“I didn't think it of you, Stephen,” he said at last, as much in sorrow as in anger. “I looked for better things from you, I did indeed!”
The boy burned to vindicate himself. He felt that all his motives were being misjudged; he wanted Benson to understand just why he had enlisted.
“Look here!” he burst out. “I've fooled my time away here digging into your law books just to please my Aunt Virginia, but it's got to stop; there's no use—no sense in it! I can only be of use to her by being of use to myself in my own way! I can't think with her brains nor hope with her hopes; I've got my own hopes, my own sense of things, and they don't fit with hers—that's all there is to it! Of course, it's going to be a wrench to her, it's going to be a wrench to me; maybe you don't think I love her? I tell you I do! She's been all the mother I have ever had—you know that—and because of her I've never missed anything in my life, but she's got an awfully strong will; she'll make endless sacrifices of herself, but her opinions are like iron, and she's never been able to see what I see! I've told her all along that I was wasting my time here with you; but she's set her heart on my having a profession; nothing I can say moves her, you know that—you know what I say is all so!” he finished in an injured tone.
“This is all beside the question,” said Benson coldly.
“No, it isn't! The wrench has got to come. I've got to have my own head in choosing for myself, and this lucky war comes just in time. It's my one chance to get away and get started on my own hook decently, and I'm going to enlist! Now we won't discuss that side of the case again, please. It's settled.”
“I was merely going to propose that I take your place,” said Benson quietly.
“You take my place—where?” demanded the boy.
“In McKeever's Company.”
“Well, you are funny!” laughed the boy.
“I'm quite in earnest,” answered Benson stiffly.
“No, no! You don't mean that!”
“I'm quite in earnest,” repeated Benson.
“Do you mean you'd enlist just to keep me from enlisting?” inquired Stephen incredulously.
“That's what I said.”
But Stephen waived this aside.
“Oh, you come, too!” he cried. “It will do you a world of good, it's just the sort of thing you need, Mr. Benson!”
Benson frowned.
“I said I'd go in your place.”
“Well, that's nonsense,” objected the boy.
“Very well, then. There is nothing more to be said. Only this, if you don't do what it is your manifest duty to do, what your sense of gratitude should make you do willingly and gladly, I'm done with you! and this war won't last always. You'll be coming back one of these days, it may be within a month or so, and you won't find me the friend I have tried to be, and am still willing to be, if you will only let me serve you!”
At his words Stephen rose slowly from his chair, and took up his hat from the table. His face was white.
“I may even be able to stand that,” he said in a voice he vainly strove to render firm; then not daring to trust himself further he turned quickly to the door, and hurried from the room.
He was deeply hurt, so hurt that he did not realize where he was going until he found himself striding along the deserted country road in the direction of his home.
“And he didn't call me back!” he thought bitterly. “He let me go and never said a word!” Then his mood changed. “I've accepted too many favours from him, if he has begun to keep count of them.” But he could not understand how Benson could have so quickly ended a friendship which he had come to regard as one of the immutable relations of his life.
It was almost midnight when he reached home. There was a faint light burning in the hall, and the library door stood open. His aunt had waited up for him.
“Is that you, Stephen?” she called softly, as he closed and locked the front door.
“Yes,” he answered her, and then as he entered the library, “I'm sorry you waited up for me. If I'd thought you were going to, I'd have gotten home sooner.”
“Surely you didn't walk home, Stephen!” she said. She saw that his shoes were muddy.
“But I did though. I went to see Mr. Benson, and when I left him, every one was gone from out this way, so I had to walk.”
He slipped into a chair at her side.
“Are you very tired, dear?” she asked.
“No, it was nothing, why did you wait up for me? You know I might have stayed at Mr. Benson's all night.”
A shadow crossed his face. The lawyer's words came back to him. He felt that he had been cast off, that that relation had suddenly ceased to be; and he was both hurt and puzzled by the readiness with which Benson had seemingly dismissed him from his regard and liking. He was most undemonstrative himself, but until that night he had as firmly believed in Benson's affection for him as he had believed in any other tangible fact of his existence; more than this, he cherished a great liking for the lawyer; he had been proud to consider him his friend. He did not know that Benson's concern for him, and interest in him, was but one of the many manifestations of his love for Virginia Landray.
“Was there much excitement?” asked Virginia, after a short silence.
“Yes, a good deal. There were speeches at the court-house and a lot of committees were appointed to do a lot of things,” he explained vaguely.
“Who addressed the meeting? Did Mr. Benson?” she questioned. She knew he had more to tell her, but she knew he would tell it in his own way.
“I don't know, I didn't go in. There was more going on outside.” and then he fell silent again. He was thinking of Marian.
