TWO NEW RESIDENTS COME TO THE COUNTY

Other changes than those already recorded had taken place in the years that had passed since the day when Middleton and Thurston, on their way to take command of a part of the conquered land, had found Jacquelin Gray outstretched under a tree at the little country station in the Red Rock County. In this period Middleton had won promotion in the West, and a wound which had necessitated a long leave of absence and a tour abroad; and finally, his retirement from the service. Reely Thurston, who was now a Captain himself, declared that Middleton’s wound was received in the South and not in the West, and that if such wounds were to be recognized, he himself ought to have been sent abroad. The jolly little officer, however, if he wished to boast of wounds of this nature, might have cited a later one; for he had for some time been a devoted admirer of Miss Ruth Welch, who had grown from a romping girl to a lively and very handsome young lady, and had, as Reely said of her, the warmest heart toward all mankind, except a man in love with her, and the coldest toward him, of any girl in the world. However this might be, she had turned a very stony heart toward Thurston in common with a number of others, and after a season or two at fashionable summer-resorts was finding, or thinking she was finding, all men insipid and life very commonplace and hollow. She declared that she liked Thurston better than any other man except her father and a half dozen or more others, all of whom labored under the sole disadvantage of being married, and she finally, as the price of the continuance of this somewhat measurable state of feeling, bound the Captain by the most solemn pledges never to so much as hint at any desire on his part for a higher degree of affection.

The little soldier would have sworn by all the gods, higher and lower, to anything that Ruth Welch proposed, for the privilege of being her slave; but he could no more have stopped bringing up the forbidden subject when in her presence, than he could have sealed up the breath in his plump and manly bosom. He was always like a cat that in sight of cream, though knowing he is on his good behavior, yet, with invincible longing, licks his chops.

No doubt the game had additional zest for Captain Thurston from the disapproval with which Mrs. Welch always regarded him. He never approached Miss Ruth without that lady fluttering around with the semi-comical distress of an anxious hen that cannot see even the house-dog approach her chick, without ruffling her feathers and showing fight.

This had thrown Thurston into a state of rather chronic opposition to the good lady, and he revenged himself for the loss of the daughter, by a habit of apparently espousing whatever the mother disapproved of, who on her part, lived in a constant effort to prove him in the wrong.

He had even ventured to express open skepticism as to the wisdom of the steps Mrs. Welch and her Aid Society had been taking in their philanthropic efforts on behalf of the freedmen; giving expression to the heretical doctrine that in the main the negroes had been humanely treated before the war, and that the question should be dealt with now from an economical rather than from a sentimental standpoint. He gave it as his opinion that the people down there knew more about the Negro, and the questions arising out of the new conditions, than those who were undertaking to settle those questions, from a distance, and that, if let alone, the questions would settle themselves. While as to Leech, the correspondent of Mrs. Welch’s society, he declared that he would not believe anything he said.

Nothing could have scandalized Mrs. Welch more than such an utterance. And it is probable that this attitude on Thurston’s part did as much as her real philanthropy to establish her in the extreme views she held.

For some time past there had been appearing in the Censor, the chief paper in the city where the Welches lived, a series of letters giving a dreadful, and, what Mrs. Welch considered, a powerful account of the outrages that were taking place in the South. According to the writer, the entire native white population were engaged in nothing but the systematic murder and mutilation of unoffending negroes and Northern settlers, who on their side were wholly without blame and received this persecution with the most Christian and uncomplaining humility.

The author’s name was not given, because, it was stated in the letters, if it were known, he would at once be murdered. Indeed, it was declared that the letters were not written for publication at all, but were sent to a philanthropic organization composed of the best and most benevolent ladies in the country, who would vouch for the high standing of the noble Christian gentleman from whose pen the accounts emanated. As the letters were from the very section—indeed, from the very neighborhood which Thurston always cited as an evidence of the beneficent effect of his theory of moderation—Mrs. Welch, who was the head of the organization to which Leech had written them, saved them for the purpose of confounding and, once for all, disposing of Captain Thurston’s arguments, together with himself.

So one morning when Thurston was calling on Ruth Mrs. Welch brought in the whole batch of papers and plumped them down before him with a triumphant air.

“Now, you read every word before you express an opinion,” she said, decisively.

While Thurston read, Mrs. Welch, who was enjoying her triumph, annotated each letter with running comments. These impressed Ruth greatly, but Thurston wilily kept his face from giving the slightest clew to his thoughts. When he was through reading, Mrs. Welch drew a long breath of exultation.

“Well, what do you say to that?”

“I don’t believe it!” said Thurston, calmly.

