He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder.Great blown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him. The noise, too,was approaching. The woods filtered men and the fields became dotted.
As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of wagons, teams,and men. From the heaving tangle issued exhortations, commands, imprecations.Fear was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged.The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.
The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They were all retreating. Perhaps, then,he was not so bad after all. He seated himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons.They fled like soft, ungainly animals. All the roarers and lashers served to help him to magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in truth a symmetrical act. There was an amount of pleasure to him in watching the wild march of this vindication.
Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared in the road.It came swiftly on. Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuous movement of a serpent.The men at the head butted mules with their musket stocks.They prodded teamsters indifferent to all howls.The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by strength.The blunt head of the column pushed. The raving teamsters swore many strange oaths.
The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them.The men were going forward to the heart of the din.They were to confront the eager rush of the enemy.They felt the pride of their onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble down this road.They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time.This importance made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the officers were very rigid.
As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to him.He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings.The separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of flame and banners of sunlight.He could never be like them. He could have wept in his longings.
He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the indefinite cause,the thing upon which men turn the words of final blame. It—whatever it was—was responsible for him, he said. There lay the fault.
The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young man to be something much finer than stout fighting.Heroes, he thought, could find excuses in that long seething lane.They could retire with perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.
He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste to force their way to grim chances of death.As he watched his envy grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said,throw off himself and become a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself,came to him—a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high—a blue,determined figure standing before a crimson and steel assault,getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all.He thought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.
These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his ears,he heard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid successful charge.The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices,the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings of war. For a few moments he was sublime.
He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a picture of himself,dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of calamity.
Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated, balancing awkwardly on one foot.
He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully to his plan. Well,rifles could be had for the picking. They were extraordinarily profuse.
Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his regiment. Well, he could fight with any regiment.
He started forward slowly. He stepped as if he expected to tread upon some explosive thing. Doubts and he were struggling.
He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him returning thus,the marks of his flight upon him. There was a reply that the intent fighters did not care for what happened rearward saving that no hostile bayonets appeared there. In the battle-blur his face would, in a way, be hidden, like the face of a cowled man.
But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when the strife lulled for a moment,a man to ask of him an explanation. In imagination he felt the scrutiny of his companions as he painfully labored through some lies.
Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections. The debates drained him of his fire.
He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon studying the affair carefully,he could not but admit that the objections were very formidable.
Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out.In their presence he could not persist in flying high with the wings of war;they rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light. He tumbled headlong.
He discovered that he had a scorching thirst.His face was so dry and grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle.Each bone of his body had an ache in it, and seemingly threatened to break with each movement.His feet were like two sores. Also, his body was calling for food.It was more powerful than a direct hunger. There was a dull, weight-like feeling in his stomach,and, when he tried to walk, his head swayed and he tottered. He could not see with distinctness.Small patches of green mist floated before his vision.
While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not been aware of ailments.Now they beset him and made clamor. As he was at last compelled to pay attention to them,his capacity for self-hate was multiplied. In despair,he declared that he was not like those others.He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon.Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went staggering off.
A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the battle.He had a great desire to see, and to get news. He wished to know who was winning.
He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering,he had never lost his greed for a victory, yet, he said,in a half-apologetic manner to his conscience,he could not but know that a defeat for the army this time might mean many favorable things for him.The blows of the enemy would splinter regiments into fragments. Thus, many men of courage,he considered, would be obliged to desert the colors and scurry like chickens.He would appear as one of them. They would be sullen brothers in distress,and he could then easily believe he had not run any farther or faster than they.And if he himself could believe in his virtuous perfection,he conceived that there would be small trouble in convincing all others.
He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the army had encountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood and tradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one; thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the valor and confidence of unconquered legions. The shrilling voices of the people at home would pipe dismally for a time, but various generals were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct sympathy upon him. The people were afar and he did not conceive public opinion to be accurate at long range. It was quite probable they would hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazement would perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of his alleged failure. It would be very unfortunate, no doubt, but in this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.
