“I wish you did,” he said, “for it's settled—about Marian, I mean.”
Yet later when he went to his room, he had the grace to be bitterly disappointed with himself, and with the situation.
He felt that they had grown strangely apart. That the war, and Marian, and his own act, had come between them, and that in spite of his real affection for his aunt, the old frank relation could never again exist.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MCKEEVER'. company left Benson the day the Confederate Cabinet in session at Montgomery, Alabama, greeted with jeers the news that President Lincoln had issued a call for seventy-five thousand men; but neither its mirth nor the scenes attending the departure of McKeever's handful, in any way foreshadowed the struggle to which the nation was committed. McKeever hustled his men into the cars reserved for them, and the crowd, some thousands strong, that had assembled to see them off, slowly dispersed. During the four grim years that followed, the town grew familiar with these departures, just as it did with the return of the remnants of companies that had gone forth, and men came and went in this new profession of theirs, and only those immediately concerned in their fortunes took note of them.
As they left the town behind, Stephen was conscious only of a sense of freedom. He had cast aside the burdens that had oppressed him. He conceived that in the career he had chosen there would be no perplexing problems, no horror of the law. His one fear was that the war would soon end; and each time this possibility was advanced in his hearing, his heart sank within him.
But if Stephen was disturbed by the prospect of the war's abrupt ending, there were those who did not share in this optimistic view that so widely prevailed. Among these was Tom Benson; who as soon as the call for men came, made ready to cast cannon for the government. When Newton Bently heard of this, he hurried down to the shops. He'd tell Tom a thing or two; did the fool think the country'd waste any time on those lunatics down South? The war would be over with by the middle of summer; then who'd want his cannon?
“And you think that the war will end in two or three months?” said Benson, when he had heard what Bently had to say; and he grinned in large pity of the little man. “Well, think it hard—if it's any comfort to you; man; you see no further than the tip of your nose. You'll never earn your salt as a prophet; this is war if there ever was war.”