II. The Energy is Transmitted
The expectations of Sergeant Jones were entirely unfulfilled. Much experience in taking charge of recruits upon long railway journeys had taught him that their earnest faces were not always more stirring than the stars upon Old Glory; he knew that you do not invariably find that sort of face for thirteen dollars a month. He had generally been obliged to watch their purchases at way stations, he had not seldom been forced to remove bottles of strong spirits from their possession, and he had almost always found it necessary to teach some of them a lesson in obedience. Judge therefore of the sergeant’s amazement when, after the first half day of journey, a long overgrown ruddy boy approached him and asked in unsoiled Southern accents: “Please, sah, can we sing?”
“Sing?” said Jones. “Sing what?”
“‘Pull foah the shoah, sailah.’ We have learned to do it in parts back in our home.”
“Yes,” said Jones, “I guess you can sing that—in parts or as a whole.”
“We sing it as a whole in parts, sah,” explained the recruit with simplicity.
“Your name Anniston?” Jones inquired, abruptly suspicious.
“Bateau, sah. Leonidas Bateau. My cousin, Xerxes Anniston, sits over yonder by the watahcoolah.”
“Oh,” said Jones.
“Yes, sah. Xerx he sings bass in our choir back in our home. Sistah Smith—”
“Who?” said the sergeant.
“Sistah Smith, sah, the wife of our ministah, Tullius C. Smith.”
“Oh,” said the sergeant.
“She is leadah of our choir back in our home. She is our best soprano, Sistah Mingory is our best alto, and Brother Macon Lafayette Young gets two notes lowah than any of our basses. He keeps the choicest grocery in town and is president of our Y. M. C. A. You’d ought to heard our quartet in the prayer from ‘Moses in Egypt,’ arranged by Sistah Mingory last Eastah Sunday.”
The thoroughly good heart of Jones now warmed to this recruit. (I cannot hope that you will remember Jones. He was Specimen Jones long ago, before he joined the Army. Some of his doings are chronicled elsewhere. He is an old member of the family.) “Made Moses hum, did y’u?” said he. “I’ll bet the girls would sooner have a solo from you than from Brother what’s-his-name Lafayette.”
“Sistah Smith,” replied Leonidas, blushing like the innocent watermelon that he was, “did say that she couldn’t see how they were going to get along without my uppah registah.”
Jones settled back in his seat. “Sing away,” said he.
Many songs were sung through Alabama and Louisiana and Texas; virtuous songs with no offending or even convivial word, and none so frequently demanded by the passengers as a solo from Leonidas,
How little do I love this vale of tears,
through which the chorus crooned a murmuring accompaniment. West of San Antonio, they played a game of riddles, and when Cousin Xerxes (who seemed the wit of the party) asked, “Why is Dass’s solo like Texas? Because it’s all in flats,” and the recruits were convulsed with merriment by this, Sergeant Jones, listening to them in his seat behind, muttered with compassion: “Their mothers could hear every word they say.” And friendliness was established between him and the recruits. They confided many things to him.
Yes; not a drop of vice’s poison flowed in them, but at El Paso, while they waited, Leonidas, on saying to Jones, “What an elegant speech the Secretary of War gave us!” was astonished to hear the sergeant burst into strong language.
“That hypercrite!” exclaimed Jones. And the shocked Leonidas answered him.
And now began to fall the first chill upon their friendliness. The recruits were clean from vice, but the Secretary’s poison was at work, the sugar of self-pity he had given them to swallow, the false sentiment over themselves, the sick notion they were objects of special sympathy, instead of stout young lads beginning life with about as many helps and hindrances as other stout young lads.
“Yes, he did say so!” declared Leonidas. “Yes, he did, sah. He said he’d take care we was treated like gentlemen. He said he was behind us. And I guess he’s the man to back up his word.”
“Well,” said Jones, making a final try, “I’ll tell y’u.” And he laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “A man enlists to be a soldier—nothin’ else. Not to be a gentleman, but just a soldier who obeys his orders—and nothin’ else. I obey the captain, and he obeys the colonel, and he obeys the commanding general of the department, and so it goes clean to the top, and we’re all soldiers obeyin’ the President of the United States, and if bein’ a gentleman consists in makin’ things as pleasant and easy for others as y’u can, why, the chap in the army who obeys best is the best gentleman. There’s remedies for injustice all right, but you keep thinkin’ about your duties and you’ll not need to think about your remedies. Understand?”
“Yes, sah,” said Leonidas, without the faintest sign of comprehension. “But the Secretary is at the top and it’s right in him to say the top should nevah forget to recognize the onaliable rights of the bottom. He said he was behind us.”
“Oh, go sit down and give us some of your upper register!” cried Jones.
Thus did friendliness give place to estrangement. The watermelons laid their heads together and assured Leonidas that he had acted in a proper and spirited manner. In Sergeant Jones they confided no longer, for which he was man enough to lay the blame where it belonged. He handsomely cursed the Secretary of War, but what good did that do?
Arrived at Fort Chiricahua, the recruits fell into safe hands, though not perhaps entirely wise ones. The post chaplain was an earnest preacher of the same denomination as the Rev. Tullius C. Smith, and delighted to surround Leonidas and his band with the same customs and influences which they had known at home. They were soon known throughout the post as “The Shouters.” This epithet came from their choir singing, which was no whit lessened by their new and not wholly religious environment. If Sergeant Jones or Captain Stone had looked for insubordination as a result of the Secretary’s speech, it was an agreeable disappointment. The recruits were punctual, they were clean, they were assiduous at drill, they showed intelligence, they were model, both as youths and soldiers, and nothing kept them from a more than common popularity in their various troops unless it was that they were a little too model for the taste of the average enlisted man. The parade-ground was constantly melodious with their week-day practising for Sabbath exercises. Sister Smith had sent them much music from home, and the post learned to admire “Moses in Egypt” as arranged by Sister Mingory and interpreted by the upper register of Leonidas.
