There is some quality which possesses the soul of a good old negro that
gives them a power not granted to other men. They have, above
everything, the power to inspire confidence, to win confidences. Perhaps
this is because of their simplicity, or because of their vast sympathy.
White children in the South will love and trust their darky friends and
will share with them those intimate secrets of childhood from which even
parents are excluded. These old darkies have a talisman against the
griefs that visit others; they soothe the sufferer, they murmur:
“Nemmine, now chile,” and the suffering is forgotten. In their own
sorrows they wail and lament theatrically, and tear their hair and vent
without restraint their primitive despair. But when white folks weep,
the darky has comfort to give, and gives it.... To tell them a secret is
like whispering it to one’s own self; there is the bliss of confession
without the anguish of knowing that one’s shame is shared. It is easy to
tell, hard to rebuff their gentle inquiries....
Jim Forrest was never able to understand how he had been led to unbosom
himself to old Eph; but he did. The negro took him over Beacon Hill, and
down one thin and dingy street, and then another; and so into a boarding
house, and up to the room where Eph dwelt. This room was as clean as a
new pin; it was meagerly furnished; yet it was comfortable. It was tiny,
but it was large enough to be a home. Eph made Jim welcome there; he
sat the boy down; he talked to him....
And Jim, who had come to hear Eph’s story, found himself talking while
Eph listened. And though he held his head high and steadily, there was
in the boy’s tones something of the longing that possessed him,
something of the shame that oppressed him because he could not be out
and doing like his fellows. Day broke and found them there together; and
it was two hours after dawn before Jim left at last, comforted in a way
he could not understand, cheered and content as he had not been for
months, steady and unafraid....
He did not realize till that night that he had failed to get Eph’s
story.
Old Eph, when the boy was gone, sat down on his bed and put his head in
his hands and thought hard. He was a shrewd old man, for all his
simplicity; and the fruits of his thoughts were action. He knew what he
wished to do, he considered only the method; and when this was chosen at
length, he took his hat and went out, and up over the Hill, and down
Beacon street to find the man he sought.
He waited humbly in an outer office till this man could see him. When he
was admitted, he fumbled in his inner pocket for a dog-eared little bank
book, and went in.
Jim Forrest, the day after, received a registered letter. This letter
contained a check for eleven hundred dollars; and it read briefly:
“I am instructed by my client to hand you this check, and to inform you
that there will be mailed, each week, to your mother, for an indefinite
period hereafter, a check for ten dollars. I have no further
instructions, except to preserve absolute secrecy.”
The letter ended in due legal form.
Jim, thereafter, did three things. The first was to go to the lawyer who
had sent the letter and ask who had given the money. He got no answer.
The second was to seek out old Eph and accuse him of sending it. At
which Eph cackled joyfully.
“Lawdy, suh,” the old darky chuckled guilelessly. “Where you think I
gwine git ’leven hunnerd dollars. Don’ you joke an old man, boy.”
The third thing Jim did, when he gave up hope of discovering the
identity of his benefactor, was to enlist.
V
One of the charms of old Eph’s nightly performances at his chosen spot
near the subway kiosk was that he never asked for money. The mercenary
side of his activities was never prominent. It was his custom to remain,
sitting cross-legged upon the paving, from beginning to end. He never
rose to pass his hat or his palm solicitously among the listeners; and
he never went so far as to set a tin cup or a similar receptacle
invitingly beside him. If coins were tossed his way, he caught them with
skinny fingers or inverted banjo; if none were tossed, no matter. Eph
never complained.
But about the time Jim Forrest enlisted, it was remarked that old Eph
began to grow greedy. At first he interspersed among his songs little
half-caught remarks about the exceeding hard times; the high cost of
living, even for a dry old darky; and the necessity of eating which
possesses every man. A little later, he introduced the custom of passing
his battered old hat out through the crowd. He never carried it from man
to man himself; he simply tossed it to the nearest, and then broke into
a gay and chuckling melody to hide his own confusion while it went from
hand to hand and came back to him. Eventually, he fell into the habit of
leaving his hat, bottom side up, upon the paving between his feet; and
he referred now and then, in his songs, to the necessity for putting
coins into it.
Some people who had known Eph for a good many years thought he was
becoming miserly. They told stories, from man to man, about beggars of
whom they had heard who owned half a dozen apartment houses out in
Dorchester. And they quit coming to hear Eph sing. Others deplored the
old man’s avarice, but gave. Still others decided that the high cost of
living must have hit Eph hard, and offered to help him.
All in all, his earnings did increase. His old, unbusiness-like
arrangement had in the past sufficed. There was always a little money;
there was sometimes a considerable sum. He might go home with one
dollar, or two, or even five; or he might trudge up the hill with only a
few pennies to show for his night’s singing. On the whole, however,
there had always been enough. He lived in some measure of comfort; and
he laid up something for a rainy day. This hoard had been long years
accumulating....
Eph told no one his troubles; no one had known of his little wealth; no
one knew that it was gone. Eph was bankrupt; and not only that, but he
had mortgaged his earnings. He had pledged his future. He had given
hostages to fortune. He had promised to find and send to Jim Forrest’s
mother the sum of ten dollars every week.
