SOME OF THE THREADS ARE TIED
In the old stories, the climax used to be considered attained when the
young couple became engaged. Like the hero and heroine of the fairy
tales of our youth, in that golden land of “Once-upon-a-time,” all
that was to be told after they became engaged was that “they married
and lived happily ever after.” In the modern stories, however, this
seems to be but the beginning of new adventures. Marriage, which used
to be the entrance to bliss unending, appears to be now but the “gate
of the hundred sorrows;” and the hero and heroine wed only to find
that they loved someone else better, and pine to be disunited. They
spend the rest of their lives trying to get unmarried. Nothing is so
unconventional as to love one’s own husband or wife, and nothing so
tame as to live pure and true to one’s vows in spirit as well as in
fact.
It must be said, at once, that this is not a story of that kind. The
people described in it knew nothing of that sort of existence. Any
reader who chooses to go farther in this history must do so with the
full knowledge that such is the case, and that the married life of the
young couples will be found as archaic and pure as that of our first
parents, before modern wisdom discovered that the serpent was more than
the devil, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil more than a tree
of knowledge. Still, when we have come so far together, it is necessary
to go a little farther.
Thus, it must be briefly explained, for the benefit of those who may be
interested to know, what became of those whose story they have been
following; and such as do not care to read farther, may leave off here
and content themselves with knowing that they met, if not the fates
they deserved, at least, the fates which life brought, and met them
with undaunted hearts.
The temporary adjournment of the prosecution against Captain Allen was
but preliminary to a continuance, and, finally, the case was altogether
dismissed. The prosecution of Major Welch’s son-in-law was a very
different thing from that of a mere citizen of that unhappy section.
But the investigation that followed proved triumphantly that Captain
Allen’s part in the movements that had taken place had been precisely
what he asserted they were, and that he had done much to break up later
the organization of night-riders.
Not that this was the end of the troubles in the Red Rock country, and
in the section of which it formed a part, or of the struggle that went
on between the people of that section and Leech and the other vultures
who were preying on them. The talons of those vultures were too firmly
imbedded to be easily dislodged. But in time, the last of the harpies
was put to flight.
As for Leech, there is record of one of the name who, after holding the
leadership of one party in his State, on the overthrow of that party
by the outraged white people of the State, soon became a partisan on
the victorious side. There is also record of a Leech who, having been
during the “carpet-bagger” régime a man of large means and political
prominence, was known at last mainly on account of an unsavory story
of the manner in which he had tried to get rid of his wife, and marry
another woman. Having been frustrated in that design through the
efforts of a former political associate, a certain Colonel McRaffle,
who attained a temporary celebrity on account of his disclosures before
the Commission that investigated the frauds in the State, this Leech,
it appears, fell into great want, and was nursed through his last
illness by the faithful wife whom he had so ill-treated. Readers may
decide for themselves whether either of these was the once supreme
“carpet-bagger” dictator of Red Rock—if, indeed, they both were not
the same person.
But to narrate all this would lead this history into wholly other lines.
The day after her marriage, Ruth received a deed which had just been
recorded, conveying to her the part of Red Rock which Major Welch had
bought of Still and restored to Jacquelin, and with the deed a letter
from Jacquelin, asking her, as Steve’s wife, to accept it from him and
Rupert as a wedding present. The letter said things about Steve over
which Ruth shed tears, though her radiant face showed how happy she was.
“Dr. Moses” had a somewhat curious career. Jacquelin’s statement of
what he saw the night of the attempted assassination of Middleton cast
suspicion on Moses; and he was arrested, and arraigned before a negro
magistrate. It was shown that he had made prophecies or threats against
Middleton. But Leech appeared as his counsel, and at least twenty
witnesses testified to the man’s having been at the Bend all night. So
he was at once discharged; and the shooting of Middleton was, in the
public press, generally charged to the bands of midnight assassins,
to whom it was the custom at that time to attribute all outrages that
were committed—at least, where the objects were Northern men. One
journal, indeed, alleged that Jacquelin himself was concerned in it,
and charged that his crowning infamy was the attempt to place the
shooting on “a reputable colored physician in the County—one of the
few men whose education had enabled them to enter one of the learned
professions.” The prophecies of Moses, however, greatly increased his
reputation; his prestige and power became tremendous, and he was,
perhaps, the person most feared in the whole County by his own race.
