Books: Love, The Fiddler
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Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler
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He spent the next eight days in a cruel and heart-breaking
suspense. He could hardly eat or sleep. He grew thin and started
at a sound. He paid a dollar to have the Touraine's arrival
telegraphed to the office; another dollar to have it telegraphed
to the boarding-house; he was fearful that one or the other might
miscarry, and repeatedly warned the landlady of a possible message
for him in the middle of the night.
"It means a great deal to me," he said. "It means everything to
me. I don't know what I'd do if I missed the Touraine!"
Of course he did not miss the Touraine. He was on the wharf hours
before her coming. He exasperated everyone with his questions. He
was turned out of all kinds of barriers; he earned the distrust of
the detectives; he became a marked man. He was certainly there for
no good, that tall guy in the slouch hat, his lean hands fidgeting
for a surreptitious pearl-necklace or an innocent-looking
umbrella full of diamonds--one who, in their language, was a guy
that would bear watching.
The steamer came alongside, and Raymond gazed up at the tier upon
tier of faces. At length, with a catch in his heart, he caught
sight of Miss Latimer, who smiled and waved her hand to him. He
scanned her narrowly for an answer to his doubts; and these
increased the more he gazed at her. It seemed a bad sign to see
her so calm, so composed; worse still to see her occasionally in
animated conversation with some of her fellow-passengers. He
thought her smiles had even a perfunctory friendliness, and he had
to share them besides with others. It was plain she had never
received his letter. No woman could bear herself like that who had
received such a letter. Then too she appeared so handsome, so
high-bred, so charming and noticeable a figure in the little
company about her that Raymond felt a peremptory sense of his own
humbleness and of the impassable void between them. How had he
ever dared aspire to this beautiful woman, and the thought of his
effrontery took him by the throat.
He stood by the gangway as the passengers came off, an
interminable throng, slow moving, teetering on the slats, a gush
of funnelled humanity, hampered with bags, hat-boxes, rolls of
rugs, dressing-cases, golf-sticks, and children. At last Miss
Latimer was carried into the eddy, her maid behind her carrying
her things, lost to view save by the bright feather in her
travelling bonnet. The seconds were like hours as Raymond waited.
He had a peep of her, smiling and patient, talking over her
shoulder to a big Englishman behind her. Then, as the slow stream
brought her down, she stepped lightly on the wharf, turned to
Raymond, and, before he could so much as stammer out a word, flung
her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"Did you really want me?" she said; and then, "You gave me but two
hours to catch the old Touraine!"
THE MASCOT OF BATTERY B
Battery A had a mascot goat, and Battery C a Filipino kid, and
Battery D a parrot that could swear in five languages, but I guess
we were the only battery in the brigade that carried an old lady!
Filipino, nothing! But white as yourself and from Oakland,
California, and I don't suppose I'd be here talking to you now, if
it hadn't been for her.
I had known Benny a long time--Benny was her son, you know, the
only one she had--and when I enlisted at the beginning of the war
Benny wished to do it, too, only he was scared to death, not of
the Spaniards, but his old Ma! So he hung off and on, while I
drilled at the Presidio and rode free on the street cars, and did
the little hero act, and ate pie the whole day long. My! How they
used to bring us pies in them times and boxes of see-gars--and
flowers! Flowers to burn! Well I remember a Wisconsin regiment
marching along Market Street, big splendid men from the up-North
woods, every one of them with a Calla lily stuck in his gun! Oh,
it was fine, with the troops pouring in, and the whole city afire
to receive them, and the girls almost cutting the clothes off your
back for souvenirs--and it made Benny sick to see it all, him
clerking in a hardware store and eating his heart out to go with
the boys. He hung back as long as he could, but at last he
couldn't stand it no longer, and the day before we sailed he went
and enlisted in my battery.
He knew there was going to be a rumpus at home and I suppose that
was why he put it off to the very end, not wanting to be plagued
to death or cried over. But when he got into his uniform and had
done a spell of goose-step with the first sergeant, he was so
blamed rattled about going home that he had to take me along too.
He lived away off somewheres in a poorish sort of neighbourhood,
all little frame houses and little front yards about that big,
where you could see commuters watering Calla lilies in their city
clothes. Benny's house seemed the smallest and poorest of the lot,
though it had Calla lilies too and other sorts of flowers, and a
mat with "welcome" on it, and some kind of a dog that licked our
hands as we walked up the front steps and answered to the name of
Dook.
