THE CARY CONFERENCE

The meeting at Birdwood was a notable occasion. It was, in a way, the outward and visible sign of the return of peace. Someone said it looked like the old St. Ann congregation risen from the dead, to which Miss Thomasia added, that the gentlemen, at least, were now all immortal, and the General, with his hand on his heart, gallantly responded that the ladies had always been so. The speech, however, left some faces grave, for there were a number of vacant places that could not be forgotten.

Jacquelin, under the excitement of his arrival, felt himself sufficiently restored and stimulated to join his mother and Aunt Thomasia, and be driven over to Birdwood, and though he suffered a good deal from the condition of the roads, yet when Blair ran forward and offered her shoulder for “his other crutch,” he felt as though a bad wound might after all have some compensations.

Steve Allen was the life of the company. He had ridden over on his black horse, “Hot-Spur,” that, like himself, had been wounded several times in the last campaigns, though never seriously. He spent his time teasing Blair. He declared that Jacquelin was holding on to his crutch only to excite sympathy, and that his own greatest cause for hatred of the Yankees now was either that they had not shot him instead of Jack, or had not killed Jack, and he offered to go out and let anyone shoot him immediately for one single pitying glance like those he said Blair was lavishing on Jack.

Jacquelin, with a vivid memory of the morning before, had meant to kiss Blair on his arrival, yet when they met he was seized with a sudden panic, and could hardly look into her eyes. She appeared to have grown taller and older since yesterday, as well as prettier, and when Steve, on arriving, insolently caught and kissed her before them all, on the plea of cousinship, Jacquelin was conscious of a pang of consuming jealousy, and for the first time in his life would gladly have thrashed Steve.

There was one thing that marred the occasion somewhat, or might have done so under other circumstances. The entire negro population, who could travel, moved by some idea that the arrival of the Federal soldiers concerned them, were flocking to the county seat, leaving the fields deserted and the cabins empty.

The visitors had found the roads lined with them as they came along. They were all civil, but what could it mean? Some of the young men, like Steve and Jacquelin, were much stirred up about it, and talked of organizing quietly so as to be ready if the need should arise. Dr. Cary, however, and the older ones, opposed anything of the kind. Any organization whatever would be viewed with great suspicion by the authorities, and might be regarded as a breach of their parole, and was not needed. They were already organized simply by being what they were. And, indeed, though gaunt and weather-beaten, in their old worn uniforms they were a martial-looking set. There was not a man there who had not looked Death in the eyes many a time, and the stare had left something notable in every face.

It was a lovely day, and the early flowers were peeping out as if to be sure before they came too far that winter had gone for good. The soft haze of Spring was over the landscape.

The one person who was wanting, to make the company complete, was the little General. They were just discussing him, and were wondering if he had gone to Mexico; and Steve, seated at Miss Thomasia’s side, was teasing her about him, declaring that, in his opinion, it was a pretty widow, whose husband had been in the General’s brigade and had been shot, that the General had gone South after; when a horseman was seen riding rapidly across the open field far below, taking the ditches as he came to them. When he drew nearer he was recognized to be none other than the gallant little General himself. As he came trotting across the lawn, among the great trees, he presented a martial figure, and handkerchiefs were waved to him, and many cheers were given, so that he was quite overcome when he dismounted in the midst of a number of his old soldiers, and found himself literally taken in the arms of both the men and the ladies.

The General beamed, as he gazed around with a look that showed that he thought life might still be worth living if only he could meet occasionally such a reception as had just been given him. Others smiled too; for it was known that the General had been an almost life-long lover and suitor of Miss Thomasia Gray, whose twenty years’ failure to smile on him had in no way damped his ardor or dimmed his hope. In fact, the old soldier, in his faded gray, with his bronzed, worn, high-bred face, was nearer achieving the object of his life at that moment than he had ever been in the whole twenty years of his pursuit. Had the occasion come fifteen or even ten years earlier, he might have done so; but Miss Thomasia had reached the point when to marry appeared to her ridiculous, and the only successful rival of the shaft of Cupid is the shaft of Ridicule.

