Chapter 2

CHAPTER IVOn the first day of April, 191-, Hayward Graham, wearing the single-barred yellow chevrons of a lance-corporal in Troop M of the 10th Cavalry, was sitting flat on the ground, perspiring and inwardly grumbling as he rubbed away at his sawed-off rifle, and mentally moralizing on his inglorious condition. There was he, almost a graduate of Harvard, a gentleman, accustomed to a bath-tub and a toothbrush, bound up hard and fast for three years' association with a crowd of illiterate, roistering, unwashed, and in the present situation unwashable, negroes of every shade from pale yellow to ebony. Why, thought he, should negroes always be dumped all into one heap as if they were all of one grade? Didn't the government know there were negroes and negroes? Whimsically he wondered why the officers didn't sort them out among the troops like they did the horses, according to colour,—blacks, browns, yellows, ash-coloured, snuff-coloured. Then what possibilities in matching or contrasting the shades of the troopers with those of their mounts: black horse, yellow rider,—bay horse, black rider,—sorrel horse, gingersnap rider—no, that wouldn't do, inartistic combination! And what colour of steed would tastily trim off that freckled abomination of a sergeant yonder? Can't be done,—scheme's a failure!—damn that sergeant anyhow, he had confiscated Graham's only toothbrush to clean his gun with. Graham again records his oath to thrash him when his three years is up.But three years is an age. It will never roll round. Only two months has he been a soldier, and yet everything that happened before that is becoming vague—even the smile on Helen Phillips' face. He cannot close his eyes and conjure up the picture as he did at first.Graham was out of temper. Cavalry wasn't what it is cracked up to be, and a horse was of more trouble than convenience anyway, he was convinced. In the battle-drills the men had been put through so repeatedly day after day the horse played no part, and what riding Graham had done so far had served only to make him so sore and stiff that he could neither ride nor walk in comfort. He heartily repented his choice and wished he had taken the infantry, where a man has to look out only for himself and his gun. Oh, the troubles, the numberless troubles, of a green soldier!All of Corporal Graham's military notions were affronted, and his right-dress, upstanding ideas of soldiering were shattered. The reality is a matter of pushing a curry-comb, getting your nose and mouth and eyes filled with horse-hairs, which get down your neck and up your sleeves, and stick in the sweat and won't come off and there's no water to wash them off. Then the drills—save the mark!—not as much precision in them as in a football manoeuvre,—just a spreading out into a thin line and running forward for five seconds perhaps, falling on your belly and pretending to fire three rounds at an imaginary foe, then jumping up and doing it all over again till you feel faint and foolish,—every man for himself, no order, no alignment, one man crouching behind a shrub, another falling prone on the ground, another hiding behind a tree,—surely no pomp or circumstance or glory in that business. Graham's study of punctilios did him no service there. Not a parade had the regiment had. Mobilized at a Southern port only three days before the sailing of the transport, it had taken every hour of the time to load the horses and equipment and supplies. Graham had found that fighting is a very small part of soldiering, which is mostly drudgery, and he had revised his idea of war several times since his enlistment.He thought as he sat cleaning his rifle that surely the preliminaries were about over, and, if camp rumour counted for anything, that the day of battle could not be more than one or two suns away. He would have his gun in fine working order, for good luck might bring some shooting on the morrow. At any rate his carbine must glisten when he becomes part of to-morrow's guard, and he hoped that he would be put right on the point of the advance picket. He hadn't had a shave in three weeks, and his uniform was sweat-stained and dusty, and he could not hope to look spick and span; but his gun could be shiny, and he knew Lieutenant Wagner well enough by that time to have learned that a clean gun counted for more with him than a clean shirt. So he hoped and prayed that he would be selected for some duty that was worth while.The brigades under General Bell, which had been landed at Alta Gracia with difficulty, were pressing forward with all haste to cut off a garrison of Germans that had been thrown into Puerto Cabello from the German cruisers, and to prevent the arrival of reinforcements which were being rushed to their aid from Caracas. Reports from native scouts and communications from General Mañana himself placed the number of these reinforcements at from five to seven thousand. General Bell doubted that this force was so large, but was anxious to meet it, whatever its size.Despite the vigilance of the all too meagre patrol of warships for Venezuelan waters which the United States had been able to spare from the necessary guard for her Atlantic and Gulf ports, the forehanded and ever-ready Kaiser had landed seven or eight thousand troops from a fleet of transports at Cumana, and with characteristic German promptness had occupied Caracas and Barcelona before Uncle Sam had been able to put any troops on Venezuelan soil. It seemed nonsense for either Germany or the United States to care to fight any battles down in that little out-of-the-way place. They could find other more accessible and far more important battle-grounds: but no, as the Monroe Doctrine forbade Germany to make a foothold in Venezuela and her doing so was the casus belli, the ethics of the affair demanded that there should be a bona fide forcible ejectment of the Kaiser's troops from Venezuelan territory by the United States. The battles there might be only a side issue, and the real test of strength might come at any or all of a dozen places on land and sea, but there must be some fighting done in Venezuela just to prove that the cause of war was not fanciful.General Bell's brigades were one under General Earnhardt, consisting of the 5th, 7th, 10th and 15th Cavalry, and a second, including the 4th and 11th regular infantry, the 71st Ohio, and the 1st X——, under General Cowles, with a battalion of engineers and four batteries of field artillery. General Earnhardt's cavalry brigade was striving to reach the Valencia road, the only passable route from Caracas to Puerto Cabello, before the German force should pass. General Mañana had sent a courier to say that he would hold the Germans in check till Earnhardt's arrival.On the morning of April 2d Graham was among the advance pickets and almost forgot his saddle pains and creaking joints in the excitement of expected battle. For half a day Earnhardt pushed forward as fast as the trail would permit. He had halted his troops for five minutes' rest about noon, when a native on a wiry pony, riding like one possessed, dashed into the picket and came near getting his head punched off before he could make Graham understand that he was a friend with a message for theAmericano capitan. Graham carried him before General Earnhardt, who at the head of his column was reclining on a bank beside the trail, perspiring and dusty and brushing viciously at the flies and mosquitoes that swarmed around him. The general did not change his position when the native, who was clad in a nondescript but much-beribboned uniform, slid from his horse and with a ceremonious bow and salute informed him that he was Captain Miguel of General Mañana's staff, and had the honour to report that he was despatched by General Mañana to say that, despite that gentleman's earnest and desperate resistance, a large and outnumbering force of German cavalry had forced a passage of the road to Puerto Cabello about eleven o'clock that morning. While Captain Miguel was delivering his elaborate message to the disgusted cavalryman, the picket passed in an old soldier of the 10th who had been detailed as a scout at the beginning of the campaign; and this scout rode up to report just as the native captain finished speaking. Earnhardt turned impatiently from Mañana's aide to his own trusted man and said:"Well, Morris, what is it?""Small force of German cavalry, sir, had a scrimmage with General Mañana's troops this morning on the Valencia road, and rode on in the direction of Puerto Cabello.""How many Germans got through?" asked the general."All of them, sir; about two troops, as near as I could count.""And how many men did Mañana have?" the question came sharply."Something like fifteen hundred I should judge, sir, from the sound of the firing and what I could see," answered the scout.General Earnhardt, without rising, turned with unconcealed contempt to Captain Miguel and said:"My compliments to General Mañana, and he's a —— old fraud and I don't want to have anything more to do with him;" and while the red-splashed aide was trying to solve the curt message which he but half understood, the trumpeter at a word from the angry cavalryman soundedmountandforwardand the brigade was again off at top speed, hoping still to cut off the main relief force sent out from Caracas. General Earnhardt considered himself a lucky soldier to find that this force had not passed when at last he reached the road (which was hardly worthy of the name highway, though one of the thoroughfares of Venezuela); and he hastily disposed his forces to meet the German advance.It was not long in coming. The crack of a rifle was the first notice Corporal Graham had that he was about to be under fire. He felt a cold breeze blow upon his back for a moment, and then as the popping began to approach a rattle the joy of contest entered his soul and sent his blood bounding.But the joy was short-lived. When the Germans came near enough to see that they were opposed by men in Uncle Sam's uniform, and not by the nagging natives who had been popping harmlessly away at them from the roadside, they decided it was best not to be too precipitate. They stopped and began to feel for the American line. After some desultory sharpshooting they finally located it, and quieted down to wait till the German commander could get his little army up and into line of battle.Then Hayward Graham had to sit still and hold his gun while the exhilaration and enthusiasm died down in him like the fiz in a glass of soda-water. He had worked his nerves up to such a tension that the reaction was nothing less than painful, and he was full of impatience and profanity. He could hardly wait for to-morrow, when Germany and Uncle Sam would get up after a good night's rest and lay on like men.Again what was his unspeakable disgust and almost unbearable disappointment when the next morning came and he was detailed as stable guard, and given charge of the 10th's corral, quite a distance in rear of the line of battle and absolutely out of all danger. Profanity was a lame and feeble remedy for that situation. He sat down and growled."Oh, for an assorted supply of languages in which to separately and collectively and properly consign this whole bloody system of details to the cellar of Hades!"A veteran sergeant of Graham's troop, who on occasions wore a medal of honour on his blouse, and at all times bore an unsightly scar on his cheek as a souvenir of Wounded Knee, sought to soothe the young man's feelings."It all comes along in the run of the business, corporal," he said. "Soldiering is not all fighting. A man earns his money by doing whatever duty is assigned to him."Graham answered with heat: "I didn't come into this nasty, sweaty, horse-smelly business for any such consideration as fifteen dollars a month and feed, and if I am to miss the scrapping and the glory I prefer to cut the whole affair."His temper improved, however, as the day began to drag itself away with no sound of conflict from the battle-line save the occasional pop of a pot-shot by the pickets, and as the rumour began to leak back to the corral that both sides must be waiting for their guns to come up. This was doubtless true: for the four batteries of American artillery arrived late in the afternoon, and the infantry brigade was all up by nightfall.CHAPTER VThe two small armies were separated by the valley of a small stream which ran in a broad circle around the low wooded hills or range of hills upon which the Germans were entrenched. This valley was from a mile to a mile and a half wide, and the water-course was much nearer the outer or American side. The bed of this stream would furnish an excellent breastwork or entrenchment for the American troops if they should see fit to use it, but it was not tenable by the Germans because it was at most all points subject to an enfilading fire from the American position. The surface of the valley was slightly broken and undulating on the German side, but clear of timber and covered only with grass, while on the American side the rise was more precipitous and covered with a scattering growth of trees and bush.On arriving and looking over the ground General Bell ordered that during the night his artillery should be placed and concealed on the commanding heights which his position afforded; and that his fighting-line, composed of the 5th and 15th Cavalry as his left wing, the 1st X—— as his centre, and the 4th and 11th Infantry as his right wing, be moved forward down the slope and into the bed of the stream, leaving as a reserve the 71st Ohio and the 10th Cavalry located approximately in rear of the centre of his line of battle. The 7th Cavalry he had sent out toward Puerto Cabello to hold in check any possible German troops that might appear from that quarter.Corporal Hayward Graham, back at the 10th's corral, had recovered his spirits as the day dragged along without any sound of battle, and he began to congratulate himself that he would finish up in good time all details that would keep him out of the fighting. When he walked over to the line late in the afternoon, however, and learned that the whole regiment was to be held out of the fight as a reserve, he immediately surmised that the 10th was kept out of it because they were negroes, and that the others from the general down wanted to scoop all the glory for the white soldiery,—and again he sat down and cursed the negro blood in his veins. The only salve to his outraged spirit was the information that those high and mighty prigs of the 71st were also to miss the glory. He even chuckled when he thought of the chagrin of Lieutenant Morgan and pictured to himself the scene of the lieutenant's meeting with Miss Elise Phillips if he should have to go back and explain to her how he came not to be under fire. Then he remembered Helen Phillips and the crimson pennant locked up in his trunk, and he felt that the whole war would count for naught if he had no chance to do something worthy of that pennant and of her. He wandered listlessly along the lines and tried to forget his troubles in listening to the talk of the fortunates who were going in.He came to where a crowd of 1st X—— men were chaffing a squad of the 71st for "taking a gallery-seat at the show." Corporal Billie Catling of the 71st replied that they took the "gallery-seat" under orders and were put behind the 1st X—— to see that they didn't dodge a fight again like they did in Cuba."That's a damn lie!" came the 1st X——'s rejoinder in chorus; to which one of them added, "The 1st X—— never ran out of any fight in Cuba, and you gallery-gods can go to sleep or go to the devil, for we'll stay here till hell freezes over so thick you can skate on the ice.""Well, you may not have runoutof any fight in Cuba, but it's blamed certain you didn'trun into one," retorted the 71st's spokesman."Now, sonny," yelled the X—— man, "don't get sassy because you're not permitted to sit down along with your betters. Run along and wait for the second table with the niggers!"The 71st's contingent could not find a suitable retort to this sally, and, as fighting was out of the question, they walked away muttering imprecations amid the jeers of the men from X——.Graham enjoyed the discomfiture of the 71st; but he was more than ever convinced that the colour