The Fanatics/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
A LONE FIGHT
There was one man whom the moving glory of the departing troops filled with no elation. From a distant point, Bob Van Doren saw the blue lines swinging down the streets of Dorbury, and heard the shriek of the fifes. But there was in him no inclination to join in the shouting or to follow the admiring crowd. He was possessed neither by the joyous nor the sorrowing interest of the citizen, nor yet by the cowardly shame of the stay-at-home. While he could not go as far as his father and stay within the closed and shuttered house, yet he felt that he was not a part of the flag-flying, dram-beating throng. Many of the young fellows there were his friends who had eaten and drunk with him. They had laughed and sported together both as men and boys. But now, suddenly, it seemed that something had arisen to make them entirely different, and to put him as far apart from them and their sympathies as if they had been born at opposite poles. What was this impalpable something? he asked himself. Was it in him, in them or outside and beyond them both? Or to get at the bottom of things, did it really exist? Their training and his had been very much the same. They had gone to the same schools, read the same books and adored the same heroes. What, then, was the subtle element that had entered into life to divide them?
These were the questions he was asking himself as he heard the farewell abouts of the departing troops and the clanging of the train bell. Then he turned and with his mind full of harassing inquiries took his way home.
"Well, they're off to help rob the South of its niggers, are they?" said his father.
"They are gone," replied Robert laconically. He was not in the mood to talk.
"Humph, Southern buzzards will be the fatter for them."
"Don't, father, that's horrible. There are a good many of the fellows we both knew and liked among them."
Stephen Van Doren flashed a quick suspicious glance at his son as he remarked, "So much the worse for them."
"I wish it might have been settled some other way," pursued Robert drearily, "I'd rather have let the South secede than institute this orgie of unnatural bloodshed, brother against brother, friend against friend."
Again his father flashed that white questioning look at him. Then he rose abruptly and left the room. Robert hardly noticed the movement, so absorbed was he in his own thoughts, but sat staring blankly before him. He was momentarily aroused from his reverie by the reentrance of his father, who laid an old miniature upon the table before him, and went out again without a word. Robert picked up the picture. It was the portrait of a beautiful young woman painted in the style of forty years before—his mother—and her name was written on a piece of yellow paper stuck in the frame, "Virginia Nelson, Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia." He gazed at the picture and read and re-read the inscription, "Fairfax Courthouse." What a quaint old-fashioned, southern sound it had. It seemed redolent of magnolias and jessamine and soft as the speech of its own citizens. But was that home, or this, the place where his youth and early manhood had been passed? Which was home, the place of memories or the place of action? What makes home; dreams or labor; the hopes of boyhood or the hard reality of later life?
To young Van Doren, the memory of his mother, who had lived only two years after coming North, had been as a guiding star and he knew that it was to recall this that his father had brought him the picture. It was apparent that he must have been strongly moved, for that little worn and faded miniature seldom left the old man's desk. His father felt deeply; so did he. His mother's eyes were pleading with him. Sentiment, said his mind; truth, said his heart.
Finally, he laid the picture face downward on the table. He told himself it must not enter into his thoughts at all. But his mind would not let it go. Eel-like, his consciousness wrapped itself about it and would not let it go. He felt guilty when the thought assailed him that perhaps the face of another woman which was graven on his heart, argued more strongly than the pictured one. "Mary, Mary," his heart said, "is my love for you blinding me to right and justice? While other men decide and do, I stand still here waiting and asking what to do." He thought of Walter Stewart and the apparent case with which he had made a hard decision, and his anger flashed up against his own impotence; but still his inclination wavered weakly back and forth. The Union, the Confederacy; the place of his boyhood and the home of his manhood.
At last, he asked himself the question which he had so long shunned, What he believed? and he was compelled to answer that his convictions leaned to the side of those who were in arms against the general government. Then there was but one thing to do. He stood up, very pale and sad of countenance, trembling on the verge of a decision. But suddenly as out of nowhere, a voice seemed to sound into his very being, "Has love no right?" "Good God," he cried alond, "shall I go on this way, forever wavering? Shall I go on being a coward, I who hate cowardice?" His heart was burning with pain, misery and anger and shame at himself, and yet he could not, he dared not say where he stood. The fact that he tried to fight out of recognition, and herein lay his greatest cowardice, was that he did not feel the Southern cause deeply enough to risk losing the woman he loved by its espousal; nor could he leap open-eyed into the Northern movement, for which he had no sympathy. Had he felt either as deeply as did Bradford Waters or his own father, he would not have hesitated where to take his place.
The struggle in his mind had not just begun. From the very moment that the atmosphere had become electric with the currents of opposing beliefs, he had felt himself drawn into the circuit. But, by nature, always inexpressive, he had said nothing, and left those who thought of him to the conviction that he was unmoved by passing events. But the lone nights and the grey dawns knew better. Many a time had he gone to bed after a period of earnest, self-searching, satisfied at last, and saying, "It is true, I shall take my stand," only to wake and find that everything was changed in the light of day. Many a time had morning found him in his chair where he had sat all night, trying to wrench order out of the chaos of his mind. And now, now, it was no better.
