Conceived in Liberty (17 page)

We can't answer. He goes, and we fall into step between the guards.

XIII

W
E SIT
in the guardroom at Fort Huntingdon. The room has no fire, no window. Four log walls and a flat roof. A space between the roof and the walls for currents of air. No lack of air. The cold of the night seeps in, the eternal, awful cold of this winter.

The commandant had a firebox brought in. He said: “You poor devils'll freeze tonight otherwise. No damned sense letting you freeze before you hang.” The firebox is red-hot with glowing coals. It may hold its heat for three or four hours.

We sit round the box. Through a crack in the roof, we can see a bit of the sky, a narrow bit with a single star. I look at the star first, and then the others, and then we sit with our eyes fixed on that single star. We sit, and our dumb longing fills the place; senseless yearning in the cold of outer space.

“Tomorrow—” Kenton starts to say. Then his voice and his thoughts drift from him. Words are an effort for us now, each word a distinct and separate effort. We shiver; close to the box, its heat scorches our shins, leaves our backs cold. Kenton says:

“That was a great lot of talk——”

“I had in mind that we would go back northward,” I say. “I had no thought in mind that we'd be taken. I had in mind that spring would come on us in our journeying.”

“I had that in mind,” Kenton agrees.

“I shouldn't have spoken up to them the way I did,” Charley mutters. “I lost hold of my senses.”

“It's no matter.”

“I'm sick with the thought of going to the gallows. I call to mind that as a child my mother would warn me I was born to be hanged. As a way of joking.”

“Your mother's living?” Kenton asks Charley.

“She's an old woman in Boston—if she's living. If she's dead, she'll curse me when I come off the gallows. She had no way with war. Christ, how she hated war! She took a stick to Sam Adams one time when he came to my house to leech me on a matter of printing. She took a stick and beat the dust out of his dirty back. He says, All right, my fine Tory. She answers, All right, my fine beggared bastard. Only keep off from my son and keep your dirty feet outa my house!”

Kenton laughs; he says slowly: “I'm not thinking there's aught after death—no matter for a man to fear, no matter of starving and freezing and whoring.”

“I can't,” I say. “I had no thought of dying. Now I tell myself, I'm twenty-one years, and I'm going into a great blackness.”

Charley says, gently: “There's no matter of going alone, Allen. Look, boy, there's no matter at all of going alone. There's Kenton and me and a fair lot of good men all the way down.”

I cover my face with my hands; I feel the chill in my heart. I feel a terror so awful that I want to scream and scream again.

When I look up, our faces glisten dully in the glow of the firebox. Kenton and Charley are regarding me strangely.

“You think I'm afraid——” I whisper.

They shake their heads. I put my face in my hands and stifle my sobs.

It might have been an hour or less after that that Hamilton came in. He stood by the door, wrapped in his blue greatcoat, his breath steaming in a red glow.

“I brought you some meat,” he said, holding out a wooden bowl. Kenton took it. Kenton said:

“You made a fine plea for us. We're not ungrateful.”

“I'm sorry,” he said simply.

“We had no thought that we'd be made free by officers.”

“You're not dead. The General said he'd speak with me tonight.” He looked at us oddly. “One of you come along, He's no hard man, the General.”

“Go along, Allen,” Kenton said. Charley nodded. I shook my head.

“Better go,” Kenton said gently.

I stood up, holding onto Kenton's shoulder. He stared at me, his thin face old and drawn, his beard ruddy in the light. Charley was nodding, whimsically.

Outside, the sentry stopped us. “I have orders to keep these men, Colonel Hamilton.”

“I'll stand for him,” Hamilton said. He had a curious way of speaking, as if he wasn't to be doubted. Then he walked on. I followed him, his orderly behind us.

At the door of the stone house, he told the orderly to wait. The sentries came to attention. He walked in, and Hamilton said to me:

“There's no need to fear him. He's a strange, hard man, but there's no need to fear him.”

