Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
Old Judge Priest

Maybe it was the old judge’s way of putting it, but the idea took unanimously. The manager of the Richland House, having been sent for, appeared in person almost immediately. To him the situation was outlined and the remedy for it that had been favoured.

“By gum, gentlemen,” said their host, instantly inspired, “I believe I know where I can put my hand on the very candidate you’re looking for. There’s a kind of seedy-looking, lonely old fellow downstairs, from somewhere the other side of the Ohio River. He’s been registered since yes’day morning; seems like to me his name is Watts – something like that, anyhow. He don’t seem to have any friends or no business in particular; he’s just kind of hanging round. And he knows about this dinner too. He was talking to me about it a while ago, just before supper – said he’d read about it in a newspaper up in his country. He even asked me what the names of some of you gentlemen were. If you think he’ll do to fill in I’ll go right down and get him. He was sitting by himself in a corner of the lobby not two minutes ago. I judge he’s about the right age, too, if age is a consideration. He looks to be about the same age as most of you.”

There was no need for Judge Priest to put the question to a vote. It carried, so to speak, by acclamation. Bearing a verbal commission heartily to speak for the entire assemblage, Manager Ritter hurried out and in less than no time was back again, escorting the person he had described. Judge Priest met them at the door and was there introduced to the stranger, whose rather reluctant hand he warmly shook.

“He didn’t want to come at first,” explained Mr. Ritter; “said he didn’t belong up here with you-all; but when I told him the fix you was in he gave in and consented, and here he is.”

“You’re mighty welcome, suh,” said Judge Priest, still holding the other man’s hand. “And we’re turribly obliged to you fur comin’, and to Mr. Ritter fur astin’ you to come.”

With that, he drew their dragooned guest into the room and, standing beside him, made formal presentation to the expectant company.

“Gentlemen of Company B, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Watts, of the State of Illinoy, who has done us the great honour of agreein’ to make fourteen at the table, and to eat a bite with us at this here little dinner of ours.” A straggling outburst of greeting and approbation arose from twelve elderly throats. “Mr. Watts, suh, will you be so good as to take this cheer here, next to me?” resumed Judge Priest when the noise abated; and he completed the ceremonial by indicating the place of the absent Mr. Reeves.

What the stranger saw as he came slowly forward – if, indeed, he was able to see anything with distinctness by reason of the evident confusion that covered him – was a double row of kindly, cordial, curious faces of old men, all staring at him. Before the battery of their eyes he bowed his acknowledgments, but did not speak them; still without speaking, he slipped into the seat which Tobe Emery sprang forward to draw clear of the table for his easier admission to the group. What the others saw was a tall, stooped, awkward man of, say, sixty-five, with sombre eyes, set deep in a whiskered face that had been burned a leathery red by wind and weather; a heavy-footed man, who wore a suit of store clothes – clothes of a homely cut and none too new, yet neat enough; such a man, one might guess at a glance, as would have little to say and would be chary about saying that little until sure of his footing and his audience. Judging by appearances and first impressions he did not promise to be what you might call exciting company, exactly; but he made fourteen at the table, and that was the main point, anyhow.

Now the dinner got under way with a swing and a clatter. For all the stitches and tucks that time had taken in their leg muscles, the three old negroes flitted about like flickery black shadows, bringing food to all and toddies to several, and just plain ice water to at least three of their white friends. Even Kentuckians have been known to be advocates of temperance. To learn how true a statement this is you must read, not the comic weeklies, but the official returns of local-option elections. Above the medley of commingling voices, some cracked and jangled with age, some still full and sonorous, and one at least as thin and piercing as the bleat of a reed flute – that would be Judge Priest’s voice, of course – sounded the rattling of dishes and glasses and plated silverware. Uncle Zach and his two aides may have been good waiters, but they were tolerably noisy ones.