Benny pushed open the door and went in, me at his heels, and both
of us nervous as cats. His mother was sitting in a rocker, reading
the evening paper with gold spectacles, and I never saw such a
straight-backed old lady in my life, nor any so tall and thin and
commanding. She looked up at us, kind of startled to see two
soldiers walking into her kitchen, and Benny smiled a silly smile
and said:
"Mommer, I'm off to help Dooey in the Fillypines!"
I guess he thought she'd jump at him or something, for he had
always been a mother's boy and minded everything she said, though
he was twenty-eight years old and rising-nine--but all she did was
to draw in her breath sharp and sudden, so you could hear the
whistle of it, and then two big tears rolled out under her specs.
"Don't feel bad about it, Mommer," said Benny in a snuffly voice.
She never said a word, but got up from the chair and came over to
where Benny was, very white and trembly, and looking at his army
coat like it was a shroud.
"Oh, my son, my son!" she said, kind of choking over the words.
"I couldn't stay behind when all the boys was going," he said.
I saw he was holding back all he could to keep from crying, and I
didn't blame him either, as we was to sail the next day and the
old lady was his Ma. It's them good-byes that break a soldier all
up. So I lit out and played with the dog and made him jump through
my hands and fetch sticks and give his paw (he was quite a
RE-markable dog, that dog, though his breeding wasn't much), while I
could hear them inside, talking and talking, and the old lady's
voice running on about the danger of drink and how he mustn't
sleep in wet clothes or give back-talk to his officers--it was
wonderful the horse-sense that old lady had--and how he must
respeck the uniform he wore and be cheerful and willing and brave,
like his sainted father who was dead--all that mothers say and
sometimes what soldiers do--and through it all there was a pleasant
rattle of dishes and the sound of the fire being poked up, and
Benny asking where's the table-cloth, and was there another pie?
By and by I was called in, and there, sure enough, the table was
spread, and we were both made to sit down while the old lady
skirmished around and wiped her eyes when we weren't looking.
We had beefsteak, warmed-over pigs' feet, coffee, potato cakes,
fresh lettuce, Graham gems, and two kinds of pie, and the next day
we sailed for Manila.
Them early days in the Fillypines was the toughest proposition I
was ever up against. Things hadn't settled down as they did
afterward, nobody knowing where he was at, and all of us shoved up
to the front higgeldy-piggeldy; and, being Regulars, they gave us
the heavy end of it, having to do all the fighting while the
Volunteers was being taught the difference between a Krag-
Jorgensen and a Moro Castle. It was all front in them days--for
the Regulars! But we were lucky in our commissary sergeant, a
splendid young man named Orr, and we lived well from the start and
never came down to rations. The battery got quite a name for
having griddle-cakes for breakfast and carrying a lot of dog
generally in the eating line, and someone wrote a song, to the
toon of Chickamauga, called "The Fried Chicken of Battery B." But
I tell you, it wasn't all fried chicken either, for the fighting
was heavy and hot, and a good many of the boys pegged out. If ever
there was a battery that looked for trouble and got it--it was
Battery B! But we took good care of our commissary sergeant--did I
mention he was a splendid young man named Orr?--and though we
dropped a good many numbers, wounded, dead, sick, and missing--we
kep' up the good name of the battery and had canned butter and
pop-overs nearly every day.
Benny and I were chums, but nobody knows what that word means till
you've kept warm under the same blanket and kneeled side by side
in the firing-line. It brings men together like nothing else in
the world, and it's queer the unlikely sorts that take to one
another. I was so common and uneddicated that I wonder what Benny
ever saw to like in me, for, as I said, he was a regular Mommer's
boy and splendidly brought up and an electrician. Religious, too,
and a church member! But he was powerful fond of me, and never
went into action but what he'd let off a little prayer to himself
that I might come out all right and go to heaven if bolo-ed. Pity
he hadn't taken as much trouble for himself, for one day while we
were lying in a trench, and firing for all we were worth, I
suddenly saw that look in his face that a soldier gets to know so
well.
"Benny, you're shot!" I yelled out, dropping my Krag and all
struck of a heap.
"Shot, nothing!" he answered, and then he keeled over in the dirt
and his legs began to kick.