of the 10th accounted for its being robbed of a chance for fame in this campaign: and he went back to his duty in a mutinous mood. He could not know that General Bell had held this veteran negro regiment in reserve because of its proved steadiness and valour; nor that he had placed the untried 1st X—— in his centre because it would thus be in the easiest supporting distance of his reserves.The battle opened on April 3d the moment it became light enough for the gunners to locate the half-hidden German lines and artillery. For awhile the cannoneers had it all between themselves; and in this duel the advantage was with the Americans, for their position gave them better protection—the fighting-line being sheltered by the stream-bed and the guns and reserves by the hill. The Germans were entrenched on a hill as high as the Americans, but it was much flatter and afforded less natural cover.After two or three hours of pounding the Germans with his artillery, which was evidently inflicting great damage, General Bell ordered his line forward to carry the German position by assault. Then the battle began in earnest. The German machine-guns opened on the American line as it rose out of the stream-bed and began its slow and terrible journey across the open valley by short rushes. The first breath of lead and iron that dashed in the faces of the American troops as they stood up began the work of death; and it came so promptly and so viciously that it overwhelmed the raw discipline and untempered metal of the 1st X——; for before advancing thirty paces the line wavered and broke and retreated ignobly to the sheltering bank of the stream. Not all the regiment broke at once; but the break and stampede of one company quickly spread along the entire regimental front, and back into the ditch they dived. Some of the officers cursed and commanded and entreated; but to no purpose. The wings of the American line were advancing steadily but slowly, standing up for a few moments to dash forward a dozen yards, and then lying as close to the ground as possible while returning the terrible fire from the hills in front of them.General Bell from his position of vantage saw the failure of the 1st X—— to advance, and waited a few moments in hope that a half-dozen officers who were recklessly exposing themselves in their attempts to urge the men forward might succeed in their efforts. As it became evident that the regiment would not face the deadly fire of the Germans, however, and as the wings of the battle-line were diverging as they advanced because of the formation of the ground in their front, General Bell waited no longer, but ordered forward both the 10th Cavalry and the 71st Ohio. These came over the hill on the run and dropped down the slope into the water-course, where the heroic handful of officers were still making frantic efforts to have the 1st X—— go forward. A captain was violently berating his men for their cowardice and imploring them to advance, while his first lieutenant squeezed down behind the bank was yelling at them not to move. A major of one battalion was standing up straight and fully exposed, waving his sword and appealing to his men by every token of courage, while another major was lying as close to the bottom of the ditch as a spreading-adder. At places the men seemed to want to move, while the officers crouched in fear; while at others officers by no amount of commands or entreaties could get a man out of the ditch. A panic of terror seemed to be upon the regiment which the few untouched spirits were not able to overcome by any power of sharp commands, or violent pleading, or reckless examples of courage.The boys of the 71st and the negro troopers of the 10th did not treat the X—— men tenderly as they passed over them. They jumped down upon them as they lay in the ditch and tramped upon them or kicked them out of the way contemptuously, while the fear-smitten creatures were as unresentful as hounds. Corporal Graham, near the left flank of the 10th, heard an officer of the 71st yell as they passed over the ditch, "Why don't you go forward? What the devil are you waiting for?" to which Billie Catling, as he knocked a cowering X—— man from his path, cried out in answer, "It's too hot for 'em, captain. They are going to stay here till this hell freezes over!"As many perhaps as a fourth of the 1st X——, officers and men, fell in with the 71st and the 10th and bravely charged with them up the long slope. The remainder waited till the battle was so far ahead of them that their belated advance could not wipe out the black shame of cowardice.In the hurry of their rush into the breach the adjoining flanks of the 10th and the 71st overlapped and were confused; but it was well that the two regiments were sent to replace the one, for the loss was appalling as they surged forward toward the German lines, and they were not long in being thinned out to an uncrowded basis.The first sight of a man struck and falling to the ground shook Corporal Graham's nerves, and he had to pull himself together sharply to save himself from the weakening horror death always had for him. He turned his eyes resolutely away from the first half-dozen, that were knocked down, and applied himself religiously and consciously to the prescribed method of advancing by rushes; but all his faculties were alert to the dangers of the situation, and he could not shake off his keen sense of peril and of the tragedies around him. Not for long did he suffer thus, however, for as he rose up from the grass for one rush forward a bullet grazed his shin—and changed his whole nature in a twinkling. It did him no real damage and little blood came from the wound, but the pain was intense. He dropped on the earth and grabbed his leg to see what the harm was, and was surprised to find himself uninjured save for the burning, stinging sensation. Then he forgot everything but his pain, and became as pettishly angry in a moment as if he had collided with a rocking-chair in the dark. In that moment he conceived a personal enmity and grudge against the whole German army, and proceeded to avenge his injury on a personal basis. He became as cool and collected as if he were playing a game of checkers, and went in a business-like way about reducing the distance between himself and the gentlemen who had hurt his shin. His anger had dissolved his confusion and neutralized the horrors that were at first upon him. He was more than ever conscious of the falling men about him; but he had his debt to pay,—let them look after their own scores. He saw Lieutenant Wagner stagger and fall and raise up and drag himself into a protecting depression in the ground; he saw the colonel of the 1st X——, fighting with a carbine in his hand right alongside the black troopers of the 10th, drop in a heap and lie so still he knew he was dead; he saw Corporal Billie Catling straighten up and pitch his gun from him as a bullet hit him in the face and carried away the whole back of his head;—yet Graham stopped not to help or to think. He had only one purpose—to reach the man who hit his shin. He saw man after man, many of his own troop, drop in death or blood or agony—and his purpose did not change. Then, a little distance to his left and somewhat to his rear, he saw Colonel Phillips of the 71st go down in the grass; he saw him try to gain his feet, and fail; and then try to drag himself from his very exposed position, and fail. Then Corporal Graham forgot his personal grievance, and thought of the girl and the pennant. He ran across to Colonel Phillips and, finding him shot through both legs, picked him up and carried him for forty yards or more through the hurricane of lead to where the Valencia road made a cut in the long slope; and in this cut, down behind a sheltering curve, he placed him. Not a moment too promptly had the trooper acted, for of all the unfortunates who had fallen anywhere near Colonel Phillips not one but was found riddled with the bullets of the machine-guns when the battle was ended. Graham's own hat was shot away from his head and the officer in his arms received another wound as he bore him out of harm's way.... At the Colonel's request the negro tried to remove the boot from the bleeding right leg, which was broken below the knee. As this was so painful Colonel Phillips handed him a pearl-handled pocket-knife and asked him to cut the boot-top away. Graham did so, and bound a handkerchief around the leg to stop the flow of blood. Having made every other disposition for the officer's comfort which his situation permitted, he looked out in the direction of the battle so wistfully that the Colonel told him he might return to the fight. He did so with a rush, absent-mindedly pocketing the pearl-handled knife as he ran.[image]"CARRIED HIM FOR FORTY YARDS OR MORE THROUGH THE HURRICANE OF LEAD."The firing-line had advanced quite a distance while Graham was rescuing Colonel Phillips and ministering to him; and in his overweening desire to be right at the front of the battle he ran forward without the customary stops for lying down and firing. That they should carry him safe through that driving rain of bullets, despite his indifference to the ordinary rules of the desperate game, was more than reasonably could have been expected of the Fates which had protected him up to that moment from serious harm; and—down he crashed in the grass and lay still without design, while the battle passed farther and farther up the long slope, away from him. In dim half-consciousness he realized what had befallen him; and the only two ideas which found place in his mind were the uncomfortable thought that he would be buried without a bath, and a feeling of satisfaction that the god of battle at least had dignified him with a more respectable wound than a bruised shin-bone.CHAPTER VIWhen two strong, alert men, disputing, come to the final appeal to battle, the decision is usually made quickly. It is only the weak or the unprepared who prolong a fight.So was it that late summer in 191- saw an end of war between Germany and the United States—thanks partially to the intervention of the Powers. And with what result? The result does appear so inadequate! The Monroe Doctrine was still unshaken—and that was worth much perhaps; but ten thousand sailors and the flower of two navies were under the tide, and half as many soldiers dead of fever or fighting in Venezuela; small armies of newly made orphans and widows in Germany and America; mourning and despair in the houses of the desolate,—some hope in the heart of the pension attorney; a new set of heroes on land and sea,—at the top. Long, who at the battle of the Bermudas, finding his own small craft and a wounded German cruiser left afloat of twenty-odd vessels that had begun the fight, in answer to her demand for his surrender, had torpedoed and sunk the German promptly, and to his own everlasting astonishment had managed to save his neck and prevent the battle's becoming a Kilkenny affair by beaching his riddled boat and keeping her flag above water: from Long an endless list of real and fictitious heroes, dwindling by nice gradations in importance as they increased in numbers, till they touched bottom in the raw volunteer infantryman whose wildest tale of adventure was of his exemplary courage in a great storm that swept the God-forsaken sand-bar on which his company had been stationed,—to prevent the German navy's purloining the new-laid foundations of a fort to guard Catfish River.In the long list of heroes Colonel Hayne Phillips was not without prominence. The sailormen were first for their deeds were more numerous and spectacular; but among the soldiers who were in the popular eye he was easily the most lauded. He was a volunteer; and that was everything in his favour, for it put him on a par with members of the regular establishment of ten times his merit. He was nothing more than a brave and patriotic man with a taste for the military and with but little of a professional soldier's knowledge or training; and yet his demonstrated possession of those two qualities alone, patriotism and personal courage (which most men indeed possess, and which are so inseparably associated with one's thought of a regular army officer as to add nothing to his fame or popularity),—the possession of these two simple American virtues had brought to Colonel Phillips the enthusiastic admiration of a hero-loving people, and—what was of more personal advantage to him—the consequent consideration and favour of party-managers in need of a popular idol.These political prestidigitators, mindful of the political successes of the soldiers, Taylor, Grant and Roosevelt, took him and his war record in hand and proceeded to work a few easy miracles. The love and plaudits of a great State and a great nation for a favourite regiment coming home with honour and with the glory of hard-won battle upon its standards were skilfully turned to account for partisan political uses. The deeds and virtues of a thousand men were deftly placed to the credit of one, and before the very eyes of the people was the legerdemain wrought by which one political party and one Colonel Phillips drew all the dividends from the investment of treasure and of blood and of patriotic energy and devotion which that thousand men had made without a thought of politics or pay.The partisan press, as always advertent to the peculiar penchant hero-worship has for ignoring patent absurdities, overdrew the picture—but no harm was done: for while truth of fact was disregarded and abused, essential truth suffered no hurt. Although enterprising newspapers did furnish for the political campaign one photogravure of Colonel Phillips leading the 71st regiment over the German earthworks at the battle of Valencia, and another of him in the act of receiving the German commander's sword on that occasion—these things did the gallant Colonel no injustice. He gladly would have attended to those little matters of the surrender in place of the veteran officer of regulars who officiated. It was through no fault of the 71st's commander that shortness of breath made it impossible for him to keep pace with his men up that long slope; nor in the least to his discredit that he was shot down in the rear of the regiment and his life saved through the bravery of a negro trooper.The Colonel's courage was indeed of the genuine metal and he willingly would have met all the dangers and performed all the mighty deeds accredited to him if opportunity had come to him. Being conscious of this willingness in his own soul, he took no measures to correct impressions of his prowess made upon the minds of misinformed thousands of voters. The error was not in a mistaken public opinion as to his valour, for that was all that was claimed for it, but in the people's belief in certain spectacular exhibitions of that valour which were really totally imaginary. He knew that he was as brave a man as the people thought: why then quibble over facts that were entirely incidental? The hero-idolaters swallowed in faith and ecstasy all the details which an inventive and energetic press bureau could turn out, and cried for more: and the nomination for the presidency practically had been tendered to him by acclamation almost a year before the convention assembled which officially commissioned him its standard-bearer.Colonel Phillips' campaign was attended by one wild hurrah from start to finish. It was pyrotechnic. Other candidates for this office of all dignity have awaited calmly at home the authoritative call of the people; but the materia medica of politics teaches that to quicken a sluggish pulse in the electorate a hero must be administered directly and vigorously into the system. So the Colonel was sent upon his mighty "swing around the circle."In that sweeping vote-drive many weapons were displayed, but only one saw any real service. That was the Colonel's gray and battered campaign hat. He wore it for the sake of comfort, to be sure; but, like the log cabin and grandfather's hat of the Harrisons, the rails of Lincoln, and the Rough Riders uniform of Roosevelt, it was the tumult-raising and final answer to every argument and appeal of the opposition. It uprooted party loyalties, silenced partisan prejudices, overrode eloquence and oratory, beat back and battered