Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/redbadge.zip/FILE11.TXT

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 14KB | 208 lines

                              CHAPTER ELEVEN

          He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was
     growing louder. Great brown 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---
     blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward
     and a broken blade high---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. Far 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 moth-like 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 ±he 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 he? 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 some 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
     crowded and cackled. He was a slang phrase.