Mr. Felsburg shook his head; but Press Harper broke in again:
Ive got him! The boys called him Lengthy fur short; but his real name wus Washburn, same ez
He stopped short off there; and, twisting his head away from the disapproving faces, which on the instant had been turned full on him from all along the table, he went through the motion of spitting, as though to rid his mouth of an unsavoury taste. A hot colour climbed to Peter J. Galloways wrinkled cheeks and he growled under the overhang of his white moustache. Doctor Lake pursed up his lips, shaking his head slowly.
There was one black spot, and just one, on the records of Company B. And, living though he might still be, or dead, as probably he was, the name of one man was taboo when his one-time companions broke bread at their anniversary dinner. Indeed, they went farther than that: neither there nor elsewhere did they speak by name of him who had been their shame and their disgrace. It was a rule. With them it was as though that man had never lived.
Up to this point Mr. Herman Felsburg had had mighty little to say. For all he had lived three-fourths of his life in our town, his command of English remained faulty and broken, betraying by every other word his foreign birth; and his habit of mixing his metaphors was proverbial. He essayed few long speeches-before mixed audiences; but now he threw himself into the breach, seeking to bridge over the awkward pause.
Speaking of roll calls and things such as that, began Mr. Felsburg, seeming to overlook the fact that until now no one had spoken of roll calls speaking of those kinds of things, maybe you will perhaps remember how it was along in the winter of 64, when practically we were out of everything clothes and shoes and blankets and money ach, yes; money especially! and how the orderly sergeant had no book or papers whatsoever, and so he used to make his report in the morning on a clean shingle, with a piece of lead pencil not so gross as that. He indicated a short and stubby finger end.
Long bout then we could a kept all the rations we drew on a clean shingle too eh, Herman? wheezed Judge Priest. And the shingle wouldnt a been loaded down at that! My, my! Ever time I think of that winter of 64 I find mysef gittin hongry all over agin! And the judge threw himself back in his chair and laughed his high, thin laugh.
Then, noting the others had not yet rallied back again to the point where the flow of reminiscences had been checked by Press Harpers labial slip-up, he had an inspiration.
Speakin of roll calls, he said, unconsciously parroting Mr. Felsburg, seems to me its bout time we had ours. The vittles end of this here dinner pears to be bout over. Zach throwing the suggestion across his shoulder you and your pardnersd better be fetchin on the coffee and the seegars, I reckin. He faced front again, raising his voice: Whos callin the roll to-night?
I am, answered Professor Reese; and at once he got on his feet, adjusted his spectacles just so, and drew from an inner breast pocket of his long frock coat a stained and frayed scroll, made of three sheets of tough parchment paper pasted end to end.
He cleared his throat; and, as though the sound had been a command, his fellow members bent forward, with faces composed to earnestness. None observed how the stranger acted; indeed, he had been quite out of the picture and as good as forgotten for the better part of an hour. Certainly nobody was interested in him at this moment when there impended what, to that little group, was a profoundly solemn, highly sentimental thing.
Again Professor Reese cleared his throat, then spoke the name that was written in faded letters at the top of the roll the name of him who had been their first captain and, at the last, their brigade commander.
Died the death of a hero in an effort to save others at Cottonwood Bar, June 28, 1871, said Judge Priest; and he saluted, with his finger against his forehead.
One by one the old school-teacher called off the list of commissioned and noncommissioned officers. Squire Futrell, who had attained to the eminence of a second corporals place, was the only one who answered for himself. For each of the others, including Lieutenant Garrett he of the game leg and the plantation in Mississippi somebody else answered, giving the manner and, if he remembered it, the date of that mans death. For, excepting Garrett, they were all dead.
The professor descended to the roster of enlisted men:
Abner P. Ashbrook!
Died in Camp Chase as a prisoner of war.
G. W. Ayres!
Killed at Bakers Creek.
R. M. Bigger!
Moved to Missouri after the war, was elected state senator, and died in 89.
Reuben Brame!
Honourably discharged after being wounded at Corinth, and disappeared. Believed to be dead.
Robert Burnell!
Murdered by bushwhackers in East Tennessee on his way home after the Surrender.
So it went down the long column of names. They were names, many of them, which once stood for something in that community but which would have fallen with an unfamiliar sound upon the ears of the oncoming generation old family names of the old town. But the old families had died out or had scattered, as is the way with old families, and the names were only pronounced when Company B met or when some idler, dawdling about the cemetery, deciphered the lichen-grown lines on gray and crumbly grave-stones. Only once in a while did a voice respond, Here! But always the Here! was spoken clearly and loudly and at that, the remaining twelve would hoist their voices in a small cheer.