In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself. He thought it would prove,in a manner, that he had fled early because of his superior powers of perception.A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree.This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.
A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important thing. Without salve,he could not, he thought, wear the sore badge of his dishonor through life.With his heart continually assuring him that he was despicable,he could not exist without making it, through his actions, apparent to all men.
If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost.If the din meant that now his army’s flags were tilted forward he was a condemned wretch.He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation. If the men were advancing,their indifferent feet were trampling upon his chances for a successful life.
As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them and tried to thrust them away.He denounced himself as a villain. He said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence.His mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before the spear of the yelling battle fiend,and as he saw their dripping corpses on an imagined field, he said that he was their murderer.
Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied a corpse.Thinking of the slain, he achieved a great contempt for some of them,as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless. They might have been killed by lucky chances,he said, before they had had opportunities to flee or before they had been really tested.Yet they would receive laurels from tradition.He cried out bitterly that their crowns were stolen and their robes of glorious memories were shams.However, he still said that it was a great pity he was not as they.
A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape from the consequences of his fall.He considered, now, however, that it was useless to think of such a possibility.His education had been that success for that mighty blue machine was certain;that it would make victories as a contrivance turns out buttons.He presently discarded all his speculations in the other direction. He returned to the creed of soldiers.
When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be defeated,he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take back to his regiment,and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.
But, as he mortally feared these shafts,it became impossible for him to invent a tale he felt he could trust.He experimented with many schemes, but threw them aside one by one as flimsy.He was quick to see vulnerable places in them all.
Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him mentally low before he could raise his protecting tale.
He imagined the whole regiment saying: “Where’s Henry Fleming?He run, didn’t ’e?Oh, my!” He recalled various persons who would be quite sure to leave him no peace about it.They would doubtless question him with sneers, and laugh at his stammering hesitation.In the next engagement they would try to keep watch of him to discover when he would run.
Wherever he went in camp, he would encounter insolent and lingeringly cruel stares.As he imagined himself passing near a crowd of comrades, he could hear one say, “There he goes!”
Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turned toward him with wide,derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make a humorous remark in a low tone.At it the others all crowed and cackled. He was a slang phrase.
Chapter XII.
The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the roadway was barely out of the youth’s sight before he saw dark waves of men come sweeping out of the woods and down through the fields. He knew at once that the steel fibers had been washed from their hearts. They were bursting from their coats and their equipments as from entanglements. They charged down upon him like terrified buffaloes.
Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops,and through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant pink glare.The voices of the cannon were clamoring in interminable chorus.
The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement.He forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe.He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philosophy of the retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.
The fight was lost. The dragons were coming with invincible strides. The army,helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the overhanging night, was going to be swallowed.War, the red animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.
Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to make a rallying speech,to sing a battle hymn, but he could only get his tongue to call into the air: “Why—why—what—what’s th’ matter?”
Soon he was in the midst of them. They were leaping and scampering all about him.Their blanched faces shone in the dusk. They seemed, for the most part, to be very burly men.The youth turned from one to another of them as they galloped along.His incoherent questions were lost. They were heedless of his appeals. They did not seem to see him.
They sometimes gabbled insanely. One huge man was asking of the sky: “Say, where de plank road?Where de plank road!” It was as if he had lost a child. He wept in his pain and dismay.
Presently, men were running hither and thither in all ways. The artillery booming, forward,rearward, and on the flanks made jumble of ideas of direction.Landmarks had vanished into the gathered gloom.The youth began to imagine that he had got into the center of the tremendous quarrel,and he could perceive no way out of it.From the mouths of the fleeing men came a thousand wild questions, but no one made answers.
The youth, after rushing about and throwing interrogations at the heedless bands of retreating infantry,finally clutched a man by the arm. They swung around face to face.
“Why—why—” stammered the youth struggling with his balking tongue.
