In due time the Senator was closeted with some kind of deputy third assistant battery-horse in the offices of the War Department. The official obviously had been told off to make a supreme effort to pacify Cadogan, and he certainly was acting according to his instructions. He was almost in tears; he spread out his hands in supplication, and his voice whined and wheedled.
“Why, really, you know, Senator, we can only beg you to look at the circumstances. Two scant divisions at the top of that hill; over a thousand men killed and wounded; the line so thin that any strong attack would smash our Army to flinders. The Spaniards have probably received reinforcements under Pando; Shafter seems to be too ill to be actively in command of our troops; Lawton can’t get up with his division before tomorrow. We are actually expecting … no, I won’t say expecting … but we would not be surprised … nobody in the department would be surprised if before daybreak we were compelled to give to the country the news of a disaster which would be the worst blow the National pride has ever suffered. Don’t you see? Can’t you see our position, Senator?”
The Senator, with a pale but composed face, contemplated the official with eyes that gleamed in a way not usual with the big, self-controlled politician.
“I’ll tell you frankly, sir,” continued the other, “I’ll tell you frankly that at this moment we don’t know whether we are afoot or a-horseback. Everything is in the air. We don’t know whether we have won a glorious victory or simply got ourselves in a deuce of a fix.”
The Senator coughed. “I suppose my boy is with the two divisions at the top of that hill? He’s with Reilly.”
“Yes; Reilly’s brigade is up there.”
“And when do you suppose the War Department can tell me if he is all right? I want to know.”
“My dear Senator, frankly, I don’t know. Again I beg you to think of our position. The Army is in a muddle; it’s a general thinking that he must fall back, and yet not sure that he can fall back without losing the Army. Why, we’re worrying about the lives of sixteen thousand men and the self-respect of the nation, Senator.”
“I see,” observed the Senator, nodding his head slowly. “And naturally the welfare of one man’s son doesn’t—how do they say it?—doesn’t cut any ice.”
V
And in Cuba it rained. In a few days Reilly’s brigade discovered that by their successful charge they had gained the inestimable privilege of sitting in a wet trench and slowly but surely starving to death. Men’s tempers crumbled like dry bread. The soldiers who so cheerfully, quietly, and decently had captured positions which the foreign experts had said were impregnable, now in turn underwent an attack which was furious as well as insidious. The heat of the sun alternated with rains which boomed and roared in their falling like mountain cataracts. It seemed as if men took the fever through sheer lack of other occupation. During the days of battle none had had time to get even a tropic headache, but no sooner was that brisk period over than men began to shiver and shudder by squads and platoons. Rations were scarce enough to make a little fat strip of bacon seem of the size of a corner lot, and coffee grains were pearls. There would have been godless quarreling over fragments if it were not that with these fevers came a great listlessness, so that men were almost content to die if death required no exertion.
It was an occasion which distinctly separated the sheep from the goats. The goats were few enough, but their qualities glared out like crimson spots.
One morning Jameson and Ripley, two captains in the Forty-fourth Foot, lay under a flimsy shelter of sticks and palm branches. Their dreamy, dull eyes contemplated the men in the trench which went to left and right. To them came Caspar Cadogan, moaning. “By Jove,” he said, as he flung himself wearily on the ground, “I can’t stand much more of this, you know. It’s killing me.” A bristly beard sprouted through the grime on his face; his eyelids were crimson; an indescribably dirty shirt fell away from his roughened neck; and at the same time various lines of evil and greed were deepened on his face, until he practically stood forth as a revelation, a confession. “I can’t stand it. By Jove, I can’t.”
Stanford, a lieutenant under Jameson, came stumbling along toward them. He was a lad of the class of ’98 at West Point. It could be seen that he was flaming with fever. He rolled a calm eye at them. “Have you any water, sir?” he said to his captain. Jameson got upon his feet and helped Stanford to lay his shaking length under the shelter. “No, boy,” he answered gloomily. “Not a drop. You got any, Rip?”
