第27章

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 pleas-ure 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 team-sters 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 ade-quate 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 some-thing 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--a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken blade high--a 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.For 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 com-rades 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 ap-peared 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 imagina-tion 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 him-self 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.