At such a meeting as this there were necessarily many serious things to be considered. One was the question of bread; another of existence. None could look around on the wide, deserted fields and fail to take in this. Everything like civil government had disappeared. There was not a civil officer left in the State. From Governor to justices of the peace, every office had been vacated. The Birdwood meeting was the first in the county at which was had any discussion of a plan for the preservation of order. Even this was informal and unpremeditated; but when it reached the ears of Colonel Krafton, the new commander of that district, who had just arrived, it had taken on quite another complexion, and the “Cary Conference,” as it came to be called, was productive of some very far-reaching consequences to certain of those who participated in it, and to the county itself.

As to some matters broached at Birdwood that day, there was wide diversity of opinion among those present.

Dr. Cary was in favor of accepting the issues as settled by the war; of making friends with the high authorities—as had already been done by some in other parts of the State, and of other States.

“Never! never!” declared General Legaie, with whom were most of the others. “They have done their worst; they have invaded us, and taken our negroes from us. Let them bear the responsibilities they have assumed.”

It was easy to see, from the enthusiasm which greeted the General, on which side the sympathy lay.

“The worst! General Legaie?” exclaimed Dr. Cary. “The worst will be coming for years. ’After the sword comes the cankerworm.’ Mark my words: the first terms offered are always the best. 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 old Whig looked so earnest—so imposing, as he stood, tall and white, his eyes flashing under their beetling brows, that though, perhaps, few agreed with him, all were impressed, and by a common and tacit consent their position was not pressed, at least for the present. The little General even agreed to accompany Dr. Cary at some near date, to give his views, along with Dr. Cary’s, to the new Commander of the district, Colonel Krafton, in order, the General stated, that the Commander might understand precisely the attitude of all persons in their county.

Steve Allen, and the other young soldiers who were there, found themselves sufficiently entertained, fighting over their battles, as though they had been the commanding generals, and laying off new campaigns in a fresh and different field; meantime, getting their hands in, adoring and teasing their young hostess, who was related to, or connected with, most of them. They had left Blair Cary, a dimple-faced, tangle-haired romp of thirteen or fourteen, with saucy eyes, which even then, as they danced behind their dark lashes, promised the best substitute for beauty. They now found her sprung up to a slender young lady of “quite seventeen,” whose demureness and new-born dignity were the more bewitching, because they were belied by her laughing glances. Mars has ever been the captive of Venus as well as her conqueror, and more than Steve Allen and Jacquelin Gray fell victims at the first fire from those “deadly batteries,” as Steve afterward characterized Blair Cary’s eyes, in his first poem to Belinda—published in the Brutusville Guardian. But they all declared they saw at once that they stood no chance with Jack Gray, whose face wore “that sickly look,” as Steve called it, which, he said, “every woman thought interesting and none could resist.” Over all of which nonsense, Miss Blair’s dark eyes twinkled with the pleasure of a girl who is too young to comprehend it quite fully, but yet finds it wonderfully delightful. As for Jacquelin, to him she was no longer mortal: he had robed her in radiance and lifted her among the stars.