“What!” Mrs. Welch was lifted out of her chair by astonishment.

“The writer of that is Jonadab Leech, one of the most unmitigated——”

“Captain Thurston! You do not know what you are talking about!” exclaimed Mrs. Welch.

“Do you mean to say Leech is not the writer of those letters?”

“No, I did not say that,” said Mrs. Welch, who would have cut out her tongue before she would have uttered a falsehood.

“I would not believe Leech on oath,” said the Captain, blandly.

“Oh, well, if that’s the stand you take, there’s no use reasoning with you.” And with a gesture expressive both of pity and sorrow that she must wash her hands of him completely and forever, Mrs. Welch gathered up her papers and indignantly swept from the room.

When Thurston went away that day he had entrusted Ruth with an apology for Mrs. Welch capable of being expanded, as circumstances might require, to an unlimited degree; for Ruth had explained to him how dear to her mother’s heart her charities were. But he had also given Ruth such sound reasons for his views regarding the people in the region where he had been stationed that, however her principles remained steadfast, the sympathies of the girl had gone out to those whom he described as in such incredible difficulties.

“Ask Larry about Miss Blair Cary,” he said. “Ask him which is the better man, Dr. Cary or Jonadab Leech, and which he’d believe first, that Steve Allen, who is spoken of as such a ruffian, or Hiram Still, the martyr.”

“And how about Miss Dockett?” Ruth’s eyes twinkled.

“Miss Dockett?—Who is Miss Dockett?” The little Captain’s face wore so comical an expression of counterfeit innocence and sheepish guilt that the girl burst out laughing.

“Have you been in love with so many Miss Docketts that you can’t remember which one lived down there?”

“No—oh, the girl I am in love with? Miss Ruth—ah, Dockett wasn’t the name. It began with Wel—.” He looked at Ruth with so languishing an expression that she held up a warning finger.

“Remember.”

He pretended to misunderstand her.

“Certainly I remember—Ruth Welch.”

Ruth gathered up her things to leave.

“Please don’t go.—Now that just slipped out. I swear I’ll not say another word on the subject as long as I live, if you’ll just sit down.”

“I can’t trust you.”

“Yes, you can, I swear it; and I’ll tell you all about Miss Dockett and—Steve Allen.”

This was too much for Ruth, and she reseated herself with impressive condescension.

Miss Welch was greatly interested for other reasons. Her father’s health had not been very good of late, and he had been thinking of getting a winter home in the South, where he could be most of the time out of doors, as an old wound in his chest still troubled him sometimes, and the doctors said he must not for the present spend another winter in the North. He had been in correspondence with this very Mr. Still, who was spoken of so highly in those letters, about a place just where this trouble was.

Besides, a short time before this conversation of Ruth’s with Thurston, Major Welch had received a letter from Middleton, who was still abroad, asking him to look into his affairs. He had always enjoyed a large income, but of late it had, he stated, fallen off, owing, as Mr. Bolter, his agent, explained, to temporary complications growing out of extensive investments Bolter had made for him on joint account with himself in Southern enterprises. These investments, Mr. Bolter assured him, were perfectly safe and would yield in a short time immense profits, being guaranteed by the State, and managed by the strongest and most successful men down there, who were themselves deeply interested in the schemes. It had happened, that the very names Bolter had given as a guarantee of the security of his investment, had aroused Middleton’s anxiety, and though he had no reason, he said, to doubt Bolter, he did doubt Leech and Still, the men Bolter had mentioned.

Major Welch had made an investigation. And it had shown him that the investments referred to were so extensive as to involve a considerable part of his cousin’s estate.

Bolter gave Major Welch what struck the latter quite as an “audience,” though, when he learned the Major’s business, he suddenly unbent and became much more confidential, explaining everything with promptness and clearness. Bolter was a strong-looking, stout man, with a round head and a strong face. His brow was rather low, but his eyes were keen and his mouth firm. As he sat in his inner business office, with his clerks in outer pens, he looked the picture of a successful, self-contained man.

“Why, they fight a railroad coming into their country as if it were a public enemy,” he said to Major Welch.

“Then they must be pretty formidable antagonists.”

“And I have gotten letters warning me and denouncing the men who have planned and worked up the matter—and who would carry it through if they were allowed to do so—as though they were thieves.”

He rang a bell and sent for the letters. Among them was one from Dr. Cary and another from General Legaie. Though strangers, they said they wrote to him as one reported to be interested, and protested against the scheme of Still and Leech, who were destroying the State and pillaging the people. They contrasted the condition of the State before the war and at the present time. Dr. Cary’s letter stated that “for purposes of identification” he would say that both his father and grandfather had been Governors of the State. General Legaie’s letter was signed “Late General, C. S. A.”

