Ladies and Gentlemen

“Nome, I never touch anything strong. But I reckin a cup of coffee would taste good to me – if I’m not putting you out too much? You’ll please have to excuse me, ma’am, for breaking in on you this way, but I – ” Remembering his manners, he got his hat off in a little flurry of confusion.

“Where were you trying to get to?”

With difficulty he brought his card forth from his pocket and she took it from him and read what was written upon it.

“You’re a good long two miles and a half from where you belong,” she told him sharply.

“But ain’t this Bonaventure Avenue?”

“Yes, North Bonaventure. You came out Lawes Drive, didn’t you? – the wide street where the trolley-line is? Well, you should have gone south when you turned off. Instead of that you came north. These people” – she consulted the card again – “Philipson or whatever the name is – are they friends of yours?”

“Well, yes, ma’am, and nome. I’ve never met them. But they’re taking in one old soldier during the reunion, the hotels and the boarding-houses and all being so full up. And a gentleman at Tennessee Headquarters – that’s my headquarters, ma’am – he gave me that card and sent me there.”

“Send you alone?” Her angular shoulders, bare above a low-cut evening gown, shrugged impatiently.

“Oh, nome, one of these here little Boy Scouts he came with me to show me the way. You see, ma’am, it’s rightly my own fault, my not being all settled before dark. But I didn’t get in on the steam-cars till about six o’clock this evening and I didn’t want to miss the opening session at the big hall. So I went right there, packing my baggage along with me, just as soon as I’d got me a snack of supper, me not wanting to miss anything, as I was saying to you, ma’am. Then when the speechmaking and all was over, me and this little Boy Scout – he’d stayed right along with me at the hall – we put out to find where I was to stay. But he couldn’t hardly drag one foot behind the other. Poor little wore-out fellow, I reckin he’d been running around all day. So a few minutes ago I made him go on home, me figuring I could find the house my own self. And – well, here I am, ma’am, imposing on your kindness and mighty sorry to do it, too.”

“Never mind that part of it.”

“But just as soon as I can get a dram of hot coffee in me I expect I’ll feel stronger and then I’ll be shoving along and not bother you any more. I reckin that long train ride and the excitement and everything must ’a’ took it out of me, some way. There was a time when it wouldn’t have bothered me at all – not a bit. Still, I’ll have to confess I’m getting along, ma’am. I’ll be eighty-four this coming ninth of August.”

“Listen to me: You’re not going to stir another inch tonight. You stay right here and tomorrow morning I’ll decide myself whether you’re fit to go trapesing off across to the other side of town.”

“Oh, ma’am, I couldn’t do that!”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“But, ma’am, are you taking in any visitors during the reunion?”

“I wasn’t aiming to.” Her voice was grim. “But I’m fixing now to do that very little thing, whether or no.”

“But honest, now – I – ” He scuffled with his tired feet. “It’s mighty good and mighty sweet of you, ma’am, but I’d hate to impose on you like that.”

“No imposition. There’re five spare bedrooms in this house – and nobody in any of them. And nobody going to be in any of them, either, while you’re here – except you. I think you’ll be comfortable.”

“I know I’d be comfortable but – ”

“Then it’s all settled. By the way, I don’t know your name yet?”

“My name is Braswell – Nathan Braswell, late high private of the rear rank in the Eighteenth Tennessee Infantry. But up at Forks of Hatchie – that’s my home town, ma’am, a little town up in West Tennessee – they call me the Reverend Braswell, sometimes.”

“Reverend?” Her eyelids narrowed. “Are you a minister?”

“Oh, nome. But sometimes when we’re short on a preacher I make out to take the pulpit and read the Scriptures and make a little kind of a talk – not a regular sermon – just a little kind of a religious talk. And I’m purty active in church work generally. So I reckin that’s why some people call me the Reverend Braswell. But I never use the entitlement myself – it wouldn’t be becoming in a layman.”

