A Soldier's Trial: An Episode of the Canteen CrusadeKing, Charles
General
A Soldier's Trial: An Episode of the Canteen Crusade
King, Charles
United States. Army -- Military life -- Fiction
For reasons of his own, Dr. Wallen, after hearing from the attendant of
the stifled scream downstairs at 12:25, gave instructions to speak of it
to nobody but the post surgeon when he came. He did not see, he did not
ask to see, Madame. He did not wish to see Félicie, but that ubiquitous
young person was on the landing and the verge of tears. Madame's rest
also had been cruelly disturbed by this disturbance the most
disreputable made by these _miserables_, the _domestiques_ of _Monsieur
le Commandant_. Madame not until after dawn had been able to repose
herself, and as for Félicie, "me who you speak," nothing but the
pathetic condition of Madame could persuade her to remain another day in
a such establishment, wherein she, the experienced, the
most-recommended, the companion of high nobility, the all-devoted, had
been subject to insolence the most frightful----at which point the rear
door to the landing opened, and in came cook, all bristling for combat,
and the wordy battle would have reopened then and there but for Wallen's
stern, "Silence, both of you! Pull each other's hair to your heart's
content in the cellar, but not one word here." Then hied him homeward.
When the senior surgeon came over later, the patient was sleeping, and,
after hearing that Wallen had been there, he left without interrogating
the nurse. All seemed going well, so Waring had nothing of especial
consequence to tell the colonel when dropping in at the office later.
Even the officer of the day, in response to the question, "Anything
special to report, sir?" failed to make the faintest mention of the
excitement reported by No. 4 as occurring soon after twelve. But it was
no fault of the officer of the day. He had other and, presumably, far
more important matters to mention first, and by the time he had told
that two sergeants, three corporals and a dozen men had been run in by
the patrols, many of them battered, most of them drunk, and all of them
out of quarters, out of the post and in the thick of a row over at
Skid's; that one of the guard had been slashed with a knife in the hands
of a half-breed; that the patrol had been pelted with bottles, glasses
and bar-room bric-a-brac; that Lieutenant Stowe had been felled by a
missile that flattened the bridge of his nose, and that the prison room
was filled to the limit, the colonel would hear no more. He ordered his
horse and a mounted orderly, strode to the guard-house to personally
look over the prisoners, then set forth to town in search of the
sheriff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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