Through it all the extra guest sat very quietly, eating little and drinking nothing. Sitting alongside him, Doctor Lake noticed that he fed himself with his right hand only; his left hand stayed in his lap, being hidden from sight beneath the table. Naturally this set afoot a train of mild professional surmise in the old doctor’s mind. The arm itself seemed sound enough; he vaguely wondered whether the Illinois man had a crippled hand or a deformed hand, or what. Judge Priest noticed it too, but subconsciously rather. At the beginning he tried to start a conversation with Watts, feeling it incumbent on him, as chief sponsor for the other’s presence, to cure him of his embarrassment if he could, and to make him feel more at home there among them; but his well-meant words appeared to fall on barren soil. The stranger answered in mumbled monosyllables, without once looking Judge Priest straight in the face. He kept his head half averted – a posture the judge ascribed to diffidence; but it was evident he missed nothing at all of the talk that ran up and down the long table and back and forth across it. Under his bushy brows his eyes shifted from face to face as this man or that had his say.

So presently the judge, feeling that he had complied with the requirements of hospitality, abandoned the effort to interest his silent neighbour, and very soon after forgot him altogether for the time being. Under the circumstances it was only to be expected of Judge Priest that he should forget incidental matters; for now, to all these lifelong friends of his, time was swinging backward on a greased hinge. The years that had lined these old faces and bent these old backs were dropping away; the memories of great and storied days were mounting to their brains like the fumes of strong wine, brightening their eyes and loosening their tongues.

From their eager lips dropped names of small country churches, tiny backwoods villages of the Southwest, trivial streams and geographically inconsequential mountains – names that once meant nothing to the world at large, but which, by reason of Americans having fought Americans there and Americans having died by the hundreds and the thousands there, are now printed in the school histories and memorised by the school children – Island Number 10 and Shiloh; Peachtree Creek and Stone River; Kenesaw Mountain and Brice’s Crossroads. They had been at these very places, or at most of them – these thirteen old men had. To them the names were more than names. Each one burned in their hearts as a living flame. All the talk, though, was not of battle and skirmish. It dealt with prisons, with hospitals, with camps and marches.

“By George, boys, will you ever forget the day we marched out of this town?” It was Doctor Lake speaking, and his tone was high and exultant. “Flags flying everywhere and our sweethearts crying and cheering us through their tears! And the old town band up front playing Girl I Left Behind Me and Johnnie’s Gone for a Soger! And we-all stepping along, feeling so high and mighty and stuck-up in our new uniforms! A little shy on tactics we were, and not enough muskets to go round; but all the boys wore new grey suits, I remember. Our mothers saw to that.”

“It was different, though, Lew, the day we came home again,” reminded some one else, speaking gently. “No flags flying then and nobody cheering, and no band to play! And half the women were in black – yes, more than half.”

“An’ dat’s de Gawd’s truth!” half-whispered black Tobe Emery, carried away for the moment.

“Well,” said Press Harper, “I know they run out of muskets ‘fore they got round to me. I call to mind that I went off totin’ an ole flintlock that my paw had with him down in Mexico when he wus campin’ on ole Santy Anny’s trail. And that wus all I did have in the way of weepins, ‘cept fur a great big bowie knife that a blacksmith out at Massac made fur me out of a rasp-file. I wus mighty proud of that there bowie of mine till we got down yonder to Camp Boone and found a whole company, all with bigger knives than whut mine wus. Called themselves the Blood River Tigers, those boys did, ‘cause they came frum up on Blood River, in Calloway.”

Squire Futrell took the floor – or the table, rather – for a moment:

“I recollec’ one Calloway County feller down at Camp Boone, when we fust got there, that didn’t even have a knife. He went round ‘lowin’ as how he wus goin’ to pick him out a likely Yank the fust fight we got into, and lick him with his bare hands ef he stood still and fit, or knock him down with a rock ef he broke and run – and then strip him of his outfit.”

“Why, I place that feller, jest ez plain ez if he wus standin’ here now,” declared Mr. Harper. “I remember him sayin’ he could lick ary Yankee that ever lived with his bare hands.”

“I reckin mebbe he could, too – he wus plenty long enough,” said the squire with a chuckle; “but the main obstacle wus that the Yankees wouldn’t fight with their bare hands. They jest would insist on usin’ tools – the contrary rascals! Let’s see, now, whut wus that Calloway County feller’s name? You remember him, Herman, don’t you? A tall, ganglin’ jimpy jawed, loose-laiged feller he wus – built like one of these here old blue creek cranes.”

