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Page 47
"All right, Wilson," said the youth. He loosened two buttons
of his coat, thrust in his hand, and brought forth the packet.
As he extended it to his friend the latter's face was turned from him.
He had been slow in the act of producing the packet because
during it he had been trying to invent a remarkable comment on
the affair. He could conjure up nothing of sufficient point.
He was compelled to allow his friend to escape unmolested with
his packet. And for this he took unto himself considerable credit.
It was a generous thing.
His friend at his side seemed suffering great shame. As he
contemplated him, the youth felt his heart grow more strong
and stout. He had never been compelled to blush in such manner
for his acts; he was an individual of extraordinary virtues.
He reflected, with condescending pity: "Too bad! Too bad!
The poor devil, it makes him feel tough!"
After this incident, and as he reviewed the battle pictures he
had seen, he felt quite competent to return home and make the
hearts of the people glow with stories of war. He could see
himself in a room of warm tints telling tales to listener.
He could exhibit laurels. They were insignificant; still,
in a district where laurels were infrequent, they might shine.
He saw his gaping audience picturing him as the central figure
in blazing scenes. And he imagined the consternation and the
ejaculations of his mother and the young lady at the seminary
as they drank his recitals. Their vague feminine formula for
beloved ones doing brave deeds on the field of battle without
risk of life would be destroyed.
Chapter 16
A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later, the
cannon had entered the dispute. In the fog-filled air their
voices made a thudding sound. The reverberations were continual.
This part of the world led a strange, battleful existence.
The youth's regiment was marched to relieve a command that had
lain long in some damp trenches. The men took positions behind a
curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up, like a large
furrow, along the line of woods. Before them was a level stretch,
peopled with short, deformed stumps. From the woods beyond came
the dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets, firing in the fog.
From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas.
The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy attitudes
awaiting their turn. Many had their backs to the firing. The youth's
friend lay down, buried his face in his arms, and almost instantly,
it seemed, he was in a deep sleep.
The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered
over at the woods and up and down the line. Curtains of trees
interfered with his ways of vision. He could see the low line of
trenches but for a short distance. A few idle flags were perched
on the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a
few heads sticking curiously over the top.
Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the
front and left, and the din on the right had grown to
frightful proportions. The guns were roaring without an
instant's pause for breath. It seemed that the cannon had
come from all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle.
It became impossible to make a sentence heard.
The youth wished to launch a joke--a quotation from newspapers.
He desired to say, "All quiet on the Rappahannock," but the guns
refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar. He never
successfully concluded the sentence. But at last the guns
stopped, and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew,
like birds, but they were now for the most part black creatures
who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused
to rise on any wings of hope. The men's faces grew doleful from
the interpreting of omens. Tales of hesitation and uncertainty
on the part of those high in place and responsibility came to
their ears. Stories of disaster were borne into their minds with
many proofs. This din of musketry on the right, growing like a
released genie of sound, expressed and emphasized the army's plight.
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