“I’m so glad! What was it those men shouted, Rhett? Does it mean any harm to you?”
“I hope not, Mary. It was just some wild zealot echoing the sentiment of his crazy masters, that’s all. We’ll go in to supper now.”
As he spoke, Bannister pulled the lever that clamped the wheel, and the whirring and grinding ceased. Then he locked the shop-door and they all went down the path to the house.
At the supper-table the subject of the draft was not mentioned. But, later in the evening, after Bob’s sister had gone to bed, and a wood-fire had been lighted in the fireplace, for it had grown suddenly cold, Rhett Bannister chose to inform his wife of the situation. Try as he might to prevent it, the social blight which had fallen on him covered her also with its sinister darkness. Her heart was deeply troubled. She passed her days in anxiety and her nights in fear. She knew little of the deep undercurrents of political passion and of fratricidal strife that were undermining the bed-rock of the nation. She knew only that she trusted her husband and believed in him, and was ready to endure any suffering for his sake. And while, always, he sought to protect and comfort her, even to the extent of keeping from her knowledge such matters as would give her unnecessary anxiety or alarm, still there were times when he thought she ought, for the sake of all of them, to know what was happening. And to-night was one of those times.
“Sit here, Mary,” he said. “Let’s talk over this matter of the draft. That rowdy shouted, and Robert confirms the report, that I have been drafted. That means that I shall have to go and fight in the ranks of the Union armies, whether I will or no.”
“O Rhett! Do you mean that you have to go as Charley Hitchner did, and John Strongmeyer?”
“Yes, only they were drafted by the state. The government at Washington chooses to take me.”
“But what shall I do without you? If they knew how impossible it is for you to go and leave me alone, they wouldn’t make you do it, I’m sure.”
“Yes, dear. The privations and sufferings of wives and children are not considered. The administration at Washington needs men to carry on this unholy war, and wives may starve and babies may die, but the war must go on. There, Mary, never mind,” as the tears came into the woman’s eyes, “I haven’t gone yet. Perhaps I’ll not go. A man’s house is his castle, you know. They’ll have hard work to take me if I choose to stay. Well, Rob, who else was drafted? You heard the list read.”
“Yes, father, Adam Johns read it. His own name was the first one on it.”