# The Little Faded Flag

Extracted from Atlantic Monthly magazine, May 1908, pp. 635-644.
THE LITTLE FADED FLAG
BY EDWARD L. WHITE
"Any objection to graveyards?" the American inquired.
"I should object to taking up my permanent abode in one unnecessarily soon," the Frenchman replied, his black eyes twinkling, his thin lips smiling between his jetty mustache and his pointed sable beard.
"Monseer Daypurtwee," said his host, "I'm not joking, you understand. I 've showed you most of this neighborhood, and I rather like to drive through our cemetery, myself. I 'm trying to find out how the idea strikes you."
"I should be charmed, I am sure," Des Pertuis answered in his unexceptionable English.
"Some people don't like to go to a graveyard," Wade resumed, "any oftener or any sooner than they have to. Sure you 're not just being polite?"
"Quite sure," René replied, smiling again.
"Honor bright, no reservations?"
Wade queried anxiously, half turning, and glancing into his guest's eyes.
"None whatever," René answered him smilingly.
"Then we'll drive through the cemetery," Wade informed him, settling back comfortably, not a muscle showing effort, except his outstretched arms, tense against the taut reins.
"I shall be charmed, I am sure," René repeated.
"You may think it queer," Wade remarked, "my taking you to the cemetery, but I'll explain afterwards, you understand, or perhaps you'll find out for yourself before we leave it, why I took you there. I want to try an experiment, want to see whether something is going to strike you the way it strikes me, you understand."
"You are very kind, I am sure," said Des Pertuis. "I shall be interested to learn the result of your experiment."
"Ferris wrote me," Wade went on, "that what you wanted was real American atmosphere, and he thought I could let you into some at Middleville. I believe you've found some, have n't you?"
"Yes," the Frenchman agreed, "I have been in what I am sure is a genuinely American atmosphere."
"I 've watched you absorbing it, you understand," Wade chuckled. "You 've had to take in quite an amount of hot air with your American atmosphere."
Des Pertuis smiled deprecatingly.
"Oh yes," his host continued. "You 've been polite about it. I could appreciate that, you understand. You 've smiled and looked interested while Uncle George talked bushels-to-the-acre and all that, while Tupper talked tons of tomatoes and the rest of it, while Bowe talked reapers and thrashers and iron fences and cutlery, while Parks talked tonnage-per-mile and tonnage-per-landing; you 've taken it all in: farm-brag, trade-brag, railroad-brag, and steamboat-brag; you 've appeared charmed, but you 've got everlastingly tired of the brag all the same."
"I have not heard you brag, Mr. Wade," René reminded him quietly, his twinkling black eyes fixed on his host's plump, smooth-shaven visage.
"Perhaps I 'm going to brag," Wade replied. "Brag is part of what you came after, part of the American atmosphere, you understand, and I brag myself, but not about the same things, nor in just the same way. I love the Eastern Shore, I like to hear it called 'God's Footstool,' or 'The Garden Spot of the World.' But I 've quit using those terms myself,—to foreigners, anyhow. I never run down my home state or my home country, you understand, but when I meet a man like you, who has seen Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg and Saxony and Provence and Lombardy, let alone other places I have n't seen, I let others do the bragging about density of population and fertility and productivity and all that. I don't call them down, I sit and smoke and look on. But I'm not saying much, you understand."
"I quite comprehend," René assured him. "Enthusiasm for one's own is not by any means unpleasant."
"Not unless you get too much of it," his host commented, "or unless the enthusiasm is for the wrong things, you understand. Enthusiasm for the wrong thing makes me mad. We Americans have plenty to brag of; things really worth boasting of. But it makes me hot to hear these half-baked countrymen blat about the area of the United States, which is an accident; or our coal and iron and copper and petroleum and what not, which are quite as accidental; or our population, which is the result of the other accidents; or the volume of immigration, which is a menace. I want them to distinguish what we really ought to be proud of from what we have no call to boast of. And I bet you feel that way, too. I 've been watching you, you understand."
"Boasting about one's own country is an amiable foible," René remarked. "I do not object to such chauvinism, as we call it."
