A day or two later there arrived here a certain major of the United States Army, a large, broad-chested, rather pompous person of about forty-eight or-nine, who from taking his ease in one sinecure and another had finally reached the place where he was unable to endure certain tests (or he thought so) which were about to be made with a view to retiring certain officers grown fat in the service. As he explained to Culhane, and the latter was always open and ribald afterward in his comments on those who offered explanations of any kind, his plan was to take the course here in order to be able to make the difficult tests later.
Culhane resented this, I think. He resented people using him or his methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and yet he received them. He felt, and I think in the main that he was right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, who actually didn't know any more about life or how to take care of his body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great institution. And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great strength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had no control having arranged for that.
However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, Culhane, might shine by contrast. Thus on the first day, having sent him around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the "joggers" were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy major had not arrived. He had been seen and passed by all, of course. After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct road, to the "shop," or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, via a kindly truck or farmer's wagon, and was on his way to the nearest railway station.
At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new guest, inquired, "Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived here this morning?"
No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three miles back.
"I thought so," he said tersely. "There you have a fine example of the desk general and major—we had 'em in the army—men who sit in a swivel chair all day, wear a braided uniform and issue orders to other people. You'd think a man like that who had been trained at West Point and seen service in the Philippines would have sense enough to keep himself in condition. Not at all. As soon as they get a little way up in their profession they want to sit around hotel grills or society ballrooms and show off, tell how wonderful they are. Here's a man, an army officer, in such rotten shape that if I sent a good horse after him now it's ten to one he couldn't get on him. I'll have to send a truck or some such thing."
He subsided. About an hour later the major did appear, much the worse for wear. A groom with a horse had been sent out after him, and, as the latter confided to some one afterward, he "had to help the major on." From that time on, on the short block and the long, as well as on those horseback tours which every second or third morning we were supposed to take, the major was his especial target. He loved to pick on him, to tell him that he was "nearly all guts"—a phrase which literally sickened me at that time—to ask him how he expected to stay in the army if he couldn't do this or that, what good was he to the army, how could any soldier respect a thing like him, and so on ad infinitum until, while at first I pitied the major, later on I admired his pluck. Culhane foisted upon him his sorriest and boniest nag, the meanest animal he could find, yet he never complained; and although he forced on him all the foods he knew the major could not like, still there was no complaint; he insisted that he should be out and around of an afternoon when most of us lay about, allowed him no drinks whatever, although he was accustomed to them. The major, as I learned afterwards, stayed not six but twelve weeks and passed the tests which permitted him to remain in the army.
But to return to Culhane himself. The latter's method always contained this element of nag and pester which, along with his brazen reliance on and pride in his brute strength at sixty, made all these others look so puny and ineffectual. They might have brains and skill but here they were in his institution, more or less undone nervously and physically, and here he was, cold, contemptuous, not caring much whether they came, stayed or went, and laughing at them even as they raged. Now and then it was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking (as he characterized them) "filthy pipes" or chewing tobacco and spitting, actually lousy, and never changing their clothes for weeks on end—how he, revolting at all this and the disease and fevers ensuing, had kept out of doors as much as possible, even in the coldest weather, and finding no other way of keeping clean the single shift of underwear and the one uniform he possessed he had, every other day or so, washed all, uniform and underwear, with or without soap as conditions might compel, in a nearby stream, often breaking the ice to get to the water, and dancing about naked in the cold, running and jumping, while they dried on bushes or the branch of a tree.
"Those poor rats," he added most contemptuously, "used to sit inside and wonder at me or laugh and jeer, hovering over their stoves, but a lot of them died that very winter, and here I am today."
And well we knew it. I used to study the faces of many of the puffy, gelatinous souls, so long confined to their comfortable offices, restaurants and homes that two hours on horseback all but wore them out, and wonder how this appealed to them. I think that in the main they took it as an illustration of either one of two things: insanity, or giant and therefore not-to-be-imitated strength.