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Page 69
"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.
End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Red Badge of Courage
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