The Escape of Mr. Trimm

    “Respectfully yours,
    “Jacob Speck,
    “Late Corporal L Company,
    “Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York, U. S. A.”

With deliberation and squeaky emphasis the pen progressed slowly across the paper, while the corporal, with his left hand, held flat the dead man's ancient letter before him, intent on copying it. Hard words puzzled him and long words daunted him, and he was making a long job of it when there were steps in the hall without. There entered breezily Miss Hortense Engel, who was the oldest of all the multiplying Engels, pretty beyond question and every inch American, having the gift of wearing Lower Sixth Avenue stock designs in a way to make them seem Upper Fifth Avenue models. Miss Engel's face was pleasantly flushed; she had just parted lingeringly from her steady company, whose name was Mr. Lawrence J. McLaughlin, in the lower hallway, which is the trysting place and courting place of tenement-dwelling sweethearts, and now she had come to make ready the family's cold Sunday night tea. At sight of her the corporal had another inspiration—his second within the hour. His brow smoothed and he fetched a sigh of relief.

“'Lo, grosspops!” she said. “How's every little thing? The kiddo all right?”

She unpinned a Sunday hat that was plumed like a hearse and slipped on a long apron that covered her from Robespierre bib to hobble hem.

“Girl,” said her grandfather, “would you make tomorrow for me at the office a copy of this letter on the typewriter machine?”

He spoke in German and she answered in New-Yorkese, while her nimble fingers wrestled with the task of back-buttoning her apron.

“Sure thing! It won't take hardly a minute to rattle that off. Funny-looking old thing!” she went on, taking up the creased and faded original. “Who wrote it? And whatcher goin' to do with it, grosspops?”

“That,” he told her, “is mine own business! It is for you, please, to make the copy and bring both to me tomorrow, the letter and also the copy.”

So on Monday morning, when the rush of taking dictation at the office of the Great American Hosiery Company, in Broome Street, was well abated, the competent Miss Hortense copied the letter, and that same evening her grandfather mailed it to the Sun, accompanied by his own introduction. The Sun straightway printed it without change and—what was still better—with the sender's name spelled out in capital letters; and that night, at the place down by the corner, Corporal Jacob Speck was a prophet not without honor in his own country—much honor, in fact, accrued.

If you have read certain other stories of mine you may remember that, upon a memorable occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest made a trip to New York and while there had dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, a promoter of gas and other hot-air propositions; and that during the course of his stay in the metropolis he made the acquaintance of one Malley, a Sun reporter. This had happened some years back, but Malley was still on the staff of the Sun. It happened also that, going through the paper to clip out and measure up his own space, Malley came upon the corporal's contribution. Glancing over it idly, he caught the name, twice or thrice repeated, of the town where Judge Priest lived. So he bundled together a couple of copies and sent them South with a short letter; and therefore it came about in due season, through the good offices of the United States Post-office Department, that these enclosures reached the judge on a showery afternoon as he loafed upon his wide front porch, waiting for his supper.

First, he read Malley's letter and was glad to hear from Malley. With a quickened interest he ran a plump thumb under the wrappings of the two close-rolled papers, opened out one of them at page ten and read the opening statement of Corporal Jacob Speck, for whom instantly the judge conceived a long-distance fondness. Next he came to the letter that Miss Hortense Engel had so accurately transcribed, and at the very first words of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and gratified little grunt; for he had known them both—the writer of that letter and its recipient. One still lived in his memory as a red-haired girl with a pert, malicious face, and the other as a stripling youth in a ragged gray uniform. And he had known most of those whose names studded the printed lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew—only now they were old men and old women—faded, wrinkled bucks and belles of a far-distant day.

As he read the first words it came back to the judge, almost with the jolting emphasis of a new and fresh sensation, that in the days of his own youth he had never liked the girl who wrote that letter or the man who received it. But she was dead this many and many a year—why, she must have died soon after she wrote this very letter—the date proved that—and he, the man, had fallen at Chickamauga, taking his death in front like a soldier; and surely that settled everything and made all things right! But the letter—that was the main thing. His old blue eyes skipped nimbly behind the glasses that saddled the tip of his plump pink nose, and the old judge read it—just such a letter as he himself had received many a time; just such a wartime letter as uncounted thousands of soldiers North and South received from their sweethearts and read and reread by the light of flickering campfires and carried afterward in their knapsacks through weary miles of marching.

It was crammed with the small-town gossip of a small town that was but little more than a memory now—telling how, because he would not volunteer, a hapless youth had been waylaid by a dozen high-spirited girls and overpowered, and dressed in a woman's shawl and a woman's poke bonnet, so that he left town with his shame between two suns; how, since the Yankees had come, sundry faithless females were friendly—actually friendly, this being underscored—with the more personable of the young Yankee officers; how half the town was in mourning for a son or brother dead or wounded; how a new and sweetly sentimental song, called Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, was being much sung at the time—and had it reached the army yet? how old Mrs. Hobbs had been exiled to Canada for seditious acts and language and had departed northward between two files of bluecoats, reviling the Yankees with an unbitted tongue at every step; how So-and-So had died or married or gone refugeeing below the enemy's line into safely Southern territory; how this thing had happened and that thing had not.

