Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction
by Thomas Nelson Page · English · Gutenberg #49648 · 1,088,716 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction
Author: Thomas Nelson Page
Illustrator: B. West Clinedinst
Release date: August 7, 2015 [eBook #49648]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED ROCK: A CHRONICLE OF RECONSTRUCTION ***
RED ROCK
A CHRONICLE OF RECONSTRUCTION
[Illustration: SHE GAVE HIM A ROLLING-PIN AND HE SET TO WORK.]
RED ROCK
_A CHRONICLE OF RECONSTRUCTION_
BY
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
_ILLUSTRATED BY B. WEST CLINEDINST_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
To
F. L. P.
_AN OLD-FASHIONED LADY_
_PREFACE_
_The Region where the Grays and Carys lived lies too far from the
centres of modern progress to be laid down on any map that will be
accessible. And, as “he who maps an undiscovered country may place what
boundaries he will,” it need only be said, that it lies in the South,
somewhere in that vague region partly in one of the old Southern States
and partly in the yet vaguer land of Memory. It will be spoken of in
this story, as Dr. Cary, General Legaie, and the other people who used
to live there in old times, spoke of it, in warm affection, as, “the
old County,” or, “the Red Rock section,” or just, “My country, sir.”_
_It was a goodly land in those old times—a rolling country, lying at
the foot of the blue mountain-spurs, with forests and fields; rich
meadows filled with fat cattle; watered by streams, sparkling and
bubbling over rocks, or winding under willows and sycamores, to where
the hills melted away in the low, alluvial lands, where the sea once
washed and still left its memory and its name._
_The people of that section were the product of a system of which it
is the fashion nowadays to have only words of condemnation. Every
ass that passes by kicks at the dead lion. It was an Oligarchy, they
say, which ruled and lorded it over all but those favored ones who
belonged to it. But has one ever known the members of a Democracy to
rule so justly? If they shone in prosperity, much more they shone in
adversity; if they bore themselves haughtily in their day of triumph,
they have borne defeat with splendid fortitude. Their old family seats,
with everything else in the world, were lost to them—their dignity
became grandeur. Their entire system crumbled and fell about them in
ruins—they remained unmoved. They were subjected to the greatest
humiliation of modern times: their slaves were put over them—they
reconquered their section and preserved the civilization of the
Anglo-Saxon._
_No doubt the phrase “Before the war” is at times somewhat abused. It
is just possible that there is a certain Caleb Osbaldistonism in the
speech at times. But for those who knew the old County as it was then,
and can contrast it with what it has become since, no wonder it seems
that even the moonlight was richer and mellower “before the war” than
it is now. For one thing, the moonlight as well as the sunlight shines
brighter in our youth than in maturer age; and gold and gossamer amid
the rose-bowers reflect it better than serge and crêpe amid myrtles
and bays. The great thing is not to despond even though the brilliancy
be dimmed: in the new glitter one need not necessarily forget the old
radiance. Happily, when one of the wise men insists that it shall
be forgotten, and that we shall be wise also, like him, it works
automatically, and we know that he is one of those who, as has been
said, avoiding the land of romance, “have missed the title of fool at
the cost of a celestial crown.”_
_Why should not Miss Thomasia in her faded dress, whom you shall
meet, tell us, if she pleases, of her “dear father,” and of all her
“dear cousins” to the remotest generation; and Dr. Cary and General
Legaie quote their grandfathers as oracles, alongside the sages of
Plutarch, and say “Sir” and “Madam” at the end of their sentences?
Antiquated, you say? Provincial? Do you, young lady, observe Miss
Thomasia the next time she enters a room, or addresses a servant;
and do you, good sir, polished by travel and contact with the most
fashionable—second-class—society of two continents, watch General
Legaie and Dr. Cary when they meet Miss Thomasia, or greet the
apple-woman on the corner, or the wagoner on the road. What an air
suddenly comes in with them of old Courts and polished halls when
all gentlemen bowed low before all ladies, and wore swords to defend
their honor. What an odor, as it were, of those gardens which Watteau
painted, floats in as they enter! Do not you attempt it. You cannot do
it. You are thinking of yourself, they of others and the devoirs they
owe them. You are republican and brought up to consider yourself “as
good as any, and better than most.” Sound doctrine for the citizen, no
doubt; but it spoils the bow. Even you, Miss or Madam, for all your
silks and satins, cannot do it like Miss Thomasia. You are imitating
the duchess you saw once, perhaps, in Hyde Park. The duchess would have
imitated Miss Thomasia. You are at best an imitation; Miss Thomasia is
the reality. Do not laugh at her, or call her provincial. She belongs
to the realm where sincerity dwells and the heart still rules—the
realm of old-time courtesy and high breeding, and you are the real
provincial. It is a wide realm, though; and some day, if Heaven be good
to you, you may reach it. But it must be by the highway of Sincerity
and Truth. No other road leads there._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN WHICH THERE ARE SEVERAL INTRODUCTIONS, 1
II. IN WHICH TWO STRANGERS VISIT RED ROCK AND ARE INVITED
TO COME AGAIN, 11
III. THE VISITORS START SOUTH AGAIN, AND THEIR FORMER HOSTS
GO TO MEET THEM, 33
IV. IN WHICH A LONG JUMP IS TAKEN, 49
V. DR. CARY RETURNS FROM THE WAR, AND TAKES AN INVENTORY
OF STOCK, 56
VI. A BROKEN SOLDIER COMES HOME FROM WAR, 63
VII. THE CARY CONFERENCE, 78
VIII. MR. HIRAM STILL TELLS HOW TO BRIDLE A SHY HORSE, AND
CAPTAIN ALLEN LAYS DOWN HIS HOE, 86
IX. MR. JONADAB LEECH TURNS UP WITH A CARPET-BAG AND OPENS
HIS BUREAU, 96
X. THE PROVOST MAKES HIS FIRST MOVE, 107
XI. THE PROVOST CATCHES A TARTAR, AND CAPTAIN MIDDLETON
SEEKS THE CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION, 118
XII. CAPTAIN ALLEN TAKES THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE AND
JACQUELIN GRAY LOSES HIS BUTTONS AND SOME OLD PAPERS, 139
XIII. STEVE ALLEN LEARNS MISS THOMASIA’S SECRET AND FORSWEARS
CARDS, 155
XIV. LEECH SECURES AN ORDER AND LOSES IT, 162
XV. CAPTAIN MIDDLETON HAS A TEST OF PEACE, AND IS ORDERED
WEST, 175
XVI. THE NEW TROOP MEETS THE ENEMY, 186
XVII. JACQUELIN GRAY GOES ON A LONG VOYAGE AND RED ROCK
PASSES OUT OF HIS HANDS, 195
XVIII. LEECH AS A STATESMAN AND DR. CARY AS A COLLECTOR OF
BILLS, 207
XIX. HIRAM STILL COLLECTS HIS DEBTS, 216
XX. LEECH LOOKS HIGHER AND GETS A FALL, 228
XXI. DR. CARY MEETS AN OLD COLLEGE MATE AND LEARNS THAT THE
ATHENIANS ALSO PRACTISE HOSPITALITY, 241
XXII. JACQUELIN GRAY COMES HOME AND CLAIMS A GRAVEYARD, 252
XXIII. TWO NEW RESIDENTS COME TO THE COUNTY, 264
XXIV. THE TRAVELLERS ARE ENTERTAINED IN A FARMHOUSE, 280
XXV. THE TRICK-DOCTOR, 289
XXVI. MAJOR WELCH AND RUTH BECOME RESIDENTS, 294
XXVII. HIRAM STILL GETS A LEGAL OPINION AND CAPTAIN ALLEN
CLIMBS FOR CHERRIES, 301
XXVIII. MRS. WELCH ARRIVES AND GIVES HER FIRST LESSON IN
ENTERPRISE, 320
XXIX. MRS. WELCH ENTERS THE HARVEST, 330
XXX. SOME OF THE GRAIN MRS. WELCH REAPED, 347
XXXI. JACQUELIN GRAY LEARNS THAT HE IS A FOOL, AND STEVE
ASTONISHES MAJOR WELCH, 365
XXXII. A CUT DIRECT AND A REJECTED ADDRESS, 385
XXXIII. BLAIR CARY SAVES A RIVAL SCHOOL, 398
XXXIV. LEECH AND STILL MAKE A MOVE, AND TWO WOMEN CHECK THEM, 410
XXXV. CAPTAIN ALLEN FINDS RUPERT AND BREAKS THE LAW, 422
XXXVI. MR. STILL OFFERS A COMPROMISE, AND A BLUFF, 436
XXXVII. IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT, IN A TRIAL, COUNSEL MAY ASK
ONE QUESTION TOO MANY, 455
XXXVIII. IN WHICH MR. LEECH SPRINGS A TRAP WITH MUCH SUCCESS, 472
XXXIX. CAPTAIN ALLEN CLAIMS THE REWARD LEECH OFFERED, 500
XL. JACQUELIN GRAY AND ANDY STAMPER PAY AN OLD DEBT, 512
XLI. DR. CARY WRITES A LETTER TO AN OLD FRIEND, 521
XLII. CAPTAIN ALLEN SURRENDERS, 528
XLIII. MISS WELCH HEARS A PIECE OF NEWS, 538
XLIV. MIDDLETON REVISITS RED ROCK, AND AN OLD SOLDIER LAYS
DOWN HIS ARMS, 544
XLV. CAPTAIN ALLEN HAS AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR, 559
XLVI. THE OLD LAWYER DECLINES TO SURPRISE THE COURT, AND
SURPRISES LEECH, 572
XLVII. SOME OF THE THREADS ARE TIED, 579
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SHE GAVE HIM A ROLLING-PIN AND HE SET TO WORK, _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
AMONG THE COMPANY THAT NIGHT THERE WERE TWO GUESTS WHO
“HAPPENED IN” QUITE UNEXPECTEDLY, 14
THE GIRLS OF THE PLACE TURNED ASIDE, WHENEVER THEY MET THEM,
AND PASSED BY WITH THEIR HEADS HELD HIGH, 96
HE CARRIED OFF IN TRIUMPH A PAIR OF OLD HORSE-PISTOLS, 124
KU KLUX—“AWFUL FORMS WRAPPED LIKE GHOSTS IN WINDING-SHEETS,” 238
BEFORE HIM STOOD, TALL AND GRAY, THE INDIAN-KILLER, 262
“I COULDN’T LET YOU BE RUN AWAY WITH AGAIN UNDER MY VERY
EYES,” HE SAID, 328
STEVE STRETCHED, AND, PICKING UP HIS BOOK, DIVED ONCE MORE
INTO THE “IDYLLS OF THE KING,” 376
SHE GAVE A STEP FORWARD AND WITH A QUICK MOVEMENT PULLED THE
MASK FROM HIS FACE, 406
STILL SPRUNG TO HIS FEET IN UNCONTROLLABLE AGITATION, HIS FACE
LIVID, 464
AND THERE, IN THE LITTLE PARLOR, STEVE AND RUTH WERE MARRIED, 570
RED ROCK
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH THERE ARE SEVERAL INTRODUCTIONS
The old Gray plantation, “Red Rock,” lay at the highest part of the
rich rolling country, before it rose too abruptly in the wooded
foothills of the blue mountains away to the westward. As everybody in
the country knew, who knew anything, it took its name from the great
red stain, as big as a blanket, which appeared on the huge bowlder in
the grove, beside the family grave-yard, at the far end of the Red
Rock gardens. And as was equally well known, or equally well believed,
which amounted almost to the same thing, that stain was the blood of
the Indian chief who had slain the wife of the first Jacquelin Gray who
came to this part of the world: the Jacquelin who had built the first
house at Red Rock, around the fireplace of which the present mansion
was erected, and whose portrait, with its piercing eyes and fierce
look, hung in a black frame over the mantel, and used to come down as a
warning when any peril impended above the house.
The bereft husband had exacted swift retribution of the murderer, on
that very rock, and the Indian’s heart blood had left that deep stain
in the darker granite as a perpetual memorial of the swift vengeance of
the Jacquelin Grays.
This, at least, was what was asserted and believed by the old negroes
(and, perhaps, by some of the whites, too, a little). And if the
negroes did not know, who did? So Jacquelin often pondered.
Steve Allen, who was always a reckless talker, however, used to say
that the stain was nothing but a bit of red sandstone which had
outcropped at the point where that huge fragment was broken off, and
rolled along by a glacier thousands of years ago, far to the northward;
but this view was to the other children’s minds clearly untenable; for
there never could have been any glacier there—glaciers, as they knew
from their geographies, being confined to Switzerland, and the world
having been created only six thousand years ago. The children were
well grounded by their mothers and Miss Thomasia in Bible history.
Besides, there was the picture of the “Indian-killer,” in the black
frame nailed in the wall over the fireplace in the great hall, and one
could not go anywhere in the hall without his fierce eyes following you
with a look so intent and piercing that Mammy Celia was wont to use it
half jestingly as a threat effectual with little Jacquelin when he was
refractory—that if he did not mind, the “Indian-killer” would see him
and come after him. How often Mammy Celia employed it with Jacquelin,
and how severe she used to be with tall, reckless Steve, because he
scoffed at the story, and to tease her, threatened, with appropriate
gesture, to knock the picture out of the frame, and see what was in
the secret cabinet behind it! What would have happened had Steve
carried out his threat, Jacquelin, as a boy, quite trembled to think;
for though he admired Steve, his cousin, above all other mortals, as
any small boy admires one several years his senior, who can ride wild
horses and do things he cannot do, this would have been to engage in a
contest with something supernatural and not mortal. Still he used to
urge Steve to do it, with a certain fascinating apprehensiveness that
made the chills creep up and down his back. Besides, it would have
been very interesting to know whether the Indian’s scalp was still in
the hollow space behind the picture, and if so, whether it was still
bleeding, and that red stain on the bottom of the frame was really
blood.
Jacquelin Gray—the one who figures in these pages—was born while
his father, and his father’s cousin, Dr. Cary, of Birdwood, and Mr.
Legaie were in Mexico, winning renown in those battles which helped
to establish the security of the United States. He grew up to be just
what most other boys of his station, stature, and blood, living on a
plantation, under similar conditions, would have been. He was a hale,
hearty boy, who adored his cousin, Steve Allen, because Steve was older
and stronger than he; despised Blair Cary because she was a girl;
disliked Wash Still, the overseer’s son, partly because Steve sneered
at him, and partly because the negro boys disliked him, and envied
every cart-driver and stable-boy on the place. He used to drive with
string “lines” two or four or six of his black boon companions, giving
them the names of his father’s horses in the stable; or sometimes,
even the names of those steeds of which his Aunt Thomasia, a famous
story-teller, told him in the hour before the candles were lighted.
But if he drove the black boys in harness, it was because they let
him do it, and not because he was their master. If he possessed any
privileges or power, he did not know it. If anything, he thought the
advantage rather on their side than on his, as they could play all the
time, while he had to go to school to his Aunt Thomasia, whose bell
he thought worse than any curfew; for that rang only at night, while
Miss Thomasia’s bell was sure to tinkle just at the moment when he was
having the most beautiful time in the world. How gladly would he have
exchanged places to mind the cows and ride the horses to the stable,
and be free all day long; and whenever he could slip off he was with
the boys, emulating them and being adored by them.
Once, indeed, his mastership appeared. Wash Still, the overseer’s son,
who was about Steve’s age, used to bully the smaller boys, and one
day when Jacquelin was playing about the blacksmith’s shop, Wash, who
was waiting for a horse to be shod, twisted the arm of Doan, one of
Jacquelin’s sable team, until the boy whimpered. Jacquelin never knew
just how it happened, but a sudden fulness came over him; he seized
a hatchet lying by, and made an onslaught on Wash, which came near
performing on that youngster the same operation that Wash’s august
namesake performed on the celebrated cherry-tree. Jacquelin received
a tremendous whipping from his father for his vicious attack; but his
defence saved his sable companions from any further imposition than his
own, and Wash was shortly sent off by his father to school.
As to learning, Jacquelin was not very apt. It was only when Blair Cary
came over one winter and went to school to Miss Thomasia—and he was
laughed at by everyone, particularly by Steve, because Blair, a girl
several years younger than he, could read Latin better—that Jacquelin
really tried to study. Though no one knew it, many of the things that
Jacquelin did were done in the hope that Steve might think well of
him; and whether it was riding wild colts, with the certainty of being
thrown and possibly hurt; diving into deep pools with the prospect of
being drowned, or doing anything else that he was afraid to do, it was
almost sure that it was done because of Steve.
With some natures the mere performance of an action is sufficient
reward: that man suffers martyrdom; this one does a great act; another
lives a devoted, saint’s life, impelled solely from within, and with
no other idea than to perform nobly. But these are rare natures: the
Christophers, à Kempises and Theresas of the world. The common herd
must have some more material motive: “wine, or sleep, or praise.”
That charge was led because a dark—or blonde-haired girl was waiting
somewhere; that gate was blown up because an army was standing by,
and a small cross might be worn on the breast for it; that poem was
written for Lalage, or Laura, Stella, or Saccharissa. Even the saint
was crowned, because somewhere, in retired monasteries or in distant
cities, deeds were sure to be known at last. So, now it is a big boy’s
praise, and later on a fair girl’s favor; now the plaudits of the
playground, and a few years hence salvos of artillery and the thanks of
the people. And who shall say they are not worthy motives? We are but
men, and only the highest win even these rewards.
Steve Allen had come to Red Rock before Jacquelin could remember—the
year after Steve’s father was killed in Mexico, leading his company
up the heights of Cerro Gordo, and his mother died of fever far down
South. Mr. Gray had brought the boy home on his mother’s death; so
Steve was part of Red Rock. Everybody spoiled him, particularly Miss
Thomasia, who made him her especial charge and was notoriously partial
to him, and old Peggy, Steve’s “Momma,” as she was called, who had come
from the far South with him, and with her sharp eyes and sharper tongue
was ready to fight the world for him.
Steve was a tall, brown-haired young fellow, as straight as a sapling,
and with broad shoulders; gray eyes that could smile or flash; teeth
as white as snow, and a chin that Dr. Cary used to say he must have
got from his mother. He was as supple as an eel. He could turn
back-somersaults like a circus man, and as he was without fear, so
he was without reverence. He would tease Miss Thomasia, and play
practical jokes on Mr. Gray and Dr. Cary. To show his contempt for the
“Indian-Killer,” he went alone and spent the night on the bloody rock,
and when the other boys crept in a body to see if he were really there,
he was found by the little party of scared searchers to be tranquilly
asleep on the “Indian-Killer’s” very grave. This and similar acts
gained Steve Allen, with some, the credit of being in a sort of compact
with the spirit of darkness, and several of the old negroes on the
plantation began to tell of his wonderful powers, a reputation which
Steve was not slow to improve; and afterward, many a strange, unearthly
sound, that scared the negroes, and ghostly manifestations which went
the rounds of the plantation might possibly have been traced to
Steve’s fertile brain.
The only persons on the place who did not get on well with Steve were
Hiram Still, the manager, and his son, Wash. Between them and Steve
there was declared enmity, if not open war. Steve treated Hiram with
superciliousness, and Wash with open contempt. The old negroes—who
remembered Steve’s father, Captain Allen, Mr. Gray’s cousin, and the
dislike between him and Hiram—said it was “bred in the bone.”
At length Steve went off to school to Dr. Maule, at “The Academy,” as
it was called, no further designation being needed to distinguish it,
as no other academies could for a moment have entered into competition
with it, and there was a temporary suspension of the supernatural
manifestations on the plantation. Jacquelin missed him sorely and tried
to imitate him in many things; but he knew it was a poor imitation,
for often he could not help being afraid, whilst Steve did not know
what fear was. Jacquelin’s knees would shake, and his teeth sometimes
chatter, whilst Steve performed his most dangerous feats with mantling
cheeks and dancing eyes. However, the boy kept on, and began to do
things simply because he was afraid. One day he read how a great
general, named Marshal Turenne, on being laughed at because his knees
were shaking as he mounted his horse to go into battle, replied that
if his knees knew where he was going to take them that day they would
shake still more. This incident helped Jacquelin mightily, and he took
his knees into many dangerous places. In time this had its effect, and
as his knees began to shake less he began to grow more self-confident
and conceited. He began to be very proud of himself, and to take
opportunities to show his superiority over others, which developed with
some rapidity the character existent somewhere in most persons: the
prig.
Blair Cary gave the first, if not the final, shock to this development.
She was the daughter of Dr. Cary, Mr. Gray’s cousin, who lived a few
miles off across the river, at “Birdwood,” perhaps the next most
considerable place to Red Rock in that section. She was a slim little
girl with a rather pale face, large brown eyes, and hair that was
always blowing into them.