“No,” answered Ripley, looking with anxiety upon the young officer. “Not a drop.”
“You, Cadogan?”
Here Caspar hesitated oddly for a second, and then in a tone of deep regret made answer, “No, Captain; not a mouthful.”
Jameson moved off weakly. “You lay quietly, Stanford, and I’ll see what I can rustle.”
Presently Caspar felt that Ripley was steadily regarding him. He returned the look with one of half-guilty questioning.
“God forgive you, Cadogan,” said Ripley, “but you are a damned beast. Your canteen is full of water.”
Even then the apathy in their veins prevented the scene from becoming as sharp as the words sounded. Caspar sputtered like a child, and at length merely said: “No, it isn’t.” Stanford lifted his head to shoot a keen, proud glance at Caspar, and then turned away his face.
“You lie,” said Ripley. “I can tell the sound of a full canteen as far as I can hear it.”
“Well, if it is, I—I must have forgotten it.”
“You lie; no man in this Army just now forgets whether his canteen is full or empty. Hand it over.”
Fever is the physical counterpart of shame, and when a man has the one he accepts the other with an ease which would revolt his healthy self. However, Caspar made a desperate struggle to preserve the forms. He arose and, taking the string from his shoulder, passed the canteen to Ripley. But after all there was a whine in his voice, and the assumption of dignity was really a farce. “I think I had better go, Captain. You can have the water if you want it, I’m sure. But—but I fail to see—I fail to see what reason you have for insulting me.”
“Do you?” said Ripley stolidly. “That’s all right.”
Caspar stood for a terrible moment. He simply did not have the strength to turn his back on this—this affair. It seemed to him that he must stand for ever and face it. But when he found the audacity to look again at Ripley he saw the latter was not at all concerned with the situation. Ripley, too, had the fever. The fever changes all laws of proportion. Caspar went away.
“Here, youngster; here is your drink.”
Stanford made a weak gesture. “I wouldn’t touch a drop from his blamed canteen if it was the last water in the world,” he murmured in his high, boyish voice.
“Don’t you be a young jackass,” quoth Ripley tenderly.
The boy stole a glance at the canteen. He felt the propriety of arising and hurling it after Caspar, but—he, too, had the fever.
“Don’t you be a young jackass,” said Ripley again.
VI
Senator Cadogan was happy. His son had returned from Cuba, and the 8:30 train that evening would bring him to the station nearest to the stone and red shingle villa which the Senator and his family occupied on the shores of Long Island Sound. The Senator’s steam yacht lay some hundred yards from the beach. She had just returned from a trip to Montauk Point, where the Senator had made a gallant attempt to gain his son from the transport on which he was coming from Cuba. He had fought a brave sea fight with sundry petty little doctors and ship’s officers, who had raked him with broadsides, describing the laws of quarantine, and had used inelegant speech to a United States Senator as he stood on the bridge of his own steam yacht. These men had grimly asked him to tell exactly how much better was Caspar than any other returning soldier.
But the Senator had not given them a long fight. In fact, the truth came to him quickly, and with almost a blush he had ordered the yacht back to her anchora
ge off the villa. As a matter of fact, the trip to Montauk Point had been undertaken largely from impulse. Long ago the Senator had decided that when his boy returned the greeting should have something Spartan in it. He would make a welcome such as most soldiers get. There should be no flowers and carriages when the other poor fellows got none. He should consider Caspar as a soldier. That was the way to treat a man. But in the end a sharp acid of anxiety had worked upon the iron old man, until he had ordered the yacht to take him out and make a fool of him. The result filled him with a chagrin which caused him to delegate to the mother and sisters the entire business of succoring Caspar at Montauk Point Camp. He had remained at home conducting the huge correspondence of an active national politician and waiting for this son whom he so loved and whom he so wished to be a man of a certain strong, taciturn, shrewd ideal. The recent yacht voyage he now looked upon as a kind of confession of his weakness, and he was resolved that no more signs should escape him.
