A Study in the Present Tense
A breezy day and a sunny landscape.
An open country to right and left and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of
this wood, facing the open but not venturing into it, long lines of troops,
halted. The wood is alive with them, and full of confused noises--the
occasional rattle of wheels as a battery of artillery goes into position to
cover the advance; the hum and murmur of the soldiers talking; a sound of
innumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew the interspaces among the trees;
hoarse commands of officers. Detached groups of horsemen are well in front--not
altogether exposed--many of them intently regarding the crest of a hill a mile
away in the direction of the interrupted advance. For this powerful army,
moving in battle order through a forest, has met with a formidable obstacle--the
open country. The crest of that gentle hill a mile away has a sinister look; it
says, Beware! Along it runs a stone wall extending to left and right a great
distance. Behind the wall is a hedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of
trees in rather straggling order. Among the trees--what? It is necessary to
know.
Yesterday, and for many days and
nights previously, we were fighting somewhere; always there was cannonading,
with occasional keen rattlings of musketry, mingled with cheers, our own or the
enemy's, we seldom knew, attesting some temporary advantage. This morning at
daybreak the enemy was gone. We have moved forward across his earthworks,
across which we have so often vainly attempted to move before, through the
debris of his abandoned camps, among the graves of his fallen, into the woods
beyond.
How curiously we had regarded
everything! how odd it all had seemed! Nothing had appeared quite familiar; the
most commonplace objects--an old saddle, a splintered wheel, a forgotten
canteen--everything had related something of the mysterious personality of
those strange men who had been killing us. The soldier never becomes wholly
familiar with the conception of his foes as men like himself; he cannot divest
himself of the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently
conditioned, in an environment not altogether of the earth. The smallest
vestiges of them rivet his attention and engage his interest. He thinks of them
as inaccessible; and, catching an unexpected glimpse of them, they appear
farther away, and therefore larger, than they really are-- like objects in a
fog. He is somewhat in awe of them.
From the edge of the wood leading
up the acclivity are the tracks of horses and wheels--the wheels of cannon. The
yellow grass is beaten down by the feet of infantry. Clearly they have passed
this way in thousands; they have not withdrawn by the country roads. This is
significant--it is the difference between retiring and retreating.
That group of horsemen is our
commander, his staff and escort. He is facing the distant crest, holding his
field-glass against his eyes with both hands, his elbows needlessly elevated.
It is a fashion; it seems to dignify the act; we are all addicted to it.
Suddenly he lowers the glass and says a few words to those about him. Two or
three aides detach themselves from the group and canter away into the woods,
along the lines in each direction. We did not hear his words, but we know them:
"Tell General X. to send forward the skirmish line." Those of us who
have been out of place resume our positions; the men resting at ease straighten
themselves and the ranks are re-formed without a command. Some of us staff
officers dismount and look at our saddle girths; those already on the ground
remount.
Galloping rapidly along in the
edge of the open ground comes a young officer on a snow-white horse. His saddle
blanket is scarlet. What a fool! No one who has ever been in action but
remembers how naturally every rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no
one but has observed how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That such
colors are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the most
astonishing of all the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem to have been
devised to increase the death-rate.
This young officer is in full
uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleam with bullion--a blue-and-gold
edition of the Poetry of War. A wave of derisive laughter runs abreast of him
all along the line. But how handsome he is!--with what careless grace he sits
his horse!
He reins up within a respectful
distance of the corps commander and salutes. The old soldier nods familiarly;
he evidently knows him. A brief colloquy between them is going on; the young
man seems to be preferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to
grant. Let us ride a little nearer. Ah! too late--it is ended. The young
officer salutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest of
the hill!
A thin line of skirmishers, the
men deployed at six paces or so apart, now pushes from the wood into the open.
The commander speaks to his bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips.
_Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la!_ The skirmishers halt in their tracks.
Meantime the young horseman has
advanced a hundred yards. He is riding at a walk, straight up the long slope,
with never a turn of the head. How glorious! Gods! what would we not give to be
in his place--with his soul! He does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs
easily at his side. The breeze catches the plume in his hat and flutters it
smartly. The sunshine rests upon his shoulder-straps, lovingly, like a visible
benediction. Straight on he rides. Ten thousand pairs of eyes are fixed upon
him with an intensity that he can hardly fail to feel; ten thousand hearts keep
quick time to the inaudible hoof-beats of his snowy steed. He is not alone--he
draws all souls after him. But we remember that we laughed! On and on, straight
for the hedge-lined wall, he rides. Not a look backward. O, if he would but
turn--if he could but see the love, the adoration, the atonement!
Not a word is spoken; the
populous depths of the forest still murmur with their unseen and unseeing
swarm, but all along the fringe is silence. The burly commander is an
equestrian statue of himself. The mounted staff officers, their field glasses
up, are motionless all. The line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at a
new kind of "attention," each man in the attitude in which he was
caught by the consciousness of what is going on. All these hardened and
impenitent man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a fact familiar
to their every-day observation; who sleep on hills trembling with the thunder
of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play at cards among
the dead faces of their dearest friends--all are watching with suspended breath
and beating hearts the outcome of an act involving the life of one man. Such is
the magnetism of courage and devotion.
If now you should turn your head
you would see a simultaneous movement among the spectators--a start, as if they
had received an electric shock--and looking forward again to the now distant
horseman you would see that he has in that instant altered his direction and is
riding at an angle to his former course. The spectators suppose the sudden deflection
to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; but take this field-glass and you will
observe that he is riding toward a break in the wall and hedge. He means, if
not killed, to ride through and overlook the country beyond.