The old judge read on and on, catching gladly at names that kindled a tenderly warm glow of half-forgotten memories in his soul, until he came to the last paragraph of all; and then, as he comprehended the intent of it in all its barbed and venomed malice, he stood suddenly erect, with the outspread paper shaking in his hard grip. For now, coming back to him by so strange a way across fifty years of silence and misunderstanding, he read there the answer to the town's oldest, biggest tragedy and knew what it was that all this time had festered, like buried thorns, in the flesh of those two men, his comrades and friends. He dropped the paper, and up and down the wide, empty porch he stumped on his short stout legs, shaking with the shock of revelation and with indignation and pity for the blind and bitter uselessness of it all.

“Ah hah!” he said to himself over and over again understandingly. “Ah hah!” And then: “Next to a mean man, a mean woman is the meanest thing in this whole created world, I reckin. I ain't sure but what she's the meanest of the two. And to think of what them two did between 'em—she writin' that hellish black lyin' tale to 'Lonzo Pike and he puttin' off hotfoot to Abner Tilghman to poison his mind with it and set him like a flint against his own flesh and blood! And wasn't it jest like Lon Pike to go and git himself killed the next day after he got that there letter! And wasn't it jest like her to up and die before the truth could be brought home to her! And wasn't it like them two stubborn, set, contrary, close-mouthed Tilghman boys to go 'long through all these years, without neither one of 'em ever offerin' to make or take an explanation!” His tone changed. “Oh, ain't it been a pitiful thing! And all so useless! But—oh, thank the Lord—it ain't too late to mend it part way anyhow! Thank God, it ain't too late for that!”

Exulting now, he caught up the paper he had dropped, and with it crumpled in his pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk, bound for the little cottage snuggled in its vine ambush across Clay Street before a better and a bigger inspiration caught up with him and halted him midway of an onward stride.

Was not this the second Friday in the month? It certainly was. And would not the Camp be meeting tonight in regular semimonthly session at Kamleiter's Hall? It certainly would. For just a moment Judge Priest considered the proposition. He slapped his linen clad flank gleefully, and his round old face, which had been knotted with resolution, broke up into a wrinkly, ample smile; he spun on his heel and hurried back into the house and to the telephone in the hall. For half an hour, more or less, Judge Priest was busy at that telephone, calling in a high, excited voice, first for one number and then for another. While he did this his supper grew cold on the table, and in the dining room Jeff, the white-clad, fidgeted and out in the kitchen Aunt Dilsey, the turbaned, fumed—but, at Kamleiter's Hall that night at eight, Judge Priest's industry was in abundant fulness rewarded.

Once upon a time Gideon K. Irons Camp claimed a full two hundred members, but that had been when it was first organized. Now there were in good standing less than twenty. Of these twenty, fifteen sat on the hard wooden chairs when Judge Priest rapped with his metal spectacle case for order, and that fifteen meant all who could travel out at nights. Doctor Lake was there, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, the faithful and inevitable. It was the biggest turnout the Camp had had in a year.

Far over on one side, cramped down in a chair, was Captain Abner Tilghman, feeble and worn-looking. His buggy horse stood hitched by the curb downstairs. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby had gone to his house for him and on the plea of business of vital moment had made him come with him. Almost directly across the middle aisle on the other side sat Mr. Edward Tilghman. Nobody had to go for him. He always came to a regular meeting of the Camp, even though he heard the proceedings only in broken bits.

The adjutant called the roll and those present answered, each one to his name; and mainly the voices sounded bent and sagged, like the bodies of their owners. A keen onlooker might have noticed a sort of tremulous, joyous impatience, which filled all save two of these old, gray men, pushing the preliminaries forward with uncommon speed. They fidgeted in their places.

Presently Judge Priest cleared his throat of a persistent huskiness and stood up.

“Before we proceed to the regular routine,” he piped, “I desire to present a certain matter to a couple of our members.” He came down off the little platform, where the flags were draped, with a step that was almost light, and into Captain Abner Tilghman's hand he put a copy of a city paper, turned and folded at a certain place, where a column of printed matter was scored about with heavy pencil bracketings. “Cap'n,” he said, “as a personal favor to me, suh, would you please read this here article?—the one that's marked”—he pointed with his finger—“not aloud—read it to yourself, please.”

It was characteristic of the paralytic to say nothing. Without a word he adjusted his glasses and without a word he began to read. So instantly intent was he that he did not see what followed next—and that was Judge Priest crossing over to Mr. Edward Tilghman's side with another copy of a paper in his hand.

“Ed,” he bade him, “read this here article, won't you? Read it clear through to the end—it might interest you maybe.” The deaf man looked up at him wonderingly, but took the paper in his slightly palsied hand and bent his head close above the printed sheet.