He took a powerful long time to die, and there was even some talk
of sending him down to the base hospital, the field one being that
full and constantly needed at our heels. But he pleaded with the
doctors and was allowed as a favour to stay on and die where he
was minded--with the battery. I was with him all I could, and I'll
never forget how good that commissary sergeant was, a splendid
young man named Orr, who always had a little pot of chicken broth
for Benny and cornstarch, and what he fancied most of all--a sort
of thick dough cakes we called sinkers. As luck would have it I
got into trouble about this time--a little matter of two silver
candle-sticks and a Virgin's crown--and Benny sent for Captain
Howard (it was him that commanded the battery), and weak as he
was, dying, he begged me off, and the captain swore awful to hide
how bad he felt, and struck my name off the sheet to please him.
There was little enough to do in this line, for it was plain as
day where Benny was bound for, and he knew himself he would never
see that little home in Oakland again.
Well, he got worse and worse, and sometimes when I went there he
didn't know me, being out of his head or kind of dopy with the
doctor's stuff, the shadow being over him, as Irish people say.
One night he was that low that I got scared, and I waylaid the
contract surgeon as he came out.
"Doctor," I said, "it's all up with Benny, ain't it?"
"He'll never hear reveille no more," he says.
I got my blanket and lay outside the door, it being against
regulations for any of us to be in the field-hospital after taps.
But the orderly said he'd call me if Benny was to wake up before
the end, and the doctor promised me I might go in. Sure enough, I
was called somewheres along of four o'clock and the orderly led me
inside the tent to Benny's cot. There was no light but a candle in
a bottle, and I held it in my hand and bent over and looked in
Benny's face. He was himself all right, and he put his cold,
sweaty hand in mine and pressed it.
"Do you know me, old man?" I said. "Do you know me?"
"Good-bye, Bill," he said, and then, as I leaned over him, his
voice being that low and faint--he whispered: "Billy, I guess
you'll have to rustle for another chum!"
Them was his last words and he said them with a kind of a smile,
like he was happy and didn't give a damn to live. Then the little
life he had left went out. The orderly looked at his watch, and
then wrote the time on a slate after Benny's regimental number and
the word: "died." This was about all the epitaph he got, though we
buried him properly in the morning and gave him the usual send-
off. Then his effects was auctioned off in front of the captain's
tent, a nickel for this, ten cents for that--a soldier hasn't much
at any time, you know, and on the march less than a little--and
five-sixty about covered the lot. There was quite a rush for the
picture of his best girl, but I bought it in, along with one of
his Ma and a one-pound Hotchkiss shell and the hilt of a Spanish
officer's sword; and when I had laid them away in my haversack and
had borrowed a sheet of paper and an envelope from the commissary
sergeant to write to Benny's mother, it came over me what a little
place a man fills in the world and how things go on much the same
without him.
I was setting down to write that letter and was about midway
through, having got to "the pride of the battery and regretted by
all who noo him," when I looked up, and what in thunder do you
suppose I saw? The old lady herself, by God! walking into camp
with an umberella and a valise, and looking like she always did--
powerful grim and commanding. Someone must have told her the news
and which was my tent, for she walked straight up to where I was
and said: "William, William!" like that. She didn't cry or
nothing, and anybody at a distance might have thought she was just
talking to a stranger; but there was a whole funeral march in the
sound of her voice, and you could read Benny's death like print in
her wrinkled old face. I took her out to where we had buried him,
and she plumped down on her knees and prayed, with the umberella
and the valise beside her, while I held my hat in one hand and my
pistol in the other, ready for any bolo business that might come
out of the high grass.
Then we went back to the field-hospital and had a look in, she
explaining on the way how she had mortgaged her home, so as to
come and look after Benny. I guess the hospital must have appeared
kind of cheerless, for lots of the wounded were lying on the bare
ground, and it was a caution the way some of them groaned and
groaned. You see Battery K had just come in, having had an
engagement by the way at Dagupan, and Wilson's cavalry, besides,
had dumped a sight of their men on us.
"And it was in a place like this that my boy died?" said the old
lady, her mouth quivering and then closing on the words like a
steel trap.
"There's the very cot, Ma'am," I said.
She said something like "Oh, oh, oh!" under her breath, and,
taking out her handkerchief, wiped the face and lips of the man in
the cot, who was lying there with his uniform still on him. I
suppose he had got it because he was a bad case,--the cot, I
mean,--and certainly he was far from spry.
"He's dead!" said the old lady, shuddering. "He's dead!"
