A Certain Rich Man

by William Allen White

"Yes, sir—in the mornin'." He caught hold of the girl's arm awkwardly and swung her around to the opposite side of the pump-handle, and put her hands on it and began to pump. She pumped with him as he puffed between the strokes, "Um' huh—we're going to hide in the provision wagons, under some saddles they is there and go—to—war!" The water was pouring into the bucket by the time he had got this out. Their hands touched on the pump-handle. It was the boy who drew his hand away. The girl gasped:—

"Why, John Barclay,—it ain't no such thing—does your ma know it?"

He told her that no one knew it but her, and they pumped in silence until the bucket was full, and walking back carrying the bucket between them, he told her another secret: that Watts McHurdie had asked John to get his guitar after midnight, and play an accompaniment to the accordion, and that Watts and Ward and Jake Dolan and Gabriel Carnine were going out serenading. Further he told her that Watts was going to serenade Nellie Logan at the Thayer House, and that Gabriel Carnine was going to serenade Mary Murphy, and that Philemon Ward was going to serenade Miss Lucy, and that he, John Barclay, had suggested that it would be fine to serenade Mrs. Culpepper, because she was such a nice woman, and they agreed that if he would bring his guitar, they would!

When the boy and girl returned to the store, Ward and Miss Lucy went to the Barclay home for the guitar. When they came back, Mrs. Barclay noted a pink welt on one of Ward's fingers where his cameo ring had been, and she observed that from time to time Miss Lucy kept feeling of her hair as if to smooth it. It was long after midnight before the girls from the hotel went home, and Miss Lucy and Mrs. Barclay lay on the counter in the store, trying to sleep. They awoke with the sound of music in their ears, and Miss Lucy said, "It's Captain Ward—and the other boys, serenading us." They heard the high tenor voice of Watts McHurdie and the strong clear voice of Ward rising above the accordion and guitar:—

"For her voice is on the breeze,
Her spirit comes at will,
At midnight on the seas
Her bright smile haunts me still."

And underneath these high voices was the gruff bass voice of Gabriel Carnine and the baritone of Jake Dolan. And when Mrs. Barclay heard the piping treble of her son, and the tinkle of his guitar, her eyes filled with tears of pride.

The serenaders waked the chickens, and the crowing roosters roused Mrs. Barclay, and in the hurry of the hour she forgot to look for her son. As "the gray dawn was breaking," a hundred men came into the room, and found the smoking breakfast on the table. It was a good breakfast as breakfasts go when men are hungry. But they sat in silence that morning. The song was all out of them; the spring of youth was crushed under the weight of great events. And as they rose—they who had been so merry the day before, and had joked of the things the soldier fears, they were all but mute, and left their breakfasts scarcely tasted.

The women remember this,—the telltale sign of the untouched breakfast,—and their memory is better than that of Martin Culpepper, who wrote in that plumy chapter of the Biography, before mentioned:—

"The soldiers left their homes that beautiful August morning as the sun was kissing the tips of the sycamore that gave the magnificent little city its name. They had partaken abundantly of a bountiful breakfast, and as they satisfied their inner man from a table groaning with good things prepared by the fair hands of the gentler sex, the gallant men rose with song and cheer, and went on their happy way where duty and honour called them."

But the women who scraped the plates that morning knew the truth. One wonders how much of history would be thrown out as worthless, like Martin Culpepper's fine writing, if the women who scraped the plates might testify. For those "large white plumes" do not dance in women's eyes!