When the South seceded and the first call to arms rang from California to Maine, Dad’s blood had stirred like that of an ancient war horse. The warlike heritage of centuries of fighters blazed like fire in his veins. His impulse was to enlist at once.
Then had come the agony of second thought.
He had been “dishonorably dismissed from the service he had degraded.” How could he return to it? Once cashiered, forever cashiered.
His services would unquestionably be rejected; as, for example, had those of that young Captain Grant who had been so decent to him down in Mexico.
Grant had not been cashiered from the army nor had he left it in disgrace. He had merely resigned that he might better support his family.
Yet when at the war’s outbreak—so a common friend had told Brinton—Grant had written to the government offering his services, no heed had been given to the offer.
No, Brinton dared not risk a repulse; perhaps an insult. So he banished the tempting war-dream; and, to keep it banished, he had drunk a little deeper.
But now—The morning air was cold and bracing. Only a single drink stood between him, thus far to-day, and stark sobriety. On the square the two companies of recruits were drilling.
Stage’s gleefully malicious words rankled sharply under Dad’s thickened, yet vulnerable mental epidermis. Unconsciously his stooping shoulders flattened and his steps fell into time to the fife-and-drum notes to which the recruits were marching and counter-marching.
Up Main Street strode Dad. And the once-firm mouth under the straggling gray mustache grew firm and set as of old, as he walked. The eyes, too, took on a less dreamy look and lost their film.