She would have given her eyes, no doubt, to have been accepted as
companion by Jacquelin, who was several years her senior; but as that
young man was now aspiring to be comrade to Steve and to Blair’s
brother, Morris, he relegated Blair to the companionship of his small
brother, Rupert, who was as much younger than Blair as she was younger
than himself, and treated her with sovereign disdain. The first shock
he received was when he found how much better Blair could read Latin
than he could, and how much Steve thought of her on that account. After
that, he actually condescended to play with her occasionally, and,
sometimes, even to let her follow him about the plantation to admire
his feats, whilst he tried to revenge himself on her for her superior
scholastic attainments by showing her how much more a boy could do
than a girl. It was all in vain. For, with this taunt for a spur, she
would follow him even to the tops of trees, or the bottoms of ponds:
so he determined to show his superiority by one final and supreme act.
This was to climb to the roof of the “high barn,” as it was called,
and spring off into the top of a tree which spread its branches below.
He had seen Steve do it, but had never ventured to try it himself. He
had often climbed to the roof, and had fancied himself performing this
feat to escape from pursuing Indians, but had never really contemplated
doing it in fact, until Blair’s persistent emulation, daunted by
nothing that he attempted, spurred him to undertake it. So one day,
after some boasting, he climbed to the peak of the roof. His heart
beat so as he gazed down into the green mass far below him and saw the
patches of brown earth through the leaves, that he wished he had not
been so boastful; but there was Blair behind him, astride of the roof,
her eyes fastened on him with a somewhat defiant gaze. He thought how
Steve would jeer if he knew he had turned back. So, with a call of
derision to Blair to see what “a man could do,” he set his teeth, shut
his eyes, and took the jump, and landed safely below, among the boughs,
his outstretched arms gathering them in as he sank amidst them, until
they stopped his descent and he found a limb and climbed down, his
heart bumping with excitement and pride. Blair, he felt sure, was at
last “stumped.” As he sprang to the ground and looked up he saw a sight
which made his heart give a bigger bound than it had ever done in all
his life. There was little Blair on the very peak of the roof, the very
point of the gable, getting ready to follow him. Her face was white,
her lips were compressed, and her eyes were opened so wide that he
could see them even from where he was. She was poised like a bird ready
to fly.
“Blair! Blair!” he cried, waving her back. “Don’t! don’t!” But Blair
took no heed. She only settled herself for a firmer foothold, and the
next second, with outstretched arms, she sprang into space. Whether
it was that his cry distracted her, or whether her hair blew into her
eyes and made her miss her step, or whether she would have misjudged
her distance anyhow, instead of reaching the thickly leaved part where
Jacquelin had landed, she struck where the boughs were much less thick,
and came crashing through: down, down, from bough to bough, until she
landed on the lowest limb, where she stopped for a second, and then
rolled over and fell in a limp little bundle on the ground, where she
lay quite still. Jacquelin never forgot the feeling he had at that
moment. He was sure she was dead, and that he was a murderer. In a
second he was down on his knees, bending over her.
“Blair, Blair,” he cried. “Dear Blair, are you hurt?” But there was
no answer. And he began to whimper in a very unmanly fashion for one
who had been so boastful a moment before, and to pray, too, which
is not so unmanly; but his wits were about him, and it came to him
quite clearly that, if she were not dead, the best thing to do was to
unfasten her neck-band and bathe her face. So off to the nearest water
he put as hard as his legs could take him, and dipped his handkerchief
in the horse-trough, and then, grabbing up a bucket near by, filled
it and ran back with it. Blair was still motionless and white, but he
wiped her little, scratched face and bathed it again and again, and,
presently, to his inexpressible joy, she sighed and half opened her
eyes and sighed again, and then, as he was still asking her how she
felt, said, faintly:
“I’m all right—I did it.”
In his joy Jacquelin actually kissed her. It seemed to him afterward to
mark an epoch.
The next quarter of an hour was passed in getting Blair’s breath back.
Fortunately for her, if not for her dress, her clothes had caught here
and there as she came crashing through the branches, and though the
breath was knocked out of her, and she was shaken and scratched and
stunned, no bones were broken, and she was not seriously hurt after
all. She proposed that they should say nothing about it to anyone: she
could get his Mammy to mend her clothes. But this magnanimous offer
Jacquelin firmly declined. He was afraid that Blair might be hurt some
way that she did not know, and he declared that he should go straight
and tell it at the house.
“But I did it myself,” persisted little Blair; “you were not to blame.
You called to me not to do it.”
“Did you hear me call? Then why did you do it?”
“Because you had done it and said I could not.”
“But didn’t you know you would get hurt?”
She nodded.
“I thought so.”
Jacquelin looked at her long and seriously, and that moment a new idea
seemed to him to enter his mind: that, after all, it might be as brave
to do a dangerous thing which you are afraid to do, as if you are not
at all afraid.
“Blair, you are a brick,” he said; “you are braver than any boy I
know—as brave as Steve. As brave as Marshal Turenne.” Which was sweet
enough to Blair to make amends for all her bruises and scratches.
From that time Jacquelin made up his mind that he would never try to
stump her again, but would guard her, and this sweetened to him the
bitterness of having to confess when he got to the house. He did it
like a man, going to his father, of whom, at heart, he was mightily
afraid, and telling him the whole story alone without the least
reference to Blair’s part in it, taking the entire blame on himself;
and it was only after he had received the punishment which was deemed
due him that Blair’s joint responsibility was known from her own lips.
This escapade, however, proved a little too much for the elders, and
Jacquelin was sent off to school, to the Academy at Brutusville, under
the learned Doctor Maule, where, still emulating Steve, who was the
leader in most of the mischief that went on at that famous institution
of learning, he made more reputation by the way he constructed a trap
to catch one of the masters, Mr. Eliphalet Bush, than in construing the
ancient language which was that gentleman’s particular department.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH TWO STRANGERS VISIT RED ROCK AND ARE INVITED TO COME AGAIN
Everyone knows what a seething ferment there was for some time before
the great explosion in the beginning of the Sixties—that strange
decade that changed the civilization of the country. Red Rock, like
the rest of the land, was turned from a haunt of peace into a forum.
Politics were rampant; every meeting was a lyceum; boys became orators;
young girls wore partisan badges; children used party-catchwords,
which they did not understand—except one thing: that they represented
“their side.” There existed an irreconcilable difference between the
two sections of the country. It could not be crushed. Hydra-headed, it
appeared after every extirpation.
One side held slavery right under the double title of the Bible and
of the Constitution. The leader of the other side said, “If it was
not wrong, then nothing was wrong”; but declared that he would not
interfere with it.
“Bosh!” said Major Legaie. “That is not a man to condone what he thinks
wrong. If he is elected, it means the end of slavery.” And so said many
others. Most of them, rather than yield, were for War. To them War was
only an episode: a pageant: a threshold to glory. Dr. Cary, who was
a Whig, was opposed to it; he had seen it, and he took the stump in
opposition to Major Legaie.
“We could whip them with pop-guns,” said the fire-eaters. Fordyce
Lambly and Hurlbut Bail were two of them.
“But will they fight with that weapon?” asked Dr. Cary, scornfully. He
never liked Lambly and Bail; he said they had no convictions. “A man
with convictions may be wrong; but you know where to meet him, sir. You
never know where to find these men.”
“Do you know what War is?” he said in a speech, in reply to a
secession-speech by Major Legaie. “War is the most terrible of all
disasters, except Dishonor. I do not speak of the dangers. For every
brave man must face danger as it comes, and should court glory; and
death for one’s Country is glorious. I speak merely of the change
that War inevitably brings. War is the destruction of everything
that exists. You may fail or you may win, but what exists passes,
and something different takes its place. The plough-share becomes a
spear, and the pruning-hook a sword; the poor may become richer, but
the rich must become poorer. You are the wealthiest people in the
world to-day—not in mere riches, but in wealth. You may become the
poorest. No people who enter a war wealthy and content ever come out
of war so. I do not say that this is an unanswerable reason for not
going to war. For war may be right at any cost. But it is not to be
entered on unadvisedly or lightly; but in the fear of God. It should
not be undertaken from mere enthusiasm; but deliberately, with a full
recognition of its cost, and resolution to support its possible and
direst consequences.”
When he had ended, Mr. Hurlbut Bail, a speaker from the city, who had
come to the county to stir up the people, said:
“Oh! Dr. Cary is nothing but a Cassandra.”
“Did Troy fall or not?” asked Dr. Cary, calmly.
This, of course, changed no one. In times of high feeling debate only
fuses opinions into convictions; only fans the flames and makes the
fire a conflagration.
When the war came the old Doctor flung in his lot with his friends, and
his gravity, that had grown on him of late, was lighted up by the old
fire; he took his place and performed his part with kindling eyes and
an erecter mien. Hurlbut Bail became an editor. This, however, was
later on.
The constantly increasing public ferment and the ever-enlarging and
deepening cloud did not prevent the ordinary course of life from
flowing in its accustomed channels: men planned and performed; sowed
and reaped; bought and sold, as in ordinary times. And as in the period
before that other flood, there was marrying and giving in marriage; so
now, with the cloud ever mounting up the sky, men loved and married,
and made their homes as the birds paired and built their nests.
Among those who builded in that period in the Red Rock district were
a young couple, both of them cousins in some degree of nearly every
gentle family in the county, including the Grays and Carys. And after
the blessing by old Mr. Langstaff, at St. Ann’s, amid the roses and
smiles of the whole neighborhood, they spent their honeymoon, as the
custom was then, in being entertained from house to house, through the
neighborhood. In this round of gayety they came in due order to Red
Rock, where the entertainment was perhaps to be the greatest of all.
The amount of preparation was almost unprecedented, and the gentry
of the whole county were invited and expected. As it was a notable
occasion and near the holidays, Jacquelin was permitted to come home
from Dr. Maule’s on the joint application of his mother, his Aunt
Thomasia, and Blair Cary; and Blair was allowed to come over with her
mother and father and spend the night, and was promised to be allowed
to sit up as late as she pleased—a privilege not to be lightly
esteemed.
Steve Allen, with a faint mustache curled above his smiling mouth, was
home from the University, and so were Morris Cary and the other young
fellows; and the office in the yard, blue with tobacco-smoke, was as
full of young men and pipes and dogs, as the upstairs chambers in the
mansion were of young girls and ribbons and muslin.
What a heaven that outer office was to Jacquelin, and what an angel
Steve was to call him “Kid” and let him adore him!
Among the company that night there were two guests who “happened
in” quite unexpectedly, but who were “all the more welcome on that
account,” the host said graciously in greeting them. They were two
gentlemen from quite another part of the country, or, perhaps, those
resident there would have said, of the world; as they came from the
North. They had come South on business connected with a sort of
traditionary claim to mineral lands lying somewhere in the range of
mountains which could be seen from the Red Rock plantation. At least,
Mr. Welch, the elder of the two, came on that errand. The younger,
Mr. Lawrence Middleton, came simply for pleasure, and because Mr.
Welch, his cousin, had invited him. He had just spoiled his career at
college by engaging, with his chum and crony, Aurelius Thurston, in
the awful crime of painting the President’s gray horse a brilliant
red, and being caught at it. He was suspended for this prank, and now
was spending his time, literally rusticating, seeing a little of the
world, while he made up his mind whether he should study Law and accept
his cousin’s offer to go into his office, or whether he should engage
in a manufacturing business which his family owned. His preference
was rather for the latter, which was now being managed by a man named
Bolter, who had made it very successful; but Reely Thurston intended to
be a lawyer, and wanted Lawrence to go in with him; so he was taking
time to consider. This visit South had inclined him to the law.
Mr. Welch and Middleton had concluded their business in the mountains:
finding the lands they were seeking to lie partly in the clouds and
partly in the possession of those whom they had always heard spoken of
as “squatters;” but now found to be a population who had been there
since before the Revolution, and had built villages and towns. They
were now returning home and were making their way back toward the
railroad, half a day’s journey farther on. They had expected to reach
Brutusville, the county seat, that night; but a rain the day before had
washed away the bridges, and compelled them to take a circuitous route
by a ford higher up the river. There, not knowing the ford, they had
almost been swept away, and would certainly have lost their vehicle but
for the timely appearance of a young countryman, who happened to come
along on his way home from a political gathering somewhere.
[Illustration: AMONG THE COMPANY THAT NIGHT THERE WERE TWO GUESTS WHO
“HAPPENED IN” QUITE UNEXPECTEDLY.]
Their deliverer: a certain Mr. Andy Stamper, was so small that at
a distance he looked like a boy, but on nearer view he might have
been anywhere from twenty or twenty-five to thirty, and he proved
extraordinarily active and efficient. He swam in and helped Middleton
get their buggy out of the river, and then amused Mr. Welch very much
and incensed Middleton by his comments. He had just been to a political
meeting at the Court House, he said, where he had heard “the finest
speech that ever was made,” from Major Legaie. “He gave the Yankees
sut,” and he “just wished he could get every Yankee in that river and
drown ’em—every dog-goned one!” This as he was working up to his neck
in water.
Mr. Welch could not help laughing at the look on Middleton’s ruddy face.
“Now, where’d you find a Yankee’d go in that river like me an’ you—or
could do it, for that matter?” the little fellow asked of Middleton,
confidentially.
“We are Yankees,” blurted out Middleton, hotly. “And a plenty of them
would.” His eye flashed as he turned to his rescuer.
The little countryman’s eyes opened wide, and his jaw fell.
“Well, I’m durned!” he said, slowly, staring in open astonishment, and
Middleton began to look gratified at the impression he had made.
“You know, you’re the first I ever seen as wan’t ashamed to own it.
Why, you looks most like we all!”
Middleton flushed; but little Stamper looked so sincerely ingenuous
that he suddenly burst out laughing.
After that they became very friendly, and the travellers learned much
of the glories of the Grays and Carys, and of the charms of a certain
Miss Delia Dove, who, Stamper declared, was as pretty as any young lady
that went to the Brick Church. Stamper offered to guide them, but as
he refused to take any money for what he had done, and as he said he
was going to see Miss Delia Dove and could take a nearer cut through
the woods to his home, Mr. Welch declined to accept his offer, and
contented himself with getting him to draw a map of the roads from that
point to the county seat.
“All you’ve got to do is to follow that map: keep the main plain
road and you can’t get out; but I advise you to turn in at the first
plantation you come to. If you go to Red Rock you’ll have a good time.
They’re givin’ a party thar to-night. Major Legaie, he left the meetin’
to go thar.”
He disappeared at a gallop down a bridle-path through the woods.
Notwithstanding the young countryman’s assurances and map, the two
strangers had gotten “out.” The plantations were large in that section
and the roads leading off to them from the highway, in the dark were
all alike, so that when night fell the two travellers were in a serious
dilemma. They at length came to a gate and were just considering
turning in at it when a carriage drove up in front of them. A horseman
who had been riding behind the vehicle came forward at a trot, calling
out that he would open the gate.
“I thought you fellows would have been there hours ago,” he said
familiarly to the two strangers as he passed, evidently mistaking them
in the dusk for some of his friends. “A laggard in love is a dastard in
war.”
The rest of his speech was lost in the click of the gate-latch and his
apostrophe to his horse. When he found that Mr. Welch was a stranger,
he changed instantly. His tone became graver and more gracious.
“I beg your pardon, sir. I thought from your vehicle that you were
some of these effeminate youngsters who have given up the saddle for
that new four-wheeled contrivance, and are ruining both our strains of
horses and of men.”
Mr. Welch asked if he knew where they could find a night’s lodging.
“Why, at every house in the State, sir, I hope,” said Dr. Cary; for it
was he. “Certainly, at the nearest one. Drive right in. We are going
to our cousins’, and they will be delighted to have you. You are just
in good time; for there is to be quite a company there to-night.” And
refusing to listen for a moment to Mr. Welch’s suggestion that it might
not be convenient to have strangers, Dr. Cary held the gate open for
them to pass through.
“Drive in, sir,” he said, in a tone of gracious command. “I never heard
of its being inconvenient to have a guest,” and in they drove.
“A gentleman by his voice,” the travellers heard him explaining a
little later into the window of the carriage behind them. And then he
added, “My only doubt was his vehicle.”
After a half-mile drive through the woods they entered the open fields,
and from a hill afar off, on top of which shone a house lit till it
gleamed like a cluster of brilliants, a chorus of dogs sent them an
inquiring greeting.
They passed through a wide gate, and ascended a steep hill through a
grove, and Middleton’s heart sank at the idea of facing an invited
company, with a wardrobe that had been under water within the last
two hours. Instantly they were in a group of welcomers, gentlemen,
servants, and dogs; negro boys running; dogs frisking and yelping
and young men laughing about the door of the newly arrived carriage.
While through it all sounded the placid voice of Dr. Cary reassuring
the visitors and inviting them in. He brought the host to them, and
presented them:
“My friends, Mr. Welch and young Mr. Middleton—my cousin and friend,
Mr. Gray.” It was his customary formula in introducing. All men were
his friends. And Mr. Welch shortly observed how his manner changed
whenever he addressed a lady or a stranger: to one he was always a
courtier, to the other always a host.
As they were ushered into the hall, Middleton’s blue eyes glistened and
opened wide at the scene before him. He found himself facing several
score of people clustered about in one of the handsomest halls he ever
saw, some of whom he took in at the first glance to be remarkably
pretty girls in white and pink, and all with their eyes, filled with
curiosity, bent on the new comers. If Middleton’s ruddiness increased
tenfold under these glances, it was only what any other young man’s
would have done under similar circumstances, and it was not until he
had been led off under convoy of a tall and very solemn old servant
in a blue coat with brass buttons, and shown into a large room with
mahogany furniture and a bed so high that it had a set of steps beside
it, that he was able to collect his ideas, and recall some of those to
whom he had been introduced. What a terrible fix it was for a fellow to
be in! He opened his portmanteau and turned to his cousin in despair.
“Isn’t this a mess?”
“What?”
“This! I can never go out there. All those girls! Just look at these
clothes! Everything dripping!—some of them awfully pretty, too. That
one with the dark eyes!” He was down on his knees, raking in his
portmanteau, and dragging the soaking garments out one by one. “Now,
look at that.”
“You need not go out. I’ll make your excuses.”
“What! Of course I’m go——”
Just then there was a knock at the door.
“Come in.” Middleton finished his sentence.
The door opened slowly and the old servant entered, bearing with a
solemnity that amounted almost to reverence, a waiter with decanters
and an array of glasses and bowls. He was followed by the young boy who
had been introduced as their host’s son.
“My father understood that you had a little accident at the river, and
he wishes to know if he cannot lend you something,” said Jacquelin.
Mr. Welch spoke first, his eyes twinkling as he glanced at his cousin,
who stood a picture of indecision and bewilderment.
“Why yes, my cousin, Mr. Middleton here, would be greatly obliged,
I think. He is a little particular about first impressions, and the
presence of so many charming——”
Middleton protested.
“Why, certainly, sir,” Jacquelin began, then turned to
Middleton—“Steve’s would fit you—Steve’s my cousin—he’s at the
University—he’s just six feet. Wait, sir——” And before they could
stop him, he was gone, and a few minutes later tapped on the door, with
his arms full of clothes.
“Uncle Daniel’s as slow as a steer, so I fetched ’em myself,” he
panted, with boyish impatience, as he dropped the clothes partly on a
sofa and partly on the floor. “Aunt Thomasia was afraid you’d catch
cold, so she made me bring these flannels. She always is afraid you’ll
catch cold. Steve told her if you’d take a good swig out of a bottle
’twould be worth all the flannel in the State—Steve’s always teasing
her.” With a boy’s friendliness he had established himself now as the
visitors’ ally.
“I’m glad you came to-night. We’re going to have lots of fun. Were you
at the speaking to-day? They say the Major made the finest speech ever
was heard. Some say he’s better than Calhoun ever was; just gave the
Yankees the mischief! I wish they’d come down here and try us once,
don’t you?”
Mr. Welch glanced amusedly at Middleton, whose face changed; but
fortunately the boy was too much interested in the suit Middleton had
just put on to notice the effect.
“I thought Steve’s would fit you,” he said, with that proud
satisfaction in his judgment being verified which characterizes the age
of thirteen, and some other ages as well.
“Steve’s nineteen, and he’s six feet!—You are six feet too? I thought
you were about that. I hope I’ll be six feet. I like that height, don’t
you? Steve’s at the University, but he don’t study much, I reckon. Are
you at college?—Where? Oh! I know. I had a cousin who went there. He
and two or three other Southern fellows laid outside of the hall for
one of those abolition chaps who was making a speech, to cut his ears
off when he came out, and they’d have done it if he had come out that
way. I reckon it’s a good college, but I’m going to the University
when I’m sixteen. I’m thirteen now—You thought I was older? I wanted
to go to West Point, but my father won’t let me. Maybe, Rupert will go
there. I go to school at the Academy—Doctor Maule’s—everybody knows
about him. I tell you, he knows a lot.—You have left college? Was it
too hot for you? Were you after somebody’s ears too? What! painted
the President’s horse red! Oh! wasn’t that a good one! I wish I’d
been there. I’ll tell Steve and Blair about that. Steve put a cow up
in the Rotunda once. The worst thing I ever did was making Blair jump
off the high barn. I don’t count flinging old Eliphalet Bush in the
creek, because I believe his teeth were false anyhow! But I’ll remember
painting that horse. I reckon he was an abolitionist too?”
