Captain Jinks, Hero, Ernest Howard Crosby [free e books to read TXT] 📗

misgivings that he began to imagine this episode. As before, he marched to his place and lifted his rifle to aim. He sees before him the figure which had been haunting his dreams ever since he left East Point. She is bound; a handkerchief is tied over her eyes, but he sees the mouth and longs to kiss it. He has a strong impulse to run forward and throw his arms around her. The command “Fire!” is given, but⁠—he does not shoot. He can not. He has disobeyed orders! He, the man whose one aim in life has been to become a perfect soldier, who only just now was considering himself fit to be a soldier of the warlord, had disobeyed orders; he had shown himself a mutineer, a deserter, a traitor; he had lost his patriotism and loyalty; he had dishonored the flag; he had trampled under foot all the gods that he had worshiped now for many years. He had flatly broken the only code of morals that he knew⁠—he was a coward, a hypocrite, a mere civilian, masquerading in the uniform of an officer! Sam buried his face in his hands and the tears trickled down through his fingers. Then he sprang up and walked to and fro for a long time. At last he took Marian’s photograph from his pocket and put it on his dressing-table. He must be a man. He must hold true to his faith. He screwed up his courage and went through the forms of the afternoon in his room dimly lighted by lanterns in the street. He stood up in the line before the Emperor, and again listened to his inspiring speech. Now he felt sure that he would not fail. He placed himself opposite the photograph when the order was given. He raised an imaginary gun and aimed with assurance⁠—but just then his eye fell upon the face which he could barely distinguish. He saw Marian again as she had been when he bade her farewell. True, she was as much a believer in the military scheme of life as he was, but he knew by instinct that she would draw the line somewhere. She was not created to be a martyr to her faith. The order “Fire!” came, but Sam, instead of obeying, threw down his musket and ran forward, seized the photograph and kissed it. He looked up, half expecting to see a crowd of spectators eying him with derision. He cast himself upon his bed with his clothes on and tossed about for a long time, until at last sleep came to his relief.

When he awoke in the morning the sun had long been up. In the first moments of waking and before he opened his eyes, he could not recall what it was that was troubling him. Suddenly the whole situation came back to him, tenfold clearer than before. He saw at once beyond all possibility of contradiction that he could not shoot Marian, no matter who ordered him to do it; that for him the ideal of a perfect soldier was altogether unattainable, and that he was obliged to admit to himself that his entire life was a failure. The public might praise and acclaim him, but he was essentially a fraud and could never secure his own approval.

XIV Home Again

When Sam got up and began to undress to take his bath, his head swam so that he was obliged to lie down again. He tried again two or three times, but always with the same result, and finally he rang for a servant and sent for an army surgeon. The doctor came at once, took his temperature with a thermometer, and, after examining him, pronounced that he had a bad attack of fever, probably typhoid. He advised him to go to the hospital, and before noon Sam found himself comfortably installed in a hospital bed, screened off by a movable partition from a ward of fever patients. The doctor’s surmise proved to be correct, and for weeks he was dangerously ill, much of the time being delirious. He suffered once or twice also from relapses, and showed very little recuperative force when the fever finally left him. Meanwhile he was very low-spirited. The idea preyed upon his mind that he was no soldier and could never be one, and he felt that the resulting depression had a great deal to do with his protracted illness. Cleary was assiduous in his attentions, but, intimate as they were, Sam could never bring himself to confess his culpable weakness to him. As he became convalescent he had other visitors, and among them Mr. Cope, the inventor of explosives and artillery.

“I am at work at a great invention which I shall owe partly to you and partly to the Emperor,” said he on one occasion. “Do you remember that at that execution the Emperor said that the perfect soldier has no conscience or reason?” Sam winced. “And then you called my attention to the fact that the men performed their part like machines. That set me thinking. I am always on the lookout for suggestions, and there was one ready-made. Do you see? Why shouldn’t a machine be made to take the place of a soldier? A great idea, isn’t it? Now you see we’ve already done something in that line. A torpedo is simply an iron soldier that swims under water and needs no breath, and does as he is told. Think how absurd it is in battle to have a field-battery come up under fire at a gallop! They swing round, unlimber, load, and fire, then harness again, swing round again, and off they are. Meanwhile perhaps half the men and horses have been killed. Wouldn’t it be better to have the whole battery a machine, instead of only the guns? The general could stay behind out of range, as he does today, and direct the whole thing with an electric