The man screamed: “Let go me!Let go me!” His face was livid and his eyes were rolling uncontrolled. He was heaving and panting.He still grasped his rifle, perhaps having forgotten to release his hold upon it.He tugged frantically, and the youth being compelled to lean forward was dragged several paces.
“Let go me!Let go me!”
“Why—why—” stuttered the youth.
“Well, then!” bawled the man in a lurid rage. He adroitly and fiercely swung his rifle.It crushed upon the youth’s head. The man ran on.
The youth’s fingers had turned to paste upon the other’s arm.The energy was smitten from his muscles.He saw the flaming wings of lightning flash before his vision.There was a deafening rumble of thunder within his head.
Suddenly his legs seemed to die. He sank writhing to the ground. He tried to arise.In his efforts against the numbing pain he was like a man wrestling with a creature of the air.
There was a sinister struggle.
Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect, battle with the air for a moment,and then fall again, grabbing at the grass. His face was of a clammy pallor. Deep groans were wrenched from him.
At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and knees, and from thence,like a babe trying to walk, to his feet.Pressing his hands to his temples he went lurching over the grass.
He fought an intense battle with his body.His dulled senses wished him to swoon and he opposed them stubbornly,his mind portraying unknown dangers and mutilations if he should fall upon the field.He went tall soldier fashion. He imagined secluded spots where he could fall and be unmolested.To search for one he strove against the tide of pain.
Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly touched the wound.The scratching pain of the contact made him draw a long breath through his clinched teeth.His fingers were dabbled with blood. He regarded them with a fixed stare.
Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the scurrying horses were lashed toward the front.Once, a young officer on a besplashed charger nearly ran him down.He turned and watched the mass of guns, men,and horses sweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a fence.The officer was making excited motions with a gauntleted hand.The guns followed the teams with an air of unwillingness, of being dragged by the heels.
Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing like fishwives.Their scolding voices could be heard above the din.Into the unspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron of cavalry.The faded yellow of their facings shone bravely. There was a mighty altercation.
The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.
The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were long purple shadows.One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red.
As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out.He imagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like brass devils guarding a gate.The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance.With it came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him,he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance.There were subtle and sudden lightnings in the far air.At times he thought he could see heaving masses of men.
He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet.The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered.Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky.There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields.
The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned wagons like sun-dried bowlders.The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies of horses and splintered parts of war machines.
It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He was afraid to move rapidly, however,for a dread of disturbing it. He held his head very still and took many precautions against stumbling.He was filled with anxiety, and his face was pinched and drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden mistake of his feet in the gloom.
His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a cool,liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down under his hair.His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think his neck to be inadequate.
The new silence of his wound made much worriment.The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought,definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed he could measure his plight.But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched into his brain.
Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past.He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at home,in which those dishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions.He saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove.Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool.He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank.He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body.The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of youthful summer.
He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness.His head hung forward and his shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing a great bundle. His feet shuffled along the ground.
He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down and sleep at some near spot,or force himself on until he reached a certain haven. He often tried to dismiss the question,but his body persisted in rebellion and his senses nagged at him like pampered babies.
At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: “Yeh seem t’ be in a pretty bad way, boy?”
The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue. “Uh!”
The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm. “Well,” he said, with a round laugh,“I’m goin’ your way. Th’ hull gang is goin’ your way. An’ I guess I kin give yeh a lift.” They began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.