Mr. Felsburg shook his head; but Press Harper broke in again:

“I’ve got him! The boys called him Lengthy fur short; but his real name wus Washburn, same ez – ”

He stopped short off there; and, twisting his head away from the disapproving faces, which on the instant had been turned full on him from all along the table, he went through the motion of spitting, as though to rid his mouth of an unsavoury taste. A hot colour climbed to Peter J. Galloway’s wrinkled cheeks and he growled under the overhang of his white moustache. Doctor Lake pursed up his lips, shaking his head slowly.

There was one black spot, and just one, on the records of Company B. And, living though he might still be, or dead, as probably he was, the name of one man was taboo when his one-time companions broke bread at their anniversary dinner. Indeed, they went farther than that: neither there nor elsewhere did they speak by name of him who had been their shame and their disgrace. It was a rule. With them it was as though that man had never lived.

Up to this point Mr. Herman Felsburg had had mighty little to say. For all he had lived three-fourths of his life in our town, his command of English remained faulty and broken, betraying by every other word his foreign birth; and his habit of mixing his metaphors was proverbial. He essayed few long speeches-before mixed audiences; but now he threw himself into the breach, seeking to bridge over the awkward pause.

“Speaking of roll calls and things such as that,” began Mr. Felsburg, seeming to overlook the fact that until now no one had spoken of roll calls – “speaking of those kinds of things, maybe you will perhaps remember how it was along in the winter of ‘64, when practically we were out of everything – clothes and shoes and blankets and money – ach, yes; money especially! – and how the orderly sergeant had no book or papers whatsoever, and so he used to make his report in the morning on a clean shingle, with a piece of lead pencil not so gross as that.” He indicated a short and stubby finger end.

“‘Long ‘bout then we could ‘a’ kept all the rations we drew on a clean shingle too – eh, Herman?” wheezed Judge Priest. “And the shingle wouldn’t ‘a’ been loaded down at that! My, my! Ever’ time I think of that winter of ‘64 I find myse’f gittin’ hongry all over agin!” And the judge threw himself back in his chair and laughed his high, thin laugh.

Then, noting the others had not yet rallied back again to the point where the flow of reminiscences had been checked by Press Harper’s labial slip-up, he had an inspiration.

“Speakin’ of roll calls,” he said, unconsciously parroting Mr. Felsburg, “seems to me it’s ‘bout time we had ours. The vittles end of this here dinner ‘pears to be ‘bout over. Zach” – throwing the suggestion across his shoulder – “you and your pardners’d better be fetchin’ on the coffee and the seegars, I reckin.” He faced front again, raising his voice: “Who’s callin’ the roll to-night?”

“I am,” answered Professor Reese; and at once he got on his feet, adjusted his spectacles just so, and drew from an inner breast pocket of his long frock coat a stained and frayed scroll, made of three sheets of tough parchment paper pasted end to end.

He cleared his throat; and, as though the sound had been a command, his fellow members bent forward, with faces composed to earnestness. None observed how the stranger acted; indeed, he had been quite out of the picture and as good as forgotten for the better part of an hour. Certainly nobody was interested in him at this moment when there impended what, to that little group, was a profoundly solemn, highly sentimental thing.

Again Professor Reese cleared his throat, then spoke the name that was written in faded letters at the top of the roll – the name of him who had been their first captain and, at the last, their brigade commander.

“Died the death of a hero in an effort to save others at Cottonwood Bar, June 28, 1871,” said Judge Priest; and he saluted, with his finger against his forehead.

One by one the old school-teacher called off the list of commissioned and noncommissioned officers. Squire Futrell, who had attained to the eminence of a second corporal’s place, was the only one who answered for himself. For each of the others, including Lieutenant Garrett – he of the game leg and the plantation in Mississippi – somebody else answered, giving the manner and, if he remembered it, the date of that man’s death. For, excepting Garrett, they were all dead.

