarded him gloomily over the low palings of
the Reverend Doctor Grundy's fence.
“Well,” he made slow answer, “I don't know ez it's anybody's business;
but, since you ast me, I ain't headin' fur no place in particular--I'm
tryin' to walk a mad off.”
“Come right on in here then,” advised the sergeant, “we've got the
cure fur that complaint.” He glanced sideways toward his companion.
“Bloomfield, this here love feast looks mighty like she might grow a
little. Do you reckin you've got another one of them teacups over at
your place, right where you could put your hands on it easy?”
“That's a chore which won't be no trouble whatsoever,” agreed Mr.
Bloomfield; and he made as if to go on the errand, but stopped at the
porch edge just inside the vines as the lone pedestrian, having opened
the gate, came slowly toward them. The newcomer put his feet down hard
on the bricks; slashes of angry colour like red flares burned under the
skin over his high and narrow cheekbones.
“Gabe Ezell--Cherokee Rifles,” he said abruptly as he mounted the steps;
“that's my name and my command.”
“I'm Sergeant Bagby, of King's Hell Hounds, and monstrous glad to
make your acquaintance,” vouchsafed, for his part, the sergeant. “This
gentleman here is my friend, Major Bloomfield. Take a cheer and set
down, pardner, and rest your face and hands a spell. You look like you
might be a little bit put out about something?” The stranger uttered
a grunt that might mean anything at all or nothing at all. He lowered
himself into a chair and tugged at the collarless band of his shirt as
though it choked him. The sergeant, pleasingly warmed to the core of his
being, was not to be daunted. He put another question:
“Whut's the reason you ain't out to the speakin'? I'm sort of lamed up
myse'f--made the fatal mistake of tryin' to break in a pair of
Dam-Yankee shoes on a couple of Southern-Rights feet. I'm purty well
reconciled, I reckin; but my feet appear to be still unreconstructed,
frum what I kin gather.” Chuckling, he glanced downward at the stubborn
members. “But there don't seem to be nothin' wrong with you--without
it's your feelin's.”
“I was figgerin' some on goin' out there,” began the tall old man, “but
I couldn't git there on time--I've been at the calaboose.” He finished
the confession in a sort of defiant blurt.
“You don't say so!” said the sergeant wonderingly, and commiseratingly
too; and from where he stood on the top step the newly bre-vetted major
evidenced his sympathy in a series of deprecatory clucks. The third man
glared from one to the other of them.
“Oh, I ain't ashamed of it none,” he went on stormily. “Ef I had it to
do over agin I'd do it agin the very same way. I may not be so young ez
I was oncet, but anybody that insults the late Southern Confederacy to
my face is breedin' trouble for hisse'f--I don't care ef he's as big as
a mountain!”
From the depths of the foot-tub came small splashing sounds, and little
wavelets rose over its sides and plopped upon the porch floor.
“I reckin sech a thing as that might pester me a little bit my own
se'f,” stated the sergeant softly. “Yes, suh; you might safely venture
that under them circumstances I would become kind of irritated myse'f.
Who done it?”
“I'll tell you,” said Mr. Ezell, “and let you boys be the jedges of
whether I done the right thing. After the parade was through with this
mornin' me and some of the other boys from down my way was knockin'
round. I got separated from the rest of 'em someway and down yond' on
that main street--I'm a stranger in this town and I don't rightly recall
its name, but it's the main street, whar all them stores is--well,
anyway, down there I come past whar one of these here movin'-picture
to-dos was located. It had a lot of war pictures stuck up out in front
of it and a big sign that said on it: At the Cannon's Mouth! So, not
havin' nothin' else to do, I paid my ten cents to a young lady at the
door and went on in. They gimme a seat right down in frontlike, and
purty soon after that they started throwin' them pictures on a big white
sheet--a screen, I think they calls it.