Judge Priest stood in the middle aisle, making no move to go back to his own place. He watched the two silent readers. All the others watched them too. They read on, making slow progress, for the light was poor and their eyes were poor. And the watchers could hardly contain themselves; they could hardly wait. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby kept bobbing up and down like a pudgy jack-in-the-box that is slightly stiff in its joints. A small, restrained rustle of bodies accompanied the rustle of the folded newspapers held in shaky hands.

Unconscious of all scrutiny, the brothers read on. Perhaps because he had started first—perhaps because his glasses were the more expensive and presumably therefore the more helpful—Captain Abner Tilghman came to the concluding paragraph first. He read it through—and then Judge Priest turned his head away, for a moment almost regretting he had chosen so public a place for this thing.

He looked back again in time to see Captain Abner getting upon his feet. Dragging his dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the bare floor to where his brother's gray head was bent to his task. And at his side he halted, making no sound or sign, but only waiting. He waited there, trembling all over, until the sitter came to the end of the column and read what was there—and lifted a face all glorified with a perfect understanding.

“Eddie!” said the older man—“Eddie!” He uttered a name of boyhood affection that none there had heard uttered for fifty years nearly; and it was as though a stone had been rolled away from a tomb—as though out of the grave of a dead past a voice had been resurrected. “Eddie!” he said a third time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving for forgiveness.

“Brother Abner!” said the other man. “Oh, Brother Abner!” he said—and that was all he did say—all he had need to say, for he was on his feet now, reaching out with wide-spread, shaking arms.

Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer, but could not make it come out of his throat—only a clicking, squeaking kind of sound came. As a cheer it was a miserable failure.

Side by side, each with his inner arm tight gripped about the other, the brothers, bareheaded, turned their backs upon their friends and went away. Slowly they passed out through the doorway into the darkness of the stair landing, and the members of the Gideon K. Irons Camp were all up on their feet.

“Mind that top step, Abner!” they heard the younger man say. “Wait! I'll help you down.”

That was all that was heard, except a scuffling sound of uncertainly placed feet, growing fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed down the long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and out into the night—that was all, unless you would care to take cognizance of a subdued little chorus such as might be produced by twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling in a large bare room. As commandant of the Camp it was fitting, perhaps, that Judge Priest should speak first.

“The trouble with this here Camp is jest this,” he said: “it's got a lot of snifflin' old fools in it that don't know no better than to bust out cryin' when they oughter be happy!” And then, as if to show how deeply he felt the shame of such weakness on the part of others, Judge Priest blew his nose with great violence, and for a space of minutes industriously mopped at his indignant eyes with an enormous pocket handkerchief.

In accordance with a rule, Jeff Poindexter waited up for his employer. Jeff expected him by nine-thirty at the latest; but it was actually getting along toward ten-thirty before Jeff, who had been dozing lightly in the dim-lit hall, oblivious to the fanged attentions of some large mosquitoes, roused suddenly as he heard the sound of a rambling but familiar step clunking along the wooden sidewalk of Clay Street. The latch on the front gate clicked, and as Jeff poked his nose out of the front door he heard, down the aisle of trees that bordered the gravel walk, the voice of his master uplifted in solitary song.

In the matter of song the judge had a peculiarity. It made no difference what the words might be or the theme—he sang every song and all songs to a fine, high, tuneless little tune of his own. At this moment Judge Priest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide range of selection. One second he was announcing that his name it was Joe Bowers and he was all the way from Pike, and the next he was stating, for the benefit of all who might care to hear these details, that they—presumably certain horses—were bound to run all night—bound to run all day; so you could bet on the bobtailed nag and he'd bet on the bay. Nearer to the porch steps it boastingly transpired that somebody had jumped aboard the telegraf and steered her by the triggers, whereat the lightnin' flew and 'lectrified and killed ten thousand niggers! But even so general a catastrophe could not weigh down the singer's spirits. As he put a fumbling foot upon the lowermost step of the porch, he threw his head far back and shrilly issued the following blanket invitation to ladies resident in a far-away district:

Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight?
Won't you come out tonight?
Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight,
And dance by the light of the moon?
I danced with a gal with a hole in her stockin';
And her heel it kep' a-rockin'—kep' a-rockin'!
She was the purtiest gal in the room!

Jeff pulled the front door wide open. The song stopped and Judge Priest stood in the opening, teetering a little on his heels. His face was all a blushing pinky glow.

“Evenin', jedge!” greeted Jeff. “You're late, suh!”

“Jeff,” said Judge Priest slowly, “it's a beautiful evenin'.”

Amazed, Jeff stared at him. As a matter of fact, the drizzle of the afternoon had changed, soon after dark, to a steady downpour. The judge's limpened hat brim dripped raindrops and his shoulders were sopping wet, but Jeff had yet to knowingly and wilfully contradict a prominent white citizen.

“Yas, suh!” he said, half affirmatively, half questioningly. “Is it?”

“It is so!” said Judge Priest. “Every star in the sky shines like a diamond! Jeff, it's the most beautiful evenin' I ever remember!”

VIII

FISHHEAD