The Fanatics/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
ROBERT VAN DOREN GOES HOME
There was no blare of trumpots, no popular acclaim to greet Robert Van Doren's homecoming. He entered Dorbury alone and unwelcomed, weary and sick at heart. It was half-past eight o'clock when his train drew into the familiar station, and the winter night had settled heavy and black. A familiar form came towards him as he walked down the platform, and sadly changed as he was, he saw the light of recognition in the man's eyes. The next instant, he was looking at the stern lines of an averted face. He shuddered and hurried on as rapidly as his weakness would allow. Although he had often in his moments of convalescence pictured dimly how he would be received at home, yet the actuality was so much stronger and harsher than any anticipation of it could be that he was quite unmanned. For the first time it came to him that he was an alien in the land of his adoption, and even upon the dark streets, he shrank from the people he met because he knew his face would be to them as a leper's, and even the empty sleeve, the badge of honor to so many of them, would read only to these people, "Unclean, unclean."
He was bending his steps towards his father's house, absorbed in bitter thoughts, when a sort of divination, rather than the appearance of things roused him from his revery. He looked around upon the place, the houses, the lawns, and then a lighted window caught his eye and he realized that he was passing Bradford Waters' house.
"I wonder if she is back at home?" he said. "I caused her so much grief." He passed through the gate, and crept up to the window. The light shone through a thin shade, but he could see nothing within the house. After a short while, however, he heard the sound of women's voices, and one was hers. Without warning, all the pent-up feeling of the past three years burst forth in the cry, "Mary!"
"What's that?" cried some one within, but there was no answer save the hurried tread of feet across the floor. Aware of what he had done, he was hurrying away, when the front door was thrown open, and he saw her before him standing in a flood of light. Then he could not go. He stood transfixed until she walked down the steps to him crying, "Robert, Robert, I was sure you would come!" And all he could do was to bow his head and murmur, "Thank God."
She took him by the hand and led him into the house, he unresisting.
"Here is Robert," she said to Nannie. "Did I not tell you he would come?"
"Yes, and I am glad with you." Her greeting of Robert was tender, almost sisterly. As soon as she could do so tactfully, she left the room, and Van Doren's glance followed her questioningly. He could not understand her subdued manner, her sad face. Mary saw the look in his eyes and asked,
"Do you not know, then?"
"No," he answered, "what is it?"
"Tom."
"Tom—not—dead?"
"Dead, yes."
"Killed?"
"Yes, at Mission Ridge, nearly a month ago," and she told of all that had happened, while he sat like one dazed.
Finally he broke in, "Tom dead, I living, why is this? Why this choice of the brave instead of the lukewarm, the soldier instead of the raider?"
"Robert, Robert, you are not yourself. I weep for my brother, but you, I have you still."
For answer he raised his empty sleeve.
"Ah, Robert, you don't know. I love you. Here are two arms—yours."
He kissed her cheek silently, and then a sound made them start apart and stare into each other's faces with parted lips. Some one was on the step. There was but one person whom it could be.
"Quick, quick," said Mary, opening a door into the next room. "In here." And Robert hurried in just as Bradford Waters entered, finding Mary troubled and embarrassed. He stood looking at her with a sad face, and then he said, "Mary, you grieve me very much. Has all the past been so hard that you cannot forget it? Has not the past month proven that I am a changed man and that you need hide nothing from me?"
"Yes, father, forgive me." And going to the door she called, "Robert!"
Van Doren came in with a defiant look on his face which vanished at sight of Waters' out-stretched hand.
"Why—why—Mr. Waters," he stammered confusedly.
"Yes, yes, I know, my boy, but I'm glad to see you back, Robert."
Robert grasped the old man's hand and wrung it warmly. "I'm so glad you're reconciled to me, you didn't like me before."
"No more of that, no more of that. I always liked you, but I didn't like your principles. I've seen sorrow though, and I look at things differently."
"Mary has told me and it grieved me much."
"You know then, that the captain has come home?"
"Yes, would to God that I might have come like that."
"Tut, tut, have you been home?"
"No, I was on my way there, when I heard Mary's voice and stopped."
"You must go to him at once now, he will be overjoyed."
"Do you think I dare go to him myself? I'm afraid he thinks me dead."
"I have no doubt. Let Mary go with you and break the news to him. Go on."
Mary hastened to put on her hat and cloak, and together the two went out, leaving the old man standing by the mantel looking at them with strange tenderness. Robert turned at the door and looked back. "You will never know what you have done, Mr. Waters, to make my homecoming less than a tragedy to me," he said huskily.
"It was Tom, not I," said Waters gently.
The house looked very dismal as Mary and Robert approached it, and the latter's heart failed him.