down the shrewd attacks and defences of political manipulation, and contemptuously kicked aside anything savouring of serious political reasoning. The convention which nominated him had indeed formulated and declared an admirable platform upon which he should go before the people, and he placed himself squarely on that platform; but the gaze of the people never got far enough below that campaign hat to notice what its wearer was standing on.Colonel Phillips was a sincere, honest, candid, plain-spoken politician—for politician he was if he was anything, while yet so fearless of party whips and mandates that his name was synonymous with honesty and lofty civic purpose. So, feeling his own purposes ringing true to the declarations of his party's platform he did not deem it necessary to direct the distracted attention of the people to these prosy matters of statecraft when they were taking such a friendly interest in his headgear. If they were willing to blindly follow the hat, he knew in his honest heart that the man under it would carry that hat along paths of political righteousness.He was indeed playing upon every chord of popular feeling and seeking the favour of every man with a ballot. He had always fought to win in every contest he had entered, from single-stick to war, and he made no exception of this race for the chieftaincy of the Republic. It was to be expected, therefore, that the large negro vote in pivotal States, as well as his natural love of justice and his admiration for a brave soldiery, would lead him to pay enthusiastic and deserved tribute to the negro troops who had served in the Venezuelan campaign. He paid these tributes religiously and brilliantly in every speech he made, but always in general and impersonal terms and without a hint of his own debt to a corporal of the 10th Cavalry. There was no need for such minutiæ of course, for that was a purely personal affair between him and an unknown negro who might be dead and buried for all he knew; while, besides, a recital of these unimportant details would necessitate a fruitless revision of other incidental ideas now pleasantly fixed in the public mind. He sometimes entertained his wife and daughters with the story of how a trooper of the 10th had saved his life, but never did he sound the personal note in public.Colonel Phillips made votes with every speech and it looked as if he would win. He deserved to win, for he was honest, capable, clean. As election day drew near the opposing candidate received a confidential letter from his campaign manager in which that veteran politician said:"I have lost and won many hats in my political career, but this is the first time I have ever been called upon to fight a hat—just a hat—to settle a Presidency. This is a hat campaign; and you have evidently made the mistake of going bareheaded all your life. You seem, too, to have limited yourself to a home-grown ancestry. The Colonel is simply wearing a hat and claiming kin with everything from a Plymouth Rock rooster to a palmetto-tree. The newspapers are getting on my nerves with their unending references to that campaign-hat and Phillips' ding-dong about the unity and virility of American blood and his mother's being a South Carolinian."*      *      *      *      *"The cards are running against us."CHAPTER VIIColonel Phillips' daughters were enjoying life to the full in their long summer outing on the St. Lawrence. The older, Elise, had just finished with the schools and was free from many of the restraints which the strict and old-fashioned ideas of her mother had put upon her during her girlhood, and was filled with a lively enjoyment of her first untrammelled association with the males of her kind. Helen was still a girl, and her mother yet threw about her all the guards and fences that properly hedge about the days of maidenhood. But this did not in the slightest check the flow of Helen's joy in life, for the matter of sex in her associates was not an element in her happiness. Boy or girl, it mattered not to her, if her fellow in the hour's sport was quick-witted, quick-moving and mischief-loving. The extent of her thoughts of love was that it and its victims were most excellent objects of banter and ridicule; and she found the incipient affair between Elise and Evans Rutledge a source of much fun."Are you a hero?" she once asked Mr. Rutledge solemnly."Not to my own knowledge," Rutledge answered. "Why?""Because if you are you may be my brother sometime. Elise likes you a little, I think, and she thinks your hair would curl beautifully if you didn't crop it so close—but you will have to be a hero. You needn't fear Mr. Morgan. He failed to be a hero when he had the chance, and now his chance is gone. Nobody but a hero can interest Elise for keeps.""When did Morgan have his chance?" asked Rutledge, amused at the mischief-maker's plain speaking."He went to Venezuela in papa's regiment, but never had a shot fired at him the whole time he was gone. That's what he did. Elise cannot love a man like that.""Perhaps it was not his fault. He may have been detailed to such duties as kept him away from the shots.""Yes, I think he says he was; but what of that? He wasn't in the fighting, and that's what it takes to make a hero. Oh, I wish I were a man. I would ride a horse and hunt lions and tigers, and I would have gone to the war in Venezuela and nobody's orders would have kept me from the firing-line—I believe that's what papa calls it—the place where all the fun and danger is. When papa talks about it I can hear my heart beat. Elise says she wouldn't be a man for anything; but I've heard her say that she could love a man if he was aman—brave and strong—you know—a man who did things. I would prefer to do the things myself. I wouldn't love any man I ever saw—unless he was just like papa. What regiment were you in, Mr. Rutledge?""I wasn't in any regiment," said Rutledge meekly."What! Didn't you volunteer?" asked Helen in surprise."I did not volunteer"—a trifle defiantly."Why?" Helen demanded scornfully. "If I had a brother and he had failed to volunteer I would never have spoken to him again! I thought all South Carolinians were fighters.""I had other things to attend to," said Rutledge shortly. "Where is Miss Phillips this afternoon?""She's out on the river with Mr. Morgan. They will not be back till dinner, so you would just as well sit down here and talk to me.... But I'm sorry you didn't volunteer—you will never be my brother now.... And I was beginning to like you so much.""I thank you, little girl, for your attempt to think well of me. I see that I have sinned past your forgiveness in not being a hero. Remember that it is only because ninety and nine men are commonplace that the hundredth may be a hero. I am one of the ninety and nine that make the hero possible—a modest king-maker, in a way. A hero must have some one else to fight for, or die for, or live for. He cannot do these things for himself, for that would make him anything but a hero. So you see that the second person is as necessary to the process of hero-making as the hero himself. It's all in the process and not in the product, anyway. It's the hero in act and not in fact, in the making and not in the taking, that enjoys his own heroism and is worth our interest. While he is making himself he thrills with the effort and with the uncertainty as to whether he will get a commission, a lathe-and-plaster arch, or a court of inquiry; and we the ninety and nine, we thrill with the gambling fever and make wagers that his trolley will get off the wire. But when he gets himself done—clean done, so to speak, wrapped in tinfoil and ready for use—then there is nothing left for the hero to do but to pose and await our applause—which is most unheroic; and we, after one whoop, forget him in the excitement of watching the next candidate risk his neck. Besides, the hero's work in hero-making is temporary and limited, for he stops with making one; but we, when we have finished with one, turn to the making of another, and our work is never done. While I am not even one hero, I have helped to make a hundred. Come now—you are generous and unselfish—which would you most admire, one finished hero listening for applause, or a hero-maker, who, without reward or the hope of reward, modestly and continuously assists in thus bringing glory to an endless procession of his fellows?""You think you are brilliant, Mr. Rutledge," answered Helen with an impatient toss of her head, "but you can't confuse me by any such talk as that. You needn't think you will be able to persuade Elise by any long jumble of words that you are greater than a hero. A king-maker!" She laughed mockingly at him."Don't fear that I will use any sophistry or doubtful method to become your brother," Rutledge rejoined amusedly. "I have only one thing to tell Miss Phillips.""And what is that?" asked Helen with interest."I am inexpressibly pained to refuse your lightest wish," said Rutledge grandiloquently, "but to grant your request would be—telling; and I may—not tell,—perhaps,—even Miss Phillips.""Do not suffer so," said Helen with an assumption of great indifference. "I don't care to hear it.""Yes, I predict that you will be delighted to listen to it when it is told to you," said Rutledge confidently. "And it will be beyond doubt. But you are too young to hear such things yet. Be patient. You'll get older if you live long enough."It fretted Helen to be told that she was young, as she was told a dozen times a day—not that she disliked her youth, but because of the suggestion that she was not free to do as she pleased; and her eyes began to flash at Rutledge's taunt and her mind to form a suitable expression of resentment—when that gentleman walked away from her smiling at her petulant anger.Evans Rutledge had more interest in Helen's words about her sister than he showed in his manner or conversation. He had not told Elise what his heart had told him for many days past, though she did not need spoken words to know. He, manlike, thought that he was keeping this knowledge of his supreme affection for her a secret in his own soul, to be delivered as a startling and effective surprise when an impressive and strategic opportunity should come to tell her of it. She, womanlike, read him as easily as a college professor is supposed to read Greek, and concerned herself chiefly with feigning ignorance of his interest in her.Elise's true attitude toward Rutledge was a sort of neutrality. She was neither for him nor against him. She was attracted by everything she saw or knew of him, and looked upon him with that more than passing interest which every woman has for a man who has asked or will ask her to be his wife.On the other hand she was decided she could not accept Rutledge. She had but crossed the threshold of her unfettered young womanhood, and her natural and healthy zest in its pleasures overcame any natural impulse to choose a mate. Added to this were the possibilities held out in her romantic imagination as the increasing newspaper prophecies concerning her father induced day-dreams of court-like scenes and princely suitors when she should be the young lady of the White House, the most exalted maiden in great America, with the prerogative of a crown princess. A temporary prerogative surely, but well-nigh irresistible when combined with the compelling charm of American womanhood, that by right of genius assumes the high positions for which nature has endowed the gentlewomen of this republic, and by right of fine adaptability and inborn queenliness establishes and fortifies them, as if born to the purple, in the social high places of older civilizations.Elise Phillips, with all her democratic training, with her admirable good common sense, with her adorable kindliness of heart and friendliness of spirit for every man and woman of high or low degree, with her sincere admiration for true manliness and pure womanliness unadorned by any tinsel of arbitrary rank, with all her contempt for the shams and pretences of decayed nobilities parading dishonoured titles, was yet too much a woman and too full of the romantic optimism of life's spring-time not to dream of princely youths wearing the white flower of blameless lives who would come in long procession to attend her temporary court.And in that procession as it even now passed before her imagination, she kept watch forhim,—the ideal of her maiden soul, the master of her virgin heart;—him, with the blue eyes and flaxen hair and the commanding figure that looked down upon all other men;—him, with the look and gesture of power that men obeyed and women adored, and that became tender and adoring only for her;—him, with a rank that made him to stand before kings with confidence, and a clean life that might stand before her white soul and feel no shame;—him, with a strength and courage that failed not nor faltered along the rocky paths by which the laurel and Victoria Crosses grow, and that yet would falter and tremble with love in her presence. Oh, the wonderful dreams of Youth! How real they are, and how powerful in changing the issues of life and of death.Had Rutledge taken counsel of his mother or heeded her disapprobation of Miss Elise Phillips, he would have saved himself at least from the pain of a flouted love; and if he could have made his heart obey his mother's wish he would have avoided the stress of many heartaches and jealousies, and of slow-dying hope.Mrs. Rutledge had her young womanhood in the heart-burning days of the Great War, and the partisan impress then seared into her young soul was ineradicable. She had a youth that knew fully the passions and the sorrows of that awful four years of blood and strife: for every man of her house, father and five brothers, had she seen dead and cold in their uniforms of gray; and her antipathy for "those people" who had sent anguish and never-ending desolation into her life might lie dormant if memory was unprovoked, but it could never change nor lose its sharp vehemence.She had objected to Elise from the moment her son showed a fancy for her, and began quietly to sow in his mind the seeds she hoped would grow into dislike and aversion. She told him that "those people," as she invariably called persons who came from that indefinite stretch of country which her mind comprehended in the term "the North," were "not of our sort,"—that they were intelligent and interesting in a way;—that Elise Phillips was unquestionably fascinating to a young man, that her money had given her a polish of mind and manner that was admittedly attractive; but that she was not fitted to be the life companion of a man whose culture and gentlemanliness was not a product of schools and of dollars but a heritage from long generations of gentle ancestors who had bequeathed to him converging legacies of fine and gentle breeding.Evans Rutledge, however, was of a new day; and his mother's theory that good blood was a Southern and sectional product found no place in his thought. He was tender, however, and considerate of his mother's prejudices, and was never so rude as to brush them aside contemptuously. He always treated them with deference and tried always to meet them with some show of reason. In the case of Elise Phillips he sought to placate his mother's whim and capture her prejudice by tacitly agreeing to the general proposition while excepting Elise from it by the use of Colonel Phillips' well-worn statement that his mother was a South Carolinian."That makes Miss Phillips a granddaughter of South Carolina," said Rutledge to his mother; "and surely there cannot be much degeneracy in two generations,—especially when the Southern blood was of the finest strain."Mrs. Rutledge admitted that the argument was not without force, but solemnly warned her son there was no telling when the common strain might crop out."What's bred in the bone will come out in the blood," she said, "and bad blood is more assertive than good."Evans loved his mother better than any other soul except Elise, and he would go far and deny himself much to obey even her most unreasonable whim, but his love for Elise was too fervid a passion to be stifled for the sake of a war-born prejudice. He would win her; yes, he must win her; and he waited only the winning moment to plead openly for his happiness.

