THE SERGEANT TALKS OF WAR AND OTHER THINGS.
The next morning Eugene was ill. He was not a very strong boy, and he
had had more excitement and mental anxiety during the last few days
than his slender frame and sensitive soul could withstand.
For some days he was obliged to keep his bed, where he was faithfully
waited on by the keepers of his pretty prison.
Mrs. Hardy was the chief jailer; and although he uttered only polite
conventional expressions of gratitude that she knew did not come from
his heart, she felt sure that she would in time win her way into his
stubborn affections.
“The great thing is to keep my temper with him,” she said to her
husband one day; “he is so provoking sometimes, without meaning to be
so.”
“All boys are,” said the sergeant consolingly, “and most men and
women too, for that matter. Nobody can keep their temper all the time.
According to my doctrine, you lose it just as seldom as you can; and
when you do, don’t kick up a fuss about it, but just do some little
thing that lets people know you’re sorry, and then take a fresh sheet
and start over again.”
“When I speak sharply to him, I think it my duty to apologize,” said
Mrs. Hardy.
“Now, Bess, none of that,” said her husband, “if you don’t want
to get priggish. I know you. You’re quick and sensitive, and you think
you’ve got to say ‘forgive me’ every time you look the wrong way.
That boy will despise you if you keep running to him with apologies. I
used to know a fellow out West, Wash-house Billy we called him, because
he was forever scrubbing himself—well, that chap was so self-righteous
that every time he played a mean trick on any one, he’d go trotting after
him with a ‘forgive me’ dropping from his lips. He got knocked down
one time for apologizing to a half-breed that wasn’t used to it. Then
he had to explain; and the half-breed swore at him, and said he didn’t
want any of his half-cooked words. If he was sorry, let him act it.
Deeds, not words, were what he wanted. The rest of us were very glad;
for Wash-house Billy had got into the bad habit of treating us all as
mean as pickpockets, because he was always ready to jump from his low
trick to his high one, and we were so dumfounded by his prig religion
that we hadn’t the spirit to knock him down as the half-breed did. If
the boy provokes you, he deserves a snub.”
“He isn’t provoking,” said Mrs. Hardy warmly, “except occasionally.
He’s the sweetest boy, Stephen, and he is going to make a fine man I am
sure; and he asks the quaintest questions while he lies in bed with his
big black eyes following me round the room.”
“Is he getting up to-day?”
“Yes; he will be out in a few minutes.”
The sergeant went on with his dinner, and did not look up until Eugene
came into the room. “How are you?” he said. “I haven’t seen you
before to-day. Don’t you want to put on your cap, and come to the park
with me?”
“I will go with pleasure,” replied Eugene. Before he could get to the
hall, Mrs. Hardy had run there, and had brought his cap, which she
dropped lightly on his head.
Eugene lifted it off; then, as if to apologize to her for not donning
it until he reached the door, he bent over her hand, and lifting it to
his lips, kissed it without speaking.
It was the first caress he had given her, and her face flushed with
pleasure as she stood looking after him. “He has such pretty foreign
ways,” she murmured. “I wish he would love me.”
“It is agreeable to be able to walk out once more,” said Eugene,
drawing a long breath, as he sauntered slowly along by the side of the
sergeant.
The man looked down at him in a kindly fashion. “You’ll be all right
now,” he said, “and you must spend a lot of time outside. Why, here’s
the king coming to meet us; we must be late to-day.”
The cat turned, and walked by the side of the sergeant, occasionally
sniffing at the paper parcels he carried in his hand.
“Will you have the kindness to stop for a minute?” asked Eugene
suddenly.
“What’s the matter?” said the sergeant.
The boy pointed to the bust of John Boyle O’Reilly that they were
approaching. “Some one has put fresh flowers there,” he said excitedly.
“I have been ill and detained from doing it. Who is it?”
“My wife and your jailer. She knows about your liking for the emperor
and O’Reilly, and she comes here with a bouquet every morning before
you’re up.”
“Does she do this to please me?”
“For no other reason that I know of.”
Eugene was silent for a short time as if he were working out some
problem. Then he said earnestly, “Have you ever found her deceitful?”
“Not as yet,” said the sergeant cheerfully. “Of course we never know
how folks may turn out.”
“No; one never does,” said Eugene with a sigh.
“Generally speaking, we turn out as we begin,” said the man.
“There’s a fine opening for a sermon, my boy, only I’m not good at
preaching. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.”
Eugene gave him a long and scrutinizing look; then he said, with a
compassionate glance at King Boozy who was mewing coaxingly about the
bags, “Suppose we proceed.”
“All right, my boy;” and the sergeant walked nimbly on until they
reached the cats’ dining-room under the shrubbery, where he spread
on the ground a sheet of brown paper, and emptied on it a medley of
chicken and beef bones. Then drawing a tin can from among the leaves,
he filled it with milk from a bottle in his pocket.