“Well, suhs, at the fust go-off it was purty good. I got consider'bly
interested--I did so. There was a house come on the sheet that looked
powerful like several places that I knows of down in Middle Georgia,
whar I come frum; and there was several young ladies dressed up like
they used to dress up back in the old days when we was all young fellows
together. Right off, though, one of the young ladies--the purtiest
one of the lot and the spryest-actin'--she fell in love with a Yankee
officer. That jarred me up a little; yet, after all, it mout 'a'
happened and, besides, he wasn't sech a bad young fellow--fur a Yankee.
He saved the young lady's brother when the brother come home frum the
army to see his sick baby and was about to be ketched fur a spy. Yes,
suhs; I've got to admit that there Yankee behaved very decently in the
matter.
“Well, purty soon after the lovin' part was over they come to the
fightin' part, and a string band began to play war pieces. I must say
I got right smartly worked up 'long about there. Them fellows that
was dressed up ez soldiers looked too tony and slick to be real
natchel--there didn't seem to be nary one of 'em wearin' a shirt that
needed searchin', the way it was when we-all was out soldierin'--but ef
you'd shet your eyes 'bout halfway you could mighty nigh imagine it was
the real thing agin. A battery of our boys went into action on the
aidge of a ploughed field and you could see the smoke bustin' out of the
muzzles of the pieces, and you could hear the pieces go off, kerboom!--I
don't know how they worked that part of it, but they did; and 'way over
yond' in a piece of woods you could see the Yankees jest a-droppin'. I
seem to recollect standin' up long about there and givin' a yell or two
myself; but in a minute or so a whole lot more Yankees come chargin' out
of the timber, and they begin to drive our boys back.
“That didn't seem right to me--that didn't seem no way to have it. I
reckin, though, I might 'a' stood that, only in less'n no time a-tall
our boys was throwin' away their guns and some of 'em was runnin' away,
and some of 'em was throwin' up their hands and surrenderin'! And
the Yankees was chargin' in amongst 'em, a-cut-tin' and slashin' and
shootin', and takin' prisoners right and left. It was a scandalous
thing--and a lie besides! It couldn't never 'a' happened noway.”
His voice, deep and grumbling before, became sharply edged with mounting
emotion. Mr. Bloomfield looked away to avoid exposing a happy grin,
new-born among his whiskers. It was Sergeant Bagby who spoke, the
intention on his part being to soothe rather than to inflame.
“Pardner,” he said, “you've got to remember it wasn't nothin' but jest
play-actin'--jest hired hands makin' believe that it was so.”
“I don't care none ef it was,” snapped Mr. Ezell. “And, besides, whut's
that got to do with it--with the principle of the thing? It was
a deliberate insult flung right in the face of the late Southern
Confederacy--that and nothin' short of it. Well, I stood it jest as long
as I natchelly could--and that wasn't very long, neither, lemme tell
you, gentlemen.”
“Then whut?” inquired Sergeant Bagby, bending forward in his seat.
“Then I up with my cheer and chunked it right through their dad-burned,
lyin' sheet--that's whut I done! I busted a big hole in her right whar
there was a smart-alecky Yankee colonel sailin' acrost on a horse. I
says: 'Here's a few reinforcements frum the free state of Georgia!' And
I let him have it with the cheer, kefrblim! That there battle broke up
right then and there. And that's how I come to go to the calaboose.”
Mr. Bloomfield, now rigidly erect, and with no grin on his face, opened
his lips to say something; but Sergeant Bagby beat him to it.
“Pardner,” he asked incredulously, “did they lock you up jest fur doin'
that?”
“No,” said the heated Mr. Ezell, “they didn't really lock me up a-tall.
But the secont I throwed that cheer there was a lot of yellin' and
scrabblin' round, and the lights went up, and the string band quit
playin' its piece and here come a-runnin' an uppidy-lookin' man--he was
the one that run the show, I take it--bleatin' out somethin' about me
havin' broke up his show and him wantin' damages. He made the mistake of
grabbin' holt of me and callin' me a name that I don't purpose to have
nobody usin' on me. He wanted damages. Well, right there he got 'em!”
He raised a bony fist, on which the knuckles were all barked and raw,
and gazed at it fondly, as though these were most honourable scars.
