But I sez, “I guess they’ll git along without hearin’ that accordeon.”
“I might sing sunthin’, I spose,” sez he. “I could put on my dressin’ gown and belt it down with the tossels and appear as a singer, and sing a silo.”
That wuz the evenin’ after Dorothy, in a thin, white dress, a little low in the neck and short sleeves, had stood up and sung a lovely piece, or that is I ’spoze it wuz lovely, it wuz in some foreign tongue, but it sounded first rate, as sweet as the song of a robin or medder lark––you know how we all like to hear them, though we can’t quite understand 90 robin and lark language. It wuz kinder good in Josiah to want to give pleasure in return for what he had had, but I argyed him into thinkin’ that he and I would give more pleasure as a congregation than as speakers or singers. For after I had vetoed the singin’ that good man proposed that he should speak a piece. Sez he, “I could tell most the hull of the American Taxation.”
And I sez, “I wouldn’t harrer up the minds of the rich men on board with thoughts of taxes,” sez I, “when lots of ’em are goin’ away to get rid on ’em.”
“Well,” sez he, “I could tell the hull of Robert Kidd.”
And I sez, “Well, I wouldn’t harrer up their feelin’s talkin’ about hullsale stealin’; they have enough of that to hum in the big cities.”
So gradual I got him off from the idee.
There wuz one little boy about Tommy’s age and a sister a little older I felt real sorry for, they looked so queer, and their ma, a thin, wirey, nervous lookin’ woman brooded over ’em like a settin’ hen over her eggs. They wuz dressed well, but dretful bulged out and swollen lookin’, and I sez to their ma one day:
“Are your children dropsical?”
And she sez, “Oh, no, their health is good. The swellin’s you see are life preservers.” She said that she kep’ one on their stomachs night and day.
Well, I knew that they would be handy in a shipwreck, but it made ’em look queer, queer as a dog.
And now whilst the passengers are all settin’ or standin’ on their own forts and tendin’ to their own bizness, and the big ship ploughin’ its big liquid furrow on the water I may as well tell what Arvilly went through. I spoze the reader is anxious to know the petickulers of how she come to be in the Cuban army and desert from it. The reason of her bein’ in the army at all, her husband enlisted durin’ the struggle for Cuban independence, and Arvilly jest worshippin’ the ground he walked on, and thinkin’ the world 91 wuz a blank to her where he wuz not, after the last care he left her wuz removed, and always havin’ done as she wuz a mind to as fur as she could, she dressed herself up in a suit of his clothes and enlisted onbeknown to him, so’s to be near to him if he got woonded, and ’tennyrate to breathe the same air he did and sleep under the same stars. She adored him.
It must be remembered that Arvilly had never loved a single thing till she fell in love with this man, her folks dyin’ off and leavin’ her to come up the best she could, and imposed upon and looked down upon on every side, and workin’ hard for a livin’, and after she got old enough to read and understand, bein’ smart as a whip and one of the firmest lovers of justice and fair play that ever wuz born, she become such a firm believer in wimmen’s rights that she got enemies that way. Well, you know right when she started for the World’s Fair, helpin’ herself along by sellin’ the book, “The Wild, Wicked, and Warlike Deeds of Men” (which she said she felt wuz her duty to promulgate to wimmen to keep ’em from marryin’ and makin’ fools of themselves). Well, right there, some like Paul on his way to Jerusalem breathin’ vengeance against his Lord, a great light struck him down in the road, so with Arvilly, the great light of Love stopped her in her career, she dropped her book, married the man she loved and who loved her, and lived happy as a queen till the Cuban war broke out.
Her husband wuz a good man, not the smartest in the world, but a good, honest God-fearin’ man, who had had a hard time to get along, but always tried to do jest right, and who hailed Arvilly’s bright intellect and practical good sense and household knowledge as a welcome relief from incompetence in hired girl form in the kitchen. His first wife died when his little girl wuz born, and she wuz about seven when Arvilly married her pa. Well, he bein’ jest what he wuz––conscientious, God-fearin’ and havin’ hearn his minister preach powerful sermons on this bein’ a war 92 of God aginst the Devil, enlightenment and Christianity aginst ignorance and barbarism, America aginst Spain––he got all fired up with the sense of what wuz his duty to do, and when his mind wuz made up to that no man or woman could turn him. Arvilly might have just as well spent her tears and entreaties on her soapstun. No, go he must and go he would. But like the good man he wuz, he made everything just as comfortable as he could for her and his little daughter, a pretty creeter that Arvilly too loved dearly. And then he bid ’em a sad adoo, for he loved ’em well, and Arvilly had made his home a comfortable and happy one. But he choked back his tears, tried to smile on ’em with his tremblin’ lips, held ’em both long in his strong arms, onclosed ’em, and they wuz bereft. Well, Arvilly held the weeping little girl in her arms, bent over her with white face and dry eyes, for his sake endured the long days and longer nights alone with the child, for his sake taking good care of her, wondering at the blow that had fell upon her, wondering that if in the future she could be so blest agin as to have a home, for love is the soul of the home, and she felt homeless.
Well, she watched and worked, takin’ good care of the little one, but bolts and bars can’t keep out death; Arvilly’s arms, though she wuz strong boneded, couldn’t. Diphtheria wuz round, little Annie took it; in one week Arvilly wuz indeed alone, and when the sod lay between her and what little likeness of her husband had shone through the child’s pretty face, Arvilly formed a strange resolution, but not so strange but what wimmen have formed it before, and probably will agin till God’s truth shall shine on a dark world and be listened to, and wars shall be no more. She made up her mind to foller the man she loved, to enlist. She wuz always a masculine lookin’ creeter, big, raw boneded, and when she cut off her hair and parted it on one side in a man’s way and put on a suit of her husband’s clothes she looked as much, or more like a man than she had ever 93 looked like a woman. She locked the doors of her home till the cruel war should be ended, and he whose love made her home should return. Till then, if indeed it should ever be, she left her happiness there in the empty, silent rooms and sallied off. She had disposed of her stock and things like that, folks not bein’ surprised at it, bein’ she wuz alone, but all to once she disappeared, utterly and entirely, nobody hearn of her and folks thought that mebby she had wandered off in her grief and put an end to her life. Not one word wuz hearn of her until lo and behold! the strange news come, Arvilly’s husband wuz killed in a drunken brawl in a licensed Canteen down in Cuba and Arvilly had deserted from the army, and of course bein’ a woman they couldn’t touch her for it. That wuz the first we ever knowed that she wuz in the army.
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CHAPTER VIII
Arvilly deserted from the army and gloried in it; she said, bein’ a woman born, she had never had a right, and now she took it. After her husband wuz buried, and her hull life, too, she thought for a spell, she deserted, but bein’ ketched and court-martialed, she appeared before the officers in her own skirt and bask waist and dared ’em to touch her. Waitstill Webb, the young sweetheart of the man that shot her husband, wuz with her. Good land! Arvilly didn’t lay up nothin’ aginst her or him; he wuz drunk as a fool when he fired the shot. He didn’t know what he wuz doin’; he wuz made irresponsible by the law, till he did the deed, and then made responsible by the same law and shot. Waitstill wuz named from a Puritan great-great-aunt, whose beauty and goodness had fell onto her, poor girl! She stood by Arvilly. They wuz made friends on that dretful night when they had stood by the men they loved, one killed and the other to be killed by the govermunt.