“There’s more than that to war,” the Sergeant told him; and Eph’s eyes blazed.
“Whut you know ’bout war, man?” he demanded. “Ain’ I been in it. Ain’ I slep’ in de rain, an’ et raw corn, an’ fit in mud to de knees, an’ got a bullet in my laig, an’ laid out in de snow three days till they come an’ fotch me in. Don’ you let on about war to me, man. I been it and I done it, befo’ you uz thought of. Go way!”
Eph was so deadly earnest that the Sergeant’s eyes misted. The Sergeant himself knew what it was to grow old. He had a terrible, sneaking fear that they would keep him on such duty as this; that he would never see France. And he crossed, and dropped his hand on Eph’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no go. We can’t take you.”
Eph passed from anger to pleading. “Spose’n I uz to go along an’ sing to um,” he proposed. “I c’d do that, anyways.”
“No. They wouldn’t allow you....”
“I’m a jim dandy cook,” Eph offered pitifully.
The Sergeant had to swear or weep. He swore. “Get out of here, you damned old scamp,” he exclaimed, and swept Eph toward the door. “Get out of here and stay out, or I’ll have you run in....”
And Eph, who knew white folks and their ways as well as the slave niggers he scorned, understood that this was the Sergeant’s way of telling him there was no hope at all. So he said simply: “Thank’e, sir.” And he turned, and with a sad and dreary dignity he went out, and down the stairs to the street, and up the Hill and down to the little room where he lodged.
He was alone in his room all that day. The woman who kept the boarding house, a billowy negress with a pock-marked face, heard little moaning cries and lamentations coming from behind his closed door; and once she knocked and offered her comfort, but Eph drove her away with hard words, and nursed his sorrow alone.
That night, some of those who saw him at his stand by the subway kiosk thought he looked tired; but he was as gay as ever, and as cheerful. He made one innovation in his singing. Across the street and above his head rose the spire of the Park street church. Whenever the hands of the clock in this spire touched the hour, old Eph rose, and took off his hat, and lifted up his voice and sang: