“The darned old nut,” said Ragan gruffly, to himself. “Not sense enough to go to bed....”
And he went on down the street, whistling between his teeth and trying not to think of Eph’s bowed body and the tears upon the black old cheeks.
II
Eph’s songs, in the old days, were simple darky ballads, or lullabys, or the songs of the southland that all the world knows. People sometimes brought their children, of an evening, just to hear Eph sing: “Don’ You Cry, Ma Honey ...” or that fearsome lullaby about the “Conju’ cats....” When the old man was in good voice, he never failed to gather a little audience about him. His listeners used to call out and ask him to sing certain songs that were their favorites; and sometimes Eph sang what they wished to hear, and sometimes he refused. He would never sing “Dixie.” “I ain’ no slave nigger,” he was accustomed to protest, with scorn. “I fit ag’in’ de South, in de big war. Rackon I’m gwine sing dat song? Lawdy, man, no suh.”
They told him, laughingly, that the war was over. “Da’s all right,” he agreed. “De war’s over. Mebbe so. But I ain’ over. Not me. An’ long as I is what I is, I don’ sing no rebelliums. No suh.”
Those who had enough curiosity to make inquiries found that Eph told the truth when he said he had fought for the North. He had served in that colored regiment whose black ranks are immortalized in the Shaw Memorial, opposite the State House, just up the hill from where Eph had his nightly stand; and he carried his discharge papers in a tattered old wallet in his tattered coat.... By the same token, though he would never sing “Dixie,” it required no more than a word to start him off on that mighty battle hymn, “Mine eyes have seen the glory....” When he sang this, his voice rolled and throbbed and thrummed with a roar like the roar of drums, and there was the beat of marching feet in the cadence of his song. His banjo tinkled shrilly as the piping of the fifes, and his bent shoulders straightened, and his head flung high, and his old eyes snapped and shone....
When Europe went to war, Eph little by little forsook the gentler melodies of his repertoire; he chose songs with a martial swing. He chose them by ear and by words; and when he sang them, there was the blare of bugles in his voice. He was, from the beginning, violently anti-German; and now and then, when his enthusiasm overcame him, he delivered an oration on the subject to his nightly audience. At which they laughed.
But if it was a joke to them, it was not funny to Eph; and he proved this when the United States went into the war. He went, unostentatiously, to the recruiting office and offered himself to the country.
The Sergeant in charge did not smile at old Eph, because he saw that Eph himself was deadly serious. Eph had said simply:
“I’ve come to jine up in de army, suh.” The Sergeant asked: