“Yes. I don’t know what. It doesn’t matter.” For a few minutes he tormented his mind, trying to decide why Quagger’s vicious glare had confused him. Then he gave it up. Quagger was no one to fear. Still—his face—

Duffey sighed. “Yes, I’ll be wholly capable of driving. Eva can help me with the harness and so on, if Elijah goes off to fight … You come with me, Dan, and we’ll have a bite of breakfast. I doubt Elijah realizes there’s such a necessity as breakfast in the world.”

“That rupture of his,” Bale asked. “Do you think he—?”

“Jesus,” said the doctor. “It will kill him completely if he tries to be a soldier. But the war’s killed plenty before him.”

Chapter 5

5.

It was early the next afternoon before Dan saw Irene Fanning. She had not been out of his mind since the hour when he surged over her body, but the great riddle of their attraction, their immediate and mutual sin, was buried deep when the bells began to ring.

He thought that his brain must be boxed into four compartments—shelves or drawers or cubicles. In one of these lay his past life, and in another his fumbled knots of philosophy. The two remaining boxes were stewing with treacherous thoughts of the war and of Tyler Fanning’s wife. He tried to keep them penned, each consciousness in its proper place, but paper by paper, word by word they would curl up and occupy him, plaster his soul, blow forever behind his eyes.

In the rain of Sunday night he had felt only the proud possessiveness of a male, the glut of pure satisfaction. She was willing; she was no child; he had bent her scruples aside if any actually existed. He had seen aright when he diagnosed the bitter desire in her eyes. This must be one form of love—he was not certain—he had never lain with an intelligent woman before … All her emotion, whatever sensitiveness and tender pride she possessed, were undiscovered and nonexistent … Only when he walked back with her through the wet pasture and left her to creep alone into the house of her betrayed marriage, only then had he felt the self-abomination of the skulker, and not for long.

Most desperately he had wanted to see her on Monday, but she did not appear, though he watched the Fanning place for hours … Certainly she would be in the crowded Diamond on Tuesday morning. He ate a light breakfast with the Duffeys, and went back up York street. Drums and fifes were playing, at the college grounds, where Major Haller was examining the Gettysburg volunteers. A coterie of men still gathered near the grocery, trying to digest Governor Curtin’s proclamation. Dan stopped and read the message. He could recognize the dogged, futile blast for what it was; the pathos of a perplexed nation seemed wailing in every massive phrase.