The professor descended to the roster of enlisted men:

“Abner P. Ashbrook!”

“Died in Camp Chase as a prisoner of war.”

“G. W. Ayres!”

“Killed at Baker’s Creek.”

“R. M. Bigger!”

“Moved to Missouri after the war, was elected state senator, and died in ‘89.”

“Reuben Brame!”

“Honourably discharged after being wounded at Corinth, and disappeared. Believed to be dead.”

“Robert Burnell!”

“Murdered by bushwhackers in East Tennessee on his way home after the Surrender.”

So it went down the long column of names. They were names, many of them, which once stood for something in that community but which would have fallen with an unfamiliar sound upon the ears of the oncoming generation – old family names of the old town. But the old families had died out or had scattered, as is the way with old families, and the names were only pronounced when Company 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 and the wrinkled brown skin, blazed a red spot, shaped like a dumb-bell, a birthmark of most unusual pattern.

Judge Priest stared and stared; and as he stared a memory that was nearly as old as he was crept out from beneath a neglected convolution in the back part of his brain, and grew and spread until it filled his amazed, startled, scarce-believing mind. So it was no wonder he did not hear Doctor Lake; no wonder he did not see black Tobe Emery stealing up behind him, with popped eyes likewise fixed on that red dumb-bell-shaped mark.

No; Judge Priest did not hear a word. As Doctor Lake faced about the other way to spread his wonderful discovery down the table and across it, the judge bent forward and touched the fourteenth guest on the shoulder very gently.

“Pardner,” he asked, apparently apropos of nothing that had happened since the dinner started – “Pardner, when was the first time you heard about this here meetin’ of Company B – the first time?”

Through the interlaced fingers of the other the answer came haltingly:

“I read about it – in a Chicago Sunday paper – three weeks ago.”

“But you knew before that there was a Company B down here in this town?”

Without raising his head or baring his face, the other nodded. Judge Priest overturned his coffee cup as he got to his feet, but took no heed of the resultant damage to the cloth on the table and the fronts of his white trouser legs.

“Boys,” he cried out so shrilly, so eagerly, so joyously, that they all jumped, “when you foller after Holy Writ you can’t never go fur wrong. You’re liable to breed a miracle. A while ago we took a lesson from the Parable of the Rich Man that give a dinner; and – lo and behold! – another parable and a better parable – yes, the sweetest parable of ‘em all – has come to pass and been repeated here ‘mongst us without our ever knowin’ it or even suspectin’ it. The Prodigal Son didn’t enjoy the advantage of havin’ a Chicago Sunday paper to read, but in due season he came back home – that other Prodigal did; and it stands written in the text that he was furgiven, and that a feast was made fur him in the house of his fathers.”

His tone changed to one of earnest demand: “Lycurgus Reese, finish the roll call of this company – finish it right now, this minute – the way it oughter be finished!”

“Why, Judge Priest,” said Professor Reese, still in the dark and filled with wonderment, “it is already finished!”

As though angered almost beyond control, the judge snapped back:

“It ain’t finished, neither. It ain’t been rightly finished from the very beginnin’ of these dinners. It ain’t finished till you call the very last name that’s on that list.”

“But, Judge – ”

“But nothin’! You call that last name, Ly-curgus Reese; and you be almighty quick about it!”

There was no need for the old professor, thus roughly bidden, to haul out his manuscript. He knew well enough the name, though wittingly it had not passed his lips for forty years or more. So he spoke it out:

“Sylvester B. Washburn!”

The man they had called Watts raised in his place and dropped his clenched hands to his sides, and threw off the stoop that was in his shoulders. He lifted his wetted eyes to the cracked, stained ceiling above. He peered past plaster and rafter and roof, and through a rift in the skies above he feasted his famished vision on a delectable land which others might not see. And then, beholding on his face that look of one who is confessed and shriven, purified and atoned for, the scales fell away from their own eyes and they marvelled – not that they knew him now, but that they had not known him before now. And for a moment or two there was not a sound to be heard.

“Sylvester B. Washburn!” repeated Professor Reese.

And the prodigal answered:

“Here!”