On the following Friday the President of one of the great railway lines
which cross Virginia was in his office when the door opened after
a gentle knock and some one entered. (The offices of presidents of
railroads had not then become the secret and mysterious sanctums which
they have since become.) The President was busily engaged with two or
three of the Directors, wealthy capitalists from the North, who had
come down on important business. He was very much engrossed; and he did
not look up immediately. When he did so he saw standing inside the door
a queer figure,--long, slim, angular,--a man who looked like a boy, or
a boy who looked like a man--red-headed, freckled-faced, bashful,--in
a coat too tight even for his thin figure, breeches too short for his
long legs; his hat was old and brown; his shirt was clean.
"Well, what do you want?" The President was busy.
It was Jim. His face twitched several times before any sound came:
"--I-w-w-w want t-t-t-to ge-get a place."
"This is not the place to get it. I have no place for you."
The President turned back to his friends. At the end of ten minutes,
seeing one of his visitors look toward the door, he stopped in the
middle of a sentence and glanced around.
The figure was still there--motionless. The President thought he had
been out and come back. He had not.
"Well?" His key was high.
"---- I-I-w-w-want to-to get a place."
"I told you I had no place for you. Go to the Superintendent."
"---- I-I've b-b-b-been to _him_."
"Well, what did he say?"
"S-s-s-says he ain't got any place."
"Well, I haven't any. Go to Mr. Blake."
"---- I'v'e b-been to him."
"Well, go to--to--" The President was looking for a paper. It occupied
his mind. He did not think any further of Jim. But Jim was there.
"--Go-go where?"
"Oh, I don't know--go anywhere--go out of _here_."
Jim's face worked. He turned and went slowly out. As he reached the
door he said: "Go-go-good-evening g-gentlemen."
The President's heart relented: "Go to the Superintendent," he called.
Next day he was engaged with his Directors when the door opened and the
same apparition stepped within--tall, slim, red-haired, with his little
tight coat, short trousers, and clean shirt.
The President frowned.
"Well, what is it?"
"---- I-I-I w-w-w-went to-to the S-S-Superintendent."
"Well, what about it?"
"Y-y-you told me to-to go-go to him. H-e-e ain't got any place." The
Directors smiled. One of them leaned back in his chair, took out a
cigar and prepared to cut the end.
"Well, I can't help it. I haven't anything for you. I told you that
yesterday. You must not come here bothering me; get out."
Jim stood perfectly still--perfectly motionless. He looked as if he had
been there always--would be there always. The Director with the cigar,
having cut it, took out a gold match-box, and opened it slowly, looking
at Jim with an amused smile. The President frowned and opened his mouth
to order him out. He changed his mind.
"What is your name?"
"J-J-James Upton."
"Where from?"
Jim told him.
"Whose son are you?"
"C-C-C-Captain J-J-James Upton's."
"What! You don't look much like him!"
Jim shuffled one foot. One corner of his mouth twitched up curiously.
It might have been a smile. He looked straight at the blank wall before
him.
"You are not much like your mother either--I used to know her as a
girl. How's that?"
Jim shuffled the other foot a little.
"R-r-run to seed, I reckon."
The President was a farmer--prided himself on it. The reply pleased
him. He touched a bell. A clerk entered.
"Ask Mr. Wake to come here."
"Can you carry a barrel of flour?" he asked Jim.
"I-I'll get it there," said Jim. He leaned a little forward. His eyes
opened.
"Or a sack of salt? They are right heavy."
"I-I-I'll get it there," said Jim. His form straightened.
Mr. Wake appeared.
"Write Mr. Day to give this man a place as brakeman."
"Yes, sir. Come this way." This to Jim.
Jim electrified them all by suddenly bursting out crying.
The tension had given way. He walked up to the wall and leaned his head
against it with his face on his arm, shaking from head to foot, sobbing
aloud.
"Thank you, I--I'm ever so much obliged to you," he sobbed.
The President rose and walked rapidly about the room.
Suddenly Jim turned and, with his arm over his eyes, held out his hand
to the President.
"Good-by." Then he went out.
There was a curious smile on the faces of the Directors as the door
closed.
"Well, I never saw anything like that before," said one of them. The
President said nothing.
"Run to seed," quoted the oldest of the Directors, "rather good
expression!"
"Damned good seed, gentlemen," said the President, a little shortly.
"Duval and Upton.--That fellow's father was in my command. Died at
Gettysburg. He'd fight hell."
Jim got a place--brakeman on a freight-train.
That night Jim wrote a letter home. You'd have thought he had been
elected President.
It was a hard life: harder than most. The work was hard; the fare was
hard; the life was hard. Standing on top of rattling cars as they
rushed along in the night around curves, over bridges, through tunnels,
with the rain and snow pelting in your face, and the tops as slippery
as ice. There was excitement about it, too: a sense of risk and danger.
Jim did not mind it much. He thought of his mother and Kitty.
There was a freemasonry among the men. All knew each other; hated or
liked each other; nothing negative about it.
It was a bad road. Worse than the average. Twice the amount of traffic
was done on the single track that should have been done. Result was
men were ground up--more than on most roads. More men were killed in
proportion to the number employed than were killed in service during
the war. The _esprit de corps_ was strong. Men stood by their trains
and by each other. When a man left his engine in sight of trouble, the
authorities might not know about it, but the men did. Unless there
was cause he had to leave. Sam Wray left his engine in sight of a
broken bridge after he reversed. The engine stopped on the track. The
officers never knew of it; but Wray and his fireman both changed to
another road. When a man even got shaky and began to run easy, the
superintendent might not mind it; but the men did: he had to go. A man
had to have not only courage but nerve.
