All demeanour of rural serenity had been wrenched violently from the
little town by the guns and by the waves of men which had surged through
it. The hand of war laid upon this village had in an instant changed it
to a thing of remnants. It resembled the place of a monstrous shaking of
the earth itself. The windows, now mere unsightly holes, made the
tumbled and blackened dwellings seem skeletons. Doors lay splintered to
fragments. Chimneys had flung their bricks everywhere. The artillery
fire had not neglected the rows of gentle shade-trees which had lined
the streets. Branches and heavy trunks cluttered the mud in drift-wood
tangles, while a few shattered forms had contrived to remain dejectedly,
mournfully upright. They expressed an innocence, a helplessness, which
perforce created a pity for their happening into this cauldron of
battle. Furthermore, there was under foot a vast collection of odd
things reminiscent of the charge, the fight, the retreat. There were
boxes and barrels filled with earth, behind which riflemen had lain
snugly, and in these little trenches were the dead in blue with the dead
in gray, the poses eloquent of the struggles for possession of the town
until the history of the whole conflict was written plainly in the
streets.
And yet the spirit of this little city, its quaint individuality, poised
in the air above the ruins, defying the guns, the sweeping volleys;
holding in contempt those avaricious blazes which had attacked many
dwellings. The hard earthen sidewalks proclaimed the games that had been
played there during long lazy days, in the careful shadows of the trees.
"General Merchandise," in faint letters upon a long board, had to be
read with a slanted glance, for the sign dangled by one end; but the
porch of the old store was a palpable legend of wide-hatted men,
smoking.
This subtle essence, this soul of the life that had been, brushed like
invisible wings the thoughts of the men in the swift columns that came
up from the river.
In the darkness a loud and endless humming arose from the great blue
crowds bivouacked in the streets. From time to time a sharp spatter of
firing from far picket lines entered this bass chorus. The smell from
the smouldering ruins floated on the cold night breeze.
Dan, seated ruefully upon the doorstep of a shot-pierced house, was
proclaiming the campaign badly managed. Orders had been issued
forbidding camp-fires.
Suddenly he ceased his oration, and scanning the group of his comrades,
said: "Where's Billie? Do you know?"
"Gone on picket."
"Get out! Has he?" said Dan. "No business to go on picket. Why don't
some of them other corporals take their turn?"
A bearded private was smoking his pipe of confiscated tobacco, seated
comfortably upon a horse-hair trunk which he had dragged from the house.
He observed: "_Was_ his turn."
"No such thing," cried Dan. He and the man on the horse-hair trunk held
discussion in which Dan stoutly maintained that if his brother had been
sent on picket it was an injustice. He ceased his argument when another
soldier, upon whose arms could faintly be seen the two stripes of a
corporal, entered the circle. "Humph," said Dan, "where you been?"
The corporal made no answer. Presently Dan said: "Billie, where you
been?"
His brother did not seem to hear these inquiries. He glanced at the
house which towered above them, and remarked casually to the man on the
horse-hair trunk: "Funny, ain't it? After the pelting this town got,
you'd think there wouldn't be one brick left on another."
"Oh," said Dan, glowering at his brother's back. "Getting mighty smart,
ain't you?"
The absence of camp-fires allowed the evening to make apparent its
quality of faint silver light in which the blue clothes of the throng
became black, and the faces became white expanses, void of expression.
There was considerable excitement a short distance from the group around
the doorstep. A soldier had chanced upon a hoop-skirt, and arrayed in it
he was performing a dance amid the applause of his companions. Billie
and a greater part of the men immediately poured over there to witness
the exhibition.
"What's the matter with Billie?" demanded Dan of the man upon the
horse-hair trunk.
"How do I know?" rejoined the other in mild resentment. He arose and
walked away. When he returned he said briefly, in a weather-wise tone,
that it would rain during the night.
Dan took a seat upon one end of the horse-hair trunk. He was facing the
crowd around the dancer, which in its hilarity swung this way and that
way. At times he imagined that he could recognise his brother's face.
He and the man on the other end of the trunk thoughtfully talked of the
army's position. To their minds, infantry and artillery were in a most
precarious jumble in the streets of the town; but they did not grow
nervous over it, for they were used to having the army appear in a
precarious jumble to their minds. They had learned to accept such
puzzling situations as a consequence of their position in the ranks, and
were now usually in possession of a simple but perfectly immovable faith
that somebody understood the jumble. Even if they had been convinced
that the army was a headless monster, they would merely have nodded with
the veteran's singular cynicism. It was none of their business as
soldiers. Their duty was to grab sleep and food when occasion permitted,
and cheerfully fight wherever their feet were planted until more orders
came. This was a task sufficiently absorbing.
They spoke of other corps, and this talk being confidential, their
voices dropped to tones of awe. "The Ninth"--"The First"--"The
Fifth"--"The Sixth"--"The Third"--the simple numerals rang with
eloquence, each having a meaning which was to float through many years
as no intangible arithmetical mist, but as pregnant with individuality
as the names of cities.
Of their own corps they spoke with a deep veneration, an idolatry, a
supreme confidence which apparently would not blanch to see it match
against everything.
It was as if their respect for other corps was due partly to a wonder
that organizations not blessed with their own famous numeral could take
such an interest in war. They could prove that their division was the
best in the corps, and that their brigade was the best in the division.
And their regiment--it was plain that no fortune of life was equal to
the chance which caused a man to be born, so to speak, into this
command, the keystone of the defending arch.
At times Dan covered with insults the character of a vague, unnamed
general to whose petulance and busy-body spirit he ascribed the order
which made hot coffee impossible.
Dan said that victory was certain in the coming battle. The other man
seemed rather dubious. He remarked upon the fortified line of hills,
which had impressed him even from the other side of the river. "Shucks,"
said Dan. "Why, we--" He pictured a splendid overflowing of these hills
by the sea of men in blue. During the period of this conversation Dan's
glance searched the merry throng about the dancer. Above the babble of
voices in the street a far-away thunder could sometimes be
heard--evidently from the very edge of the horizon--the boom-boom of
restless guns.