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.