“What was the excitement, Stephen?” Virginia asked
“Captain McKeever was enlisting men. You see, President Lincoln has issued a call for men—”
“Did many enlist?”
“Yes, a good many, a hundred, I should say.”
“But you didn't wish to, Stephen?” she said, searching his face anxiously.
“Why do you think that?” he asked, to gain time.
She did not answer him directly.
“I am glad you have come back to me,” she said tenderly, “for I shan't let you go into town again until the excitement is past. It is no place for a hot-headed boy who might easily be led into folly, and you will stay quietly here with me, won't you? Sam can go in tomorrow and bring out your books. That will be the best way; won't it, dear?”
The boy set his teeth in his endeavour to control the workings of his face, which he felt must betray him.
“I suppose it seemed for the moment the only thing left for men to do,” Virginia went on gently. “But the realities of war are so dreadful, that if we would only stop to think, I am sure a better, a wiser way could be found to settle our difficulties.”
He moved restlessly in his chair.
“Oh, this won't be much of a war, Aunt Virginia. President Lincoln only wants men for ninety days, I suppose he knows what's needed. The fellows who enlisted to-night will probably go to Washington, or maybe they won't get any further away than Columbus, where there's to be a big military camp established; but the enlisting was sort of interesting to watch, everybody was cheering and there was a lot of enthusiasm and noise.”
How was he going to tell her of what he had done! He had felt the excitement himself as an intoxicating draught that carried forgetfulness with it. He had gone to extremes of feeling that night of which he had hardly thought himself capable. Men had slapped him on the back, telling him he was a fine fellow, a brave fellow, and every inch a Landray! But more than all, Marian had smiled upon him with love and pride and hero-worship; but how was he to make his Aunt Virginia understand this, or the need he had of the very experience that was to take him from her. She must have realized something of what was passing in his mind, for she said in sudden alarm:
“You are not telling me all, Stephen—you are keeping back something!”
And he answered her with a look so miserable, that she was instantly convinced that this was so.
“Dear Stephen, listen to me, you must stay quietly here and finish fitting yourself for your profession. You will have responsibilities and cares enough, poor boy, just here, you need not go away from home to seek them; the family fortunes need rebuilding, and you must do that. They have been wrecked by just such folly as this, by this love for adventure. You must be very sane and reasonable, you can't give way to these impulses; don't you see it this way, too?”
Her words did not shake his resolution in the least, though they made him profoundly wretched, since he despaired of her ever comprehending his distaste for the career she had mapped out for him. Yet it seemed to him a most brutal thing to do to even try and explain this to her.
“I'm sorry,” he said, with a gulp. “But you'd better know it now—I've enlisted!”
The hand she had been resting on his arm, fell at her side. There was a ghastly pause.
“Stephen! Stephen—how could you?” she cried.
“I am sorry,” he repeated, and there was such depth of misery in his tone that she forbore to reproach him.
“Does Mr. Benson know what you have done?” she asked. As in all her difficulties, she turned now as then, instinctively to the one person who had always been equal to the occasion.
“Yes,” said the boy, “I told him;” but his face clouded.
“What did he say? Didn't he think you had done very wrong?” questioned Virginia.
Stephen nodded.
“What did he propose?”
“Never mind, Aunt Virginia, he proposed all sorts of things, but nothing that fits this case. I'm a member of Captain McKeever's Company, and I shall remain a member as long as there's any need of it. I've given my word, and I've put my name on the muster-roll. I can't take back my word, and I can't take off my name; but we don't know yet how much of a war there is going to be, no one thinks it is going to amount to much. I wish you wouldn't take it so seriously!”
“Won't you tell me what Mr. Benson proposed, Stephen?”
“There is no use thinking of him, Aunt Virginia, he can do nothing, for I shouldn't let him. And anyway, we have had a row about this very matter.”
“You have quarrelled with Mr. Benson!”
“If you choose to call it that—yes. Only I had rather not talk about it.”
But there was one thing more he wished to tell her; and this was what had passed between Marian and him. He knew it would please her if possible, even less than the news of his enlistment; but he deemed it well to get it all over with at once, then they could adjust themselves the sooner to these new conditions which he had so suddenly created.
“What else is there, Stephen?” Virginia asked.
“How do you know there is anything else?” he inquired.
“I can always tell; what is it?”
“Haven't I told you enough for to-night?” he said.
“I would like to know all.”
“Do you know Mr. Benson's uncle?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“Well, do you know his wife?”
“Slightly.”
He gave her an embarrassed smile that she did not understand.
“We Landrays are a proud lot; aren't we? Her husband could buy us out and never feel it—; pay all our debts into the bargain, too, and yet you don't know him or his wife, Aunt Virginia.”
“There is no reason why I should know them.”
“But what have you against them?” he persisted.
“I have nothing against them; they are very worthy people in their way.”