So the boy rattled on, his guests drawing him out for the pleasure of
seeing him.
“What State are you from? Maybe, we are cousins?” he said presently,
giving the best evidence of his friendliness.
“What! Mass—a—! I beg your pardon.”
He looked so confused that both Mr. Welch and Middleton took some pains
to sooth him.
“Yes, of course I was not talking about you; but I wouldn’t have said
anything about Massachusetts if I had known you came from there. I
wouldn’t like anybody to say anything about _my_ State. You won’t mind
what I said, will you? I think Massachusetts the best of the Northern
States—anyhow——” And he left them, his cheeks still glowing from
embarrassment.
This apology, sincerely given, with a certain stress on the word
Northern, amused Mr. Welch, and even Middleton, to whom it presented,
however, an entirely new view.
“Aren’t they funny?” asked Middleton of his cousin, after their young
host had left them. “You know I believe they really think it.”
“Larry, you have understated it. They think they know it.”
Jacquelin employed the few moments, in which he preceded the visitors
to the hall, in telling all he had learned, and when Mr. Welch and
Middleton appeared they found themselves in the position of the most
distinguished guests. The fact that they came from the North, and
Jacquelin’s account of his mistake, had increased the desire to show
them honor. “The hospitality of the South knows no latitude,” said
Dr. Cary, in concluding a gracious half apology to Mr. Welch for
Jacquelin’s error; and he proceeded deftly to name over a list of
great men from Massachusetts, and to link their names with those of
the men of the South whom she most delighted to honor. His dearest
friend at college, he said, was from New England, and unless he was
mistaken, Anson Rockfield would one day be heard of. Nothing could
have been more gracious or more delicately done; and when supper was
announced, Mr. Welch was taken to the table by the hostess herself,
and his health was drunk before the groom’s. Middleton meanwhile
found himself no less honored. The artistic feat performed on the
President’s horse had made him a noted personage, and in consequence
of this and of the freemasonry which exists among young college-men,
he was soon surrounded by all the younger portion of the company, and
was exchanging views with Steve Allen and the other young fellows with
that exaggerated man-of-the-world air which characterizes the age and
occupation of collegians.
“Where is Blair?” he asked Jacquelin, presently, who was standing by
Steve, open-eyed, drinking in their wisdom as only a boy of thirteen
can drink in the sapience of men of nineteen or twenty.
“Over there.” Jacquelin nodded toward another part of the hall.
Middleton looked, but all he saw was a little girl sitting behind a
big chair, evidently trying to conceal herself, and shaking her head
violently at Jacquelin, who was beckoning to her. Jacquelin ran over to
her and caught her by the hand, whereupon there was a little scuffle
between them behind the chair, and as Middleton watched it he caught
her eye. The next second she rose, smoothed her little white frock with
quite an air, and came straight across with Jacquelin to where they
stood. “This is Blair, Mr. Middleton,” the boy said to the astonished
guest. And Miss Blair held out her hand to him with an odd mixture of
the child and the lady.
“How do you do, sir?” She evidently considered him one of the ancients.
“She jump off a high barn!” Middleton’s eyes opened wide.
“Blair is the champion jumper of the family,” said Steve, tall and
condescending, catching hold of her half-teasingly, and drawing her up
close to him.
“And she is a brick,” added Master Jacquelin, with mingled
condescension and admiration, which brought the blushes back to the
little girl’s cheeks and made her look very charming. The next moment
she was talking to Middleton about the episode of the painted horse;
exchanging adventures with him, and asking him questions about his
chum, Reely Thurston and his cousin, Ruth Welch, whom he had mentioned,
as if she had known him always.
It was a night that Middleton never forgot. So completely was he
adopted by his hosts that he could scarcely believe that he had not
been one of them all his life. As Mr. Welch said truly: they had the
gift of hospitality. Jacquelin and Blair constituted themselves young
Middleton’s especial hosts, and he made an engagement to visit with
them all the points which they wished to show him, provided his cousin
could accept their invitation to spend several days there.
In the midst of their talk an old mammy in a white apron, with a tall
bandanna turban around her head, suddenly appeared in a doorway, and
dropping a curtsey made her way over to Blair, like a ship bearing down
under full sail. There was a colloquy between the two, inaudible, but
none the less animated and interesting, the old woman urging something
and the little girl arguing against it. Then Blair went across and
appealed to her mother, who, after a little demurring, came over
and spoke to the mammy, and thereon began further argument. She was
evidently taking Blair’s side; but she was not commanding, she was
rather pleading. Middleton, new to the customs, was equally surprised
and amused to hear the tones of the old colored woman’s voice:
“Well, jist a little while.” Then as she turned on her way out, she
said, half audibly:
“You all gwine ruin my chile’ looks, meckin’ her set up so late. How
she gwine have any complexion, settin’ up all times o’ night?” As she
passed out, however, many of the ladies spoke to her, and they must
have said pleasant things; for before she reached the door she was
smiling and curtseying right and left, and carried her head as high
as a princess. As for Blair, her eyes were dancing with joy at her
victory, and when the plump figure of the mammy disappeared she gave a
little frisk of delight.
There were no more speeches that could wound the sensibilities of
the guests; but there was plenty of discussion. All the young men
were ardent politicians, and Middleton, who was nothing himself, was
partly amused and partly horrified at the violence of some of their
sentiments. Personally, he agreed with them in the main about Slavery
or, at least, about Abolitionism. He thought Slavery rather a fine
thing, and recalled that his grandfather or his great-grandfather,
he couldn’t be certain which, had owned a number of slaves. He was
conscious of some pride in this—though his cousin, Patience Welch, who
was an extreme abolitionist, was always bemoaning the fact.
But he was thunderstruck to hear a young orator of sixteen or seventeen
declaim about breaking up the Union, under certain circumstances, as if
it were a worthless old hulk, stuck in the mud. It had never occurred
to Middleton that it was possible, and he had always understood that
it was not. However, he was reassured by the warmth with which others
defended the Union, and the ardor with which toasts were drunk to it.
Jacquelin himself was a stanch Democrat, like his father. He confided
to Middleton that Blair was a Whig, because her father was one; but
that a girl did not know any better, and that she really did not know
the difference between them.
The entertainment consisted of dancing—quadrilles and “the Lancers,”
and after awhile, the old Virginia reel. In the first, all the young
people joined, and in the last, some of the old ones as well. Middleton
heard Steve urging their host’s sister, Miss Gray—“Cousin Thomasia”
as Steve called her—a sweet patrician-faced lady, to come and dance
with him, and when she smilingly refused, teasing her about Major
Legaie. She gave him a little tap with her fan and sent him off with
smiling eyes, which, after following the handsome boy across the hall,
saddened a second later as she lifted the fan close to her face to
arrange the feathers. Steve mischievously whisked Blair off from under
Jacquelin’s nose and took her to the far end of the line of laughing
girls ranged across the hall, responding to Jacquelin’s earnest protest
that he was just going to dance with her himself, with a push—that
unanswerable logic of a bigger boy.
“But you did not ask me!” said Miss Blair to Jacquelin, readily taking
the stronger side against her sworn friend.
“Never mind, I’m not going to dance with you any more,” pouted
Jacquelin as he turned off, his head higher than usual, to which Miss
Blair promptly replied: “I don’t care if you don’t.” And she held
her head higher than his, dancing through her reel apparently with
double enjoyment because of his discomfiture. Then when the reel
had been danced again and again, with double couples and fours, to
ever-quickening music and ever-increasing mirth, until it was a maze
of muslin and radiance and laughter, there was a pause for rest. And
someone near the piano struck up a song, and this drew the crowd. Many
of the girls, and some of the young men, had pleasant voices, which
made up by their natural sweetness and simplicity for want of training,
and the choruses drew all the young people, except a few who seemed to
find it necessary to seek something—fans or glasses of water, in the
most secluded and unlikely corners, and always in couples.
There was one song—a new one which had just been picked up somewhere
by someone and brought there, and they were all trying to recall
it—about “Dixie-land.” It seemed that Blair sang it, and there was a
universal request for her to sing it; but the little girl was shy and
wanted to run away. Finally, however, she was brought back and, under
coaxing from Steve and Jacquelin, was persuaded; and she stood up by
the piano and with her cheeks glowing and her child’s-voice quavering
at first at the prominence given her, sang it through. Middleton had
heard the song once at a minstrel-show not long before, and had thought
it rather a “catchy” thing; but now, when the child sang it, he found
its melody. But when the chorus came, he was astonished at the feeling
it evoked. It ran:
“Away down south in Dixie, away, away—
In Dixie land, I’ll take my stand,
To live and die for Dixie land—
Away, away, away down south in Dixie.”
It was a burst of genuine feeling, universal, enthusiastic, that made
the old walls resound. Even the young couples came from their secluded
coverts to join in. It was so tremendous that Dr. Cary, who was
standing near Mr. Welch, said to him, gravely:
“A gleam of the current that is dammed up?”
“If the bank ever breaks what will happen?” asked Mr. Welch.
“A flood.”
“Then the right will survive.”
“The strongest,” said Dr. Cary.
The guest saw that there was deep feeling whenever any political
subject was touched on, and he turned to a less dangerous theme. The
walls of the hall and drawing-room were covered with pictures; scenes
from the Mythology; battle-pieces; old portraits: all hung together
in a sort of friendly confusion. The portraits were nearly all in
rich-colored dresses: men in velvets or uniforms, ladies in satins and
crinolines, representing the fashions and faces of many generations of
Jacquelin-Grays. But one, the most striking figure of them all, stood
alone to itself in a space just over the great fireplace. He was a man
still young, clad in a hunter’s garb. A dark rock loomed behind him.
His rifle lay at his feet, apparently broken, and his face wore an
expression of such determination that one knew at once that, whatever
he had been, he had been a master. The other paintings were portraits;
this was the man. To add to its distinction, while the other pictures
were in frames richly gilded and carved, this was in straight black
boards apparently built into the wall, as if it had been meant to stand
him there and cut him off from all the rest of the world. Wherever one
turned in the hall those piercing eyes followed him. Mr. Welch had been
for some time observing the picture.
“An extraordinary picture. It has a singular fascination for me,”
he said, as his host turned to him. “One might almost fancy it
allegorical, and yet, it is intensely human. An indubitable portrait? I
never saw a stronger face.”
His host smiled.
“Yes. It has a somewhat curious history, though whether it is exactly
a portrait or not we do not know. It is, or is supposed to be, the
portrait of an ancestor of mine, the first of my name who came to
this country. He had been unfortunate on the other side—so the story
goes—was a scholar, and had been a soldier under Cromwell and lost
all his property. He fell in love with a young lady whose father was
on the King’s side, and married her against her parents’ wishes and
came over here. He built a house on this very spot when it was the
frontier, and his wife was afterward murdered by the Indians, leaving
him one child. It is said that he killed the Indian with his naked
hands just beside a great rock that stands in the grave-yard beyond the
garden, a short distance from the house. He afterward had that picture
painted and placed there. It is reported to be a Lely. It has always
been recognized as a fine picture, and in all the successive changes it
has been left there. This present house was built around the fireplace
of the old one. In this way a story has grown up about the picture,
that it is connected with the fortunes of the house. You know how
superstitious the negroes are?”
“I am not surprised,” said Mr. Welch, examining the picture more
closely. “I never saw a lonelier man. That black frame shutting it in
seems to have something to do with the effect.”
“The tradition has possibly had a good effect. There used to be a
recess behind it that was used as a cupboard, perhaps a secret cabinet,
because of this very superstition. The picture fell down once a few
years ago and I found a number of old papers in there, and put some
more in myself.
“Here, you can see the paint on the frame, where it fell. It was in
the early summer, and one of the servants was just painting the hearth
red, and a sudden gust of wind slammed a door and jarred the picture
down, and it fell, getting that paint on it. You never saw anyone so
frightened as that boy was. And I think my overseer was also,” he
laughed. “He happened to be present, settling up some matters with
which I had entrusted him in the South, and although he is a remarkably
sensible man—so sensible that I had given him my bonds for a very
considerable amount—one for a very large amount, indeed, in case he
should need them in the matter I refer to, and he had managed the
affair with the greatest shrewdness, bringing my bonds back—he was as
much frightened almost as the boy. You’d have thought that the fall
of the picture portended my immediate death. I took advantage of the
circumstance to put the papers in the cupboard, and, to ease his mind,
made Still nail the picture up, so that it will never come down again,
at least, in my lifetime.”
“I had no idea the whites were so superstitious,” said Major Welch.
“Well, I do not suppose he really believed it. But, do you know, after
that they began to say that stain on it was blood? And here again.”
He pointed to where three or four little foot-tracks, as of a child’s
bare foot, were dimly seen on the hard white floor near the hearth.
“My little boy, Rupert, was playing in the hall at the time I mention,
dabbling his feet in the paint, and the same wind that blew down the
picture scattered my papers, and he ran across the floor and finally
stepped on one. There, you can see just where he caught it: the little
heel is there, and the print of the toes is on the bond behind the
picture. His mother would never allow the prints to be scoured out, and
so they have remained. And now, I understand, they say the tracks are
blood.”
“On such slim evidence, perhaps other and weightier superstitions have
been built,” said Mr. Welch, smiling.
Next morning, as Mr. Welch wished to see a Southern plantation, he
deferred his departure until the afternoon, and rode over the place
with Mr. Gray. Middleton was taken by his young hosts to see all the
things of interest about the plantation: the high barn from which
Blair had jumped into the tree, the bloody rock beside which the
“Indian-Killer” had been buried, and the very spot where Steve had
slept that night; together with many other points, whilst Mr. Welch was
taken to see the servants’ quarters, the hands working and singing in
the fields, and such things as interested him. The plantation surpassed
any he had yet seen. It was a little world in itself—a sort of feudal
domain: the great house on its lofty hill, surrounded by gardens; the
broad fields stretching away in every direction, with waving grain
or green pastures dotted with sheep and cattle, and all shut in and
bounded by the distant woods.
During this tour Mr. Langstaff, the rector, made to Mr. Welch an
observation that he thought there were evidences that the Garden
of Eden was situated not far from that spot, and certainly within
the limits of the State. Major Welch smiled at the old clergyman’s
ingenuousness, but was graver when, as they strolled through the negro
quarters, he began to speak earnestly of the blessings of Slavery. He
pointed out the clean cabins, each surrounded by its little yard and
with its garden; the laughing children and smiling mothers curtseying
from their doors. The guest remained silent, and the old gentleman took
it for assent.
“Why, sir, I have just prepared a paper which my friends think
establishes incontrovertibly that Slavery is based on the Scriptures,
and is, as it were, a divine institution.” Mr. Welch looked up to see
how the other gentlemen took this. They were all grave, except Dr.
Cary, usually the gravest, around whose mouth a slight smile flickered,
and in whose eyes, as they met Major Welch’s, there was a little gleam
of amusement.
“It is written, ‘A servant of servants shall he be.’ You will not deny
that?” asked the old preacher, a little of the smouldering fire of the
controversialist sparkling for a moment in his face.
“Well, no, I don’t think I will.”
“Then that settles it.”
“Well, perhaps not altogether,” said Mr. Welch. “There may be an
economical sin. But I do not wish to engage in a polemical controversy.
I will only say that down here you do not seem to me to appreciate
fully how strong the feeling of the world at present is against
Slavery. It seems to me, that Slavery is doomed as much as the
Stage-coach, and the Sailing vessel.”
“My dear sir,” declared Mr. Gray, “I cannot agree with you. We
interfere with nobody; all we demand is that they shall not interfere
with us.”
“It is precisely that which you cannot enforce,” said Mr. Welch. “I
do not wish to engage in a discussion in which neither of us could
convince the other; but I think I have not defined my position
intelligibly. You interfere with everyone—with every nation—and you
are only tenants at will of your system—only tenants by sufferance of
the world.”
“Oh! my dear sir!” exclaimed his host, his face slightly flushed; and
then the subject was politely changed, and Mr. Welch was conscious
that it was not to be opened again.
The only additional observation made was by a gentleman who had been
introduced to Mr. Welch as the leading lawyer of the county, a portly
man with a round face and keen eyes. “Well, as George IV. remarked, it
will last my time,” he said.
Before the young people had seen half the interesting places of
which Jacquelin had told Middleton, they were recalled to the house.
Jacquelin’s face fell.
“School!” he said in disgust.
As they returned on a road leading up to a farm-house on a hill, they
passed a somewhat rickety buggy containing a plain-looking young girl,
a little older than Blair, driven by a thin-shouldered youngster of
eighteen or nineteen, who returned Jacquelin’s and Blair’s greeting,
with a surly air. Middleton thought he checked the girl for her
pleasant bow. At any rate, he heard his voice in a cross tone, scolding
her after they had passed.
“That’s Washy Still and Virgy, the overseer’s children,” explained
someone.
“And he’s just as mean to her as he can be. She’s afraid of him. I’ll
be bound I wouldn’t be afraid of him!” broke out Blair, her eyes
growing suddenly sparkling at the idea of wrong to one of her sex.
Middleton looked down at her glowing face and thought it unlikely.
On arrival at the house it proved that Jacquelin’s fears were
well-founded. It had been decided that he must go back to school.
Jacquelin appealed to his Aunt Thomasia to intercede for him, and she
did so, as she always interceded for everyone, but it was in vain. It
was an age of law, and the law had to be obeyed.
As Middleton was passing from the room he occupied, to the hall, he
came on Blair. She was seated in a window, almost behind the curtain
and he would have passed by without seeing her but for a movement she
made to screen herself entirely. Curiosity and mischief prompted
the young man to go up and peep at her. She had a book in her hand,
which she held down as if to keep out of sight, and as he looked at
her he thought she had been crying. A glance at the book showed it
was “Virgil,” and Middleton supposed, from some personal experience,
that the tears were connected with the book. So he offered to construe
her lesson for her. She let him do it, and he was just congratulating
himself that he was doing it tolerably well when she corrected him. At
the same moment Jacquelin came in. He too looked unusually downcast,
and Blair turned away her face, and then suddenly sprang up and ran
away.
“What’s the matter?” asked Middleton. “Can’t she read her lesson?”
“No: she can read that well enough. You just ought to hear her read
Latin. I wish I could do it as well as she does, that’s all! I’d make
old Eliphalet open his eyes. She’s crying because I’ve got to go back
to school—I wish I were grown up, I bet I wouldn’t go to school
any more! I hate school, and I hate old Eliphalet, and I hate old
Maule—no, I don’t quite hate him; but I hate school and I’m going to
paint his horse blue, if he licks the life out of me.” After which
explosion the youngster appeared relieved, and went off to prepare for
the inevitable.
When he rode away with Doan behind him, his last call back was to
Middleton, to be sure and remember his promise to come back again, and
to bring Reely Thurston with him.
CHAPTER III
THE VISITORS START SOUTH AGAIN; AND THEIR FORMER HOSTS GO TO MEET THEM
Both Larry Middleton and Mr. Welch were to visit Red Rock again; but
under circumstances little anticipated by anyone at the time the
invitation to return was given.
When Middleton came of age he turned over the manufacturing business
he had inherited, to the family’s agent, Mr. Bolter, and, on leaving
college, accepted the invitation of his cousin, Mr. Welch, to go in
his law-office. He made only one condition: that the same invitation
should be extended to his college chum, Reely Thurston, whom Middleton
described to Mr. Welch as “at once the roundest and squarest fellow”
in his class. This was enough for Mr. Welch, and within a few months
the two young men were at adjoining desks, professing to practise law
and really practising whatever other young gentlemen of their age and
kind are given to doing: a combination of loafing, working, and airing
themselves for the benefit of the rest of mankind, particularly of that
portion that wears bonnets and petticoats.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Welch were glad to have Middleton with them; for
Mrs. Welch was fond of him as a near relation, and one who in personal
appearance and address was a worthy representative of the old stock
from which they had both come. And she had this further reason for
wishing to have Middleton near her: that she had long observed his
tendency to be affected unduly, as she termed it, by his surroundings,
and she meant to counteract this defect of character by her personal
influence.
It was enough for Mrs. Welch to see a defect of any kind to wish to
correct it, and her wish was usually but a step in advance of her
action. One might see this in the broad brow above which the hair was
brushed so very smoothly; in the deep gray eyes; in the firm mouth
with its fine, even teeth; in the strong chin, almost too strong for
a woman; and especially, in the set of her head, and the absolute
straightness of her back. She was at heart a missionary: one of those
intrepid and unbending spirits who have carried their principles
through the world by the sheer energy of their belief. She would no
more have bowed in the house of Rimmon than she would have committed
theft. If she had lived in Rome, she would have died before taking
a pinch of incense for Diana, unless, indeed, she had been on the
other side, when she would have fed the lions with fervor. If she had
been in Spain on Torquemada’s side, she could have sung Te Deums at
an _auto-da-fé_. As someone said of her, she would have burned like
a candle. The only difficulty was that she wanted others to burn
too—which they were not always so ready to do. As a girl, she had been
on the eve of going out as missionary to the Sandwich Islands, when she
heard the splendid oratory of one of the new apostles of abolitionism,
one evening in company with Mr. Welch, then a young engineer, when her
philanthropical direction changed from West to South, and she devoted
herself thenceforth to the cause of the negroes—and of the young
engineer.
