"Oh, the saxophone! Well, as to that I could not with certainty speak.
But, mark you, the whifflet.i.t is a creature of infinite resources--versatile, abounding in quaint conceits and whimsies, and, having withal a wide repertoire. Sometimes its repertoire is twice as wide as it is, thus producing a peculiar effect when the whifflet.i.t is viewed from behind. On second thought, I have no doubt that in the privacy of its subterranean fireside the whifflet.i.t wiles away the tedium of the long winter evenings by playing on the saxophone."
"Come on over, Jeff, and Uncle Dwight will tell us some more," urged the hospitable oldest nephew.
But Jeff had vanished. He wished to be alone for the working out of a project as yet vague and formless, but having a most definite object to be attained. Stimulated by hope new-born, he was now a sort of twelfth carbon-copy of the regular Jeff--faint, perhaps, and blurry, but recognizable. Through the clouds which encompa.s.sed him the faint promise of a rift was apparent.
By rights one would have said that Jeff had no excuse for hiding in a shadowed hinterland at all. The world might have been excused for its failure to plumb the underlying causes which roiled the waters of his soul. Seemingly the currents of life ran for him in agreeable channels.
He had an indulgent employer whose clothes fitted Jeff. Indeed, anybody"s clothes fitted Jeff. He had one of those figures which seem to give and take. He was well nourished, gifted conversationally, of a nimble wit, resourceful, apt. Moreover, home-grown watermelons were ripe. The Eighth of August, celebrated in these parts by the race as Emanc.i.p.ation Day, impended. The big revival--the biggest and most tremendously successful revival in his people"s local history--was in full swing at the Twelfth Ward tabernacle, affording thrill and entertainment every week-night and thrice on Sundays.
There never had been such a revival; probably there never would be another such. Justifiably, the pastor of Emmanuel Chapel took credit to himself that he had planted the seed which at this present time so gloriously yielded harvest. Theretofore his chief claim to public attention had rested upon the sound of the name he wore. He had been born a Shine and christened a Rufus. But to him the name of Rufus Shine had seemed lacking in impressiveness and euphony for use by one about entering the ministry. Thanks to the ingenuity of a white friend who was addicted to puns and plays upon words, the defect had been cured. As the Rev. A. Risen Shine he bore a name which fitted its bearer and its bearer"s calling--at once it was a slogan and a testimony, a trade-mark and a watch-cry.
Proudly now he walked the earth, broadcasting the favor of his smile on every side. For it had been he who divined that the times were ripe for the importation of that greatest of all exhorting evangelists of his denomination, the famous Sin Killer Wickliffe, of Nashville, Tenn. His had been the zeal which inspired the congregation to form committees on ways and means, on place and time, on finance; his, mainly, the energy behind the campaign for subscriptions which filled the war-chest. As resident pastor, chief promotor, and general manager of the project, he had headed the delegation which personally waited upon the great man at his home and extended the invitation. Almost immediately, upon learning that the amount of his customary guaranty already had been raised and deposited in bank, the Rev. Wickliffe felt that he had a call to come and labor, and he obeyed it. He brought with him his entire organization--his private secretary, his treasurer, his musical director. For, mind you, the Sin Killer had borrowed a page from the book of certain distinguished revivalists of a paler skin-pigmentation than his. As the saying goes among the sinful, he saw his Caucasian brethren and went them one better. His musical director was not only an instrumentalist but a composer as well. He adapted, he wrote, he originated, he improvised, he interpolated, he orchestrated, he played.
As one inspired, this genius played the saxophone.
Now, in the world at large the saxophone has its friends and its foes.
Its detractors agree that the late Emperor Nero was a maligned man; cruel, perhaps, in some of his aspects, but not so cruel as has been made out in the case against him. It was a fiddle he played while Rome burned--it might have been a saxophone. But to the melody-loving heart of the black race in our land the mooing tones of this long-waisted, dark-complected horn carry messages as of great joy. It had remained, though, for the resourceful Rev. Wickliffe to prove that it might be made to fill a n.o.bler and a higher destiny than setting the feet of the young men to dancing and the daughters to treading the syncopated pathways of the unG.o.dly. Discerning this by a sort of higher intuition, he had thrown himself into the undertaking of luring the most expert saxophone performer of his acquaintance away from the flaunting tents of the transgressor and herding him into the fold of the safely regenerate.
