Books: Love, The Fiddler

L >> Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler

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There was nothing too good for the old lady after that, and the
captain wouldn't hear of her living anywheres but at the officers'
mess, where she sat at his right hand, and always spoke first. The
Queen of England couldn't have been treated with more respeck, and
the captain put her on the strength of the battery, and she drew
back-pay from the day she first blew into camp. My, but it was
changed times! and you ought to have seen the way the old lady
cocked her head in the air and made a splendid black silk dress of
loot, which she wore every evening with the officers and rattled
all over with jet. But it didn't turn her head the least bit, like
for a time the boys feared it might, and she was twice as good to
us as she had been before. We had a pull at headquarters now, and
she had a heart that big that it could hold the officers and us,
too--and more in the draw.

The tide had turned her way when she needed it most, for, tough as
she was, she could not have long gone on like she had been. She
had worn down very thin, and was like a shadow of the old lady I
remembered in Oakland, California, and kind of sunk in around the
eyes, and I don't believe Benny would have known her, had he risen
from the grave; and, when anybody joked with her about it, and
said: "Take it easy, Ma'am, you owe it to the battery to be
keerful," she'd answer she had enlisted for the term of the war,
and looked to peg out the day peace was proclaimed.

"Then I'll be off to join Benny," she'd say, "and the rest of the
battery, in heaven!"

There was getting to be a good deal of a crowd up there--that is,
if the other place hadn't yanked them in--and some of the boys
found a lot of comfort in her way of thinking.

"A boy as dies for his country isn't going to be bothered about
passing in," she would say, with a click of her teeth and that
sure way of hers like she KNEW. And I, reckon perhaps she DID.

One afternoon she was suddenly taken very bad; and, instead of
better, she grew worse and worse, being tied to the bed and
raving; and the captain, who wouldn't hear of her being sent to
hospital, give up his own quarters to her and almost went crazy,
he was that frightened she was dying.

"It's just grit that's kep' her alive," I heard the doctor saying
to him.

"You must save her, Marcus," said the captain, holding to him,
like he was pleading with the doctor for her life. "You must save
her, Marcus. You must do everything in the world you can, Marcus."

The contract surgeon looked mighty glum. "She's like a ship that's
been burning up her fittings for lack of coal," said he. "There
ain't nothing left," he said. "Not a damn thing," said he, and then
he piled in a lot of medical words that seemed to settle the
matter.

As for the captain, he sat down and regularly cried. I'm sorry now
I said anything against the captain, for he was a splendid man,
and the pride of the battery. And, I tell you, he wasn't the only
one that cried neither, for the boys idolised the old lady, and
there wasn't no singing that night or cards or anything. I was on
picket, and it was a heavy heart I took with me into the dark;
and, when they left me laying in the grass, and nobody nearer nor
a hundred yards and that behind me, I felt mortal blue and
lonesome and homesick, and like I didn't care whether I was killed
or not. It was midnight when I went out,--mind, I say MIDNIGHT--
and I don't know what ailed me that night, for, after thinking of
the old lady and Benny and my own mother that was dead, and all
the rest of the boys that had marched out so fine and ended so
miserable--I couldn't keep the sleep away; and I'd go off and off,
though I tried my damnedest not to; and my eyes would shut in
spite of me and just glue together; and I would kind of drown,
drown, drown in sleep. If ever a man knew what he was doing, and
the risk, and what I owed to the boys, and me a Regular, and all
that--it was ME; yet--yet--And you must remember it had been a hard
day, and the guns had stuck again and again in the mud, and it was
pull, mule, pull, soldier, till you thought you'd drop in your
tracks. Oh, I am not excusing myself! I've seen men shot for
sleeping on guard, and I know it's right; and, even in my dreams,
I seemed to be reproaching myself and calling myself a stinker.

Then, just as I was no better nor a log, laying there with my head
on my arm, a coward and a traitor, and a black disgrace to the
uniform I wore, I suddenly waked up with somebody shaking me hard,
real rough, like that--and I jumped perfectly terrible to think it
might be the captain on his rounds. Oh, the relief when I saw it
was nothing else than the old lady, she kneeling beside me all
alone, and her specs shining in the starlight.

"William, William!" she said, sorrowful and warning, her voice
kind of strange, like she didn't want to say out loud that I had
been asleep at my post; and, as she drew away her hand, it touched
mine, and it was ice-cold. And, just as I was going to tell her to
lope back and be keerful of herself, the grass rustled in front of
me, and I saw, rising like a wall, rows on rows of Filipino heads!
My, but didn't I shoot and didn't I run, and the bugles rang out
and the whole line was rushed, me pelting in and the column
spitting fire along a length of three miles! We stood them off all
right, and my name was mentioned in orders, and I was promoted
sergeant, the brigadier shaking my hand and telling the boys I was
a pattern to go by and everything a Regular ought to be. But it
wasn't THAT I was going to tell. It was about the old lady, though
I didn't learn it till the next day.

She had died at a quarter of midnight, and had lain all night on
the captain's bed with a towel over her poor old face.

Now, what do you make of that?

THE END

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