One person there was whom the strains of psalmody, as they floated from the open windows of the school-room, did not wholly please. Captain Stone disapproved of his Gwendolen’s spending so much time alone with the melodeon and Leonidas. Almost as fittingly might a Senator’s wife sing duets with her coachman, and all the ladies of the Post knew this—excepting Gwendolen! But he could not forbid her, at least not yet. Was she not his bride of scarce three months? In this new army world, where he had brought her so far from everything that she had always known, how could he deprive her of one great resource, he who had cut her off from so many? Time would steadily teach her the conduct suitable for an officer’s wife, and then of her own accord she would put the proper distance between herself and the enlisted men.
“It is so unexpected, Joshua,” she said once, “such an unexpected joy to be able to keep a good influence around those poor boys.”
“What do you call them poor boys for?” inquired the captain.
“To come into so many temptations so far from home!” she exclaimed.
“They’re not going to have you and the chaplain and the organ all their lives, Gwendolen.”
“Now, Joshua, keep your mustache down! The Secretary of War—don’t swear so dreadfully, darling! Don’t!” And the bride stopped her lord’s lips with her hand. “I won’t mention him any more,” she promised. “I must run now, or I’ll be late for practising next Sunday’s anthem with Leonidas Bateau.”
Left on the porch of his quarters, the captain made the same remark about next Sunday’s anthem that he had made about the Secretary of War; but Gwendolen, having departed, did not hear him, and soon from the open windows of the school-house floated the chords of the melodeon with a chorus led by Cousin Xerxes, and a solo on an upper register,
How little do I love this vale of teahs.
Would Gwendolen have been so eager to redeem some dried-up middle-aged sinner? I don’t know. At any rate, in her solicitude for the spotless Leonidas, she was abreast with the advanced Philanthropy which holds prevention better than cure. Of course, not even to the most evil-minded could scandal arise from any of this. But when you see a wife of nineteen playing the organ for a trooper of twenty-two, and a husband of forty-five constantly remarking that a man is always as young as he feels, why, then you are at no great distance from comedy, and the joke draws nearer when the wife is anxious that the trooper should not feel the want of his mother, and the trooper retains the limpid innocence of the watermelon. The ladies of the Post tried to be indignant that an officer’s wife should so much associate herself with enlisted men, but they could only laugh—and hush when the captain came by, and the men in barracks laughed—and hushed when the captain came by, and the poor captain knew it all. Meanwhile, the melodeon played on, the watermelons lifted their harmless hymns, and in the heart of Leonidas the Secretary’s speech dwelled like honey but like gall in the heart of the captain. Had Captain Stone dreamed what sweet familiarity the hymns were breeding, he—but he did not dream, hence was his awakening all the more pronounced.
The day it came had made an ill beginning with him. He had walked unexpectedly into the kitchen before breakfast, and found there his Chinaman putting a finishing crust on the breakfast rolls. He had never been aware of such a process. He had always particularly enjoyed the crust. The Chinaman had just reached the point where he withdrew the hot rolls from the oven and sprayed them suddenly with cold water from his mouth. There had ensued a dreadful time in the kitchen, and no rolls for breakfast and no Chinaman for dinner, and even as late as five o’clock the captain’s mustache had not completely flattened down. Leonidas should have observed this as he came up the captain’s steps with a message from the chaplain for the captain’s wife. They were waiting for her to come over and play the melodeon for Sunday’s anthem.
“Is Sistah Stone here?” Leonidas inquired.
“WHO?” said the captain, rising from his chair, which fell backward with the movement.
“Is Sistah Stone here?” repeated Leonidas, mildly. “The chaplain says—”
You will meet the most conflicting accounts of the spot where Leonidas first landed on firm ground after leaving the captain’s boot. The colonel’s orderly, who was standing in front of the colonel’s gate four houses farther up the line, deposed that he “thought he heard a something but didn’t see what made it.” Mrs. Phillips declared she was sitting on her porch two houses down the line, and “it looked just like diving from a spring-board.” These were the only two disinterested witnesses. The afflicted Leonidas claimed that he had gone from the porch clean over the front gate, and Captain Stone said that he didn’t know and didn’t care, but that if the gate story was true, then he had projected one hundred and sixty pounds forty measured feet and felt younger than ever.
The version which Jones gave has (to me) always seemed wholly satisfactory. “Don’t y’u go sittin’ up nights over it,” said Jones. “Nobody’ll never prove where he struck. But what
“Is Sistah Stone heah?” Leonidas inquired
I seen was the captain come ragin’ out of his gate. He went over to the officers’ club and I knowed it was particular, for y’u could have stood a vase of flowers on his muss-tash without spillin’ a drop. And next comes Leonidas a-flyin’ by me, a-screechin’, ‘The Secretary shall hear of this!’ And I seen the mark on his pants and he tells me. ‘Hard brushin’ will remove it,’ I says to him, and he says, ‘The Secretary shall hear of it!’ And I says, ‘Well, Leonidas, it sure ain’t your upper register that’s damaged.’ ‘The Secretary,’ says he, but I got tired. ‘If you was figuring to be the captain’s brother-in-law,’ I says, ‘you should have bruck it to him gently.’”