He succeeded. He saved Cephus Fringe, plucking him up as a brand from the burning, to remold him into a living torch fitted to light the way for others.
Of Cephus it might be said, paraphrasing the lines about little dog Rover, that when he was saved he was saved all over. Being redeemed, he straightway disbanded his orchestra. He tore up his calling-card reading,
+-----------------------------------------+ | PROFESSOR CEPHUS FRINGE ESQUIRE | | THE ANGLO-SAXOPHONE KING | | Address: Care Champey"s Barber-Shop | |SOLE PROPRIETOR FRINGE"S ALL-STAR TROUPE | +-----------------------------------------+
He enlisted under the militant banners and on the personal staff of the Sin Killer. Amply then was the prior design of his new commander justified. For if it was the eloquence, the magnetism, the compelling force of the revivalist which brought the penitents shouting down the tan-bark trail to the mourner"s bench, it was the harmonious croonings of Prof. Fringe as he conducted the introductory program--now rendering as a solo his celebrated original composition, "The Satan Blues," now leading the special choir--which psychologically paved the way for the greater scene to follow after. There was distress in the devil"s glebe-lands when this pair struck their proper stride--first the Fringian outpourings harmoniously exalting the spirits of the a.s.semblage and then the exhorters tying his hands to the Gospel plow and driving down into the populous valleys of sin, there to furrow and harrow, to sow and tend, to garner and glean.
The team had struck its stride early at the protracted meeting so competently fostered by the resident pastor of Emmanuel Chapel, the Rev.
A. Risen Shine. To himself, as already stated, the latter took prideful credit for results achieved and results promised. Well he might. Already hundreds of converts had come halleluiahing through; hundreds more teetered and swayed, back and forth, between doubt and conviction, ready at a touch to fall like the ripe and sickled grain in the lap of the husbandman. Wavering brethren had been fortified and were made stalwart again. Confirmed backsliders rubbed their wayward feet in the resin of faith and were boosted up the treacherous skids of their temptation and over the citadel walls to bask among the chosen in a Jericho City of repentance. Proselytes from other and hostile creeds trooped over with hosannas and loud outcries of rejoicing. Even the place where, each evening, the triumph of the preceding evening was repeated and amplified seemed appropriate for such scenes. For the Twelfth Ward tabernacle had not always been a tabernacle; it had been a tobacco-warehouse--but it was converted. And its present chief ornament, next only to the Sin Killer himself--indeed, its chiefest ornament of all in the estimation of impressionable younger unmarried female members--was Prof. Cephus Fringe.
At thought of him and of this, Jeff Poindexter, reperched on his wabbly piggin, wove his furrowed brow into a closer and more intricate pattern of cordial dislike. For if the main reason of his unhappiness was Ophelia Stubblefield, the secondary reason and princ.i.p.al contributory cause was this same Cephus Fringe. Ophelia"s favorite letter may not have been F, but it should have been. She was fair, fickle, fawn-toned, flirty, flighty, and frequently false. Jeff cast back in his mind. He certainly had had his troubles since he became permanently engaged to Ophelia. For instance, there had been her affair with that ferocious razor-wielder Smooth Crumbaugh. In this matter the fortuitous return from the dead of Red Hoss Shackleford, as skilfully engineered by Jeff, had broken up Red Hoss"s own memorial services, had also operated to scare Smooth Crumbaugh clean out of Colored Odd Fellows" Hall and leave the fainting Ophelia in the rescuing arms of Jeff. But there had been half a dozen other affairs, each of such intensity as temporarily to undermine Jeff"s peace of mind. Between spells of infatuations for attractive strangers, she accepted Jeff"s devotions. The trouble was, though, that life, with Ophelia, seemed to be just one infatuation after another. And now, to cap all, she had suffered herself, nay, offered herself, to fall thrall to the dashing personality and the varied accomplishments of this Fringe person. It was this entanglement which for two weeks past had made Jeff, her official "tween-times fiance, a prey to carking cares and dark forebodings.
