Queed Part 42

"How do you know it isn't more like you than anything you ever did in your life?"

That struck him to silence; he gave her a quick inquiring glance, and looked away at once; and Sharlee, for the moment entirely oblivious of the noise and the throng all about her, went on.

"I called that a magnificent boast once--about your being editor of the _Post_. Do you remember? Isn't it time I was confessing that you have got the better of me?"

"I think it is too soon," he answered, in his quietest voice, "to say whether I have got the better of you, or you have got the better of me."

Sharlee looked off down the street. "But you certainly will be editor of the _Post_ some day."

"As I recall it, we did not speak only of editorial writing that night."

"Oh, listen ...!"

From far away floated the strains of "Dixie," crashed out by forty bands. The crowd on the sidewalks stirred; prolonged shouts went up; and now all those who were seated on the porch arose at one motion and came forward.

Sharlee had to spring up to greet still another relative. She came back in a moment, sincerely hoping that Mr. Queed would resume the conversation which her exclamation had interrupted. But he spoke of quite a different matter, a faint cloud on his intelligent brow.

"You should hear Professor Nicolovius on these veterans of yours."

"What does he say about them? Something hateful, I'm sure."

"Among other things, that they are a lot of professional beggars who have lived for forty years on their gray uniforms, and can best serve their country by dying with all possible speed. Do you know," he mused, "if you could hear him, I believe you would be tempted to guess that he is a former Union officer--who got into trouble, perhaps, and was cashiered."

"But of course you know all about him?"

"No," said he, honest, but looking rather annoyed at having given her such an opening, "I know only what he told me."

"Sharlee," came her mother's voice from the rear, "are you sitting on the cold stone?"

"No, mother. Two mats and a cushion."

"Well, he is not a Union officer," said Sharlee to Queed, "for if he were, he would not be bitter. All the bitterness nowadays comes from the non-combatants, the camp-followers, the sutlers, and the cowards. Look, Mr. Queed! _Look!_"

The street had become a tumult, the shouting grew into a roar. Two squares away the head of the parade swept into view, and drew steadily nearer. Mr. Queed looked, and felt a thrill in despite of himself.

At the head of the column came the escort, with the three regimental bands, mounted and bicycle police, city officials, visiting military, sons of veterans, and the militia, including the resplendent Light Infantry Blues of Richmond, a crack drill regiment with an honorable history dating from 1789, and the handsomest uniforms ever seen. Behind the escort rode the honored commander-in-chief of the veterans, and staff, the grand marshal and staff, and a detachment of mounted veterans. The general commanding rode a dashing white horse, which he sat superbly despite his years, and received an ovation all along the line. An even greater ovation went to two festooned carriages which rolled behind the general staff: they contained four black-clad women, no longer young, who bore names that had been dear to the hearts of the Confederacy. After these came the veterans afoot, stepping like youngsters, for that was their pride, in faded equipments which contrasted sharply with the shining trappings of the militia. They marched by state divisions, each division marshaled into brigades, each brigade subdivided again into camps. At the head of each division rode the major-general and staff, and behind each staff came a carriage containing the state's sponsor and maids of honor. And everywhere there were bands, bands playing "Dixie," and the effect would have been even more glorious, if only any two of them had played the same part of it at the same time.

Everybody was standing. It is doubtful if in all the city there was anybody sitting now, save those restrained by physical disabilities.

Conversation on the Weyland piazza became exceedingly disjointed.

Everybody was excitedly calling everybody else's attention to things that seemed particularly important in the pa.s.sing spectacle. To Queed the amount these people appeared to know about it all was amazing. All during the afternoon he heard Sharlee identifying fragments of regiments with a sureness of knowledge that he, an authority on knowledge, marveled at.

The escort pa.s.sed, and the officers and staffs drew on. The fine-figured old commander-in-chief, when he came abreast, turned and looked full at the Weyland piazza, seemed to search it for a face, and swept his plumed hat to his stirrup in a profound bow. The salute was greeted on the porch with a burst of hand-clapping and a great waving of flags.

"That was for my grandmother. He was in love with her in 1850," said Sharlee to Queed, and immediately whisked away to tell something else to somebody else.

One of the first groups of veterans in the line, heading the Virginia Division, was the popular R.E. Lee Camp of Richmond. All afternoon they trod to the continual accompaniment of cheers. No exclusive "show"

company ever marched in better time than these septuagenarians, and this was everywhere the subject of comment. A Grand Army man stood in the press on the sidewalk, and, struck by the gallant step of the old fellows, yelled out good-naturedly:--

"You boys been drillin' to learn to march like that, haven't you?"

Instantly a white-beard in the ranks called back: "No, sir! _We never have forgot!_"

Other camps were not so rhythmic in their tread. Some of the lines were very dragging and straggly; the old feet shuffled and faltered in a way which showed that their march was nearly over. Not fifty yards away from Queed, one veteran pitched out of the ranks; he was lifted up and received into the house opposite which he fell. Sadder than the men were the old battle-flags, soiled wisps that the aged hands held aloft with the most solicitous care. The flag-poles were heavy and the men's arms weaker than once they were; sometimes two or even three men acted jointly as standard-bearer.