She had great hopes of Lawrence Middleton and deplored the influence
on him of the young man whom he had chosen at college as his especial
friend; and she grieved over the effect that his visit South, already
described, had on him. He had come home much impressed by the charm
of the life there. Indeed, he had become actually an apologist for
Slavery. But Mrs. Welch did not despair. She never despaired. It
implied weakness, and so, sin. She was urgent to have Larry Middleton
accept her husband’s proposal to take a place in his office, and though
she would have preferred to separate him from young Thurston, as to
whom she had misgivings, yet when he made this condition she yielded;
for it brought Middleton where she could influence him, and had, at
least, this advantage: that it gave her two persons to work on instead
of one.
When her daughter, Ruth Welch, a young Miss with sparkling eyes, came
home in her vacations, it was natural that she should be thrown a great
deal with her cousin, and the only singular thing was that Mrs. Welch
appeared inclined to minimize the importance of the relationship. This,
however, made little difference to the gay, fun-loving girl, who,
enjoying her emancipation from school, tyrannized over the two young
sprigs of the Law to her heart’s content. She soon reduced Thurston
to a condition of abject slavery which might well have called forth
the intervention of so ardent an emancipator as her mother, and did,
indeed, excite some solicitude in her maternal bosom. Mrs. Welch was
beginning to be very anxious about him when events, suddenly crowding
on each other, gave her something widely different to think of, and
unexpectedly relieved her from this cause of care to give her others
far weightier.
Both the young men had become politicians. Middleton was a Whig, though
he admitted he did not see how Slavery could be interfered with; while
Thurston announced tenets of the opposite party, particularly when Mrs.
Welch was present.
The cloud which had been gathering so long above the Country suddenly
burst.
Middleton and Thurston were sitting in their office one afternoon when
there was a scamper outside; the door was flung open, and a paper
thrown in—an extra still wet from the press. Thurston seized it, his
seat being nearest the door, and gave a long whistle as his eye fell
on the black headlines:
The Flag Fired on: Open Rebellion. The Union Must Be Saved At Any
Cost. Etc., etc.
He sank into his seat and read rapidly the whole account, ending with
the call for troops to put down the Rebellion; while Middleton listened
with a set face. When Thurston was through, he flung the paper down and
sat back in his chair, thinking intently. The next moment he hammered
his fist on his desk and sprang to his feet, his face white with
resolve.
“By God! I’ll go.”
With a single inquiring look at Middleton, he turned to the door and
walked out. A moment later Middleton locked his desk and followed
him. The street was already filling with people, crowding to hear the
details, and the buzz of voices was growing louder.
Within a few hours the two young men were both enrolled in a company
of volunteers which was being gotten up—Middleton, in right of his
stature and family connections, as a Sergeant, and little Thurston as a
Corporal, and were at work getting others enrolled.
As they were so engaged, Thurston’s attention was arrested by a man
in the crowd who was especially violent in his denunciations, and was
urging everybody to enlist. His voice had a peculiar, penetrating
whine. As Thurston could not remember the man among those who had
signed the roll, he asked him his name.
“Leech, Jonadab Leech,” he said.
When Thurston looked at the roster, the name was not on it, and the
next time Leech came up in the crowd, the little Corporal called him:
“Here; you have forgotten to put your name down.”
To his surprise, Leech drew back and actually turned pale.
“What’s the matter?” asked Thurston.
“I have a wife.”
The little volunteer gave a sniff.
“All right—send her in your place. I guess she’d do as well.”
“If he has, he’s trying to get rid of her,” said someone standing by,
in an undertone.
“Why—ah!—my eyes are bad; I’m too near-sighted.”
“Your eyes be hanged! You can see well enough to read this paper.”
“I—ah!—I cannot see in the dark at all,” stammered Leech as a number
of the new volunteers crowded around them.
“Neither can I—neither can anybody but a cat,” declared the little
Corporal, and the crowd around cheered him. Leech vanished.
“Who is he?” asked Thurston, as Leech disappeared.
“He is a clerk in old Bolter’s commissary.”
The crowd was patriotic.
There was great excitement in the town all night: bells rang; crowds
marched up and down the streets singing; stopping at the houses of
those who had been opposed to ultra measures, and calling on them to
put up flags to show their loyalty. The name of Jonadab Leech appeared
in the papers next morning as one of the street-orators who made the
most blood-thirsty speech.
Next day was Sunday. Sober second thought had succeeded the excitement
of the previous day, the faces of the people showed it. The churches
were overflowing. The preachers all alluded to the crisis that had
come, and the tears of the congregations testified how deeply they were
moved. After church, by a common impulse, everyone went to the public
square to learn the news. The square was packed. Suddenly on the pole
that stood above the old court-house, someone ran up the flag. At the
instant that it broke forth the breeze caught it, and it fluttered out
full and straight, pointing to the southward. The effect was electric.
A great cheer burst from the crowd below. As it died down, a young
man’s clear voice struck up “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” and the next
moment the whole crowd was singing and weeping.
That flag and that song made more soldiers from the old town than all
the newspapers and all the speeches, and Larry Middleton, for having
struck up the song, found himself suddenly of more note in his own home
than he could have been later if he had stormed a battery.
Loudest among the shouters was the street-orator of the evening before,
Jonadab Leech, the clerk in Bolter’s commissary.
Within a week the two young men were on their way South.
A little later, Mr. Welch, having taken time to settle up his affairs,
and also those of his cousin, Larry Middleton, went off to join the
first corps of engineers from his State, with abundance of tears from
Ruth and a blessing from his wife, whose mouth was never firmer, or her
eye clearer, than when she kissed him, and bade him God-speed.
She replied to the astonished query of Mrs. Bolter, “You did not cry?”
with another question:
“Why should I cry, when I knew it was his duty? If I had wept it would
have been because I could not go myself to strike a blow for the
freedom of the poor African!”
“You are an unusually strong woman,” said Mrs. Bolter, with a shake of
her head, and, indeed, Mrs. Welch looked it; for though Bolter had gone
to Washington, he had not gone to war, but to see about contracts.
* * * * *
Just at the time that the two young students from Mr. Welch’s office
were in the street of their town enrolling their names as soldiers
to fight for the flag of the Union, the young men, and the elders
as well, whom Middleton had met at Red Rock a thousand miles to the
southward, were engaged in similar work—enlisting to fight against
Invasion, to fight for their State.
There had been much discussion—much dissension in the old county, and
all others like it, during the interim since the night when Middleton
and Mr. Welch had appeared unexpectedly at Red Rock among the wedding
guests. Some were for radical measures, for Secession, for War; others
were conservative. Many were for the Union. Matters more than once had
reached a white heat in that section, and it had looked for a long time
as though an explosion must come. Yet the cooler heads had controlled,
and when the final elections for the body that was to settle the
momentous questions at issue at last came on, the most conservative
men in the country had been selected. In our county, Dr. Cary and Mr.
Bagby, both strong Union men, had been chosen over Major Legaie and Mr.
Gray, both ardent Democrats; and one, the former, a hot Secessionist.
When they arrived at the capital to attend the session of the
Convention they found, perhaps, the most distinguished body that had
sat in the State in fifty years. In this great crisis both sides had
put forward their best men, and in face of the nearing peril the
wildest grew conservative. The body declared for Peace.
Affairs moved rapidly, however; excitement grew; feeling changed. Yet
the more conservative prevailed.
One morning Dr. Cary received a report of a great public meeting held
at the county seat, instructing him to vote for Secession. Many of his
old supporters had signed it. He presented the resolutions at the desk,
and stated their purport fully and strongly, amid cheers from the other
side.
“Now you will vote with us?” said one of the leaders on that side.
“Not if every man in my county instructed me.”
“Then you must resign?”
“Not if every man in my county demanded it.”
“Are you the only wise man in the county?”
The voice trembled. Feeling was rising.
The Doctor was looking his questioner full in the eyes.
“If they signed such a paper, I should think so.” And there were
cheers from his side, and the vote was stayed for that day at least.
Dr. Cary made an appeal for the Union that men remembered all their
lives. However they disagreed with him, they were moved by him. But the
magazine was being stored fuller every moment.
Then the spark fell and the explosion came.
A week after this the call for troops by the President to put down
Rebellion appeared in an extra in the city where the Convention sat.
Invasion!
The whole people rose. From the time of Varrus down they had done so.
The defences that conservatives like Dr. Cary had laboriously built up
were swept away in an instant. The State went out with a rush.
At the announcement the population poured into the streets and public
squares in a great demonstration. It was tremendous—a maelstrom—a
tornado—a conflagration. Men were caught up and tossed on platforms,
that appeared as if by magic from nowhere, to makes speeches; bonfires
were lighted and bells were rung; but the crowd shouted louder than the
ringing of the bells, for it meant War: none could now withstand it.
Suddenly from some public place a gun, which had been found and run
out, boomed through the dusk, and the crowd roared louder than before,
and made a rush in that direction, cheering as if for a great victory.
Dr. Cary, stalking through the throng, silent and white, was recognized
and lifted unresisting to a platform. After a great roar, the tumult
hushed down for a moment; for he was waiting with close-shut mouth and
blazing eye, and he had the reputation of being, when he chose to
exert himself, an orator. Besides, it was not yet known what he would
do, and he was a power in his section.
He broke the silence with a calm voice that went everywhere. Without
appearing to be strong, his voice was one of those strange instruments
that filled every building with its finest tone and reached over
every crowd to its farthest limit. With a gesture that, as men said
afterward, seemed to sweep the horizon, he began:
“The time has passed for talking. Go home and prepare for War. For it
is on us.”
“Oh! there is not going to be any war,” cried someone, and a part of
the crowd cheered. Dr. Cary turned on them.
“No war? We are at war now—with the greatest power on earth: the power
of universal progress. It is not the North that we shall have to fight,
but the world. Go home and make ready. If we have talked like fools, we
shall at least fight like men.”
That night Dr. Cary walked into his lodgings alone and seated himself
in the dusk. His old body-servant, Tarquin, silent and dark, brought
a light and set it conveniently for him. He did not speak a word; but
his ministrations were unusually attentive and every movement expressed
adherence and sympathy. Suddenly his master broke the silence:
“Tarquin, do you want to be free?”
“Lawd Gawd!” exclaimed Tarquin, stopping quite still and gazing in
amazement. “Me! Free?”
“If you do I will set you free, and give you money enough to live in
Philadelphia.”
“No, suh; Marster, you know I don’ wan’ be free,” said Tarquin.
“Pack my trunk. I am going home.”
“When, suh?”
“I do not know exactly; but shortly.”
Within a week Dr. Cary was back at home, working, along with Major
Legaie and the other secessionists, making preparation for equipping
the companies that the county was going to send to the war.
What a revolution that week had made in the old county! In the face
of the menace of invasion, after but ten days one would scarcely have
known it. All division was ended: all parties were one. It was as if
the county had declared war by itself and felt the whole burden of the
struggle on its shoulders. From having been one of the most quiet,
peaceful and conservative corners of the universe, where a fox-hunt or
an evening-party was the chief excitement of the year, and where the
advent of a stranger was enough to convulse the entire community, it
became suddenly a training ground and a camp, filled with bustle and
preparation and the sound of arms. The haze of dust from men galloping
by, hung over the highways all day long, and the cross-roads and
the county seat, where the musters used to meet quarterly and where
the Fourth of July celebrations were held, became scenes of almost
metropolitan activity.
Men appeared to spring from the ground as in the days of Cadmus, ready
for war. Red Rock and Birdwood became recruiting-stations and depots of
supply. From the big estates men came; from the small homesteads amid
their orchards, and from the cabins back among the pines—all eager for
war and with a new light in their eyes. Everyone was in the movement.
Major Legaie was a colonel and Mr. Gray was a captain; Dr. Cary was
surgeon, and even old Mr. Langstaff, under that fire of enthusiasm,
doffed his cassock for a uniform, merged his ecclesiastical title of
rector in the military one of chaplain, and made amends for the pacific
nature of his prescribed prayers in church, by praying before his
company outside, prayers as diverse from the benignity of his nature,
as the curses of Ezekiel or Jeremiah from the benediction of St. John
the Aged.
Miss Thomasia, who was always trying to meet some wants which only
the sensitiveness of her own spirit apprehended, enlarged her little
academy in the office at Red Rock, so as to take in all the children of
the men around who had enlisted; made them between their lessons pick
lint, and opened her exercises daily with the most martial hymns she
could find in the prayer-book, feeling in her simple heart that she
could do God no better service than to inculcate an undying patriotism
along with undying piety. As for Blair, she had long deserted the
anti-war side, horse, foot, and dragoons, and sewed on uniforms and
picked lint; wore badges of palmetto, and single stars on little blue
flags sewed somewhat crookedly in the front of her frocks, and sang
“Dixie,” “Maryland,” and “The Bonny Blue Flag” all the time.
Steve Allen and Morris Cary, on an hour’s notice, had left the
University where all the students were flocking into companies, and
with pistols and sabres strapped about their slender waists galloped
up to the county seat together one afternoon, in a cloud of dust,
having outsped their telegrams, and, amid huzzas and the waving of
handkerchiefs from the carriages lining the roadside, spurred their
sweating horses straight to the end of the line that was drilling
under Colonel Legaie in the field beside the court-house. And so, with
radiant faces and bounding hearts were enlisted for the war. Little
Andy Stamper, the rescuer of the two visitors at the ford, was already
there in line at the far end on one of his father’s two farmhorses;
and Jacquelin, on a blooded colt, was trying to keep as near in line
with him as his excited four-year-old would permit. Even the servants,
for whom some on the other side were pledging their blood, were warmly
interested, and were acting more like clansmen than slaves.
Hiram Still, Mr. Gray’s tall manager, had a sudden return of his old
enemy, rheumatism, and was so drawn up that he had to go on crutches;
but was as enthusiastic as anyone, and lent money to help equip the
companies—lent it not to the county, it is true, but to Mr. Gray and
Dr. Cary on their joint security. He and Andy Stamper were not on good
terms, yet he even offered to lend money to Andy Stamper to buy a horse
with. Jacquelin, however, spared Andy this mortification.
The boy, emancipated from school, partly because his father was going
off so shortly to the war, and partly because Dr. Maule himself had
enlisted and Mr. Eliphalet Bush, his successor, was not considered
altogether sound politically, spent his time breaking his colt to stand
the excitement of cavalry drill. Jacquelin and Andy were sworn friends,
and hearing that Andy had applied to Hiram Still to borrow money to
buy a horse with, Jacquelin asked his father’s consent to give him his
colt, and was rewarded by the pick of the horses on the place, after
the carriage horses, his father’s own riding horse and Steve’s. It was
a proud moment for the boy when he rode the high-mettled bay he chose,
over to the old Stamper place.
Andy, in a new gray jacket, was sitting on the front steps, polishing
his scabbard and accoutrements, old Mrs. Stamper was in her low,
split-bottomed chair behind him, knitting a yarn sock for her soldier,
and Delia Dove, with her plump cheeks glowing under her calico
sun-bonnet, which she had pushed back from her round face, was seated
on the bench in the little porch, toying with the wisteria-vine above
her, and looking down on Andy with her black eyes softer than usual.
Andy rose to greet Jacquelin as the boy galloped up to the gate.
“Come in, Jack. What’s up? Look out or he’ll git you off him. That’s
the way to set him! Ah!” as Jacquelin swung himself down.
“Here’s a present for you,” said Jacquelin.
“What?”
“This horse!”
“What!”
“Yes: he’s mine: papa gave him to me this morning and said I might give
him to you. I took the pick——”
“Well, by—” Andy was too much dazed to swear.
“Jack—” This also ended. “Now let that Hiram Still ask for s’curity.
Delia, I’ll lick a regiment.” He faced his sweetheart, who suddenly
turned and caught Jacquelin and kissed him violently, bringing the red
blood to the boy’s fresh face.
“If you’ll do that to me I’ll give him to you right now. D——d ’f I
don’t!” And the little recruit looked Miss Delia Dove in the eyes and
gave a shake of his head for emphasis. The girl looked for one moment
as if she were going to accept his offer. Then as Andy squared himself
and opened his arms wide she considered, and, with a toss of her head
and a sparkle in her eyes, turned away.
That moment the latch clicked and Hiram Still’s daughter, Virgy, stood
beside them, shy and silent, veiled within her sun-bonnet.
“Mr. Stamper, pappy says if you’ll come over to see him about that
business o’ yourn, maybe he can make out to help you out.”
She delivered the message automatically, and, with a shy glance at
Jacquelin, and another, somewhat different, at Delia Dove, retired once
more within the deep recesses of her sun-bonnet.
“Well, you tell your pappy that I say I’m much obliged to him; but I
ain’t got any business with him that I knows on; ’t somebody else’s
done helped me out.” The voice was kind, though the words were
sarcastic.
“Yes, sir. Good-even’.” And with another shy glance and nod to each one
in turn, the girl turned and went off as noiselessly as a hare.
“That girl always gives me the creeps,” said Delia, when Virgy had
reached a safe distance.
“How about Washy?” asked Andy, at which Delia only sniffed disdainfully.
Jacquelin Gray was not the only one of the youngsters whose patriotic
fervor was rewarded. The ladies of the neighborhood made a banner for
each of the companies that went forth, and Blair Cary was selected
to present the banner to the Red Rock company, which she did from the
court-house balcony, with her laughing eyes sobered by excitement, her
glowing face growing white and pink by turns, and her little tremulous
speech, written by her father and carefully conned by heart for days,
much swallowed and almost inaudible in face of the large crowd filling
all the space around, and of the brave company drawn up in the road
below her. But she got through it—that part about “emulating the
Spartan youth who came back with his shield or on it,” and all; and at
the close she carried everyone away by a natural clasp of her little
brown hands over her heart, as she said, “And don’t you let them take
it away from you, not ever,” outstretching her arms to her father, who
sat with moist eyes at one end of the line a little below her, with
Jacquelin close beside him, his eyes like saucers for interest in, and
admiration of, Blair.
“Blair, that’s the best speech that ever was made,” cried the boy,
enthusiastically, when he saw her; “and Steve says so, too. Don’t you
wish I was old enough to go?” The little girl’s cheeks glowed with
pleasure.
The evening before Jacquelin’s father went off, he called Jacquelin
into his office, and rising, shut the door himself. They were alone,
and Jacquelin was mystified. He had never before been summoned for
an interview with his father unless it were for a lecture, or worse.
He hastily ran over in his mind his recent acts, but he could recall
nothing that merited even censure, and curiosity took the place of
wonderment. Wonder came back, however, when his father, motioning him
to a seat, stood before him and began to address him in an entirely
new and unknown tone. He talked to him as if he were a man. Jacquelin
suddenly felt all his old timidity of his father vanish, and a new
spirit, as it were, rise up in his heart. His father told him that now
that he was going away to the war, he might never come back; but he
left, he said, with the assurance that whatever happened, he would
be worthily succeeded; and he said that he was proud of him, and had
the fullest confidence in him. He had never said anything like this to
Jacquelin before, in all his life, and the boy felt a new sensation.
He had no idea that his father had ever been satisfied with him, much
less been proud of him. It was like opening the skies and giving him a
glimpse beyond them into a new heaven. The boy suddenly rose, and flung
his arms about his father’s neck, and clung there, pouring out his
heart to him. Then he sat down again, feeling like a shriven soul, and
the father and son understood each other like two school-fellows.
Mr. Gray told Jacquelin of his will. He had left his mother everything;
but it would be the same thing as if he had left it to him and Rupert.
He, as the oldest, was to have Red Rock, and Rupert the estate in the
South. “I leave it to her, and I leave her to you,” he said, putting
his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Jacquelin listened, his mind suddenly
sobered and expanded to a man’s measure.
“And, Jacquelin,” he said, “keep the old place. Make any sacrifice to
do that. Landholding is one of the safeguards of a gentry. Our people,
for six generations, have never sold an acre, and I never knew a man
who sold land that throve.”
“I will keep it, father,” said the boy, earnestly.
There were some debts, but not enough to amount to anything, his father
told him; the principal one was to Hiram Still. Still had wanted him
to keep his money, and he had done so. It could be paid any time, if
necessary. Still was a better man than he was given credit for. A
bad manner made those who did not know him well, suspicious of him.
But he was the best business man he had ever known, and he believed
devoted to his interest. His father, old Mr. Still, had been overseer
for Jacquelin’s grandfather when Mr. Gray was a boy, and he could not
forget him, and though Still was at present in poor health, he had
contracted the disease while in their service at the South, and he
would be glad to have him kept in his position as long as he treated
the negroes well, and cared to remain.
“And, Jacquelin, one other thing: be a father to Rupert. See that he
gets an education. It is the one patrimony that no accident—not even
war—can take away.”
Jacquelin promised his father that he would remember his injunctions,
and try faithfully to keep them, every one; and when the two walked
out, it was arm in arm like two brothers, and the old servants, looking
at them, nodded their heads, and talked with pride of Jacquelin’s
growing resemblance to his grandfather.