“So then, after that, a couple of them other show people they drug him
away frum whar he was layin' on the floor a-yellin',” he went on, “and a
town policeman come in and taken me off to the calaboose in a hack, with
a crowd followin' 'long behind. But when we got there the gentleman that
was runnin' the place--he wore blue clothes and I jedge from his costume
and deportment he must 'a' been the town marshal--he listened to whut
we-all had to say, and he taken a look at that there showman's busted
jaw and sort of grinned to hisse'f; then he said that, seein' as all us
old soldiers had the freedom of the city for the time bein', he 'lowed
he'd let the whole matter drop right whar it was providin' I'd give
him my solemn promise not to go projectin' round no more movin'-picture
places endurin' of my stay in their midst. Well, ef they're all like
the one I seen to-day it's goin' to be a powerful easy promise fur me
to keep--I know that! But that's how I come to miss the doin's this
evenin'--I missed my dinner too--and that's how I come to be walkin' way
out here all by myse'f.”
In the pause that followed Mr. Bloomfield saw his chance. Mr.
Bloomfield's voice had a crackling tone in it, like fire running through
broom-sedge.
“Lookyhere, my friend!” he demanded crisply. “Ain't you been kind of
flyin' in the face of history as well as the movin'-picture industry?
Seems to me I recall that you pleg-taked Rebs got a blamed good lickin'
about ever' once in so often, or even more frequently than that. If my
memory serves me right it seems to me you did indeed!”
Mr. Ezell swung in his chair and the spots in his cheeks spread until
his whole face burned a brick-dust red.' Sergeant Jimmy Bagby threw
himself into the breach. Figuratively speaking, he had both arms full of
heartsease and rosemary.
“In reguards to the major here”--he indicated Mr. Bloomfield with a
gracious gesture of amity--“I furgot to tell you that he taken a rather
prominent part--on the other side frum us.”
As Mr. Ezell's choler rose his brows came down and lowered.
“Huh!” said Mr. Ezell with deadly slowness. “Whut's a Yankee doin' down
here in this country?”
“Doin' fairly well,” answered Mr. Bloomfield. “F'r instance, he's payin'
taxes on that there house next door.” He flirted his whiskered chin over
his left shoulder. “F'r instance, also, he's runnin' the leadin' tannery
and saddle-works of this city, employin' sixteen hands regular. Also,
he was elected a justice of the peace a week ago last We'nesday by his
fellow citizens, regardless of politics or religion--thanky for askin'!
“Also,” he went on, his freckles now standing out beautifully against a
mounting pink background--“Also and furthermore, he remembers distinctly
having been present on a number of occasions when he helped to lick you
Seceshers good and proper. And if you think, my friend, that I'm goin'
to abate one jot or tittle from that statement you're barkin' up the
wrong tree, I tell you!”
Now behold in the rôle of peacemaker Sergeant Jimmy Bagby rising
grandly erect to his full height, but keeping his feet and ankles in the
foottub.
“Say, listen here, Major,” he pleaded, “ef you kin kindly see your
way clear to abatin' a few jots on behalf of Indiana I'll bet you I kin
induce Georgia to throw off every blamed tittle he's got in stock. And
then ef Indiana kin dig up another of them delightful teacups of his'n
I believe I kin guarantee that Kintucky and Georgia will join him in
pourin' a small but nourishin' libation upon the altar of friendship,
not to mention the thresholds of a reunited country. Ain't I got the
right notion, boys? Of course I have! And then, as soon as we-all git
settled down agin comfortable I'm goin' to tell you two boys something
mighty interestin' that come up oncet when I was on hand and heared the
whole thing. Did I mention to you before that I belonged to King's Hell
Hounds?”
Diplomacy surely lost an able advocate in the spring of 1865 when
Sergeant Bagby laid down the sword to take up retail groceries. As
soothing oil upon roiled waters his words fell; they fell even as sweet
unguents upon raw wounds. And, besides, just then Mr. Ezell caught
a whiff of a most delectable and appealing aroma as the sergeant, on
concluding his remarks with a broad-armed gesture, swished his teacup
directly under Mr. Ezell's nose.