CHAPTER IV

On the first day of April, 191-, Hayward Graham, wearing the single-barred yellow chevrons of a lance-corporal in Troop M of the 10th Cavalry, was sitting flat on the ground, perspiring and inwardly grumbling as he rubbed away at his sawed-off rifle, and mentally moralizing on his inglorious condition. There was he, almost a graduate of Harvard, a gentleman, accustomed to a bath-tub and a toothbrush, bound up hard and fast for three years' association with a crowd of illiterate, roistering, unwashed, and in the present situation unwashable, negroes of every shade from pale yellow to ebony. Why, thought he, should negroes always be dumped all into one heap as if they were all of one grade? Didn't the government know there were negroes and negroes? Whimsically he wondered why the officers didn't sort them out among the troops like they did the horses, according to colour,—blacks, browns, yellows, ash-coloured, snuff-coloured. Then what possibilities in matching or contrasting the shades of the troopers with those of their mounts: black horse, yellow rider,—bay horse, black rider,—sorrel horse, gingersnap rider—no, that wouldn't do, inartistic combination! And what colour of steed would tastily trim off that freckled abomination of a sergeant yonder? Can't be done,—scheme's a failure!—damn that sergeant anyhow, he had confiscated Graham's only toothbrush to clean his gun with. Graham again records his oath to thrash him when his three years is up.