Hamilton tapped on the door of the same room that the court-martial had been held in. Then he went in. Washington was there alone, sitting at the table, writing. He didn't look up when we first came in. He was wrapped in a woollen jacket, a small cap on his head. There were a few candles on the table. I could see how slowly his hand moved writing.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Colonel Hamilton.”

“Come in, my boy. And close the door. There's a draught.”

Hamilton said: “Thank you, your excellency.” He closed the door softly. We stood there, in front of the door. I could see that Hamilton was nervous, biting his lips and staring down at his hands.

Washington was all intent on his writing, squinting through his spectacles. He looked like an old man in the jacket and the cap. The large spaces of his face were filled with shadows. Finally, he laid aside the quill and looked up, half a smile on his face. The smile went, and a sullen, rigid coldness replaced it.

“What is the meaning of this, Colonel Hamilton?” he demanded.

“I thought, your excellency——”

“By God, you go too far, Colonel Hamilton! What do you mean by bringing this man before me? Where is your authority?” He had risen from the table, his whole being rigid with sudden fury.

“I have none, sir.”

“Then take him out of here!”

I moved to go, but Hamilton stood where he was. He had dropped his head. He spoke softly.

“I will, your excellency. I wish to resign my commission at the same time. I no longer have a place here.”

I thought for a moment that Washington would hurl the table aside and fling himself on Hamilton. His rage was awful and terrible. Then, in a sudden, it collapsed, like a pricked bladder. He dropped back into his chair, limply, staring at us, his face old and tired. He leant his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands.

“Resign your commission?” he said, unbelievingly.

“I must.”

His face was broken. I had never seen a face so broken all in an instant. He spread his hands hopelessly, murmured: “You too—I might have known. Stirling spreads his tales, and Conway plots, and Varnum mocks me, and Wayne is half-mad—and now you too. God, I'm alone. It's too much for me.”

I didn't know whether he was acting; if he was acting, then he was a marvellous actor. His hands spread wide on the table, his mouth open just a bit, his eyes staring at Hamilton and unseeing at the same time, his face trembling, he whispered:

“Go on—get out—leave me alone. God knows, I'm alone. Always alone. You're no different. I thought you believed—but you're no different.”

I glanced sidewise at Hamilton. His face was a reflection of the General's, pain and a deep sorrow in his half-veiled violet eyes. He stood stiffly, his hands a little in front of him.

“Get out,” Washington said hoarsely.

Still Hamilton stood there, for moments; and then he stepped backward toward the door, slowly.

“Wait—” Washington had wilted; he was an old, old man. He said, tonelessly: “Why are you resigning your commission? Why do you want to leave me?”

“I don't want to leave you, sir. Believe me, as sure as there is a God in heaven, I don't want to leave you, sir. After I leave you, there is no reason for me to live. Sir, I have no other reason to live than you and our cause.”

A sort of hope in Washington's face, love and a groping toward Hamilton. He stretched out a hand.

“You won't leave me,” he said.

“Sir, if one life is taken unjustly, if one man must die because of jealousy and hate, then a cause is already dishonoured. The cause exists no longer. Men can suffer for it no longer. It marks the limit of all suffering, all——”

Washington rose to his feet, crashing his hand down upon the table. The change in him was sudden and furious, like the change in a man gone suddenly mad. We recoiled from him. I felt suddenly that the room was too small for us. He wrenched out from behind the table, stood panting, cried:

“You talk of suffering! My God, you talk of suffering! What do you know? What have you suffered? Does anyone believe in me? Can I trust anyone? Do you know what it is to be alone—always alone, feared, hated?. Whom do they come to? They come to me pleading, crying! Men are starving! Have you seen me touch food today? Do I sleep? Do I rest? Is there any peace for me, ever—until the day I die? Is there anything ahead of me but a rope and a gibbet in England? They talk about ambition, about King Washington. Christ!—don't deny it. I'm cold—I'm ice waiting for a throne! Look out of that window and you'll my throne! Look out of that window and you'll see my throne in the ice on Mount Joy! Howe swore I'd hang there! Who'll be with me then? Whom can I trust? Can a man go on alone, always, endure ——”

He stands there, a pitiful giant, used up with his own fury. His arms drop limply to his sides. His cap has fallen to the floor. He fumbles at his glasses, puts them on the table. He reaches for his chair, then walks across the room to the fire. Trembling, he tries to warm himself at the fire, seemingly unaware of the fact that we are still in the room. Hamilton murmurs:

“Sir—I'm sorry.”

