Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/redbadge.zip/FILE24.TXT

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 9KB | 152 lines

                            CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

          The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across
     the face of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker. The
     stentorian speeches of the artillery continued in some distant
     encounter, but the crashes of the musketry had almost ceased. The
     youth and his friend of a sudden looked up, feeling a deadened form
     of distress at the waning of these noises, which had become a part
     of life. They could see changes going on among the troops. There
     were marchings this way and that way. A battery wheeled leisurely.
     On the crest of a small hill was the thick gleam of many departing
     muskets.
          The youth arose "Well, what now, I wonder?" he said. By his
     tone he seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in
     the way of dins and smashes. He shaded his eyes with his grimy hand
     and gazed over the field.
          His friend also arose and stared. "I bet we're going to get
     along out of this and back over the river," said he.
          "Well, I swan!" said the youth.
          They waited, watching. Within a little while the regiment
     received orders to retrace its way. The men got up grunting from
     the grass, regretting the soft repose. They jerked their stiffened
     legs, and stretched their arms over their heads. One man swore as
     he rubbed his eyes. They all groaned "O Lord!" They had as many
     objections to this change as they would have had to a proposal for
     a new battle.
          They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had
     run in a mad scamper.
          The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows. The
     reformed brigade, in column, aimed through a wood at the road.
     Directly they were in a mass of dust-covered troops, and were
     trudging along in a way parallel to the enemy's lines as these had
     been defined by the previous turmoil.
          They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in
     front of it groups of their comrades lying in wait behind a neat
     breastwork. A row of guns were booming at a distant enemy. Shells
     thrown in reply were raising clouds of dust and splinters. Horsemen
     dashed along the line of entrenchments.
          At this point of its march the division curved away from the
     field and went winding off in the direction of the river. When the
     significance of this movement had impressed itself upon the youth
     he turned his head and looked over his shoulder toward the trampled
     and débris-strewed ground. He breathed a breath of new
     satisfaction. He finally nudged his friend. "Well, it's all over,"
     he said to him.
          His friend gazed backward. "By God, it is," he assented. They
     mused.
          For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and
     uncertain way. His mind was undergoing a subtle change. It took
     moments for it to cast off its battleful ways and resume its
     accustomed course of thought. Gradually his brain emerged from the
     clogged clouds, and at last he was enabled to more closely
     comprehend himself and circumstance.
          He understood then that the existence of shot and counter-shot
     was in the past. He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling
     upheavals and had come forth. He had been where there was red of
     blood and black of passion, and he was escaped. His first thoughts
     were given to rejoicings at this fact.
          Later he began to study his deeds, his failures, and his
     achievements. Thus, fresh from scenes where many of his usual
     machines of reflection had been idle, from where he had proceeded
     sheep-like, he struggled to marshal all his acts.
          At last they marched before him clearly. From this present
     viewpoint he was enabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and
     to criticize them with some correctness, for his new condition had
     already defeated certain sympathies.
          Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and
     unregretting, for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and
     shining prominence. Those performances which had been witnessed by
     his fellows marched now in wide purple and gold, having various
     deflections. They went gaily with music. It was pleasure to watch
     these things. He spent delightful minutes viewing the gilded images
     of memory.
          He saw that he was good. He recalled with a thrill of joy the
     respectful comments of his fellows upon his conduct.
          Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first
     engagement appeared to him and danced. There were small shoutings
     in his brain about these matters. For a moment he blushed, and the
     light of his soul flickered with shame.
          A specter of reproach came to him. There loomed the dogging
     memory of the tattered soldier---he who, gored by bullets and faint
     for blood, had fretted concerning an imagined wound in another; he
     who had loaned his last of strength and intellect for the tall
     soldier; he who, blind with weariness and pain, had been deserted
     in the field.
          For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the
     thought that he might be detected in the thing. As he stood
     persistently before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp
     irritation and agony.
          His friend turned. "What's the matter, Henry?" he demanded.
     The youth's reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.
          As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his
     prattling companions this vision of cruelty brooded over him. It
     clung near him always and darkened his view of these deeds in
     purple and gold. Whichever way his thoughts turned they were
     followed by the somber phantom of the desertion in the fields. He
     looked stealthily at his companions, feeling sure that they must
     discern in his face evidences of this pursuit. But they were
     plodding in ragged array, discussing with quick tongues the
     accomplishments of the late battle.
          "Oh, if a man should come up and ask me, I'd say we got a dum
     good licking."
          "Licking---in your eye! We ain't licked, sonny. We're going
     down here aways, swing around, and come in behind them."
          "Oh, hush, with your coming in behind them. I've seen all that
     I want to. Don't tell me about coming in behind---"
          "Bill Smithers, he says he'd rather been in ten hundred
     battles than been in that hell of a hospital. He says they got
     shooting in the nighttime, and shells dropped plum among them in
     the hospital. He says such hollering he never see."
          "Hasbrouck? He's the best officer in this here regiment. He's
     a whale."
          "Didn't I tell you we'd come around in behind them? Didn't I
     tell you? We---"
          "Oh, shut your 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 the conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet
     manhood, non-assertive 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