He was surprised presently by the young lieutenant of his company, who began heartily to beat him with a sword, calling out in a loud and insolent voice: “Come, young man, get up into the ranks there. No skulking’ll do here.” He mended his pace with suitable haste. And he hated the lieutenant, who had no appreciation of fine minds. He was a mere brute.
After a time the brigade was halted in the cathedral light of a forest. The busy skirmishers were still popping. Through the aisles of the wood could be seen the floating smoke from their rifles. Sometimes it went up in little balls, white and compact.
During this halt many men in the regiment began erecting tiny hills in front of them. They used stones, sticks, earth, and anything they thought might turn a bullet. Some built comparatively large ones, while others seemed content with little ones.
This procedure caused a discussion among the men. Some wished to fight like duellists, believing it to be correct to stand erect and be, from their feet to their foreheads, a mark. They said they scorned the devices of the cautious. But the others scoffed in reply, and pointed to the veterans on the flanks who were digging at the ground like terriers. In a short time there was quite a barricade along the regimental fronts. Directly, however, they were ordered to withdraw from that place.
This astounded the youth. He forgot his stewing over the advance movement. “Well, then, what did they march us out here for?” he demanded of the tall soldier. The latter with calm faith began a heavy explanation, although he had been compelled to leave a little protection of stones and dirt to which he had devoted much care and skill.
When the regiment was aligned in another position, each man’s regard for his safety caused another line of small entrenchments. They ate their noon meal behind a third one. They were moved from this one also. They were marched from place to place with apparent aimlessness.
The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in a battle. He saw his salvation in such a change. Hence this waiting was an ordeal to him. He was in a fever of impatience. He considered that there was denoted a lack of purpose on the part of the generals. He began to complain to the tall soldier. “I can’t stand this much longer,” he cried. “I don’t see what good it does to make us wear out our legs for nothin’.” He wished to return to camp, knowing that this affair was a blue demonstration; or else to go into a battle and discover that he had been a fool in his doubts, and was, in truth, a man of traditional courage. The strain of present circumstances he felt to be intolerable.
The philosophical tall soldier measured a sandwich of cracker and pork, and swallowed it in a nonchalant manner. “Oh, I suppose we must go on reconnoitring around the country jest to keep ’em from getting too close, or to develop ’em or something.”
“Huh!” said the loud soldier.
“Well,” cried the youth, still fidgeting, “I’d rather do anything ’most than go tramping ’round the country all day doing no good to nobody and jest tiring ourselves out.”
“So would I,” said the loud soldier. “It ain’t right. I tell you if anybody with any sense was a-runnin’ this army it—”
“Oh, shut up!” roared the tall private. “You little fool. You little damn’ cuss. You ain’t had that there coat and them pants on for six months, and yet you talk as if—”
“Well, I wanta do some fighting anyway,” interrupted the other. “I didn’t come here to walk. I could ’ave walked to home—’round an’ ’round the barn, if I jest wanted to walk.”
The tall one, red-faced, swallowed another sandwich as if taking poison in despair.
But gradually, as he chewed, his face became again quiet and contented. He could not rage in fierce argument in the presence of such sandwiches. During his meals he always wore an air of blissful contemplation of the food he had swallowed. His spirit seemed then to be communing with the viands.
He accepted new environment and circumstance with great coolness, eating from his haversack at every opportunity. On the march he went along with the stride of a hunter, objecting to neither gait nor distance. And he had not raised his voice when he had been ordered away from three little protective piles of earth and stone, each of which had been an engineering feat worthy of being made sacred to the name of his grandmother.
In the afternoon the regiment went out over the same ground it had taken in the morning. The landscape then ceased to threaten the youth. He had been close to it, and become familiar with it.
When, however, they began to pass into a new region his old fears of stupidity and incompetence reassailed him, but this time he doggedly let them babble. He was occupied with his problem, and in his desperation he concluded that the stupidity did not greatly matter.
Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be nothing but rest, and he was filled with a momentary astonishment that he should have made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter of getting killed. He would die; he would go to some place where he would be understood. It was useless to expect appreciation of his profound and fine senses from such men as the lieutenant. He must look to the grave for comprehension.
The skirmish fire increased to a long clattering sound. With it was mingled far-away cheering. A battery spoke.
Directly the youth would see the skirmishers running. They were pursued by the sound of musketry fire. After a time, the hot, dangerous flashes of the rifles were visible. Smoke clouds went slowly and insolently across the fields like observant phantoms. The din became crescendo, like the roar of an oncoming train.
A brigade ahead of them and on the right went into action with a rending roar. It was as if it had exploded. And thereafter it lay stretched in the distance behind a long grey wall, that one was obliged to look twice at to make sure that it was smoke.
The youth, forgetting his neat plan of getting killed, gazed spellbound. His eyes grew wide and busy with the action of the scene. His mouth was a little ways open.
Of a sudden he felt a heavy and sad hand laid upon his shoulder. Awakening from his trance of observation, he turned and beheld the loud soldier.
“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” said the latter, with intense gloom. He was quite pale, and his girlish lip was trembling.
“Eh?” murmured the youth in great astonishment.
“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” continued the loud soldier. “Something tells me—”
“What?”
“I’m a gone coon this first time, and—and I w-want you to take these here things—to—my folks.” He ended in a quavering sob of pity for himself. He handed the youth a little packet done up in a yellow envelope.
“Why, what the devil—” began the youth again.
But the other gave him a glance as from the depths of a tomb, and raised his limp hand in a prophetic manner and turned away.
The brigade was halted in the fringe of a grove. The men crouched among the trees and pointed their restless guns out at the fields. They tried to look beyond the smoke.
Out of this haze they could see running men. Some shouted information and gestured as they hurried.
The men of the new regiment watched and listened eagerly while their tongues ran on in gossip of the battle. They mouthed rumours that had flown like birds out of the unknown.
“They say Perry has been driven in with big loss.”
“Yes, Carrott went t’-th’ hospital. He said he was sick. That smart lieutenant is