Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

DR. CARY RETURNS FROM THE WAR, AND TAKES AN INVENTORY OF STOCK

The home-coming of the men who went to the war was about the same time of the year that most of them went forth. While the troops of the victorious army were parading amid the acclaims of multitudes, the remnants of that other army that had met and defeated them so often were making their way back to their dismantled homes, with everything they had fought for lost, save honor. They came home singly or in squads from northward, eastward and westward, wherever their commands happened to be when the final collapse came. And but for certain physical landmarks they would scarcely have known the old neighborhood. The blue mountains still stretched across the skyline, with the nearer spurs nestled at their feet; the streams still ran through the little valleys between the hills, under their willows and sycamores, as they ran when Steve Allen and Jacquelin and the other boys fished and swam in them; but the bridges were gone, and the fishing-holes were dammed with fallen trees, some of them cut down during the battles that had been fought on their banks. And the roads made by the army-wagons often turned out through the unfenced fields and the pillaged and fire-scorched forests.

Dr. Cary, now known as Major Cary, from his title as surgeon in General Legaie’s brigade, and Captain Allen and Sergeant Stamper came home together as they had ridden away together through the April haze four years before. They had started from the place of their surrender with a considerable company, who had dropped off from time to time as they had arrived at the roads which took them their several ways, and these three were the last to separate. When they parted, it was at the forks where the old brick church had stood when they last passed that way. The church had gone down in the track of war. Nothing remained of it now except fragments of the walls, and even these were already half hidden by the thicket which had grown up around them. It brought the whole situation very close home to them; for they all had memories of it: Dr. Cary had buried his father and mother there, and Stamper and Delia Dove had been married in it a year before. And they did not have a great many words to speak—perhaps, none at all at the very last—only a “Well—Well!” with a rising inflection, and something like a sigh; and then, after a long pause, from the older officer, a sudden: “Well, good-by, Steve;—good-by, Sergeant. We’ll have to begin over again.—God bless you—Come over and see me. Good-by.” And from each of the other two, “Good-by, Major—I will;—Good-by, Tarquin,” to the Major’s tall, gray-haired body-servant, waiting silently, on his weary horse; then a couple of hard handgrips and silence; and the horses went plashing off in the mud, slow and sullen, reluctant to leave each other. All turned once to look back; caught each other’s glances and waved their hands; and then rode on through the mud, their heads sunk on their chests, and the officer’s two body-servants, old Tarquin and young Jerry, following silently behind their masters.

The meeting at home was in the dusk.

The little group waiting on the hill-top at Dr. Cary’s for the small cavalcade as they rode up through the waning light had been waiting and watching for days; but there were no words spoken at the meeting. Only, Mrs. Cary walked out from the others and met her husband a part of the way down the hill, and Blair followed her a moment after.

When the doctor reached his door, walking between his wife and daughter, an arm around each, he turned to his old servant, who was holding the horses:

“Tarquin, you are free. I present you the horse you rode home. Take the saddles off, and turn them out.” And he walked into the house, shaking by the hand the servants clustered about the door.

It was only when he was inside, facing the portrait of a young boy with handsome, dark eyes, that he gave way.

The very next day Dr. Cary, to use a commercial phrase, began to “take stock.”

“Taking stock” is always a serious thing to do, and it must come often into every thoughtful man’s life. He is his own ledger. In all cases he must look back and measure himself by himself. Perhaps some hour brings him some question on which all must hinge. It may come unexpectedly, or he may have seen it advancing with inevitable steps. He may have brought it on himself, or he may have fought strenuously against it. It is all the same. It comes straight down upon him, a cyclone threatening to overwhelm him, and he must meet it either as a brave man or a craven. It comes, sweeps past or over him and leaves him in its track, unscathed or wounded or slain. But it comes. And this is Life. The ancients called it Fate; we call it Providence or Chance, or the result of natural laws. But by whatever name known, it is inscrutable.