By common consent certain survivors spoke for certain departed members. For example, when the professor came to one name down among the Ls, Peter J. Galloway, who was an incorruptible and unshakable Roman of the party of Jefferson and Jackson, blared out: Turnt Republikin in 96, and by the same token died that same year! And when he reached the name of Adolph Ohlmann it was Mr. Felsburgs place to tell of the honourable fate of his fellow Jew, who fell before Atlanta.
The reader read on and on until his voice took on a huskened note. He had heard Here! for the thirteenth time; he had come to the very bottomest lines of his roster. He called one more name Vilas, it was and then he rolled up his parchment and put it away.
The records show that, first and last, Company B had one hundred and seventy-two members, all regularly sworn into the service of the Confederate States of America under our beloved President, Jefferson Davis, stated Professor Reese sonorously. Of those names, in accordance with the custom of this organisation, I have just called one hundred and seventy-one. The roll call of Company B, of the Old Regiment of mounted infantry serving under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, is completed for the current year. And down he sat.
As Judge Priest, with a little sigh, settled back in his chair, his glance fell on the face of the man next him. Perhaps the old judges eyes were not as good as once they had been. Perhaps the light was faulty. At any rate, he interpreted the look that was on the others face as a look of loneliness. Ordinarily the judge was a pretty good hand at reading faces too.
Looky here, boys! he called out, with such emphasis as to centre general attention on the upper end of the table. We oughter be shamed of ourselves carryin on this way mongst ourselves and plum furgittin we had an outsider with us ez a special guest. Our new friend here is bout the proper age to have seen service in the war his own sef mebbe he did see some. Of all the states that fought aginst us, none of em turned out better soldiers than old Illinoy did. If my guess is right I move we hear frum Mr. Watts, frum Illinoy, on some of his own wartime experiences. His hand dropped, with a heartening thump, on the shoulder of the stranger. Come on, colonel! Weve had a word from everbody exceptin you. Its your turn aint it, boys?
Before his question might be answered, Watts had straightened to his feet. He stood rigidly, his hands driven wrist-deep into his coat pockets; his weather-beaten face set in heavy, hard lines; his deep eyes fixed on a spot in the blank wall above their heads.
Youre right I was a soldier in the war between the States, he said in a thickened, quick voice, which trembled just a little; but I didnt serve with the Illinois troops. I didnt move to Illinois until after the war. My regiment was as good a regiment, though, and as game a regiment, as fought in that war on either side.
Some six or eight broke generously into a brisk patter of handclapping at this, and from the exuberant Mr. Galloway came:
Whirroo! Thats right stick up for yer own side always! Go on, me boy; go on!
The urging was unnecessary. Watts was going on as though he had not been interrupted, as though he had not heard the friendly applause, as though his was a tale which stood in most urgent need of the telling:
Im not saying much of my first year as a soldier. I wasnt satisfied well, I wasnt happily placed; Ill put it that way. I had hopes at the beginning of being an officer; and when the company election was held I lost out. Possibly I was too ambitious for my own good. I came to know that I was not popular with the rest of the company. My captain didnt like me, either, I thought. Maybe I was morbid; maybe I was homesick. I know I was disappointed. You men have all been soldiers you know how those things go. I did my duty after a fashion I didnt skulk or hang back from danger but I didnt do it cheerfully. I moped and I suppose I complained a lot.
Well, finally I left that company and that regiment. I just quit. I didnt quit under fire; but I quit in the night. I think I must have been half crazy; Id been brooding too much. In a day or two I realised that I couldnt go back home which was where I had started for and I wouldnt go over to the enemy. Badly as I had behaved, the idea of playing the outright traitor never entered my mind. I want you to know that. So I thought the thing over for a day or two. I had time for thinking it over alone there in that swamp where I was hiding. Ive never spoken of that shameful thing in my life since then not until to-night. I tried not to think of it but I always have every day.
Well, I came to a decision at last. I closed the book on my old self; I wiped out the past. I changed my name and made up a story to account for myself; but I thank God I didnt change flags and I didnt change sides. I was wearing that new name of mine when I came out of those woods, and under it I enlisted in a regiment that had been recruited in a state two hundred miles away from my own state. I served with it until the end of the war as a private in the ranks.
