Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

  CHAPTER VI

  A BROKEN SOLDIER COMES HOME FROM WAR

  It was a little over two weeks or, perhaps, three, after theConfederate armies had laid down their arms and disbanded, and the restof the men from the county had turned their faces homeward with, orwithout, their paroles in their pockets, that a train which had beencrawling all night over the shaky track, stopped in the morning nearthe 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 washelped down by the conductor and brakeman and was laid, with his crutchand blanket, as gently as might be, on a bank a little way from thetrack.

  “Are you all right now? Do you think you can get on? You are suresomeone will come for you?” asked the train men.

  “Oh! yes; I feel better already.” And the young fellow stretched outhis hands in the gray dawn and felt the moist earth on either side ofhim almost tenderly.

  As the railroad men climbed back into the car they were conversingtogether in low tones.

  “Unless his friends come before many hours they won’t find him,” saidone 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 creditfor, and the very touch of the soil he loved did him good. He draggedhimself a little way up, stretched himself out under a tree on thegrass near where they had laid him, and went to sleep like a baby. Thesun came up over the dewy trees and warmed him, and he only turnedand slept on, dreaming that he had escaped from prison and reached theold county too weary to go any farther, and so, lay down on a bank andwaited for someone to come for him. How often he had dreamed that, andhad awaked to find himself in his old cot in the hospital, maybe, withthe guard peering down at him with his lantern. Suddenly a shadow fellacross 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 usedto do in the hospital, and was closing his eyes again when he awakedfully. Two or three Federal soldiers, one of them an officer, a littlefellow with blue eyes, were leaning over him, and a cavalry company wasyonder at rest, in the road below him. He was free after all, back inthe old county.

  The Lieutenant asked him his name and how he came there, and he toldthem.

  “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—beyondBrutusville.”

  “Why, we are going that way ourselves—we were going to give you adecent burial; but maybe we can do you a better turn if you are notready for immortality; we’ve an ambulance along, and here’s the bestsubstitute for the honor we offered you.”

  The little Lieutenant was so cheery as he pressed the canteen toJacquelin’s lips that the latter could not help feeling better.

  The Captain, who had remained with the company, came over, on hishandsome 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 Lieutenantshook his canteen up beside his ear, as if to gauge its remainingcontents; then held it to Jacquelin again.

  “Have another pull? No? All right—when you want it. You aren’t thefirst reb’s had a swig at it.”

  Then he repeated to his superior, a tall, handsome fellow, whatJacquelin had told him as to his name and destination. In an instantthe Captain had sprung from his horse.

  “Jacquelin Gray! Red Rock!—By Jove! It can’t be!” He stared down atthe man on the ground.

  “Do you mean to say that you live at a place called ‘Red Rock’—a greatplantation, 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? Whatare you dressed this way for?—I mean an old plantation where therewas a wedding—or a wedding-party, about five years ago—?” he brokeout, as if it were impossible to believe it. “And—a little girl, namedBlair Something, sang?”

  Jacquelin nodded.

  “Yes, that’s the place—Miss Blair Cary. But who are—? What do youknow about——?”

  “Well, I’m— Here, Reely, call Sergeant O’Meara; tell him to send theambulance here directly,” interrupted the Captain. He turned back toJacquelin.

  “Don’t you remember me? I’m Middleton—Lawrence Middleton. Don’t youremember? I happened in that night with Mr. Welch, and you took care ofus? 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 gotme into all that trouble. And he has got me into a lot more since. Butwhere have you been that you look like this?”

  Jacquelin told him.

  By this time several of the people from the few houses in theneighborhood of the station, who had at first kept aloof from the troopof soldiers and gazed at them from a distance, had come up, seeing thatthey had a Confederate with them. They recognized Jacquelin and beganto talk about his appearance, and to make cutting speeches as to thetreatment 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 AndyStamper’s cousin.

  They wanted Jacquelin to stay with them and let them take care of himuntil his mother could send for him. Captain Allen had been down to seeabout him, and Andy Stamper had been there several times, and had saidthat if he didn’t hear anything from him next time, he was going Northto see about him, if he had to ride his old horse there.

  Jacquelin, however, was so anxious to get home that, notwithstandingthe pressing invitations of his friends, he accepted the offer ofthe Federal officers, and, after getting a cup of coffee from Andy’scousin—who said it was the first she had had in three years—he washelped up in the ambulance and was driven off.