Next day the companies raised in the county started off to the war,
taking almost every man of serviceable age and strength, and many who
were not.
When they marched away it was like a triumphal procession. The blue
haze of spring lay over the woods, softening the landscape, and filling
it with peace. Tears were on some cheeks, no doubt; and many eyes were
dimmed; but kerchiefs and scarfs were waved by many who could not see,
and fervent prayers went up from many hearts when the lips were too
tremulous to speak.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH A LONG JUMP IS TAKEN
It is not proposed to attempt any relation of that part of the lives
of the people in this record which was covered by the four years of
war. That period was too tremendous to be made a mere fragment of any
history. “After that the deluge.”
What pen could properly tell the story of those four years; what
fittingly record the glory of that struggle, hopeless from the
beginning, yet ever appearing to pluck success from the very abyss of
impossibility, and by the sheer power of unconquerable valor to reverse
the laws of nature and create the consummation it desired, in the face
of insuperable force?
It was a great formative force in every life that participated in it.
It stamped itself on every face. The whole country emptied itself into
it. They went into it boys, and came out of it men—striplings, and
came out of it heroes. But the eye once fastened on that flaming fire
would be blinded for any lesser light.
It is what took place after the war rather than what occurred during
the struggle that this chronicle is concerned with.
If the part that the men played in the war must be passed over in
silence as too large for this history, how much more impossible would
it be to describe fitly the part that the women performed. It was a
harder part to fill, yet they filled it to the brim, good measure,
overflowing. It is no disparagement to the men to say that whatever
courage they displayed, it was less than that which the women showed.
Wherever a Southern woman stood during those four years, there in her
small person was a garrison of the South, impregnable.
Year after year the mills of war ground steadily array after array, and
crushed province after province, and still the ranks filled and poured
with intrepid daring into the abyss of destruction, to be ground like
their predecessors to dust; until at the end there was nothing left to
grind. Some day the historian, annalist or novelist, may arise to tell
the mighty story, but meantime this pen must pass it by as too great a
theme, and deal with the times that come after.
One or two incidents, however, must be mentioned to fill the break and
explain what came afterward.
Colonel Gray, who had been early promoted, fell at the head of his
regiment on one of those great days which are the milestones of history.
His body was brought home and buried in the old grave-yard at Red
Rock among generations of Grays, of whom, as old Mr. Langstaff, who
had been bodily haled back to his parish by his congregation, said to
the neighbors and servants about the grave, not one was a better or a
braver man, or a truer gentleman. Colonel Gray’s burial marked one of
the steps of the war in that retired neighborhood.
When it was all over, and the neighbors had gone home, and the servants
had retired to their quarters, hushed to that vague quietude that
follows the last putting away in the earth of those who have been near
to us, Jacquelin came out of the office where he had held that last
interview with his father, and walked into his mother’s room. His
shoulders were square and his figure erect. Mrs. Gray rose from her
knees as he entered, and stood before him in her black dress, her face
deadly white; her eyes, full of fear, fastened on his face.
“Mamma—.” He stopped as if that were all he had to say, and, perhaps,
it was; for Mrs. Gray seated herself calmly.
“Yes, my son.” The fine, sad eyes grew wistful. How like he was to his
father!
—“Because, you know, there ought to be one of us in the old company,
mamma,” he said, quite as though he had spoken the other sentence.
“Yes, my son, I know.” And the mother sighed, her heart breaking in
spite of her resolve to be brave.
“—And I am the only man of the name now—and I am fifteen and a whole
head taller than Andy Stamper.”
“Yes, I know, my son.” She had noticed it that day, and had known this
would come.
“And he is one of the best soldiers in the army—_He_ said so. And
if—if anything happens, you have Rupert.” He went on arguing, as
though his mother had not agreed with him.
“Yes, my son, I know.” And Mrs. Gray rose suddenly and flung herself
into his arms and hugged him and clung to him, and wept on his
shoulder, as though he were his father.
So the change comes: the boy in little trousers suddenly stands before
the mother a man; the little girl who was in her pinafores yesterday,
to-day has stepped into full-blown womanhood; and the children have
gone; the old has passed; and the new is here.
General Legaie offered to make a place on his staff for Jacquelin; but
Jacquelin declined it. He wished to go into the Red Rock troop, of
which Steve Allen was now Captain.
“Because, mamma, all the men are in it, and Steve has refused a
majority to stay with them, and there must be one of the Grays in the
old company,” he said with a rise of his head.
Doan, of course, expected to go with his master; but Mrs. Gray vetoed
this; she was afraid Doan might be killed: young men were so rash. She
remembered that Doan was his mother’s only son. So, by a compromise,
Old Waverley was sent. He had so much judgment, she said.
The year after Jacquelin went away to the army the tide of war rolled
nearer to the old county, and the next year, that which had been deemed
impossible befell: it swept over it.
When the invading army had passed, the county was scarcely recognizable.
Jacquelin’s career in the army was only that of many others—indeed, of
many thousands of others: he went in a boy, but a boy who could ride
any horse, and all day and all night; sleep on stones or in mud; and if
told to go anywhere, would go as firmly and as surely among bayonets or
belching guns as if it were in a garden of roses.
Being the youngest man in his company, he might naturally have been a
favorite in any case; but when he was always ready to stand an extra
tour of guard-duty, or to do anything else for a comrade, it placed
his popularity beyond question. They used to call him “The baby;” but
after a sharp cavalry fight on a hill-top one afternoon they stopped
this. Legaie’s brigade charged, and finding infantry entrenched, were
retiring amid smoke and dust and bullets, when Jacquelin, missing
Morris Cary, who had been near him but a moment before, suddenly turned
and galloped back through the smoke. Two or three men shouted and
stopped, and Steve suddenly dashed back after the boy, followed by Andy
Stamper and the whole company. There was a rally with the whole Red
Rock troop in the lead, Steve Allen, with little Andy Stamper close
behind, shouting and sabering like mad, which changed the fortune of
the day.
Poor Morris was found under his horse, past help; but they brought
his body out of the fray, and Jacquelin sent him home, with a letter
which was harder to write than any charge he had ever made or was to
make—harder even than to tell Dr. Cary, who was at the field hospital
and who received the announcement with only a sudden tightening of the
mouth and whitening of the face. After that, Andy Stamper “allowed that
Jacquelin’s cradle was big enough for him” (Andy), which it certainly
was, by linear measurement, at least.
Blair’s letter to Jacquelin in reply was more to him than General
Legaie’s mention of his name in his report.
Blair was growing up to be almost a woman now. Women, as well as men,
age rapidly amid battles, and nearly every letter Jacquelin received
from home contained something about her. “What a pretty girl Blair
has grown to be. You have no idea how we all lean on her,” his mother
wrote. Or Miss Thomasia would say: “I wish you could have heard Blair
sing in church last Sunday. Her voice has developed unspeakable
sweetness. It reminded me of her grandmother, when I can first remember
her.”
It was not a great while after this that Jacquelin himself went down
one day, and had to be fought over, and though he fared better than
poor Morris Cary, in that the bullet which brought him down only
smashed his leg instead of finding his heart, it resulted in Steve
getting both himself and his horse shot, and Jacquelin being left in
the enemy’s hands, along with Andy Stamper, who had fought over him,
like the game little bantam that he was, until a big Irish Sergeant
knocked him in the head with a carbine-barrel and came near ending the
line of the Stampers then and there. Happily, Andy came to after a
while, and was taken along with Jacquelin and sent to Point Lookout.
Jacquelin and Andy stayed in prison a long time; Andy because he was
a hardy and untamed little warrior, of the kind which was drawn last
for exchange; and Jacquelin partly because he was unable to travel on
account of his wound and partly because he would not accept an exchange
to leave Andy.
One day, however, Andy got a letter which seriously affected him. It
told him that Delia Dove was said to be going to marry Mr. Still.
Within a week little Andy, whose constitution had hitherto appeared of
iron, was in the hospital. The doctor told Jacquelin that he thought
he was seriously ill, and might die.
That night Jacquelin scribbled a line to Andy and persuaded a nurse,
Miss Bush, a small woman with thin hair, a sharp nose and a complaining
voice, but gentle eyes and a kind heart, to get it to him. It ran:
“Hold on for Delia’s sake. We’ll get exchanged before long.”
“Who is Delia?” asked the nurse, looking at the paper doubtfully. It
was against orders to carry notes.
“His sweetheart.”
The nurse took the note.
In a week Andy was ready to be out of the hospital.
The next morning Jacquelin and the doctor had a long talk, and later
on, Jacquelin and the nurse; and when the next draft for exchange came,
the name of Jacquelin Gray was on it. But Andy Stamper’s was not. So
the nurse told Jacquelin. Another note was written and conveyed by Miss
Bush, and that evening, when the line of prisoners for exchange marched
out of the prison yard, Andy Stamper, with his old blanket pulled
up around his face and a crutch under his arm, was in it. Jacquelin
was watching from a corner of the hospital window while the line was
inspected. Andy answered the questions all right—Private in Company A,
—th Cavalry; captured at ——; wounded in leg; and just left hospital.
As the last guard filed out behind the ragged line and the big gate
swung to, Jacquelin hobbled back to his cot and lay with his face to
the wall. The nurse came by presently and stopping, looked down at him.
“Now you’ve gone and ruined your chance for ever,” she said in the
querulous tone habitual with her.
Jacquelin shut his eyes tightly, then opened them and without a word
gazed straight at the wall not a foot before him. Suddenly the woman
bent close down over him and kissed him.
“You are a dear boy.” The next instant she went back to her duty.
An effort was made to get an exchange for Jacquelin, the principal
agents being a nurse in the prison-hospital and a philanthropical
friend of hers, a Mrs. Welch, through whom the nurse had secured her
position; but the answer was conclusive:
“Jacquelin Gray has already been exchanged.”
As for Andy, when he reached home he found the report about Miss Delia
Dove to be at least premature. It was not only Mr. Washington Still,
but Hiram as well, who was unpleasantly attentive to her, and Miss
Delia, after the first burst of genuine delight at Andy’s unexpected
appearance, proceeded to use the prerogative of her sex and wring
her lover’s heart by pretending to be pleased by his new rival’s
attentions. Andy, accordingly, did not stay long at home, but accepting
the renewed proffer of a loan from Hiram Still to buy a horse, was soon
back with the old company, sadly wasted by this time and only kept up
by the new recruits, on whom Andy looked with disdain.
When Wash Still was drafted from the dispensary department of the
hospital service it was some consolation that he was at least banished
from dangerous proximity to Miss Delia, but it was hard to have to
accept him as a comrade, and Andy’s sunburned nose was always turned up
when Wash was around.
“Washy Still in place of Jacquelin Gray,” he sniffed; “a dinged little
’pothecary-shop sweeper for a boy as didn’t mind bullets no mo’ than
flies. I bet he’s got pills in that pistol now! And he to be a-settin’
up to Delia Dove!”
However, a few months later Andy had his reward.
So it happened, that when the end came, Andy was back with the old
company, and Jacquelin was still in prison.
CHAPTER V
DR. CARY RETURNS FROM THE WAR, AND TAKES AN INVENTORY OF STOCK
The home-coming of the men who went to the war was about the same time
of the year that most of them went forth. While the troops of the
victorious army were parading amid the acclaims of multitudes, the
remnants of that other army that had met and defeated them so often
were making their way back to their dismantled homes, with everything
they had fought for lost, save honor. They came home singly or in
squads from northward, eastward and westward, wherever their commands
happened to be when the final collapse came. And but for certain
physical landmarks they would scarcely have known the old neighborhood.
The blue mountains still stretched across the skyline, with the nearer
spurs nestled at their feet; the streams still ran through the little
valleys between the hills, under their willows and sycamores, as they
ran when Steve Allen and Jacquelin and the other boys fished and swam
in them; but the bridges were gone, and the fishing-holes were dammed
with fallen trees, some of them cut down during the battles that had
been fought on their banks. And the roads made by the army-wagons
often turned out through the unfenced fields and the pillaged and
fire-scorched forests.
Dr. Cary, now known as Major Cary, from his title as surgeon in General
Legaie’s brigade, and Captain Allen and Sergeant Stamper came home
together as they had ridden away together through the April haze four
years before. They had started from the place of their surrender with
a considerable company, who had dropped off from time to time as they
had arrived at the roads which took them their several ways, and these
three were the last to separate. When they parted, it was at the forks
where the old brick church had stood when they last passed that way.
The church had gone down in the track of war. Nothing remained of it
now except fragments of the walls, and even these were already half
hidden by the thicket which had grown up around them. It brought the
whole situation very close home to them; for they all had memories
of it: Dr. Cary had buried his father and mother there, and Stamper
and Delia Dove had been married in it a year before. And they did not
have a great many words to speak—perhaps, none at all at the very
last—only a “Well—Well!” with a rising inflection, and something like
a sigh; and then, after a long pause, from the older officer, a sudden:
“Well, good-by, Steve;—good-by, Sergeant. We’ll have to begin over
again.—God bless you—Come over and see me. Good-by.” And from each
of the other two, “Good-by, Major—I will;—Good-by, Tarquin,” to the
Major’s tall, gray-haired body-servant, waiting silently, on his weary
horse; then a couple of hard handgrips and silence; and the horses
went plashing off in the mud, slow and sullen, reluctant to leave each
other. All turned once to look back; caught each other’s glances and
waved their hands; and then rode on through the mud, their heads sunk
on their chests, and the officer’s two body-servants, old Tarquin and
young Jerry, following silently behind their masters.
The meeting at home was in the dusk.
The little group waiting on the hill-top at Dr. Cary’s for the small
cavalcade as they rode up through the waning light had been waiting and
watching for days; but there were no words spoken at the meeting. Only,
Mrs. Cary walked out from the others and met her husband a part of the
way down the hill, and Blair followed her a moment after.
When the doctor reached his door, walking between his wife and
daughter, an arm around each, he turned to his old servant, who was
holding the horses:
“Tarquin, you are free. I present you the horse you rode home. Take the
saddles off, and turn them out.” And he walked into the house, shaking
by the hand the servants clustered about the door.
It was only when he was inside, facing the portrait of a young boy with
handsome, dark eyes, that he gave way.
The very next day Dr. Cary, to use a commercial phrase, began to “take
stock.”
“Taking stock” is always a serious thing to do, and it must come often
into every thoughtful man’s life. He is his own ledger. In all cases he
must look back and measure himself by himself. Perhaps some hour brings
him some question on which all must hinge. It may come unexpectedly,
or he may have seen it advancing with inevitable steps. He may have
brought it on himself, or he may have fought strenuously against it. It
is all the same. It comes straight down upon him, a cyclone threatening
to overwhelm him, and he must meet it either as a brave man or a
craven. It comes, sweeps past or over him and leaves him in its track,
unscathed or wounded or slain. But it comes. And this is Life. The
ancients called it Fate; we call it Providence or Chance, or the result
of natural laws. But by whatever name known, it is inscrutable.
So Dr. Cary felt that soft spring morning as he stood on the front
porch of the roomy and rambling old mansion, where the Carys had had
their seat and had made the Birdwood hospitality celebrated for more
than two hundred years, and looked across the wide lawn, once well
trimmed and filled with shrubbery and flowers, now ragged and torn. His
eye took in the whole scene. The wide fields, once teeming with life,
stretched before him now empty and silent; the fences were broken down
or had disappeared altogether. And yet the grass was fresh and green,
the trees and bushes were just bursting from bud to leaf; the far-off
mountains rose blue and tender across the newly washed sky; the birds
were flitting and singing joyously, and somewhere, around the house,
a young girl’s voice was singing sweeter than any of the birds. The
look on the old soldier’s face was for a moment one of deep gravity,
if not of dejection; but it passed away the next instant, as Blair’s
song reached him and as a step sounded behind him, and a hand was laid
lightly on his shoulder, followed by an even softer touch on his arm,
as his wife’s face rested for a moment against it. At the caressing
touch his expression changed, he looked down in her eyes and, when he
spoke, it was with a new light in his own eyes and a new tone in his
voice.
“Well, Bess, we’ll begin all over again. We have each other, and we
have Blair, and we have—the land. It is as much as our forefathers
began with. At least, I think we have the land—I don’t suppose they’ll
take that away. If they do—why, we have each other and Blair, anyhow.
If we only had the boy!” He turned his face away.
“He died for his country,” said the mother, though her voice belied the
courage of her words.
“He died like a soldier: with all his wounds before.” He looked down
into his wife’s eyes.
“Yes.” And she sighed deeply.
“We have to take care of what’s left. Where is Jim Sherwood? I have not
seen him.”
“He has gone.”
“What!” The Doctor gave a whistle of amazement. “I’d almost as soon
have expected Mammy Krenda and Tarquin to leave.” Jim was one of the
most trusted men about the place, a sort of preacher and leader, and
had married, as his third wife, Mammy Krenda’s daughter, Jane.
“Yes, Jim has gone. He went two weeks ago, and I was rather glad he
went,” said Mrs. Cary. “He had never been quite the same since the
Yankees came through; you know he behaved very badly then. He had
changed more than almost anyone of them who remained. He had been
preaching a good deal lately, and appeared to be stirring the others
up more than I liked. There seemed to have been some influence at work
among them that I could not understand. It was said that Mr. Still,
Helen’s manager—But I don’t know,”—she broke off. “I heard them one
night, at the house, and went out to the church where they were, and
found them in a great state of excitement. They quieted down when I
appeared. That repulsive creature, Mr. Gray’s Moses, was there, and
I ordered him home, and gave them a talk, and the next morning Jim
Sherwood was missing too, and a few days later Jane said that she had
to go also. I told them they were free, but if they remained here they
must observe my regulations. I put Gideon in charge and told him you
would look to him to keep order till you came. And he has done so to
the best of his ability, I believe. I hear that he gave Jim Sherwood
to understand that he would have no more of his preaching here for the
present, and that if he wanted to preach for Hiram Still he could go to
Red Rock and do it, not here. And now you are here, this is the end of
my stewardship, and I surrender it into your hands.”
She made her husband, half-mockingly, a profound curtsey—perhaps to
turn off the serious thoughts which her words called up. But the Doctor
declared that, at least, one of her slaves recognized too well the
blessing of servitude to such a mistress to wish for freedom, and that
he declined to assume control.
“Why, Bess, we men fought a quarter of the war and you women fought
three-quarters. Do you imagine we want to depose you?”
Just then a young girl came around the corner of the house, her dark
eyes full of light; her hair blown back from her forehead by the
morning breeze, and her hands full of jonquils and other early flowers.
Her face was glowing with the exercise she has been taking, and her
whole person was radiant with youth.
“The morn is breaking. Here comes Aurora,” said her father, gazing at
her fondly, at which Miss Blair’s cheeks glowed only the more.
It was proposed by the Doctor that they should invite to dinner such of
their friends as had arrived at home and could be reached.
“Our first reunion,” said Mrs. Cary, smiling, and she began to give
what she called her ménu, in which, corn-bread, dried fruit, black-eyed
pease, and welcome figured as the principal dishes. She laughed at her
husband’s dumb amazement.
“Bess,” said the Doctor, humbly, “I retract what I said a little while
ago about our having fought a fourth of the war—it was the speech of a
braggart.” And having followed her with his eyes, as she went into the
house, he walked around to have a talk with his negroes.
He found a number of them congregated and evidently expecting something
of the kind.
“Gideon, tell the men I wish to speak to them.”
In fifteen minutes they had collected. He called them all up, and
standing on the portico of the office where he had been accustomed to
speak with them, addressed a few calm words to them.
For a moment he went over the past. They had been faithful servants, he
said. And he was glad to be able to say this to them. Now there were to
be new relations between them. He told them they were free—on which
there was an audible murmur of acquiescence—and they could leave, if
they pleased. There was another murmur of satisfaction. But if they
remained they would have to work and be subject to his authority.
Upon this many of the older ones signified their assent, while some of
the others turned and, looking back, called to some one in the rear of
the crowd:
“Come, Brer Sherrod, you done heah de noration; now come and gi’ de
’sponse.”
A low, stout negro, of middle age, whom the Doctor had not before
noticed, came forward somewhat sheepishly, but with a certain swagger
in his gait. It was evidently concerted. The Doctor’s mind acted
quickly. At the speaker’s first word, he cut him short.
“I decline to allow Jim Sherwood to be the spokesman,” he said. “He
does not belong here. I left him in a position of trust, and he has
failed in it. Fall to the rear; I make no terms with outsiders.”
Taken by surprise at the tone of authority, the exhorter fell or was
moved back, in sudden confusion, while the doctor went on:
“Gideon, I appoint you; you have proved trustworthy. This place has
supported two hundred souls in the past, and we can make it do so
again. Tell them that all those who remain here and work under you,
including Sherwood, shall be supported and treated fairly and paid what
is proper if it takes every acre I have to do it; the others can go and
find homes elsewhere.” He turned on his heel and walked into the house.
The next day there was a good force at work in the fields.