Probably not more than ten or twelve minutes had pleasantly elapsed--it
usually took the sergeant twenty to tell in all its wealth of detail
the story of what General Breckinridge said to General Buckner, and
what General Buckner said in reply to General Breckinridge, and he was
nowhere near the delectable climax yet--when an interruption came.
Into the ken of these three old men, seated in a row upon the parsonage
porch, there came up the street a pair whose gait and general air of
flurriment and haste instantly caught and held their attention. Side by
side sped a young woman and a young man--a girl and a boy rather, for
she looked to be not more than eighteen or, say, nineteen, and he at
the most not more than twenty-one or so. Here they came, getting nearer,
half-running, panting hard, the girl with her hands to her breast,
and both of them casting quick, darting glances backward over their
shoulders as though fearing pursuit.
“Well,” said Mr. Bloomfield, “all the excitement appears to be happenin'
round here this afternoon. I wonder now what ails them two young
people?” He squinted through his glasses at the nearing couple. “Why,
the gal is that pore little Sally Fannie Gibson that lives over here on
the next street. Do tell now!”
He rose; so, a moment later, did his companions, for the youth had
jerked Doctor Grundy's gate open and both of them were scudding up the
walk toward them. Doubtless because of their agitation the approaching
two seemed to notice nothing unusual in the fact that these three
elderly men, rising at their coming, should each be holding in his
right hand a large china teacup, and that one, the central figure of the
three, and the largest of bulk, should be planted ankle-deep and better
in a small green tub, rising from it at an interested angle, like some
new kind of plump, round potted plant.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped the girl; she clung to the lowermost post of the
step-rail. “Where is Doctor Grundy, please? We must see Doctor Grundy
right away--right this minute!”
“We want him to marry us!” exclaimed the youth, blurting it out.
“We've got the license,” the girl said. “Harvey's got it in his pocket.”
“And here it is!” said the youth, producing the document and holding it
outspread in a shaking hand. It appeared crumpled, but valid.
It was but proper that Sergeant Bagby, in his capacity as host pro tem,
should do the necessary explaining.
“Well now, young lady and young gentleman,” he said, “I'm sorry to have
to disappoint you--monstrous sorry--but, to tell you the truth, the
Reverend Doctor Grundy ain't here; in fact, we ain't lookin' fur him
back fur quite some time yit.”
“He is reunionisin' at the Pastime Skating Rink,” volunteered Mr.
Bloomfield. “You'll have to wait a while, Sally Fannie.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, “we can't wait--we just can't wait! We were
counting on him. And now--Oh, what shall we do, Harvey?”
Shrinking up against the railing she wrung her hands. The sergeant
observed that she was a pretty little thing--small and shabby, but
undeniably pretty, even in her present state of fright. There were tears
in her eyes. The boy was trembling.
“You'd both better come in and take a cheer and ca'm yourselves,” said
the sergeant. “Let's talk it over and see whut we-all kin do.”
“I tell you we can't wait!” gulped the girl, beginning to sob in
earnest. “My stepfather is liable to come any minute! I'm as 'fraid as
death of him. He's found out about the license--he's looking for us
now to stop us. Oh, Harvey! Harvey! And this was our only chance!”
She turned to her sweetheart and he put both his arms round her
protectingly.
“I know that stepfather of yours,” put in Mr. Bloomfield, in a tone
which indicated that he did not know much about him that was good or
wholesome. “What's his main objection to you and this young fellow
gittin' married? Ain't you both of age?”
“Yes, we are--both of us; but he don't want me to marry at all,” burst
from the girl. “He just wants me to stay at home and slave and slave and
slave! And he don't like Harvey--he hates him! Harvey hasn't been
living here very long, and he pretends he don't know anything about
Har-rr-r-vey.”
She stretched the last word out in a pitiful, long-drawn quaver.
“He don't like Harvey, eh?” repeated Mr. Bloomfield. “Well, that's one
thing in Harvey's favour anyway. Young man,” he demanded briskly, “kin
you support a wife?”