Jim was not especially popular among men. He was reserved, slow,
awkward. He was "pious" (that is, did not swear). He was "stuck up"
(did not tell "funny things," by which was meant vulgar stories; nor
laugh at them either). And according to Dick Rail, he was "stingy as
h--l."
These things were not calculated to make him popular, and he was not.
He was a sort of butt for the free and easy men who lived in their
cabs and cabooses, obeyed their "orders," and owned nothing but their
overalls and their shiny Sunday clothes. He was good-tempered, though.
Took all their gibes and "dev'ling" quietly, and for the most part
silently. So, few actually disliked him. Dick Rail, the engineer of
his crew, was one of those few. Dick "dee-spised" him. Dick was big,
brawny, coarse: coarse in looks, coarse in talk, coarse every way, and
when he had liquor in him he was mean. Jim "bothered" him, he said.
He made Jim's life a burden to him. He laid himself out to do it. It
became his occupation. He thought about it when Jim was not present;
laid plans for it. There was something about Jim that was different
from most others. When Jim did not laugh at a "hard story," but just
sat still, some men would stop; Dick always told another harder yet,
and called attention to Jim's looks. His stock was inexhaustible. His
mind was like a spring which ran muddy water; its flow was perpetual.
The men thought Jim did not mind. He lost three pounds; which for a
man who was six feet (and would have been six feet two if he had been
straight) and who weighed 122, was considerable.
It is astonishing how one man can create a public sentiment. One
woman can ruin a reputation as effectually as a churchful. One bullet
can kill a man as dead as a bushel, if it hits him right. So Dick
Rail injured Jim. For Dick was an authority. He swore the biggest
oaths, wore the largest watch-chain, knew his engine better and sat
it steadier than any man on the road. He had had a passenger train
again and again, but he was too fond of whiskey. It was too risky.
Dick affected Jim's standing: told stories about him: made his life
a burden to him. "He shan't stay on the road," he used to say. "He's
stingier'n----! Carries his victuals about with him--I b'lieve he
sleeps with one o' them _I_-talians in a goods box." This was true--at
least, about carrying his food with him. (The rest was Dick's humor.)
Messing cost too much. The first two months' pay went to settle an old
guano-bill; but the third month's pay was Jim's. The day he drew that
he fattened a good deal. At least, he looked so. It was eighty-two
dollars (for Jim ran extra runs;--made double time whenever he could).
Jim had never had so much money in his life; had hardly ever seen it.
He walked about the streets that night till nearly midnight, feeling
the wad of notes in his breast-pocket. Next day a box went down the
country, and a letter with it, and that night Jim could not have bought
a chew of tobacco. The next letter he got from home was heavy. Jim
smiled over it a good deal, and cried a little too. He wondered how
Kitty looked in her new dress, and if the barrel of flour made good
bread; and if his mother's shawl was warm.
One day he was changed to the passenger service, the express. It was a
promotion, paid more, and relieved him from Dick Rail.
He had some queer experiences being ordered around, but he swallowed
them all. He had not been there three weeks when Mrs. Wagoner was a
passenger on the train. Carry was with her. They had moved to town.
(Mr. Wagoner was interested in railroad development.) Mrs. Wagoner
called him to her seat, and talked to him--in a loud voice. Mrs.
Wagoner had a loud voice. It had the "carrying" quality. She did not
shake hands; Carry did and said she was so glad to see him: she had
been down home the week before--had seen his mother and Kitty. Mrs.
Wagoner said, "We still keep our plantation as a country place." Carry
said Kitty looked so well; her new dress was lovely. Mrs. Wagoner said
his mother's eyes were worse. She and Kitty had walked over to see
them, to show Kitty's new dress. She had promised that Mr. Wagoner
would do what he could for him (Jim) on the road.
Next month Jim went back to the freight service. He preferred Dick Rail
to Mrs. Wagoner. He got him. Dick was worse than ever, his appetite was
whetted by abstinence; he returned to his attack with renewed zest. He
never tired--never flagged. He was perpetual: he was remorseless. He
made Jim's life a wilderness. Jim said nothing, just slouched along
silenter than ever, quieter than ever, closer than ever. He took to
going on Sunday to another church than the one he had attended, a
more fashionable one than that. The Wagoners went there. Jim sat far
back in the gallery, very far back, where he could just see the top
of Carry's head, her big hat and her face, and could not see Mrs.
Wagoner, who sat nearer the gallery. It had a curious effect on him:
he never went to sleep there. He took to going up-town walking by the
stores--looking in at the windows of tailors and clothiers. Once he
actually went into a shop and asked the price of a new suit of clothes.
(He needed them badly.) The tailor unfolded many rolls of cloth and
talked volubly: talked him dizzy. Jim looked wistfully at them, rubbed
his hand over them softly, felt the money in his pocket; and came out.
He said he thought he might come in again. Next day he did not have
the money. Kitty wrote him she could not leave home to go to school on
their mother's account, but she would buy books, and she was learning;
she would learn fast, her mother was teaching her; and he was the best
brother in the world, the whole world; and they had a secret, but he
must wait.
One day Jim got a big bundle from down the country. It was a new suit
of clothes. On top was a letter from Kitty. This was the secret. She
and her mother had sent for the cloth and had made them; they hoped
they would fit. They had cried over them. Jim cried a little too.
He put them on. They did not fit, were much too large. Under Dick
Rail's fire Jim had grown even thinner than before. But he wore them
to church. He felt that it would have been untrue to his mother and
Kitty not to wear them. He was sorry to meet Dick Rail on the street.
Dick had on a black broadcloth coat, a velvet vest, and large-checked
trousers. Dick looked Jim over. Jim winced, flushed a little: he was
not so sunburned now. Dick saw it. Next week Dick caught Jim in a crowd
in the "yard" waiting for their train. He told about the meeting.