[Illustration: THE TWO CATS CROUCHED BESIDE THEIR FESTAL BOARD.]
King Boozy mewed to his chum Squirrel; and the two cats crouched
down beside their festal board, and daintily proceeded to eat up
everything.
“Do you do this every day?” asked Eugene.
“Every day as regular as the sun.”
“It is a thoughtfulness on the part of the city to provide for homeless
beasts.”
“The city! bless you, my boy, the city doesn’t do it.”
“Do you supply this food yourself?” asked Eugene in surprise.
“Yes, young sir; why not?”
“For cats, for vermin, or what I was formerly accustomed to call
vermin?” continued the boy in polite astonishment.
“Vermin must live,” said the sergeant. “Brute vermin protect the
human vermin. If I had time I’d tell you some of the uses of cats;
but I haven’t, and I guess you’d get bored if I had. Let us go down
to the lower cat-house. I have some more food in this other bag.”
“Unless you are a rich man,” said Eugene as they entered a shady path,
“I think that the city should feed the cats that serve it.”
“The city might if it was asked,” said the sergeant good-naturedly;
“but I’d like to see myself sending in a requisition for cats’ meat.
It only costs a few dollars a week to feed them.”
Eugene murmured an almost indistinct reply, and fell into a brown study
that lasted until they reached the second colony of cats.
“You musn’t walk any farther,” said the sergeant, after he had
scattered the second supply of food on the ground, and the cats had
come scampering and cuffing each other aside to reach it. “Come into
the office and rest. I have to wait here a while.”
Eugene went with him into a little wooden building, and sat down by the
window where he could watch the animals outside. “Their coats are very
thick,” he said musingly, “or is it that they are sticking out their
hairs?”
“No; their coats are really heavy. They get that way after they have
lived out-doors for some time.”
“Have these animals all been cast out by some one?”
“Every man Jack of them,” said the sergeant; “cast out, or frightened
out, or scolded out, or kicked out. They come mewing and cringing to
this park, most of them scared out of their lives, only here and there
a bold one.”
“Unfortunates,” said Eugene bitterly, “it would be better for them to
die.”
“They think it more fun to live and have a good time. They don’t mind
dependence. Bless you, we’ve all got to be looked after. Where would I
be if I hadn’t my wife to take care of me? what would she do without
me?”
“Have no thought for her,” said Eugene magnificently. “If misfortune
befalls you, I shall take her under my protection.”
The sergeant stared hard at the cats, and tried not to smile.
“After my fortune comes from France, I shall remember you,” said
Eugene.
“Thank you,” replied the sergeant demurely. “May I ask you whether
you intend remaining in this country?”
“Yes; I shall not live under that villanous republic. My grand-uncle
will send me not the whole, he is too avaricious for that, but a part
of the fortune that rightfully belongs to me. I shall go to a military
school, of which I am assured there are good ones in this country;
then, when I become a man, the republic of France will probably be no
more. We shall have our empire, and I shall return, and take service
under the Bonapartes.”
“You are quite sure that your grand-uncle will send you some money?”
At this remark Eugene turned such a startled face toward his companion
that the latter, finding that he had surprised the boy out of his usual
composure, made haste to change the subject of conversation.
“So you want to be a soldier,” he said.
“Yes; it is the only profession for a gentleman.”
“Napoleon made a pretty big thing of war,” said the sergeant.
“Oh! an enormous thing. I should like to be a second Napoleon;” and
Eugene’s eyes sparkled.
“I don’t take much stock in war,” said the sergeant.
“Do you mean that you would not fight?”
“No; I mean I don’t like it.”
“You do not—how very extraordinary. How does it happen?”
“Because I’ve been in it.”
“You have seen active service, have been in engagements,” exclaimed
Eugene. “Oh! why did you not tell me?”
“It never occurred to me,” said the sergeant; “and unlike most
men I’m not fond of talking of it.”
“Your rank,” said Eugene feverishly, “and the country you fought in,
will you not tell me?”
“Rank, drummer-boy; country, my own native land and its last war;
enemies, brother-men. Boy, I don’t like war.”
“Why not, oh, why not?”
“I’ll tell you presently. You tell me first what your idea of war
is.”
“We have a picture of my great-grandfather in white huzzar uniform,”
said Eugene enthusiastically. “He is magnificent. In the hall of our
château in France hangs also a painting of my great-great-grandfather,
mounted on his charger Austerlitz. He waves his arm in the air; he
encourages his men. They are about to charge the enemy. He reminds them
that they fight for their country, their emperor—oh! it makes one’s
blood stir to look at it.”