  The company, it seemed, had come up from the city the day beforeand had encamped a little below the station, and was marching toBrutusville, where it was to be posted.

  Julius, General Legaie’s old butler, met them near the court-house andplunged out in the mud and wrung Jacquelin’s hand, thanking God for hisreturn.

  The old butler was on the lookout for his master, who had not come homeyet, and about whom he was beginning to be very uneasy. The General hadgone South somewhere “to keep on fightin’,” Julius told Jacquelin, andhe invited him to come by and spend the night, and offered to go onhimself and let his mother know he had come. The old fellow, in hisbest clothes—a high hat and an old blue coat with brass buttons—andwith his best manners, caused much amusement to the soldiers, andLieutenant 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 tecka bigger man’n you to teck my master prisoner—And he ain’ big asyou nuther,” he said, with a snap of his eyes. “He ain’t de kind dats’renders.”

  “We’ll have to stand in on this together,” said the little Lieutenantacross to Jacquelin, as the laugh went round; and then to Julius, witha wave of his hand toward Jacquelin, “Well, what do you say to thatgentleman’s having surrendered?”

  The old darky was quick enough, however.

  “He was shot, and besides _you_ never got him. I know you never gotnigh enough to him in battle to shoot him.”

  “I think you’ll have to go this alone,” said Jacquelin. The Lieutenantadmitted himself routed.

  Late that evening Jacquelin’s ambul
ance was toiling up the hill to RedRock, 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. LittleThurston, who, as they rode in, had caught sight of a plump younggirl gazing at them from the open door of the old clerk’s office,with mingled curiosity and defiance, declared that it was not half asbad as some places he had been in in the South. At that moment, as ithappened, Miss Elizabeth Dockett, the young lady in question, daughterof Mr. Dockett, the old County Clerk, was describing to her mother thelittle Lieutenant as the most ridiculous and odious-looking littleperson in the world.

  It was night when Jacquelin reached home; but so keen was the watch inthose times, that the ambulance had been heard in the dark, so thatwhen he arrived there was quite a crowd on the lawn ready to receivehim, 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 aGineral at least; but no, ut was me native gintilitee. I was that proudof meself I almost shed tears of j’y. The only thing I lacked was somewan to say me so gran’ that could appreciate me. An ould gintleman—aDocther Major Cary—a good Oirish naim, bedad!—was there to say wan ofthe leddies, and ivery toime a leddy cooms in, oop he gits, and bowsvery gran’, an’ the leddy bows an’ passes by, an’ down he sets, an’ Iwatches him out o’ the tail of me eye, an’ ivery toime he gits oup, oupI 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 ofbeing free and at home again was tempered by memory of the past andrealization of the present; but he was filled with a profound feelingwhich, perhaps, he himself could not have named. As he hobbled out tothe front portico and gazed around on the wide fields spread out belowhim, with that winding ribbon of tender green, where the river ranbetween its borders of willows and sycamores, he renewed his resolveto follow in his father’s footsteps. He would keep the place at allsacrifices. He was in this pleasant frame of mind when Hiram Stillcame around the house. Still had aged during the war, his voice hadbecome more confidential.

  As he came up to Jacquelin, the latter, notwithstanding hisoutstretched hand and warm words, had a sudden return of his oldfeeling of suspicion and dislike.

  “Mr. Jacquelin, I swan, I am glad to see you, suh—an’ to see youlookin’ so well. I told yo’ Ma you’d come back all right. An’ I toldthat Yankee what brought you up last night that ’twas a shame theytreated 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 ’emprowling around my place—_our_ place—too much. Stirs up th’ niggersso you can’t get no work out of ’em. And I didn’t like that fellow’slooks, particularly. Well, I certainly am glad to see you lookin’ sowell.”

  Jacquelin felt doubly rebuked for his unjust suspicions, and, as acompensation, 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 nobetter than your father.”

  “No, indeed,” Jacquelin agreed to that. All he wished was to do justwhat his father had done—He was not well; and he should leave themanagement of the place to Mr. Still, just as his father had done—atleast, till they knew how things stood, he added.