"Has my father seemed to grieve much?" he asked.
"He has been absorbed and preoccupied, but his faith was like mine. We knew you would come back."
"I have heard of the faith that is stronger than death, but I always thought it a meaningless phrase until now. Bless you both."
Stephon Van Doren was drowsing by his library fire when Mary was admitted, but with the courtesy of his kind, he rose and wont nimbly to meet her, apologizing meanwhile for his dressing-gown and slippers.
"But, my dear child," he exclaimed, "what brings you here at this hour?"
"Mr. Van Doren," Mary faltered, her face all aglow.
"Stop," he exclaimed, "whether the dead can come to life or not, no girl can show a face like that, unless she has seen her lover. What is it?"
"I have seen him, he is here in the hall."
Van Doren took a step forward, and then stood trembling, but Robert had thrown the door open and rushed to his father.
"Father!"
"My boy!"
This was in the days before men grew too old to embrace their fathers, and bearded cheeks and lips met. The father's arms were about his son and the empty sleeve fell under his hand. He held it up and then pushed his son from him. His head drooped sadly for a moment, but there was a look of exaltation on his face.
"Father—father, don't let that grieve you. I—I—lost it honorably."
Stephen Van Doren's head went up like a bull's when he scents resistance. "Grieve me," he cried, and then turning to Mary, he said, "Now, my dear, I can show your father that and talk to him upon more nearly equal terms. Why, boy, you've won your spurs, if you haven't got them. To us of the newer land, an empty sleeve, when gallantly won is what the Victoria Cross is to an Englishman."
Robert flushed and moved away a pace further from his father. "But you do not know all."
"All? You said it was won honestly that is enough."
The young soldier looked appealingly at Mary. "I shall have to tell you all," he said.
"I will go, Robert," she said; "it was wrong for me to stay so long, but this meeting has given me such joy as I have never known before." She turned towards the door.
"You must not go," he cried, detaining her, "it is for you also to know. It belongs to you."
"To me?"
"To you—yes."
"How?"
"You remember that night of nights," he asked her softly. "Do they know of it?"
"No, I have never dared to tell them so wild a story."
"I will tell it now, then."
"You may, Robert, they will believe you, every one will."
Then briefly Robert told his father of the strange meeting with Mary that had resulted in his wound. "I don't know what you will say," he ended, "and I don't know what it means."
"It means God," said his father solemnly. "He sent her. Think of it as an old man's fancy if you will, but he lighted one of his own torches at the moment that you might see each other's faces."
"Oh, Robert," cried Mary. "Then it was for me?"
"Yes, darling. Father forgive us, but Mary is glad."
"Why, Mary, child, you show more sense than that great hulking, one-armed hero."
"Hero—father!"
"The man who is old enough to have done a noble deed and is not old enough to know it, should be sent into a closet like a child."
"He does know it—he must know it. Robert, you must see it."
"Hero" was the word running through young Van Doren's brain and he did not understand. He felt Mary's arms about him, he felt his father's hand pressing his own and his thoughts grew hazy. "Hero, how could he be a hero when he was lying helpless when the best fighting was going on, when—though he dared not say it—he did not even know if his heart were wholly with the cause.
His father's voice broke in upon his revery. "Bob, you are the—well, look here, don't you see what kind of a man he must be who dares to ride away from his comrades and into the face of the enemy, and alone, to save a woman?"
"Yes, don't you see, Rob?" said Mary eagerly.
"Why, I loved her," said Robert. "I loved her, and forgive me, father, more than my cause."
"Unless you had had that in you that made your cause strong and noble, you could not have done it even for love."
"Have I pleased you?"
"I am proud to be your father."
"And Mary, I didn't want to tell you—are you hurt?"
"Hurt with the sort of a hurt that a woman—" she started impulsively towards her lover and then paused abashed.
"Never check a good impulse," said old Van Doren. "I am now looking at the portrait of my grandfather."
The two young people improved the opportunity. The old man showed consideration in the length of time he spent admiring the portrait. But a hurried knock on the door recalled their attention.
A servant with a frightened face entered. "There's a lot of men at the door," he said.
"What do they want?" asked Van Doren sternly.
"They—they say that there is a rebel in here, and they want him."
"Go back to them and say," said the old man, his voice ringing like a trumpet, "that there is no rebel here, but a soldier and the son of a soldier, and if they want to see him, he is at their service when he knows their business with him." The servant retired.
"The hounds have begun to bay already," said Robert, his face set and dogged, though he patted Mary's hair as she clung fearfully to him.
"The hounds!" said his father, bringing from his desk a brace of pistols that had seen service, "you mean the curs. The hounds know their true game. Can you use your left hand?"