Im not ashamed of the part I played those last three years. Im proud of it! As God is my judge, I did my whole duty then. I was commended in general orders once; my name was mentioned in despatches to the War Department once. That time I was offered a commission; but I didnt take it. I bear in my body the marks of three wounds. Ive got a chunk of lead as big as your thumb in my shoulder. Theres a little scar up here in my scalp, under the hair, where a splinter from a shell gashed me. One of my legs is a little bit shorter than the other. In the very last fight I was in a spent cannon ball came along and broke both the bones in that leg. Ive got papers to prove that from 62 to 65 I did my best for my cause and my country. Ive got them here with me now I carry them with me in the daytime and I sleep at night with them under my pillow.
With his right hand he fumbled in his breast pocket and brought out two time-yellowed slips of paper and held them high aloft, clenched and crumpled up in a quivering fist.
One of these papers is my honourable discharge. The other is a letter that the old colonel of my regiment wrote to me with his own hand two months before he died.
He halted and his eyes, burning like red coals under the thick brows, ranged the faces that looked up into his. His own face worked. When he spoke again he spoke as a prisoner at the bar might speak, making a last desperate appeal to the jury trying him for his life:
You men have all been soldiers. I ask you this now, as a soldier standing among soldiers I ask you if my record of three years of hard service and hard fighting can square me up for the one slip I made when I was hardly more than a boy in years? I ask you that?
With one voice, then, the jury answered. Its verdict was acquittal and not alone acquittal but vindication. Had you been listening outside you would have sworn that fifty men and not thirteen were yelling at the tops of their lungs, beating on the table with all the might in their arms.
The old man stood for a minute longer. Then suddenly all the rigidity seemed to go out of him. He fell into his chair and put his face in his two cupped hands. The papers he had brandished over his head slipped out of his fingers and dropped on the tablecloth. One of them a flat, unfolded slip settled just in front of Doctor Lake. Governed partly by an instinct operating automatically, partly to hide his own emotions, which had been roused to a considerable degree, Doctor Lake bent and spelled out the first few words. His head came up with a jerk of profound surprise and gratification.
Why, this is signed by John B. Gordon him-self! he snorted. He twisted about, reaching out for Judge Priest. Billy! Billy Priest! Why, look here! Why, this mans no Yankee! Not by a dam sight hes not! Why, he served with a Georgia regiment! Why
But Judge Priest never heard a word of what Doctor Lake was saying. His old blue eyes stared at the strangers left hand. On the back of that hand, standing out upon the corded tendons and the wrinkled brown skin, blazed a red spot, shaped like a dumb-bell, a birthmark of most unusual pattern.
Judge Priest stared and stared; and as he stared a memory that was nearly as old as he was crept out from beneath a neglected convolution in the back part of his brain, and grew and spread until it filled his amazed, startled, scarce-believing mind. So it was no wonder he did not hear Doctor Lake; no wonder he did not see black Tobe Emery stealing up behind him, with popped eyes likewise fixed on that red dumb-bell-shaped mark.
No; Judge Priest did not hear a word. As Doctor Lake faced about the other way to spread his wonderful discovery down the table and across it, the judge bent forward and touched the fourteenth guest on the shoulder very gently.
Pardner, he asked, apparently apropos of nothing that had happened since the dinner started Pardner, when was the first time you heard about this here meetin of Company B the first time?
Through the interlaced fingers of the other the answer came haltingly:
I read about it in a Chicago Sunday paper three weeks ago.
But you knew before that there was a Company B down here in this town?
Without raising his head or baring his face, the other nodded. Judge Priest overturned his coffee cup as he got to his feet, but took no heed of the resultant damage to the cloth on the table and the fronts of his white trouser legs.
Boys, he cried out so shrilly, so eagerly, so joyously, that they all jumped, when you foller after Holy Writ you cant never go fur wrong. Youre liable to breed a miracle. A while ago we took a lesson from the Parable of the Rich Man that give a dinner; and lo and behold! another parable and a better parable yes, the sweetest parable of em all has come to pass and been repeated here mongst us without our ever knowin it or even suspectin it. The Prodigal Son didnt enjoy the advantage of havin a Chicago Sunday paper to read, but in due season he came back home that other Prodigal did; and it stands written in the text that he was furgiven, and that a feast was made fur him in the house of his fathers.