These old flags, mere unrecognizable fragments as many of them were, were popular with the onlookers. Each as it marched by, was hailed with a new roar. Of course there were many tears. There was hardly anybody in all that crowd, over fifty years old, in whom the sight of these fast dwindling ranks did not stir memories of some personal bereavement. The old ladies on the porch no longer used their handkerchiefs chiefly for waving. Queed saw one of them wave hers frantically toward a drooping little knot of pa.s.sing gray-coats, and then fall back into a chair, the same handkerchief at her eyes. Sharlee, who was explaining everything that anybody wanted to know, happened to be standing near him; she followed his glance and whispered gently:--

"Her husband and two of her brothers were killed at Gettysburg. Her husband was in Pickett's Division. Those were Pickett's men that just pa.s.sed--about all there are left now."

A little while afterwards, she added: "It is not so gay as one of your Grand Army Days, is it? You see ... it all comes home very close to us.

Those old men that can't be with us much longer are our mothers'

brothers, and sweethearts, and uncles, and fathers. They went out so young--so brave and full of hope--they poured out by hundreds of thousands. Down this very street they marched, no more than boys, and our mothers stood here where we are standing, to bid them G.o.dspeed. And now look at what is left of them, straggling by. There is n.o.body on this porch--but you--who did not lose somebody that was dear to them. And then there was our pride ... for we were proud. So that is why our old ladies cry to-day."

"And why your young ladies cry, too?"

"Oh, ... I am not crying."

"Don't you suppose I know when people are crying and when they aren't?--Why do you do it?"

Sharlee lowered her eyes. "Well ... it's all pretty sad, you know ...

pretty sad."

She turned away, leaving him to his own devices. From his place on the top step, Queed turned and let his frank glance run over the ladies on the porch. The sadness of face that he had noticed earlier had dissolved and precipitated now: there was hardly a dry eye on that porch but his own. What were they all crying for? Miss Weyland's explanation did not seem very convincing. The war had ended a generation ago. The whole thing had been over and done with many years before she was born.

He turned again, and looked out with unseeing eyes over the thick street, with the thin strip of parade moving down the middle of it. He guessed that these ladies on the porch were not crying for definite brothers, or fathers, or sweethearts they had lost. People didn't do that after forty years; here was Fifi only dead a year, and he never saw anybody crying for her. No, they were weeping over an idea; it was sentiment, and a vague, misty, unreasonable sentiment at that. And yet he could not say that Miss Weyland appeared simply foolish with those tears in her eyes. No, the girl somehow managed to give the effect of seeing farther into things than he himself.... Her tears evidently were in the nature of a tribute: she was paying them to an idea. Doubtless there was a certain largeness about that. But obviously the paying of such a tribute could do no possible good--unless--to the payer. Was there anything in that?--in the theory....

Unusual bursts of cheering broke their way into his consciousness, and he recalled himself to see a squad of negro soldiers, all very old men, hobbling by. These were of the faithful, whom no number of proclamations could shake from allegiance to Old Marster. One of them declared himself to be Stonewall Jackson's cook. Very likely Stonewall Jackson's cooks are as numerous as once were ladies who had been kissed by LaFayette, but at any rate this old negro was the object of lively interest all along the line. He was covered with reunion badges, and carried two live chickens under his arm.

Queed went down to the bottom step, the better to hear the comments of the onlookers, for this was what interested him most. He found himself standing next to an exceptionally clean-cut young fellow of about his own age. This youth appeared a fine specimen of the sane, wholesome, successful young American business man. Yet he was behaving like a madman, yelling like Bedlam, wildly flaunting his hat--a splendid-looking Panama--now and then savagely brandishing his fists at an unseen foe. Queed heard him saying fiercely, apparently to the world at large: "They couldn't lick us now. By the Lord, they couldn't lick us now!"

Queed said to him: "You were badly outnumbered when they licked you."

Flaunting his hat pa.s.sionately at the thin columns, the young man shouted into s.p.a.ce: "Outnumbered--outarmed--outequipped--outrationed--but not outgeneraled, sir, not outsoldiered, not outmanned!"

"You seem a little excited about it. Yet you've had forty years to get used to it."

"Ah," brandished the young man at the soldiers, a glad battlenote breaking into his voice, "I'm being addressed by a Yankee, am I?"

"No," said Queed, "you are being addressed by an American."

"That's a fair reply," said the young man; and consented to take his eyes from the parade a second to glance at the author of it. "h.e.l.lo!

You're Doc--Mr. Queed, aren't you?"

Queed, surprised, admitted his ident.i.ty.

"Ye-a-a-a!" said the young man, in a mighty voice. This time he shouted it directly at a tall old gentleman whose horse was just then dancing by. The gentleman smiled, and waved his hand at the flaunted Panama.

"A fine-looking man," said Queed.

"My father," said the young man. "G.o.d bless his heart!"