The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (210 page)

Baker stormed other and more formidable officials. In fact, he struck as high as he dared. They one and all flung him short, hard words, even as men pelt an annoying cur with pebbles. He emerged from the brilliant light, from the groups of men with anxious, puzzled faces, and as he walked back to the hotel he did not know if his name were Baker or Cholmondeley.

However, as he walked up the stairs to the Senator’s rooms he contrived to concentrate his intellect upon a manner of speaking.

The war-horse was still pacing his parlour and smoking. He paused at Baker’s entrance. “Well?”

“Mr. Cadogan,” said the private secretary coolly, “they told me at the Department that they did not give a cuss whether your son was alive or dead.”

The Senator looked at Baker and smiled gently. “What’s that, my boy?” he asked in a soft and considerate voice.

“They said — —” gulped Baker, with a certain tenacity. “They said that they didn’t give a cuss whether your son was alive or dead.”

There was a silence for the space of three seconds. Baker stood like an image; he had no machinery for balancing the issues of this kind of a situation, and he seemed to feel that if he stood as still as a stone frog he would escape the ravages of a terrible Senatorial wrath which was about to break forth in a hurricane speech which would snap off trees and sweep away barns.

“Well,” drawled the Senator lazily, “who did you see, Baker?”

The private secretary resumed a certain usual manner of breathing. He told the names of the men whom he had seen.

“Ye — e — es,” remarked the Senator. He took another little brown cigar and held it with a thumb and first finger, staring at it with the calm and steady scrutiny of a scientist investigating a new thing. “So they don’t care whether Caspar is alive or dead, eh? Well … maybe they don’t…. That’s all right…. However … I think I’ll just look in on ’em and state my views.”

When the Senator had gone, the private secretary ran to the window and leaned afar out. Pennsylvania Avenue was gleaming silver blue in the light of many arc-lamps; the cable trains groaned along to the clangour of gongs; from the window, the walks presented a hardly diversified aspect of shirt-waists and straw hats. Sometimes a newsboy screeched.

Baker watched the tall, heavy figure of the Senator moving out to intercept a cable train. “Great Scott!” cried the private secretary to himself, “there’ll be three distinct kinds of grand, plain practical fireworks. The old man is going for ‘em. I wouldn’t be in Lascum’s boots. Ye gods, what a row there’ll be.”

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 reenforcements 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 to-morrow. 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 a-foot 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 forever 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 anchorage 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 succouring 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.