He made a double shot. He said, "Boys, Jim's in love, he's got new
clothes! you ought to see 'em!" Dick was graphic; he wound up: "They
hung on him like breechin' on his old mule. By ----! I b'lieve he was
too ---- stingy to buy 'em and made 'em himself." There was a shout
from the crowd. Jim's face worked. He jumped for him. There was a
handspike lying near and he seized it. Some one grabbed him, but he
shook him off as if he had been a child. Why he did not kill Dick no
one ever knew. He meant to do it. For some time they thought he was
dead. He laid off for over a month. After that Jim wore what clothes he
chose: no one ever troubled him.
So he went on in the same way: slow, sleepy, stuttering, thin, stingy,
ill-dressed, lame.
He was made a fireman; preferred it to being a conductor, it led to
being an engineer, which paid more. He ran extra trips whenever he
could, up and double straight back. He could stand an immense amount of
work. If he got sleepy he put tobacco in his eyes to keep them open.
It was bad for the eyes, but waked him up. Kitty was going to take
music next year, and that cost money. He had not been home for several
months, but was going at Christmas.
They did not have any sight tests then. But the new Directory meant
to be thorough. Mr. Wagoner had become a Director, had his eye on the
presidency. Jim was one day sent for, and was asked about his eyes.
They were bad. There was not a doubt about it. They were inflamed; he
could not see a hundred yards. He did not tell them about the extra
trips and putting the tobacco in them. Dick Rail must have told about
him. They said he must go. Jim turned white. He went to his little
room, close up under the roof of a little dingy house in a back street,
and sat down in the dark; thought about his mother and Kitty, and dimly
about some one else; wrote his mother and Kitty a letter; said he
was coming home--called it "a visit"; cried over the letter, but was
careful not to cry on it. He was a real cry-baby--Jim was.
"Just run to seed," he said to himself, bitterly, over and over; "just
run to seed." Then he went to sleep.
The following day he went down to the railroad. That was the last day.
Next day he would be "off." The train-master saw him and called him. A
special was just going out. The Directors were going over the road in
the officers' car. Dick Rail was the engineer, and his fireman had been
taken sick. Jim must take the place. Jim had a mind not to do it. He
hated Dick. He thought of how he had pursued him. But he heard a voice
behind him and turned. Carry was standing down the platform, talking
with some elderly gentlemen. She had on a travelling cap and ulster.
She saw him and came forward--a step:
"How do you do?" she held out her little gloved hand. She was going out
over the road with her father. Jim took off his hat and shook hands
with her. Dick Rail saw him, walked round the other side of the engine,
and tried to take off his hat like that. It was not a success; Dick
knew it.
Jim went.
"Who was that?" one of the elderly gentlemen asked Carry.
"An old friend of mine--a gentleman," she said.
"Rather run to seed--hey?" the old fellow quoted, without knowing
exactly why; for he only half recognized Jim, if he recognized him at
all.
They started.
It was a bad trip. The weather was bad, the road was bad, the engine
bad; Dick bad;--worse than all. Jim had a bad time: he was to be off
when he got home. What would his mother and Kitty do?
Once Carry came (brought by the President) and rode in the engine for a
little while. Jim helped her up and spread his coat for her to sit on,
put his overcoat under her feet; his heart was in it. Dick was sullen,
and Jim had to show her about the engine. When she got down to go back
to the car she thanked him--she "had enjoyed it greatly"--she "would
like to try it again." Jim smiled. He was almost good-looking when he
smiled.
Dick was meaner than ever after that, sneered at Jim--swore; but Jim
didn't mind it. He was thinking of some one else, and of the rain which
would prevent her coming again.
They were on the return trip, and were half-way home when the accident
happened. It was just "good dusk," and it had been raining all night
and all day, and the road was as rotten as mud. The special was behind
and was making up. She had the right of way, and she was flying. She
rounded a curve just above a small "fill," under which was a little
stream, nothing but a mere "branch." In good weather it would never
be noticed. The gay party behind were at dinner. The first thing they
knew was the sudden jerk which came from reversing the engine at full
speed, and the grind as the wheels slid along under the brakes. Then
they stopped with a bump which jerked them out of their seats, set the
lamps to swinging, and sent the things on the table crashing on the
floor. No one was hurt, only shaken, and they crowded out of the car to
learn the cause. They found it. The engine was half buried in wet earth
on the other side of the little washout, with the tender jammed up into
the cab. The whole was wrapped in a dense cloud of escaping steam. The
roar was terrific. The big engineer, bare-headed and covered with mud,
and with his face deadly white, was trying to get down to the engine.
Some one was in there.
They got him out after a while (but it took some time), and laid him on
the ground, while a mattress was got. It was Jim.
Carry had been weeping and praying. She sat down and took his head
in her lap, and with her lace handkerchief wiped his blackened and
bleeding face, and smoothed his wet hair.
* * * * *
The newspaper accounts, which are always reflections of what
public sentiment is, or should be, spoke of it--some, as "a
providential"--others, as "a miraculous"--and yet others as "a
fortunate" escape on the part of the President and the Directors of
the road, according to the tendencies, religious or otherwise, of their
paragraphists.
They mentioned casually that "only one person was hurt--an employee,
name not ascertained." And one or two had some gush about the devotion
of the beautiful young lady, the daughter of one of the directors of
the road, who happened to be on the train, and who, "like a ministering
angel, held the head of the wounded man in her lap after he was taken
from the wreck." A good deal was made of this picture, which was
extensively copied.
