“Do? Do? Why, those damned Greasers are firing through this town.” The mayor’s fingers spread as though dropping from them something not to be entertained for a moment.
“I have no military function, you know,” drawled Swinnerton; “I’m just a surgeon. And if I had, the orders are plain. We must not cross that line, whatever happens.”
“Drat your orders!” bellowed his Excellency, the mayor. A bullet came and smashed the door-lintel. It covered the mayor with a shower of dust and plaster. He ducked incontinently, and came up furious at Swinnerton’s vapid smile.
“I know you, Doctor Swinnerton. You’re the regimental joker, the official fool. Gad! man, don’t you get sick of yourself? Doesn’t the sight of suffering humanity”—he waved his hand in an excited gesture that included a hurrying group of frightened non-combatants who were rushing a wounded man to shelter—“stir a spark of anger in you? Ain’t you weary of grinning and being grinned at? Ain’t you tired of it, I say?”
“Yes,” said Swinnerton, with unexpected decision, “I am tired. Get out of my way.” He walked deliberately through the door and out into the street, hatless and unarmed. The orderly at the door, a mere boy, followed him in his journey toward the plaza, to the custom-house door, and then to the line. Spiteful little dust-spots kicked up here and there in the open square, and a bullet whined close to the boy’s ear. Swinnerton turned and ordered him back.
“I ain’t goin’,” the soldier refused stolidly. “I’m a-goin’ to stay by you—an’ I know what orders is.”
Swinnerton seemed not disposed to argue the point. Perhaps he thought the hotter fire forward would drive the lad back. He walked unhesitatingly on. He did not stop at the federal trenches, though men and officers cheered him as he passed. But once he had clambered over the glacis, his and the boy’s were the only upright figures in a wide stretch of sloping, gravelly hillside. There was a sense of awful loneliness there for a moment; yet he did not hesitate.
His calm decision seemed, without qualification, good to Swinnerton. He expected to be killed. No one could look out across the bullet-spattered front and hope for less. The air was filled with gruesome sounds—the screams and whines and whistles of deflected rifle-balls. He did not yearn for the shot that would be the end, and yet he did not shrink from it. The very proximity of death caused nervous little shivers along his spine and in the pit of his stomach, but no regret. He was tired of disappointment, and glad to end it. There was an unavoidable trifle of revengeful school-boy thought, “They’ll be sorry when I’m gone,” and another that brought real pleasure, “There can never be any joke about this thing I am doing.”
A gentle breeze was sweeping down the hill with the fire; it ruffled in his hair and cooled his temples. Yes, it was all pleasant, all good, all desirable. He had forgotten the boy who had so faithfully followed him.
Swinnerton was just enough to see the terrible selfishness of what he had done. A cry came from behind. The lad was down, writhing and clawing at the gravelly soil, a bullet through his intestines. Calmness and self-satisfaction left Swinnerton between two pulse-throbs, and as he knelt beside the soldier and examined the wound, anger came to him—anger with himself at first, and then a bullet covered them with trash and another seared Swinnerton’s forehead like a red-hot iron. The rebels were firing at them both. His blood flowed down into his eyes. Blinded with this and rage, he rose and ran forward. He was no doubt absurd, but he was not unterrifying, as with lumbering gait he stumbled and ran straight on to the very muzzles of the firing-line. If he was grotesque, it was with the grotesquery of the bizarre and sinister figures of the first French Empire, and he was standing where vehemence commanded respect.