"As well as my right."
The father tried vainly to hide his satisfaction as he handed his son a weapon. Outside a clamor arose, which grew louder and louder, and the servant came flying back. "They say you must come out."
"So they are afraid to chance it where there's a man's chance," said Robert. "Come, father, let us go to them. You are right, they are curs, not hounds, after all."
Mary moved forward with them.
"No, dear, stay here."
"I will not, Robert, I have no fear for myself. I am going with you. If you die, I do not want to live. I am going."
"Think of your father."
"Do you think of my brother? Would he have me do less?"
The cries were growing fiercer every moment, and the father at the door cried, "Come on," and stepped out as if eager to meet a crowd of enthusiastic admirers. They passed along the hall, threw open the front door and stepped out into the blaze of light which fell from the chandelier within. At their appearance a hoarse cry rose from the lips of the mob, for mob it was, low, ignorant, infuriated.
"There he is—the rebel!"
"Rebel's too good for him—copperhead's the name!"
"Traitor!"
"Coward!"
They stood calmly upon the steps, the three. Robert, pale but dauntless; his father as fixed as a statue, and Mary just behind them, like a spirit of Justice, with eyes unbound.
When their attitude had somewhat quieted the tumult, Stephen Van Doren spoke, and his voice was calm and hard. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "what is it that you want of us?"
"We want your son. We want that damned copperhead that's joined the rebels and been killing our boys. That's what we want," came the reply in fifty voices.
"There is no traitor and no copperhead here," Van Doren went on. "My son, it is true, is here," and he bowed to Robert as if he were delivering a complimentary address, "but he is none of the things which you name. He is a man who has fought for his convictions, and has returned here where he has as good a right as any of you. He is here, I say, and if any or all of you want him, damn you, come and take him!"
The old man's voice had risen, and at the moment both he and Robert, as if by a preconcerted signal, raised their pistols and levelled them at the foremost ranks of the mob. Intimidated at this defiance, the crowd fell back. Just then a rock hurtled past Van Doren's head, and crashed through a window. The noise was like an electric shock to the rabble's failing energies, and with the cry, "Come on, rock them!" they started forward again, those behind forcing the front ranks.
"Try not to kill any of the fools," the father whispered briefly to his son.
They were both pressing their triggers and the forward men were on the first step, when a new cry, "Waters, Waters!" checked their advance, and a man with flowing white hair who had been thrusting his way through the crowd, also mounted the step. The mob thought it had found a new champion, and again yelling, "Waters, Waters!" rushed forward, but Waters turned and faced them, waving his arms.
"Back, back, you cowards!" he cried. They paused in amazement, as he backed slowly up the steps. When they took in his meaning, they attempted another rush, but he stood above them, and suddenly from beneath his coat he tore a long whip with leaden tipped thongs.
"Back," he cried, wielding it with terrific force into the faces and over the heads of the leaders. "Take this, this is for dogs. Back to your kennels, I say!"
His face was terrible, and the men in front quickly turned and began fighting their way to the rear. Others followed, and a panic seized upon them. When Waters stood alone, and the mob at a safe distance began sullenly to gather, some one shouted, "If it wasn't for your son's sake, Waters, we'd kill you."
Waters indicated that he wished to speak, and they became silent with the silence of watchful beasts.
"If it were not for my son's sake!" he said. "I gave him for the cause of right and decency, and I am willing to give myself. What right has any of you who joins so cowardly an attack as this to take upon his lips the name of a brave man? Let never a man who was in this mob to-night utter my son's name again, or by the God who rules over us, I will kill him!" A breath like a shudder passed over the rabble, and Waters went on, "I have lost and I have the right to demand the full worth of my sacrifice, and you who know my loss, have no right to deny me this." He moved up beside Robert, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said, "This man shall stand to me in lieu of the son I have lost, and his empty sleeve shall be the sign of an eternal compact between us, the badge of honor which it is. He is mine, not yours. Mine, by the blood of my son, mine by the void in my heart. Touch him, if you dare! Go home," and he began moving down the steps, his whip grasped tightly in his hand. "Go home, I say, or I'll whip you there."
The mob fell back, and just then the orderly tramping of feet was heard and a rush was made in an opposite direction as the police arrived on the scene, late and reluctant.
The four turned and went silently into the house. They sat silent, too, in the library, all too tense for speech, until Waters said, "Come, Mary, let us go. You need have no fear of further trouble, Bob, the captain will be about. Steve, I disagree with you very much in your last article in the Diurnal. You are all wrong, but I'll talk to you about that to-morrow. Good-night. Come, Mary. It is strange how fanatical some men will be on a subject."