“What are you going to do with such people!” exclaimed Mr. Bolter. “They abuse those men as if they were pickpockets, and they are the richest and most influential men in that county, and Leech will, without doubt, be the next Governor.” He handed Major Welch a newspaper containing a glowing account of Leech’s services to the Commonwealth, and a positive assertion that he would be the next Governor of the State.

“What did you write them in reply?” asked Major Welch, who was taking another glance at the letters.

“Why, I wrote them that I believed I was capable of conducting my own affairs,” said the capitalist, with satisfaction, running his hands deep in his pockets; “and if they would stop thinking about their grandfathers and the times before the war, and think a little more about their children and the present, it would be money in their pockets.”

“And what did they reply to that?”

“Ah—why, I don’t believe I ever got any reply to that. I suppose the moss had covered them by that time,” he laughed. Major Welch looked thoughtful, and the capitalist changed his tone.

“In fact I had already made the investments, and I had to see them through. Major Leech is very friendly to me. It was through him we were induced to go into the enterprise—through him—and because of the opportunities it offered, at the same time that it was made perfectly safe by the guarantee of both the counties and the States. He used to be in my—in our—employ, and he is a very shrewd fellow, Leech is. That was the way we came to go in, and it doesn’t do to swap horses in the stream.”

“Mrs. Welch thinks very highly of him,” said Major Welch, meditatively. “She has had some correspondence with him on behalf of her charitable society for the freedmen, and she has been much impressed by him.”

“My only question was whether he was not a little too philanthropic,” said Bolter, significantly. “But since I have come to find out, I guess he has used his philanthropy pretty discreetly. He’s a very shrewd fellow.” His smile and manner grated on the Major somewhat.

“Perhaps he is too shrewd?” he suggested, dryly.

“Oh, no, not for me. I have made it a rule in life to treat every man as a rascal——”

“Oh!” A shadow crossed the Major’s brow, which Bolter was quick to catch.

“Until I found out differently.”

“I should think the other would have been rather inconvenient.” Major Welch changed the subject. “But Captain Middleton had some sort of trouble with this man, and has always had a dislike for him. And I think I shall go South and look into matters there.”

“Oh, well, that’s nothing,” broke in Bolter, hotly. “What does Middleton know about business? That’s his trouble. These military officers don’t understand the word. They are always stickling for their d—d dignity, and think if a man ain’t willing to wipe up the floor for ’em he’s bound to be a rascal.”

It was as much the sudden insolence in the capitalist’s tone, as his words that offended Major Welch. He rose to his feet.

“I am not aware, that being officers, and having risked their lives to save their country, necessarily makes men either more narrow or greater fools than those who stayed at home,” he said, coldly.

The other, after a sharp glance at him, was on his feet in an instant, his whole manner changed.

“My dear sir. You have misunderstood me. I assure you you have.” And he proceeded to smooth the Major down with equal shrewdness and success; delivering a most warm and eloquent eulogy on patriotism in general, and on that of Captain Lawrence Middleton in particular. Truth to tell, it was not hard to do, as the Major was one of the most placable of men, except where a principle was involved; then he was rock.

Bolter wound up by making Major Welch an offer, which the latter could not but consider handsome, to go South and represent his interests as well as Middleton’s.

“If he is going there he better be on my side than against me, and his hands would be tied then anyway,” reflected Bolter.

“You will find our interests identical,” he said, seeing the Major’s hesitation. “We are both in the same boat. And you will find that I have done by Mr. Middleton just what I have done for myself. And I have taken every precaution, of that you may be sure. And we are bound to win. We have the most successful men in the State with us, bound up by interest, and also as tight as paper can bind them. We have the law with us, the men who make, and the men who construe the law, and against us, only a few old moss-backs and soreheads. If they can beat that combination I should like to see them do it.”

The only doubt in Major Welch’s mind as to the propriety of a move to the South was on account of his daughter.

The condition of affairs there made no difference to Major Welch himself—for he felt that he had the Union behind him—and he knew it made none to Mrs. Welch. She had been working her hands off for two years to send things to the negroes through these men, Still and Leech. But with Ruth, who was the apple of her father’s eye, it might be another matter.

But when the subject was broached to Ruth, and she chimed in and sketched, with real enthusiasm, the delights of living in the South, in the country—the real country—amid palm and orange groves, the Major’s mind was set at rest. He only cautioned her against building her air-castles too high, as he knew there were no orange-groves where they were going, and though there might be palms, he doubted if they were of the material sort, or very easy to obtain.

