"I cried out. I am sorry," she said meekly. Without glancing at Blackburn, she straightened herself, and walked, with short, wavering steps, out of the room.
For a minute the two men faced each other in silence; then Alan made an impetuous gesture of indignation and followed Angelica.
CHAPTER V
The Choice
"Looks as if we were going to war, Blackburn." It was the beginning of April, and Robert Colfax had stopped on the steps of his club.
"It has looked that way for the last thirty-two months."
"Well, beware the anger—or isn't it the fury?—of the patient man. It has to come at last. We've been growling too long not to spring—and my only regret is that, as long as we're going to war, we didn't go soon enough to get into the fight. I'd like to have had a chance at potting a German. Every man in town is feeling like that to-day."
"You think it will be over before we get an army to France?"
"I haven't a doubt of it. It will be nothing more than a paper war to a finish."
A good many Virginians were thinking that way. Blackburn was not sure that he hadn't thought that way himself for the last two or three months. Everywhere he heard regrets that it was too late to have a share in the actual whipping of Germany—that we were only going to fight a decorous and inglorious war on paper. Suddenly, in a night, as it were, the war spirit in Virginia had flared out. There was not the emotional blaze—the flaming heat—older men said—of the Confederacy; but there was an ever-burning, insistent determination to destroy the roots of this evil black flower of Prussian autocracy. There was no hatred of Austria—little even of Turkey. The Prussian spirit was the foe of America and of the world; and it was against the Prussian spirit that the militant soul of Virginia was springing to arms. Men who had talked peace a few months before—who had commended the nation that was "too proud to fight," who had voted for the President because of the slogan "he kept us out of war"—had now swung round dramatically with the volte-face of the Government. The President had at last committed himself to a war policy, and all over the world Americans were awaiting the great word from Congress. In an hour personal interests had dissolved into an impersonal passion of service. In an hour opposing currents of thought had flowed into a single dominant purpose, and the President, who had once stood for a party, stood now for America.
For, in a broader vision, the spirit of Virginia was the spirit of all America. There were many, it is true, who had not, in the current phrase, begun to realize what war would mean to them; there were many who still doubted, or were indifferent, because the battle had not been fought at their doorstep; but as a whole the country stood determined, quiet, armed in righteousness, and waited for the great word from Congress.