Of their own corps they spoke with a deep veneration,
an idolatry, a supreme confidence which apparently
would not blanch to see it match against everything.
It was as if their respect for other corps was due
partly to a wonder that organisations not blessed
with their own famous numeral could take such an interest
in war. They could prove that their division was
the best in the corps, and that their brigade was
the best in the division. And their regiment—it
was plain that no fortune of life was equal to the
chance which caused a man to be born, so to speak,
into this command, the keystone of the defending arch.
At times Dan covered with insults the character of
a vague, unnamed general to whose petulance and busy-body
spirit he ascribed the order which made hot coffee
impossible.
Dan said that victory was certain in the coming battle.
The other man seemed rather dubious. He remarked
upon the fortified line of hills, which had impressed
him even from the other side of the river. “Shucks,”
said Dan. “Why, we——”
He pictured a splendid overflowing of these hills
by the sea of men in blue. During the period of
this conversation Dan’s glance searched the
merry throng about the dancer. Above the babble
of voices in the street a far-away thunder could sometimes
be heard—evidently from the very edge of
the horizon—the boom-boom of restless guns.
Ultimately the night deepened to the tone of black
velvet. The outlines of the fireless camp were
like the faint drawings upon ancient tapestry.
The glint of a rifle, the, shine of a button, might
have been of threads of silver and gold sewn upon
the fabric of the night. There was little presented
to the vision, but to a sense more subtle there was
discernible in the atmosphere something like a pulse;
a mystic beating which would have told a stranger
of the presence of a giant thing—the slumbering
mass of regiments and batteries.
With tires forbidden, the floor of a dry old kitchen
was thought to be a good exchange for the cold earth
of December, even if a shell had exploded in it, and
knocked it so out of shape that when a man lay curled
in his blanket his last waking thought was likely to
be of the wall that bellied out above him, as if strongly
anxious to topple upon the score of soldiers.
Billie looked at the bricks ever about to descend
in a shower upon his face, listened to the industrious
pickets plying their rifles on the border of the town,
imagined some measure of the din of the coming battle,
thought of Dan and Dan’s chagrin, and rolling
over in his blanket went to sleep with satisfaction.
At an unknown hour he was aroused by the creaking
of boards. Lifting himself upon his elbow, he
saw a sergeant prowling among the sleeping forms.
The sergeant carried a candle in an old brass candlestick.
He would have resembled some old farmer on an unusual
midnight tour if it were not for the significance
of his gleaming buttons and striped sleeves.