  There was a slight return of a look which had been once or twice inStill’s downcast eyes, and he raised them to take a covert glance atJacquelin’s face. Jacquelin, however, did not see it. He was reallysuffering greatly from his wound; and the expression he caught onStill’s face was only one of deep concern. He asked after Still’sfamily.

  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 havea trade or something.”

  Virgy was at home keeping house for him. She was a good big girlnow—“most grown like Miss Blair,” he added.

  There was a slight tone in the manager’s voice which somehow grated onJacquelin a little, he did not know why. And he changed the subjectrather shortly.

  Some time he wished to talk to Mr. Still about that Deep-run plantationin the South, he said, as he had attended to stocking it and knew moreabout it than anyone else; but he did not think he was equal to it justthen. Still agreed that this was right, also that the first thing forJacquelin 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 handand a bunch of flowers in the other. At sight of Jacquelin his face litup 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 hisgait.

  The bucket Andy had brought was full of eggs, which Delia Dove, Andysaid, 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’tgoin’ to get her after all. I thought she’d ’a’ sent me back to P’intLookout,” 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 thereason, he kind o’ cuts out whenever I come ’roun’. Looks almost likehe’s got some’n’ ag’inst me; yet he done me a mighty good turn when Iwas married; he come and insisted on lendin’ me some money, not onlyto 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—Ifyou 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. Hedon’t do things all at once. He didn’t tell me he wanted no deed; butafter I was gone, he got one from the old lady—said ’twould be allright, 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 anxiousto go back in the army—an’ to git Delia. Hiram thought he was sure towin.” The little soldier’s face always lighted up when he referred tohis wife.

  Jacquelin protested that he thought Still a better fellow than Andywould 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 hewasn’t lookin’ out for him. I don’t like a man I can’t understand. Ifyou know he’s a liar, you needn’t b’lieve him; but if you aint foundhim out yet, he gets aroun’ you. Hiram is that sort. I know he us’t tobe a liar, an’ I don’t b’lieve folks recovers from that disease. So I’mgoin’ 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 theveranda, which, to one of them, at least, was followed by an apparitionof light—as, with a smothered cry of, “Jacquelin!” a young girl, herhair blowing about her brow, ran forward, and as the wounded soldierrose, threw her arms around his neck. Blair Cary looked like a rose asshe drew back in a pretty confusion, her blushes growing deeper everymoment.

  “Why, Blair, how pretty you’ve grown!” exclaimed Jacquelin, thinkingonly of her beauty
.

  “Well, you talk as if you were very much surprised,” and Miss Blairbridled with pretended indignation.

  “Oh! No—Of course, not. I only——”

  “Oh! yes, you do,” and she tossed her pretty head with well-feigneddisdain. “You are as bold with your compliments as you were with yoursword.”

  She turned from him to Sergeant Stamper, who was regarding her withopen-mouthed admiration.

  “How do you do, Sergeant Stamper? How’s Delia? And how are her newchickens? Tell her she isn’t to keep on sending them all to me. I amgoing to learn to raise them for myself now.”

  “I daren’t tell her that,” said the little fellow. “You know I can’t donothin’ with Delia Dove. You’re the only one can do that. If I tell herthat, 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 wereback at home, together with some who were not originally from thatcounty, but who, having nowhere better to go, and no means to go with,even if they had had, and finding themselves stranded by the recedingtide, pitched their tents permanently where they had only intendedto bivouac, and thus, by the simple process of staying there, becamepermanent residents.

  The day after that on which Jacquelin arrived, General Legaie, to thedelight of old Julius and of such other servants as yet remained on hisplace, turned up, dusty, and worn, but still serene and undispirited.He marched into his dismantled mansion with as proud a step as when heleft it, and took possession of it as though it had been a castle. Withhim was an officer to whom the General offered the hospitalities of thehouse as though it had been a palace, and to whom he paid as courtlyattention 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 ofother negroes who had rushed out and gathered around him on hearingof his arrival. “Julius will attend to you, and unless he has lostsome of his art you will confess that I have not exaggerated hisabilities.” 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 likea julep.” And with a wave of the hand the little General transferredthe responsibility of his guest to the old butler, who stood bowing,dividing his glances between those of affection for his master and ofshrewd inspection of the visitor.

