Albert Payson Terhune

“ And right there Joseph Brinton made a mistake which, if duplicated in his business, would have ruined the same beyond recall.
We all of us, when we are ill, feel that the world owes us the privilege of being querulous about our pet grievances; and Joseph now lifted his voice and complained:
“I can’t understand why you make all this fuss over my father. If it hadn’t been for the trouble I’ve had all these years in caring for him, and the shame he’s so often brought on me—”
Emily Sessions changed instantly from a kindly and wise, though easy-going, nurse into a small, almost youthful, spitfire. ”

“ The room to which Marcia had assigned him was under the eaves and had not yet been ceiled. Through its one window poured in a flood of summer moonlight.
To the old campaigner the bare quarters were not physically uncomfortable. He had slept—and slept snug—in worse beds, and indeed in no bed at all.
But his thoughts were stretching him on a couch of fire.
Now that the miserable day was over, he had time to think, time to realize. And his reflections turned him heart-sick. At times he would sink into an apathy of misery. Again a wave of angry shame would scourge him. ”

“ The foremost guerrilla reached his bridle and jumped for it as the horse darted nervously forward under the sudden double impact of the spurs.
Dad threw his own body far forward and with his pistol-butt caught the guerrilla’s outflung wrist a numbing blow that deflected the grasp from the bridle leather.
A second guerrilla clutched at the leg of the rider himself, missed it by a scant inch, and rolled in the dirt from a glancing contact with the roan’s flank.
Dad was clear of the men and was still riding at top speed. ”

“ Oh, I’m a cruel, shrewish old woman to go on like I did about Brinton—about you.
“Who am I to sit in judgment on a poor, weak man whose love for drink overcomes him sometimes? Why, I’m just every mite as bad myself. Without my morning cup of tea, I’m no good at all. I lean on it as men lean on whisky.” ”

“ The captain made as though to speak; then turned his head abruptly away. When he faced Dad again, the look of physical pain in the sleepy eyes was all but effaced by one of utter shame.
“It is only fair to tell you, suh,” he began jerkily, his glance downcast, like a scolded schoolboy, “it’s only fair to tell you that I had every intention, a while back, of taking you and your orderly prisoner and turning you over to our provost marshal to be shipped off to prison.”
“Well,” responded Dad, “suppose you had? That is your affair. Every man to his own whim. ”

“ The disgrace, the sneers, the shame, dulled by liquor—all were things of the past. Ahead—somewhere to the southward—lay a new world, a new career, a new chance under a new name. The shackles had been struck away. The convict was free.
Dad’s keen eyes traced the bulk of a big house on a rise of ground at the town’s northern end. In a room of that house a boy was lying awake, praying for the good fortune of his grandfather. A boy—the only being on earth who loved James Brinton and whom James Brinton loved. ”

“ Regardless of the distant nurses, regardless of possible onlookers from the scattered wayside houses, Dad stopped stock-still, gathered her into his arms, then stooped and kissed her.
She raised her lips to his and smiled tenderly up at him.
Then of a sudden she drew back in ostentatious haste.
“There!” she declared vehemently. “It’s true there’s no fool like an old fool. Here I am, a woman with a married daughter, making a spectacle of myself in a public street. Shame on me! And shame on you, too, Jim Brinton!”
“I never dreamed,” said Dad, “that shame could be such a nice thing. ”

“ At the first halting notes, a grin of wondering delight twisted the faces of the marching regiment. The episode appealed to their Yankee humor. The grin was reflected on the visages of the crowd of officers and civilians who filled the dais at the plaza’s northern end.
The onlooking Mexicans—from peon to hidalgo—who fringed the square’s edges, listened in stark apathy. Most of them were ignorant of the air’s import. To them it was but a gringo melody; far inferior to “La Paloma.” ”

“ Dad was an imposing figure. There was not lacking those who declared he was even yet a fine figure of a man—even though a covert grin went with the praise.
And more than one woman was wont to follow, with a gaze almost as admiring as it was disapproving, his stately thrice-a-day progress down Main Street from his riverside cottage to the Eagle barroom.
No one in Ideala was so ignorant of Dad’s habits as to imagine for a moment that three daily visits to the Eagle entailed only three drinks thereat. ”