"But you are a trifle uneasy," Wade put in, "when they begin to draw comparisons,—especially if they are undeserved, you understand,—and to run down France and French things. Is that what you mean?"
"Precisely," Des Pertuis replied. "You have penetrated my meaning; and I may remind you that you yourself have done nothing of the kind, nor Madame Wade."
"It 's good of you to notice it," his host said. "Naturally she would n't any more than I. We 've been in France, you understand. But perhaps I 'm going to do that, too, as well as brag. No offense, you understand. But I 'm commercial. I take a commercial view of things. I fail to see through a great many things other people seem to comprehend, you understand, and one thing they told me in France surprised me. I thought I heard Mary asking you about it last night. But I was n't sure, what with Humphreys and all the other fellows talking at once, you understand. Anyhow, I want to ask you about it."
"What is it?" his guest queried civilly.
"What was the name of that part of France, over toward England, where there was no end of a civil war during your revolution?"
"You mean La Vendée?" René asked.
"That 's it," his host replied. "I never can remember that sort of a name. I 'm commercial, you understand. Well, somebody told us while we were in Paris (I think it was the Rogerses, who live there, but I'm not sure), that the descendants of the people who fought on opposite sides in that war won't sit down to table together this minute, nor be under the same roof. Is that true?"
"Not wholly," René responded; "two might be in the same theatre or in the same public building, and neither think it necessary to leave after recognizing the other. But certainly it is true of not dining together. No one would invite a Charette to meet a Hoche; neither would remain in any house a moment after learning the presence of the other. Still less would a Cathelineau or Rochejaquelein consent to spend an instant in a drawing-room with a Turreau or a Carrier; no, nor in a restaurant or hotel."
"Don't you think that is carrying personal hostility pretty far?" Wade asked.
Des Pertuis stroked his short spike of a beard.
"You do not comprehend," he said, "how fierce, how implacable, how ferocious was the fighting in that war. You have never heard of the devastations and counter-devastations, of the massacres and retaliatory massacres, of the savageries, the tortures, the insults, the ingenious horrors inflicted on the vanquished by the victors on both sides; of the brutal ruthlessness and refined cruelties."
"Perhaps not," Wade rejoined. "But when did all that happen?"
"From sometime in 1793," René replied, "to sometime in 1796."
"All over a hundred and ten years ago," his host commented. "No offense, you understand, but speaking as between friends, don't you think that is a long time to hold a grudge?"
"The families concerned," Des Pertuis made answer, "do not take that view of it. They still smart under the reciprocal wrongs inflicted, they still recall the gloating fiendishness of their foes, and apart from any recollections of outrage, they rather make a point of honor of their inflexibility. Why, not only the families involved on one side or the other of the war in La Vendée, but the old legitimist nobility generally and the descendants of the revolutionists at large, stand upon the same punctilio. No son of a noble house which never bowed to Bonapartism or to the Orleanist ascendancy, or to the party of the Citizen King, no member of any such noble family would ever meet socially any descendant of a Bonapartist, still less of a regicide, were he Montagnard, Jacobin, or Girondist. No La Rochefoucauld or Château-Reynaud would unbend to any Murat or Carnot."
"Don't you think yourself,—no offense, you understand," Wade suggested, "that that is rather a peevish and childish way to behave?"
René again stroked his beard, even more slowly.
"They do not so look upon it," he said; "they take pride in their tenacity."
"What 's that national motto of yours on your coins," Wade asked argumentatively. "What does it mean in English?"
"Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity is the translation of that motto," Des Pertuis answered, a trifle stiffly.
"Do you call that fraternity?" Wade queried triumphantly.
"You do not comprehend," the Frenchman began ardently.
"I allow that," his host cut in. "I 'm commercial, you know, and miss the fine points. No offense, Daypurtwee, go on."
"Indeed, you do not comprehend," René declared. "Our national motto is for us as the—what do you call it?—Golden Rule for all Christians; the ideal which is aimed at rather than an injunction which all live up to. The Golden Rule has not made all Christians always treat others as they wish themselves to be treated. We strive for fraternity. But a motto cannot make human nature otherwise than it is."
