PAGE 6
The Kidnaped Memorial
by
“I am. ” The clergyman licked his lips. With fictitious jocularity Mr. Gale said, “I see you do not salute your superior officer. But I reckon a dominie isn’t like us old soldiers. Now, boys, listen to me. There’s a little woman—”
The clergyman’s voice cut in on this lumbering amiability as a knife cuts butter: “My dear sir, I don’t quite understand the reason for this farce. I am a ‘dominie,’ as you are pleased to call it, but also I am an old soldier, the present commander of this post, and it may ‘interest you to know’ that I fought clear through the war in the Tenth New York! And if my memory is still good, you were not my commanding officer for any considerable period!”
“No!” bellowed Mr. Gale, “I wa’n’t! I’m a Southerner. From Alabama. And after today I’m not even sure I’m reconstructed! I’m powerful glad I never was a blue-bellied Yank, when I think of that poor little woman dying of a broken heart up in Wakamin!”
With banal phrases and sentimental touches, with simple words and no further effort to be friendly, he told the story of Mrs. Captain Tiffany, though he did not satisfy the beggar ears of the crowd with her name.
His voice was at times almost hostile. “So,” he wound up, “I want you-all to come to Wakamin and decorate the graves there, too. You, my dear sir, I don’t care a damaged Continental whether you ever salute me or not. If you boys do come to Wakamin, then I’ll know there’s still some MEN, as there were in the ‘60’s. But if you eight or nine great big husky young Yanks are afraid of one poor old lone Johnny Reb, then by God, sir, I win another scrimmage for the Confederate States of America!”
Silence. Big and red, Mr. Gale stood among them like a sandstone boulder. His eyes were steady and hard as his clenched fist. But his upper lip was trembling and covered with a triple row of sweat drops.
Slowly, as in the fumbling stupor of a trance, the clergyman drew off his canonicals and handed them to a boy. He was formal and thin and rather dry of aspect in his black frock coat. His voice was that of a tired, polite old gentleman, as he demanded of Mr. Gale, “Have you a car to take us to Wakamin?”
“Room for five. ”
To a man beside him the clergyman said, “Will you have another car ready for us?” Abruptly his voice snapped: “‘Tention. Fall in. Form twos. B’ th’ right flank. For’ard. March!”
As he spoke he leaped down into the ranks, and the veterans tramped toward the gate of the cemetery, through the parting crowd. Their faces were blurred with weariness and dust and age, but they stared straight ahead, they marched stolidly, as though they had been ordered to occupy a dangerous position and were too fagged to be afraid.
The two rear-line men struck up with fife and drum. The fifer was a corpulent banker, but he tootled with the agility of a boy. The drummer was a wisp of humanity. Though his clay-hued hands kept up with the capering of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” his yellowish eyes were opening in an agonized stare, and his chin trembled.
“Halt!” the clergyman ordered. “Boys, seems to me the commander of this expedition ought to be Colonel Gale. Colonel, will you please take command of the post?”
“W—why, I wouldn’t hardly call it regular. ”
“You old Rebel, I wouldn’t call any of this regular!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Gale. “‘Tention!”
The old drummer, his eyes opening wider and wider, sank forward from the knees, and held himself up only by trembling bent arms. Two men in the crowd caught him. “Go on!” he groaned. His drumsticks clattered on the ground.