“Oh, Aunt Virginia!” cried the boy. “That's the last thing you can say of any one! I wish you knew her.”
“Knew whom, Stephen?”
“Well, Mrs. Benson, and Miss Benson—Marian—she's the prettiest girl in town.”
“Has Mr. Benson permitted you to form an attachment of which I knew nothing? Did he take you to the house of those people for that?”
“Those people!” scoffed the boy. “I wish you would be a little more generous, Aunt Virginia! It's unfair to judge her like that; and Mr. Benson don't know anything about it anyhow!”
“What do you wish me to think, Stephen; for I suppose I am to take this as a confession of some sort.”
“I've known them—I've known Marian, for four or five years,” muttered the boy sheepishly.
“Well, what of that?” with some displeasure.
“You don't approve?” he asked gloomily.
“No—if you wish me to understand that you have committed yourself, I don't approve. There is every reason why I should not.”
“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.”
“All right, Tom Benson!” sputtered Bently. “If I want to see no further than that, it suits me well enough not to. But I'll tell you one thing; you're doing your best to send this concern straight to hell. You're going to make cannon, are you? When do you expect to use 'em, next Fourth of July, maybe. You're wasting good stock, on which you'll never clear a dollar's profit. I'll not stand for the spending of one cent on such damn foolishness.”
“I'll get it somewhere else,” said Benson sourly.
“Not on the firm's name, you won't; mind you that!” shouted Mr. Bently flying into a rage.
“The firm!” sneered Benson, elevating his bushy eyebrows. “Look here, don't you think the firm's lasted quite long enough? It's been my head against your jaw. It's a hell of a pardnership!” he thrust his hands deep in his trousers' pockets. “Come, which shall it be, do I step out, or do you? One of us has got to go!”
“I guess you'll buy, Tom Benson,” said the postmaster, with a shrewd shake of the head. “I'll not have you moving across the street to set up shop under my nose.”
Benson threw back his head and laughed aloud at this.
“You got a heap of confidence in me. That's a pretty way to talk to your son-in-law, ain't it now?” he said.
“You ain't of my choosing, Tom, I never made any bones about that,” retorted Bently.
His candour must have agreed perfectly with the mechanic's rude sense of humour, for his grin widened.
“Nobody'll ever accuse you of saying anything less than you think,” he said. “Well, if I moved across the street, I could show you how shops ought to be run.”
“I ain't so sure there's anything I can learn of you! I was a mechanic when you was a nursing baby.”
“About then, I should say,” answered Benson. “But the world's slipped forward a cog or two since then.”
“Better buy me out, Tom!” urged Bently. “It's your chance to let the world know how smart a fellow you are!”
“You'll sell then? It ain't all talk?” said Benson.
“Make me your offer, you know what the shops are doing; make me a fair offer and I'll leave you alone here, since that is what you want, to play hell with the business!”
“You'll have my offer inside of two hours,” said the Yankee mechanic coolly.
“Make it cash, Tom, I want none of your paper; people will be building fires with it inside of a twelve month,” he jeered.
Benson turned on his heel and went back through the shops to the pattern-room. From his desk there, which he unlocked, he took a device in polished wood and steel and nickle. This he slipped under his coat, for it was too bulky to carry in his pocket; then he went straight to his nephew's office, where he wasted no time in explanation.
“I want to buy Bently out, Jake,” he said briefly. “I've got money enough put by to meet his price. Now'll you go in with me? for I must have a partner with capital. Wait a minute—I want you should see this before you give me your answer;” and he placed the mechanism he had brought from the pattern room in the lawyer's hands.
“Do you know what you got there, Jake?” he asked, after a moment's silence.
“It's the stock and breech of a gun,” said the lawyer, turning it over.
“It's a repeating rifle, Jake—my own invention, and even if I do say it, it's the greatest weapon ever made! Put that in the hands of one Yankee, and he'll be the match for twenty rebels; do you think the government's going to stand off when I get it in shape to offer? I sha'n'. be able to fill the contracts! Look here, it loads with this special cartridge—automatic—do you see? And feeds from the stock where ten rounds will be carried, and them ten rounds will be available in almost as many seconds. Jake, once I begin to manufacture them rifles, secession's got its death blow; nothing will make good the difference between a muzzle loading musket and that weapon! Once that's in the hands of the Yankees, they will be hunting Jeff Davis in his own back-yard—nothing'll stop 'em!”
“But what do you want me to do?” asked Benson.
“Join me in making that arm! I'll ask you for no money now, all I want is that you should stand ready to put in a few thousands—say eight or ten—in case we're slow in realizing on our contracts.”
“How soon will these demands begin?”
“Not under five or six months.”
