He turned up his collar, and thudded along the wet walks which bordered Chambersburg street. He hoped that the rain would stop before supper time; since no one observed mourning any more, he was going to the Huddlestones’ for supper. He fancied Mrs. Huddlestone babbling to Elijah that Dan Bale oughtn’t to be left to brood alone, now that his poor grandfather was dead, and most young folks gone away to the war, the war, the war.

I’d rather get killed, said Tyler Fanning, than go through Antietam again. And no one had made the idiot go. There hadn’t been any draft when he went. The draft was at hand, now, and maybe it would take Dan Bale along with the rest. It was one of the immutable gnashings of a nation’s jaws: if it pulverized him, he must watch with open eyes, watch it squeezing his chest in two, but never fall back on the hypocrisy with which some others had bolstered themselves. Let them get out a band of martial music, he decided, and the most ordinary oafs became knights until they are spoiled by it. Isn’t that so, my dear? Yes, she’d say, but Tyler isn’t an ordinary oaf. He’s embittered and childish and wholly wrong, but you see how well he let himself be shaped for the slaughter. There must be a knightly fancy underneath, and maybe it was that knightly fancy which I married. I don’t know. It all seems sullen and stupid, now … Yes, my dear, yes, yes, whiskey-hair, slim neck, yes, hard green eyes—yes, most bitter mouth in the world, and you will forget it if ever we meet, alone at night, when the insects are fuming around us and the grass is smooth and dry, yes, you will forget it if ever we meet in another field. Another field.

His hands had little gulleys of perspiration: the bent folds of their flesh. He walked on, going home through the rain to try for satisfaction in Plotinus. But any satisfaction ran away from him.

Chapter 7

7.

Some of the churches held prayer meeting on Wednesday night, some on Thursday. By this time, Dan knew that there were prayers all the time—little imprecations which old men shaped as they weeded their peas, blundering entreaties that baked in women’s heads as they shook the ashes out of their kitchen stoves. He heard the whole town, the hot green countryside, praying all around him. It was hard to sleep at night.

He sat on the edge of the front porch, his feet close beside the drowsing pansies. Slow-gathering night began to show itself in blue dust that hung along the turnpike and made a witchery of every paling. This was Thursday evening, and two bells turned heavily on their beams, far across the town. A B-flat bell and another which he couldn’t name.