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.