Dick Rail's account, after he had come back from carrying the broken
body down to the old Upton place in the country, and helping to lay it
away in the old enclosure under the big trees on the hill, was this:
"By----!" he said, when he stood in the yard, with a solemn-faced
group around him, "we were late, and I was just shaking 'em up. I had
been meaner'n hell to Jim all the trip (I didn't know him, and you all
didn't neither), and I was workin' him for all he was worth: I didn't
give him a minute. The sweat was rolling off him, and I was damnin'
him with every shovelful. We was runnin' under orders to make up,
and we was just rounding the curve this side of Ridge Hill, when Jim
hollered. He saw it as he raised up with the shovel in his hand to wipe
the sweat off his face, and he hollered to me, 'My God! Look, Dick!
Jump!'
"I looked and Hell was right there. He caught the lever and reversed,
and put on the air and sand before I saw it, and then grabbed me,
and flung me clean out of the cab: 'Jump!' he says, as he give me a
swing. I jumped, expectin' of course he was comin' too; and as I lit,
I saw him turn and catch the lever. The old engine was jumpin' nigh
off the track. But she was too near. In she went, and the tender right
on her. You may talk about his eyes bein' bad; but by----! when he
gave me that swing, they looked to me like coals of fire. When we got
him out 'twarn't Jim! He warn't nothin' but mud and ashes. He warn't
quite dead; opened his eyes, and breathed onct or twict; but I don't
think he knew anything, he was so mashed up. We laid him out on the
grass, and that young lady took his head in her lap and cried over
him (she had come and seed him in the engine), and said she knew his
mother and sister down in the country (she used to live down there);
they was gentlefolks; that Jim was all they had. And when one of them
old director-fellows who had been swilling himself behind there come
aroun', with his kid gloves on and his hands in his great-coat pockets,
lookin' down, and sayin' something about, 'Poor fellow, couldn't he 'a
jumped? Why didn't he jump?' I let him have it; I said, 'Yes, and if
it hadn't been for him, you and I'd both been frizzin' in h--l this
minute.' And the President standin' there said to some of them, 'That
was the same young fellow who came into my office to get a place last
year when you were down, and said he had run to seed. 'But,' he says,
'Gentlemen, it was d----d good seed!'"
How good it was no one knew but two weeping women in a lonely house.
"A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE."
It was his greatest pride in life that he had been a soldier--a soldier
of the empire. He was known simply as "The Soldier," and it is probable
that there was not a man or woman, and certain that there was not a
child in the Quarter who did not know him: the tall, erect old Sergeant
with his white, carefully waxed moustache, and his face seamed with two
sabre cuts. One of these cuts, all knew, had been received the summer
day when he had stood, a mere boy, in the hollow square at Waterloo,
striving to stay the fierce flood of the "men on the white horses"; the
other, tradition said, was of even more ancient date.
Yes, they all knew him, and knew how when he was not over thirteen,
just the age of little Raoul the humpback, who was not as tall as
Pauline, he had received the cross which he always wore over his heart
sewed in the breast of his coat, from the hand of the emperor himself,
for standing on the hill at Wagram when his regiment broke, and beating
the long-roll, whilst he held the tattered colors resting in his arm,
until the men rallied and swept back the left wing of the enemy. This
the children knew, as their fathers and mothers and grandfathers and
grandmothers before them had known it, and rarely an evening passed
that some of the gamins were not to be found in the old man's kitchen,
which was also his parlor, or else on his little porch, listening with
ever-new delight to the story of his battles and of the emperor. They
all knew as well as he the thrilling part where the emperor dashed
by (the old Sergeant always rose reverently at the name, and the
little audience also stood,--one or two nervous younger ones sometimes
bobbing up a little ahead of time, but sitting down again in confusion
under the contemptuous scowls and pluckings of the rest),--where the
emperor dashed by, and reined up to ask an officer what regiment that
was that had broken, and who was that drummer that had been promoted
to ensign;--they all knew how, on the grand review afterwards, the
Sergeant, beating his drum with one hand (while the other, which had
been broken by a bullet, was in a sling), had marched with his company
before the emperor, and had been recognized by him. They knew how he
had been called up by a staff-officer (whom the children imagined to be
a fine gentleman with a rich uniform, and a great shako like Marie's
uncle, the drum-major), and how the emperor had taken from his own
breast and with his own hand had given him the cross, which he had
never from that day removed from his heart, and had said, "I would make
you a colonel if I could spare you."
This was the story they liked best, though there were many others which
they frequently begged to be told--of march and siege and battle, of
victories over or escapes from red-coated Britishers and fierce German
lancers, and of how the mere presence of the emperor was worth fifty
thousand men, and how the soldiers knew that where he was no enemy
could withstand them. It all seemed to them very long ago, and the
soldier of the empire was the only man in the Quarter who was felt to
be greater than the rich nobles and fine officers who flashed along the
great streets, or glittered through the boulevards and parks outside.
More than once when Paris was stirred up, and the Quarter seemed on the
eve of an outbreak, a mounted orderly had galloped up to his door with
a letter, requesting his presence somewhere (it was whispered at the
prefect's), and when he returned, if he refused to speak of his visit
the Quarter was satisfied; it trusted him and knew that when he advised
quiet it was for its good. He loved France first, the Quarter next. Had
he not been offered--? What had he not been offered! The Quarter knew,
or fancied it knew, which did quite as well. At least, it knew how he
always took sides with the Quarter against oppression. It knew how he
had gone up into the burning tenement and brought the children down out
of the garret just before the roof fell. It knew how he had jumped into
the river that winter when it was full of ice, to save Raoul's little
lame dog which had fallen into the water; it knew how he had reported
the gendarmes for arresting poor little Aimée just for begging a man
in the Place de L'Opéra for a franc for her old grandmother, who was
blind, and how he had her released instead of being sent to----. But
what was the need of multiplying instances! He was "the Sergeant," a
soldier of the empire, and there was not a dog in the Quarter which
did not feel and look proud when it could trot on the inside of the
sidewalk by him.
