Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

It was a great blow to Jacquelin to find on his return what extraordinary changes had taken place in the county: Still, occupying not only his old home, but Dr. Cary’s; Leech the supreme power in all public matters in the county; Nicholas Ash driving a carriage, with money that must have been stolen; and almost the entire gentry of the State either turned out of their homes or just holding on, while those whom he had left half-amused children playing at the game of freedmen, were parading around the country in all the bravery and insolence of an armed mob. All this was a shock to him. He spoke of his views to Dr. Cary. The Doctor was the person who had first suggested the idea to his mind, and was the one who, he felt, was the soundest and safest guide to follow. In the little that he had seen of him since his return he had found him, as he knew he would be, precisely the same he had always been, absolutely calm and unruffled. To his astonishment the Doctor shook his head.

“It is Utopian. I thought so myself formerly and, as you may remember, incurred much animadversion and some obloquy. I did not care a button about that. But I am not sure that General Legaie and those who agreed with him, whose action I at that time thought the height of folly, were not nearer right than I was. I am sure my principle was correct, and, perhaps, had they yielded and gone in with us at the beginning it might have been different; but I am not certain as to it now.” He bowed his head in deep and painful reflection.

“It is now vae victis, and the only hope is in resistance,” he proceeded, sadly. “Yielding is esteemed simply a confession of cowardice. The miscreants who rule us know no restraint except fear. You will be astonished when I tell you that the last few years have almost overthrown the views I have held for a lifetime. I am nearer agreeing with Legaie than I ever was in my whole life.” The old fellow shook his head in deep despondency over this fatal declension.

Jacquelin did not agree with him. He had all a young man’s confidence. He determined that he would effect his ends by law. He shortly had an illustration of what the Doctor meant.

Mrs. Gray was failing steadily. The strain she had undergone had been too much for her. She had lived only until Jacquelin’s return.

To the end, all her heart was on her old home. In those last days she went back constantly to the time when she had come as a bride to her home adorned with all that love and forethought could devise. The war and the long years of struggle seemed to have been blotted out and her memory appeared only to retain and to dwell on every scene of the old life. One of her constant thoughts was: If she could only have lain at the old home, at her husband’s side! So, she passed quietly away. In the watches of the last night, when no one was with her but Jacquelin, after she had talked to him of Rupert and confided him to his care, she asked Jacquelin if he thought she might ever be taken home. His father and she had picked out the spot under one of the great trees.

“Mother,” said Jacquelin, kneeling beside her and holding one of her thin, transparent hands in his, “if I live and God is good to me, you shall lie there.”

He had consulted General Legaie and Steve on the subject, and they both had thought that the burying-ground had not been conveyed in the deed to Still, though Leech, to whom, as counsel for Still, they had broached the matter, asserted that it had been included.