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 driftwood 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 caldron 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 grey, 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 organisations 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.