She said: “Stephen, I am afraid that the war has come.”
He sat up, blindly. Even he did not guess the agony in her heart.
“You will have to go, Stephen.”
It was long before his answer came.
“You know that I cannot, mother. We have nothing left but the little I earn. And if I were—” He did not finish the sentence, for he felt her trembling. But she said again, with that courage which seems woman's alone:
“Remember Wilton Brice. Stephen—I can get along. I can sew.”
It was the hour he had dreaded, stolen suddenly upon him out of the night. How many times had he rehearsed this scene to himself! He, Stephen Brice, who had preached and slaved and drilled for the Union, a renegade to be shunned by friend and foe alike! He had talked for his country, but he would not risk his life for it. He heard them repeating the charge. He saw them passing him silently on the street. Shamefully he remembered the time, five months agone, when he had worn the very uniform of his Revolutionary ancestor. And high above the tier of his accusers he saw one face, and the look of it stung to the very quick of his soul.
Before the storm he had fallen asleep in sheer weariness of the struggle, that face shining through the black veil of the darkness. If he were to march away in the blue of his country (alas, not of hers!) she would respect him for risking life for conviction. If he stayed at home, she would not understand. It was his plain duty to his mother. And yet he knew that Virginia Carvel and the women like her were ready to follow with bare feet the march of the soldiers of the South.
The rain was come now, in a flood. Stephen's mother could not see in the blackness the bitterness on his face. Above the roar of the waters she listened for his voice.
“I will not go, mother,” he said. “If at length every man is needed, that will be different.”