The Red Badge of Courage

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Another, who was a boy in years, took his
plight with great calmness and apparent good
nature. He conversed with the men in blue,
studying their faces with his bright and keen
eyes. They spoke of battles and conditions.
There was an acute interest in all their faces dur-
ing this exchange of view points. It seemed a
great satisfaction to hear voices from where all
had been darkness and speculation.

The third captive sat with a morose counte-
nance. He preserved a stoical and cold attitude.
To all advances he made one reply without varia-
tion, "Ah, go t' hell!"

The last of the four was always silent and,
for the most part, kept his face turned in un-
molested directions. From the views the youth
received he seemed to be in a state of absolute
dejection. Shame was upon him, and with it
profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more
to be counted in the ranks of his fellows. The
youth could detect no expression that would
allow him to believe that the other was giving
a thought to his narrowed future, the pictured
dungeons, perhaps, and starvations and brutali-
ties, liable to the imagination. All to be seen
was shame for captivity and regret for the right
to antagonize.

After the men had celebrated sufficiently they
settled down behind the old rail fence, on the
opposite side to the one from which their foes
had been driven. A few shot perfunctorily at
distant marks.

There was some long grass. The youth
nestled in it and rested, making a convenient rail
support the flag. His friend, jubilant and glori-
fied, holding his treasure with vanity, came to
him there. They sat side by side and congratu-
lated each other.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE roarings that had stretched in a long line
of sound across the face of the forest began to
grow intermittent and weaker. The stentorian
speeches of the artillery continued in some dis-
tant encounter, but the crashes of the musketry
had almost ceased. The youth and his friend of
a sudden looked up, feeling a deadened form of
distress at the waning of these noises, which had
become a part of life. They could see changes
going on among the troops. There were march-
ings this way and that way. A battery wheeled
leisurely. On the crest of a small hill was the
thick gleam of many departing muskets.

The youth arose. "Well, what now, I won-
der?" he said. By his tone he seemed to be
preparing to resent some new monstrosity in
the way of dins and smashes. He shaded his
eyes with his grimy hand and gazed over the
field.

His friend also arose and stared. "I bet

226
we're goin' t' git along out of this an' back over
th' river," said he.

"Well, I swan!" said the youth.

They waited, watching. Within a little while
the regiment received orders to retrace its way.
The men got up grunting from the grass, regret-
ting the soft repose. They jerked their stiffened
legs, and stretched their arms over their heads.
One man swore as he rubbed his eyes. They all
groaned "O Lord!" They had as many objec-
tions to this change as they would have had to a
proposal for a new battle.

They trampled slowly back over the field
across which they had run in a mad scamper.

The regiment marched until it had joined its
fellows. The reformed brigade, in column, aimed
through a wood at the road. Directly they were
in a mass of dust-covered troops, and were
trudging along in a way parallel to the enemy's
lines as these had been defined by the previous
turmoil.

They passed within view of a stolid white
house, and saw in front of it groups of their com-
rades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork. A
row of guns were booming at a distant enemy.
Shells thrown in reply were raising clouds of
dust and splinters. Horsemen dashed along the
line of intrenchments.

At this point of its march the division curved
away from the field and went winding off in the
direction of the river. When the significance of
this movement had impressed itself upon the
youth he turned his head and looked over his
shoulder toward the trampled and debris-strewed
ground. He breathed a breath of new satisfac-
tion. He finally nudged his friend. "Well, it's
all over," he said to him.

His friend gazed backward. "B'Gawd, it
is," he assented. They mused.

For a time the youth was obliged to reflect
in a puzzled and uncertain way. His mind was
undergoing a subtle change. It took moments
for it to cast off its battleful ways and resume
its accustomed course of thought. Gradually his
brain emerged from the clogged clouds, and at
last he was enabled to more closely compre-
hend himself and circumstance.

He understood then that the existence of shot
and counter-shot was in the past. He had dwelt
in a land of strange, squalling upheavals and had
come forth. He had been where there was red
of blood and black of passion, and he was es-
caped. His first thoughts were given to rejoic-
ings at this fact.