Thus the old Sergeant came to be regarded as the conservator of order
in the Quarter, and was worth more in the way of keeping it quiet than
all the gendarmes that ever came inside its precincts. And thus the
children all knew him.
One story that the Sergeant sometimes told, the girls liked to hear,
though the boys did not, because it had nothing about war in it, and
Minette and Clarisse used to cry so when it was told, that the Sergeant
would stop and put his arms around them and pet them until they only
sobbed on his shoulder.
It was of how he had, when a lonely old man, met down in Lorraine his
little Camille, whose eyes were as blue as the sky, and her hand as
white as the flower from which she took her name, and her cheeks as
pink as the roses in the gardens of the Tuileries. He had loved her,
and she, though forty years his junior, had married him and had come
here to live with him; but the close walls of the city had not suited
her, and she had pined and languished before his eyes like a plucked
lily, and, after she bore him Pierre, had died in his arms, and left
him lonelier than before. And the old soldier always lowered his voice
and paused a moment (Raoul said he was saying a mass), and then he
would add consolingly: "But she left a soldier, and when I am gone,
should France ever need one, Pierre will be here." The boys did not
fancy this story for the reasons given, and besides, although they
loved the Sergeant, they did not like Pierre. Pierre was not popular in
the Quarter,--except with the young girls and a few special friends.
The women said he was idle and vain like his mother, who had been, they
said, a silly lazy thing with little to boast of but blue eyes and a
white skin, of which she was too proud to endanger it by work, and that
she had married the Sergeant for his pension, and would have ruined him
if she had lived, and that Pierre was just like her.
The children knew nothing of the resemblance. They disliked Pierre
because he was cross and disagreeable to them, and however their
older sisters might admire his curling brown hair, his dark eyes, and
delicate features, which he had likewise inherited from his mother,
they did not like him; for he always scolded when he came home and
found them there; and he had several times ordered the whole lot out of
the house; and once he had slapped little Raoul, for which Jean Maison
had beaten him. Of late, too, when it drew near the hour for him to
come home, the old Sergeant had two or three times left out a part of
his story, and had told them to run away and come back in the morning,
as Pierre liked to be quiet when he came from his work--which Raoul
said was gambling.
Thus it was that Pierre was not popular in the Quarter.
He was nineteen years old when war was declared.
They said Prussia was trying to rob France,--to steal Alsace and
Lorraine. All Paris was in an uproar. The Quarter, always ripe for any
excitement, shared in and enjoyed the general commotion. It struck off
from work. It was like the commune; at least, so people said. Pierre
was the loudest declaimer in the district. He got work in the armory.
Recruiting officers went in and out of the saloons and cafés, drinking
with the men, talking to the women, and stirring up as much fervor
as possible. It needed little to stir it. The Quarter was seething.
Troops were being mustered in, and the streets and parks were filled
with the tramp of regiments; and the roll of the drums, the call of the
bugles, and the cheers of the crowds as they marched by floated into
the Quarter. Brass bands were so common that although in the winter a
couple of strolling musicians had been sufficient to lose temporarily
every child in the Quarter, it now required a full band and a grenadier
regiment, to boot, to draw a tolerable representation.
Of all the residents of the Quarter, none took a deeper interest than
the soldier of the empire. He became at once an object of more than
usual attention. He had married in Lorraine, and could, of course,
tell just how long it would take to whip the Prussians. He thought a
single battle would decide it. It would if the emperor were there.
His little court was always full of inquirers, and the stories of the
emperor were told to audiences now of grandfathers and grandmothers.
Once or twice the gendarmes had sauntered down, thinking, from seeing
the crowd, that a fight was going on. They had stayed to hear of the
emperor. A hint was dropped by the soldier of the empire that perhaps
France would conquer Prussia, and then go on across to Moscow to settle
an old score, and that night it was circulated through the Quarter that
the invasion of Russia would follow the capture of Berlin. The emperor
became more popular than he had been since the _coup d'état_. Half the
Quarter offered its services.
The troops were being drilled night and day, and morning after morning
the soldier of the empire locked his door, buttoned his coat tightly
around him, and with a stately military air marched over to the park to
see the drill, where he remained until it was time for Pierre to have
his supper.
The old Sergeant's acquaintance extended far beyond the Quarter.
Indeed, his name had been mentioned in the papers more than once,
and his presence was noted at the drill by those high in authority;
so that he was often to be seen surrounded by a group listening to
his accounts of the emperor, or showing what the _manuel_ had been
in his time. His air, always soldierly, was now imposing, and many a
visitor of distinction inquiring who he might be, and learning that he
was a soldier of the empire, sought an introduction to him. Sometimes
they told him that they could hardly believe him so old, could hardly
believe him much older than some of those in the ranks, and although
at first he used to declare he was like a rusty flint-lock, too old
and useless for service, their flattery soothed his vanity, and after
a while, instead of shaking his head and replying as he did at first
that France had no use for old men, he would smile doubtfully and say
that when they let Pierre go, maybe he would go too, "just to show the
children how they fought then."
The summer came. The war began in earnest. The troops were sent to
the front, the crowds shouting, "On to Berlin." Others were mustered
in and sent after them as fast as they were equipped. News of battle
after battle came; at first, of victory (so the papers said), full and
satisfying, then meagre and uncertain, and at last so scanty that only
the wise ones knew there had been a defeat. The Quarter was in a fever
of patriotism. Jean Maison and nearly all the young men had enlisted
and gone, leaving their sweet-hearts by turns waving their kerchiefs
and wiping their eyes with them. Pierre, however, still remained
behind. He said he was working for the Government. Raoul said he was
not working at all; that he was skulking.