"Human nature," Wade remarked, "varies with the race and country, you understand. Some kinds don't need to be made over."
"I see," said his guest shortly.
"No offense, I hope, Daypurtwee;" his host spoke anxiously. "No offense meant, you understand."
"Yes, I understand," René replied, smiling again.
"Here 's the cemetery," Wade proclaimed. "We 've driven miles around. I wanted to talk before we reached it."
He pointed with his whip to one gravestone after another, telling of the families, their characteristics, and their relationships to one another and to his own. The horse walked slowly. René, his hat in his hand, listened affably.
Wade halted his team under four big wide-spreading maples.
"That 's my father's grave," he said, pointing.
René bowed in silence.
"And that 's my uncle's," Wade went on, "my mother's brother, Colonel William Spence."
"He was a soldier in the Federal armies during your late war," René remarked.
"What makes you think that?" Wade inquired.
"I have visited many of your cemeteries," René answered, "at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities. I have learned your customs in respect to the graves of all such soldiers."
"So you think he fought for the Union?" Wade queried.
"I am sure of it," René replied confidently.
"Well," said his host, "you never were more mistaken in your life. My father's brothers both fought for the Union, but my mother's kin were all fire-eating rebels. Colonel William Spence fought under Lee."
"What!" the Frenchman cried. "the Union flag on a Confederate soldier's grave!"
"You'll find," Wade told him, "that this is not the only part of the country where they put the Stars and Stripes on the graves of ex-Confederates."
The Frenchman said nothing. They sat silent, side by side, the stout, blond, jolly-faced, red-cheeked, smooth-shaven American, his gray felt hat on the back of his head, looking sideways with quizzical blue eyes at his guest; the compact, black-haired, black-bearded Frenchman gazing steadily down at the white headstone, the narrow grass-mound, the month-old withered flowers, the draggled, mud-streaked, rain-bleached muslin flag, no bigger than a handkerchief. One of the geldings tossed his head and champed at his bit, and the reins tinkled and clanked softly.
"Who put it there?" René queried at last.
"The veterans," Wade answered lightly.
"When?" René inquired.
"The thirtieth of last May," his host replied.
"Why," Des Pertuis exclaimed, "that is your national Decoration Day. I was told that the Confederates had a different decoration day of their own; in June, I think."
"Yes," Wade responded. "They observe it all over the South, you understand. But here and in many of the border districts, in small towns, where there are not many veterans, they all walk out here, blue and gray together, and put Old Glory on every grave indifferently."
"I had been led to think," René ruminated, "that there was much rancor after your civil war; but I fancy from what you tell me that there was less animosity than I had conceived."
"There was much rancor," his host declared. "The animosity at the time of the war cannot be exaggerated, could not be conveyed to you by any description, you understand. There is rancor yet, mostly among the Southern women, particularly those born since the war, or those whose families really suffered least or whose men did not fight at all,—a sort of artificial cult of rancor. But the families who lost everything, whose estates were trampled by the armies, whose homes were burned, whose best men died in battle, who were left beggars when it was all over,—well, they and theirs talk now as they acted then, like the thoroughbreds they are. Not a complaint then, not a recrimination now. And the Northern families who gave most lives on the field are as mute on their side. As for the men who did the fighting, their animosity has all faded away. They forgive and forget."
"If the bitterness of feeling has so soon effaced itself," the Frenchman argued, "the war must have been waged without any exasperating atrocities on either side."
"If you mean by atrocities," Wade replied, " such massacres of prisoners by the regular authorities as you spoke of a while ago, or such butchery of surrendered adversaries as goes on in the South American revolutions, nothing of the kind occurred. But the bushwhackers and jayhawkers who hung about the armies and infested the border were often worse than Apache Indians. The Confederate raiders burned some buildings, the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley caused much suffering and venom. But that is about the list of what you might call atrocities. Yet without any unnecessary ferocity, the mere inevitable horrors of fair, honorable, open warfare roused enough exasperation and bitterness and animosity and rancor, you understand. The hatred on both sides was at white heat while it lasted."
