Old Judge Priest

“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 dear 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!”