You are not to forget the nature
of this man's act; it is not permitted to you to think of it as an instance of
bravado, nor, on the other hand, a needless sacrifice of self. If the enemy has
not retreated he is in force on that ridge. The investigator will encounter
nothing less than a line-of-battle; there is no need of pickets, videttes,
skirmishers, to give warning of our approach; our attacking lines will be
visible, conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground
the moment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheet of rifle
bullets in which nothing can live. In short, if the enemy is there, it would be
madness to attack him in front; he must be manoeuvred out by the immemorial
plan of threatening his line of communication, as necessary to his existence as
to the diver at the bottom of the sea his air tube. But how ascertain if the
enemy is there? There is but one way,--somebody must go and see. The natural
and customary thing to do is to send forward a line of skirmishers. But in this
case they will answer in the affirmative with all their lives; the enemy,
crouching in double ranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will
wait until it is possible to count each assailant's teeth. At the first volley
a half of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it can
accomplish the predestined retreat. What a price to pay for gratified
curiosity! At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchase knowledge!
"Let me pay all," says this gallant man--this military Christ!
There is no hope except the hope
against hope that the crest is clear. True, he might prefer capture to death.
So long as he advances, the line will not fire--why should it? He can safely
ride into the hostile ranks and become a prisoner of war. But this would defeat
his object. It would not answer our question; it is necessary either that he
return unharmed or be shot to death before our eyes. Only so shall we know how
to act. If captured--why, that might have been done by a half-dozen stragglers.
Now begins an extraordinary
contest of intellect between a man and an army. Our horseman, now within a
quarter of a mile of the crest, suddenly wheels to the left and gallops in a
direction parallel to it. He has caught sight of his antagonist; he knows all.
Some slight advantage of ground has enabled him to overlook a part of the line.
If he were here he could tell us in words. But that is now hopeless; he must
make the best use of the few minutes of life remaining to him, by compelling
the enemy himself to tell us as much and as plainly as possible--which,
naturally, that discreet power is reluctant to do. Not a rifleman in those
crouching ranks, not a cannoneer at those masked and shotted guns, but knows
the needs of the situation, the imperative duty of forbearance. Besides, there
has been time enough to forbid them all to fire. True, a single rifle-shot
might drop him and be no great disclosure. But firing is infectious--and see
how rapidly he moves, with never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to
take a new direction, never directly backward toward us, never directly forward
toward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass; it seems
occurring within pistol-shot; we see all but the enemy, whose presence, whose
thoughts, whose motives we infer. To the unaided eye there is nothing but a
black figure on a white horse, tracing slow zigzags against the slope of a
distant hill--so slowly they seem almost to creep.
Now--the glass again--he has
tired of his failure, or sees his error, or has gone mad; he is dashing
directly forward at the wall, as if to take it at a leap, hedge and all! One
moment only and he wheels right about and is speeding like the wind straight
down the slope--toward his friends, toward his death! Instantly the wall is
topped with a fierce roll of smoke for a distance of hundreds of yards to right
and left. This is as instantly dissipated by the wind, and before the rattle of
the rifles reaches us he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has but pulled
his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous cheer bursts
from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of our feelings. And the
horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away. Away, indeed--they are making
directly to our left, parallel to the now steadily blazing and smoking wall.
The rattle of the musketry is continuous, and every bullet's target is that
courageous heart.
Suddenly a great bank of white
smoke pushes upward from behind the wall. Another and another--a dozen roll up
before the thunder of the explosions and the humming of the missiles reach our
ears and the missiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into our
covert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporary distraction,
a passing thought of self.
The dust drifts away. Incredible!--that
enchanted horse and rider have passed a ravine and are climbing another slope
to unveil another conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed
host. Another moment and that crest too is in eruption. The horse rears and
strikes the air with its forefeet. They are down at last. But look again--the
man has detached himself from the dead animal. He stands erect, motionless,
holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head. His face is toward
us. Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face and moves it outward, the
blade of the sabre describing a downward curve. It is a sign to us, to the
world, to posterity. It is a hero's salute to death and history.
Again the spell is broken; our
men attempt to cheer; they are choking with emotion; they utter hoarse,
discordant cries; they clutch their weapons and press tumultuously forward into
the open. The skirmishers, without orders, against orders, are going forward at
a keen run, like hounds unleashed. Our cannon speak and the enemy's now open in
full chorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest, seeming
now so near, erects its towers of cloud and the great shot pitch roaring down
among our moving masses. Flag after flag of ours emerges from the wood, line after
line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on its burnished arms. The rear
battalions alone are in obedience; they preserve their proper distance from the
insurgent front.
The commander has not moved. He
now removes his field-glass from his eyes and glances to the right and left. He
sees the human current flowing on either side of him and his huddled escort,
like tide waves parted by a rock. Not a sign of feeling in his face; he is
thinking. Again he directs his eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malign
and awful crest. He addresses a calm word to his bugler. _Tra-la-la!
Tra-la-la!_ The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it. It is
repeated by all the bugles of all the sub-ordinate commanders; the sharp
metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance and penetrate the
sound of the cannon. To halt is to withdraw. The colors move slowly back; the
lines face about and sullenly follow, bearing their wounded; the skirmishers
return, gathering up the dead.
Ah, those many, many needless
dead! That great soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder, so conspicuous
against the sere hillside--could it not have been spared the bitter
consciousness of a vain devotion? Would one exception have marred too much the
pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan?
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