Some of those he had addressed had gone off in the night; but most of
them remained, and the Doctor told Mrs. Cary he thought things would
work out all right; he was ready to accept present conditions, and
matters would adjust themselves.
“Time is the adjuster,” he said.
CHAPTER VI
A BROKEN SOLDIER COMES HOME FROM WAR
It was a little over two weeks or, perhaps, three, after the
Confederate armies had laid down their arms and disbanded, and the rest
of the men from the county had turned their faces homeward with, or
without, their paroles in their pockets, that a train which had been
crawling all night over the shaky track, stopped in the morning near
the little station, or what remained of it, on the edge of the county,
where persons bound for nearly all that region got off. A passenger was
helped down by the conductor and brakeman and was laid, with his crutch
and blanket, as gently as might be, on a bank a little way from the
track.
“Are you all right now? Do you think you can get on? You are sure
someone will come for you?” asked the train men.
“Oh! yes; I feel better already.” And the young fellow stretched out
his hands in the gray dawn and felt the moist earth on either side of
him almost tenderly.
As the railroad men climbed back into the car they were conversing
together in low tones.
“Unless his friends come before many hours they won’t find him,” said
one of them. “I don’t know but what we ought to a’ brought him along,
any way.”
But Jacquelin Gray had more staying power than they gave him credit
for, and the very touch of the soil he loved did him good. He dragged
himself a little way up, stretched himself out under a tree on the
grass near where they had laid him, and went to sleep like a baby. The
sun came up over the dewy trees and warmed him, and he only turned
and slept on, dreaming that he had escaped from prison and reached the
old county too weary to go any farther, and so, lay down on a bank and
waited for someone to come for him. How often he had dreamed that, and
had awaked to find himself in his old cot in the hospital, maybe, with
the guard peering down at him with his lantern. Suddenly a shadow fell
across his face, and he woke and looked up. Yes, there was the guard,
three or four of them, gazing down on him in their blue uniform.
“Jacquelin Gray. No.—. Ward ten,” he muttered wearily, as he used
to do in the hospital, and was closing his eyes again when he awaked
fully. Two or three Federal soldiers, one of them an officer, a little
fellow with blue eyes, were leaning over him, and a cavalry company was
yonder at rest, in the road below him. He was free after all, back in
the old county.
The Lieutenant asked him his name and how he came there, and he told
them.
“Where are you going?”
“Home!” with a little flash in his eye.
“Where is that?”
“Above here, across the country, in the Red Rock neighborhood—beyond
Brutusville.”
“Why, we are going that way ourselves—we were going to give you a
decent burial; but maybe we can do you a better turn if you are not
ready for immortality; we’ve an ambulance along, and here’s the best
substitute for the honor we offered you.”
The little Lieutenant was so cheery as he pressed the canteen to
Jacquelin’s lips that the latter could not help feeling better.
The Captain, who had remained with the company, came over, on his
handsome horse, picking his way through the débris lying about.
“So he is alive after all?” he asked as he rode up.
“Alive? Well, if you’d seen the way he took this!” And the Lieutenant
shook his canteen up beside his ear, as if to gauge its remaining
contents; then held it to Jacquelin again.
“Have another pull? No? All right—when you want it. You aren’t the
first reb’s had a swig at it.”
Then he repeated to his superior, a tall, handsome fellow, what
Jacquelin had told him as to his name and destination. In an instant
the Captain had sprung from his horse.
“Jacquelin Gray! Red Rock!—By Jove! It can’t be!” He stared down at
the man on the ground.
“Do you mean to say that you live at a place called ‘Red Rock’—a great
plantation, with a big rock by a burial-ground, and a red stain on it,
said to be an Indian’s blood?”
Jacquelin nodded.
“Well by ——! What’s the matter with you? Where have you been? What
are you dressed this way for?—I mean an old plantation where there
was a wedding—or a wedding-party, about five years ago—?” he broke
out, as if it were impossible to believe it. “And—a little girl, named
Blair Something, sang?”
Jacquelin nodded.
“Yes, that’s the place—Miss Blair Cary. But who are—? What do you
know about——?”
“Well, I’m— Here, Reely, call Sergeant O’Meara; tell him to send the
ambulance here directly,” interrupted the Captain. He turned back to
Jacquelin.
“Don’t you remember me? I’m Middleton—Lawrence Middleton. Don’t you
remember? I happened in that night with Mr. Welch, and you took care of
us? I’ve never forgotten it.”
“I remember it—you painted the horse red,” said Jacquelin.
“Yes—it was really this fellow, Reely Thurston. He is the one that got
me into all that trouble. And he has got me into a lot more since. But
where have you been that you look like this?”
Jacquelin told him.
By this time several of the people from the few houses in the
neighborhood of the station, who had at first kept aloof from the troop
of soldiers and gazed at them from a distance, had come up, seeing that
they had a Confederate with them. They recognized Jacquelin and began
to talk about his appearance, and to make cutting speeches as to the
treatment he had undergone.
“We ain’t forgot your Pa,” some of them said.
“Nor you neither,” said one of the women, who added that she was Andy
Stamper’s cousin.
They wanted Jacquelin to stay with them and let them take care of him
until his mother could send for him. Captain Allen had been down to see
about him, and Andy Stamper had been there several times, and had said
that if he didn’t hear anything from him next time, he was going North
to see about him, if he had to ride his old horse there.
Jacquelin, however, was so anxious to get home that, notwithstanding
the pressing invitations of his friends, he accepted the offer of
the Federal officers, and, after getting a cup of coffee from Andy’s
cousin—who said it was the first she had had in three years—he was
helped up in the ambulance and was driven off.
The company, it seemed, had come up from the city the day before
and had encamped a little below the station, and was marching to
Brutusville, where it was to be posted.
Julius, General Legaie’s old butler, met them near the court-house and
plunged out in the mud and wrung Jacquelin’s hand, thanking God for his
return.
The old butler was on the lookout for his master, who had not come home
yet, and about whom he was beginning to be very uneasy. The General had
gone South somewhere “to keep on fightin’,” Julius told Jacquelin, and
he invited him to come by and spend the night, and offered to go on
himself and let his mother know he had come. The old fellow, in his
best clothes—a high hat and an old blue coat with brass buttons—and
with his best manners, caused much amusement to the soldiers, and
Lieutenant Thurston undertook to tease him.
“You haven’t any master now,” he said.
The old servant looked at him.
“I ain’t? Does you think I’se a free nigger?” he asked, sharply,
“‘Cause I ain’t!”
“Yes, but I mean we’ve taken your master prisoner.”
“You is?” He looked at him again keenly. “Nor, you ain’t. It’ll teck
a bigger man’n you to teck my master prisoner—And he ain’ big as
you nuther,” he said, with a snap of his eyes. “He ain’t de kind dat
s’renders.”
“We’ll have to stand in on this together,” said the little Lieutenant
across to Jacquelin, as the laugh went round; and then to Julius, with
a wave of his hand toward Jacquelin, “Well, what do you say to that
gentleman’s having surrendered?”
The old darky was quick enough, however.
“He was shot, and besides _you_ never got him. I know you never got
nigh enough to him in battle to shoot him.”
“I think you’ll have to go this alone,” said Jacquelin. The Lieutenant
admitted himself routed.
Late that evening Jacquelin’s ambulance was toiling up the hill to Red
Rock, while the troop of cavalry, sent to keep order in that section,
with its tents pitched in the court-house yard under the big trees,
were taking a survey of the place they had come to govern. Little
Thurston, who, as they rode in, had caught sight of a plump young
girl gazing at them from the open door of the old clerk’s office,
with mingled curiosity and defiance, declared that it was not half as
bad as some places he had been in in the South. At that moment, as it
happened, Miss Elizabeth Dockett, the young lady in question, daughter
of Mr. Dockett, the old County Clerk, was describing to her mother the
little Lieutenant as the most ridiculous and odious-looking little
person in the world.
It was night when Jacquelin reached home; but so keen was the watch in
those times, that the ambulance had been heard in the dark, so that
when he arrived there was quite a crowd on the lawn ready to receive
him, and the next moment he was in his mother’s arms.
Sergeant O’Meara, who had been detailed to go on with the ambulance,
took back to the court-house an account of the meeting.
“It was wurruth the drive,” he said, “to see ’um whan we got there.
An’ if I’d been th’ Gineral himself, or the Captain, they couldn’t
’a’ made more fuss over me. Bedad! I thought they moust tak’ me for a
Gineral at least; but no, ut was me native gintilitee. I was that proud
of meself I almost shed tears of j’y. The only thing I lacked was some
wan to say me so gran’ that could appreciate me. An ould gintleman—a
Docther Major Cary—a good Oirish naim, bedad!—was there to say wan of
the leddies, and ivery toime a leddy cooms in, oop he gits, and bows
very gran’, an’ the leddy bows an’ passes by, an’ down he sets, an’ I
watches him out o’ the tail of me eye, an’ ivery toime he gits oup, oup
I gits too. An’ I says:
“‘I always rise for the leddies; me mither was a leddy,’ an’ he says,
with a verra gran’ bow: ‘Yis,’ he says, ‘an’ her son is a gintleman,
too.’ What dy’e think o’ that? An’ I says, ‘Yis, I know he is.’”
Next morning Jacquelin was in a very softened mood. The joy of
being free and at home again was tempered by memory of the past and
realization of the present; but he was filled with a profound feeling
which, perhaps, he himself could not have named. As he hobbled out to
the front portico and gazed around on the wide fields spread out below
him, with that winding ribbon of tender green, where the river ran
between its borders of willows and sycamores, he renewed his resolve
to follow in his father’s footsteps. He would keep the place at all
sacrifices. He was in this pleasant frame of mind when Hiram Still
came around the house. Still had aged during the war, his voice had
become more confidential.
As he came up to Jacquelin, the latter, notwithstanding his
outstretched hand and warm words, had a sudden return of his old
feeling of suspicion and dislike.
“Mr. Jacquelin, I swan, I am glad to see you, suh—an’ to see you
lookin’ so well. I told yo’ Ma you’d come back all right. An’ I told
that Yankee what brought you up last night that ’twas a shame they
treated you as they done, and if you hadn’t come back all right we’d
’a’ come up thar an’ cleaned ’em out. Yes, sir, we would that.
“I sent him off this mornin’—saw him acrost the ford myself he added,
lowering his voice confidentially, “because I don’t like to have ’em
prowling around my place—_our_ place—too much. Stirs up th’ niggers
so you can’t get no work out of ’em. And I didn’t like that fellow’s
looks, particularly. Well, I certainly am glad to see you lookin’ so
well.”
Jacquelin felt doubly rebuked for his unjust suspicions, and, as a
compensation, told Mr. Still of his last conversation with his father,
and of what his father had said of him. Still was moved almost to tears.
“Your father was the best friend I ever had in this world, Mr. Jack,”
he said. “I’ll never—” he had to turn his face away. “You can’t do no
better than your father.”
“No, indeed,” Jacquelin agreed to that. All he wished was to do just
what his father had done—He was not well; and he should leave the
management of the place to Mr. Still, just as his father had done—at
least, till they knew how things stood, he added.
There was a slight return of a look which had been once or twice in
Still’s downcast eyes, and he raised them to take a covert glance at
Jacquelin’s face. Jacquelin, however, did not see it. He was really
suffering greatly from his wound; and the expression he caught on
Still’s face was only one of deep concern. He asked after Still’s
family.
Wash had gone to the city to study medicine, Still said.
“We pore folks as ain’t got a fine plantation like this has got to have
a trade or something.”
Virgy was at home keeping house for him. She was a good big girl
now—“most grown like Miss Blair,” he added.
There was a slight tone in the manager’s voice which somehow grated on
Jacquelin a little, he did not know why. And he changed the subject
rather shortly.
Some time he wished to talk to Mr. Still about that Deep-run plantation
in the South, he said, as he had attended to stocking it and knew more
about it than anyone else; but he did not think he was equal to it just
then. Still agreed that this was right, also that the first thing for
Jacquelin to do now was to take care of himself and get well.
Just then Andy Stamper came round the house, with a bucket in one hand
and a bunch of flowers in the other. At sight of Jacquelin his face lit
up with pleasure. Before Andy could nod to Hiram the latter had gone,
with a queer look on his face, and something not unlike a slink in his
gait.
The bucket Andy had brought was full of eggs, which Delia Dove, Andy
said, had sent Jacquelin, and she had sent the flowers too.
“I never see anyone like her for chickens an’ flowers,” said Andy.
“She’s a good friend o’ yours. I thought when I got home I wa’n’t
goin’ to get her after all. I thought she’d ’a’ sent me back to P’int
Lookout,” he laughed.
His expression changed after a moment.
“I see Hiram’s been to see you—to wish you well? Don’t know what’s the
reason, he kind o’ cuts out whenever I come ’roun’. Looks almost like
he’s got some’n’ ag’inst me; yet he done me a mighty good turn when I
was married; he come and insisted on lendin’ me some money, not only
to buy a horse with fer the ole woman: but a horse to go back in th’
army with—a whole basketful of money, and he’s been lendin’ all aroun’
the neighborhood; an’ don’t seem to be in no hurry to git it back—If
you jest give him a little slip o’ writin’ on yo’ land, that’s all.
Yet, somehow, he always r’minds me of a mink, kind of slippy-like. He
don’t do things all at once. He didn’t tell me he wanted no deed; but
after I was gone, he got one from the old lady—said ’twould be all
right, and I could pay him any time; he jest wanted it in case he died,
and she didn’ know no better than to sign it. I’m goin’ to pay him off,
first money I git. I never would ’a’ borrowed it ’cept I was so anxious
to go back in the army—an’ to git Delia. Hiram thought he was sure to
win.” The little soldier’s face always lighted up when he referred to
his wife.
Jacquelin protested that he thought Still a better fellow than Andy
would admit, and added that his father had always esteemed him highly.
“Yes, I know that; but the Colonel didn’t know him, Mr. Jack, and he
wasn’t lookin’ out for him. I don’t like a man I can’t understand. If
you know he’s a liar, you needn’t b’lieve him; but if you aint found
him out yet, he gets aroun’ you. Hiram is that sort. I know he us’t to
be a liar, an’ I don’t b’lieve folks recovers from that disease. So I’m
goin’ to pay him off. An’ you do the same. I tell you, he’s a schemer,
an’ he’s lookin’ up.”
Just then there was a light step behind them, a shadow fell on the
veranda, which, to one of them, at least, was followed by an apparition
of light—as, with a smothered cry of, “Jacquelin!” a young girl, her
hair blowing about her brow, ran forward, and as the wounded soldier
rose, threw her arms around his neck. Blair Cary looked like a rose as
she drew back in a pretty confusion, her blushes growing deeper every
moment.
“Why, Blair, how pretty you’ve grown!” exclaimed Jacquelin, thinking
only of her beauty.
“Well, you talk as if you were very much surprised,” and Miss Blair
bridled with pretended indignation.
“Oh! No—Of course, not. I only——”
“Oh! yes, you do,” and she tossed her pretty head with well-feigned
disdain. “You are as bold with your compliments as you were with your
sword.”
She turned from him to Sergeant Stamper, who was regarding her with
open-mouthed admiration.
“How do you do, Sergeant Stamper? How’s Delia? And how are her new
chickens? Tell her she isn’t to keep on sending them all to me. I am
going to learn to raise them for myself now.”
“I daren’t tell her that,” said the little fellow. “You know I can’t do
nothin’ with Delia Dove. You’re the only one can do that. If I tell her
that, she’d discharge me, an’ sen’ me ’way from the place.”
“I’m glad to see she’s breaking you in so well,” laughed Blair.
* * * * *
In a short time all the soldiers from the old county who were left were
back at home, together with some who were not originally from that
county, but who, having nowhere better to go, and no means to go with,
even if they had had, and finding themselves stranded by the receding
tide, pitched their tents permanently where they had only intended
to bivouac, and thus, by the simple process of staying there, became
permanent residents.
The day after that on which Jacquelin arrived, General Legaie, to the
delight of old Julius and of such other servants as yet remained on his
place, turned up, dusty, and worn, but still serene and undispirited.
He marched into his dismantled mansion with as proud a step as when he
left it, and took possession of it as though it had been a castle. With
him was an officer to whom the General offered the hospitalities of the
house as though it had been a palace, and to whom he paid as courtly
attention as if he had been a prince.
“This is Julius, Captain, of whom I have spoken to you,” he said,
after he had shaken hands with the old butler, and with the score of
other negroes who had rushed out and gathered around him on hearing
of his arrival. “Julius will attend to you, and unless he has lost
some of his art you will confess that I have not exaggerated his
abilities.” He faced his guest and made him a low bow. “I hope,
Captain, you will consider this your home as long as you wish. Julius,
the Captain will stay with us for the present, and I suspect he’d like
a julep.” And with a wave of the hand the little General transferred
the responsibility of his guest to the old butler, who stood bowing,
dividing his glances between those of affection for his master and of
shrewd inspection of the visitor.
The latter was a tall, spare man, rather sallow than dark, but with
a piercing, black eye, and a closely shut mouth under a long, black,
drooping mustache. He acknowledged the General’s speech with a civil
word, and Julius’s bow with a nod and a look, short but keen and
inquiring, and then, flinging himself into the best seat, leant his
head back and half closed his eyes, while the General went out and
received the negroes, who, with smiling faces, were still gathering on
the news of his arrival.
During this absence the guest did not rise from his chair; but turned
his head slowly from time to time, until his eyes had rested on every
article in the field of his vision. He might have been making an
appraisement.
The General, in fact, did not know any more of his guest than Julius
knew. He had come on him only that afternoon at a fork in the road,
resting, stretched out on a couple of fence-rails, while his horse
nibbled and picked at the grass and leaves near by. The gray uniform,
somewhat fresher than those the General was accustomed to, attracted
the General’s attention, and when Captain McRaffle, as the stranger
called himself, asked him the nearest way to Brutusville, or to some
gentleman’s house, the General at once invited him to his home. He had
heard, he stated, that a company of Yankees had already been sent to
Brutusville; but he could show him the way to a house where gentlemen
had lived in the past, and where, if he thought _he_ would pass muster,
one was about to live again. And with this invitation Captain McRaffle
became an inmate of Thornleigh, as the General’s place was called, and
might have stayed there indefinitely had not unforeseen contingencies
caused him to remove his quarters.
Just as the General returned from his reception on the veranda, the old
butler entered with a waiter and two juleps sparkling in their glasses.
At sight of them the General beamed, and even the guest’s cold eyes lit
up.
“On my soul! he is the most remarkable fellow in the world,” declared
the General to his visitor. “Where did you get this?”
“Well, you see, suh,” said Julius, “de Yankees over yander was givin’
out rations, and I thought I’d git a few, so’s to be ready for you
’ginst you come.”
The General smiled delightedly, and between the sips of his julep
proceeded to extract from Julius all the news of the county since his
last visit, a year or more before, and to give a running commentary
of his own for the enlightenment of his guest, who, it must be said,
appeared not quite as much interested in it all as he might have been.
All the people on the place, Julius said, had been over to the
court-house already to see the soldiers, but most of them had come
back. He had been there himself one day, but had returned the same
evening, as he would not leave the place unguarded at night.
“The most faithful fellow that ever was on earth; he would die for me!”
asserted the General, in a delighted aside to his guest, who received
the encomium somewhat coldly, and on the first opportunity that he
could do so unobserved, gave the old butler another of those looks that
appeared like a flash of cold steel.
Dr. Cary had been down the day before to inquire after the
General.—“An old and valued friend of mine, the greatest surgeon
in the State—ought to have been made Surgeon-General of the army,”
interpolated the General to his guest.
The Doctor had said the ladies were well, and were mighty anxious about
the General—“Yes, sir, Miss Thomasia was very well, indeed.”
“Miss Gray—a very old—I mean—ah—_dear_ friend of mine—sister of
Colonel Gray,” the General explained to his guest. “On my word, I
believe her intuitions are infallible. I never knew her at fault in her
estimate of a man in my life.”
The Doctor had left word asking if he would not come up to dinner next
day, Julius continued:
“Bless my soul! Of course I will—and I’ll take you too, Captain; they
will be delighted to see you—Most charming people in the world!”
So the General annotated old Julius’s bulletin, gilding everyone and
everything with the gold of his own ingenuous heart.
“The—ah—soldiers had left an order for him as soon as he came, to
come to the court-house to swear to something”, said Julius, doubtfully.
“I’ll see the soldiers d—— condemned first!” bristled the General.
“I shall go to pay my respects to the ladies at Red Rock and Birdwood
to-morrow—the two most beautiful places in all the country, sir.”
This to Captain McRaffle, who received even this stirring information
without undue warmth; but when their backs were turned, inspected again
both the General and old Julius.
Next morning the General invited his guest to accompany him, but
Captain McRaffle was not feeling well, he said, and he thought if the
General would leave him, he would remain quiet. Or, perhaps, if he felt
better, he might ride over to the county seat and reconnoitre a little.
He always liked to know the strength of the force before him.
“A most excellent rule,” the General declared, with admiration.
