“But I’m not. And that’s how they hurt me.”
“What have they done to you, Robert? What have they said to you? How have they hurt you? I want to know.”
The pitch of anger was back in the man’s voice. He could stand persecution for himself, but to have his loved ones persecuted, that was unbearable.
“Oh, it don’t amount to much,” replied the boy; “they simply didn’t want me, that’s all.”
“Didn’t want you when? where? how? Tell me, Robert! I say, tell me!”
It was the last thing the boy would have told to his father voluntarily, the story of the slight put upon him that evening at the village. But, inadvertently, he had stumbled into the mention of it, and now there was no escape from telling the whole story. He had never learned the art of equivocation, and it did not take many questionings before the whole humiliating tale was in his father’s possession. But the outburst of wrath that the boy had feared did not come. Instead, for many minutes, the man sat silent, looking down at the gray footpath losing itself in the shadows of the trees. When at last he raised his head, he spoke slowly as if to himself.
“Poor, weak, wicked human nature! Poor, paltry, fluctuating popular sentiment! Utterly illogical, brutally oppressive, with no mind nor thought of its own, led hither and thither by charlatans and demagogues ‘clothed with a little brief authority.’ Ah! but those men who rule and ruin down there at Washington will have much to answer for some day! It may not be until the last great day, but the accounting is bound to come. Mary,” turning to his wife, “is it better that we should follow the lead of our own minds and consciences, and suffer humiliation and insult and ostracism; or shall we yield to popular pressure, and hide our sentiments, and go along with the shouting, cheering, mindless rabble, and shout and cheer with them?”
“I don’t know, Rhett, dear. I don’t know anything about it. I try to think it out sometimes, but I get all confused and I stop trying. You know Cousin Henry is fighting with Lee, and Cousin Charley is with Grant in Mississippi. So many Kentucky families are divided that way, and it isn’t strange that I should be at a loss to decide. But you’ve thought it all out, Rhett, and you must be right, and I’ll think just as you do, no matter what happens to us. Anyway, so long as I have you and Robert and Louise I shall try to be happy. Where is Louise? I forgot all about her. Louise!”
“Here, mother.”
The child had retreated to the corner of the porch when the first sign of trouble appeared, and, now that the excitement was over, she was tired and sleepy.