“ Dad’s spurs were blood-flecked. Dad’s gallant horse was beginning to breathe in gasps. The September wind hammered and whipped the man’s hot face and blurred his eyes. The octuple thud of hoofs was nauseating him.
Another mile and the runaway breasted a steep hillock. Dad was a bare ten yards behind.
“Now, then, Jimmie!” he sung out. “Now’s your chance as he takes that rise. Both hands on the reins. Forget the pommel. Both hands on the reins, I said. Lean back with all your weight. Hold the right rein stiff, and saw on the left. With your whole weight, son!” ”

“ From walls and roofs hung a myriad of more or less soiled American flags. On the plaza band stand a group of Mexican musicians were wrestling with “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.”
This last feature of the celebration was a bit of tragic irony attributed to no less a humorist than the arch-victor, the hero of the day—Major-General Winfield Scott. The native musicians were in no wise loath, on patriotic grounds, to play “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” ”

“ Dad (his long years of supposedly aimless reading of military tactics, during such evenings as the Eagle bar had not called him, bearing sudden and glorious{161} fruit) knew the glow that can be equaled by none other the world has to offer—the inspiration of seeing a mighty mass of fellow men moving and acting on the sole impulse of his own brain.
He grew young again. As he rode close to the general’s bridle rein, briefly mapping out the future movements of the detachment, he felt that failure and he had forever bidden each other adieu. ”

“ The humorist had just put a capstone on his achievement of wit by creeping slyly up behind the old man whom he had been bombarding with peanut-shells, and emptying the entire residue of the paper-bag’s contents down the back of his patient victim’s neck.
The exploit brought forth tumultuous applause from the uncouth crowd of onlookers near by.
Dad, who had smiled amusedly as each peanut of the earlier volleys had chanced to hit him, now laughed aloud in tolerant mirth. He had seen new-comers far more mercilessly hazed in his earlier army days. ”

“ As the saber fell, he leaped back out of reach—yet barely far enough, for the blade grazed his arm in whizzing past; grazed it, glancingly; shearing a gash in coat and shirt sleeve, and the deflected blade raising a welt on the flesh of the upper arm.
Before the weapon could be swung aloft for a second slash, or its wielder’s arm shortened for a lunge, Dad was at the Confederate’s throat.
Bare-handed, unafraid, he ran in; too close to his foe to allow the use of saber play. ”

“ Captain James Dadd, falling on his knees beside the rude and cluttered cot, smoothed his son’s hair. He darted out to the spring at the back of the cottage and brought his cap full of water, and bathed Joseph’s forehead, all the while agitatedly insisting:
“There, there, my boy! You were right—I wasn’t much good, and if you did think of me as a soldier, it’s more than I deserved. Don’t—don’t, my boy! I don’t at all understand what you mean about business having killed something in you. You were always an upright man.” ”

“ Then, with a multifold shuffle, the hoofs came to a standstill.
There were heavy steps on the porch. A hammering broke out, as of gunbutt or sword hilt against the front door panels. And a voice shouted “Let us in!”
“Sakes!” whispered Mrs. Sessions. “I’d clean forgot! There must be a hundred of ’em from the sound.”
“No,” corrected Dad, his practiced ear having enumerated the hoof-beats. “Not more than four or five, I should say. Probably the men who chased me this morning. ”

“ I’d rather have you back in Ideala, learning the rule of three, than fighting because you like to have the boys trundle you around on their shoulders the way they did that day when we got back to the corps after that charge.
“It’s nice to be praised. No one but a hypocrite will say he doesn’t like it. But it isn’t the real thing to work for. ”

“ There had been plenty of sympathy for Lee. There was no aid there for him.
And Bret Harte’s parody on “Maryland, My Maryland,” was sung derisively throughout the North; a parody beginning:
In battle thou art strangely meek,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thy politics are changed each week,
Maryland, my Maryland!
The Army of the Potomac dashed to the defense of the invaded State.
As Lee marched out of Frederick, McClellan marched into the town. The hour for the decisive clash drew near; the clash that should once and for all decide the invasion’s fate. ”

“ One company, three months earlier, had marched gayly forth from Ideala upon the calcium path of patriotism—to be shot to atoms in the first battle of Manassas. And now a second and a third were forming.
“Yes,” a crippled oldster was declaring from the far end of the bar, his words percolating ludicrously through a double set of misfit teeth, “yes, gentlemen, Uncle Sam will find he’s in for a good long siege of it before he’s done. He thought he’d have Jeff Davis licked to a standstill in three months. Well, the three months are up. And, so far, it’s been Uncle Jeff that’s done all the licking. ”