JACQUELIN GRAY GOES ON A LONG VOYAGE AND RED ROCK PASSES OUT OF HIS HANDS

Jacquelin had never recovered from the rough handling which he had received that night from Leech. His wound had broken out afresh and he was now confined to his bed all the time. There was one cause which, perhaps, more than all the rest, weighed him down, and that, certainly, Dr. Cary did not know, though, no doubt, Mrs. Cary and Mrs. Gray knew. It was a secret wound, deeper than that which Dr. Cary was treating. He had never been the same since the evening of his misunderstanding with Blair Cary. The affair in which the negro soldiers were killed, and Rupert’s and Steve’s part in it, with the necessity of sending Rupert away, and the consequences which followed, seemed to be the finishing stroke, and it appeared to be only a question of a few months with Jacquelin.

One other reason for his anxiety Dr. Cary had. Reports of threats made by Leech came to the Doctor.

“Another arrest, and he will go,” said Dr. Cary. “We must get him away. Send him first to a city where he can have better surgical treatment than he is able to receive in the country. Then, when he is fit for it, put him on a sailing vessel and send him around the world.” How cleverly he had managed it, thought the Doctor!

Mrs. Gray also had her own reasons for wishing to get Jacquelin away, though they were not mainly what Dr. Cary thought. With a keener insight than the good Doctor had, she had seen Blair Cary’s change and its effect on Jacquelin. And she eagerly sought to carry out the Doctor’s suggestions. The chief difficulty in the way was want of funds. The demands of the plantation, according to Mr. Still’s account, had been enough of late to consume everything that was made on it. The negroes had to be supported whether they worked or not, and the estate was running behind.

The Doctor felt certain he could manage the matter of means. Hiram Still had just offered to lend him a further sum. Indeed, Still had himself brought up the matter of Jacquelin’s health, and had even asked the Doctor if he did not think a long visit somewhere might do Jacquelin good.

“He is a strange mixture, that man Still. He is undoubtedly a very kind-hearted man,” asserted the Doctor.

Mrs. Gray did not altogether agree with her cousin in his estimate of Still; she had her own opinion of him; but she was somewhat mollified by hearing of his interest in Jacquelin’s welfare. She could not, however, allow her cousin to borrow money in his own name on her account, but, in the face of Jacquelin’s steady decline, she finally yielded and bowed her pride so far as to permit the Doctor to borrow it for her, only stipulating that the plate and pictures in the house should be pledged to secure it. This would relieve her partly from personal obligations to Still. One other stipulation she made: that Jacquelin was not to know of the loan.

When the Doctor applied to Still he obtained the loan without difficulty, and Still, having taken an assignment of the plate and pictures, agreed without hesitation to his condition of silence, even expressing the deepest interest in Jacquelin’s welfare, and reiterating his protestations of friendship for him and Mrs. Gray.

“It is the most curious thing,” said the Doctor to Mrs. Cary, afterward: “I never apply to that man without his doing what I ask. I always expect to be refused. I am always surprised—and yet my suspicion is not relieved—I do not know why it is. I think I must be a very suspicious man.”

Mrs. Cary’s mouth shut closely. But she would not add to her husband’s worries by a suggestion, the very idea of which she thought was an indignity.

“I wish you had not applied to him,” she said. “I do not want to be under any obligations to him whatever. I do not think Helen should have asked it of you.”

“Oh! my dear!” said the Doctor. “She didn’t ask it of me, I offered it to her.”

“I cannot bear him,” declared Mrs. Cary, with the tone of one who delivers a convincing argument. “And the son is more intolerable than the father. It requires all my politeness to prevent my asking him out of the house whenever he comes. He comes here entirely too often.”

“My dear, he is a young doctor who is trying to practise his profession, and needs advice,” expostulated the old doctor, but Mrs. Cary was not to be convinced.

“A young doctor, indeed! a young—” The rest of the sentence was lost as she went out with her head in the air.

When the matter of removing Jacquelin was broached to him, a new and unexpected difficulty arose. He refused to go. The idea of his getting better treatment than Dr. Cary was able to give was, he said, all nonsense, and they could not stand the expense of such a plan as was proposed. In this emergency his mother was forced to bow her pride. She summoned Blair Cary as an ally. Blair yielded so far as to add an expression of her views to the mother’s, because she did not know how to refuse; but, with a woman’s finesse, she kept herself within limitations, which Jacquelin, at least, would understand. She came over on a visit, and went in to see him, and took occasion to say that she thought he ought to go to the city. It was a very prim and stiff little speech that she made. Jacquelin’s face showed the first tinge of color that had been on it for months, as he turned his eyes to her almost eagerly. So impassive, though, was she, that the tinge faded out.

