“And after our first engagement he urgently recommended me and I got a lieutenant’s commission in another company of our regiment. The next battle vacated the captaincy above me.”
“Do you mean that the officer above you was killed?”
“That’s the way most promotions are got.”
“Well, it’s shocking! I don’t see how you could accept it. To profit by the death of others!”
Easton winced. “Oh,” he said, bitterly, “I did worse than that. Our general was killed, and the colonel who took his place as brigade commandant had an old feud with Gilbert—something that had begun before the war. I don’t know whether he planned to strike him with my hand, when he saw what friends we were, or whether it was a sudden, infernal inspiration. But just as we were going into action he detached Gilbert for staff duty; we were fighting on toward the end of the war by that time, and there had been many changes and losses, so that I now stood next to him in seniority, and took his place in the regiment. The colonel and the lieutenant-colonel were killed, and I brought the remnant of the regiment out as well as I could. The colonel commanding had been a truckling politician at home, and he never took his hands off the wires that work officeholders.”
Easton stopped, and it seemed as if he did not mean to go on, the absence which he fell into was so long. He stared at her with a look of pain, when recalled by an eager “Well?” from Mrs. Farrell.
“It all fell out with such malignant fatality that I don’t think that part of it could have been planned. But one day Gilbert and I sat talking before his tent, and an orderly came up with an official letter for me. Gilbert made a joke of pretending to open it; I told him to go on, and then he opened it and looked at what was in it. He handed me the inclosure without a word: it was my commission as colonel; I had been advanced two steps over his head.”
Mrs. Farrell broke out, with a pitiless frankness that seemed to strike Easton like a blow, “I don’t see how he could forgive you!”
Easton passed his hand over his face. “It was a great deal to forgive; if it hadn’t seemed to make us closer friends, I should say it was too much to forgive; that such a thing ought to have separated us at once and forever.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Farrell, “I don’t understand how you got over it. What did you do? What did you say?”