“I see. You preach but you’re not a preacher. I guess you practice what you preach, too. You look like a good man, to me – and a good man can be set down anywhere and not suffer by it; at least that’s my opinion. So, Mr. Braswell, right here is where you camp.”

“Just as you say, ma’am.” His surrender was complete now, his weariness was, too. “Probably you’re right – if I tried to go any further tonight it’s likely I wouldn’t be much good tomorrow and I want to be spry and fresh so I can knock around and see if I can’t run across some of my old pardners in the army. But excuse me again – you got my name but you ain’t told me yours?”

“Call me Miss Sissie, if you want to. That’s what nearly everybody does call me. Or else just plain Sis.”

“All right, Miss Sissie, just as you say.” He bowed to her with a grave simplicity. “And I’m sure I’m very much beholden to you, ma’am. It ain’t every day that an old fellow like me is lucky enough to run into such a lovely nice lady as you.”

He drank his coffee, and, being helped to his feet, he went upstairs with some aid from the lovely nice lady and presently was sound asleep in a clean bed in what he regarded as a very fine bedroom indeed. Its grandeur impressed him even through his tiredness.

Coming back down after seeing him properly bestowed, the mistress of the house hailed the colored girl. “Pansy,” she said, “this place is out of business until further orders, understand?”

At that, Pansy seemed deeply puzzled. “But, Miss Sissie,” she expostulated, “don’t you remember ’at a suttin party – you know, Mista J. W. B. – is ’spectin’ to be yere most any time wid – ”

“Did you hear what I told you?” A quality of metallic harshness in Miss Sissie’s voice was emphasized.

“Yessum, but you know yo’se’f how that there party, Mista J. W. B., is. He’ll shore be dis’p’inted. He’s liable raise Cain. He’s – ”

“Get him on the telephone; you know his number. Tell him this place is closed for tonight and for every day and every night until further notice from me. And tell the same thing to everybody else who calls up or stops by during the reunion. Get me?” By her tone she menaced the darky.

“Yassum.”

“Then turn that hall light out.”

For three days Mr. Braswell abode under that roof. Frequently during that time he remarked that he couldn’t remember when he’d had a pleasanter stay anywhere. Nor could it be said that Miss Sissie failed in any possible effort to make the visit pleasant for him.

He limped down to breakfast next morning; to limp was the best he could do. His entertainer gave her household staff a double surprise, first by coming down to join him at the meal instead of taking her coffee and rolls in her room and second by appearing not in negligée but in a plain dark house-gown which accentuated rather than softened the square contours of her face and the sharp lines in it. By daylight the two had better opportunity to study each other than the somewhat hurried meeting of the night before had afforded.

She saw in him a gentle tottery relic of a man with a pair of faded unworldly old eyes looking out from a bland, wrinkly, rather empty face. He saw in her a most kindly and considerate hostess. Privately he decided she must have had plenty of sorrow in her time – something or other about her told him that life had bestowed upon her more than her proper share of hard knocks. He figured that living here alone in such a big house – except for the servants she seemed to be quite alone – must be lonesome for her, too.

As they sat down, just the two of them, he said, not apologetically exactly but a bit timidly:

“I hope, ma’am, you don’t mind if I say a grace at your table? I always like to invoke the divine blessing before I break bread – seems like to me it makes the victuals taste better. Or maybe” – he hesitated politely – “maybe it’s your custom to ask the blessing your own self?”

“You say it, please,” she urged him in a curious strained fashion, which, however, he did not notice, and lowered her head. She lifted it once – to shoot a quick venomous glance at Pansy, who stood to serve, and a convulsive giggle which had formed in Pansy’s throat died instantly. Then she bowed it again and kept it bowed while he asked God to sanctify this food to their uses and to be merciful to all within those walls and to all His children everywhere. For Jesus’ sake, Amen!