Suddenly the levy came. Pierre was conscripted.
That night the Sergeant enlisted in the same company. Before the week
was out, their regiment was equipped and dispatched to the front, for
the news came that the army was making no advance, and it was said that
France needed more men. Some shook their heads and said that was not
what she needed, that what she needed was better officers. A suggestion
of this by some of the recruits in the old Sergeant's presence drew
from him the rebuke that in his day "such a speech would have called
out a corporal and a file of grenadiers."
The day they were mustered in, the captain of the company sent for him
and bade him have the first sergeant's chevrons sewed on his sleeve.
The order had come from the colonel, some even said from the marshal.
In the Quarter it was said that it came from the emperor. The Sergeant
suggested that Pierre was the man for the place; but the captain simply
repeated the order. The Quarter approved the selection, and several
fights occurred among the children who had gotten up a company as to
who should be the sergeant. It was deemed more honorable than to be the
captain.
The day the regiment left Paris, the Sergeant was ordered to report
several reliable men for special duty; he detailed Pierre among the
number. Pierre was sick, so sick that when the company started he would
have been left behind but for his father. The old soldier was too proud
of his son to allow him to miss the opportunity of fighting for France.
Pierre was the handsomest man in the regiment.
The new levies on arrival in the field went into camp, in and near
some villages and were drilled,--quite needlessly, Pierre and some of
the others declared. They were not accustomed to restraint, and they
could not see why they should be worked to death when they were lying
in camp doing nothing. But the soldier of the empire was a strict
drill-master, and the company was shortly the best-drilled one in the
regiment.
Yet the army lay still: they were not marching on to Berlin. The sole
principle of the campaign seemed to be the massing together of as many
troops as possible. What they were to do no one appeared very clearly
to know. What they were doing all knew: they were doing nothing. The
men, at first burning for battle, became cold or lukewarm with waiting;
dissatisfaction crept in, and then murmurs: "Why did they not fight?"
The soldier of the empire himself was sorely puzzled. The art of war
had clearly changed since his day. The emperor would have picked the
best third of these troops and have been at the gates of the Prussian
capital in less time than they had spent camped with the enemy right
before them. Still, it was not for a soldier to question, and he
reported for a week's extra guard duty a man who ventured to complain
in his presence that the marshal knew as little as the men. Extra guard
duty did no good. The army was losing heart.
Thus it was for several weeks. But at last, one evening, it was
apparent that some change was at hand: the army stirred and shook
itself as a great animal moves and stretches, not knowing if it will
awake or drop off to sleep again.
During the night it became wide awake. It was high time. The Prussians
were almost on them. They had them in a trap. They held the higher
grounds and hemmed the French in. All night long the tents were
being struck, and the army was in commotion. No one knew just why it
was. Some said they were about to be attacked; some said they were
surrounded. Uncertainty gave place to excitement. At length they
marched.
When day began to break, the army had been tumbled into line of battle,
and the regiment in which the old Sergeant and Pierre were was drawn
up on the edge of a gentleman's park outside of the villages. The line
extended beyond them farther than they could see, and large bodies of
troops were massed behind them, and were marching and countermarching
in clouds of dust. The rumor went along the ranks that they were in
the advanced line, and that the Germans were just the other side of
the little plateau, which they could dimly see in the gray light of
the dawn. The men, having been marching in the dark, were tired, and
most of them lay down, when they were halted, to rest. Some went to
sleep; others, like Pierre, set to work and with their bayonets dug
little trenches and threw up a slight earthwork before them, behind
which they could lie; for the skirmishers had been thrown out, looking
vague and ghostly as they trotted forward in the dim twilight, and they
supposed that the battle would be fought right there. By the time,
however, that the trenches were dug, the line was advanced, and the
regiment was moved forward some distance, and was halted just under
a knoll along which ran a road. The Sergeant was the youngest man in
the company; the sound of battle had brought back all his fire. To him
numbers were nothing. He thought it now but a matter of a few hours,
and France would be at the gates of Berlin. He saw once more the field
of glory and heard again the shout of victory; Lorraine would be saved;
he beheld the tricolor floating over the capital of the enemies of
France. Perhaps, it would be planted there by Pierre. And he saw in his
imagination Pierre climbing at a stride from a private to a captain,
a colonel, a--! who could tell?--had not the _baton_ been won in a
campaign? As to dreaming that a battle could bring any other result
than victory!--It was impossible!
"Where are you going?" shouted derisively the men of a regiment at
rest, to the Sergeant's command as they marched past.
"To Berlin," replied the Sergeant.
The reply evoked cheers, and that regiment that day stood its ground
until a fourth of its men fell. The old soldier's enthusiasm infected
the new recruits, who were pale and nervous under the strain of
waiting. His eye rested on Pierre, who was standing down near the other
end of the company, and the father's face beamed as he thought he saw
there resolution and impatience for the fight. Ha! France should ring
with his name; the Quarter should go wild with delight.
Just then the skirmishers ahead began to fire, and in a few moments it
was answered by a sullen note from the villages beyond the plain, and
the battle had begun. The dropping fire of the skirmish line increased
and merged into a rattle, and suddenly the thunder broke from a hill to
their right, and ran along the crest until the earth trembled under
their feet. Bullets began to whistle over their heads and clip the
leaves of the trees beyond them, and the long, pulsating scream of
shells flying over them and exploding in the park behind them made the
faces of the men look gray in the morning twilight. Waiting was worse
than fighting. It told on the young men.
