I
The fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seem
of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a
new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have
been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one
part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick
ranks, and blended in an undertoned roar, which was the voice of the
column.
The town on the southern shore of the little river loomed spectrally, a
faint etching upon the grey cloud-masses which were shifting with oily
languor. A long row of guns upon the northern bank had been pitiless in
their hatred, but a little battered belfry could be dimly seen still
pointing with invincible resolution toward the heavens.
The enclouded air vibrated with noises made by hidden colossal things.
The infantry tramplings, the heavy rumbling of the artillery, made the
earth speak of gigantic preparation. Guns on distant heights thundered
from time to time with sudden, nervous roar, as if unable to endure in
silence a knowledge of hostile troops massing, other guns going to
position. These sounds, near and remote, defined an immense
battle-ground, described the tremendous width of the stage of the
prospective drama. The voices of the guns, slightly casual, unexcited
in their challenges and warnings, could not destroy the unutterable
eloquence of the word in the air, a meaning of impending struggle which
made the breath halt at the lips.
The column in the roadway was ankle-deep in mud. The men swore piously
at the rain which drizzled upon them, compelling them to stand always
very erect in fear of the drops that would sweep in under their
coat-collars. The fog was as cold as wet cloths. The men stuffed their
hands deep in their pockets, and huddled their muskets in their arms.
The machinery of orders had rooted these soldiers deeply into the mud,
precisely as almighty nature roots mullein stalks.
They listened and speculated when a tumult of fighting came from the
dim town across the river. When the noise lulled for a time they
resumed their descriptions of the mud and graphically exaggerated the
number of hours they had been kept waiting. The general commanding
their division rode along the ranks, and they cheered admiringly,
affectionately, crying out to him gleeful prophecies of the coming
battle. Each man scanned him with a peculiarly keen personal interest,
and afterward spoke of him with unquestioning devotion and confidence,
narrating anecdotes which were mainly untrue.
When the jokers lifted the shrill voices which invariably belonged to
them, flinging witticisms at their comrades, a loud laugh would sweep
from rank to rank, and soldiers who had not heard would lean forward
and demand repetition. When were borne past them some wounded men with
grey and blood-smeared faces, and eyes that rolled in that helpless
beseeching for assistance from the sky which comes with supreme pain,
the soldiers in the mud watched intently, and from time to time asked
of the bearers an account of the affair. Frequently they bragged of
their corps, their division, their brigade, their regiment. Anon they
referred to the mud and the cold drizzle. Upon this threshold of a wild
scene of death they, in short, defied the proportion of events with
that splendour of heedlessness which belongs only to veterans.
"Like a lot of wooden soldiers," swore Billie Dempster, moving his feet
in the thick mass, and casting a vindictive glance indefinitely:
"standing in the mud for a hundred years."
"Oh, shut up!" murmured his brother Dan. The manner of his words
implied that this fraternal voice near him was an indescribable bore.
"Why should I shut up?" demanded Billie.
"Because you're a fool," cried Dan, taking no time to debate it; "the
biggest fool in the regiment."
There was but one man between them, and he was habituated. These
insults from brother to brother had swept across his chest, flown past
his face, many times during two long campaigns. Upon this occasion he
simply grinned first at one, then at the other.
The way of these brothers was not an unknown topic in regimental
gossip. They had enlisted simultaneously, with each sneering loudly at
the other for doing it. They left their little town, and went forward
with the flag, exchanging protestations of undying suspicion. In the
camp life they so openly despised each other that, when entertaining
quarrels were lacking, their companions often contrived situations
calculated to bring forth display of this fraternal dislike.
Both were large-limbed, strong young men, and often fought with friends
in camp unless one was near to interfere with the other. This latter
happened rather frequently, because Dan, preposterously willing for any
manner of combat, had a very great horror of seeing Billie in a fight;
and Billie, almost odiously ready himself, simply refused to see Dan
stripped to his shirt and with his fists aloft. This sat queerly upon
them, and made them the objects of plots.
When Dan jumped through a ring of eager soldiers and dragged forth his
raving brother by the arm, a thing often predicted would almost come to
pass. When Billie performed the same office for Dan, the prediction
would again miss fulfilment by an inch. But indeed they never fought
together, although they were perpetually upon the verge.
They expressed longing for such conflict. As a matter of truth, they
had at one time made full arrangement for it, but even with the
encouragement and interest of half of the regiment they somehow failed
to achieve collision.
If Dan became a victim of police duty, no jeering was so destructive to
the feelings as Billie's comment. If Billie got a call to appear at the
headquarters, none would so genially prophesy his complete undoing as
Dan. Small misfortunes to one were, in truth, invariably greeted with
hilarity by the other, who seemed to see in them great re-enforcement
of his opinion.