“That’s mostly the picture outsiders draw,” said the sergeant mildly.
“They always fancy handsome officers, stainless uniforms, a lot of
enemies waiting somewhere to be cut down like sheep. It’s all glory and
paint and a lot of big figures in histories and newspapers. But there’s
another side to it after you’ve been in a battle. In the first place, I
should say war is a dirty thing.”
“A dirty thing,” said Eugene wonderingly. “What is that for an
epithet?”
“It’s a suitable one,” replied the sergeant coolly. “In the first
place, war is dirty; in the second, it’s low; and in the third, it’s
needless.”
“I do not understand you;” and Eugene made a gesture expressive of
slight contempt.
“Look here,” said the sergeant, dragging his chair up to the table,
and bringing a lead-pencil from a drawer. “Here on this side of the
table imagine gray men, imagine blue there. They haven’t one earthly
thing against each other, but they’ve got to rend and tear each other’s
mortal bodies to preserve the independence of the Union. The subject of
their dispute is a grand one, a glorious one; and if there wasn’t any
other way to settle it they’d have to whack each other, and beat the
life out of each other’s bodies, but there is another way.”
“Wars must take place,” said Eugene firmly. “My grandfather asserts
it.”
“Your grandfather is—that is, you are mistaken. Wars don’t need to
take place. In the late one in this country, when we were all seething
hotheads, why didn’t we apply to foreign countries to settle our
dispute?”
“Arbitration—ah! that is not for gentlemen,” said the boy proudly.
The sergeant smiled. “Lad,” he said, “you’re just like all the
rest of growing things. You have got to learn for yourself. You won’t
take a leaf out of any other body’s book. Do you believe me when I
say that if you were to enlist to-day, and go on the field to-morrow,
that your little body would quiver and shake, and you’d want to turn
tail and run, like one of those cats, when you heard the big guns?”
“I would never run.”
“Possibly you might not,” said the sergeant amiably. “I’m not
going to say that all men do, though I believe most men want to. Well,
we’ll say you’ve got through the first engagement, and have a nice
undangerous wound in the fleshy part of your leg. You’d admire the
battlefield, wouldn’t you, and the agony of men and horses heaped up,
and you’d go to the hospital and see the wounded, and smell the
sickening smells, and enjoy yourself?”
“A soldier must look on blood.”
“Yes, he must—tears and blood. Why, lad, if all the women that lost
husbands and fathers and lovers could hover over a battlefield, there
would be a good sharp shower like rain on it.”
“It is necessary for women to cry,” remarked Eugene.
“Yes; that’s true. I guess men would be a little better to shed tears
now and again. Well, lad, I hope no woman will ever have to cry because
your body has been made a target of. I hope, too, that you’ll never
be stood up and have an awful moment when you wonder what in the name
of common-sense you have done, or your ancestors have done, that you
shouldn’t be allowed to live out this life, which is tricky anyway,
but should be set up for a plaything, not for butchers, but for decent
human beings, that haven’t the faintest bit of spite against you. But
good gracious, I’m preaching a sermon, which is always against my
principles.”
“I like to talk of war,” said Eugene; “it makes me feel warm. You
have of course read of Napoleon and his glorious campaigns?”
The sergeant nodded. Eugene had turned his back to the window, and
sat confronting him with flaming cheeks. He had forgotten the very
existence of the cats.
“He was the greatest soldier the world has ever seen,” pursued the lad.
“Well, granted he was,” said the sergeant, “what did he get out of
it?”
“Glory, honor, victory, and reputation for France.”
“And a lonely prison without a razor to shave his upper lip, according
to you,” said the sergeant, “though I think you are rather hard on
England in that.”
“At the last, yes,” said Eugene; ”but his career up to that was
magnificent.”
“I don’t see the magnificence of it,” said the sergeant. “He set
all Europe by the ears; he stirred up the kings and emperors; he turned
things topsy-turvy, and in the end left France no better than he found
her. His ambition was too big for his little body. He should have
stopped half way in his course.”
“You do not understand,” said Eugene impatiently.
“And he strewed dead Frenchmen all over Europe,” said the sergeant,
“and not one-half of them knew what they were fighting about. What do
you think of the retreat from Moscow, my boy?”
“A splendid failure. But the emperor did not know all things. How could
he tell what was going to be?”
“I’ll come back to my starting-point,” said the sergeant. “I
believe we’re put on this earth—cats and dogs and beasts and men—to
be happy. Any one or anything that lifts his hand against his brother
throws the whole world out of tune. A man that kills anybody or any
creature without cause is a murderer—I don’t care who he is that does
it; and that’s the sum of the whole thing, according to me, and I’m
not going to say another word. You run home like a good lad, or the
wife will be getting worried about you. We’ll talk of these things
another time.”