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Chapter 24
The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across
the face of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker.
The stentorian speeches of the artillery continued in some
distant encounter, but the crashes of the musketry had almost ceased.
The youth and his friend of a sudden looked up, feeling a deadened
form of distress at the waning of these noises, which had become
a part of life. They could see changes going on among the troops.
There were marchings this way and that way. A battery wheeled leisurely.
On the crest of a small hill was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.
The youth arose. "Well, what now, I wonder?" he said. By his
tone he seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in
the way of dins and smashes. He shaded his eyes with his grimy
hand and gazed over the field.
His friend also arose and stared. "I bet we're goin' t' git
along out of this an' back over th' river," said he.
"Well, I swan!" said the youth.
They waited, watching. Within a little while the regiment
received orders to retrace its way. The men got up grunting
from the grass, regretting the soft repose. They jerked their
stiffened legs, and stretched their arms over their heads.
One man swore as he rubbed his eyes. They all groaned "O Lord!"
They had as many objections to this change as they would have
had to a proposal for a new battle.
They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had
run in a mad scamper.
The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows.
The reformed brigade, in column, aimed through a wood
at the road. Directly they were in a mass of dust-covered troops,
and were trudging along in a way parallel to the enemy's lines
as these had been defined by the previous turmoil.
They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in front
of it groups of their comrades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork.
A row of guns were booming at a distant enemy. Shells thrown in
reply were raising clouds of dust and splinters. Horsemen dashed
along the line of intrenchments.
At this point of its march the division curved away from the
field and went winding off in the direction of the river.
When the significance of this movement had impressed itself upon
the youth he turned his head and looked over his shoulder toward the
trampled and debris-strewed ground. He breathed a breath of
new satisfaction. He finally nudged his friend. "Well, it's all
over," he said to him.
His friend gazed backward. "B'Gawd, it is," he assented.
They mused.
For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and
uncertain way. His mind was undergoing a subtle change. It took
moments for it to cast off its battleful ways and resume its
accustomed course of thought. Gradually his brain emerged from
the clogged clouds, and at last he was enabled to more closely
comprehend himself and circumstance.
He understood then that the existence of shot and countershot
was in the past. He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling
upheavals and had come forth. He had been where there was red of
blood and black of passion, and he was escaped. His first thoughts
were given to rejoicings at this fact.
Later he began to study his deeds, his failures, and his
achievements. Thus, fresh from scenes where many of his usual
machines of reflection had been idle, from where he had
proceeded sheeplike, he struggled to marshal all his acts.
At last they marched before him clearly. From this present view
point he was enabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and
criticise them with some correctness, for his new condition had
already defeated certain sympathies.
Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and unregretting,
for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and shining prominence.
Those performances which had been witnessed by his fellows marched now
in wide purple and gold, having various deflections. They went gayly
with music. It was pleasure to watch these things. He spent delightful
minutes viewing the gilded images of memory.
He saw that he was good. He recalled with a thrill of joy the
respectful comments of his fellows upon his conduct.
Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first engagement
appeared to him and danced. There were small shoutings in his
brain about these matters. For a moment he blushed, and the
light of his soul flickered with shame.
A specter of reproach came to him. There loomed the dogging
memory of the tattered soldier--he who, gored by bullets and
faint of blood, had fretted concerning an imagined wound in
another; he who had loaned his last of strength and intellect
for the tall soldier; he who, blind with weariness and pain,
had been deserted in the field.
For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the
thought that he might be detected in the thing. As he stood
persistently before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp
irritation and agony.
His friend turned. "What's the matter, Henry?" he demanded.
The youth's reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.
As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his
prattling companions this vision of cruelty brooded over him.
It clung near him always and darkened his view of these deeds
in purple and gold. Whichever way his thoughts turned they were
followed by the somber phantom of the desertion in the fields.
He looked stealthily at his companions, feeling sure that they
must discern in his face evidences of this pursuit. But they
were plodding in ragged array, discussing with quick tongues the
accomplishments of the late battle.
"Oh, if a man should come up an' ask me, I'd say we got a dum good lickin'."
"Lickin'--in yer eye! We ain't licked, sonny. We're goin' down here aways,
swing aroun', an' come in behint 'em."
"Oh, hush, with your comin' in behint 'em. I've seen all 'a that I wanta.
Don't tell me about comin' in behint--"
"Bill Smithers, he ses he'd rather been in ten hundred battles than been
in that heluva hospital. He ses they got shootin' in th' nighttime,
an' shells dropped plum among 'em in th' hospital. He ses sech hollerin'
he never see."
"Hasbrouck? He's th' best off'cer in this here reg'ment. He's a whale."
"Didn't I tell yeh we'd come aroun' in behint 'em?
Didn't I tell yeh so?
We--"
"Oh, shet yeh mouth!"
For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took
all elation from the youth's veins. He saw his vivid error,
and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life.
He took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look
at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that
they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of
the scene with the tattered soldier.
Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.
And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He found
that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier
gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful when he discovered
that he now despised them.
With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet
manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that
he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point.
He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all,
it was but the great death. He was a man.
So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and
wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects
of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not.
Scars faded as flowers.
It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled
train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort
in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky.
Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him,
though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks.
He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry
nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered
and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with
a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows,
cool brooks--an existence of soft and eternal peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of
leaden rain clouds.
THE END.
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