“Do you ask me to go?”

“No—I have nothing to do with it. I only think you ought to do what your mother wishes.” The mouth was closer than usual. There was a little deeper color in her face now.

“Oh! it was only a moral idea you wished to inculcate?”

“If you choose to call it so.” The mouth drew closer.

“Well—will you ask me?”

“I don’t mind doing it—for your mother.” It was no accident that a woman was chosen to be the oracle at Delphi. Jacquelin could make no more of the face before him than if he had never seen it before, and he had studied it for years.

Jacquelin agreed to go to the hospital. So he was sent off to the city, where an operation was performed to remove some of the splintered bone and relieve him. And as soon as he was well enough he was sent off on a sailing vessel trading to China. He thus escaped the increasing afflictions that were coming on the county, and his mother, who would have torn out her heart for him, for fear he would come home if he knew the state of affairs, kept everything from him, and bore her burdens alone.

The burdens were heavy.

The next few years which passed brought more changes to the old county than any years of the war. The war had destroyed the Institution of slavery; the years of the carpet-bagger’s domination well-nigh destroyed the South. As Miss Thomasia said, sighing, it was the fulfilment of the old prophecy: “After the sword shall come the cankerworm.” And the Doctor’s speech was recalled by some: “You ask for war, but you do not know what it is. A fool can start a conflagration, but the Sanhedrim cannot stop it. War is never done. It leaves its baleful seed for generations.”

Dr. Cary, when he uttered this statement, had little idea how true it was.

Events had proved that although the people were impoverished, their spirit was not broken. Unhappily, the power was in the hands of those who did not understand them, and Leech and his fellows had their ear. It was deemed proper to put them in absolute control. Leech wrote the authorities that he and his party must have power to preserve the Union; he wrote to Mrs. Welch that they must have it to preserve the poor freedmen. The authorities promised it, and kept the promise. It was insanity.

One provision gave the ballot to the former slave, just as it was taken from the former master. An act was so shrewdly framed that, while it appeared simply to be intended to secure loyalty to the Union, it was aimed to strike from the rolls of citizenship almost the entire white population of the South; that is, all who would not swear they had never given aid or comfort to the Confederacy. It was so all-embracing that it came to be known as the “ironclad” oath.

“It is the greatest Revolution since the time of Poland,” said Dr. Cary, his nostrils dilating with ire. “They have thrown down the man of intelligence, character, and property, and have set up the slave and the miscreant. ‘Syria is confederate with Ephraim.’ More is yet to come.”

“It is the salvation of the Union,” wrote Leech to Mrs. Welch, who was the head of an organization that sent boxes of clothes to the negroes through Leech. Leech was beginning to think himself the Union.

While General Legaie and Steve Allen were discussing constitutional rights and privileges, and declaring that they would never yield assent to any measures of the kind proposed, a more arbitrary act than these was committed: the State itself was suddenly swept out of existence, and a military government was substituted in its place; the very name of the State on which those gentlemen and their ancestors had prided themselves for generations was extinguished and lost in that of “Military District, Number ——.” The old State, with all others like it, ceased to be.

Colonel Krafton was the chief authority in that part of the State, and Major Leech, as he was now called, was his representative in the county. And between them they had the enforcement of all the measures that were adopted.

When their hands were deemed strong enough, it was determined to give them the form of popular government.

It was an easy process; for the whites had been disfranchised, and only the negroes and those who had taken the ironclad oath could vote.

At the first election that was held under the new system, the spectacle was a curious one. Krafton was the candidate for governor. Most of the disfranchised whites stayed away, haughtily or sullenly, from the polls, where ballots were cast under a guard of soldiers. But others went to see the strange sight, and to vent their derision on the detested officials who were in charge. Dr. Cary and General Legaie, with most men of their age and stamp, remained at home in haughty, and impotent indignation.

“Why should I go to see my former wagon-driver standing for the seat my grandfather resigned from the United States Senate to take?” asked General Legaie, proudly.

Steve Allen and Andy Stamper, however, and many of the young men were on hand.

Leech and Nicholas Ash were the candidates for the Legislature, and Steve went to the poll where he thought it likely Leech would be. Steve had become a leader among the whites. Both men knew that it was now a fight to the finish between them, and both always acted in full consciousness of the fact. Leech counted on his power, and the force he could always summon to his aid, to hold Steve in check until he should have committed some rashness which would enable him to destroy him. Steve was conscious that Leech was personally afraid of him, and he relied on this fact—taking every occasion to assert himself—as the master of a treacherous animal keeps ever facing him, holding him with the spell of an unflinching eye.

The negroes were led in lines to cast their votes.

