Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1914 — TUPS AND REVEILLE [ARTICLE]

TUPS AND REVEILLE

By EDWARD MARSHALL.

(Copyright.) Clear and high and silvery, cleaving—with a smooth cry as of insistent woe—the uproar of the city’s traffic down by the Twenty-third street ferries, call of Berger’s bugle, playing “Taps” as he sought among the tenements and butcher shops and boarding houses for knives and shears to grind. is It carried to the ears of Bloom,.in his little shanty at the pier-end, where, he was ‘‘chief shipping clerk at dock” for a great hardware firm, a flood of memories, all sad —of nights upon far southern battle fields when joy of war was wholly gone from the blue fighters, and men sank in sleep of absolute, death-like exhaustion. Not one bright reminiscence came to Bloom, the aged veteran, at sound of that intense, pathetic call. "Why does he play ‘Taps?’” he cried. “Great Lord! Why ‘Taps?’” He moved uneasily upon his stool. “Acb,” he said, so loudly that he drew attention from the youths on two high stools who, as his assistants, occupied the little dockhouse with him. “Is death so far away that old men, such as him and me, must keep ourselves reminded of it with a horn?” He rose, acutely irritated, and went to a little window which looked out upon the swirling waters of the slip, foul and greasy as the tide paused at the turn. The two clerks, rebellious at being forced to work under an old man, grinned, for they could see the son of the company’s president coming up the dock and they knew the methods of that youth. Their little hearts, not yet developed and expanded by the long pulsations of deep sorrow and experience, leaped with an exultation which they did not know was mean. If young Fuhrstadt but looked in while Bloom was loafing, things might progress upon that dock! Bloom was the only real old fogy left about the place. Young Fuhrstadt, since his aged father had been forced to stay at home because of rheumatism, had wiped the others all away. But, that day he did not look in as he passed. Later, at the small restaurant where, daily, they had luncheon, Bloom met Berger. “Man,” he said to him, “why is it that you always play ‘Taps?’” , “And why not?” Berger answered. “It is slow and easy. Those other calls, they are too nimble,, ‘Taps’ brings trade as well as would the ‘Reveille.’ ” "True,” said Bloom, “you were a cook in army days, no bugler. You learned late. And ‘Taps’ is slow and easy. I understand. I often wondered.”

“That is how it is,” said Berger. Next day, Bloom again went to the window for a moment, and young Fuhrstadt did look in. He was amazed. “Hi, you!” he cried. Bloom quickly turned, although he felt no fear. He thought himself a fixture on the dock. “Is it something I can do?” he asked. "Yes,” was the sarcastic answer, “get to work.” The two youths bent above their books, smothering laughter. Bloom felt that he was standing in the middle of the ruin of all things. Anger first, then panic, seized him. Was he, then, who had believed himself secure, to lose his chance of earning his small livelihood? Was the fact that he had been the tent-mate of young Fuhrstadt’s father 40 years and more ago, not to be considered? - For 30 years he had kept the records of the dock, with what help had been assigned to him, with absolute exactness. “But —I am old,” he muttered, “and it is a young man’s world!” “You are right in playing ‘Taps,’” he said to Berger when he met him next. “Quite right. For you are old; and it is the one call for me to hear. I, also, am old. Berger, it is a young man’s world —a young man’s wdrld.” Next morning when he went to work he found a note upon his desk. It was brief and pointed. “Call at the office and take time,” it paid. “We need young men.” . Not even the young, clerks could laugh as they looked at his face when he’first raided it from that note. “Make all of life you can, young men,” he said, as he put on his coat. “Your youth—lt passes. Good-by. I have always done my work, but I am now grown old. Good-by.” He forgot to call for the small wages due him, but passed, unseeing, to his boarding house. From the distance came the wail of Berger’s bugle v , Nowhere could he find a new position. Everywhere they said he was too old. Daily he trudged the streets, his only brisk emotions being an intense desire to keep clear of Berger. But when a week had passed, alarmed at Bloom’s long absence from the little restaurant, Berger went to the dock to make inquiries. Learning what had happened, filled with mighty wrath and formed a great resolve. He left his scisaors-grinding outfit In the restaurant and sought a drug store, where be thumbed through a directory until he found the street and number of young Fuhrstadt’s* father. When two hours later, he was leaving the old man, he called him “comrade,” and furthermore the rich man, answering, said “comrade.” also.