  The latter was a tall, spare man, rather sallow than dark, but witha piercing, black eye, and a closely shut mouth under a long, black,drooping mustache. He acknowledged the General’s speech with a civilword, and Julius’s bow with a nod and a look, short but keen andinquiring, and then, flinging himself into the best seat, leant hishead back and half closed his eyes, while the General went out andreceived the negroes, who, with smiling faces, were still gathering onthe news of his arrival.

  During this absence the guest did not rise from his chair; but turnedhis head slowly from time to time, until his eyes had rested on everyarticle in the field of his vision. He might have been making anappraisement.

  The General, in fact, did not know any more of his guest than Juliusknew. 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 horsenibbled and picked at the grass and leaves near by. The gray uniform,somewhat fresher than those the General was accustomed to, attractedthe General’s attention, and when Captain McRaffle, as the strangercalled himself, asked him the nearest way to Brutusville, or to somegentleman’s house, the General at once invited him to his home. He hadheard, he stated, that a company of Yankees had already been sent toBrutusville; but he could show him the way to a house where gentlemenhad lived in the past, and where, if he thought _he_ would pass muster,one was about to live again. And with this invitation Captain McRafflebecame an inmate of Thornleigh, as the General’s place was called, andmight have stayed there indefinitely had not unforeseen contingenciescaused him to remove his quarters.

  Just as the General returned from his reception on the veranda, the oldbutler 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 litup.

  “On my soul! he is the most remarkable fellow in the world,” declaredthe 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 julepproceeded to extract from Julius all the news of the county since hislast visit, a year or more before, and to give a running commentaryof 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 thecourt-house already to see the soldiers, but most of them had comeback. He had been there himself one day, but had returned the sameevening, 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 receivedthe encomium somewhat coldly, and on the first opportunity that hecould do so unobserved, gave the old butler another of those looks thatappeared like a flash of cold steel.

  Dr. Cary had been down the day before to inquire after theGeneral.—“An old and valued friend of mine, the greatest surgeonin 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 aboutthe General—“Yes, sir, Miss Thomasia was very well, indeed.”

  “Miss Gray—a very old—I mean—ah—_dear_ friend of mine—sister ofColonel Gray,” the General explained to his guest. “On my word, Ibelieve her intuitions are infallible. I never knew her at fault in herestimate of a man in my life.”

  The Doctor had left word asking if he would not come up to dinner nextday, Julius continued:

  “Bless my soul! Of course I will—and I’ll take you too, Captain; theywill be delighted to see you—Most charming people in the world!”

  So the General annotated old Julius’s bulletin, gilding everyone andeverything with the gold of his own ingenuous heart.

  “The—ah—soldiers had left an order for him as soon as he came, tocome 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 Birdwoodto-morrow—the two most beautiful places in all the country, sir.”This to Captain McRaffle, who received even this stirring informationwithout undue warmth; but when their backs were turned, inspected againboth the General and old Julius.

  Next morning the General invited his guest to accompany him, butCaptain McRaffle was not feeling well, he said, and he thought if theGeneral would leave him, he would remain quiet. Or, perhaps, if he feltbetter, 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 limpshirts which “the thoughtfulness of a dear friend, Mrs. Cary, ofBirdwood,” had provided for him, arrayed himself in the other and setout 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 rodeoff in the direction of the court-house.

  On arriving at the county seat the new-comer rode straight to thetavern, and dismounting, gave his horse to a servant and walked in.As he entered he gave one of those swift, keen glances, and thenasked for Mrs
. Witcher, the landlady. When she arrived, a languid,delicate-looking woman, the Captain was all graciousness, and, in a fewmoments, Mrs. Witcher was equally complacent. In fact, the new-comerhad decided on the first glance that this was good enough for him, atleast, till he could do better. The Captain told Mrs. Witcher that hehad not had a really square meal in two months, and had not slept in abed 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 Captaincondescended to make the experiment, after giving her a somewhatdetailed account of his extensive family connection, and of an evenlarger circle of friends, which included the commanding Generals of allthe 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 namehappened 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 gapingat? 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 theCaptain turned on the negro so dark and saturnine a face that “Jim”withdrew in a hurry, and ten minutes later was informing the othernegroes that there was a man in the house that had been dead and “doneriz agin.”

  And this was the equipment with which Captain McRaffle began life as aresident of Brutusville.