“Say, can’t you leave him be?”
They moved with reverence about the immovable figure,
with its countenance of mask-like invulnerability.
After the red round eye of the sun had stared long
at the little plain and its burden, darkness, a sable
mercy, came heavily upon it, and the wan hands of
the dead were no longer seen in strange frozen gestures.
The heights in front of the plain shone with tiny
camp-fires, and from the town in the rear, small shimmerings
ascended from the blazes of the bivouac. The
plain was a black expanse upon which, from time to
time, dots of light, lanterns, floated slowly here
and there. These fields were long steeped in
grim mystery.
Suddenly, upon one dark spot, there was a resurrection.
A strange thing had been groaning there, prostrate.
Then it suddenly dragged itself to a sitting posture,
and became a man.
The man stared stupidly for a moment at the lights
on the hill, then turned and contemplated the faint
colouring over the town. For some moments he
remained thus, staring with dull eyes, his face unemotional,
wooden.
Finally he looked around him at the corpses dimly
to be seen. No change flashed into his face upon
viewing these men. They seemed to suggest merely
that his information concerning himself was not too
complete. He ran his fingers over his arms and
chest, bearing always the air of an idiot upon a bench
at an almshouse door.
Finding no wound in his arms nor in his chest, he
raised his hand to his head, and the fingers came
away with some dark liquid upon them. Holding
these fingers close to his eyes, he scanned them in
the same stupid fashion, while his body gently swayed.
The soldier rolled his eyes again toward the town.
When he arose, his clothing peeled from the frozen
ground like wet paper. Hearing the sound of it,
he seemed to see reason for deliberation. He paused
and looked at the ground, then at his trousers, then
at the ground.
Finally he went slowly off toward the faint reflection,
holding his hands palm outward before him, and walking
in the manner of a blind man.
The immovable Dan again sat unaddressed in the midst
of comrades, who did not joke aloud. The dampness
of the usual morning fog seemed to make the little
camp-fires furious.
Suddenly a cry arose in the streets, a shout of amazement
and delight. The men making breakfast at the
fire looked up quickly. They broke forth in clamorous
exclamation: “Well! Of all things!
Dan! Dan! Look who’s coming!
Oh, Dan!”
Dan the silent raised his eyes and saw a man, with
a bandage of the size of a helmet about his head,
receiving a furious demonstration from the company.
He was shaking hands, and explaining, and haranguing
to a high degree.
Dan started. His face of bronze flushed to his
temples. He seemed about to leap from the ground,
but then suddenly he sank back, and resumed his impassive
gazing.