It was a notable thing that in all the county there was not an angry word that day between a white man and a negro. Leech, in a letter to Mrs. Welch describing the occasion, declared that the quietness with which the election passed off was due wholly to the presence of the soldiery, and he was very eloquent in his denunciation of the desperadoes who surrounded him, and who were held at bay only by fear of the bayonets about them. But this was not true. The situation was too novel not to be interesting, and there was feeling, but it was suppressed. It was a strange sight, the polls guarded by soldiers; the men who had controlled the country standing by, disfranchised, and the lines of blacks who had just been slaves, and not one in one hundred of whom could read their ballots, voting on questions which were to decide the fate of the State. There were many gibes flung at the new voters by the disfranchised spectators, but they were mainly good-natured.

“Whom are you voting for, Uncle Gideon?” asked Steve of one of the old Red Rock negroes.

“Marse Steve, you know who I votin’ for better’n I does myself.”

To another:

“Whom are you voting for?”

“Gi’ me a little tobacker, Marse Steve, an’ I’ll tell you.” And when it was given, he turned to the crowd: “Who is I votin’ for? I done forgit. Oh! yes—old Mr. Linkum—ain’ dat he name?”

“Well, he’s a good one to vote for—he’s dead,” said Steve.

“Hi! is he? When did he die?” protested the old man in unfeigned astonishment.

“You ain’ votin’ for him—you’se votin’ for Mist’ Grant,” explained another younger negro, indignant at the old man’s ignorance.

“Is I? Who’s he? He’s one I ain’ never heard on. Marse Steve, I don’ know who I votin’ for—I jis know I votin’, dat’s all.”

This raised a laugh at Steve’s expense which was led by Leech, and to atone for it the old servant added:

“I done forgit de gent’man’s name.”

“The gentlemen you are voting for are Leech and Nicholas Ash,” said Steve.

“Marse Steve, you know dey ain’ no gent’mens,” said the old fellow, undisturbed by the fact that Leech was present.

“Uncle Tom, you know something, anyhow,” said Steve, enjoying the Provost’s discomfiture.

The only white man of any note in the upper end of the county who took the new “ironclad” oath was Hiram Still. Andy Stamper met him after Hiram had voted. Still tried to dodge him.

“Don’t run, Hiram,” said the little Sergeant, contemptuously, “I ain’t a going to hurt ye. The war’s over. If I had known at the time you was givin’ the Yanks information, I might ’a’ done it once—and I would advise you, Hiram, never to give ’em too much information about me now. You’ve already giv’ ’em too much once about me. See there?” He stretched out his arm and showed a purple mark on his wrist. It was the scar that had been left by the handcuff when he was arrested for the riot at Deal’s. “It won’t come out. You understand?” The little fellow’s eyes shot at the renegade so piercing a glance that Still cowered and muttered that he had nothing to do with him one way or another.

“Maybe, if you didn’t give no aid and comfort to the rebels you’d like to give me back that little piece of paper you took from my old mother to secure the price of that horse you let me have to go back in the army?” drawled Stamper, while one or two onlookers laughed.

The renegade made his escape as quickly as possible.

Still’s reply to the contempt that was visited on him was to bring suit on the bonds he held. Leech was his counsel. One of the first suits was against Andy Stamper. Andy was promptly sold out under the deed which had been given during the war; the place was bought by Still, and Andy and Delia rented another little house. This was only the beginning, however.

When Still flung away his mask, he went as far as he dared. It was now open war, and he had thrown in his fortune with the other side.

Dr. Cary received a note one morning from Mrs. Gray asking him to come and see her immediately. He found her in a state of agitation very unusual with her. She had the night before received a letter from Still, stating that he was a creditor of her husband’s estate and held his bonds for over fifty thousand dollars. Mrs. Gray had known that there were some outstanding debts of her husband due him, though she had supposed they were nearly paid off—but fifty thousand dollars! It would take the whole estate!

“Why, it is incredible,” declared the Doctor. “Quite incredible! The man is crazy. You need give yourself no uneasiness whatever about it. I will see him and clear up the whole matter.”

Yet, even as the Doctor spoke, he recalled certain hints of Still’s, dropped from time to time, recently, as to balances due by his former employer on old accounts connected with his Southern estate, and Mr. Gray was a very easy man, thought the Doctor, who believed himself one of the keenest and most methodical of men.

Women love to have encouragement from men, even though they may feel the reverse of what they are told to believe. So Mrs. Gray and Miss Thomasia were more comforted than they could have found ground for.