In a little while a staff-officer galloped up to the colonel, who was
sitting on his horse in the road, quietly smoking a cigar, and a moment
later the whole line was in motion. They were wheeled to the right,
and marched under shelter of the knoll in the direction of the firing.
As they passed the turn of the road, they caught a glimpse of the hill
ahead where the artillery, enveloped in smoke, was thundering from an
ever-thickening cloud. A battery of eight guns galloped past them, and
turning the curve disappeared in a cloud of dust. To the new recruits
it seemed as if the whole battle was being fought right there. They
could see nothing but their own line, and only a part of that; smoke
and dust hid everything else; but the hill was plainly an important
point, for they were being pushed forward, and the firing on the rise
ahead of them was terrific. They were still partly protected by the
ridge, but shells were screaming over them, and the earth was rocking
under their feet. More batteries came thundering by,--the men clinging
to the pieces and the drivers lashing their horses furiously,--and
disappearing into the smoke on the hill, unlimbered and swelled the
deafening roar; they passed men lying on the ground dead or wounded, or
were passed by others helping wounded comrades to the rear. Several men
in the company fell, some crying out or groaning with pain, and two or
three killed outright.
The men were dodging and twisting, with heads bent forward a little as
if in a pelting rain. Only the old Sergeant and some of the younger
ones were perfectly erect.
"Why don't you dodge the balls?" asked a recruit of the Sergeant.
"A soldier of the empire never dodges," was the proud reply.
Some change occurred on the hills; they could not see what. Just then
the order came down the line to advance at a double-quick and support
the batteries. They moved forward at a run and passed beyond the
shelter of the ridge. Instantly they were in the line of fire from the
Prussian batteries, whose white puffs of smoke were visible across the
plain, and bullets and shell tore wide spaces in their ranks. They
could not see the infantrymen, who were in pits, but the bullets hissed
and whistled by them. The men on both sides of Pierre were killed and
fell forward on their faces with a thud, one of them still clutching
his musket. Pierre would have stopped, but there was no time, the
men in the rear pressed him on. As they appeared in the smoke of the
nearest battery, the artillerymen broke into cheers at the welcome
sight, and all down the line it was taken up. All around were dead and
dying men increasing in numbers momentarily. No one had time to notice
them. Some of them had blankets thrown over them. The infantry, who
were a little to the side of the batteries, were ordered to lie down;
most of them had already done so; even then they were barely protected;
shot and shell ploughed the ground around them as if it had been a
fallow field; men spoke to their comrades, and before receiving a reply
were shot dead at their sides. The wounded were more ghastly than the
dead; their faces growing suddenly deadly white from the shock as they
were struck.
The gunners lay in piles around their guns, and still the survivors
worked furiously in the dense heat and smoke, the sweat pouring down
their blackened faces. The fire was terrific.
Suddenly an officer galloped up, and spoke to the lieutenant of the
nearest battery.
"Where is the colonel?"
"Killed."
"Where is your captain?"
"Dead, there under the gun."
"Are you in command?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, hold this hill."
"How long?"
"Forever." And he galloped off.
His voice was heard clear and ringing in a sudden lull, and the old
Sergeant, clutching his musket, shouted:
"We will, forever."
There was a momentary lull.
Suddenly the cry was:
"Here they are."
In an instant a dark line of men appeared coming up the slope. The guns
were trained down on them, but shot over their heads; they were double
shotted and trained lower, and belched forth canister. They fell in
swathes, yet still they came on at a run, hurrahing, until they were
almost up among the guns, and the gunners were leaving their pieces.
The old Sergeant's voice speaking to his men was as steady as if on
parade, and kept them down, and when the command was given to fire
kneeling, they rose as one man, and poured a volley into the Germans'
faces which sent them reeling back down the hill, leaving a broken line
of dead and struggling men on the deadly crest. Just then a brigade
officer came along. They heard him say, "That repulse may stop them."
Then he gave some order in an undertone to the lieutenant in command of
the batteries, and passed on. A moment later the fire from the Prussian
batteries was heavier than before; the guns were being knocked to
pieces. A piece of shell struck the Sergeant on the cheek, tearing away
the flesh badly. He tore the sleeve from his shirt and tied it around
his head with perfect unconcern. The fire of the Germans was still
growing heavier; the smoke was too dense to see a great deal, but they
were concentrating or were coming closer. The lieutenant came back for
a moment and spoke to the captain of the company, who, looking along
the line, called the Sergeant, and ordered him to go back down the hill
to where the road turned behind it, and tell General ---- to send them
a support instantly, as the batteries were knocked to pieces, and they
could not hold the hill much longer. The announcement was astonishing
to the old soldier; it had never occurred to him that as long as a
man remained they could not hold the hill, and he was half-way down
the slope before he took it in. He had brought his gun with him, and
he clutched it convulsively as if he could withstand alone the whole
Prussian army. "He might have taken a younger man to do his trotting,"
he muttered to himself as he stalked along, not knowing that his wound
had occasioned his selection. "Pierre--" but, no, Pierre must stay
where he would have the opportunity to distinguish himself.
It was no holiday promenade that the old soldier was taking; for his
path lay right across the track swept by the German batteries, and
the whole distance was strewn with dead, killed as they had advanced
in the morning. But the old Sergeant got safely across. He found the
General with one or two members of his staff sitting on horseback in
the road near the park gate, receiving and answering dispatches. He
delivered his message.
"Go back and tell him he _must_ hold it," was the reply. "Upon it
depends the fate of the day; perhaps of France. Or wait, you are
wounded; I will send some one else; you go to the rear." And he gave
the order to one of his staff, who saluted and dashed off on his horse.
"Hold it for France," he called after him.