Hourly and daily the situation, from Jeff"s point of view, had grown more desperate as Ophelia"s pa.s.sion for the fascinating sojourner grew.
He had even lost his relish for victuals which, with Jeff, was indeed a serious sign. In long periods of self-imposed solitude he had devised and discarded as hopeless various schemes for bringing discomfiture upon his latest and most dangerous rival. For a while he had thought somehow, somewhere, to rake up proofs of the interloper"s former wild and reckless life. But of what avail to do that?
By his own frank avowal the Professor had had a spangled past; had been an adventurer and a wanton, a wandering minstrel bard; had even been in jail. This background of admitted transgressions, now that he was so completely reformed and reclaimed, merely made him an all-the-more attractive figure in the eyes of those to whom he offered confession.
Again, Jeff had trifled with a vague design of taunting Fringe into a quarrel and beating him up something scandalous. To this end he tentatively had approached our leading exponent of the art of self-defense and our most dependable sporting authority, one Mr. Jerry Ditto.
Mr. Ditto had grown out of a clerkship at Gus Neihiem"s cigar-store into the realm of fistiana. As a shadow-boxer he excelled; as a bag-puncher also. But in an incautious hour for himself and his backer, Flash Purdy, owner of Purdy"s Dixieland Bar, he had permitted himself to be entered for a match before an athletic club at Louisville against one Max Schorrer, a welter-weight appearing professionally under the _nom de puge_ of Slugging Fogarty. It was to have been a match of twelve rounds, but early in the second round Mr. Ditto suddenly lost all conscious interest in the proceedings.
He retired from the ring after this with a permanent lump on the point of his jaw and a profound conviction that the Lord had made a mistake and drowned the wrong crowd that time at the Red Sea. He fitted up a gymnasium in the old plow factory and gave instructions in sparring to the youth of the town. Naturally, his patronage was all-white, but he offered to take Jeff on for a few strictly private lessons at night provided Jeff would promise not to tell anybody about it. But at last the prospective client drew back. His ways were the ways of peace and diplomacy. Why depart from them? And, anyhow, this Cephus Fringe was so dog-goned sinewy-looking. Playing a saxophone ought to give a man wind and endurance. If not knocked cold in the first onslaught he might become seriously antagonized toward Jeff.
But now, in the sportive fablings of the young white gentleman from up North who was visiting the Enders family, he had found a clue to what he sought. The difficult point, though, was to evolve the plan for the plot nebulously floating about in his brain; for while he envisaged the delectable outcome, the scheme of procedure was as yet entirely without form and substance. It was as though he looked through a tunnel under a hill. At the far end he beheld the sunlight, but all this side of it was utter darkness. Seeking to pluck inspiration out of the air, his roving eye fell upon the dappled rump of Mittie May as she stood in her stall placidly munching provender, and with that, _bang_! inspiration hit him spang between the eyes.
To look on her, ruminative, ewe-like, fringed of fetlock and deliberate in her customary amblings, you would never have reckoned Mittie May to be a mare with a past. But such was the case. Her youth had been spent in travel over the continent with a tented caravan; in short, a circus.
Her broad flat top-side, her dependable gait, her amiable disposition, her color--white with darkish half-moons on shoulder and flank--all these admirably had fitted her for the ring. When, long years before, Hooper"s wagon-shows came to grief in our town Mittie May had been seized by Farrell Brothers to satisfy an unpaid hay-bill.
Through her sobering maturer years she had pa.s.sed from one set of hands to another, until finally, in her declining days, she found asylum in the affectionate ownership of Judge Priest, with Jeff to curry her fat sides and no more arduous labor to perform than occasionally to draw the Judge about from place to place in his ancient shovel-topped buggy.
About her now there was naught to suggest the prancing rozin-back she once had been; the very look of her eye conjured up images of simple pastoral scenes--green meadows and purling brooks.