“Yes, sir,” spoke up Harvey; “I can. I've got a good job and I'm making
good pay--I'm in the engineering crew that came down from Chicago last
month to survey the new short line over to Knoxville.”
“Oh, what are we wasting all this time for?” broke in the desperate
Sally Fannie. “Don't you-all know--didn't I tell you that he's right
close behind us? And he'll kill Harvey! I know he will--and then I'll
die too! Oh, don't be standing there talking! Tell us what to do,
somebody--or show us where to hide!”
Mr. Bloomfield's dappled hand waggled his brindled whiskers agitatedly.
Mr. Ezell tugged at his hickory neckband; very possibly his thoughts
were upon that similar situation of a Northern wooer and a Southern
maid as depicted in the lately interrupted film drama entitled At the
Cannon's Mouth. Like a tethered pachyderm, Sergeant Bagby swayed his
form upon his stationary underpinning.
“Little gal, I most certainly do wisht there was something I could do!”
began Mr. Bloomfield, the spirit of romance all aglow within his elderly
and doubtless freckled bosom.
“Well, there is, Major!” shouted the sergeant suddenly. “Shore as gun's
iron, there's somethin' you kin do! Didn't you tell us boys not half an
hour ago you was a jestice of the peace?”
“Yes, I did!”
“Then marry 'em yourself!” It wasn't a request--it was a command,
whoopingly, triumphantly given.
“Cumrud,” said Mr. Bloomfield, “I hadn't thought of it--why, so I
could!”
“Oh, could you?” Sally Fannie's head came up and her cry had hope in it
now. “And would you do it--right quick?”
Unexpected stage fright overwhelmed Mr. Bloomfield.
“I've took the oath of office, tubby sure--but I ain't never performed
no marriage ceremony--I don't even remember how it starts,” he
confessed.
“Think it up as you go 'long,” advised Sergeant Bagby.
“Whutever you say is bindin' on all parties concerned--I know that much
law.” It was the first time since the runaways arrived that Mr. Ezell
had broken silence, but his words had potency and pith.
“But there has got to be witnesses--two witnesses,” parried Mr.
Bloomfield, still filled with the buck-ague qualms of the amateur.
“Whut's the matter with me and him fur witnesses?” cried Sergeant Bagby,
pointing toward Mr. Ezell. He wrestled a thin gold band off over a
stubborn fingerjoint. “Here's even a weddin' ring!”
The boy, who had been peering down the silent street, with a tremulous
hand cupped over his anxious eyes, gave a little gasp of despair and
plucked at the girl's sleeve. She turned--and saw then what he had
already seen.
“Oh, it's too late! It's too late!” she quavered, cowering down. “There
he comes yonder!”
“'Tain't no sech of a thing!” snapped Sergeant Bagby, actively in
command of the situation. “You two young ones come right up here on
this porch and git behind me and take hands. Indiana, perceed with your
ceremony! Georgia and Kintucky, stand guard!” With big spread-eagle
gestures he shepherded the elopers into the shelter of his own wide
bulk.
A man with a red, passionate face and mean, squinty eyes, who ran along
the nearer sidewalk, looking this way and that, saw indistinctly through
the vines the pair he sought, and, clearing the low fence at a bound, he
came tearing across the grassplot, his heels tearing deep gouges in the
turf. His voice gurgled hoarsely in his throat as he tried to utter--all
at once--commands and protests, threats and curses.
From somewhere behind Sergeant Bagby's broad back came the last feebly
technical objection of the officiating functionary:
“But, cumruds, somebody's got to give the bride away!”
“I give the bride away, dad-gum you!” blared Sergeant Bagby at the top
of his vocal register. “King's Hell Hounds give the bride away!”
Thus, over his shoulder, did Sergeant Bagby give the bride away; and
then he faced front, with chest expanded and the light of battle in his
eyes.
Vociferating, blasphemous, furious, Sally Fannie's tyrant charged the
steps and then recoiled at their foot. A lean, sinewy old man in a
hickory shirt barred his way, and just beyond this barrier a stout old
man with his feet in a foot-tub loomed both large and formidable. For
the moment baffled, he gave voice to vain and profane foolishness.
