Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

As the young man went out from this interview he met Blair. She had just come in from her school; her cheeks were all aglow and she gave him a warm handclasp—and her eyes, after the first glance into his, fell. He was sure from what he had heard that she was engaged to Steve, and he had rehearsed a hundred times how he should meet her. Now like a puff of wind went all his strong resolutions. It was as though he had opened a door toward the sunrise. A fresh sense of her charm came over him as though he had just discovered her. Her presence appeared to him to fill all the place. She had grown in beauty since he went away. She was blushing and laughing and running away from Steve, who had met her outside and told her of Jacquelin’s arrival, and was calling to her through the door to come back; but after shaking hands with Jacquelin she sped on upstairs, with a little side glance at him as she ran up. She had never appeared so beautiful to Jacquelin, and his heart leaped up in him at her charm. It was the vision that had gone with him all around the globe. He followed her with his eyes. As she turned at the top of the stairs his heart sank; for, leaning down over the banisters, she gave Steve a glance so full of meaning that Jacquelin took it all in in an instant.

“I’m going to tell him,” called Steve, teasingly.

“No, you promised me you would not, Steve,” and she was gone.

Jacquelin turned to the door.

Steve called him:

“Jack, Jack, come here.”

But Jacquelin could not stand seeing him at that moment. He wanted to be alone, and he went out to meet the full realization of it all by himself.

Jacquelin made up his mind at once. Although Doctor and Mrs. Cary pressed him to stay with them, he felt that he could not live in the house with Blair. How could he sit by and see her and Steve day by day! Steve was as a brother to him, and Blair, from her manner, meant to be a sister; but he could not endure it. He declared his intention of starting at once to practise law. Steve offered him a partnership, meeting Jacquelin’s objection that it would not be fair, with the statement that he would make Jacquelin do all the work, as he proposed to be a statesman.

So, as the Doctor had said that a change and occupation in household duties might possibly do Mrs. Gray good, Jacquelin rented a small farm between the Carys’ and the old hospital-place on the river, and they moved there. His mother and Miss Thomasia furnished it with the assistance of Mrs. Cary, and Blair, and other neighbors; the old pieces of furniture and other odds and ends giving, as Miss Thomasia said, “a distinction which even the meanness of the structure itself could not impair. For, my dear,” she said to Blair, who was visiting them the evening after they had made their exodus from Dr. Cary’s to their new home, “I have often heard my grandfather say that nothing characterized gentle-people more than dignity under misfortune.” And she smoothed down her faded dress and resumed her knitting with an air which Blair in vain tried to reproduce to her father on her return.

Jacquelin was vaguely conscious that a change had come, not only over the old county since he left it, but over his friends also. Not merely had the places gone down, but the people themselves were somewhat changed. They looked downcast; their tone, formerly jovial and cheery, had a tinge of bitterness. In those few years a difference between him and them had grown up. He did not analyze it, but it was enough to disquiet him. Had his point of view changed? He saw defects which he thought he could remedy. Those he was with, apparently saw none. They simply plodded on, as though oblivious of the facts. It made him unhappy. He determined to use his enlarged view, as he deemed it, to instruct and aid those who lacked his advantages. It seemed to him that, in his travels, his horizon had widened. On the high seas or in a foreign land, it had been the flag of the nation that he wanted to see. He had begun to realize the idea of a great nation that should be known and respected wherever a ship could sail or a traveller could penetrate; of a re-united country in which the people of both sides, retaining all the best of both sides, should vie with each other in building up the nation, and should equally receive all its benefits. He had pondered much on this, and he thought he had discovered the way to accomplish it, in a complete acceptance of the new situation.