The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War
casting glances of hatred and contempt at the tattered man, here spoke
in a hard voice. “Good-by,” he said.
The tattered man looked at him in gaping amazement. “Why—why, pardner,
where yeh goin’?” he asked unsteadily. The youth looking at him, could
see that he, too, like that other one, was beginning to act dumb and
animal-like. His thoughts seemed to be floundering about in his head.
“Now—now—look—a—here, you Tom Jamison—now—I won’t have this—this here
won’t do. Where—where yeh goin’?”
The youth pointed vaguely. “Over there,” he replied.
“Well, now look—a—here—now,” said the tattered man, rambling on in
idiot fashion. His head was hanging forward and his words were slurred.
“This thing won’t do, now, Tom Jamison. It won’t do. I know yeh, yeh
pig-headed devil. Yeh wanta go trompin’ off with a bad hurt. It ain’t
right—now—Tom Jamison—it ain’t. Yeh wanta leave me take keer of yeh,
Tom Jamison. It ain’t—right—it ain’t—fer yeh t’ go—trompin’ off—with a
bad hurt—it ain’t—ain’t—ain’t right—it ain’t.”
In reply the youth climbed a fence and started away. He could hear the
tattered man bleating plaintively.
Once he faced about angrily. “What?”
“Look—a—here, now, Tom Jamison—now—it ain’t—”
The youth went on. Turning at a distance he saw the tattered man
wandering about helplessly in the field.
He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed he envied those
men whose bodies lay strewn over the grass of the fields and on the
fallen leaves of the forest.
The simple questions of the tattered man had been knife thrusts to him.
They asserted a society that probes pitilessly at secrets until all is
apparent. His late companion’s chance persistency made him feel that he
could not keep his crime concealed in his bosom. It was sure to be
brought plain by one of those arrows which cloud the air and are
constantly pricking, discovering, proclaiming those things which are
willed to be forever hidden. He admitted that he could not defend
himself against this agency. It was not within the power of vigilance.
Chapter XI.
He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder.
Great blown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him.
The noise, too, was approaching. The woods filtered men and the fields
became dotted.
As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying
mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued
exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along.
The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged. The white-topped
wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions like fat sheep.
The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They were all
retreating. Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all. He seated
himself and watched the terror-stricken wagons. They fled like soft,
ungainly animals. All the roarers and lashers served to help him to
magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to
prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in
truth a symmetrical act. There was an amount of pleasure to him in
watching the wild march of this vindication.
Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared
in the road. It came swiftly on. Avoiding the obstructions gave it the
sinuous movement of a serpent. The men at the head butted mules with
their musket stocks. They prodded teamsters indifferent to all howls.
The men forced their way through parts of the dense mass by strength.
The blunt head of the column pushed. The raving teamsters swore many
strange oaths.
The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them.
The men were going forward to the heart of the din. They were to
confront the eager rush of the enemy. They felt the pride of their
onward movement when the remainder of the army seemed trying to dribble
down this road. They tumbled teams about with a fine feeling that it
was no matter so long as their column got to the front in time. This
importance made their faces grave and stern. And the backs of the
officers were very rigid.
As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to
him. He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings. The
separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of
flame and banners of sunlight. He could never be like them. He could
have wept in his longings.
He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the
indefinite cause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final
blame. It—whatever it was—was responsible for him, he said. There lay
the fault.
The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young
man to be something much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he thought,
could find excuses in that long seething lane. They could retire with
perfect self-respect and make excuses to the stars.
He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste
to force their way to grim chances of death. As he watched his envy
grew until he thought that he wished to change lives with one of them.
He would have liked to have used a tremendous force, he said, throw off
himself and become a better. Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in
himself, came to him—a blue desperate figure leading lurid charges with
one knee forward and a broken blade high—a blue, determined figure
standing before a crimson and steel assault, getting calmly killed on a
high place before the eyes of all. He thought of the magnificent pathos
of his dead body.
These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his
ears, he heard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid
successful charge. The music of the trampling feet, the sharp voices,
the clanking arms of the column near him made him soar on the red wings
of war. For a few moments he was sublime.
He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a
picture of himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front
at the proper moment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of
calamity.
Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated,
balancing awkwardly on one foot.
He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully
to his plan. Well, rifles could be had for the picking. They were
extraordinarily profuse.
Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his regiment.
Well, he could fight with any regiment.
He started forward slowly. He stepped as if he expected to tread upon
some explosive thing. Doubts and he were struggling.
He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him
returning thus, the marks of his flight upon him. There was a reply
that the intent fighters did not care for what happened rearward saving
that no hostile bayonets appeared there. In the battle-blur his face
would, in a way, be hidden, like the face of a cowled man.
But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when the
strife lulled for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation. In
imagination he felt the scrutiny of his companions as he painfully
labored through some lies.
Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections. The
debates drained him of his fire.
He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon studying the
affair carefully, he could not but admit that the objections were very
formidable.
Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out. In their presence
he could not persist in flying high with the wings of war; they
rendered it almost impossible for him to see himself in a heroic light.
He tumbled headlong.
He discovered that he had a scorching thirst. His face was so dry and
grimy that he thought he could feel his skin crackle. Each bone of his
body had an ache in it, and seemingly threatened to break with each
movement. His feet were like two sores. Also, his body was calling for
food. It was more powerful than a direct hunger. There was a dull,
weight-like feeling in his stomach, and, when he tried to walk, his
head swayed and he tottered. He could not see with distinctness. Small
patches of green mist floated before his vision.
While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not been aware of
ailments. Now they beset him and made clamor. As he was at last
compelled to pay attention to them, his capacity for self-hate was
multiplied. In despair, he declared that he was not like those others.
He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero.
He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He
groaned from his heart and went staggering off.
A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the
battle. He had a great desire to see, and to get news. He wished to
know who was winning.
He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering, he had never
lost his greed for a victory, yet, he said, in a half-apologetic manner
to his conscience, he could not but know that a defeat for the army
this time might mean many favorable things for him. The blows of the
enemy would splinter regiments into fragments. Thus, many men of
courage, he considered, would be obliged to desert the colors and
scurry like chickens. He would appear as one of them. They would be
sullen brothers in distress, and he could then easily believe he had
not run any farther or faster than they. And if he himself could
believe in his virtuous perfection, he conceived that there would be
small trouble in convincing all others.
He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the army had
encountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood
and tradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one;
thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the
valor and confidence of unconquered legions. The shrilling voices of
the people at home would pipe dismally for a time, but various generals
were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no
compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could not tell
who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct
sympathy upon him. The people were afar and he did not conceive public
opinion to be accurate at long range. It was quite probable they would
hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazement would
perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of
his alleged failure. It would be very unfortunate, no doubt, but in
this case a general was of no consequence to the youth.
In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself. He
thought it would prove, in a manner, that he had fled early because of
his superior powers of perception. A serious prophet upon predicting a
flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate
that he was indeed a seer.
A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important
thing. Without salve, he could not, he thought, wear the sore badge of
his dishonor through life. With his heart continually assuring him that
he was despicable, he could not exist without making it, through his
actions, apparent to all men.
If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost. If the din meant
that now his army’s flags were tilted forward he was a condemned
wretch. He would be compelled to doom himself to isolation. If the men
were advancing, their indifferent feet were trampling upon his chances
for a successful life.
As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them
and tried to thrust them away. He denounced himself as a villain. He
said that he was the most unutterably selfish man in existence. His
mind pictured the soldiers who would place their defiant bodies before