But yet his boy had been down there against the enemy and among the fevers. There had been grave perils, and his boy must have faced them. And he could not prevent himself from dreaming through the poetry of fine actions, in which visions his son’s face shone out manly and generous. During these periods the people about him, accustomed as they were to his silence and calm in time of stress, considered that affairs in Skowmulligan might be most critical. In no other way could they account for this exaggerated phlegm.
On the night of Caspar’s return he did not go to dinner, but had a tray sent to his library, where he remained writing. At last he heard the spin of the dogcart’s wheels on the gravel of the drive, and a moment later there penetrated to him the sound of joyful feminine cries. He lit another cigar; he knew that it was now his part to bide with dignity the moment when his son should shake off that other welcome and come to him. He could still hear them; in their exuberance they seemed to be capering like school-children. He was impatient, but this impatience took the form of a polar stolidity.
Presently there were quick steps and a jubilant knock at his door. “Come in,” he said.
In came Caspar, thin, yellow, and in soiled khaki. “They almost tore me to pieces,” he cried, laughing. “They danced around like wild things.” Then as they shook hands he dutifully said: “How are you, sir?”
“How are you, my boy?” answered the Senator, casually but kindly.
“Better than I might expect, sir,” cried Caspar cheerfully. “We had a pretty hard time, you know.”
“You look as if they’d given you a hard run,” observed the father in a tone of slight interest.
Caspar was eager to tell. “Yes, sir,” he said rapidly. “We did, indeed. Why, it was awful. We—any of us—were lucky to get out of it alive. It wasn’t so much the Spaniards, you know. The Army took care of them all right. It was the fever and the—you know, we couldn’t get anything to eat. And the mismanagement. Why, it was frightful.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” said the Senator. A certain wistful look came into his eyes, but he did not allow it to become prominent. Indeed, he suppressed it. “And you, Caspar? I suppose you did your duty?”
Caspar answered with becoming modesty. “Well, I didn’t do more than anybody else, I don’t suppose, but—well, I got along all right, I guess.”
“And this great charge up San Juan Hill?” asked the father slowly. “Were you in that?”
“Well—yes; I was in it,” replied the son.
The Senator brightened a trifle. “You were, eh? In the front of it? or just sort of going along?”
“Well—I don’t know. I couldn’t tell exactly. Sometimes I was in front of a lot of them, and sometimes I was—just sort of going along.”
This time the Senator emphatically brightened. “That’s all right, then. And of course—of course you performed your commissary duties correctly?”
The question seemed to make Caspar uncommunicative and sulky. “I did when there was anything to do,” he answered. “But the whole thing was on the most unbusinesslike basis you can imagine. And they wouldn’t tell you anything. Nobody would take time to instruct you in your duties, and of course if you didn’t know a thing your superior officer would swoop down on you and ask you why in the deuce such and such a thing wasn’t done in such and such a way. Of course I did the best I could.”
The Senator’s countenance had again become somberly indifferent. “I see. But you weren’t directly rebuked for incapacity, were you? No; of course you weren’t. But—I mean—did any of your superior officers suggest that you were ‘no good,’ or anything of that sort? I mean—did you come off with a clean slate?”
Caspar took a small time to digest his father’s meaning. “Oh, yes, sir,” he cried at the end of his reflection. “The commissary was in such a hopeless mess anyhow that nobody thought of doing anything but curse Washington.”
“Of course,” rejoined the Senator harshly. “But supposing that you had been a competent and well-trained commissary officer. What then?”
Again the son took time for consideration, and in the end deliberately replied: “Well, if I had been a competent and well-trained commissary I would have sat there and eaten up my heart and cursed Washington.”
“Well, then, that’s all right. And now, about this charge up San Juan. Did any of the generals speak to you afterward and say that you had done well? Didn’t any of them see you?”
