Old Judge Priest. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
B met or when some idler, dawdling about the cemetery, deciphered the lichen-grown lines on gray and crumbly grave-stones. Only once in a while did a voice respond, “Here!” But always the “Here!” was spoken clearly and loudly and at that, the remaining twelve would hoist their voices in a small cheer.
By common consent certain survivors spoke for certain departed members. For example, when the professor came to one name down among the L’s, Peter J. Galloway, who was an incorruptible and unshakable Roman of the party of Jefferson and Jackson, blared out: “Turn’t Republikin in ‘96, and by the same token died that same year!” And when he reached the name of Adolph Ohlmann it was Mr. Felsburg’s place to tell of the honourable fate of his fellow Jew, who fell before Atlanta.
The reader read on and on until his voice took on a huskened note. He had heard “Here!” for the thirteenth time; he had come to the very bottomest lines of his roster. He called one more name – Vilas, it was – and then he rolled up his parchment and put it away.
“The records show that, first and last, Company B had one hundred and seventy-two members, all regularly sworn into the service of the Confederate States of America under our beloved President, Jefferson Davis,” stated Professor Reese sonorously. “Of those names, in accordance with the custom of this organisation, I have just called one hundred and seventy-one. The roll call of Company B, of the Old Regiment of mounted infantry serving under General Nathan Bedford Forrest, is completed for the current year.” And down he sat.
As Judge Priest, with a little sigh, settled back in his chair, his glance fell on the face of the man next him. Perhaps the old judge’s eyes were not as good as once they had been. Perhaps the light was faulty. At any rate, he interpreted the look that was on the other’s face as a look of loneliness. Ordinarily the judge was a pretty good hand at reading faces too.
“Looky here, boys!” he called out, with such emphasis as to centre general attention on the upper end of the table. “We oughter be ‘shamed of ourselves – carryin’ on this way ‘mongst ourselves and plum’ furgittin’ we had an outsider with us ez a special guest. Our new friend here is ‘bout the proper age to have seen service in the war his own se’f – mebbe he did see some. Of all the states that fought ag’inst us, none of ‘em turned out better soldiers than old Illinoy did. If my guess is right I move we hear frum Mr. Watts, frum Illinoy, on some of his own wartime experiences.” His hand dropped, with a heartening thump, on the shoulder of the stranger. “Come on, colonel! We’ve had a word from ever’body exceptin’ you. It’s your turn – ain’t it, boys?”
Before his question might be answered, Watts had straightened to his feet. He stood rigidly, his hands driven wrist-deep into his coat pockets; his weather-beaten face set in heavy, hard lines; his deep eyes fixed on a spot in the blank wall above their heads.
“You’re right – I was a soldier in the war between the States,” he said in a thickened, quick voice, which trembled just a little; “but I didn’t serve with the Illinois troops. I didn’t move to Illinois until after the war. My regiment was as good a regiment, though, and as game a regiment, as fought in that war on either side.”
Some six or eight broke generously into a brisk patter of handclapping at this, and from the exuberant Mr. Galloway came:
“Whirroo! That’s right – stick up for yer own side always! Go on, me boy; go on!”
The urging was unnecessary. Watts was going on as though he had not been interrupted, as though he had not heard the friendly applause, as though his was a tale which stood in most urgent need of the telling:
“I’m not saying much of my first year as a soldier. I wasn’t satisfied – well, I wasn’t happily placed; I’ll put it that way. I had hopes at the beginning of being an officer; and when the company election was held I lost out. Possibly I was too ambitious for my own good. I came to know that I was not popular with the rest of the company. My captain didn’t like me, either, I thought. Maybe I was morbid; maybe I was homesick. I know I was disappointed. You men have all been soldiers – you know how those things go. I did my duty after a fashion – I didn’t skulk or hang back from danger – but I didn’t do it cheerfully. I moped and I suppose I complained a lot.
“Well, finally I left that company and that regiment. I just quit. I didn’t quit under fire; but I quit – in the night. I think I must have been half crazy; I’d been brooding too much. In a day or two I realised that I couldn’t go back home – which was where I had started for – and I wouldn’t go over to the enemy. Badly as I had behaved, the idea of playing the outright traitor never entered my mind. I want you to know that. So I thought the thing over for a day or two. I had time for thinking it over – alone there in that swamp where I was hiding. I’ve never spoken of that shameful thing in my life since then – not until to-night. I tried not to think of it – but I always have – every day.
“Well, I came to a decision at last. I closed the book on my old self; I wiped out the past. I changed my name and made up a story to account for myself; but I thank God I didn’t change flags and I didn’t change sides. I was wearing that new name of mine when I came out of those woods, and under it I enlisted in a regiment that had been recruited in a state two hundred miles away from my own state. I served with it until the end of the war – as a private in the ranks.
“I’m not ashamed of the part I played those last three years. I’m proud of it! As God is my judge, I did my whole duty then. I was commended in general orders once; my name was mentioned in despatches to the War Department once. That time I was offered a commission; but I didn’t take it. I bear in my body the marks of three wounds. I’ve got a chunk of lead as big as your thumb in my shoulder. There’s a little scar up here in my scalp, under the hair, where a splinter from a shell gashed me. One of my legs is a little bit shorter than the other. In the very last fight I was in a spent cannon ball came along and broke both the bones in that leg. I’ve got papers to prove that from ‘62 to ‘65 I did my best for my cause and my country. I’ve got them here with me now – I carry them with me in the daytime and I sleep at night with them under my pillow.”
With his right hand he fumbled in his breast pocket and brought out two time-yellowed slips of paper and held them high aloft, clenched and crumpled up in a quivering fist.
“One of these papers is my honourable discharge. The other is a letter that the old colonel of my regiment wrote to me with his own hand two months before he died.”
He halted and his eyes, burning like red coals under the thick brows, ranged the faces that looked up into his. His own face worked. When he spoke again he spoke as a prisoner at the bar might speak, making a last desperate appeal to the jury trying him for his life:
“You men have all been soldiers. I ask you this now, as a soldier standing among soldiers – I ask you if my record of three years of hard service and hard fighting can square me up for the one slip I made when I was hardly more than a boy in years? I ask you that?”
With one voice, then, the jury answered. Its verdict was acquittal – and not alone acquittal but vindication. Had you been listening outside you would have sworn that fifty men and not thirteen were yelling at the tops of their lungs, beating on the table with all the might in their arms.
The old man stood for a minute longer. Then suddenly all the rigidity seemed to go out of him. He fell into his chair and put his face in his two cupped hands. The papers he had brandished over his head slipped out of his fingers and dropped on the tablecloth. One of them – a flat, unfolded slip – settled just in front of Doctor Lake. Governed partly by an instinct operating automatically, partly to hide his own emotions, which had been roused to a considerable degree, Doctor Lake bent and spelled out the first few words. His head came up with a jerk of profound surprise and gratification.
“Why, this is signed by John B. Gordon him-self!” he snorted. He twisted about, reaching out for Judge Priest. “Billy! Billy Priest! Why, look here! Why, this man’s no Yankee! Not by a dam’ sight he’s not! Why, he served with a Georgia regiment! Why – ”
But Judge Priest never heard a word of what Doctor Lake was saying. His old blue eyes stared at the stranger’s left hand. On the back of that hand, standing out upon the corded tendons