Ruth’s ardor, however, was not to be damped just then.

“Why, the South is the land of Romance, Papa.”

“It will be if you are there,” smiled her father.

It is said that curiosity is a potent motive with what used to be called the gentler, and, occasionally, even the weaker sex, a distinction that for some time has been passing, if it has not altogether passed, away. But far be it from the writer even to appear to give adherence to such a doctrine by anything that he may set down in this veracious chronicle. He does not recollect ever to have heard this remark made by any of the thousands of women whom he has known, personally, or through books with which the press teems, and he feels sure that had it been true it would not have escaped their acute observation. In recording, therefore, the move of the Welches to the South he is simply reporting facts.

On the occasion of the discussion between Mrs. Welch and Captain Thurston, Mrs. Welch was left by that gentleman in what, in a weaker woman, might have been deemed a state of exasperation. After all the trouble she had taken to secure the evidence to confound and annihilate that young man, he had with a breath undermined her foundation, or, rather, had shown that her imposing fabric had no foundation whatever. He knew Leech, and she did not. She would now go and satisfy herself by personal knowledge that she was right and he wrong—as she well knew to be the case, anyhow. So, many people start out on a quest for information, not to test, but to prove, their opinions. Thus, when Major Welch came with the statement of the offer he had received, Mrs. Welch truthfully declared that she in some sort saw in it the hand of Providence. This was strengthened by a conversation with Miss Ruth, who quoted Thurston’s opinion of Leech.

“Captain Thurston, my dear!” said Mrs. Welch. “So light and frivolous a person as Captain Thurston is really incapable of forming a just opinion of such a man as Mr. Leech, whose letters breathe a spirit of the truest Christian humility, as well as the most exalted courage under circumstances which might well make even a strong man quail. I hope you will not quote Captain Thurston to me again. You know what my opinion of him has always been. I never could understand what your father’s and Lawrence Middleton’s infatuation for him was. Besides, you know that Captain Thurston was in love with some girl down in that country, and when a man is in love he is absolutely irresponsible. Love makes a man a fool about everything.”

Thus Mrs. Welch, so to speak, shot at, even if she did not kill, two birds with one stone. If she did not kill this second bird it was not her fault, as the glance which she gave Ruth showed. Ruth’s face did not wholly satisfy her, for she added:

“Besides that, Mr. Bolter has been down there and he tells me that he thinks very highly of Major Leech.”

“Oh, Mr. Bolter! I don’t like Mr. Bolter, and neither do you,” began Miss Ruth.

“My dear, that is very unreasonable; what possible cause can you have to dislike Mr. Bolter, for you do not know him at all?”

“I have met him. He did not go into the army; but stayed at home and made money. Papa does not like him either.”

“Don’t you see how illogical that is. We cannot dislike everyone who did not go into the army.”

“No, I know that.” Ruth pondered a moment and then broke out, laughing: “Why, mamma, I have given two reasons for not liking Mr. Bolter, and you did not give any for disliking Captain Thurston.”

“That is different,” replied Mrs. Welch, gravely, though she did not explain precisely how, and perhaps Ruth did not see it.

“Mamma,” burst out Ruth, warmly, her face glowing, “I believe in a man’s fighting for what he believes right. If I had been a man when the war broke out I should have gone into it, and if I had lived at the South I should have fought for the South.”

“Ruth!” exclaimed her mother, deeply shocked.

“I would, mamma, I know I would, and you would too; for I know how much trouble you took to get an exchange for that young boy, Mr. Jacquelin or something, that Miss Bush, the nurse, was interested in.”

“Ruth, I hope I shall never hear you say that again,” protested Mrs. Welch, warmly. “You do not understand.”

“I think I do—I won’t say it again—but I have wanted to say it for a long time, and I feel so much better for having said it, mamma.”

So the conversation ended.

It was decided that Major Welch and Ruth should go ahead and select a place which they could rent until they should find one that exactly suited them, and then Mrs. Welch, as soon as she could finish packing the furniture and other things which they would want, should follow them.

A week later, Ruth and her father found themselves in the old county and almost at their journey’s end, in a region which though as far as possible from Ruth’s conception of palm and orange groves, was to the girl, shut up as she had been all her life in a city, not a whit less romantic and strange.

It was far wilder than she had supposed it would be. The land lay fallow, or was cultivated only in patches; the 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. Some time, perhaps, she would see Blair Cary, about whom Reely Thurston was always hinting in connection with Larry Middleton; and she tried to picture to herself what she would be like—small and dark and very vivacious, or else no doubt, haughty. She was sure she should not like her.