So the General, having given the Captain one of the two very limp
shirts which “the thoughtfulness of a dear friend, Mrs. Cary, of
Birdwood,” had provided for him, arrayed himself in the other and set
out to pay his respects to his friends in the upper end of the county,
leaving his guest stretched out on a lounge.
He had not been gone long when the Captain ordered his horse and rode
off in the direction of the court-house.
On arriving at the county seat the new-comer rode straight to the
tavern, and dismounting, gave his horse to a servant and walked in.
As he entered he gave one of those swift, keen glances, and then
asked for Mrs. Witcher, the landlady. When she arrived, a languid,
delicate-looking woman, the Captain was all graciousness, and, in a few
moments, Mrs. Witcher was equally complacent. In fact, the new-comer
had decided on the first glance that this was good enough for him, at
least, till he could do better. The Captain told Mrs. Witcher that he
had not had a really square meal in two months, and had not slept in a
bed in six months.
“A floor, madam, or a table, so it is long enough, is all I desire.
Upon my word and honor I don’t think I could sleep in a bed.”
But Mrs. Witcher insisted that he should try, and so the Captain
condescended to make the experiment, after giving her a somewhat
detailed account of his extensive family connection, and of an even
larger circle of friends, which included the commanding Generals of all
the armies and everybody else of note in the country besides.
“Well, this suits me,” he said as he walked into the room assigned him.
“Jim, who occupied this room last?” he asked the darky—whose name
happened to be Paul.
“Well, I forgits the gent’man’s name, he died in dis room.”
“Did he? How?”
“Jes’ so, suh. He died right in dat bed, ’caus I help’ to lay him out.”
“Well, maybe I’ll die in it myself. See that the sheets are clean,”
said Captain McRaffle, composedly. “What are you standing there gaping
at? Do you suppose I mind a man’s dying? I’ve killed a hundred men.”
“Suh!”
“Yes, two hundred—and slept in a coffin myself to boot.” And the
Captain turned on the negro so dark and saturnine a face that “Jim”
withdrew in a hurry, and ten minutes later was informing the other
negroes that there was a man in the house that had been dead and “done
riz agin.”
And this was the equipment with which Captain McRaffle began life as a
resident of Brutusville.
CHAPTER VII
THE CARY CONFERENCE
The meeting at Birdwood was a notable occasion. It was, in a way, the
outward and visible sign of the return of peace. Someone said it looked
like the old St. Ann congregation risen from the dead, to which Miss
Thomasia added, that the gentlemen, at least, were now all immortal,
and the General, with his hand on his heart, gallantly responded that
the ladies had always been so. The speech, however, left some faces
grave, for there were a number of vacant places that could not be
forgotten.
Jacquelin, under the excitement of his arrival, felt himself
sufficiently restored and stimulated to join his mother and Aunt
Thomasia, and be driven over to Birdwood, and though he suffered a good
deal from the condition of the roads, yet when Blair ran forward and
offered her shoulder for “his other crutch,” he felt as though a bad
wound might after all have some compensations.
Steve Allen was the life of the company. He had ridden over on his
black horse, “Hot-Spur,” that, like himself, had been wounded several
times in the last campaigns, though never seriously. He spent his time
teasing Blair. He declared that Jacquelin was holding on to his crutch
only to excite sympathy, and that his own greatest cause for hatred of
the Yankees now was either that they had not shot him instead of Jack,
or had not killed Jack, and he offered to go out and let anyone shoot
him immediately for one single pitying glance like those he said Blair
was lavishing on Jack.
Jacquelin, with a vivid memory of the morning before, had meant to
kiss Blair on his arrival, yet when they met he was seized with a
sudden panic, and could hardly look into her eyes. She appeared to
have grown taller and older since yesterday, as well as prettier, and
when Steve, on arriving, insolently caught and kissed her before them
all, on the plea of cousinship, Jacquelin was conscious of a pang of
consuming jealousy, and for the first time in his life would gladly
have thrashed Steve.
There was one thing that marred the occasion somewhat, or might have
done so under other circumstances. The entire negro population, who
could travel, moved by some idea that the arrival of the Federal
soldiers concerned them, were flocking to the county seat, leaving the
fields deserted and the cabins empty.
The visitors had found the roads lined with them as they came along.
They were all civil, but what could it mean? Some of the young men,
like Steve and Jacquelin, were much stirred up about it, and talked
of organizing quietly so as to be ready if the need should arise. Dr.
Cary, however, and the older ones, opposed anything of the kind. Any
organization whatever would be viewed with great suspicion by the
authorities, and might be regarded as a breach of their parole, and
was not needed. They were already organized simply by being what they
were. And, indeed, though gaunt and weather-beaten, in their old worn
uniforms they were a martial-looking set. There was not a man there who
had not looked Death in the eyes many a time, and the stare had left
something notable in every face.
It was a lovely day, and the early flowers were peeping out as if to be
sure before they came too far that winter had gone for good. The soft
haze of Spring was over the landscape.
The one person who was wanting, to make the company complete, was the
little General. They were just discussing him, and were wondering if
he had gone to Mexico; and Steve, seated at Miss Thomasia’s side, was
teasing her about him, declaring that, in his opinion, it was a pretty
widow, whose husband had been in the General’s brigade and had been
shot, that the General had gone South after; when a horseman was seen
riding rapidly across the open field far below, taking the ditches as
he came to them. When he drew nearer he was recognized to be none other
than the gallant little General himself. As he came trotting across
the lawn, among the great trees, he presented a martial figure, and
handkerchiefs were waved to him, and many cheers were given, so that he
was quite overcome when he dismounted in the midst of a number of his
old soldiers, and found himself literally taken in the arms of both the
men and the ladies.
The General beamed, as he gazed around with a look that showed that
he thought life might still be worth living if only he could meet
occasionally such a reception as had just been given him. Others smiled
too; for it was known that the General had been an almost life-long
lover and suitor of Miss Thomasia Gray, whose twenty years’ failure
to smile on him had in no way damped his ardor or dimmed his hope.
In fact, the old soldier, in his faded gray, with his bronzed, worn,
high-bred face, was nearer achieving the object of his life at that
moment than he had ever been in the whole twenty years of his pursuit.
Had the occasion come fifteen or even ten years earlier, he might have
done so; but Miss Thomasia had reached the point when to marry appeared
to her ridiculous, and the only successful rival of the shaft of Cupid
is the shaft of Ridicule.
At such a meeting as this there were necessarily many serious things
to be considered. One was the question of bread; another of existence.
None could look around on the wide, deserted fields and fail to take
in this. Everything like civil government had disappeared. There was
not a civil officer left in the State. From Governor to justices of
the peace, every office had been vacated. The Birdwood meeting was the
first in the county at which was had any discussion of a plan for the
preservation of order. Even this was informal and unpremeditated;
but when it reached the ears of Colonel Krafton, the new commander of
that district, who had just arrived, it had taken on quite another
complexion, and the “Cary Conference,” as it came to be called, was
productive of some very far-reaching consequences to certain of those
who participated in it, and to the county itself.
As to some matters broached at Birdwood that day, there was wide
diversity of opinion among those present.
Dr. Cary was in favor of accepting the issues as settled by the war; of
making friends with the high authorities—as had already been done by
some in other parts of the State, and of other States.
“Never! never!” declared General Legaie, with whom were most of the
others. “They have done their worst; they have invaded us, and taken
our negroes from us. Let them bear the responsibilities they have
assumed.”
It was easy to see, from the enthusiasm which greeted the General, on
which side the sympathy lay.
“The worst! General Legaie?” exclaimed Dr. Cary. “The worst will be
coming for years. ’After the sword comes the cankerworm.’ Mark my
words: the first terms offered are always the best. I should not be
surprised if you were to live to see negroes invested with the elective
franchise.”
“Impossible! Preposterous! Incredible!” declared general Legaie, his
words being echoed by most of those present.
“It seems almost impossible and quite incredible, yet to an old man
many things appear possible that are incredible,” said Dr. Cary.
“We will die before such an infamy should be perpetrated!” protested
General Legaie, with spirit.
“The only trouble is, that dying would do no good; only those who know
how to live can now save the Country,” said the Doctor, gravely.
The old Whig looked so earnest—so imposing, as he stood, tall and
white, his eyes flashing under their beetling brows, that though,
perhaps, few agreed with him, all were impressed, and by a common and
tacit consent their position was not pressed, at least for the present.
The little General even agreed to accompany Dr. Cary at some near
date, to give his views, along with Dr. Cary’s, to the new Commander
of the district, Colonel Krafton, in order, the General stated, that
the Commander might understand precisely the attitude of all persons in
their county.
Steve Allen, and the other young soldiers who were there, found
themselves sufficiently entertained, fighting over their battles,
as though they had been the commanding generals, and laying off new
campaigns in a fresh and different field; meantime, getting their hands
in, adoring and teasing their young hostess, who was related to, or
connected with, most of them. They had left Blair Cary, a dimple-faced,
tangle-haired romp of thirteen or fourteen, with saucy eyes, which
even then, as they danced behind their dark lashes, promised the best
substitute for beauty. They now found her sprung up to a slender young
lady of “quite seventeen,” whose demureness and new-born dignity were
the more bewitching, because they were belied by her laughing glances.
Mars has ever been the captive of Venus as well as her conqueror, and
more than Steve Allen and Jacquelin Gray fell victims at the first fire
from those “deadly batteries,” as Steve afterward characterized Blair
Cary’s eyes, in his first poem to Belinda—published in the Brutusville
_Guardian_. But they all declared they saw at once that they stood no
chance with Jack Gray, whose face wore “that sickly look,” as Steve
called it, which, he said, “every woman thought interesting and none
could resist.” Over all of which nonsense, Miss Blair’s dark eyes
twinkled with the pleasure of a girl who is too young to comprehend it
quite fully, but yet finds it wonderfully delightful. As for Jacquelin,
to him she was no longer mortal: he had robed her in radiance and
lifted her among the stars.
The older people found not less pleasure in the reunion than their
juniors, and appeared to have grown young again. And while the
youngsters were out on the grass at Miss Blair’s feet, in more senses
than one, the General and Dr. Cary and the other seniors were on the
vine-covered portico, discussing grave questions of state-craft,
showing precisely how and when the Confederacy might have been saved
and made the greatest power on earth—together with other serious
matters. The General teased himself as of old about Miss Thomasia,
and the Doctor teased them both. The General had been noted formerly
as a great precisionist in matters of dress, as well as in all other
matters, and now, when he stalked about the veranda, with his old
uniform-coat buttoned to the chin as jauntily as ever, and with a limp
bit of white showing above the collar and at the wrists, in which he
evidently took much pride, the Doctor, who knew where the shirt came
from, and that, like the one which he himself had on, it was made
from an under-garment of one of the ladies, could not help rallying
him a little. The Doctor wisely took advantage of Mrs. Cary’s absence
from the room to do this, but had got no farther than to congratulate
the General on the luxury of fresh linen and to receive from him the
gallant assurance that he had felt on putting it on that morning, as
a knight of old might have felt when he donned his armor prepared
by virgin hands, when Mrs. Cary entered and, recognizing instantly
from her husband’s look of suspicious innocence and Miss Thomasia’s
expression, that some mischief was going on, pounced on him promptly
and bore him off. When he returned from the “judgment chamber,” as he
called it, he was under a solemn pledge not to open the subject again
to the General, which he observed to the best of his ability, though he
kept Miss Thomasia on thorns, by coming as near to it as he dared with
a due regard to himself in view of his wife’s watchfulness.
In fact, these men were thoroughly enjoying home life after the
long interval of hardship and deprivation, and neither the sorrow of
the past nor the gloom of the present could wholly depress them. The
future, fortunately, they could not know. Then, among young people
there must be joy, if there be not death; and fun is as natural as
grass or flowers in spring or any other outbudding of a new and
bounding life.
So, even amid the ruins, the flowers bloomed and there were fun and
gayety. Hope was easily worth all the other spirits in Pandora’s box
put together.
Before the company separated they began to talk even of a party, and,
to meet the objections of old Mr. Langstaff and some others, it was
agreed that it should be a contribution-entertainment and that the
proceeds should go to the wounded soldiers and soldiers’ widows, of
the county. This Steve declared was a deep-laid scheme on the part of
Jacquelin Gray. It was already decided on when the Doctor returned
to the sitting-room, after Mrs. Cary had summoned him thence, and
the question under advisement was whether the Yankee officers at the
court-house should be invited. Steve Allen had started it. The ladies
were a unit.
“No, indeed; not one of them should set his foot inside the door; not
a girl would dance with one of them.” On this point Miss Blair was
very emphatic, and her laughing eyes lost their gleam of sunlight and
flashed forth a sudden spark which showed deeper depths behind those
dark lashes than had appeared at any time before.
“I’ll bet you do,” said Steve. He stretched out his long legs, settled
himself, and looked at Blair with that patronizing air which always
exasperated her.
“I’ll bet I don’t!”—with her head up, and her color deepening a little
at the bravado of using such a word.
“I’ll bet my horse you’ll break a set with Jack for the Yankee
captain,” declared Steve.
“Don’t want your old horse, he’s too full of lead,” said Blair.
“Then I’ll bet you his horse.”
“It’s a good one,” said Jacquelin from his place on the lounge.
“Blood-bay, with three white feet and a blaze on his nose.”
“He’s mine,” asserted Steve with a nod of his head.
“How will you get it?” asked Blair.
“Steve knows several ways of getting horses,” laughed one of the other
young men.
“Shut up, you fool,” telegraphed Steve with his lips, glancing quickly
at Miss Thomasia, who was beaming on him with kindly eyes.
It is surprising what little things have influence. That sudden flash,
with the firmer lines which came for a second in the young girl’s face,
did more to bind the young men to her footstool than all the fun and
gayety she had shown.
The men were not so unanimous on the point touching the exclusion of
the officers. Most of them agreed with the ladies, but one or two were
inclined to the other side.
“Men like to fancy themselves broader and more judicial than women,”
said Miss Thomasia, placidly.
Jacquelin mentioned casually that Middleton was not only quite a
gentlemanly fellow, but a strikingly handsome one.
“A Yankee soldier good-looking! I’ll not believe that!” declared Miss
Blair, promptly.
This debate created a diversion in their favor, and it was suggested
and agreed to, as a compromise, that they should “wait until after a
St. Ann Sunday, and see what the officers looked like. No doubt some
of them would come to church, and then they could determine what they
would do.”
This idea was feminine, and, to offset it, it was re-declared that at
present they were “unanimously opposed to regarding them in any other
light than that of bitter enemies.”
CHAPTER VIII
MR. HIRAM STILL TELLS HOW TO BRIDLE A SHY HORSE, AND CAPTAIN ALLEN LAYS
DOWN HIS HOE
So Peace spread her white wings, extending her serenity and shedding
her sweetness even in those regions where war had passed along.
Without wasting time or repining about the past, Dr. Cary and General
Legaie and the other men began to pick up such of the tangled and
broken threads of the old life as could be found, and to form with them
the new. They mended the worn vehicles, patched up the old harness
and gear, broke their war-horses to drive, and set in to live bravely
and cheerfully, in as nearly the old manner as they could. They had,
they believed, made the greatest fight on record. They had not only
maintained, but had increased, the renown of their race for military
achievement—the reputation which they most highly valued. They had
been overwhelmed, not whipped; cast down, but not destroyed. They still
had the old spirit, the unconquerable spirit of their race, and, above
all, they had the South.
Dr. Cary determined to use every effort to restore at once the old
state of affairs, and, to this end, to offer homes and employment to
all his old servants.
Accordingly, he rode down to the county seat one day to have an
interview with the officers there. He went alone, because he did not
know precisely how he would be received, and, besides, there was by no
means general approval of his course among his friends.
He found that the ranking officer, Captain Middleton, had been summoned
that morning to the city by Colonel Krafton, the provost in command
there. The next in command, however, Lieutenant Thurston, was very
civil and obliging to the Doctor, and, on learning of his plans, took
steps to further them.
The officer summoned all the negroes who were hanging around the
village, to assemble on the court-green, told them of the Doctor’s
offer, and, after a short talk to them, ordered all the Doctor’s old
servants who were present, and had not secured employment elsewhere, to
return home and go to work on the wages he had agreed the Doctor should
pay. For, as he said to Middleton when he returned:
“By Gad! Larry, I was not sure whether I was talking to Don Quixote
or old Dr. Filgrave—I know he is cousin to them both, for he told me
so—he is a cousin to everybody in the United States. And, besides, I
was so bored with those niggers hanging around, looking pitiful, and
that tall, whispering fellow, Still, who tells about the way he had to
act during the war to keep the people from knowing he was on our side,
that I would have ordered every nigger in the country to go with the
old gentleman if he had wanted them. By the way, he is the father of
the girl they say is so devilishly pretty, and he asked after you most
particularly. Ah! Larry, I am a diplomat. I have missed my calling.”
And, as he looked at his tall, good-looking superior, the little
Lieutenant’s eyes twinkled above the bowl of his pipe, which was much
the shape of himself.
The engagement to furnish his negroes rations Dr. Cary was enabled to
make, because on his arrival at the county seat he had fallen in with
Hiram Still, who had offered to lend him a sum of money, which he said
he happened to have by him. Hiram had been down to take the oath of
allegiance, he told the Doctor.
“I been wonderin’ to myself what I was to do with that money—and what
I turned all them Confed notes into gold and greenbacks for,” he said.
“Fact is, I thought myself a plum fool for doin’ it; but I says,
‘Well, gold’s gold, whichever way it goes.’ So I either bought land or
gold. But’t does look’s if Providence had somethin’ to do with it, sure
’nough. I ain’t got a bit o’ use for it—you can take it and pay me
just when it’s convenient.”
Still had never been a favorite with Dr. Cary, though the latter
confessed that he could cite on positive ground for his dislike. When
he thought of his antipathy at all, he always traced it back to two
things—one that Legaie always disliked Still, the other that when
Still had his attack of inflammatory rheumatism at the outbreak of
the war, the symptoms were such as to baffle the Doctor’s science.
“That’s a pretty ground for a reasonable man to found an antipathy on,”
reflected the Doctor.
As the Doctor and Hiram rode back together toward home, Still was so
bitter in his denunciation of the Federals and of their action touching
the negroes, that the Doctor actually felt it his duty to lecture
him. They were all one country now, he said, and they should accept
the result as determined. But Still said, “Never!” He had only taken
the oath of allegiance, he declared, because he had heard he would be
arrested unless he did. But he had taken it with a mental reservation.
This shocked the Doctor so much that he rebuked him with sternness, on
which Still explained that he did not mean exactly that, but that he
had heard that if a man took an oath under threats he was absolved from
it.
“There was some such legal quibble,” the Doctor admitted, with a sniff,
but he was “very sure that no brave man would ever take an oath for
such a reason, and no honest one would ever break one.” He rode off
with his head very high.
When Still reached home that evening he was in uncommonly good spirits.
He was pleasanter than usual to his daughter, who appeared the plainer
because of the contrast that her shabby clothes presented to the
showy suit which her brother wore. It was to his son, however, that
Mr. Still showed his particular good-humor. Wash had just come home
for a little visit from the city, where he had been ever since his
return from the army, and where he was now studying medicine. He was a
tall, slim fellow, very much like his father in appearance, though in
place of the rather good-tempered expression which usually sat on the
latter’s face, Wash’s look was usually sour and discontented.
“Ah, Wash, my son, I did a good stroke of business for you to-day,”
said the father that evening at supper.
“What was it? Did you buy another farm? You’ll break, buying so much
land,” replied his son, pleasantly.
Still put aside the ungraciousness of the reply. He was accustomed to
his son’s slurs.
“Yes and no.” He winked at Virgy, to whom he had already confided
something of his stroke of business. He glanced at the door to see that
no one was listening, and dropped his voice to his confidential pitch.
“I lent the Doctor a leetle money.” He nodded with satisfaction.
Wash became interested; but the next instant attempted to appear
indifferent.
“How much? What security did he give?”
“More than he’ll be able to pay for some time, and the security’s all
right. Aha! I thought that would wake you up. I’ll lend him some more
one of these days and then we’ll get the pay—with interest.” He winked
at his son knowingly. “When you’re tryin’ to ketch a shy horse, don’t
show him the bridle; When you’ve got him, then—!” He made a gesture
of slipping on a halter. This piece of philosophy appeared to satisfy
the young man and to atone for the apparent unwisdom of his father’s
action. He got into such a good-humor that he began to talk pleasantly
with his sister and to ask her about the young men in the neighborhood.
It was striking to see how she changed at the notice her brother took
of her. The listless look disappeared, and her eyes brightened and made
her face appear really interesting.
Presently the young man said:
“How’s Lord Jacquelin?” At the unexpected question the blood mounted
to the girl’s face, and after an appealing look she dropped her eyes
quickly.
* * * * *
When the end of the month came, Dr. Cary summoned his hands and paid
them their wages one by one, according to his contract with Thurston,
checking each name, as he paid them, on a pay-roll he had prepared.
Their reception of the payment varied with the spirit of the men; some
being gay and facetious; others taking it with exaggerated gravity. It
was the first time they had ever received stipulated wages for their
services, and it was an event.