As soldiers, they expressed each for each a scorn intense and blasting.
After a certain battle, Billie was promoted to corporal. When Dan was
told of it, he seemed smitten dumb with astonishment and patriotic
indignation. He stared in silence, while the dark blood rushed to
Billie's forehead, and he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Dan at
last found his tongue, and said: "Well, I'm durned!" If he had heard
that an army mule had been appointed to the post of corps commander,
his tone could not have had more derision in it. Afterward, he adopted
a fervid insubordination, an almost religious reluctance to obey the
new corporal's orders, which came near to developing the desired strife.
It is here finally to be recorded also that Dan, most ferociously
profane in speech, very rarely swore in the presence of his brother;
and that Billie, whose oaths came from his lips with the grace of
falling pebbles, was seldom known to express himself in this manner
when near his brother Dan.
At last the afternoon contained a suggestion of evening. Metallic cries
rang suddenly from end to end of the column. They inspired at once a
quick, business-like adjustment. The long thing stirred in the mud. The
men had hushed, and were looking across the river. A moment later the
shadowy mass of pale blue figures was moving steadily toward the
stream. There could be heard from the town a clash of swift fighting
and cheering. The noise of the shooting coming through the heavy air
had its sharpness taken from it, and sounded in thuds.
There was a halt upon the bank above the pontoons. When the column went
winding down the incline, and streamed out upon the bridge, the fog had
faded to a great degree, and in the clearer dusk the guns on a distant
ridge were enabled to perceive the crossing. The long whirling outcries
of the shells came into the air above the men. An occasional solid shot
struck the surface of the river, and dashed into view a sudden vertical
jet. The distance was subtly illuminated by the lightning from the
deep-booming guns. One by one the batteries on the northern shore
aroused, the innumerable guns bellowing in angry oration at the distant
ridge. The rolling thunder crashed and reverberated as a wild surf
sounds on a still night, and to this music the column marched across
the pontoons.
The waters of the grim river curled away in a smile from the ends of
the great boats, and slid swiftly beneath the planking. The dark,
riddled walls of the town upreared before the troops, and from a region
hidden by these hammered and tumbled houses came incessantly the yells
and firings of a prolonged and close skirmish.
When Dan had called his brother a fool, his voice had been so decisive,
so brightly assured, that many men had laughed, considering it to be
great humour under the circumstances. The incident happened to rankle
deep in Billie. It was not any strange thing that his brother had
called him a fool. In fact, he often called him a fool with exactly the
same amount of cheerful and prompt conviction, and before large
audiences, too. Billie wondered in his own mind why he took such
profound offence in this case; but, at any rate, as he slid down the
bank and on to the bridge with his regiment, he was searching his
knowledge for something that would pierce Dan's blithesome spirit. But
he could contrive nothing at this time, and his impotency made the
glance which he was once able to give his brother still more malignant.
The guns far and near were roaring a fearful and grand introduction for
this column which was marching upon the stage of death. Billie felt it,
but only in a numb way. His heart was cased in that curious dissonant
metal which covers a man's emotions at such times. The terrible voices
from the hills told him that in this wide conflict his life was an
insignificant fact, and that his death would be an insignificant fact.
They portended the whirlwind to which he would be as necessary as a
butterfly's waved wing. The solemnity, the sadness of it came near
enough to make him wonder why he was neither solemn nor sad. When his
mind vaguely adjusted events according to their importance to him, it
appeared that the uppermost thing was the fact that upon the eve of
battle, and before many comrades, his brother had called him a fool.
Dan was in a particularly happy mood. "Hurray! Look at 'em shoot," he
said, when the long witches' croon of the shells came into the air. It
enraged Billie when he felt the little thorn in him, and saw at the
same time that his brother had completely forgotten it.
The column went from the bridge into more mud. At this southern end
there was a chaos of hoarse directions and commands. Darkness was
coming upon the earth, and regiments were being hurried up the slippery
bank. As Billie floundered in the black mud, amid the swearing, sliding
crowd, he suddenly resolved that, in the absence of other means of
hurting Dan, he would avoid looking at him, refrain from speaking to
him, pay absolutely no heed to his existence; and this done skilfully
would, he imagined, soon reduce his brother to a poignant sensitiveness.
At the top of the bank the column again halted and rearranged itself,
as a man after a climb rearranges his clothing. Presently the great
steel-backed brigade, an infinitely graceful thing in the rhythm and
ease of its veteran movement, swung up a little narrow, slanting street.
Evening had come so swiftly that the fighting on the remote borders of
the town was indicated by thin flashes of flame. Some building was on
fire, and its reflection upon the clouds was an oval of delicate pink.