Later he began to study his deeds, his fail-
ures, and his achievements. Thus, fresh from
scenes where many of his usual machines of re-
flection had been idle, from where he had pro-
ceeded sheeplike, he struggled to marshal all his
acts.

At last they marched before him clearly.
From this present view point he was enabled
to look upon them in spectator fashion and
to criticise them with some correctness, for his
new condition had already defeated certain sym-
pathies.

Regarding his procession of memory he felt
gleeful and unregretting, for in it his public deeds
were paraded in great and shining prominence.
Those performances which had been witnessed
by his fellows marched now in wide purple and
gold, having various deflections. They went
gayly with music. It was pleasure to watch these
things. He spent delightful minutes viewing the
gilded images of memory.

He saw that he was good. He recalled with
a thrill of joy the respectful comments of his fel-
lows upon his conduct.

Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from
the first engagement appeared to him and
danced. There were small shoutings in his
brain about these matters. For a moment he
blushed, and the light of his soul flickered with
shame.

A specter of reproach came to him. There
loomed the dogging memory of the tattered
soldier--he who, gored by bullets and faint for
blood, had fretted concerning an imagined wound
in another; he who had loaned his last of strength
and intellect for the tall soldier; he who, blind
with weariness and pain, had been deserted in
the field.

For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was
upon him at the thought that he might be
detected in the thing. As he stood persistently
before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp
irritation and agony.

His friend turned. "What's the matter,
Henry?" he demanded. The youth's reply was
an outburst of crimson oaths.

As he marched along the little branch-hung
roadway among his prattling companions this
vision of cruelty brooded over him. It clung
near him always and darkened his view of these
deeds in purple and gold. Whichever way his
thoughts turned they were followed by the
somber phantom of the desertion in the fields.
He looked stealthily at his companions, feeling
sure that they must discern in his face evidences
of this pursuit. But they were plodding in
ragged array, discussing with quick tongues the
accomplishments of the late battle.

"Oh, if a man should come up an' ask me, I'd
say we got a dum good lickin'."

"Lickin'--in yer eye! We ain't licked, sonny.
We're goin' down here aways, swing aroun', an'
come in behint 'em."

"Oh, hush, with your comin' in behint 'em.
I've seen all 'a that I wanta. Don't tell me about
comin' in behint--"

"Bill Smithers, he ses he'd rather been in
ten hundred battles than been in that heluva
hospital. He ses they got shootin' in th' night-
time, an' shells dropped plum among 'em in th'
hospital. He ses sech hollerin' he never see."

"Hasbrouck? He's th' best off'cer in this
here reg'ment. He's a whale."

"Didn't I tell yeh we'd come aroun' in behint
'em? Didn't I tell yeh so? We--"

"Oh, shet yeh mouth!"

For a time this pursuing recollection of the
tattered man took all elation from the youth's
veins. He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid
that it would stand before him all his life. He
took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor
did he look at them or know them, save when he
felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his
thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene
with the tattered soldier.

Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin
at a distance. And at last his eyes seemed to
open to some new ways. He found that he could
look back upon the brass and bombast of his
earlier gospels and see them truly. He was
gleeful when he discovered that he now despised
them.

With this conviction came a store of assur-
ance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but
of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he
would no more quail before his guides wher-
ever they should point. He had been to touch
the great death, and found that, after all, it was
but the great death. He was a man.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from
the place of blood and wrath his soul changed.
He came from hot plowshares to prospects of
clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares
were not. Scars faded as flowers.

It rained. The procession of weary soldiers
became a bedraggled train, despondent and
muttering, marching with churning effort in a
trough of liquid brown mud under a low,
wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw
that the world was a world for him, though many
discovered it to be made of oaths and walking
sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of
battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past.
He had been an animal blistered and sweating in
the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a
lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh
meadows, cool brooks--an existence of soft and
eternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came
through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.

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