Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

“This is Julius, Captain, of whom I have spoken to you,” he said, after he had shaken hands with the old butler, and with the score of other negroes who had rushed out and gathered around him on hearing of his arrival. “Julius will attend to you, and unless he has lost some of his art you will confess that I have not exaggerated his abilities.” He faced his guest and made him a low bow. “I hope, Captain, you will consider this your home as long as you wish. Julius, the Captain will stay with us for the present, and I suspect he’d like a julep.” And with a wave of the hand the little General transferred the responsibility of his guest to the old butler, who stood bowing, dividing his glances between those of affection for his master and of shrewd inspection of the visitor.

The latter was a tall, spare man, rather sallow than dark, but with a piercing, black eye, and a closely shut mouth under a long, black, drooping mustache. He acknowledged the General’s speech with a civil word, and Julius’s bow with a nod and a look, short but keen and inquiring, and then, flinging himself into the best seat, leant his head back and half closed his eyes, while the General went out and received the negroes, who, with smiling faces, were still gathering on the news of his arrival.

During this absence the guest did not rise from his chair; but turned his head slowly from time to time, until his eyes had rested on every article in the field of his vision. He might have been making an appraisement.

The General, in fact, did not know any more of his guest than Julius knew. He had come on him only that afternoon at a fork in the road, resting, stretched out on a couple of fence-rails, while his horse nibbled and picked at the grass and leaves near by. The gray uniform, somewhat fresher than those the General was accustomed to, attracted the General’s attention, and when Captain McRaffle, as the stranger called himself, asked him the nearest way to Brutusville, or to some gentleman’s house, the General at once invited him to his home. He had heard, he stated, that a company of Yankees had already been sent to Brutusville; but he could show him the way to a house where gentlemen had lived in the past, and where, if he thought he would pass muster, one was about to live again. And with this invitation Captain McRaffle became an inmate of Thornleigh, as the General’s place was called, and might have stayed there indefinitely had not unforeseen contingencies caused him to remove his quarters.

Just as the General returned from his reception on the veranda, the old butler entered with a waiter and two juleps sparkling in their glasses. At sight of them the General beamed, and even the guest’s cold eyes lit up.

“On my soul! he is the most remarkable fellow in the world,” declared the General to his visitor. “Where did you get this?”

“Well, you see, suh,” said Julius, “de Yankees over yander was givin’ out rations, and I thought I’d git a few, so’s to be ready for you ’ginst you come.”

The General smiled delightedly, and between the sips of his julep proceeded to extract from Julius all the news of the county since his last visit, a year or more before, and to give a running commentary of his own for the enlightenment of his guest, who, it must be said, appeared not quite as much interested in it all as he might have been.

All the people on the place, Julius said, had been over to the court-house already to see the soldiers, but most of them had come back. He had been there himself one day, but had returned the same evening, as he would not leave the place unguarded at night.