Part 12

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?”