She piled his plate abundantly and, for all his bodily infirmity, he showed her a healthy appetite. He talked freely, she encouraging him by proving a good listener. He was a widower with one married daughter. Since his wife’s death he had made his home with this daughter. Her husband was a mighty fine man – not religious, but high-principled and doing very well indeed as a banker, considering that Forks of Hatchie was such a small town. He himself had been in the grain and feed business for most of his life but was retired now. He’d never been much of a hand for gadding over the world. Going to reunions once a year was about the extent of his traveling around. In all the time since the United Confederate Veterans had been formed he’d missed but one reunion – that was the spring when his wife died.

“Minty – that’s my daughter, ma’am – Minty, she didn’t want me to come to this one,” he went on. “She was afraid for me to be putting out alone on such a long trip ’way down here; she kept saying, Minty did, she was afraid the excitement might be too much for me at my age. But I says to her, I says, ‘Minty, child, when my time comes for me to go I don’t ask anything better than that it should be whilst I’m amongst my old comrades, with the sound of one of our old battle songs ringing in my ears!’ I says to her, ‘Shucks, but what’s the use of talking that way! Nothing’s going to happen to me. I can get there and I can get back!’ I says to her. ‘Going to reunion makes me feel young and spry all over again.’ But, ma’am, I’m afraid Minty was right about it, this time anyhow. I actually don’t believe I’m going to be able to get back down-town for today’s doings – not for the morning’s session anyway. I have to own up to you that I feel all kind of let-down and no-account, someway.”

So through the forenoon he sat in an easy chair in an inner sitting-room and Miss Sissie, abandoning whatever else she might have had to do, read to him the accounts of the great event which filled column after column of the morning paper. He dozed off occasionally but she kept on reading, her voice droning across the placid quiet. Following the dinner which came at midday, she prevailed on him to take a real nap, and he stretched out on a sofa under a light coverlid which she tucked about him and slept peacefully until four o’clock. Late in the afternoon a closed car containing a couple – a man and a woman – stopped in the alleyway behind the house and the driver came to the back door, but Miss Sissie went out and gave him a message for his passengers and he returned to his car and drove away. There were no other callers that day.

Mr. Braswell fretted a little after supper over his inability to muster up strength for getting to the auditorium, but somewhat was consoled by her assurances that a good night’s rest should put him in proper trim for marching in the big parade next morning. By nine o’clock he was in bed and Miss Sissie had a silent idle evening at home and seemed not ungrateful for it.

On the second morning the ancient greeted her in what plainly was his official wardrobe for parading. A frayed and threadbare butternut jacket, absurdly short, with a little peaked tail sticking out behind and a line of tarnished brass buttons spaced down its front, hung grotesquely upon his withered framework. Probably it had fitted him once; now it was acres too loose. Pinned to the left breast was a huge badge, evidently home-made, of yellowed white silk, and lengthwise of it in straggled letters worked with faded red floss ran the number and name of his regiment. In his hand he carried a slouch-hat which had been black once but now was a rusty brown, with a scrap of black ostrich-plume fastened to its band by a brass token.

With trembling fingers he proudly caressed the badge.

“My wife made it for me out of a piece of her own wedding-dress nearly thirty years ago,” he explained. “I’ve worn it to every reunion since then. It’s funny how you put me in mind of my wife. Not that you look like her nor talk like her either. She was kind of small and she had a low voice and you’re so much taller and your way of speaking is deeper and carries further than hers did. And of course you can’t be more than half as old as she’d be if she’d lived. Funny, but you do remind me of her, though. Still, I reckin that’s easy to explain. All good women favor each other some way even when they don’t look alike. It’s something inside of them that does it, I judge – goodness and purity and thinking Christian thoughts.”

If she winced at that last his innocent, weakened old eyes missed it. Anyhow the veteran very soon had personal cause for distress. He had to confess that he wasn’t up to marching. Leaving the dining-room, he practically collapsed. He was heart-broken.

“Don’t you worry,” said Miss Sissie, in that masterful way of hers. “Even if you’re not able to turn out with the rest of them you’re going to see the parade. I can’t send you down-town in my own car – it’s – it’s broken down – and I can’t go with you myself – I – I’m going to be busy. But I can send you in a taxicab with a careful man to drive and you can see the parade.”