Three words were in the Captain's heart. He shaped them soundlessly with his trembling lips, as he had not breath to spare for a whisper: 'I am lost'
And having given up life, the Captain suddenly began to live. A great mad joy surged through him. This emotion, coming as unexpectedly as the plunge of the horse when he had broken away, was one that the Captain had never experienced. His eyes were glassy and half open, as in delirium, but he saw suddenly as he had never seen before. The world was a kaleidoscope, and each of the multiple visions which he saw impressed itself on his mind with burning vividness. On the ground half buried in the leaves there was a little flower, dazzling white and beautifully wrought. A thorny pine cone, the flight of a bird in the blue windy sky, a fiery shaft of sunshine in the green gloom these the Captain saw as though for the first time in his life. He was conscious of the pure keen air and he felt the marvel of his own tense body, his laboring heart, and the miracle of blood, muscle, nerves, and bone. The Captain knew no terror now; he had soared to that rare level of consciousness where the mystic feels that the earth is he and that he is the earth. Clinging crabwise to the runaway horse, there was a grin of rapture on his bloody mouth.
How long this mad ride lasted the Captain would never know. Toward the end he knew that they had come out from the woods and were galloping through an open plain. It seemed to him that from the corner of his eye he saw a man lying on a rock in the sun and a horse grazing. This did not surprise him and in an instant was forgotten. The only thing which concerned the Captain now was the fact that when they entered the forest again the horse was giving out. In an agony of dread the Captain thought: 'When this ends, all will be over for me.'
The horse slowed to an exhausted trot and at last stopped altogether. The Captain raised himself in the saddle and looked about him. When he struck the horse in the face with the reins, they stumbled on a few paces farther. Then the Captain could make him go no farther. Trembling, he dismounted. Slowly and methodically he tied the horse to a tree. He broke off a long switch, and with the last of his spent strength he began to beat the horse savagely. Breathing in great gasps, his coat dark and curled with sweat, the horse at first moved restively about the tree. The Captain kept on beating him. Then at last the horse stood motionless and gave a broken sigh. A pool of sweat darkened the pine straw beneath him and his head hung down. The Captain threw the whip away. He was smeared with blood, and a rash caused by rubbing against the horse's bristly hair had come out on his face and neck. His anger was unappeased and he could hardly stand from exhaustion. He sank down on the ground and lay in a curious position with his head in his arms. Out in the forest there, the Captain looked like a broken doll that has been thrown away. He was sobbing aloud.
For a brief time the Captain lost consciousness. Then, as he came out of his faint, he had a vision of the past. He looked back at the years behind him as one stares at a shaking image at the bottom of a well. He remembered his boyhood. He had been brought up by five old maid aunts. His aunts were not bitter except when alone; they laughed a great deal and were constantly arranging picnics, fussy excursions, and Sunday dinners to which they invited other old maids. Nevertheless, they had used the little boy as a sort of fulcrum to lift the weight of their own heavy crosses. The Captain had never known real love. His aunts gushed over him with sentimental effulgence and knowing no better he repaid them with the same counterfeit coin. In addition, the Captain was a Southerner and was never allowed by his aunts to forget it On his mother's side he was descended from Huguenots who left France in the seventeenth century, lived in Haiti until the great uprising, and then were planters in Georgia before the Civil War. Behind him was a history of barbarous splendor, ruined poverty, and family hauteur. But the present generation had not come to much; the Captain's only male first cousin was a policeman in the city of Nashville. Being a great snob, and with no real pride in him, the Captain set exaggerated store by the lost past.
The Captain lacked his feet on the pine straw and sobbed with a high wail that echoed thinly in the woods. Then abruptly he lay still and quiet. A strange feeling that had lingered in him for some time took sudden shape. He was sure that there was someone near him. Painfully he turned himself over on his back.
At first the Captain did not believe what he saw. Two yards from him, leaning against an oak tree, the young soldier whose face the Captain hated looked down at him. He was completely naked. His slim body glistened in the late sun. He stared at the Captain with vague, impersonal eyes as though looking at some insect he had never seen before. The Captain was too paralyzed by surprise to move. He tried to speak, but only a dry rattle came from his throat. As he watched him, the soldier turned his gaze to the horse. Firebird was still soaked with sweat and there were welts on his rump. In one afternoon the horse seemed to have changed from a thoroughbred to a plug fit for the plow.
The Captain lay between the soldier and the horse. The naked man did not bother to walk around his outstretched body. He left his place by the tree and lightly stepped over the officer. The Captain had a close swift view of the young soldier's bare foot; it was slim and delicately built, with a high instep marked by blue veins. The soldier untied the horse and put his hand to his muzzle in a caressing gesture. Then, without a glance at the Captain, he led the horse off into the dense woods.
It had happened so quickly that the Captain had not found a chance to sit up or to utter a word. At first he could feel only astonishment. He dwelt on the pure cut lines of the young man's body. He called out something inarticulate and received no reply. A rage came in him. He felt a rush of hatred for the soldier that was as exorbitant as the joy he had experienced on runaway Firebird. All the humiliations, the envies, and the fears of his life found vent in this great anger. The Captain stumbled to his feet and started blindly through the darkening woods.
He did not know where he was, or how far he had come from the post His mind swarmed with a dozen cunning schemes by which he could make the soldier suffer. In his heart the Captain knew that this hatred, passionate as love, would be with him all the remaining days of his life.
After walking for a long time, when it was almost night, he found himself on a path familiar to him.
The Pendertons' party began at seven, and half an hour later the front rooms were crowded. Leonora, stately in a gown of cream colored velvet, received her guests alone. When replying to inquiries about the absence of the host, she said that, devil take him, she didn't know he might have run away from home. Everyone laughed and repeated this they pictured the Captain trudging off with a stick over his shoulder and his notebooks wrapped in a red bandanna. He had planned to drive into town after his ride and perhaps he was having car trouble.