As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted him with the replies like one manipulating the mind of a child.Sometimes he interjected anecdotes. “What reg’ment do yeh b’long teh?Eh?What’s that?Th’ 304th N’ York?Why, what corps is that in?Oh, it is?Why, I thought they wasn’t engaged t’-day-they’re ’way over in th’ center. Oh, they was, eh?Well pretty nearly everybody got their share ’a fightin’ t’-day. By dad,I give myself up fer dead any number ’a times. There was shootin’ here an’ shootin’ there,an’ hollerin’ here an’ hollerin’ there, in th’ damn’ darkness,until I couldn’t tell t’ save m’ soul which side I was on.Sometimes I thought I was sure ’nough from Ohier,an’ other times I could ’a swore I was from th’ bitter end of Florida.It was th’ most mixed up dern thing I ever see. An’ these here hull woods is a reg’lar mess.It’ll be a miracle if we find our reg’ments t’-night. Pretty soon, though,we’ll meet a-plenty of guards an’ provost-guards, an’ one thing an’ another. Ho!there they go with an off’cer, I guess. Look at his hand a-draggin’. He’s got all th’ war he wants,I bet. He won’t be talkin’ so big about his reputation an’ all when they go t’ sawin’ off his leg. Poor feller!My brother’s got whiskers jest like that. How did yeh git ’way over here, anyhow?Your reg’ment is a long way from here, ain’t it?Well, I guess we can find it. Yeh know there was a boy killed in my comp’ny t’-day that I thought th’ world an’ all of.Jack was a nice feller. By ginger, it hurt like thunder t’ see ol’ Jack jest git knocked flat.We was a-standin’ purty peaceable fer a spell,’though there was men runnin’ ev’ry way all’round us, an’ while we was a-standin’ like that,’long come a big fat feller. He began t’ peck at Jack’s elbow, an’ he ses: ‘Say, where’s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ An’ Jack, he never paid no attention, an’ th’ feller kept on a-peckin’ at his elbow an’ sayin’: ‘Say, where’s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ Jack was a-lookin’ ahead all th’ time tryin’ t’ see th’ Johnnies comin’ through th’ woods,an’ he never paid no attention t’ this big fat feller fer a long time,but at last he turned ’round an’ he ses: ‘Ah, go t’ hell an’ find th’ road t’ th’ river!’ An’ jest then a shot slapped him bang on th’ side th’ head. He was a sergeant, too.Them was his last words. Thunder, I wish we was sure ’a findin’ our reg’ments t’-night.It’s goin’ t’ be long huntin’. But I guess we kin do it.”
In the search which followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youth to possess a wand of a magic kind.He threaded the mazes of the tangled forest with a strange fortune.In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed the keenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin.Obstacles fell before him and became of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast,stood woodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out of sullen things.
The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic circles,but the cheery man conducted the youth without mistakes,until at last he began to chuckle with glee and self-satisfaction. “Ah, there yeh are!See that fire?”
The youth nodded stupidly.
“Well, there’s where your reg’ment is. An’ now, good-by, ol’ boy, good luck t’ yeh.”
A warm and strong hand clasped the youth’s languid fingers for an instant,and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as the man strode away.As he who had so befriended him was thus passing out of his life,it suddenly occurred to the youth that he had not once seen his face.
Chapter XIII.
The youth went slowly toward the fire indicated by his departed friend. As he reeled,he bethought him of the welcome his comrades would give him.He had a conviction that he would soon feel in his sore heart the barbed missiles of ridicule.He had no strength to invent a tale; he would be a soft target.
He made vague plans to go off into the deeper darkness and hide,but they were all destroyed by the voices of exhaustion and pain from his body. His ailments,clamoring, forced him to seek the place of food and rest, at whatever cost.
He swung unsteadily toward the fire. He could see the forms of men throwing black shadows in the red light,and as he went nearer it became known to him in some way that the ground was strewn with sleeping men.
Of a sudden he confronted a black and monstrous figure. A rifle barrel caught some glinting beams. “Halt!halt!” He was dismayed for a moment, but he presently thought that he recognized the nervous voice.As he stood tottering before the rifle barrel, he called out: “Why, hello, Wilson, you—you here?”
The rifle was lowered to a position of caution and the loud soldier came slowly forward.He peered into the youth’s face. “That you, Henry?”
“Yes, it’s—it’s me.”
