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.