The older people found not less pleasure in the reunion than their juniors, and appeared to have grown young again. And while the youngsters were out on the grass at Miss Blair’s feet, in more senses than one, the General and Dr. Cary and the other seniors were on the vine-covered portico, discussing grave questions of state-craft, showing precisely how and when the Confederacy might have been saved and made the greatest power on earth—together with other serious matters. The General teased himself as of old about Miss Thomasia, and the Doctor teased them both. The General had been noted formerly as a great precisionist in matters of dress, as well as in all other matters, and now, when he stalked about the veranda, with his old uniform-coat buttoned to the chin as jauntily as ever, and with a limp bit of white showing above the collar and at the wrists, in which he evidently took much pride, the Doctor, who knew where the shirt came from, and that, like the one which he himself had on, it was made from an under-garment of one of the ladies, could not help rallying him a little. The Doctor wisely took advantage of Mrs. Cary’s absence from the room to do this, but had got no farther than to congratulate the General on the luxury of fresh linen and to receive from him the gallant assurance that he had felt on putting it on that morning, as a knight of old might have felt when he donned his armor prepared by virgin hands, when Mrs. Cary entered and, recognizing instantly from her husband’s look of suspicious innocence and Miss Thomasia’s expression, that some mischief was going on, pounced on him promptly and bore him off. When he returned from the “judgment chamber,” as he called it, he was under a solemn pledge not to open the subject again to the General, which he observed to the best of his ability, though he kept Miss Thomasia on thorns, by coming as near to it as he dared with a due regard to himself in view of his wife’s watchfulness.

In fact, these men were thoroughly enjoying home life after the long interval of hardship and deprivation, and neither the sorrow of the past nor the gloom of the present could wholly depress them. The future, fortunately, they could not know. Then, among young people there must be joy, if there be not death; and fun is as natural as grass or flowers in spring or any other outbudding of a new and bounding life.

So, even amid the ruins, the flowers bloomed and there were fun and gayety. Hope was easily worth all the other spirits in Pandora’s box put together.

Before the company separated they began to talk even of a party, and, to meet the objections of old Mr. Langstaff and some others, it was agreed that it should be a contribution-entertainment and that the proceeds should go to the wounded soldiers and soldiers’ widows, of the county. This Steve declared was a deep-laid scheme on the part of Jacquelin Gray. It was already decided on when the Doctor returned to the sitting-room, after Mrs. Cary had summoned him thence, and the question under advisement was whether the Yankee officers at the court-house should be invited. Steve Allen had started it. The ladies were a unit.

“No, indeed; not one of them should set his foot inside the door; not a girl would dance with one of them.” On this point Miss Blair was very emphatic, and her laughing eyes lost their gleam of sunlight and flashed forth a sudden spark which showed deeper depths behind those dark lashes than had appeared at any time before.

“I’ll bet you do,” said Steve. He stretched out his long legs, settled himself, and looked at Blair with that patronizing air which always exasperated her.

“I’ll bet I don’t!”—with her head up, and her color deepening a little at the bravado of using such a word.

“I’ll bet my horse you’ll break a set with Jack for the Yankee captain,” declared Steve.

“Don’t want your old horse, he’s too full of lead,” said Blair.

“Then I’ll bet you his horse.”

“It’s a good one,” said Jacquelin from his place on the lounge. “Blood-bay, with three white feet and a blaze on his nose.”

“He’s mine,” asserted Steve with a nod of his head.

“How will you get it?” asked Blair.

“Steve knows several ways of getting horses,” laughed one of the other young men.

“Shut up, you fool,” telegraphed Steve with his lips, glancing quickly at Miss Thomasia, who was beaming on him with kindly eyes.

It is surprising what little things have influence. That sudden flash, with the firmer lines which came for a second in the young girl’s face, did more to bind the young men to her footstool than all the fun and gayety she had shown.

The men were not so unanimous on the point touching the exclusion of the officers. Most of them agreed with the ladies, but one or two were inclined to the other side.

“Men like to fancy themselves broader and more judicial than women,” said Miss Thomasia, placidly.

Jacquelin mentioned casually that Middleton was not only quite a gentlemanly fellow, but a strikingly handsome one.

“A Yankee soldier good-looking! I’ll not believe that!” declared Miss Blair, promptly.

This debate created a diversion in their favor, and it was suggested and agreed to, as a compromise, that they should “wait until after a St. Ann Sunday, and see what the officers looked like. No doubt some of them would come to church, and then they could determine what they would do.”

This idea was feminine, and, to offset it, it was re-declared that at present they were “unanimously opposed to regarding them in any other light than that of bitter enemies.”