But let a certain signal be sounded and on top of that let a certain air be played and Mittie May, instantly losing that air she had of a venerable and dignified sheep, became a Mittie May transformed; a Mittie May reverted to another and more feverish time; a Mittie May stirred by olden memories to nightmarish performances. By chance once Jeff had happened upon her secret, and now, all in one illuminating flash, recalling the conditions governing this discovery, he gave vent to a low antic.i.p.atory chuckle. It was the first chuckle he had uttered in a fortnight, and this one was edged with a sinister portent. He had his idea now. He had at hand the agency for bringing the scheme to fruition.
But yet there remained much of preliminary detail to be worked out. His plan still was like a fine-toothed comb which has seen hard usage in a wiry thatch--there were wide gaps between its p.r.o.ngs.
Jeff gave himself over to sustained thought. He made calculations calendar-wise. This was the first day of August; the eighth, therefore, was but seven short days removed. This plot of his seemed to resemble a number of things. It was like a piece of pottery, too. First the plastic clay must be a.s.sembled, then the vessel itself turned from it; finally the completed product must be given time to harden before it would be ready for use. He must move fast but warily.
To begin with, now, he must create a setting of plausibility for the role he meant, in certain quarters, to essay; must dress the character, as it were, in its correct housings and provide just the right touches of local color. Ready at hand was Aunt Dilsey; he would make her, unwittingly so far as she kenned, a supporting member of the cast. She would never know it, but she would play an accessory part, small but important, in his prologue.
Five minutes later she lifted her eyebrows in surprise. As he reinserted himself halfway across the portals of the realm where she queened it his recent moroseness was quite gone from him. About him now was the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that here stood one who, after profound cogitation, had found out what ailed him and, by the finding out, was filled with a gentle, chastened satisfaction. He seated himself on the kitchen door-step, facing outward so that comparative safety might be attained with a single flying leap did her uncertain temper, flaring up suddenly, lead her to acts of hostility before he succeeded in winning her over. He uttered a long-drawn sigh, then sat a minute in silence. In silence, too--a suspicious, menacing silence--she glared at him.
"Aunt Dilsey," he ventured, speaking over his shoulder, with his face averted from her, "mebbe you been noticin" yere lately I seemed kind of downcasted an" shiftless, lak ez ef I had a mood on me?"
"Has I noticed it?" she repeated--"huh!" The punctuating grunt was non-committal. It might mean nothing; it might mean anything.
He cleared his throat and went on,
"An", mebbe--I ain"t sayin" you actually is; I"s sayin" it with a mebbe--mebbe you been marvelin" in yore mind whut it wuz w"ich pestered me an" made me ack so kind of no-"count?"
"I ain"t needin" to marvel," she stated coldly. "I knows. Laziness! Jes"
pyure summer-time n.i.g.g.e.r laziness, wid a rich streak of meanness th"owed in."
"Nome, you is wrong," he corrected her gently. "You is wrong there.
"Ca"se likewise an" furthermo" I also is been off my feed--ain"t that a sign to you?"
"Sign of a tapeworm, I "spects."
"Don"t say that, please, Ma"am," he humbly pleaded. "You speakin" in sich a way meks me "most discouraged to confide in you whut I aims to confide in you. I"m tellin" it to you the fust one, too. "Tain"t nary "nother soul heared it. Aunt Dilsey, I"s grateful to you in my heart, honest I is, fur runnin" me "way frum yore presence yere jes" a little w"ile ago. You never knowed it at the time--I didn"t s"picion it also neither--but you done me a favor. "Ca"se settin" out yonder in the stable all alone and ponderin" deep, all of a sudden somethin" jes" come right over me an" I knowed whut"s been the matter wid me lately. Aunt Dilsey, I"s felt the quickenin" tech."
"Better fur you ef somebody made you feel de quickenin" buggy-whup."
He disregarded the brutal suggestion.
"Yessum, I"s felt the quickenin" tech. Ez you doubtless full well knows, I ain"t been "tendin" much "pon the big revival. But even so--even an"
evermo" so--the influence frum it done stretch fo"th its hand an" reach me. I ain"t sayin" I"s plum won over yit, but "way down deep insides of me I"s stirred--yessum, tha"s the word--stirred. I ain"t sayin" the spirit of grace is actually th"owed me, but I feel p.r.o.ne to say I thinks it"s fixin" to ra.s.sle wid me. I ain"t sayin" I stands convicted, but I aims to be a searcher fur the truth; I aims to stop, look, an" lissen. I ain"t sayin"--" He broke off, the floods of his imagery dammed by the skeptical eye which swept him; then made a lame conclusion, "Tha"s whut I sez, Ma"am, to you in strict confidences."
