Chapter 11
He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder.
Great blown 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--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 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 the 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 mothlike 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 general 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 though, were 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 the 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 might 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 'e? 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 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
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