Alas, Lieutenant Pendleton’s high tenor (he is the adjutant for the day) calls “Guides—posts!” We knew—we ought to have known—the order; we had been warned to ignore it. But some of the men come to parade rest. The captain hears, though he cannot turn to look. “Stupid!” he hisses. “As you were!” Then comes the command for us all, “Parade—rest!”
It was very comfortable, waiting while the band marched up and down. We were not much stirred by this; we knew by heart all the few tunes; we thought the drum-major very tiresome with his bent head and his elbow jogging for the time. But there was, above the ugly mess-shacks straight in front, the finest sunset to look at: angry clouds to the right, to the left wide reaches of pure blue, with tiny white clouds stretching in rank to infinite distance, and in the middle the yellow glow of fire behind broken masses, through which shot, not beams of light, but rather, it seemed, wide bars of shadow.
The captain, as we thus stood at parade, hissed back over his shoulder, “Bad! Some of you men have your feet too far back.” This would particularly disgust him, for at previous practice, taking a gun from a sergeant, he stood in front of us and said, “Let me show you how Rip Van Winkle here in the second squad comes to parade rest,” and gave us a ludicrous example of slowness and slovenliness. Then he illustrated, in briskness and correct position, just how we should do it.
Returned to his place after saluting the major, he said, looking straight in front, “Your next command is Squads Right.” The major’s big voice boomed: “Pass in review—squads right—March!” I turned sharply to my right, marked time, and when the other three had come into line, together we stepped out. The band blared out, we were in step, and so approached the corner. “Column left!” and we did our best to turn correctly, though nobody could see. Then we marched up the slope, knowing that the real test was now coming. “Squads left!” and as the rear rank man made way for me, I stepped into place, and in one line we all strode out together. To hold the line straight! You on the top of the slope may have cried “How pretty!” at the rifles all with the same slant, the hands at the same height, the heads straight front, the feet—one, two! one, two!—in perfect time with the music. But with us in the line there was intentness to remedy any unevenness, strain to hold ourselves just right. We could not look except out of the corners of the eyes; all was done by the touch of the elbows. For a few yards, rods, it was good. We safely crossed a slimy patch where a great puddle had just dried, through which on Monday I tramped ankle deep, and where now a fall would be natural. Then—ah! we expected this! Frothingham, I, Knudsen, found ourselves marching alone, the other men out of touch with us, having drawn away to the right and left. I heard my mates grumble, I knew what I was to do: spread myself to occupy all possible space and march straight onward, for—there! they were back again, surging from the left and right, back in their proper places, and the line had not really broken. “Good!” murmurs Knudsen. “Hold it!” exhorts the captain over his shoulder. Then “Eyes right!” and thus saluting as we passed the major we could see, or thought we saw, a perfect line. “Front!” We swept on; we listened. The ladies had clapped the first two companies, but there was no applause for us. Had it then been bad after all?
Back to the street we marched, and formed in line. Lieutenant Pendleton came and spoke to the captain, then walked away smiling. “The lieutenant says you did well,” said the captain briefly. But he was so short that we thought him grumpy, especially since the lieutenant had never before been seen to give us anything else than his little ironical smile. Yet at company conference, in the evening, one of us ventured to ask the captain if we really had done badly. “No,” said he. “I was pleased with you. You did well. The major said you did best.” So the lack of applause meant nothing. I saw men whose home affairs are so large that this might properly be small to them, look at each other in relief.
Today I got a letter from Walt Farnham about his cousin Lucy. He says: “I know you won’t baby him. The camp ought to do him good. It was I that put the idea into his head, but his father, afraid that he might back out at the last minute, or not stick it through, has promised him an auto of his own when he gets back, anything up to twelve thousand dollars. How can even Plattsburg save such a boy?”
And Vera is after him now. After conference I was writing in the company tent, the inner one, while the captain still talked outside to half a dozen men. To my surprise a bell rang behind me, and while I sat looking at a curious instrument on the post, wondering if it were a telephone, the captain came in, took from it a strange receiver-transmitter, and spoke into it. I heard Vera plainly answering, and the captain, saying “Mr. Godwin is right here,” gave me the thing to hold. She said “Oh, Dick!” so plainly that of course the captain heard it as he went out again. Vera told me that Mrs. Farnham has written her, asking her to keep an eye on her darling, and I was to send Lucy to call. I warned her she’d much better leave him alone, but she laughed and insisted. The telephone was in that state, or she spoke so plainly (you know how it occasionally happens) that anyone could have heard her even in the outer tent. When I hung up and went out, there was the captain just saying good night to the men, and the table and benches would not let me slip by before he turned and saw me.
You know there are moments when eyes meet and seem to catch, and it is difficult to pass without speaking. That is why, I am sure, the captain said: “You are very well acquainted with Miss Wadsworth?”
I thought that here was a chance for the truth. “I ought to be,” I said. “I have been engaged to her for the past two years.” And then seeing, by the instant change in his face to one of deepest gravity, what he supposed me to mean, I added, “She broke the engagement a month ago.”
“Oh,” said he, not relieved, mother, or not showing relief, but very seriously kind, “I’m sorry, Mr. Godwin.”