"Den lemme say somethin" to you. You figgers it"s salvation you needs, huh? I figgers it"s vermifuge. Oh, I knows you, boy--I knows you f"um de gra.s.s-roots up. Still an" wid all dat, ef you should crave to mend yo"
ways--an" de Heavens above knows dey kin stand a heap of mendin"!--I ain"t gwine be de one to hender you."
Against her better judgment her tone was softening. For she gave her allegiance unrestrainedly to the doctrine preached at Emmanuel Chapel.
She was one of its stanch pillows. Indeed, it might be said of her that she was one of its plumpest bolsters; and Jeff, although admittedly of no religious persuasion, had grown up in the shadow of a differing creed. The winning over of the black ram of another fold would be a greater victory than the reclamation of any wandering sheep who had been reared as a true believer.
"Well, boy," she went on, in this new mood, "let us hope an" pray dat in yore case dey"s yit hope. De ways of de Almighty is pas" findin" out.
Fur do not de Scriptures say dey"s room fur both man an" beast?--de maid servant an" de man servant, de ox an" de a.s.s, dey all may enter in? So dey mout be a skimsy, bare chanct fur sech even ez you is. One thing sh.o.r.e--ef dey"s ary grain of contritefulness in yore soul, trust de Sin Killer to fetch it fo"th to de light of day. He"s de ole fambly doctor w"en it come to dat kind of sickness. You go to dat tabernickle to-night an" you keep on goin" an" le"s see whut come to pa.s.s.... Jeffy, dey"s a little mossil of cold peach cobbler lef over f"um dinner yistiddy settin" up yonder amongst de shelfs of my cu"board!"
"Nome, thank you," said Jeff. "The emotions w"ich is in me seems lak they ain"t left me no room fur nothin" else. Seems lak I can"t git my mind on vittles yit. But I sh.o.r.e aims to be at the tabernickle to-night, Aunt Dilsey--I means, Sist" Dilsey. You jes" watch me. Tha"s all I asts of you now--jes" watch me!"
Head down and shoulders hunched, in the manner of one harkening to inner voices, Jeff betook himself around the corner of the back porch. Once out of her sight, though, he flung from him his mien of absorption. The overture had been rendered; there remained much to be done before the curtain rose. The languorous shade invited one to tarry and rest, but Jeff breasted the sunshine, going hither and yon upon his errands. Back of a cabin on Plunket"s Hill he had private conference with one Gumbo Rollins, by profession a carnival concessionaire and purveyor of amus.e.m.e.nts in a small way. No cash actually changed hands, but on Jeff"s part there was a promise of moneys to be paid in the event of certain as-yet-problematical contingencies.
Next he sought for and, at the Bleeding Heart restaurant, found a limber individual named Tec.u.mseh Sherman Gla.s.s, called c.u.mp for short. This Tec.u.mseh Sherman Gla.s.s was a person of two trades and one outstanding trait. By day a short-order cook, by night he played in "Gustus Hillman"s Colored String Band. It is to be marked down in the reader"s memory that the instrument he played was the saxophone; also that he was heavily impregnated with that form of professional jealousy which lurks in the souls of so many _artistes_; likewise that he was a member in fair standing of the Rev. A. Risen Shine"s congregation, and, finally, that he was a born meddler in other folks" affairs. These facts all should be borne in mind; they have their value.
With Tec.u.mseh Sherman Gla.s.s, Jeff spent some time in a confidential exchange of words. Here, again, the matter of a subsequent financial reward, to be paid by the party of the first part, meaning Jeff, to the party of the second part, meaning c.u.mp, following the satisfactory outcome of sundry developments, was arranged. Would there were s.p.a.ce to tell how cunningly, how craftily Jeff, in the subtleties marking this interview, played upon three chords in the other"s being--the chord of vengeful envy, the chord of malice, the chord of avarice. There is not s.p.a.ce.