On her father, however, the same surroundings that pleased Miss Ruth had a very different effect. Major Welch had always carried in his mind the picture of this section as he remembered it the first time he rode through it, when it was filled with fine plantations and pleasant homesteads, and where, even during the war, the battle in which he had been wounded had been fought amid orchards and rolling fields and pastures.

At length, at the top of the hill they came to a fork, but though there was an open field between the roads, such as Major Welch remembered, there was no church there; in the open field was only a great thicket, an acre or more in extent, and the field behind it was nothing but a wilderness.

“We’ve missed the road, just as I supposed,” said Major Welch. “We ought to have kept nearer to the river, and I will take this road and strike the other somewhere down this way. I thought this country looked very different—and yet—?” He gazed all around him, at the open fields filled with bushes and briars, the rolling hills beyond, and the rampart of blue spurs across the background.

“No, we must have crossed Twist Creek lower down that day.” He turned into the road leading off from that they had been travelling, and drove on. This way, however, the country appeared even wilder, and they had driven two or three miles before they saw anyone. Finally they came on a man walking along, just where a footpath left the road and turned across the old field. He was a small, sallow fellow, very shabbily dressed, the only noticeable thing about him being his eyes, which were both keen and good-humored. Major Welch stopped him and inquired as to their way.

“Where do you want to go?” asked the man, politely.

“I want to go to Mr. Hiram Still’s,” said the Major.

The countryman gave him a quick glance.

“Well, you can’t git there this way,” he said, his tone changed a little; “the bridge is down, on this road and nobody don’t travel it much now—you’ll have to go back to Old Brick Church and take the other road. There’s a new bridge on that road, but it’s sort o’ rickety since these freshes, and you have to take to the old ford again. One of Hiram’s and Jonadab’s jobs,” he explained, with a note of hostility in his voice. Then, in a more friendly tone, he added: “The water’s up still from last night’s rain, and the ford ain’t the best no time, so you better not try it unless you have somebody as knows it to set you right. I would go myself, but—” He hesitated, a little embarrassed—and the Major at once protested.

“No, indeed! Just tell me where is Old Brick Church.”

“That fork back yonder where you turned is what’s called Old Brick Church,” said the man; “that’s where it used to stand.”

“What has become of the church?”

“Pulled down during the war.”

“Why don’t they rebuild it?” asked the Major, a little testily over the man’s manner.

“Well, I s’pose they think it’s cheaper to leave it down,” said the man, dryly.

“Is there any place where we could spend the night?” the Major asked, with a glance up at the sunset sky.

“Oh, Hiram Still, he’s got a big house. He’ll take you in, if he gits a chance,” he said, half grimly.

“But I mean, if we get overtaken by night this side the river? You tell me the bridge is shaky and the ford filled up now. I have my daughter along and don’t want to take any chances.”

“Oh, papa, the idea! As if I couldn’t go anywhere you went,” put in Ruth, suddenly.

At the Major’s mention of his daughter, the man’s manner changed.

“There’s Doct’r Cary’s,” he said, with a return of his first friendly tone. “They take everyone in. You just turn and go back by Old Brick Church, and keep the main, plain road till you pass two forks on your left and three on your right, then turn in at the third you come to on your left, and go down a hill and up another, and you’re right there.” The Major and Ruth were both laughing; their director, however, remained grave.

“Ain’t no fences nor gates to stop you. Just keep the main, plain road, like I tell you, and you can’t git out.”

“I can’t? Well, I’ll see,” said the Major, and after an inquiring look at the man, he turned and drove back.

“What bright eyes he has,” said Ruth, but her father was pondering.

“It’s a most curious thing; but that man’s face and voice were both familiar to me,” said he, presently. “Quite as if I had seen them before in a dream. Did you observe how his whole manner changed as soon as I mentioned Still’s name? They are a most intractable people.”

“But I’m sure he was very civil,” defended Ruth.

“Civility costs nothing and often means nothing. Ah, well, we shall see.” And the Major drove on.

As they passed by the fork again, both travellers looked curiously across at the great clump of trees rising out of the bushes and briars. The notes of a dove cooing in the soft light came from somewhere in the brake. They made out a gleam of white among the bushes, but neither of them spoke. Major Welch was recalling a night he had spent in that church-yard amid the dead and the dying.

Ruth was thinking of the description Middleton had given of the handsome mansion and grounds of Dr. Cary, and was wondering if this Dr. Cary could be the same.