"I can scarcely credit," René said, "that what has cooled so soon could have been so fierce."
"You are comparing our forty years," Wade conjectured, "with your hundred and ten after the war in what's-its-name?"
"Just so," his guest replied. "It seems the hatred can scarcely have been so intense as you claim, nor the provocations so frightful."
"You ought to have heard the veterans last Decoration Day," Wade told him. "They had a sort of reunion of both sides here. Several of them stayed at my house and they made my porch their headquarters. You ought to have heard the stories they told."
"For instance," the Frenchman suggested.
"Oh, I can't begin to tell them," Wade disclaimed. "I 'm commercial, you understand. I never can remember the names of the battles and generals and colonels, nor the number of the regiments, nor the dates either, for that matter; any more than I can remember the names of all those high-and-mighty families you were telling me about, you understand. But I took in the gist of their talk, you bet. I just sat there and smoked and listened, and when they ran dry I 'd take 'em out in the pantry for a little ammunition. One evening in particular, I think it was the 29th of May, they got going.
"There were two of them staying with me, my uncle, General Tom Wade of Milwaukee, and Colonel Melrose of Boston, an uncle of my wife's. They were both born in Middleville, you understand, but one went west and one went north, and they live there yet. They were back in Middleville for a visit. Then there was Captain Tupper, cousin of the farmer you met, and Captain Bowe, uncle of the storekeeper. They both live here, came back after they made their pile, but they were out west when the war broke out. They were Union men too, you understand.
"We had five Confeds. Captain John Spence, my mother's youngest brother, Colonel Parks, father of the Parks you met, and old General Humphreys, Dick Humphreys's father. They live here, and with them were Colonel Janney, Henry Tupper's father-in-law, and Colonel Rhett, my sister-in-law's uncle.
"They were all right there on my porch, where you and I were sitting this morning. It was a beautiful night, hot for May and still. They had had a snifter or two all around and had rather limbered up to each other and warmed up to their talk. They talked war, of course, talked it good-naturedly. They had all been in it, had all lost near relatives in battle: Colonel Rhett had lost most,—never heard of such a connection as the Rhetts. But Colonel Janney had lost nearly as many. The five Confeds had all come out of the war beggars, lost every cent they ever had. Yet they all talked good-naturedly, you understand. They got to talking about a cornfield; not the cornfield at Gettysburg, but one famous in some small battle, early in the war, soon after Bull Run, I think. Anyhow they called it Rumbold's cornfield. I can't remember the name of the battle or of the locality, but they remembered it all right, you understand. They talked about the first charge and the second charge, and the second day's fighting, and the third charge across that same cornfield.
"Colonel Melrose said nothing.
"Uncle Wade asked, 'Were n't you there, Melrose?'
"Melrose tugged at his curly gray beard.
"'Yes, I was there,' he said. 'The most fearful moment of my life was in Humbold's cornfield.'
"We expected him to tell a story, but he said no more.
"General Humphreys launched into an account of the difficulties the Confederates labored under, their shortness of supplies, and all that. He told how they got five field-guns in position to cover that cornfield, and he made a good story of it too. You could just feel what an exploit it was merely to plant those guns after all they had to overcome. Then, when they were in position, they found they had just three shells. Only three shells, you understand. And before they could get more the first charge across the cornfield began.
"You ought to have heard Humphreys describe just how they felt, how they could not see the men charging, but could see the movement in the corn, how they made each one of those shells tell, and at short range too. How the shells failed to stop the charge, how the rifle-fire failed to stop the charge, how they barely saved their guns, how they lost one and recaptured it next day. He made you feel the fierceness, the hurry, the sweat of it all, you understand. He had sighted one of the guns himself for the second shot.
"When he stopped every cigar was out. They all started to light up. After they settled down again. Colonel Melrose began:—
"'So you sighted the gun that fired that second shell, Humphreys! I was a private then. It was my third fight. When we scrambled over the rail-fence Nathan Adams was next me. We were on one end of the line. I was a strong runner then and must have drawn ahead of him farther than I thought as we forced ourselves through the tall corn. The second shell burst midway of the company a little toward the rear. The force of the explosion knocked me flat on my face, though I was not hit. When I scrambled to my feet I glanced behind me, could not see Nathan, and ran back to look for him. I had heard of the horrors of war, but then I first realized them.