"Orderly," I said, "number fifty-six is dead!"
The orderly bent over to make sure and then ran for his slate--the
same old slate--and began to write down the same old thing. I
suppose there was some sense to that slate racket, for with a
little spit one slate would do for a brigade, but it seemed a
cheap way to die. Then, as we stood there, another orderly came
gallumphing in with something steaming in a tin can. The old lady
took it out of his hand and smelled it, supercilious.
"What do you call this?" she said.
"It's chicken broth, Ma'am," he said. "That's what it is, Ma'am."
"Faugh!" said the old lady, "faugh!" and handed it back to him,
like she was going to throw it away, but didn't. Then we watched
him dip it out in tin cups and carry it around, while some other
fellers came in and carried out the body of the man in the cot, a
trooper by his legs. We went out with them, and, I tell you, it
was good to stand in the open air again and breathe. The old lady
took a little spell of rest on a packing-case; then she gave me
her umberella and valise to take back to quarters, and, rolling up
her sleeves, made like she was going into the hospital again.
I didn't know what to say, but I guess I looked it.
"William," she said, with a glitter of her gold specs.
"Ma'am," said I.
"Those boys aren't getting proper CON-sideration," she said. "If
it was dogs," she said, "they couldn't be treated worse. William,
I'm going to see what one old woman can do."
"You ought to ask Captain Howard first," I said. "You don't belong
to the Army Medical Corps."
"It's them that let Benny die," she said, with her eyes snapping,
"and, as for asking, they'd say 'No,' for they don't allow any
women except at the base hospitals."
I knew this for a fack, but I'd rather she'd find it out from the
captain than from me. I didn't want to seem to make trouble for
her. So, while I was wondering what to do about it, she headed
right in, leaving me with the valise and the umberella, and a kind
of qualmy feeling that the old lady might strike a snag.
I didn't have no chance to come back till along sundown, but, my
stars I even in that time there had been a change. Benny's mother
had been getting in her deadly work, and the orderlies were
bursting mad, not that any of them dared say anything outright or
show it except in their faces, which were that long; for, you see,
the contract surgeon had taken her side, and had backed her up.
But they moved around like mules with their ears down, powerful
unwilling, and yet scared to say a word. The hospital had been
made a new place, with another tent up that had been laid away and
forgotten (you wouldn't think it possible, but it was), and the
sick and wounded had been sorted over and washed and made
comfortable; and, where before there was no room to turn around,
you could walk through wide lanes and wonder what had become of
the crowd. She had peeked into the cooking, too, and had found out
more things going wrong in five hours than the contract surgeon
had in five months. Blest if there wasn't a court-martial laying
for every one of the orderlies if they said "boo!" for the swine
had been making away scandalous with butter and chocolate and
beef--tea and canned table peaches and sparrow-grass and sardines,
and all the like of that, belly-robbing the boys right and left
perfectly awful.
It was a mighty good account of the contract surgeon that he took
it all so well, and was willing to admit how badly he had been
done. But he was a splendid young fellow, named Marcus, and what
the old lady said, went! He was right sorry he couldn't put her on
the strength of the battery, but the regulations kept women nurses
at the base-hospitals, and anyway (for we broke everything them
days, and there wasn't enough red-tape left to play cat-and-my-
cradle with) Captain Howard hated the sight of a petticoat, and
was dead set against women anywheres. I don't know what they had
ever done to him, but I'm just saying it for a fack. But, however
it was, Marcus said the old lady had to be kept out of sight, or
else the captain would surely send her to the rear under arrest.
Now, this made it a pretty hard game for the old lady to play, and
you can reckon how much dodging she had to do to keep out of the
captain's sight. It was hard about her sleeping, too, for she had
to do that where she could, not to speak of the pay she might have
drawn and didn't, and which, sakes alive! she earned twenty times
over. By and by everybody got onto it except the captain, but
there wasn't such a skunk in the battery as to tell him, partly
because of the joke, but, most of all, on account of the
convalescents, who naturally thought a heap of her. Then it got
whispered around that she was our mascot, and carried the luck of
the battery; and it was certainly RE-markable how it began to
change, getting fresh beef quite regular and maple syrup to burn,
and nine kegs of Navy pickles by mistake.