There was a step in the hall, and his father looked in on him for a moment and passed on. Robert knew that he was going through an ordeal no less terrible than his own, and he wished that it might be ended, even if it brought strife and separation between them as it had done between Walter Stewart and his father. The thought had hardly left his brain when it was occupied by another. Was he to be watched like a child who was likely to get into mischief? This was too much, too much. He had borne with his father as long as he could. Now he would show him that he was his own master, to go his own way. Anyway, it was his concern alone. With whichever side he went, he must be shot for himself. If he stayed at home, it was he who must bear the sneers and jokes, who must live down the contumely. Whose right was it, then, to institute an annoying surveillance over him? Not even his father's. It had come to a pretty pass when a man might not think without interruption. Bah, he could not call his soul his own. It was only the sign of his nervous condition that he should fall into this state of petulant anger.
Then unaccountably, his whole mental attitude changed, and the appearance of his father's questioning face in the door, struck him only with a ludicrous aspect. He thought of himself as some coquettish but wavering maiden who bade her lover wait outside until she could answer the momentous question, yes or no, and he burst out laughing.
But his mirth was short and unnatural.
"I am either a fool or a brute," he said, "I know that father and Mary are both watching me, but they have a right to watch and they have the right to demand from me the answer in their hearts."
He paused as if a new thought had struck him. Then he rose and took his hat. "I'll do it," he exclaimed passionately, "I'll go to her and let her help me. Why haven't I thought of it before?" He passed out and called to his father as he went, "I'm going out for a while, father."
"All right," was the answer, but the words that followed solemnly were, "The boy is driven out into the street, even as the men possessed of devils spirit were driven to the rocks and the tombs. It is the evil spirit of Northern narrowness working in him."
It was with a heart somewhat lightened by the hope of relief that Robert Van Doren hastened along the street towards the Waters' home. So much had passed in the days since he had last stood at the gate that the little difference between him and the father of the woman he loved appeared as a very small thing. When two great sections of a nation are arrayed against each other, there is no time for the harboring of petty angers. Two thoughts held him. He would see Mary again. She would help him, and his honor should come to its own. These thoughts left no room in his mind for malice.
No misgiving touched him even when he stood at the door and his knock brought Mary to the door. She looked at him with a frightened face, and turned involuntarily to glance at her father who sat within.
"Is anything the matter?" she said in a low, hurried voice.
"Nothing, only I want your advice and help," said Van Doren, stepping across the threshold.
At the voice and step, Bradford Waters rose and faced the visitor, and his face began working with growing anger. "What do you mean by invading my house, again, Robert Van Doren?"
"I came to see Mary."
Waters took his daughter by the hand as if he would put himself between the girl and her lover. "Mary can have no dealings with you or your kind. We do not want you here. I have told you that before. Your way and ours lie apart."
"They have not always lain apart and need not now." Van Doren's surprise was stronger than his resentment as he looked into the old man's passionate face. Could a few days work such a change in a man?
"They must and shall lie apart," Waters took him up hotly. "What you have been to this family, you cannot be again."
"What have I done to forfeit your respect?"
"It isn't what you've done, but what you are."
"How do you know what I am?"
"That's it. At least, your father has the courage to come out and say what he is. You haven't. At least, he is a man———"
"Father, father," cried Mary, "don't say any more!"
"I'm sorry to see a daughter of mine," said Waters, turning upon her, "pleading for one of those whom her brother has gone South to kill" The girl put her hands up quickly as if she would check the words upon her father's lips. Van Doren had turned very white. He stood as one stunned. All his hopes of help had been suddenly checked, and instead of sympathy, he had received hard words. But a smile curved his lips.
"Have I not said enough, Robert Van Doren?"
"Yes," was the reply, still with a quiet smile, "you have said enough," and he turned towards the door.
Mary sprang away from her father. "Robert, Robert, don't go," she cried, "he doesn't mean it. This great trouble has made him mad." Bradford Waters started to speak but stopped as the young man put off the girl's detaining hand. "I must go, Mary," he said, "your father is right. We have come to the parting of the ways. I have not had the courage to say where I stood, but I have it now. I came for help to decide a momentous question. I have got it. Good-bye, Mary, good-bye—Mr. Waters, the Confederacy may thank you for another recruit."
He opened the door and passed out, the old man's voice ringing after him, "Better an open rebel than a copperhead." A hard look came into the girl's eyes.
"You needn't worry," said her father, "it's good riddance." She made no reply.
In spite of all that passed, Robert Van Doren went home in a lighter frame of mind.
"I'm going to leave to-morrow," he said to his father.
"You have made your choice?"
"The South needs me," returned the young man evasively. His father came to him and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he took the miniature from the table and placed it on his breast.
"I knew that your mother would not plead with you in vain," he said, and Robert smiled bitterly.