But three years is an age. It will never roll round. Only two months has he been a soldier, and yet everything that happened before that is becoming vague—even the smile on Helen Phillips' face. He cannot close his eyes and conjure up the picture as he did at first.

Graham was out of temper. Cavalry wasn't what it is cracked up to be, and a horse was of more trouble than convenience anyway, he was convinced. In the battle-drills the men had been put through so repeatedly day after day the horse played no part, and what riding Graham had done so far had served only to make him so sore and stiff that he could neither ride nor walk in comfort. He heartily repented his choice and wished he had taken the infantry, where a man has to look out only for himself and his gun. Oh, the troubles, the numberless troubles, of a green soldier!

All of Corporal Graham's military notions were affronted, and his right-dress, upstanding ideas of soldiering were shattered. The reality is a matter of pushing a curry-comb, getting your nose and mouth and eyes filled with horse-hairs, which get down your neck and up your sleeves, and stick in the sweat and won't come off and there's no water to wash them off. Then the drills—save the mark!—not as much precision in them as in a football manoeuvre,—just a spreading out into a thin line and running forward for five seconds perhaps, falling on your belly and pretending to fire three rounds at an imaginary foe, then jumping up and doing it all over again till you feel faint and foolish,—every man for himself, no order, no alignment, one man crouching behind a shrub, another falling prone on the ground, another hiding behind a tree,—surely no pomp or circumstance or glory in that business. Graham's study of punctilios did him no service there. Not a parade had the regiment had. Mobilized at a Southern port only three days before the sailing of the transport, it had taken every hour of the time to load the horses and equipment and supplies. Graham had found that fighting is a very small part of soldiering, which is mostly drudgery, and he had revised his idea of war several times since his enlistment.

He thought as he sat cleaning his rifle that surely the preliminaries were about over, and, if camp rumour counted for anything, that the day of battle could not be more than one or two suns away. He would have his gun in fine working order, for good luck might bring some shooting on the morrow. At any rate his carbine must glisten when he becomes part of to-morrow's guard, and he hoped that he would be put right on the point of the advance picket. He hadn't had a shave in three weeks, and his uniform was sweat-stained and dusty, and he could not hope to look spick and span; but his gun could be shiny, and he knew Lieutenant Wagner well enough by that time to have learned that a clean gun counted for more with him than a clean shirt. So he hoped and prayed that he would be selected for some duty that was worth while.

The brigades under General Bell, which had been landed at Alta Gracia with difficulty, were pressing forward with all haste to cut off a garrison of Germans that had been thrown into Puerto Cabello from the German cruisers, and to prevent the arrival of reinforcements which were being rushed to their aid from Caracas. Reports from native scouts and communications from General Mañana himself placed the number of these reinforcements at from five to seven thousand. General Bell doubted that this force was so large, but was anxious to meet it, whatever its size.

Despite the vigilance of the all too meagre patrol of warships for Venezuelan waters which the United States had been able to spare from the necessary guard for her Atlantic and Gulf ports, the forehanded and ever-ready Kaiser had landed seven or eight thousand troops from a fleet of transports at Cumana, and with characteristic German promptness had occupied Caracas and Barcelona before Uncle Sam had been able to put any troops on Venezuelan soil. It seemed nonsense for either Germany or the United States to care to fight any battles down in that little out-of-the-way place. They could find other more accessible and far more important battle-grounds: but no, as the Monroe Doctrine forbade Germany to make a foothold in Venezuela and her doing so was the casus belli, the ethics of the affair demanded that there should be a bona fide forcible ejectment of the Kaiser's troops from Venezuelan territory by the United States. The battles there might be only a side issue, and the real test of strength might come at any or all of a dozen places on land and sea, but there must be some fighting done in Venezuela just to prove that the cause of war was not fanciful.

General Bell's brigades were one under General Earnhardt, consisting of the 5th, 7th, 10th and 15th Cavalry, and a second, including the 4th and 11th regular infantry, the 71st Ohio, and the 1st X——, under General Cowles, with a battalion of engineers and four batteries of field artillery. General Earnhardt's cavalry brigade was striving to reach the Valencia road, the only passable route from Caracas to Puerto Cabello, before the German force should pass. General Mañana had sent a courier to say that he would hold the Germans in check till Earnhardt's arrival.

On the morning of April 2d Graham was among the advance pickets and almost forgot his saddle pains and creaking joints in the excitement of expected battle. For half a day Earnhardt pushed forward as fast as the trail would permit. He had halted his troops for five minutes' rest about noon, when a native on a wiry pony, riding like one possessed, dashed into the picket and came near getting his head punched off before he could make Graham understand that he was a friend with a message for theAmericano capitan. Graham carried him before General Earnhardt, who at the head of his column was reclining on a bank beside the trail, perspiring and dusty and brushing viciously at the flies and mosquitoes that swarmed around him. The general did not change his position when the native, who was clad in a nondescript but much-beribboned uniform, slid from his horse and with a ceremonious bow and salute informed him that he was Captain Miguel of General Mañana's staff, and had the honour to report that he was despatched by General Mañana to say that, despite that gentleman's earnest and desperate resistance, a large and outnumbering force of German cavalry had forced a passage of the road to Puerto Cabello about eleven o'clock that morning. While Captain Miguel was delivering his elaborate message to the disgusted cavalryman, the picket passed in an old soldier of the 10th who had been detailed as a scout at the beginning of the campaign; and this scout rode up to report just as the native captain finished speaking. Earnhardt turned impatiently from Mañana's aide to his own trusted man and said:

"Well, Morris, what is it?"

"Small force of German cavalry, sir, had a scrimmage with General Mañana's troops this morning on the Valencia road, and rode on in the direction of Puerto Cabello."

"How many Germans got through?" asked the general.

"All of them, sir; about two troops, as near as I could count."

"And how many men did Mañana have?" the question came sharply.

"Something like fifteen hundred I should judge, sir, from the sound of the firing and what I could see," answered the scout.

General Earnhardt, without rising, turned with unconcealed contempt to Captain Miguel and said:

"My compliments to General Mañana, and he's a —— old fraud and I don't want to have anything more to do with him;" and while the red-splashed aide was trying to solve the curt message which he but half understood, the trumpeter at a word from the angry cavalryman soundedmountandforwardand the brigade was again off at top speed, hoping still to cut off the main relief force sent out from Caracas. General Earnhardt considered himself a lucky soldier to find that this force had not passed when at last he reached the road (which was hardly worthy of the name highway, though one of the thoroughfares of Venezuela); and he hastily disposed his forces to meet the German advance.

It was not long in coming. The crack of a rifle was the first notice Corporal Graham had that he was about to be under fire. He felt a cold breeze blow upon his back for a moment, and then as the popping began to approach a rattle the joy of contest entered his soul and sent his blood bounding.

But the joy was short-lived. When the Germans came near enough to see that they were opposed by men in Uncle Sam's uniform, and not by the nagging natives who had been popping harmlessly away at them from the roadside, they decided it was best not to be too precipitate. They stopped and began to feel for the American line. After some desultory sharpshooting they finally located it, and quieted down to wait till the German commander could get his little army up and into line of battle.

Then Hayward Graham had to sit still and hold his gun while the exhilaration and enthusiasm died down in him like the fiz in a glass of soda-water. He had worked his nerves up to such a tension that the reaction was nothing less than painful, and he was full of impatience and profanity. He could hardly wait for to-morrow, when Germany and Uncle Sam would get up after a good night's rest and lay on like men.

Again what was his unspeakable disgust and almost unbearable disappointment when the next morning came and he was detailed as stable guard, and given charge of the 10th's corral, quite a distance in rear of the line of battle and absolutely out of all danger. Profanity was a lame and feeble remedy for that situation. He sat down and growled.

"Oh, for an assorted supply of languages in which to separately and collectively and properly consign this whole bloody system of details to the cellar of Hades!"

A veteran sergeant of Graham's troop, who on occasions wore a medal of honour on his blouse, and at all times bore an unsightly scar on his cheek as a souvenir of Wounded Knee, sought to soothe the young man's feelings.

"It all comes along in the run of the business, corporal," he said. "Soldiering is not all fighting. A man earns his money by doing whatever duty is assigned to him."

Graham answered with heat: "I didn't come into this nasty, sweaty, horse-smelly business for any such consideration as fifteen dollars a month and feed, and if I am to miss the scrapping and the glory I prefer to cut the whole affair."

His temper improved, however, as the day began to drag itself away with no sound of conflict from the battle-line save the occasional pop of a pot-shot by the pickets, and as the rumour began to leak back to the corral that both sides must be waiting for their guns to come up. This was doubtless true: for the four batteries of American artillery arrived late in the afternoon, and the infantry brigade was all up by nightfall.