“Why, n-n-no, I don’t suppose they did … any more than I did them. You see, this charge was a big thing and covered lots of ground, and I hardly saw anybody excepting a lot of the men.”
“Well, but didn’t any of the men see you? Weren’t you ahead some of the time leading them on and waving your sword?”
Caspar burst into laughter. “Why, no. I had all I could do to scramble along and try to keep up. And I didn’t want to go up at all.”
“Why?” demanded the Senator.
“Because—because the Spaniards were shooting so much. And you could see men falling, and the bullets rushed around you in—by the bushel. And then at last it seemed that if we once drove them away from the top of the hill there would be less danger. So we all went up.”
The Senator chuckled over this description. “And you didn’t flinch at all?”
“Well,” rejoined Caspar humorously, “I won’t say I wasn’t frightened.”
“No, of course not. But then, you did not let anybody know it?”
“Of course not.”
“You understand, naturally, that I am bothering you with all these questions because I desire to hear how my only son behaved in the crisis. I don’t want to worry you with it. But if you went through the San Juan charge with credit I’ll have you made a major.”
“Well,” said Caspar, “I wouldn’t say I went through that charge with credit. I went through it all good enough, but the enlisted men around went through in the same way.”
“But weren’t you encouraging them and leading them on by your example?”
Caspar smirked. He began to see a point. “Well, sir,” he said with a charming hesitation, “aw—er—I—well, I dare say I was doing my share of it.”
The perfect form of the reply delighted the father. He could not endure blatancy; his admiration was to be won only by a bashful hero. Now he beat his hand impulsively down upon the table. “That’s what I wanted to know. That’s it exactly. I’ll have you made a major next week. You’ve found your proper field at last. You stick to the Army, Caspar, and I’ll back you up. That’s the thing. In a few years it will be a great career. The United States is pretty sure to have an Army of about a hundred and fifty thousand men. And, starting in when you did and with me to back you up—why, we’ll make you a General in seven or eight years. That’s the ticket. You stay in the Army.” The Senator’s cheek was flushed with enthusiasm, and he looked eagerly and confidently at his son.
But Caspar had pulled a long face. “The Army?” he said. “Stay in the Army?”
The Senator continued to outline quite raptu
rously his idea of the future. “The Army, evidently, is just the place for you. You know as well as I do that you have not been a howling success, exactly, in anything else which you have tried. But now the Army just suits you. It is the kind of career which especially suits you. Well, then, go in, and go at it hard. Go in to win. Go at it.”
“But—” began Caspar.
The Senator interrupted swiftly. “Oh, don’t worry about that part of it. I’ll take care of all that. You won’t get jailed in some Arizona adobe for the rest of your natural life. There won’t be much more of that, anyhow; and besides, as I say, I’ll look after all that end of it. The chance is splendid. A young, healthy, and intelligent man, with the start you’ve already got, and with my backing, can do anything—anything! There will be a lot of active service—oh, yes, I’m sure of it—and everybody who—”
“But,” said Caspar, wan, desperate, heroic, “father, I don’t care to stay in the Army.”
The Senator lifted his eyes and darkened. “What?” he said. “What’s that?” He looked at Caspar.
The son became tightened and wizened like an old miser trying to withhold gold. He replied with a sort of idiot obstinacy, “I don’t care to stay in the Army.”
The Senator’s jaw clenched down, and he was dangerous. But, after all, there was something mournful somewhere. “Why, what do you mean?” he asked gruffly.
“Why, I couldn’t get along, you know. The—the—”
“The what?” demanded the father, suddenly uplifted with thunderous anger. “The what?”
Caspar’s pain found a sort of outlet in mere irresponsible talk. “Well, you know—the other men, you know. I couldn’t get along with them, you know. They’re peculiar, somehow; odd; I didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand me. We—we didn’t hitch, somehow. They’re a queer lot. They’ve got funny ideas. I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but—somehow—I don’t like ’em. That’s all there is to it. They’re good fellows enough, I know, but—”
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane Page 90
