第23章 The Gray Jacket of "No.4"(6)

As the last mounted veterans came by, I remembered that I had not seen "No.4"; but as I looked up, he was just coming along.

In his hand, with staff resting on his toe, he carried an old standard so torn and tattered and stained that it was scarcely recognizable as a flag.

I did not for a moment take in that it was he, for he was not in the gray jacket which I had expected to see.He was busy looking down at the throng on the sidewalk, apparently searching for some one whom he expected to find there.He was in some perplexity, and pulled in his horse, which began to rear.Suddenly the applause from the portico above arrested his attention, and he looked toward it and bowed.As he did so his eye caught that of the old lady seated there.

His face lighted up, and, wheeling his prancing horse half around, he dipped the tattered standard, and gave the royal salute as though saluting a queen.The old lady pressed her wrinkled hand over the knot of faded ribbon on her breast, and made a gesture to him, and he rode on.He had suddenly grown handsome.I looked at her again;her eyes were closed, her hands were clasped, and her lips were moving.

I saw the likeness: she was his mother.As he passed me I caught his eye.

He saw my perplexity about the jacket, glanced up at the torn colors, and pointed to a figure just beyond him dressed in a short, faded jacket.

"No.4" had been selected, as the highest honor, to carry the old colors which he had once saved; and not to bear off all the honors from his friend, he had with true comradeship made Binford Terrell wear his cherished jacket.

He made a brave figure as he rode away, and my cheer died on my lips as I thought of the sad, old mother in her faded knot, and of the dashing young soldier who had saved the colors in that unnamed fight.

After that we got him a place, and he did well for several months.

He seemed to be cured.New life and strength appeared to come back to him.

But his mother died, and one night shortly afterward he disappeared, and remained lost for several days.When we found him he had been brought to jail, and I was sent for to see about him.He was worse than I had ever known him.He was half-naked and little better than a madman.

I went to a doctor about him, an old army surgeon, who saw him, and shook his head."`Mania a potu'.Very bad; only a question of time," he said.

This was true."No.4" was beyond hope.Body and brain were both gone.

It got to be only a question of days, if not of hours.

Some of his other friends and I determined that he should not die in jail;so we took him out and carried him to a cool, pleasant room looking out on an old garden with trees in it.There in the dreadful terror of raving delirium he passed that night.I with several others sat up with him.I could not have stood many more like it.

All night long he raved and tore.His oaths were blood-curdling.

He covered every past portion of his life.His army life was mainly in his mind.He fought the whole war over.Sometimes he prayed fervently;prayed against his infirmity; prayed that his chains might be broken.

Then he would grow calm for awhile.One thing recurred constantly: he had sold his honor, betrayed his cause.This was the order again and again, and each time the paroxysm of frightful fury came on, and it took all of us to hold him.He was covered with snakes: they were chains on his wrists and around his body.He tried to pull them from around him.At last, toward morning, came one of those fearful spells, worse than any that had gone before.It passed, and he suddenly seemed to collapse.

He sank, and the stimulant administered failed to revive him.

"He is going," said the doctor, quietly, across the bed.Whether his dull ear caught the word or not, I cannot say; but he suddenly roused up, tossed one arm, and said:

"Binford, take the horses.I'm going to old Joe," and sank back.

"He's gone," said the doctor, opening his shirt and placing his ear over his heart.As he rose up I saw two curious scars on "No.4"'s emaciated breast.They looked almost like small crosses, about the size of the decorations the European veterans wear.

The old doctor bent over and examined them.

"Hello! Bayonet-wounds," he said briefly.

A little later I went out to get a breath of fresh morning air to quiet my nerves, which were somewhat unstrung.As I passed by a little second-hand clothing-store of the meanest kind, in a poor, back street, I saw hanging up outside an old gray jacket.I stopped to examine it.

It was stained behind with mud, and in front with a darker color.

An old patch hid a part of the front; but a close examination showed two holes over the breast.It was "No.4"'s lost jacket.

I asked the shopman about it.He had bought it, he said, of a pawnbroker who had got it from some drunkard, who had probably stolen it last year from some old soldier.He readily sold it, and I took it back with me;and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it and put "No.4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves.Word was sent to us during the day to say that the city would bury him in the poorhouse grounds.

But we told them that arrangements had been made; that he would have a soldier's burial.And he had it.