You would have thought she was too old to stand it, for we was
always on the move, and I have seen her sleeping on what was
nothing else but mud, with the rain coming down tremenjous. But
she was a tough old customer, and always came to time, outlasting
men that could have tossed her in the air, or run with her a block
and never taken breath. But, of course, it couldn't be kept up for
ever--I mean about the captain--and, sure enough, one day he
caught her riding on a gun-carriage, while he was passing along
the line on a Filipino pony.
"Good God!" he said, like that, reining in his horse and looking
at her campaign hat and the old gingham dress she wore. I wonder
she didn't correct him for his profanity, but I allow for once she
was scared stiff, and hadn't no answer ready. My! But she kind of
shrunk in and looked a million years old.
"Madam," said he, "do you belong to this column?"
"Unofficially, I do," she said, perking up a little.
"Might I inquire where you came from?" said he, doing the ironical
perlite.
"Oakland, California," said she.
"And is this your usual mode of locomotion?" said he. "Riding on a
gun?" said he. "Like the Goddess of War," said he. "Perching on
the belcherous cannon's back," said he.
The old lady, now as bold as brass, allowed that it was.
"Scandalous!" roared the captain. "Scandalous!"
The old lady always had a kind of nattified air, and even on a
gun-carriage she sported that look of dropping in on the
neighbours for a visit. She ran up her little parasol, settled her
feet, give a tilt to her specs, and looked the captain in the eye.
"Yes," she said, "I do belong to this column, and I guess it would
be a smaller column by a dozen, if it hadn't been for me in your
field-hospital. Or twenty," said she. "Or maybe more," said she.
This kind of staggered the captain. It was plain he didn't know
just what to do. We were hundreds of miles from anywheres, and
there were Aguinaldoes all around us. He was as good as married to
that old lady, for any means he had of getting rid of her. He
began to look quite old himself, as he stared and stared at the
mascot of Battery B, the cannon lumping along, and the old lady
bouncing up and down, as the wheels sank to the axles in the rutty
road.
"When we strike the railroad, home you go," said he.
"We'll see about that," said the old lady.
"It's disgraceful," said he. "Pigging with a whole battery," said
he. "Oh, the shame of it!" said he.
"Shoulder-straps don't always make a gentleman," said she.
"Holy Smoke!" said he, galloping off very fierce and grand on his
little horse, to haul Dr. Marcus over the coals. They say the
contract surgeon got it in the neck, but we were short-handed in
that department already, Dr. Fenelly having been killed in action,
so the captain could do nothing worse nor reprimand him. It was
bad enough as it was--for Marcus--for HE wasn't no old lady, and
the captain could let himself rip. And, I tell you, it was a
caution any time to be up against Captain Howard, for, though he
could be nice as pie and perlite to beat the band, it only needed
the occasion for him to unloose on you like a thirteen-inch gun.
Well, it was perfectly lovely what happened next, for, with all
her sassiness, the old lady felt pretty blue, and talked about
Benny for hours, like she always did when she was down-hearted;
and, by this time, you know, she had got to love Battery B, and
every boy in it; and it naturally went against her to think of
starting out all over again with strangers, and them maybe
Volunteers. So you can guess what her feelings was that night when
the captain went down with fever. It was like getting money from
home!
The captain had never been sick in his life, and he took it hard
to be laid by and keep off the flies, while another feller ran the
battery and jumped his place. I guess it came over him that he
wasn't the main guy after all, and that it wouldn't matter a hill
of beans whether he lived or quit. Them's one of the things you
learn in hospital, and the most are the better for it; but the
captain, you see, was getting his lesson a bit late. So he was
layed off, with amigos to carry him or bolo him (like what amigos
are when they get a chance), and the old lady give a whoop and
took him in charge. My! If she wasn't good to that man. and, as
for coals of fire, she regularly slung them at him! The doctor,
too, got his little axe in, and was everlastingly praising the old
lady, and telling the captain he would have been a goner, if it
hadn't been for her! And, when the captain grew better--which he
did after a few days--he was that meek he'd eat out of your hand.
The old lady was not only a champion nurse, but she was a buster
to cook. Give her a ham-bone and a box of matches and she could
turn out a French dinner of five courses, with oofs-sur-le-plate,
and veal-cutlets in paper pants! It was then, I reckon, she
settled the captain for good; and, when he picked up and was able
to walk about camp, leaning pretty heavy on her arm, she called
him "George" and "My boy"--like that--and you might have taken him
for Benny and she his Ma.
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