And in spite of the fact that in the past he had never averaged earning
ten dollars a week, he proposed to keep his word.
He believed, in the beginning, that this would not be hard. He would
have to demean himself, to ask for money, to invite gifts.... The
thought irked him; yet he was ready to do it. And to help out, he
himself prepared to make sacrifices. Down in his boarding house, he gave
up his comfortable little two dollar room and took another, in the very
top of the house, which cost him half a dollar less. Likewise he cut
down on his food. He gave up altogether the sliced, roast ham that had
always been his delight; the occasional eggs; the bananas. He ate
meagerly, and scouted the scolding insistences of his old colored
landlady when she tried to force food upon him.
“I ain’ no beggar, Mis’ Hopkins,” he told her, over and over. “When old
Eph cain’ pay his way, he gwine git out o’ here to som’eres where he
can.”
In the beginning, matters went well enough. The people who stopped to
listen to his singing opened their purses at his unwilling hints to
them. He was able to take the promised ten dollars to the lawyer every
week, and to live on what remained. And when he heard Jim Forrest was in
the army, the old darky sang in a fashion that he had not equalled for
a dozen years, and the next day he boasted to his landlady of the
matter.
“Ol’ Eph ain’ here, at all, Mis’ Hopkins,” he told her gleefully. “Y’all
jes’ thinks he is. He ain’ here, I’m tellin’ you.”
She shooed him, with fat hands. “Go ’long, Eph, you ol’ scamp,” she
scolded.
“I’m tellin’ you,” he repeated. “Eph ain’ here. Ol’ Eph’s in de army,
now. Ain’ old Eph no more; he’s a fine, stroppin’ boy big enough to cut
de Dutch. A fixin’ tuh fight, Mis’ Hopkins. A fixin’ tuh fight!”
“Whut you tryin’ let out, anyhows?” she demanded. “You sayin’ somethin;
or is you jes’ talkin’ th’ough yore hat?”
“I’m tellin’ you,” he chanted. “Eph’s in de army, now.”
But he did not lay bare his secret to her, even then. Eph knew white
folks. He knew that Jim Forrest wouldn’t want it noised abroad that a
nigger street singer was supporting his mother. And he kept his tongue
in his head; but he exulted. He carried his old head high; and when he
met on the street one day that Sergeant Hare who had refused him
enlistment, Eph went into a fit of merriment that made the Sergeant
think the old darky had gone witless.
“Dat man ’lowed he ’uz gwine keep me out o’ dis here war,” he boasted to
Mis’ Hopkins next day. “But I showed him. Old Eph showed whut ’uz whut.”
“Yo’re crazy,” Mis’ Hopkins told him scornfully. “Git out o’ my way.”
Eph told his lawyer, the next week, to ask Jim’s mother to give them
word of Jim; and when she wrote, two weeks later, that the boy had been
admitted to an officer’s training camp, Eph danced on his bowed legs,
and told Mis’ Hopkins loftily that she would have to step lively now.
“Howcome?” she demanded.
“’Caze I’m an orf’cer now,” Eph told her proudly.
“Yo’re bughouse,” she assured him. “De booby man’ll git you.”
Eph thought nothing of her word at that time; but two or three weeks
later, it was repeated in a way that frightened him.
He had fallen into the habit of acting a little comedy of his own; a
habit infinitely soothing to his soul. When he climbed the Hill every
night, on his way home, he passed the Shaw Memorial, and he had always
stopped to look at it. Now he fell into the habit of marching stiffly
down the middle of the road to face the Memorial, and of coming to a
halt there, standing at attention, and saluting after the ancient
fashion of his Rebellion days. He used to fancy that the eyes in the
sculptured faces of the marching soldiers turned sidewise to look at
him; he used to imagine that the arm of the officer graven in the stone
flicked upward in an answering gesture. And there were nights when he
stood thus for a minute or two, speaking his thoughts aloud....
Walter Ragan came upon him so, one bleak dawn in mid-November. Old Eph,
very stiff and straight, was saying respectfully:
“Yas suh, Cunnel; I’se a soldier now. Ol’ Eph. Yas suh; gwine tuh be an
orf’cer, too.”
Ragan called to him: “You, Eph, what are you doing out there?”
Eph saw the patrolman, and cackled. “Howdy, Miste’ Ragan,” he called.
“What are you up to, you old rascal?”
“Jes’ makin’ my reports to de Cunnel,” said Eph gleefully. “Makin’ my
reports on a little matter.”
“Look out, Eph,” Ragan warned him. “You’ll go bugs, next thing I know,
and I’ll have to ship you out to Waverly.”
Now when Mis’ Hopkins had warned Eph that he was showing symptoms of
insanity, Eph had laughed; but Ragan’s warning was another matter.
Ragan, for all he was Eph’s good friend, was a policeman, an arm of the
law; and Eph had the negro’s deep-rooted and abiding awe of the blue
uniform and the helmet. Ragan’s word hushed him instantly; and it
chilled him with a sudden, cold fear....