“We'll endure,” he says quietly. “We'll endure.” He has taken hold of himself. He walks back to the table and sits down. He says:

“I'm sorry, Colonel Hamilton. I owe you an apology. If you wish to resign, that is your affair. I can do nothing.”

“You can, sir—only say you need me.”

“God knows, I do.”

“You'll hear me?”

“Go ahead, Colonel Hamilton.”

“Sir, this man is condemned to death. You know that. He and two more deserters were condemned to hang for shooting one of Captain McLane's troopers. Sir, I didn't bring him here to mock at your decision; I brought him here to appeal to your mercy. I want you to see what war and suffering can do to a boy of twenty-one. I say that he has already atoned for his crime, that the others have atoned.”

“There's no place for mercy in an army.”

“But there's a place for justice.”

“They confessed to the crime.”

“But, your excellency, their act was an act of passion, of self-defence.”

“I told you, Colonel Hamilton, that civil law cannot apply to an army in the field. The British hang deserters.”

“But we're not the British.”

“No—we're a rabble, a caricature of an army. But so long as one man is left, that man will be under my command. If he's naked and without arms, he'll still be under my command.”

“Then one man can hang. One is enough. Only one of McLane's men died.”

The General shakes his head slowly. He says: “Colonel Hamilton, the only justice I know is the justice I have kept an army together with for three years. We're in hell, and hell is not gentle.”

“Sir, we are human beings in hell. Once we are not—then where is the use in going on?”

The candles are burning low. I stand there wearily, trying to keep from hope, trying to forget the pain in my feet. The General becomes a blur in the light of the candles. There is a long time of silence. He sits behind the candles, a bewildered man away from the world, unable to be part of the world, staring ahead of him and looking at nothing. Finally he says, uncertainly:

“I'm writing to the Congress for shoes, Colonel Hamilton. The Congress have shoes. They have a thousand pairs, but I can't plead humbly enough. I can't. You'll write it over for me, Colonel Hamilton.”

“I'll write it, sir.”

He looks at me, stares at my feet, at my face. It seems that he is trying to break me apart from five thousand men. “Which one of you fired the shot?” he asks, not ungently.

I shake my head. “We don't know, sir,” I say.

“Decide it.” He turns to Hamilton. “Write an order for the release of two, Colonel. Have them flogged and sent back to their brigades.”

Hamilton is unable to speak. He sits down at the table, takes up a quill, and begins to write. When he is through, he says hoarsely:

“You'll sign it, sir?”

Washington signs, drops the quill. He seems hardly able to hold up the weight of his head. Hamilton goes to the door. As he opens the door, Washington's voice stops him.

“You'll come back, Colonel? I can't sleep. If you come back, we'll talk a while.”

“I'll come back, sir. I can't thank you now. I'll come back.”

We go outside. Hamilton doesn't speak until he hands me over to one of the sentries, with orders to return to the fort. Then he says: “Try to know before morning. I wish it could have been different”

I want to speak. I'm choked inside. He gives me his hand, and I hold on to it. Then he goes back.

I walk across the snow with the sentry. The air is cold, sharp. I think of life. I feel the bite of the air, the cold of the snow. I try to think of life, not that one of us must die. I think of going back to the dugout the way I would think of going home.

XIV

T
HEY KEEP
staring at me, trying to make me out in the dark, and I don't know how to tell them. I stand at the door. I keep in the shadow.

Kenton says: “Come over and sit, Allen.”

Keenly aware of the pain in my feet, I go to the firebox and sit down. Only the pain is life, more an evidence of life than of pain.

Kenton tells me: “We saved a part of the meat for you, Allen. It's good salt ham. I have it warming.”