“Well, well, ol’ boy,” said the other, “by ginger, I’m glad t’ see yeh!I give yeh up fer a goner. I thought yeh was dead sure enough. ” There was husky emotion in his voice.
The youth found that now he could barely stand upon his feet.There was a sudden sinking of his forces.He thought he must hasten to produce his tale to protect him from the missiles already on the lips of his redoubtable comrades.So, staggering before the loud soldier, he began: “Yes, yes. I’ve—I’ve had an awful time.I’ve been all over. Way over on th’ right. Ter’ble fightin’ over there. I had an awful time.I got separated from the reg’ment. Over on th’ right, I got shot. In th’ head.I never see sech fightin’. Awful time. I don’t see how I could a’ got separated from th’ reg’ment. I got shot, too.”
His friend had stepped forward quickly. “What?Got shot?Why didn’t yeh say so first?Poor ol’ boy, we must—hol’ on a minnit; what am I doin’. I’ll call Simpson.”
Another figure at that moment loomed in the gloom. They could see that it was the corporal. “Who yeh talkin’ to, Wilson?” he demanded. His voice was anger-toned. “Who yeh talkin’ to?Yeh th’ derndest sentinel—why—hello, Henry, you here?Why, I thought you was dead four hours ago!Great Jerusalem, they keep turnin’ up every ten minutes or so!We thought we’d lost forty-two men by straight count, but if they keep on a-comin’ this way,we’ll git th’ comp’ny all back by mornin’ yit. Where was yeh?”
“Over on th’ right. I got separated”—began the youth with considerable glibness.
But his friend had interrupted hastily. “Yes, an’ he got shot in th’ head an’ he’s in a fix,an’ we must see t’ him right away.” He rested his rifle in the hollow of his left arm and his right around the youth’s shoulder.
“Gee, it must hurt like thunder!” he said.
The youth leaned heavily upon his friend. “Yes, it hurts—hurts a good deal,” he replied. There was a faltering in his voice.
“Oh,” said the corporal. He linked his arm in the youth’s and drew him forward. “Come on, Henry. I’ll take keer ’a yeh.”
As they went on together the loud private called out after them: “Put’im t’ sleep in my blanket,Simpson. An’—hol’ on a minnit—here’s my canteen. It’s full ’a coffee.Look at his head by th’ fire an’ see how it looks. Maybe it’s a pretty bad un.When I git relieved in a couple’a minnits, I’ll be over an’ see t’ him.”
The youth’s senses were so deadened that his friend’s voice sounded from afar and he could scarcely feel the pressure of the corporal’s arm.He submitted passively to the latter’s directing strength.His head was in the old manner hanging forward upon his breast. His knees wobbled.
The corporal led him into the glare of the fire. “Now, Henry,” he said, “let’s have look at yer ol’ head.”
The youth sat obediently and the corporal, laying aside his rifle,began to fumble in the bushy hair of his comrade.He was obliged to turn the other’s head so that the full flush of the fire light would beam upon it.He puckered his mouth with a critical air.He drew back his lips and whistled through his teeth when his fingers came in contact with the splashed blood and the rare wound.
“Ah, here we are!” he said. He awkwardly made further investigations. “Jest as I thought,” he added, presently.“Yeh’ve been grazed by a ball. It’s raised a queer lump jest as if some feller had lammed yeh on th’ head with a club.It stopped a-bleedin’ long time ago. Th’ most about it is that in th’ mornin’ yeh’ll fell that a number ten hat wouldn’t fit yeh.An’ your head’ll be all het up an’ feel as dry as burnt pork.An’ yeh may git a lot ’a other sicknesses, too, by mornin’. Yeh can’t never tell. Still,I don’t much think so. It’s jest a damn’ good belt on th’ head, an’ nothin’ more. Now,you jest sit here an’ don’t move, while I go rout out th’ relief.Then I’ll send Wilson t’ take keer ’a yeh.”
The corporal went away. The youth remained on the ground like a parcel.He stared with a vacant look into the fire.