"'A fragment of shell had torn him open from hip to hip. His heart could scarcely have ceased beating, his flesh must still have been quivering. But what I saw was already a loathsome carcass, not a man.
"'I turned away. Gentlemen, there was nothing there for me to help. Nothing but carrion, what an instant before had been my dearest friend, the man I most admired, the most promising youth I ever knew. I bore my part in that charge, did my utmost in the fight. But I was a mere maniac with the riot of my feelings, the turmoil of my thoughts. I was surprised at the clearness of those same thoughts. The rush of the charge, the fury of the fight, the confusion of the retreat were enough to occupy the whole of any man's faculties. The mere physical horror of what I had seen was sufficient to benumb any conceivable intellect. Yet I went through everything like a wound-up automaton, not needing any faculties seemingly, for what I did, thinking independently of what I was doing, and observing my own sensations as one does in the double-consciousness of a dream. I remember what I thought, for I went over it a hundred times, a thousand times in the next year.
"'First of all there was a sort of incredulous amazement at the intensity of the internal, physical sensation of overwhelming grief. It amazed me that it could hurt so atrociously, and I was more amazed that a spiritual smart could feel so entirely corporeal, like a scald or burn. It was as if I had swallowed hell-fire and it blazed in me without consuming me, a suffocating agony.
"'Then there was the bewilderment at my loneliness, the inability to realize that he would never speak to me again, that we should never again exchange confidences. I had gone to college very unformed. There was not much to form a lad on the Eastern Shore in those days. And at Harvard my mind and soul had developed rapidly. But my intellectual growth had been less the effect of Harvard than of Nathan Adams. He had been not so much my guiding star as the sun of my existence from the moment I first saw him. My other interests had been swallow-ed up in the fascination he exercised over me, and always for good. He was the prophet, preacher, and poet of my college days. My devotion to him was the first passion of my life, its only passion up to his death. To please him, to strive after the ideals he held before himself, to aspire with his aspirations, had been the sum of my aims. Behold, the idol had vanished from my heart's shrine. Life was empty.
"'Also I was dazed with a sense of the loss to the commonwealth. Not only I but all who knew him had regarded Nathan as a natural leader of men, as possessed of transcendent powers, capacities and abilities, as born to a high destiny, as a precious possession of his state, his nation, of the world. I quailed at the irretrievable annihilation of his potentialities for good, of all he was certain to have done had he lived.
"'Likewise I was overwhelmed with the sense of the waste of life the war entailed, of its frightful cost to humanity, and with that sense a crushing weight of my part of the duty to win for the country all his blood had been spilled for, all that was to be bought at the price of such lives as his. I had an access of partisan patriotism.
"'And yet I felt not only that flare of ardor, but the lofty intellectual exaltation of devotion to the cause which had led us to enlist, swamped utterly by a torrent of personal animositv, of revengefulness, throughout that charge. I felt that life's most precious prize would be to have the man who fired that shell helpless before me, to feel my bayonet pierce his breast. That feeling haunted me for months. After I was an officer, after I had my sword and had used my sword, after I knew that gritty, friable, yielding grind of bone under my sabre-point, no other desire so consumed me as to meet in fair fight the m a n who fired that shell and feel tingle all up my arm the crunching, clinging drag of my sabre-edge cleaving his skull. I was astonished at the elemental fury of my inward savagery. I was as primitive as Agamemnon praying to Jupiter to let him feel his spear-point rend Hector's corselet and pierce his breast-bone. I was as primitive as a Sioux brave at a war-dance.'
"When Melrose stopped, nobody thought of cigars. They sat so still you could hear the breath whistle in Colonel Park's asthmatic wind-pipe. And they were still for some time.
"At last Humphreys asked:—
"'And now?'
"'And now,' Melrose took him up, 'there is not even the ghost of that acrimony left. We meet and you tell of it and I hear of it and know that you are the man. But all that volcano of hatred is burned out in me. I tell of how I felt, but the telling does not revive the feeling it recalls. I have no more animus against you than if those horrors had happened in some past lifetime, or to other men altogether?"