When Dr. Cary did look into the matter, to his amazement he found that the bonds were in existence. Still gave the account of them which he had already given to Leech, and produced some corroborative evidence in the shape of letters relating to the transaction of buying and stocking the sugar plantation. There was hope for awhile that the writers of the letters might be able to throw some light on the matter, but, on investigation, it turned out that they were without exception dead, and Mrs. Gray herself, on seeing the big bond, pronounced it genuine, and declared that she remembered her husband once spoke of it, though she thought he had told her it was all settled. She hunted all through his papers, but though she found other bonds of his which he had taken in she could find no record of this big one. Jacquelin was written to, but in his reply he said that no matter what the cost, he wanted his father’s debts paid. So no defence was made to the suit which Still had instituted by Leech as his counsel, and judgment was obtained by default. And soon afterward the Red Rock place, with everything on it, was sold under this judgment and was bought in by Still for less than the amount of his claim.

Jacquelin was still abroad and Mrs. Gray purposely kept him in ignorance of what was going on; for her chief anxiety at this time was to prevent Jacquelin from returning home until all this matter was ended. He had written that his health was steadily improving.

Mrs. Gray did not remain at Red Rock twenty-four hours after Still became its owner. She and Miss Thomasia moved next day to Dr. Cary’s, where they were offered a home. She congratulated herself anew that morning that Jacquelin was yet absent.

Mrs. Gray and Miss Thomasia walked out with their heads up, bidding good-by to their old servants, who had assembled outside of the house, their faces full of concern and sorrow.

There was hardly a negro on the place who was not there. However they might follow Still in politics, they had not yet learned to forget the old ties that bound them in other matters to their old masters, and they were profoundly affected by this step, which they could all appreciate.

“I drives you away, my mistis,” said the driver, old Waverley. “I prays Gord I may live to drive you back.”

“Not me, Waverley; but, maybe, this boy,” said Mrs. Gray, laying her hand on Rupert’s shoulder.

“Yes’m, we heah him say he comin’ back,” said the old driver, with pride. “Gord knows we hopes so.”

Just then Hiram Still, accompanied by Leech, rode up into the yard. He had evidently kept himself informed as to Mrs. Gray’s movements. He rode across the grass and gave orders to the negroes to clear away. Mrs. Gray took not the least notice of him, but, outraged by his insolence, Rupert suddenly sprang forward and denounced him passionately. His mother checked him: “Rupert, my son.” But the boy was wild with anger. “We are coming back some day,” he cried to Still. “You have robbed us; but wait till my brother returns.”

Both Still and Leech laughed, and Still ostentatiously ordered the negroes off. Still moved in that afternoon.

Before Still had been installed in his new mansion twenty-four hours he repented of his indiscretion, if not of his insolence. He was absent a part of the evening, and on his return he heard that Captain Allen had been to see him. The face of the servant who gave the message told more than the words he delivered.

“What did he want?” Still asked, sharply.

“He say he want to see you, and he want to see you pussonally.” The negro looked significant.

“Well, he knows where to find me.”

“Yes, he say he gwine fine you—dat’s huccome he come, an’ he gwine keep on till he do fine you.” Still’s heart sank.

“I don’t know what he wants with me,” he growled, as he turned away and went into the house. The great hall filled with pictures had never looked so big or so dark. The eyes fastened on him from the walls seemed to search him. Those of the “Indian-Killer” pierced him wherever he went.

“Curse them; they are all alike,” he growled. “I wish I had let them have the d——d rubbish. I would, but for having to take that one down.”

Poor Virgy, who had been given the room that had formerly been Jacquelin’s, came toward him. She was scared and lonely in her new surroundings, and had been crying.

This increased her father’s ill-humor. He inquired if she had seen Captain Allen. She had, but he had only bowed to her; all he had said was to the servant.

“Did he seem excited?” Still asked.

“No, he only looked quiet. He looked like one of those pictures up there.” It was an unlucky illustration. Her father broke out on her so severely that she ran to her own room weeping. It was only of late that he had begun to be so harsh.

Still, left alone, sat down and without delay wrote a letter to Captain Allen, expressing regret that he had been away when he called. He also wrote a letter to Dr. Cary, which he sent out that night, apologizing to Mrs. Gray and calling heaven to witness that he had not meant to offend her, and did not even know she was on the place when he rode up. He did not wait for replies. The next morning before daylight he left for the city.

“I would not mind one of them,” he complained to his counsel, Leech. “I’m as good a man as any one of ’em; but you don’t know ’em. They stick together like Indians, and if one of ’em got hurt, the whole tribe would come down on me like hornets.”

“Wait till we get ready for ’em,” counselled Leech. “We’ll bring their pride down. We’ll be more than a match for the whole tribe. Wait till I get in the Legislature; I’ll pass some laws that will settle ’em.” His blue eyes were glistening and he was opening his hands and shutting them tightly in a way he had, as if he were crushing something in his palms.

“That’s it—that’s it,” said Still, eagerly.