That accumulated hoard of the years had been Eph’s safeguard against old
age. He had expected it would one day make him comfortable while he
smoked, and sang, and waited his time to die; he had known it would
always keep him out of the institutions he dreaded. But now it was gone;
and when he thought of this fact, Eph felt stripped and defenseless and
afraid. So now he was afraid; he hushed his mirth and touched his cap to
Ragan.
“Yas suh,” he said respectfully.
“Get along home to bed,” Ragan advised him.
“I’m gone,” said Eph; and he went.
Ragan, considering the matter afterward, wondered if old Eph’s mind
might not indeed be weakening. He decided to keep an eye on the darky.
He thought, during the next month, that Eph was aging. The old negro was
growing thin; and Ragan guessed this might be the sudden wastage of age.
But he was wrong. It was something distinctly more tangible. It was a
matter of money, and of food.
Times were tightening purse-strings. There were a thousand calls for
money besetting every man; and each had the high urge of country behind
it. People who had never considered dollars before began to count
pennies. A quarter thrown to Eph would buy a thrift stamp.... And men,
thinking this, returned the quarter to their pockets and turned away.
Old Eph, after all, was only a beggar. No doubt he wasted his money on
rum; or if not that, he must own at least one “three-decker” that
brought him in fat rents. The legend of the wealth of beggars harassed
Eph and was like to ruin him. He did his best; he labored manfully; he
descended to covert pleadings....
One week in mid-December, he had only nine dollars and thirty cents on
the appointed day. He borrowed the remaining seventy cents from the
lawyer, and repaid the loan next day, in spite of that gentleman’s
insistence.
“Naw suh,” Eph told him proudly. “Dis heah’s my arrangement, suh. I’ll
manage. Lemme alone.”
The next week he brought ten dollars; and the next. But for two days of
that second week he ate nothing. He admitted this, in the bleak dawn,
when he stopped for a whispered colloquy with the stone figure of his
old Colonel, at the Memorial.
“But dat ain’ no matter, suh,” he assured the inscrutable officer. “Dis
ol’ coon don’ need tuh eat. Nothin’ but skin an’ bone, anyhow. Lawdy,
suh, whut good is vittles tuh me?”
Cold had struck down on Boston in December; and it held and intensified
as January came. Sometimes people, listening to Eph’s singing, thought
the old man must be shivering where he sat upon the stones; and Ragan
drove him away two or three nights and bade him warm himself. But each
time Eph looked at him with such pitiful entreaty against this kindness
that Ragan gave up. “Have it your own way, you old idiot,” he told Eph.
“If you want to freeze, go ahead and freeze. But don’t look at a man
like he’s kicked you....”
“Yas suh,” said Eph. “Thank’e kindly, suh.”
Neither Ragan, nor Eph’s friend, the lawyer, realized how serious the
matter was. They found Eph stubbornly determined to hold his own course;
they decided he would not otherwise be content; and Eph was but one
figure in their crowded lives. They let him have his way.
Eph duly met his obligations in the first week of that cold January; he
was at his post through the second week. On the appointed day, he went
to make the payment....
The lawyer had good news for him. Jim Forrest’s mother wrote that Jim
had won a commission in the training camp; he had won, by exceptional
merit, a commission as Captain.
“You understand, Eph,” the attorney explained, “this means he’ll have a
good salary, about two hundred dollars a month. So his mother can get
along all right, now....”
Eph’s feet were shuffling on the floor in something that sounded very
like a soft but jubilant hornpipe; he disregarded utterly the attorney’s
word. “My man’s a captain, suh,” he chanted. “An’ I put him in where he
c’ud be it. Same as if I ’uz a captain in de army, now....”
“By Jove, Eph, you’re right,” the lawyer agreed. “I ... I’d like to....”
There were tears in his eyes when he had shaken Eph’s hand and seen him
go; but there were no tears in old Eph. He was riotously happy, madly
happy, tenderly happy.... He went out, and down the street, and in the
early dusk spread a newspaper on the cold stones of the pavement by the
kiosk there, and sat him down, and lifted up his voice in song....
People said afterward that Eph had never sung so tunefully as that last
evening. His voice had an unusual purity and sweetness; it was as tender
as a woman’s. There was an exaltation about the old man, so that the
discerning eye seemed to see a glory hanging over him. He sang and
sang....
That was a bitter cold night, and the streets cleared early. Ragan came
along about one o’clock and found Eph still singing, with no one near to
hear. He bade Eph stop and go home; but Eph protested:
“Please suh, Miste’ Ragan; dis is my night tuh sing, suh.”
Ragan, shivering in his warm garments, said harshly: “This’ll be your
night to freeze to death. Get up and go home, before I run you in.”
Eph got up. There was nothing else to do when a policeman commanded. And
Ragan watched him cross the street, and called: “Good night.”
Eph looked back and nodded. “Good night, suh,” he echoed. “I’m gwine
right along.”
He started up Park street; and Ragan went on his way, trying the shop
doors, huddling in the doorways to avoid the wind, blowing on his aching
hands.
“By God, I don’t see how the old fool stands it,” he said to himself.
“It’s a wonder he’s not stiff....”