Wade paused.
"And then?" René queried.
"And then," Wade enlightened him, "they shook hands and we all went out and took a drink."
"Do you know," René remarked, "for a man who calls himself commercial, you tell a story very well?"
"So my wife says," Wade replied shortly.
"Also," René went on, "for a man who disclaims a memory for names you have some rather pat. Agamemnon is not a commercial word."
"Oh," Wade laughed, "I remember names I learned at school. But I get so lost among names of battles, commanders and numbers of regiments, you understand, that I give up altogether. I can repeat a conversation pretty well, though. My wife says it 's a wonder that a man who can remember another man's language so exactly can find so few words to express his own ideas. But that 's the way I'm built. I remember what impresses itself on me, you understand.
"After we got out on the porch again they were all a little uncomfortable. Melrose's story had been too real. Captain Tupper started in to create a diversion; you could hear that in his tone.
"'Speaking of sighting a shell,' he said, ' the best shot I ever saw was fired from a battery I commanded on the march to the sea. It was just before we reached Columbia. There was really no force in front of us, but they behaved as if they had a substantial body of men, and fooled us for some hours. We got our guns well within range and well-masked. Through my binoculars I could see the enemy's staff as pompous as if they had an army of a hundred thousand men intrenched.
"'There was an officer with a gray goatee seated at a little table, two younger officers, with black goatees, standing on his left, and five or six men on his right, one in front with a long dark beard. They were as cool as if they controlled the situation, orderlies galloping up and galloping off and all that.
"'We had a German named Krebs, a barrel of a man, but a wonderful artillerist: I called him and he sighted our best gun through the scrub pines.
"'He plunked the shell square on that table, I saw the table smash, and the shell exploded as it struck the ground. That was the best cannon-shot I ever saw or heard of.'
"The instant Tupper ceased Colonel Rhett cleared his throat. He spoke in a muffled, choked voice.
"'Strange,' he said, 'a second recognition the same evening. I was one of the half-dozen men on that general's right hand. I was the only one not killed of the nine by the table. The general was my father, and the man with the long black beard my brother-in-law. Two of the others were my cousins.'
"You may be sure we were all uncomfortable after that. And it did n't seem to me another drink was in order, just then, either.
"Colonel Tupper spoke like a man.
"'It was all in the course of duty, Rhett,' he said. 'I would n't hold a personal grudge for it against you, if our places were changed, not if the shell had killed all my family and friends.'
"That sort of relieved the tension and we all felt less nervous when Rhett answered,—
"'I hold no grudge, Tupper. We 're all friends together, now. And since you mention it, it would have taken an almighty big shell to kill all my kin at one shot.'
"We laughed at that and felt better.
"Captain Bowe cut in. He thought he could change the line of thought.
"'Duty led to some pretty unpalatable acts being forced on a fellow in wartime,' he said. 'Sometimes I think some of the duties that resulted in no bloodshed at all were worse to have to do than any kind of killing. I was in the Shenandoah Valley, and I can tell you turning ladies and children out of doors and burning their homes before their eyes took all a man's resolution and devotion to duty. It took all a man's resolve not to bolt and desert rather than carry out orders. I had some horrible days then.
"The worst of all was near Red Post, at an estate named Tower Hill, belonging to some people named Archibald. Of course there were women at home, only the women. Mrs. Archibald was not over twenty-six. She had four children, a beautiful little girl of about five years, twin boys, not any too sure on their feet, and a baby not six weeks old. She had two sisters, handsome dark girls, about seventeen and nineteen; Rannie their name was, or something like it. Her mother was an exquisite old lady, all quiet dignity. They were not hard and cold and scornful like some of the women I had had to leave houseless; they acquiesced without protests. Mrs. Archibald said she realized how distasteful my task must be to me. Indeed, I had tears in my eyes when I talked to her, I know. They huddled together just beyond the heat of the fire, and watched the barn and quarters burn and the house catch. They clung to each other, and the girls cried softly. By the Lord, gentlemen, that hurt more than any loss by death, and death took some of my dear ones during the war. That tried my soul more than danger or privations. It was bitter hard to have to do, and it is not agreeable to recall, even now.'