“Very well,” said the lawyer. “You can close with Mr. Bently while he's in the humour to sell; later we can draw up papers covering the partnership—there's no hurry about that.”
And before the two hours for which he had stipulated had elapsed,
Tom Benson had closed with Mr. Bendy, and rather less than twenty minutes later he was back at the shops and had given orders to have the old sign which read “Bendy's Foundry” painted out, and “The Benson Iron Works,” the new firm name, under which he intended to continue the business, painted in its stead.
Before Stephen left Camp Jackson, near Columbus, where he was mustered in, he was displaying so great an aptitude for his work, that McKeever, now advanced to a colonelcy, urged his claims to such good purpose, that when he was wounded in a skirmish at Romney, Virginia, and was sent home on sick leave, a lieutenant's commission shortly followed him thither.
His first home-coming his Aunt remembered long afterward with entire satisfaction. Their little estrangement was forgotten; he was frank and affectionate as he had always been.
He had developed wonderfully; his shoulders had broadened and he was brown and muscular, the boy had become a man. He had quite lost his air of troubled preoccupation born of his doubt and foreboding of the future, for his future no longer troubled him.
Virginia made much of him, and he accepted her solicitude and Jane's, with infinite good-nature.
“A fellow don't have any chance with you two!” he told them laughingly. “Especially when his arm's tied up as mine is.”
“But, dear, this is all we can do!” said Virginia sighing, and adjusting his bandages with tender caressing fingers. “When we heard that your regiment had been in battle, it was just as if you were the only one—as if there were not thousands of others!”
The one disturbing element in Virginia's happiness was Stephen's devotion to Marian Benson. It was little short of tragic that this sturdy handsome fellow should be determined to throw himself away on Tom Benson's daughter. Her prejudice here she felt was not altogether groundless, for Benson at her request had brought his cousin to the farm to call; the meeting had not been very successful however; Marian had been embarrassed and ill at ease, and Virginia had not been able to see in her at all what Stephen Saw. With this one tentative attempt at an acquaintance her efforts in that direction had ceased.
Stephen had been delighted when he heard that Marian had driven out to see Virginia. He heard this from Marian herself, Virginia had not mentioned it.
“Why you never said Marian had called,” he told Virginia, almost reproachfully.
“Didn't I, dear?” she asked drily.
“No; and Marian only chanced to mention it to-day. Didn't you think her very pretty?” he questioned eagerly.
“Yes, she is certainly pretty,” agreed Virginia, but without enthusiasm.
“The prettiest girl in Benson—and quite as nice as she is pretty! I wonder you didn't tell me that she had been here; I hope you'll see lots of her, Aunt Virginia.”
“You know, dear, I've quite gotten out of the way of meeting people.”
His face clouded at this.
“But I'm sure you'd like her mother; and Mr. Benson's a very superior sort of man. He showed me an invention of his to-day, a rifle, if he can get it accepted by the government he'll make a fortune. It's certainly a wonderful thing.”
Virginia heard him in silence, and then abruptly changed the subject. He was puzzled, but remembered that Marian had been equally reticent. He decided that for some reason they had not gotten on very well together, and that the friendship which he had confidently looked for the moment they met, was even further off than if they had not met at all. But he took comfort in the thought that when he and Marian were married, the relation between her and Virginia would change entirely; she would be of the family then. There was Harriett, a stranger might have found it difficult to say whether she was Jane's daughter or Virginia's. The latter seemed to feel an equal interest in her with her mother. This was all so characteristic of his aunt, that he felt once they were married, her love would go out to Marian in the same way.
It was during the continuance of his furlough that Virginia determined to sell the mill. It had taken Benson six months to find a purchaser for the property, but he was at last successful; and Stephen drove Virginia into town the day the deed was signed.
“You are satisfied to have the sale made, Stephen?” Benson inquired.
“Certainly,” said the young man a little defiantly, “the ready money is better than the property.”
“I dare say.” responded the lawyer.
In the afternoon, Benson drove to the mill with the new owner. Afterward he strolled up to the house to see Virginia.
“I have just been going over the accounts,” she told him, a trifle ruefully, and held up an inky forefinger.
“I was aware that the sale of the mill would not do all you hoped it might; that it would not clear off the debts even. I can't bear to see you continue this useless struggle; it hurts me as nothing else has ever hurt me. I am proposing nothing unusual—men go to the aid of other men—business is not entirely a matter of calculation, sentiment does enter into it; I want to make this situation easy for you; let me clear up those debts, then you can put this money in the bank.”
“No,” she said quietly.
He left his chair and took a turn of the room.
“Have you forgotten what I once told you, Virginia?” he asked, pausing and facing her.
“You were not to mention that to me again.”
“Have I spoken of it only in words, Virginia?” he asked.
“You have been—most considerate always,” she said guardedly.