The Doctor was well satisfied with the result, and went in to make the
same settlement with the house-servants. The first he met was Mammy
Krenda, and he handed her the amount he had agreed on with Thurston
as a woman’s wages. The old woman took it quietly. This was a relief.
Mrs. Cary had been opposed to his paying her anything; she had felt
sure that the mammy would feel offended. “Why, she is a member of the
family,” she said. “We can’t pay her wages.” The Doctor, however,
deemed himself bound by his engagement with Thurston. He had said he
would pay all wages, and he would do so. So when the mammy took the
money with her usual curtsey, in one way the Doctor’s spirits rose,
though he was conscious of a little tug at his heart, as if the old
ties had somehow been loosened. He rallied, however, at the reflection
that he could satisfy his wife, at last, that he knew human nature more
profoundly than she did—a doctrine he had secretly cherished, but had
never been entirely successful in establishing.
In this satisfactory state of mind, not wishing to sever entirely the
tie with the mammy, as the old woman still stood waiting, he, after a
moment, said kindly and with great dignity:
“Those are your wages, mammy.”
“My what, sir?” The Doctor was conscious of a certain chilling of the
atmosphere. He looked out of the window to avoid her gaze.
“Your wages—I—ah—have determined—I—think it better from this time
to—ah—.” He had no idea it was so difficult. Why had he not got Mrs.
Cary to attend to this—why had he, indeed, not taken her advice?
Pshaw!— He had to face the facts; so he would do it. He summoned
courage and turned and looked at the old woman. She was in the act of
putting the money carefully on the corner of the table by her, and if
the Doctor had difficulty in meeting her gaze, she had none in looking
at him. Her eyes were fastened on him like two little shining beads.
They stuck him like pins. The Doctor felt as he used to feel when a
young man he went to pay his addresses to his wife—he was conscious
that whenever he met Krenda she was inspecting him, searching his
inmost soul—looking through and through him. He had to assert himself.
“You see, I promised the Federal officer at the court-house to pay
everyone wages,” he began with an effort, looking at the old woman.
“How much does you pay _Miss Bessie_?”
“How much what?”
“_Wages._” He had no idea one word could convey so much contempt.
“Why, nothing—of course—”
Old Krenda lifted her head.
“I’m gwine ’way.”
“What!”
“I’m feared you’ll charge me _bode_!” She had expanded. “I ken git
a little house somewheres, I reckon—or I ken go to th’ city and
nuss—chillun.”
“Mammy—you don’t understand—” The Doctor was never in such a dilemma.
If his wife would only come in! What a fool he was, not to have known
that his wife knew more about it than he did.
“Won’t you accept the money as a gift from me?” he said at last,
desperately.
“Nor—I ain’ gwine _tetch_ it!” The gesture was even more final than
the tone. With a sniff, she turned and walked out, leaving the Doctor
feeling like a school-boy.
He rose after a few minutes and went to his wife’s room to get her to
make his peace. The door was shut, but he opened it. The scene within
was one that remained with him through life. His wife was weeping, and
the mammy and Blair were in each other’s arms. The only words he heard
were from the mammy.
“Ef jest my _ole marster_ could come back. He’d know I didn’ do it for
no wages.”
“Oh! mammy, _he_ knows it too!”
The Doctor was never conscious of being so much alone in his life, and
it took some time to make his peace.
In the same way that the old planters and landowners set in to restore
the old places, the younger men also went to work. Necessity is a good
spur and pride is another.
Stamper, with Delia Dove “for overseer,” as he said, was already
beginning to make an impression on his little place. As he had “kept
her from having an overseer,” he said, the best thing he could do was
to “let her be one.”
“Talk about th’ slaves bein’ free, Mr. Jack! they won’t all be free
long’s Delia Dove’s got me on her place.” The little Sergeant’s chuckle
showed how truly he enjoyed that servitude. “She owns me, but she
treats me well,” he laughed.
The Stamper place, amid its locusts and apple-trees, with its hipped
roof and dormer-windows, small as it was, was as old as Red Rock—at
least as the new mansion, with its imposing porticoes and extended
wings, built around the big fireplace of the old house—and little
Andy, though being somewhat taciturn he never said anything about
it, was as proud of this fact as he was of being himself rather than
Hiram Still. He had got an old army wagon from somewhere and was now
beginning his farming operations in earnest. It had had “U. S.” on it,
but though Andy insisted that the letters stood for “_US_,” not for the
United States, Delia Dove had declined to ride in the vehicle as long
as it had such characters stamped on it. As Mrs. Stamper was obdurate,
Andy finally was forced to save her sensibilities, which he did by
substituting “D” for “U.” This, he said, would stand either for “Delia
Stamper,” or “D—d States.”
Jacquelin Gray was almost the only one of the men who was not able to
go to work. His wound showed a tendency to break out afresh.
Steve Allen intended to practise law as soon as matters settled
themselves. As yet, however, he could not engage in any profession. He
had not yet determined to take the oath of allegiance. Meantime, to
the great happiness of his cousins, especially of Miss Thomasia, he
deferred going to the county seat and, moved by the grassy appearance
of the once beautifully cultivated fields of Red Rock, began farming.
Perhaps, it was sheer pride and dislike of meeting Middleton at the
court-house under circumstances so different from those under which
they had met last; perhaps it was the pleasure of being near Birdwood
that kept him. It was very pleasant when his day’s work was done, to
don his old gray jacket, play gentleman once more, and ride across
the river of an evening; lounge on the grass under the big trees at
Birdwood, and tease Blair Cary about Jacquelin, until her eyes flashed,
and she let out at him, as he used to say, “like a newly bridled
filly.” So he hitched his war-horses, Hotspur and Kate, to ploughs and
ploughed day by day, while he made his boy, Jerry, plough furrow for
furrow near him, under promise of half of his share of their crop if
he kept up, and of the worst “lambing” he had ever had in his life if
he did not. Jerry was a long, slim, young negro, as black as tar. He
was the grandson of old Peggy, Steve’s mammy, and had come from the far
South. Where Steve had got him during the war no one knew except Steve
and Jerry themselves. Steve said he found him hanging to a tree and
cut him down because he wanted the rope; but that if he had known Jerry
as well then as he did afterward, he would have left him hanging. At
this explanation, Jerry always grinned, exhibiting two rows of white
teeth which looked like corn from a full ear. Jerry was a drunkard,
a liar, and a thief. But one thing was certain: he adored Steve, who
in return for that virtue bore delinquencies which no one else in the
world would have tolerated. Jerry had one other trait which recommended
him to his master: he was as brave as a lion; he would not have been
afraid of the devil himself unless he had taken on the shape of Mr.
Stevenson Allen, of whom alone Jerry stood in wholesome awe.
Steve’s bucolic operations came somewhat suddenly to an end. One
evening, after a hard day’s work, he met Wash Still dressed up and
driving a new buggy, turning in at Dr. Cary’s gate. He was “going to
consult Dr. Cary about a case,” he said. Next day, as Steve was working
in the field, he saw Wash driving down the hill from the manager’s
house with the same well-appointed rig. Steve stopped in the row and
looked at him as he drove past. Just then Jerry came up. His eye
followed his master’s, and his face took on an expression of scorn.
“Umph! things is tunned sort o’ upside down,” he grunted. “Overseer’s
son drivin’ buggy, and gent’mens in de fiel’.” Steve smiled at Jerry’s
use of the plural. The next moment Hiram Still rode down the hill, and
turning his horse in Steve’s direction came across the field.
“He sutney don’ like you, Cun’l,” said Jerry, “an’ he don’ like the
Cap’n neider;” by which last, he designated Jacquelin. Jerry always
gave military titles to those he liked—the highest to Steve, of
course. “He say it do him good to see you wuckin’ in the fiel’ like a
nigger, and some day he hope to set in de gret-house and see you doin’
it.”
Still passed quite close to Captain Allen, and as he did so, reined in
his horse, and sat looking down at Steve, as he came to the end of his
row.
“We all have to come to it, at last, Captain,” he said.
Whether it was his words, and the look on his face, or whether Steve
had intended anyhow to do what he did, he straightened up, and shot a
glance at the Manager.
“You think so? Well, you are mistaken.” He raised his hoe and stuck it
in the ground up to the eye.
“There,” he said to Still, in a tone of command, “take that home.
That’s the last time I’ll ever touch a hoe as long as I live. I’ve
brains enough to make my living by them, and if I haven’t, I mean to
starve!” He walked past the overseer with his head so straight, that
Still began to explain that he had meant no offence. But Steve took no
further notice of him.
“Jerry, you can keep on; I’ll see that you get your part of the crop.”
“Nor—I ain’t gwine to hit anur lick, nurr—I’ll starve wid yer.” And
Jerry lifted his hoe and drove it into the ground; looked at Still
superciliously, and followed his master with as near an imitation of
his manner and gait as he could achieve.
It was only when Steve was out of hearing, that Still’s look changed.
He clenched his fist, and shook it after the young man.
“I’ll bring you to it yet,” he growled.
That evening Steve announced his intention of beginning immediately the
practice of his profession.
CHAPTER IX
MR. JONADAB LEECH TURNS UP WITH A CARPET-BAG AND OPENS HIS BUREAU
The young officers at the court-house meantime had fared very well. It
is true that most of the residents treated them coldly, if civilly, and
that the girls of the place, of whom there were quite a number, turned
aside whenever they met them, and passed by with their heads held high,
and their eyes straight to the front, flashing daggers. But this the
young men were from experience more or less used to.
Reely Thurston told Middleton that if he would leave matters to him,
he would engineer him through the campaign, and before it was over
would be warbling ditties with all the pretty girls in a way to make
his cousin, Miss Ruth Welch, green with envy. The lieutenant began by
parading up and down on his very fine horse; but the only result he
attained was to hear a plump young girl ask another in a clear voice,
evidently meant for him to hear, “What poor Southerner,” she supposed,
“that little Yankee stole that horse from!” He recognized the speaker
as the young lady he had seen looking at them from the door of the
clerk’s office the morning of their arrival.
Brutusville, the county seat where they were posted, was a pretty
little straggling country village of old-fashioned houses amid groves
of fine old trees, lying along the main road of the county, where it
wound among shady slopes, with the blue mountain range in the distance.
Most of the houses were hip-roofed and gray with age. The river—the
same stream that divided Red Rock from Birdwood—passed near the
village, broadening as it reached the more level country and received
the waters of one or two other streams. Before the war there had been
talk of establishing deep-water connections with the lower country, as
the last rapids of any extent were not far below Brutusville. Dr. Cary,
however, had humorously suggested that they would find it easier to
macadamize the river than to make it navigable.
[Illustration: THE GIRLS OF THE PLACE TURNED ASIDE, WHENEVER THEY MET
THEM AND PASSED BY WITH THEIR HEADS HELD HIGH.]
The county seat had suffered, like the rest of the county, during the
war; but as it happened, the main body of the enemy had been kept out
of the place by high water, and the fine old trees did much to conceal
the scars that had been made.
The old, brick court-house in the middle of the green, peeping out
from among the trees, with its great, classical portico, was esteemed
by the residents of the village to be, perhaps, the most imposing
structure in the world. Mr. Dockett, the clerk—who had filled this
position for nearly forty years, with the exception of the brief period
when, fired by martial enthusiasm, he had gone off with Captain Gray’s
company—told Lieutenant Thurston a day or two after the latter’s
arrival, that while he had never been to Greece or, indeed, out of
the State, he had been informed by those who had been there that the
court-house was, perhaps, in some respects, more perfect than any
building in Athens. Lieutenant Thurston said he had never been to
Greece either, but he was quite sure it was. He also added that he
considered Mr. Dockett’s own house a very beautiful one, and thought
that it showed evidences, in its embellishments, of that same classical
taste that Mr. Dockett admired so much. Mr. Dockett, while accepting
the compliment with due modesty, answered that if the lieutenant wished
to see a beautiful house he should see Red Rock. And thereupon began
new matter, the young officer gently leading the old gentleman to talk
of all the people and affairs of the neighborhood, including the charms
of the girls.
From this, it will be seen that the little Lieutenant was already
laying his mines, and preparing to make good his promise to Middleton
to engineer him through the campaign.
The compliment to the Dockett mansion was not without its effect on
the genius who presided in that classic and comfortable abode, and,
at length, Mrs. Dockett, a plump and energetic woman, had, with some
prevision, though in a manner to make her beneficiaries sensible of
her condescension, acceded to the young men’s request to take them as
boarders, and allow them to occupy a wing-room in her house.
Thus Middleton and Thurston were able to write Ruth Welch a glowing
account of their “head-quarters in an old colonial mansion,” and of the
“beautiful maiden” who sang them “songs of the South.”
The songs, however, that Miss Dockett sang, though as Thurston said
truly, they were in one sense sung for them, were not sung in the
sense Lieutenant Thurston implied. They were hardly just the sort
that Miss Ruth Welch would have approved of, and were certainly not
what Mrs. Welch would have tolerated. For they were all of the most
ultra-Southern spirit and tendency, and breathed the deadliest defiance
to everyone and everything Northern. Miss Dockett was not pretty,
except as youth and wholesomeness give beauty; but she was a cheery
maiden, with blue eyes, white teeth, rosy cheeks, and a profusion of
hair, and though she had no training, she possessed a pleasant voice
and sang naturally and agreeably—at least to one who, like Thurston,
had not too much ear for music. Thurston once had the temerity to ask
for a song—for which he received a merited rebuff. Of course she would
not sing for a Yankee, said the young lady, with a toss of her head and
an increased elevation of her little nose, and immediately she left the
room. When, however, the young officers were in their rooms, she sang
all the Southern songs she knew. One, in particular, she rendered with
great spirit. It had just been written. It began:
“Oh! I’m a good old rebel,
Now, that’s just what I am;
For this ’Fair land of freedom,’
I do not care a-t all.”
Another verse ran:
“Three hundred thousand Yankees
Lays dead in Southern dus’,
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us;
They died of Southern fever,
Of Southern steel and shot;
I wish they were three million,
Instead of what we got.”
The continued iteration of this sanguinary melody floating in at the
open window finally induced the little Lieutenant, in his own room one
afternoon, to raise, in opposition, his own voice, which was none of
the most melodious, in the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But
he had got no further than the second invocation to “the land of the
free and the home of the brave,” when there was a rush of footsteps
outside, followed by a pounding on his door, and on his opening the
door Mrs. Dockett bore down on him with so much fire in her eye that
Reely was quite overwhelmed. And when she gave him notice that she
would have no Yankee songs sung in her house, and that he must either
“quit the house or quit howling,” little Thurston, partly amused and
partly daunted, and with the wide difference between Mrs. Dockett’s
fried chicken and beat-biscuit and the mess-table “truck” before his
eyes, promised to adopt the latter course—“generally.”
Fortunately the young officers were too much accustomed to such
defiances to feel very serious about them, and they went on
ingratiating themselves with Miss Dockett—Thurston by his fun and
good-humor, and Middleton by his gentlemanly bearing and his firm
management of the negroes who hung around the camp.
The peace and comfort of the young men, however, were suddenly
much threatened by the arrival of a new official, not under their
jurisdiction, though under Colonel Krafton, who had sent him up,
specially charged with all matters relating to the negroes.
He arrived one afternoon with only a carpet-bag; took a room in the
hotel, and, as if already familiar with the ground, immediately
dispatched a note to Mrs. Dockett asking quarters in her house. Even
had the new-comer preferred his application as a request it might have
been rejected; but he demanded it quite as a right; the line which
he sent up by a negro servant being rather in the nature of an order
than a petition to Mrs. Dockett to prepare the best room in her house
for his head-quarters. It was signed “Jonadab Leech, Provost-Marshal,
commanding,” etc., etc. But the new official did not know Mrs. Dockett.
The order raised a breeze which came near blowing the two officers,
whom she had accepted and domiciled in her house, out of the quarters
she had vouchsafed them. She sailed down upon them with the letter in
her hand; and, as Thurston said, with colors flying and guns ready for
action. But, fortunately, little Thurston was equal to the emergency.
He glanced at the paper the enraged lady showed him and requested to be
allowed possession of it for a moment. When he had apparently studied
it attentively, he looked up.
“I do not know that I quite comprehend. Do I understand you to insist
on taking this man in?” He was never so innocent-looking. Mrs. Dockett
gasped:
“What!! Ta—ke in the man that wrote _that_!” She visibly expanded.
“—Because if you do, Captain Middleton and I shall have to move
our quarters. I happen to know this man personally—slightly—that
is, I once had a transaction with him as an officer which resulted
unpleasantly. His functions are entirely different from ours; he being
charged with matters relating to the freedmen, their care and support;
while ours are military and relate to the government of the county and
the maintenance of peace. (He glanced at Mrs. Dockett, who was sniffing
ominously.) While we shall uphold him in all proper exercise of his
power, and recognize his authority as an officer within the scope of
his own jurisdiction, I must say that for personal reasons his presence
would be distasteful to me, and I think I can speak for Captain
Middleton (here he looked over at his friend inquiringly), and if you
contemplate taking him in, I should prefer to remove my own quarters
back to camp.”
The little Lieutenant had gathered dignity as he proceeded, and he
delivered the close of his oration with quite the manner of an orator.
He had spoken so rapidly that Mrs. Dockett had not had a moment to get
in a word. He closed with a most impressive bow, while Middleton gazed
at him with mingled amusement and admiration.
Mrs. Dockett discovered the wind taken completely out of her sails, and
found herself actually forced into the position of making a tack and
having rather to offer an apology to the ruffled little officer.
She had never dreamed of preferring this new-comer to them, she
declared. She could not but say that they had always acted in a most
gentlemanly way, so far as she was concerned. She had, indeed, been
most agreeably surprised. She had never, for a moment, dreamed of
permitting this impudent upstart, whoever he was, to come into her
house. Let him go to some of his colored friends. Of course, if they
wished to leave her house—they must do so. Her head was rising again.
Thurston hastened to interpose.
Not at all—they were most charmed, etc. Only he didn’t know but she
might not care to have them remain—and they could not do so if this
man came.
“He’s not coming. Let him try it.” And the irate lady sailed out to
deliver her broadside to the new enemy that had borne down on her.
She had no sooner disappeared than the Lieutenant’s face fell.
“Gad! Larry, we are undone. It’s that Leech who used to live with old
Bolter, and about whom they told the story of his trying to persuade
his wife to let him get a divorce, and who shirked all through the war.
Unless we can get rid of him it’s all up. We’re ruined.”
“Freeze him out,” Middleton said, briefly. “You’ve begun well.”
“Freeze——? Freeze a snow-bank! That’s his climate. He’d freeze in
——!” The little Lieutenant named a very hot place.
Thurston had not been too soon in placing the line of discrimination
clearly between themselves and the Provost Marshal, for the arrival of
the latter in the county at once caused a change of conditions.
On receipt of Mrs. Dockett’s decisive and stinging reply Leech
immediately made application to Captain Middleton to enforce his
requisition, but, to his indignation, he was informed that they were
the only boarders, and that Mrs. Dockett managed her own domestic
affairs: which, indeed, was no more than the truth. To revenge himself,
the Provost took possession of Mr. Dockett’s office, and opened his
bureau in it, crowding the old official into a back room of the
building. Here, too, however, he was doomed to disappointment and
mortification; for, on the old clerk’s representation of the danger to
his records, and of their value, enforced by Mrs. Dockett’s persuasive
arguments, Leech was required by Middleton to surrender possession and
take up his quarters in an unoccupied building on the other side of the
road. Here he opened his office under a flaring sign bearing the words,
“FREEDMEN’S BUREAU.”
So the Provost, being baffled here, had to content himself, as he
might, at the court-house tavern, where he soon laid off a new
campaign. His principal trouble there, lay in the presence of the dark,
sallow Captain McRaffle, whose saturnine face scowled at him from the
upper end of the table, and kept him in a state of constant irritation.
The only speech the Captain ever addressed to him was to ask if he
played cards, and on his saying he “never played games,” he appeared to
take no further interest in him. The Provost, however, kept his eye on
him.
The effect of the Provost’s appearance was felt immediately. The news
of his arrival seemed to have spread in a night, and the next day the
roads were filled with negroes.
“De wud had come for ’em,” they said. They “had to go to de Cap’n to
git de papers out o’ de buro.” Only the old house-servants were left,
and even they were somewhat excited.
This time those who left their homes did not return so quickly.
Immediately after the news of the surrender came, a good many of the
negroes had gone off and established settlements to themselves. The
chief settlement in the Red Rock neighborhood was known as “The Bend,”
from the fact that it was in a section half surrounded by a curve of
the river. It was accessible from both sides of the river, and in the
past had been much associated with runaway negroes.
It had always been an unsavory spot in the county, and now, the negroes
congregating there, it had come into greater ill repute than ever. It
was dubbed with some derision, “Africa.” Here Jim Sherwood and Moses
had built cabins, and shortly many others gathered about them. This,
however, might not have amounted to much had not another matter come to
light.
The Provost was summoning the negroes and enrolling them by hundreds,
exciting them with stories of what the Government proposed t
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