"Janney swore out loud.
"'This seems to be a day of recognitions,' he said. 'Their name was not Rannie, it was Janney. They were my sisters and my mother. I was not two miles away, and I saw the house go. I vowed to kill the man that burned it, if I ever met him, and I meant it too.'
"'Does that vow hold good?' Bowe asked quietly, never stirring in his chair.
"'Time has canceled all the rash vows of those years,' Melrose put in before Janney could speak. 'All the rash vows and all the old hatreds.'
"'Yes,' Janney agreed, 'that is my view too. I consider that vow as completely annulled as if I had never taken it. But if we had captured you, Bowe, among the prisoners we made out of the stragglers then, and if I had known you for the man who burnt Tower Hill, I'd have shot you like a dog, sir; murdered you in cold blood without a qualm.
Wade sat silent. The near horse pawed at the turf-grown carriage track and turned his head toward the buggy, wickering softly.
"And what followed?" Des Pertuis queried.
"I don't remember any more that evening," Wade replied. "But next day the nine of them walked down here, arm in arm, Humphreys with Melrose, Rhett with Tupper, Janney with Bowe, and Captain Spence and Parks and Uncle Wade, with seven or eight more veterans. Colonel Melrose stuck that flag on Colonel Spence's grave, himself."
René looked at the flag as if he had never seen it before.
"I perceive the point," he said. "Your experiment is entirely successful. I agree with you. I have seen nothing in America as wonderful as that little faded flag. I understand what it is of which you especially boast. You conceive that here in the United States exists a kind of fraternity more genuine than anything anywhere else in the world. It is this of which you brag."
"Exactly so, "Wade affirmed. "That 's what I brag of, that's worth bragging of, you understand. What do area and population and wealth and manufactures and trade-balances and prosperity and all that sort of thing amount to, after all? Other nations have had them, and have them, and will have them. But what other nation ever had what that flag stands for? I don't know much history, you understand, but my wife spends her life reading, and I listen when she talks. I'm dead sure no nation ever produced anything to compare with the spirit in which our differences have resulted. I'm sure no nation has it to-day. And if it ever overspreads the world in the future, we made it, we started it, we had it first. That's something worth being proud of."
"I comprehend indeed," René told him. "And I do not wonder at your pride in it."
"Bully for you," Wade cried. "It 's some satisfaction talking to somebody who is appreciative, you understand. Now I don't mean to run down the old countries. I acknowledge their culture and manners, their music and poetry and literature, their painting and sculpture and architecture. They've all that and we have n't; we can't compete with them in any of those things. Let them brag of their cathedrals, and art-galleries, and court-balls, and all the rest of it. They are wonderful. But that flag stands for the most wonderful thing in all the world, for the finest thing the world has ever produced yet. Not for talk about brotherhood, but for the real thing. That 's my view, you understand."
"I comprehend indeed," René repeated. "And how long will that flag stay there?"
"Till the 30th of next May," his host replied.
"What will they do with it then?" Des Pertuis queried.
"Throw it away, I suppose," Wade answered easily. "It will be pretty well used up by then, you see, and they 'll stick down a fresh one."
"Shall you be here then?" the Frenchman inquired.
"Sure," said the American. "Why?"
"Could you get it for me?" René queried. "If you could I should like to put it up over the fireplace at Pertuis."
"With what's-his-name's stirrup and thing-em-a-bob's glove?" Wade asked.
"Yes," René answered, "with the gauntlet left by du Guesclin with that hostess who had nursed him back to life; with the stirrup-iron from the saddle which Gaston de Foix gave his boyhood crony, my ancestor: with the other like relics, not a few."
My wife went wild over that chimney-piece," Wade affirmed. "She said it was the finest she had seen in France and the most wonderful collection of mementos she ever saw in a private house."
"Madame Wade is very kind." René replied. "If you will be so good I should like to place among them this very flag."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1934, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 89 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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