“Stop them two!” he yelled, his rage making him almost inarticulate.
“She ain't of age--and even ef she is I ain't agoin' to have this!”
“Say, ain't you got no politeness a'tall!” inquired Mr. Ezell,
of Georgia. “Don't you see you're interruptin' the holy rites of
matrimony--carryin' on thataway?”
“That's whut I aim to do, blame you!” howled the other, now sensing for
the first time the full import of the situation. “I'll matrimony her,
the little----” He spat out the foulest word our language yields for
fouler tongues to use. “That ain't all--I'll cut the heart out of the
man that interferes!”
Driving his right hand into his right trousers pocket he cleared the
three lower steps at a bound and teetered upon his toes on the very edge
of the fourth one.
In the act of making his hand into a fist Mr. Ezell discovered he could
not do so by reason of his fingers being twined in the handle of a
large, extra-heavy ironstone-china teacup. So he did the next best
thing--he threw the cup with all his might, which was considerable.
At close range this missile took the enemy squarely in the chest and
staggered him back. And as he staggered back, clutching to regain his
balance, Mr. Bloomfield, standing somewhat in the rear and improvising
as fast as his tongue could wag, uttered the concluding, fast-binding
words: “Therefore I pernounce you man and wife; and, whatever you do,
don't never let nobody come betwixt you, asunderin' you apart!”
With a lightning-fast dab of his whiskers he kissed the bride--he had a
flashing intuition that this was required by the ritual--shoved the
pair inside Doctor Grundy's front hall, slammed the door behind them,
snatched up Sergeant Bagby's rusted rifle from where it leaned against
Doctor Grundy's porch post, and sprang forward in a posture combining
defence and offense. All in a second or two Mr. Bloomfield did this.
Even so, his armed services were no longer required; for Sergeant Jimmy
Bagby stepped nimbly out of his tub, picked it up in both hands and
turned it neatly yet crashingly upside down upon the head of the bride's
step-parent--so that its contents, which had been cold and were still
coolish, cascaded in swishing gallons down over his person, effectually
chilling the last warlike impulse of his drenched and dripping bosom,
and rendering him in one breath whipped, choked and tamed.
“With the compliments of the Southern Confederacy!” said Sergeant Bagby,
so doing.
The shadows on the grass lay lank and attenuated when the folks came
back from the Pastime Rink. Sergeant Bagby sat alone upon Doctor
Grundy's porch. There were puddles of spilt water on porch and step
and the walk below, and a green foot-tub, now empty, stood on its side
against the railings. The sergeant was drawing his white yarn socks on
over his water-bleached shanks.
“Well, suh, Jimmy,” said Judge Priest as he came up under the vines,
“you certainly missed it this evenin'. That was the best speech Gen'l
Tige Gracey ever made in his whole life. It certainly was a wonder and a
jo-darter!”
“Whut was the subject, cumrud?” asked Sergeant Bagby.
“Fraternal Strife and Brotherly Love,” replied the judge. “He jest
natchelly dug up the hatchet and then he reburied her ag'in--reburied
her miles deep under Cherokee roses and magnolia blossoms. But how's
your feet? I reckon you've had a purty toler'ble lonesome time settin'
here, ain't you?”
“I see--love and war! War and love,” commented the sergeant softly.
Before answering further, he raised his head and glanced over the top
of the intervening hedge toward the house next door. From its open door
issued confused sounds of which he alone knew the secret--it was Georgia
trying to teach Indiana the words and music of the song entitled Old
Virginny Never Tire!
“Oh, my feet are mighty nigh cured,” said he; “and I ain't had such a
terrible lonesome time as you might think fur either--cumrud.”
“That's the _second_ time you've called me that,” said Judge Priest
suspiciously. “Whut does it mean?”
“Oh, that? That's a fureign word I picked up to-day.” And Sergeant Bagby
smiled gently. “It's a pet name the Yankees use when they mean pardner!”