Thomas Nelson Page

“ I would not let him scare me,” said Major Welch, dryly.
“You don’t know ’em, Colonel,” said Still. “You don’t know what we Union men have had to go through. They won’t let us buy land, and they won’t let us sell it. They hate you because you come from the North, and they hate me because I don’ hate you. I tell you all the truth, Colonel, and you don’t believe it—but you don’t know what we go through down here. We’ve got to stand together. You’ll see.” The man’s voice was so earnest, and his face so sincere that Major Welch could not help being impressed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the travellers drove along they passed a small house, just off the road, hardly more than a double cabin, but it was set back amid fruit-trees, sheltered by one great oak, and there was an air of quietude and peace about it which went to Ruth’s soul. A lady in black, with a white cap on her gray hair, and a white kerchief on her shoulders, was sitting out on the little veranda, knitting, and Ruth was sure that as they drove by she bowed to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 land lay fallow, or was cultivated only in patches; the [276] woods were forests and seemed to stretch interminably; the fields were growing up in bushes and briars. And yet the birds flitted and sang in every thicket, and over everything rested an air of peace that sank into Ruth’s soul, as she jolted along in a little rickety wagon which they had hired at the station, and filled her with a sense of novelty and content. She was already beginning to feel something of the charm of which her cousin, Larry Middleton, and Captain Thurston were always talking. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As for Rupert, when he returned to Captain Allen he was so full of Miss Welch that Steve declared he was in love with her, and guilefully drew him on to talk of her and tell, over and over, every detail of his interview. The charge of being in love the boy denied, of course, but from that time Ruth, without knowing it, had the truest blessing a girl can have—the ingenuous devotion of a young boy’s heart. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ She laughed triumphantly. “No, I didn’t know you, Captain McRaffle. I’ve got cause to know you. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself coming out here to harm a poor woman. So ought all of you; and you are, I know, every mother’s son of you. If you want to do anything, why don’t you do it to men, and openly, like Andy Stamper and Capt’n Allen?” ”

“ So things went, and before the summer evenings were over, the young Captain had ridden to the point where he had given Blair Cary all the confidences which a young man in his twenties is likely to give the prettiest girl in his circle of acquaintance, especially when she is the only one whose eyes soften a little at the recital, and who responds a bit by giving just a little of her own. Not that Miss Cary for a moment allowed Middleton to forget that on the one great subject always present, the world stretched between them. They were enemies. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Bagby and General Legaie were the leading counsel, and Jerry lounged about the door like a Bashi-Bazouk. The crowd in the village was larger than it had been in a good while. Men were assembled in groups in the suburbs or on the verandas, sullen and almost awe-struck, discussing the points in the case with the intelligence of those trained by sharp experience to know the gravity of such an occasion and to weigh the chances. It was known that the principal evidence against Captain Allen was his own confession. ”

“ If a man fell in love he fell in love, that was all; and if he was in love, he had a right to do as he chose—there was no Mason and Dixon line in love. Even these, however, thought that Miss Welch was taking her revenge.
Andy Stamper, who had come up and was grimly listening with unwonted silence, broke forth with a strong denunciation of such nonsense. He did not believe a word of it. Miss Welch had been to see Miss Blair Cary and Miss Thomasia, old Mr. Langstaff and Mr. Bagby, and had done all she could to keep from testifying. She was “cut up as the mischief about it,” declared Andy. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He took in Captain Thurston’s jolly face, Major Welch’s look of satisfaction, and the shrewd content of old Mr. Bagby, as Major Welch handed him a batch of telegrams. He saw the other lawyers’ faces light up as the telegrams were handed on to them and were eagerly scanned. He knew the wires had been well worked. He calculated all the chances. And when the judge, with sharp reprimands and angry threats, had quelled the noise and restored order, Leech rose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As she looked out through the orchard and across over the fields, glowing after the last night’s rain, there came to Ruth for the first time that tender feeling which comes to dwellers in the country, almost like a sweet odor, and compensates them for so much besides, and which has made so many a poet, whether he has written or not. Her hostess took her around the yard to show her her rose-bushes, particularly one which she said had come from one which had always been her mother’s favorite at their old home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having thus punished both her admirers, Miss Cary declined to dance—whether to keep her word; to avoid pleasing too much the young Federal Captain, or to soothe the ruffled spirits of his unsuccessful competitors, who may tell? For no one can thread the mazes of a girl’s caprice.
But this made little difference to Middleton. They strolled outside and found a seat. The moonlight appeared to Middleton more charming than he ever remembered it, and he discovered something which he had never known before. ”

“ CHAPTER XLII CAPTAIN ALLEN SURRENDERS
The effect of Leech’s return to power was soon visible, and the gloom in the old County was never so deep as it became after that. The failure of Steve’s daring and high-handed step but intensified this. It appeared as if a complete overthrow had come at last.
As is often the case when unexpected failure has come to brilliant and promising plans, popular opinion veered suddenly; and whereas, but a little before, all were full of wonder at Steve Allen’s daring coup, now that it had failed many were inclined to blame him. ”