He remained in the office and read on, doggedly and determinedly seeking to close his senses to all external sights and sounds. Whatever happened, duty and devotion left but one course open to him.
That evening—it was Friday—he went home; he wished to escape from the fever of excitement that he knew was raging all about him, though he had voluntarily held himself aloof from it as from something he feared.
Early the next morning he hunted up Sam West, who had spent half the night in town. Of him he eagerly enquired the latest news; the bombardment of Fort Sumter still continued. In the afternoon, Jackson, the farm tenant, was able to tell him that a meeting had been called for Monday night; and that Captain Jim McKeever, a veteran of the Mexican War, who had recently failed in the liquor business, had already been to Columbus and had returned with the governor's authority to raise a company of volunteers in the event of there being a call for troops.
Stephen knew the captain, a dissipated little man, whose record as a citizen was far from spotless; but in the boy's eyes he suddenly assumed heroic proportions, for he had met the occasion in the one way it could be met, he had risen above profitless discussion. He slowly turned this latest information over in his mind as he strolled about the place. One thing was certain, he would not go into town; most of all, he would not go near that meeting on Monday night.
Yet when Monday came, and never before had a Sunday seemed so long in passing, or such a useless interruption to the affairs of life, he found his interest in the meeting all consuming and not to be denied; Sumter had fallen, and surely something would be done! During the afternoon he informed Virginia that he was going in to see Benson; and after supper rode in with Jackson who expected to attend the meeting. But when they reached town, the court-house was already packed to the doors; Stephen could not have gained admittance had he wished; but he no longer wished to, for what was going forward on the square he found infinitely more to his taste.
The centre of interest was Captain McKeever, who, mounted on an upturned barrel was haranguing the crowd that pressed about him. The whole scene was more one of popular rejoicing than anything else; for no one then realized the blackness of the shadow that was falling on the land; all was life and excitement, and joyous anticipation. How soon this was to simmer down in the realities of war, no one could have foreseen; but that, too, was again a phase of the national uprising, which was only national as it was widely individual.
Stephen was not in the least moved by McKeever's speech; he had a certain contempt for oratory; even the quiet restraint that characterized most of Benson's utterances in public, and he rarely ventured on a metaphor or happy turn, had always offended him; but his glance was fixed yearningly on a score or more of men in red shirts, who kept together about the speaker. At intervals, from the court-house there issued the sound of cheers and the heavy stamping of feet, but he had no interest in what was passing there; it was McKeever who was worth watching, McKeever and his men! Yet after a time he disengaged himself from the crowd, and was about to turn away, when some one touched him gently on the arm. It was Marian Benson.
“I've been standing close at your elbow for the past ten minutes, and you never saw me, you hadn't any eyes for me!” she said, laughing up into his face.
“I was listening to McKeever,” he muttered.
“But you were looking at the men who've enlisted, you never took your eyes off them; you looked and looked.”