Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

CAPTAIN ALLEN HAS AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

Dr. Cary had hardly been laid away, when the County had to face another sorrow.

The trial of Captain Allen was set for the next day, and the county seat was in a fever of expectation and apprehension. It was the final struggle between the old residents and the new invaders, and it seemed that the latter must triumph. There was no hope. It was the beginning of the complete subjugation of the people. All thoughts were centred on the little village where the battle was to be joined and fought. A dark cloud seemed to have settled like a pall over the place which even the soft afterglow of a summer evening could not lighten. The breath of flowers was on the breeze that came from the shrubbery-filled yards and rustled the trees. Yet the sounds were subdued, and the faces of the people were gloomy and grim. The Judge had arrived, and had taken his room in the old Hotel. Leech, solemn and once more self-assertive, with a face still pale from his recent attack, but a gleam of joy in his pale blue eyes, was quartered with Judge Bail in the hotel. Some said he was afraid to go to his house; some that he wanted to be near the Judge, and keep his mind filled with his insinuations. It was hinted that he was afraid Bail would offer to sell out. McRaffle had quarrelled with Leech and had made such an offer. He had also said that the Judge could be reached, if the sum tendered were large enough. At least, such was the rumor about the village. The jury was assembled and kept together. The witnesses had been brought to town and were also keeping together. The lawyers, with grave faces, were consulting behind locked doors and closely shut windows—those who represented the Government in a room adjoining Leech’s, and not far from the Judge’s chamber; and those who were for the prisoner, among them some of the ablest lawyers in the State, in Steve’s old office. Mr. Bagby and General Legaie were the leading counsel, and Jerry lounged about the door like a Bashi-Bazouk. The crowd in the village was larger than it had been in a good while. Men were assembled in groups in the suburbs or on the verandas, sullen and almost awe-struck, discussing the points in the case with the intelligence of those trained by sharp experience to know the gravity of such an occasion and to weigh the chances. It was known that the principal evidence against Captain Allen was his own confession. This was his chief danger. Leech (it was noticeable that, when Leech was there, it was not the Government, whose soldiers were still quartered in the village, but Leech that was spoken of as representing the prosecution)—Leech could not prove any act of his without that. The lawyers could break down all the witnesses except one—the one to whom Captain Allen had been fool enough to talk; her testimony they could not get around. Mr. Bagby and General Legaie had said so. Mr. Bagby said that a man’s own confession was the hardest thing in the world to overcome; that one was a fool ever to confess anything. Such were the observations of a group assembled on one of the street corners, out of hearing of the sentries.

This idea gave the discussion another turn. “Was Captain Allen really in love with Miss Welch?” someone questioned. He had been in love with her beyond a doubt, but he had stopped visiting her. Some thought she had led him on, to get all out of him she could; others that he had stopped, and that she was taking her revenge. One element considered that it served him right. Why should he have to go off after a Yankee girl, whose people were all against them, when there were plenty of their own girls just as pretty and more attractive? Others took Steve’s part. If a man fell in love he fell in love, that was all; and if he was in love, he had a right to do as he chose—there was no Mason and Dixon line in love. Even these, however, thought that Miss Welch was taking her revenge.

Andy Stamper, who had come up and was grimly listening with unwonted silence, broke forth with a strong denunciation of such nonsense. He did not believe a word of it. Miss Welch had been to see Miss Blair Cary and Miss Thomasia, old Mr. Langstaff and Mr. Bagby, and had done all she could to keep from testifying. She was “cut up as the mischief about it,” declared Andy. She had wanted to go away, but Leech was too sharp for her; he had had her recognized to appear. He knew he could not convict the Captain without her. Her father, too, was awfully troubled about it, and had been to Washington to see what he could do. He could not bear Leech. Was he not getting ready to sue him about that railroad steal? He had just come back from the North. They had not come to the court-house. Perhaps he had been able to do something?

The crowd did not accept Andy’s views. Some of them thought the attitude of Major Welch was all a sham; that his anger with Leech was just a pretence, and that he was really in collusion with him. Had he not objected to Captain Allen’s visiting at his house, and hadn’t he done all he could to trace up Leech when the Captain had him hidden. He had made a big show of giving up when Captain Steve and Mr. Gray proved Hiram Still’s rascality; but he had bided his time, and he was getting a pretty sweet revenge. He had been North; but the speakers believed it was to push the case against the Captain, not to stop it. He could have stopped it easy enough, if he had chosen. He was “in with the biggest of ’em.”

Little Andy chewed in glum silence. Suddenly he burst out:

“Well, I say that man don’t pretend to nothin’. Whether he likes the Captain or whether he don’t, or whether you like him or whether you don’t, is one thing. But what he is, he is; and he don’t pretend to nothin’. If all Yankees was like him, I wouldn’t care how many they was—unless I had to fight ’em.”

This sententious speech had its effect on the crowd, and the sergeant was proceeding to expound further his opinion. But just then the sound of wheels was heard; and the next moment a close carriage, with a good pair of horses, drove quickly by them in a cloud of dust. It was recognized as Major Welch’s carriage, and, though the curtains were half-drawn, the group recognized the occupants as Major and Mrs. Welch and their daughter, and one other person, who was leaning back. One man thought it looked like old Mr. Langstaff; but, of course, it was not he. A number of groans followed the carriage as it passed on down the street toward the hotel. Andy’s countenance and stock both fell.

To a man like Steve Allen the sentence which appeared to wait for him on the morrow was worse than death. He had faced death scores of times, and would readily have done so again, on any occasion. But he had never apprehended that a shameful sentence, however undeserved, would be passed on him. Better, a thousand times, that he had died in battle and lain with his comrades, who had left honorable names. He summoned to his aid all his fortitude, and tried to soothe himself with the knowledge that he had never committed a dishonorable act; that the cause of his present situation was the desire to act a noble part and save others. But do what he might, he could not keep from his mind the feeling that, deserved or not, a conviction and sentence to the penitentiary placed a stigma on him never to be erased. All his high hopes would be blighted, his future ruined; he would have brought disgrace on his family; he could never more face men as he had done heretofore; he would not be fit to speak to a lady.