CHAPTER V

The two small armies were separated by the valley of a small stream which ran in a broad circle around the low wooded hills or range of hills upon which the Germans were entrenched. This valley was from a mile to a mile and a half wide, and the water-course was much nearer the outer or American side. The bed of this stream would furnish an excellent breastwork or entrenchment for the American troops if they should see fit to use it, but it was not tenable by the Germans because it was at most all points subject to an enfilading fire from the American position. The surface of the valley was slightly broken and undulating on the German side, but clear of timber and covered only with grass, while on the American side the rise was more precipitous and covered with a scattering growth of trees and bush.

On arriving and looking over the ground General Bell ordered that during the night his artillery should be placed and concealed on the commanding heights which his position afforded; and that his fighting-line, composed of the 5th and 15th Cavalry as his left wing, the 1st X—— as his centre, and the 4th and 11th Infantry as his right wing, be moved forward down the slope and into the bed of the stream, leaving as a reserve the 71st Ohio and the 10th Cavalry located approximately in rear of the centre of his line of battle. The 7th Cavalry he had sent out toward Puerto Cabello to hold in check any possible German troops that might appear from that quarter.

Corporal Hayward Graham, back at the 10th's corral, had recovered his spirits as the day dragged along without any sound of battle, and he began to congratulate himself that he would finish up in good time all details that would keep him out of the fighting. When he walked over to the line late in the afternoon, however, and learned that the whole regiment was to be held out of the fight as a reserve, he immediately surmised that the 10th was kept out of it because they were negroes, and that the others from the general down wanted to scoop all the glory for the white soldiery,—and again he sat down and cursed the negro blood in his veins. The only salve to his outraged spirit was the information that those high and mighty prigs of the 71st were also to miss the glory. He even chuckled when he thought of the chagrin of Lieutenant Morgan and pictured to himself the scene of the lieutenant's meeting with Miss Elise Phillips if he should have to go back and explain to her how he came not to be under fire. Then he remembered Helen Phillips and the crimson pennant locked up in his trunk, and he felt that the whole war would count for naught if he had no chance to do something worthy of that pennant and of her. He wandered listlessly along the lines and tried to forget his troubles in listening to the talk of the fortunates who were going in.

He came to where a crowd of 1st X—— men were chaffing a squad of the 71st for "taking a gallery-seat at the show." Corporal Billie Catling of the 71st replied that they took the "gallery-seat" under orders and were put behind the 1st X—— to see that they didn't dodge a fight again like they did in Cuba.

"That's a damn lie!" came the 1st X——'s rejoinder in chorus; to which one of them added, "The 1st X—— never ran out of any fight in Cuba, and you gallery-gods can go to sleep or go to the devil, for we'll stay here till hell freezes over so thick you can skate on the ice."

"Well, you may not have runoutof any fight in Cuba, but it's blamed certain you didn'trun into one," retorted the 71st's spokesman.

"Now, sonny," yelled the X—— man, "don't get sassy because you're not permitted to sit down along with your betters. Run along and wait for the second table with the niggers!"

The 71st's contingent could not find a suitable retort to this sally, and, as fighting was out of the question, they walked away muttering imprecations amid the jeers of the men from X——.

Graham enjoyed the discomfiture of the 71st; but he was more than ever convinced that the colour of the 10th accounted for its being robbed of a chance for fame in this campaign: and he went back to his duty in a mutinous mood. He could not know that General Bell had held this veteran negro regiment in reserve because of its proved steadiness and valour; nor that he had placed the untried 1st X—— in his centre because it would thus be in the easiest supporting distance of his reserves.

The battle opened on April 3d the moment it became light enough for the gunners to locate the half-hidden German lines and artillery. For awhile the cannoneers had it all between themselves; and in this duel the advantage was with the Americans, for their position gave them better protection—the fighting-line being sheltered by the stream-bed and the guns and reserves by the hill. The Germans were entrenched on a hill as high as the Americans, but it was much flatter and afforded less natural cover.

After two or three hours of pounding the Germans with his artillery, which was evidently inflicting great damage, General Bell ordered his line forward to carry the German position by assault. Then the battle began in earnest. The German machine-guns opened on the American line as it rose out of the stream-bed and began its slow and terrible journey across the open valley by short rushes. The first breath of lead and iron that dashed in the faces of the American troops as they stood up began the work of death; and it came so promptly and so viciously that it overwhelmed the raw discipline and untempered metal of the 1st X——; for before advancing thirty paces the line wavered and broke and retreated ignobly to the sheltering bank of the stream. Not all the regiment broke at once; but the break and stampede of one company quickly spread along the entire regimental front, and back into the ditch they dived. Some of the officers cursed and commanded and entreated; but to no purpose. The wings of the American line were advancing steadily but slowly, standing up for a few moments to dash forward a dozen yards, and then lying as close to the ground as possible while returning the terrible fire from the hills in front of them.

General Bell from his position of vantage saw the failure of the 1st X—— to advance, and waited a few moments in hope that a half-dozen officers who were recklessly exposing themselves in their attempts to urge the men forward might succeed in their efforts. As it became evident that the regiment would not face the deadly fire of the Germans, however, and as the wings of the battle-line were diverging as they advanced because of the formation of the ground in their front, General Bell waited no longer, but ordered forward both the 10th Cavalry and the 71st Ohio. These came over the hill on the run and dropped down the slope into the water-course, where the heroic handful of officers were still making frantic efforts to have the 1st X—— go forward. A captain was violently berating his men for their cowardice and imploring them to advance, while his first lieutenant squeezed down behind the bank was yelling at them not to move. A major of one battalion was standing up straight and fully exposed, waving his sword and appealing to his men by every token of courage, while another major was lying as close to the bottom of the ditch as a spreading-adder. At places the men seemed to want to move, while the officers crouched in fear; while at others officers by no amount of commands or entreaties could get a man out of the ditch. A panic of terror seemed to be upon the regiment which the few untouched spirits were not able to overcome by any power of sharp commands, or violent pleading, or reckless examples of courage.

The boys of the 71st and the negro troopers of the 10th did not treat the X—— men tenderly as they passed over them. They jumped down upon them as they lay in the ditch and tramped upon them or kicked them out of the way contemptuously, while the fear-smitten creatures were as unresentful as hounds. Corporal Graham, near the left flank of the 10th, heard an officer of the 71st yell as they passed over the ditch, "Why don't you go forward? What the devil are you waiting for?" to which Billie Catling, as he knocked a cowering X—— man from his path, cried out in answer, "It's too hot for 'em, captain. They are going to stay here till this hell freezes over!"

As many perhaps as a fourth of the 1st X——, officers and men, fell in with the 71st and the 10th and bravely charged with them up the long slope. The remainder waited till the battle was so far ahead of them that their belated advance could not wipe out the black shame of cowardice.

In the hurry of their rush into the breach the adjoining flanks of the 10th and the 71st overlapped and were confused; but it was well that the two regiments were sent to replace the one, for the loss was appalling as they surged forward toward the German lines, and they were not long in being thinned out to an uncrowded basis.

The first sight of a man struck and falling to the ground shook Corporal Graham's nerves, and he had to pull himself together sharply to save himself from the weakening horror death always had for him. He turned his eyes resolutely away from the first half-dozen, that were knocked down, and applied himself religiously and consciously to the prescribed method of advancing by rushes; but all his faculties were alert to the dangers of the situation, and he could not shake off his keen sense of peril and of the tragedies around him. Not for long did he suffer thus, however, for as he rose up from the grass for one rush forward a bullet grazed his shin—and changed his whole nature in a twinkling. It did him no real damage and little blood came from the wound, but the pain was intense. He dropped on the earth and grabbed his leg to see what the harm was, and was surprised to find himself uninjured save for the burning, stinging sensation. Then he forgot everything but his pain, and became as pettishly angry in a moment as if he had collided with a rocking-chair in the dark. In that moment he conceived a personal enmity and grudge against the whole German army, and proceeded to avenge his injury on a personal basis. He became as cool and collected as if he were playing a game of checkers, and went in a business-like way about reducing the distance between himself and the gentlemen who had hurt his shin. His anger had dissolved his confusion and neutralized the horrors that were at first upon him. He was more than ever conscious of the falling men about him; but he had his debt to pay,—let them look after their own scores. He saw Lieutenant Wagner stagger and fall and raise up and drag himself into a protecting depression in the ground; he saw the colonel of the 1st X——, fighting with a carbine in his hand right alongside the black troopers of the 10th, drop in a heap and lie so still he knew he was dead; he saw Corporal Billie Catling straighten up and pitch his gun from him as a bullet hit him in the face and carried away the whole back of his head;—yet Graham stopped not to help or to think. He had only one purpose—to reach the man who hit his shin. He saw man after man, many of his own troop, drop in death or blood or agony—and his purpose did not change. Then, a little distance to his left and somewhat to his rear, he saw Colonel Phillips of the 71st go down in the grass; he saw him try to gain his feet, and fail; and then try to drag himself from his very exposed position, and fail. Then Corporal Graham forgot his personal grievance, and thought of the girl and the pennant. He ran across to Colonel Phillips and, finding him shot through both legs, picked him up and carried him for forty yards or more through the hurricane of lead to where the Valencia road made a cut in the long slope; and in this cut, down behind a sheltering curve, he placed him. Not a moment too promptly had the trooper acted, for of all the unfortunates who had fallen anywhere near Colonel Phillips not one but was found riddled with the bullets of the machine-guns when the battle was ended. Graham's own hat was shot away from his head and the officer in his arms received another wound as he bore him out of harm's way.... At the Colonel's request the negro tried to remove the boot from the bleeding right leg, which was broken below the knee. As this was so painful Colonel Phillips handed him a pearl-handled pocket-knife and asked him to cut the boot-top away. Graham did so, and bound a handkerchief around the leg to stop the flow of blood. Having made every other disposition for the officer's comfort which his situation permitted, he looked out in the direction of the battle so wistfully that the Colonel told him he might return to the fight. He did so with a rush, absent-mindedly pocketing the pearl-handled knife as he ran.