The words were heard perfectly clear even above the din of battle which
was steadily increasing all along the line, and they stirred the old
soldier like a trumpet. No rear for him! He turned and pushed back up
the hill at a run. The road had somewhat changed since he left, but
he marked it not; shot and shell were ploughing across his path more
thickly, but he did not heed them; in his ears rang the words--"For
France." They came like an echo from the past; it was the same cry he
had heard at Waterloo, when the soldiers of France that summer day
had died for France and the emperor, with a cheer on their lips. "For
France": the words were consecrated; the emperor himself had used them.
He had heard him, and would have died then; should he not die now for
her! Was it not glorious to die for France, and have men say that he
had fought for her when a babe, and had died for her when an old man!
With these thoughts was mingled the thought of Pierre--Pierre also
would die for France! They would save her or die together; and he
pressed his hand with a proud caress over the cross on his breast. It
was the emblem of glory.
He was almost back with his men now; he knew it by the roar, but the
smoke hid everything. Just then it shifted a little. As it did so, he
saw a man steal out of the dim line and start towards him at a run. He
had on the uniform of his regiment. His cap was pulled over his eyes,
and he saw him deliberately fling away his gun. He was skulking. All
the blood boiled up in the old soldier's veins. Desert!--not fight for
France! Why did not Pierre shoot him! Just then the coward passed close
to him, and the old man seized him with a grip of iron. The deserter,
surprised, turned his face; it was pallid with terror and shame; but no
more so than his captor's. It was Pierre.
"Pierre!" he gasped. "Good God! where are you going?"
"I am sick," faltered the other.
"Come back," said the father sternly.
"I cannot," was the terrified answer.
"It is for France, Pierre," pleaded the old soldier.
"Oh! I cannot," moaned the young man, pulling away. There was a
pause--the old man still holding on hesitatingly, then,--"Dastard!" he
hissed, flinging his son from him with indescribable scorn.
Pierre, free once more, was slinking off with averted face, when a new
idea seized his father, and his face grew grim as stone. Cocking his
musket, he flung it up, took careful and deliberate aim at his son's
retreating figure, and brought his finger slowly down upon the trigger.
But, before he could fire, a shell exploded directly in the line of his
aim, and when the smoke blew off, Pierre had disappeared. The Sergeant
lowered his piece, gazed curiously down the hill, and then hurried to
the spot where the shell had burst. A mangled form marked the place.
The coward had in the very act of flight met the death he dreaded.
Pierre lay dead on his face, shot in the back. The back of his head was
shattered by a fragment of shell. The countenance of the living man was
more pallid than that of the dead. No word escaped him, except that
refrain, "For France, for France," which he repeated mechanically.
Although this had occupied but a few minutes, momentous changes had
taken place on the ridge above. The sound of the battle had somewhat
altered, and with the roar of artillery were mingled now the continuous
rattle of the musketry and the shouts and cheers of the contending
troops. The fierce onslaught of the Prussians had broken the line
somewhere beyond the batteries, and the French were being borne back.
Almost immediately the slope was filled with retreating men hurrying
back in the demoralization of panic. All order was lost. It was a
rout. The soldiers of his own regiment began to rush by the spot where
the old Sergeant stood above his son's body. Recognizing him, some of
his comrades seized his arm and attempted to hurry him along; but
with a fierce exclamation the old soldier shook them off, and raising
his voice so that he was heard even above the tumult of the rout, he
shouted, "Are ye all cowards? Rally for France--For France----"
They tried to bear him along; the officers, they said, were dead; the
Prussians had captured the guns, and had broken the whole line. But it
was no use; still he shouted that rallying cry, For France, for France,
"Vive la France; Vive l'Empereur"; and steadied by the war-cry, and
accustomed to obey an officer, the men around him fell instinctively
into something like order, and for an instant the rout was arrested.
The fight was renewed over Pierre's dead body. As they had, however,
truly said, the Prussians were too strong for them. They had carried
the line and were now pouring down the hill by thousands in the ardor
of hot pursuit, the line on either side of the hill was swept away, and
whilst the gallant little band about the old soldier still stood and
fought desperately, they were soon surrounded. There was no thought
of quarter; none was asked, none was given. Cries, curses, cheers,
shots, blows, were mingled together, and clear above all rang the
old soldier's war-cry, For France, for France, "Vive la France, Vive
l'Empereur." It was the refrain from an older and bloodier field. He
thought he was at Waterloo.
Mad with excitement, the men took up the cry, and fought like tigers;
but the issue could not be doubtful.
Man after man fell, shot or clubbed down, with the cry "For France"
on his lips, and his comrades, standing astride his body, fought with
bayonets and clubbed muskets till they too fell in turn. Almost the
last one was the old Sergeant. Wounded to death, and bleeding from
numberless gashes, he still fought, shouting his battle-cry, "For
France," till his musket was hurled spinning from his shattered hand,
and staggering senseless back, a dozen bayonets were driven into his
breast, crushing out forever the brave spirit of the soldier of the
empire.
It was best, for France was lost.
A few hours later the Quarter was in mourning over the terrible defeat.
* * * * *
That night a group of Prussian officers going over the field with
lanterns looking after their wounded, stopped near a spot remarkable
even on that bloody slope for the heaps of dead of both armies
literally piled upon each other.
"It was just here," said one, "that they got reinforcements and made
that splendid rally."
A second, looking at the body of an old French sergeant lying amidst
heaps of slain, with his face to the sky, said simply as he saw his
scars:
"There died a brave soldier."
Another, older than the first, bending closer to count the bayonet
wounds, caught the gleam of something in the light of the lantern, and
stooping to examine a broken cross of the Legion on the dead man's
breast, said reverently:
"He was a _soldier of the empire_."
Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston.
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston.
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