“No, no,” Berger had answered to a query. “That would be charity. It would be bitterest of all.” Down in his boarding house sat Bloom, white-faced, having reached a great decision. It was a young man’s world. In it was no place for veterans, for “has-beens,” he quoted bitterly from the young clerkß. It was no place for him, so on the table lay an old-time pistol, newly loaded. He had faced death, many times, in the old days, without a tremor, when he was young, with everything before him. Should he falter now, when nothing was before him? He had raised the pistol to his forehead, when a thought came to him. Berger would be passing presently with his call of “Taps.” It would be fitting that he wait for the slow bugle notes; they would be music most appropriate to his old ears as he was steeled to Btart upon the last long sleep, prepared to have' “Lights out" forever for his dim old eyes. Yes, he would wait. Berger’s lips bothered him as he went downtown in the underground, lie could feel that they had swollen that afternoon, even beyond the thick proportions to which the previous night of practising upon his bugle softly in the back yard of the tenement he lived in, had brought them in the morning. “Ach! Bloom will be surprised,” he told himself. And Bloom was not finding waiting tedious. Putting from it with relief, until the time should come to take it up appropriately, the thought of death, his mind dwelt on far memories. He placed small keepsakes of his good old wife in the breast pocket of his coat —the pocket nearest to his heart. He wrote a brief farewell to Berger, and another to the gray commander of his post in the Grand Army. The letter to the commander said: I’m waiting now for Berger to go by, and play “Taps” on his bugle. It kind of seems to me that as I go to sleep it will be nice to hear that “Taps” call blowed. “Reveille” is for young men. “Taps”— that is the call for us—for me, and, pretty soon, for you and all the rest. Good-by. I bivouac. Then he waited five; ten, fifteen minutes. He fingered the pistol calmly. Its chill touch did not terrify him. It was to be the Instrument of his release, an old man, from a young man’s world.

There was a brilliant smile on Berger’s face as he went to get his scis-sors-grinding outfit and his bugle; his step was almost jaunty as he passed out upon the street with them, and hurried briskly toward Bloom’s, boarding house. As, nearing, he raised the bugle to his lips he had to kill a smile in order to conform to the small brass mouthpiece. “Ah!” he was thinking, “here is a surprise for Bloom!” v At the first soft quaver of the throaty, brazen call, the pistol which had been hanging loosely in Bloom’s hand twitched as the muscles of his fingers and his leas old wrist contracted. He glanced about the room to see that everything was in good order. He had forgotten nothing, he assured himself. Now, as soon as “Taps” was finished— But—what? Those which were coming through' the open window were not the long and mournful notes his ears had been expecting, it could not, after all, be Berger who was playing. Some coaching party probably had wandered to the dingy side street, or some ingenious auto-horn had been devised which accurately counterfeited lip-blown bugle calls. No, not the notes of “Taps;” quick and sharp and shrill, they reached him, without a hint of sadness. Triumphantly they sang of hope and energy and joy, declaring birth of a new day. No farewell was that call, 'but greeting—loud, melodious, inspiring. “It’s ‘Reveille!’ ” he muttered. “ ‘Reveille!’”

There was a clatter on the stain. Berger entered gaily. “Did I play it good?” he cried. “It maybe braced you up a little, huh? It braced me up a whole lot to play it Yes, it did.” Bloom went to him and laid a trembling hand upon the fingers and the bugle which they held. “It sounded fine,” he said. ‘ “It sounded fine. Yes, it braced me up. It did me good to hear it.” From the street below arose the notes of still another, fashioned tube of brass, this time the barking horn of a great touring car, stopping at that door. “Why, Bloom, it’s Fuhrstadt!” Berger cried. “He’s going to climb out We- musn’t let him —not tied up, the way he is, with rheumatlz. He must have got to thinking and come down himself.” They hurried to the stairs. “I just came ropnd to say,” said Fuhrstadt, glad to sink back among the comfortable cushions, “that you go back to work tomorrow, Bloom; and if those kids there in your office don’t do as they are told, you fire ’em. I’ve —seen my son!"