[image]"CARRIED HIM FOR FORTY YARDS OR MORE THROUGH THE HURRICANE OF LEAD."

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"CARRIED HIM FOR FORTY YARDS OR MORE THROUGH THE HURRICANE OF LEAD."

The firing-line had advanced quite a distance while Graham was rescuing Colonel Phillips and ministering to him; and in his overweening desire to be right at the front of the battle he ran forward without the customary stops for lying down and firing. That they should carry him safe through that driving rain of bullets, despite his indifference to the ordinary rules of the desperate game, was more than reasonably could have been expected of the Fates which had protected him up to that moment from serious harm; and—down he crashed in the grass and lay still without design, while the battle passed farther and farther up the long slope, away from him. In dim half-consciousness he realized what had befallen him; and the only two ideas which found place in his mind were the uncomfortable thought that he would be buried without a bath, and a feeling of satisfaction that the god of battle at least had dignified him with a more respectable wound than a bruised shin-bone.

CHAPTER VI

When two strong, alert men, disputing, come to the final appeal to battle, the decision is usually made quickly. It is only the weak or the unprepared who prolong a fight.

So was it that late summer in 191- saw an end of war between Germany and the United States—thanks partially to the intervention of the Powers. And with what result? The result does appear so inadequate! The Monroe Doctrine was still unshaken—and that was worth much perhaps; but ten thousand sailors and the flower of two navies were under the tide, and half as many soldiers dead of fever or fighting in Venezuela; small armies of newly made orphans and widows in Germany and America; mourning and despair in the houses of the desolate,—some hope in the heart of the pension attorney; a new set of heroes on land and sea,—at the top. Long, who at the battle of the Bermudas, finding his own small craft and a wounded German cruiser left afloat of twenty-odd vessels that had begun the fight, in answer to her demand for his surrender, had torpedoed and sunk the German promptly, and to his own everlasting astonishment had managed to save his neck and prevent the battle's becoming a Kilkenny affair by beaching his riddled boat and keeping her flag above water: from Long an endless list of real and fictitious heroes, dwindling by nice gradations in importance as they increased in numbers, till they touched bottom in the raw volunteer infantryman whose wildest tale of adventure was of his exemplary courage in a great storm that swept the God-forsaken sand-bar on which his company had been stationed,—to prevent the German navy's purloining the new-laid foundations of a fort to guard Catfish River.

In the long list of heroes Colonel Hayne Phillips was not without prominence. The sailormen were first for their deeds were more numerous and spectacular; but among the soldiers who were in the popular eye he was easily the most lauded. He was a volunteer; and that was everything in his favour, for it put him on a par with members of the regular establishment of ten times his merit. He was nothing more than a brave and patriotic man with a taste for the military and with but little of a professional soldier's knowledge or training; and yet his demonstrated possession of those two qualities alone, patriotism and personal courage (which most men indeed possess, and which are so inseparably associated with one's thought of a regular army officer as to add nothing to his fame or popularity),—the possession of these two simple American virtues had brought to Colonel Phillips the enthusiastic admiration of a hero-loving people, and—what was of more personal advantage to him—the consequent consideration and favour of party-managers in need of a popular idol.

These political prestidigitators, mindful of the political successes of the soldiers, Taylor, Grant and Roosevelt, took him and his war record in hand and proceeded to work a few easy miracles. The love and plaudits of a great State and a great nation for a favourite regiment coming home with honour and with the glory of hard-won battle upon its standards were skilfully turned to account for partisan political uses. The deeds and virtues of a thousand men were deftly placed to the credit of one, and before the very eyes of the people was the legerdemain wrought by which one political party and one Colonel Phillips drew all the dividends from the investment of treasure and of blood and of patriotic energy and devotion which that thousand men had made without a thought of politics or pay.

The partisan press, as always advertent to the peculiar penchant hero-worship has for ignoring patent absurdities, overdrew the picture—but no harm was done: for while truth of fact was disregarded and abused, essential truth suffered no hurt. Although enterprising newspapers did furnish for the political campaign one photogravure of Colonel Phillips leading the 71st regiment over the German earthworks at the battle of Valencia, and another of him in the act of receiving the German commander's sword on that occasion—these things did the gallant Colonel no injustice. He gladly would have attended to those little matters of the surrender in place of the veteran officer of regulars who officiated. It was through no fault of the 71st's commander that shortness of breath made it impossible for him to keep pace with his men up that long slope; nor in the least to his discredit that he was shot down in the rear of the regiment and his life saved through the bravery of a negro trooper.

The Colonel's courage was indeed of the genuine metal and he willingly would have met all the dangers and performed all the mighty deeds accredited to him if opportunity had come to him. Being conscious of this willingness in his own soul, he took no measures to correct impressions of his prowess made upon the minds of misinformed thousands of voters. The error was not in a mistaken public opinion as to his valour, for that was all that was claimed for it, but in the people's belief in certain spectacular exhibitions of that valour which were really totally imaginary. He knew that he was as brave a man as the people thought: why then quibble over facts that were entirely incidental? The hero-idolaters swallowed in faith and ecstasy all the details which an inventive and energetic press bureau could turn out, and cried for more: and the nomination for the presidency practically had been tendered to him by acclamation almost a year before the convention assembled which officially commissioned him its standard-bearer.

Colonel Phillips' campaign was attended by one wild hurrah from start to finish. It was pyrotechnic. Other candidates for this office of all dignity have awaited calmly at home the authoritative call of the people; but the materia medica of politics teaches that to quicken a sluggish pulse in the electorate a hero must be administered directly and vigorously into the system. So the Colonel was sent upon his mighty "swing around the circle."

In that sweeping vote-drive many weapons were displayed, but only one saw any real service. That was the Colonel's gray and battered campaign hat. He wore it for the sake of comfort, to be sure; but, like the log cabin and grandfather's hat of the Harrisons, the rails of Lincoln, and the Rough Riders uniform of Roosevelt, it was the tumult-raising and final answer to every argument and appeal of the opposition. It uprooted party loyalties, silenced partisan prejudices, overrode eloquence and oratory, beat back and battered down the shrewd attacks and defences of political manipulation, and contemptuously kicked aside anything savouring of serious political reasoning. The convention which nominated him had indeed formulated and declared an admirable platform upon which he should go before the people, and he placed himself squarely on that platform; but the gaze of the people never got far enough below that campaign hat to notice what its wearer was standing on.

Colonel Phillips was a sincere, honest, candid, plain-spoken politician—for politician he was if he was anything, while yet so fearless of party whips and mandates that his name was synonymous with honesty and lofty civic purpose. So, feeling his own purposes ringing true to the declarations of his party's platform he did not deem it necessary to direct the distracted attention of the people to these prosy matters of statecraft when they were taking such a friendly interest in his headgear. If they were willing to blindly follow the hat, he knew in his honest heart that the man under it would carry that hat along paths of political righteousness.

He was indeed playing upon every chord of popular feeling and seeking the favour of every man with a ballot. He had always fought to win in every contest he had entered, from single-stick to war, and he made no exception of this race for the chieftaincy of the Republic. It was to be expected, therefore, that the large negro vote in pivotal States, as well as his natural love of justice and his admiration for a brave soldiery, would lead him to pay enthusiastic and deserved tribute to the negro troops who had served in the Venezuelan campaign. He paid these tributes religiously and brilliantly in every speech he made, but always in general and impersonal terms and without a hint of his own debt to a corporal of the 10th Cavalry. There was no need for such minutiæ of course, for that was a purely personal affair between him and an unknown negro who might be dead and buried for all he knew; while, besides, a recital of these unimportant details would necessitate a fruitless revision of other incidental ideas now pleasantly fixed in the public mind. He sometimes entertained his wife and daughters with the story of how a trooper of the 10th had saved his life, but never did he sound the personal note in public.

Colonel Phillips made votes with every speech and it looked as if he would win. He deserved to win, for he was honest, capable, clean. As election day drew near the opposing candidate received a confidential letter from his campaign manager in which that veteran politician said:

"I have lost and won many hats in my political career, but this is the first time I have ever been called upon to fight a hat—just a hat—to settle a Presidency. This is a hat campaign; and you have evidently made the mistake of going bareheaded all your life. You seem, too, to have limited yourself to a home-grown ancestry. The Colonel is simply wearing a hat and claiming kin with everything from a Plymouth Rock rooster to a palmetto-tree. The newspapers are getting on my nerves with their unending references to that campaign-hat and Phillips' ding-dong about the unity and virility of American blood and his mother's being a South Carolinian."

*      *      *      *      *

"The cards are running against us."

CHAPTER VII

Colonel Phillips' daughters were enjoying life to the full in their long summer outing on the St. Lawrence. The older, Elise, had just finished with the schools and was free from many of the restraints which the strict and old-fashioned ideas of her mother had put upon her during her girlhood, and was filled with a lively enjoyment of her first untrammelled association with the males of her kind. Helen was still a girl, and her mother yet threw about her all the guards and fences that properly hedge about the days of maidenhood. But this did not in the slightest check the flow of Helen's joy in life, for the matter of sex in her associates was not an element in her happiness. Boy or girl, it mattered not to her, if her fellow in the hour's sport was quick-witted, quick-moving and mischief-loving. The extent of her thoughts of love was that it and its victims were most excellent objects of banter and ridicule; and she found the incipient affair between Elise and Evans Rutledge a source of much fun.