Finally, indeed, he became such a dread to them that they rose, and he
was run away from the Bend by his own people. Nothing more was heard
of him in the County. But some years later, in one of the adjoining
States, a negro was hanged by a mob, and an account of it was published
in the papers. The press of one side stated that he confessed not only
the terrible crime for which he was hanged, but, in addition, several
others sufficiently heinous to entitle him to be classed as one of the
greatest scoundrels in the world. The other side asserted that he was
a physician of standing, who had at one time enjoyed a large practice
in another State, from which he had been run out by the bands of masked
desperadoes who had terrorized that section. In proof, it declared that
“he died calling on all present to meet him in heaven.” As both sides,
however, concurred in giving his name as Moses ——, and his former
domicile as Red Rock, we have some ground for supposing that “Dr.
Moses,” as Andy Stamper said, at last came to the end of his rope.
Did our limits permit, the marriage of several other couples besides
Steve and Ruth might be chronicled. But the novelist cannot tell at one
time all he knows. Be this known, however, that as some citadels are
captured by assault, so others capitulate only after long siege; and
this both Jacquelin and Captain Thurston discovered.
When the engagement of Captain Thurston and Miss Elizabeth Dockett
was announced to Mrs. Dockett, it was by Miss Dockett herself. It
must be left to the members of Mrs. Dockett’s own sex to say whether
Mrs. Dockett was surprised or not. But if Miss Elizabeth had struck
her flag, Mrs. Dockett had not by any means struck hers. Her first
pronunciamento was that she had not a word to say against Captain
Thurston, who was, she admitted, a perfect gentleman; but that she
wanted him to understand that everyone who came into that house had to
dance to the tune of Dixie. This the Captain professed he was prepared
to do, and would only ask that he might sometimes be allowed to warble
in his own room the Star-Spangled Banner.
Not long after this, the Red Rock case was to come up again. But a
little time before the term of court at which it was to be tried, an
offer of compromise was made to Jacquelin. It was said that Hiram
Still had one night seen the “Indian Killer” standing by the red-rock,
and that this influenced him to make his proposition. Later on, some
said the apparition was Rupert, who had just come back from the West a
stalwart youngster as tall as Jacquelin.
Under the terms of Still’s offer the mansion and a part of the
plantation were to become Jacquelin’s and Rupert’s, while the
overseer’s house, with something like half the estate, was to remain
Mr. Still’s.
Jacquelin was, at first, unwilling to make any terms with Still. He
was satisfied that, with the evidence he now had, he should win his
case, and that Still could be sent to the penitentiary. But Bail was
to sit in the case again, and the upper court was composed of Leech’s
creatures; so that no one could be sure of winning his cause, whatever
its merits; while Still himself was reported to be so feeble that his
death was expected at any time.
There were, perhaps, other reasons that moved Jacquelin. Miss Thomasia,
when she heard of Still’s offer, promptly urged its rejection. She
would never allow him to be lawful owner of an acre of their old place,
though, she added, with a sigh, she herself would, perhaps, not live to
set foot there again.
“Yes, you shall,” said Jacquelin; and he wrote that night and accepted
the terms proposed. His first act was the fulfilment of his pledge to
his mother on her death-bed; and she was laid beside her husband in the
Red Rock burying-ground, in sight of the old garden in which she had
walked as a bride.
When Miss Thomasia entered the Red Rock door on the day of her return,
she stopped and clasped her hands tightly. The eyes bent on her, from
the walls seemed to beam on her a welcome.
“Well, thank God for all His mercies!” she said, fervently; and, taking
her seat in an arm-chair, she spent most of the afternoon knitting
silently and looking round her with softened eyes and lips that moved
constantly, though they uttered no sound. Later she went out into the
garden, and looked at the remnants of the flowers that were left; and
there Steve and his wife found her when they came to take tea with her
that first evening, and there, still later, Jacquelin brought Blair to
tell of his new happiness.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.