"Are you a hero?" she once asked Mr. Rutledge solemnly.

"Not to my own knowledge," Rutledge answered. "Why?"

"Because if you are you may be my brother sometime. Elise likes you a little, I think, and she thinks your hair would curl beautifully if you didn't crop it so close—but you will have to be a hero. You needn't fear Mr. Morgan. He failed to be a hero when he had the chance, and now his chance is gone. Nobody but a hero can interest Elise for keeps."

"When did Morgan have his chance?" asked Rutledge, amused at the mischief-maker's plain speaking.

"He went to Venezuela in papa's regiment, but never had a shot fired at him the whole time he was gone. That's what he did. Elise cannot love a man like that."

"Perhaps it was not his fault. He may have been detailed to such duties as kept him away from the shots."

"Yes, I think he says he was; but what of that? He wasn't in the fighting, and that's what it takes to make a hero. Oh, I wish I were a man. I would ride a horse and hunt lions and tigers, and I would have gone to the war in Venezuela and nobody's orders would have kept me from the firing-line—I believe that's what papa calls it—the place where all the fun and danger is. When papa talks about it I can hear my heart beat. Elise says she wouldn't be a man for anything; but I've heard her say that she could love a man if he was aman—brave and strong—you know—a man who did things. I would prefer to do the things myself. I wouldn't love any man I ever saw—unless he was just like papa. What regiment were you in, Mr. Rutledge?"

"I wasn't in any regiment," said Rutledge meekly.

"What! Didn't you volunteer?" asked Helen in surprise.

"I did not volunteer"—a trifle defiantly.

"Why?" Helen demanded scornfully. "If I had a brother and he had failed to volunteer I would never have spoken to him again! I thought all South Carolinians were fighters."

"I had other things to attend to," said Rutledge shortly. "Where is Miss Phillips this afternoon?"

"She's out on the river with Mr. Morgan. They will not be back till dinner, so you would just as well sit down here and talk to me.... But I'm sorry you didn't volunteer—you will never be my brother now.... And I was beginning to like you so much."

"I thank you, little girl, for your attempt to think well of me. I see that I have sinned past your forgiveness in not being a hero. Remember that it is only because ninety and nine men are commonplace that the hundredth may be a hero. I am one of the ninety and nine that make the hero possible—a modest king-maker, in a way. A hero must have some one else to fight for, or die for, or live for. He cannot do these things for himself, for that would make him anything but a hero. So you see that the second person is as necessary to the process of hero-making as the hero himself. It's all in the process and not in the product, anyway. It's the hero in act and not in fact, in the making and not in the taking, that enjoys his own heroism and is worth our interest. While he is making himself he thrills with the effort and with the uncertainty as to whether he will get a commission, a lathe-and-plaster arch, or a court of inquiry; and we the ninety and nine, we thrill with the gambling fever and make wagers that his trolley will get off the wire. But when he gets himself done—clean done, so to speak, wrapped in tinfoil and ready for use—then there is nothing left for the hero to do but to pose and await our applause—which is most unheroic; and we, after one whoop, forget him in the excitement of watching the next candidate risk his neck. Besides, the hero's work in hero-making is temporary and limited, for he stops with making one; but we, when we have finished with one, turn to the making of another, and our work is never done. While I am not even one hero, I have helped to make a hundred. Come now—you are generous and unselfish—which would you most admire, one finished hero listening for applause, or a hero-maker, who, without reward or the hope of reward, modestly and continuously assists in thus bringing glory to an endless procession of his fellows?"

"You think you are brilliant, Mr. Rutledge," answered Helen with an impatient toss of her head, "but you can't confuse me by any such talk as that. You needn't think you will be able to persuade Elise by any long jumble of words that you are greater than a hero. A king-maker!" She laughed mockingly at him.

"Don't fear that I will use any sophistry or doubtful method to become your brother," Rutledge rejoined amusedly. "I have only one thing to tell Miss Phillips."

"And what is that?" asked Helen with interest.

"I am inexpressibly pained to refuse your lightest wish," said Rutledge grandiloquently, "but to grant your request would be—telling; and I may—not tell,—perhaps,—even Miss Phillips."

"Do not suffer so," said Helen with an assumption of great indifference. "I don't care to hear it."

"Yes, I predict that you will be delighted to listen to it when it is told to you," said Rutledge confidently. "And it will be beyond doubt. But you are too young to hear such things yet. Be patient. You'll get older if you live long enough."

It fretted Helen to be told that she was young, as she was told a dozen times a day—not that she disliked her youth, but because of the suggestion that she was not free to do as she pleased; and her eyes began to flash at Rutledge's taunt and her mind to form a suitable expression of resentment—when that gentleman walked away from her smiling at her petulant anger.

Evans Rutledge had more interest in Helen's words about her sister than he showed in his manner or conversation. He had not told Elise what his heart had told him for many days past, though she did not need spoken words to know. He, manlike, thought that he was keeping this knowledge of his supreme affection for her a secret in his own soul, to be delivered as a startling and effective surprise when an impressive and strategic opportunity should come to tell her of it. She, womanlike, read him as easily as a college professor is supposed to read Greek, and concerned herself chiefly with feigning ignorance of his interest in her.

Elise's true attitude toward Rutledge was a sort of neutrality. She was neither for him nor against him. She was attracted by everything she saw or knew of him, and looked upon him with that more than passing interest which every woman has for a man who has asked or will ask her to be his wife.

On the other hand she was decided she could not accept Rutledge. She had but crossed the threshold of her unfettered young womanhood, and her natural and healthy zest in its pleasures overcame any natural impulse to choose a mate. Added to this were the possibilities held out in her romantic imagination as the increasing newspaper prophecies concerning her father induced day-dreams of court-like scenes and princely suitors when she should be the young lady of the White House, the most exalted maiden in great America, with the prerogative of a crown princess. A temporary prerogative surely, but well-nigh irresistible when combined with the compelling charm of American womanhood, that by right of genius assumes the high positions for which nature has endowed the gentlewomen of this republic, and by right of fine adaptability and inborn queenliness establishes and fortifies them, as if born to the purple, in the social high places of older civilizations.

Elise Phillips, with all her democratic training, with her admirable good common sense, with her adorable kindliness of heart and friendliness of spirit for every man and woman of high or low degree, with her sincere admiration for true manliness and pure womanliness unadorned by any tinsel of arbitrary rank, with all her contempt for the shams and pretences of decayed nobilities parading dishonoured titles, was yet too much a woman and too full of the romantic optimism of life's spring-time not to dream of princely youths wearing the white flower of blameless lives who would come in long procession to attend her temporary court.

And in that procession as it even now passed before her imagination, she kept watch forhim,—the ideal of her maiden soul, the master of her virgin heart;—him, with the blue eyes and flaxen hair and the commanding figure that looked down upon all other men;—him, with the look and gesture of power that men obeyed and women adored, and that became tender and adoring only for her;—him, with a rank that made him to stand before kings with confidence, and a clean life that might stand before her white soul and feel no shame;—him, with a strength and courage that failed not nor faltered along the rocky paths by which the laurel and Victoria Crosses grow, and that yet would falter and tremble with love in her presence. Oh, the wonderful dreams of Youth! How real they are, and how powerful in changing the issues of life and of death.

Had Rutledge taken counsel of his mother or heeded her disapprobation of Miss Elise Phillips, he would have saved himself at least from the pain of a flouted love; and if he could have made his heart obey his mother's wish he would have avoided the stress of many heartaches and jealousies, and of slow-dying hope.

Mrs. Rutledge had her young womanhood in the heart-burning days of the Great War, and the partisan impress then seared into her young soul was ineradicable. She had a youth that knew fully the passions and the sorrows of that awful four years of blood and strife: for every man of her house, father and five brothers, had she seen dead and cold in their uniforms of gray; and her antipathy for "those people" who had sent anguish and never-ending desolation into her life might lie dormant if memory was unprovoked, but it could never change nor lose its sharp vehemence.

She had objected to Elise from the moment her son showed a fancy for her, and began quietly to sow in his mind the seeds she hoped would grow into dislike and aversion. She told him that "those people," as she invariably called persons who came from that indefinite stretch of country which her mind comprehended in the term "the North," were "not of our sort,"—that they were intelligent and interesting in a way;—that Elise Phillips was unquestionably fascinating to a young man, that her money had given her a polish of mind and manner that was admittedly attractive; but that she was not fitted to be the life companion of a man whose culture and gentlemanliness was not a product of schools and of dollars but a heritage from long generations of gentle ancestors who had bequeathed to him converging legacies of fine and gentle breeding.

Evans Rutledge, however, was of a new day; and his mother's theory that good blood was a Southern and sectional product found no place in his thought. He was tender, however, and considerate of his mother's prejudices, and was never so rude as to brush them aside contemptuously. He always treated them with deference and tried always to meet them with some show of reason. In the case of Elise Phillips he sought to placate his mother's whim and capture her prejudice by tacitly agreeing to the general proposition while excepting Elise from it by the use of Colonel Phillips' well-worn statement that his mother was a South Carolinian.

"That makes Miss Phillips a granddaughter of South Carolina," said Rutledge to his mother; "and surely there cannot be much degeneracy in two generations,—especially when the Southern blood was of the finest strain."

Mrs. Rutledge admitted that the argument was not without force, but solemnly warned her son there was no telling when the common strain might crop out.

"What's bred in the bone will come out in the blood," she said, "and bad blood is more assertive than good."

Evans loved his mother better than any other soul except Elise, and he would go far and deny himself much to obey even her most unreasonable whim, but his love for Elise was too fervid a passion to be stifled for the sake of a war-born prejudice. He would win her; yes, he must win her; and he waited only the winning moment to plead openly for his happiness.

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