Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

The meeting at Birdwood was a notable occasion. It was, in a way, the outward and visible sign of the return of peace. Someone said it looked like the old St. Ann congregation risen from the dead, to which Miss Thomasia added, that the gentlemen, at least, were now all immortal, and the General, with his hand on his heart, gallantly responded that the ladies had always been so. The speech, however, left some faces grave, for there were a number of vacant places that could not be forgotten.

Jacquelin, under the excitement of his arrival, felt himself sufficiently restored and stimulated to join his mother and Aunt Thomasia, and be driven over to Birdwood, and though he suffered a good deal from the condition of the roads, yet when Blair ran forward and offered her shoulder for “his other crutch,” he felt as though a bad wound might after all have some compensations.

Steve Allen was the life of the company. He had ridden over on his black horse, “Hot-Spur,” that, like himself, had been wounded several times in the last campaigns, though never seriously. He spent his time teasing Blair. He declared that Jacquelin was holding on to his crutch only to excite sympathy, and that his own greatest cause for hatred of the Yankees now was either that they had not shot him instead of Jack, or had not killed Jack, and he offered to go out and let anyone shoot him immediately for one single pitying glance like those he said Blair was lavishing on Jack.

Jacquelin, with a vivid memory of the morning before, had meant to kiss Blair on his arrival, yet when they met he was seized with a sudden panic, and could hardly look into her eyes. She appeared to have grown taller and older since yesterday, as well as prettier, and when Steve, on arriving, insolently caught and kissed her before them all, on the plea of cousinship, Jacquelin was conscious of a pang of consuming jealousy, and for the first time in his life would gladly have thrashed Steve.

There was one thing that marred the occasion somewhat, or might have done so under other circumstances. The entire negro population, who could travel, moved by some idea that the arrival of the Federal soldiers concerned them, were flocking to the county seat, leaving the fields deserted and the cabins empty.

The visitors had found the roads lined with them as they came along. They were all civil, but what could it mean? Some of the young men, like Steve and Jacquelin, were much stirred up about it, and talked of organizing quietly so as to be ready if the need should arise. Dr. Cary, however, and the older ones, opposed anything of the kind. Any organization whatever would be viewed with great suspicion by the authorities, and might be regarded as a breach of their parole, and was not needed. They were already organized simply by being what they were. And, indeed, though gaunt and weather-beaten, in their old worn uniforms they were a martial-looking set. There was not a man there who had not looked Death in the eyes many a time, and the stare had left something notable in every face.

It was a lovely day, and the early flowers were peeping out as if to be sure before they came too far that winter had gone for good. The soft haze of Spring was over the landscape.

The one person who was wanting, to make the company complete, was the little General. They were just discussing him, and were wondering if he had gone to Mexico; and Steve, seated at Miss Thomasia’s side, was teasing her about him, declaring that, in his opinion, it was a pretty widow, whose husband had been in the General’s brigade and had been shot, that the General had gone South after; when a horseman was seen riding rapidly across the open field far below, taking the ditches as he came to them. When he drew nearer he was recognized to be none other than the gallant little General himself. As he came trotting across the lawn, among the great trees, he presented a martial figure, and handkerchiefs were waved to him, and many cheers were given, so that he was quite overcome when he dismounted in the midst of a number of his old soldiers, and found himself literally taken in the arms of both the men and the ladies.

The General beamed, as he gazed around with a look that showed that he thought life might still be worth living if only he could meet occasionally such a reception as had just been given him. Others smiled too; for it was known that the General had been an almost life-long lover and suitor of Miss Thomasia Gray, whose twenty years’ failure to smile on him had in no way damped his ardor or dimmed his hope. In fact, the old soldier, in his faded gray, with his bronzed, worn, high-bred face, was nearer achieving the object of his life at that moment than he had ever been in the whole twenty years of his pursuit. Had the occasion come fifteen or even ten years earlier, he might have done so; but Miss Thomasia had reached the point when to marry appeared to her ridiculous, and the only successful rival of the shaft of Cupid is the shaft of Ridicule.

At such a meeting as this there were necessarily many serious things to be considered. One was the question of bread; another of existence. None could look around on the wide, deserted fields and fail to take in this. Everything like civil government had disappeared. There was not a civil officer left in the State. From Governor to justices of the peace, every office had been vacated. The Birdwood meeting was the first in the county at which was had any discussion of a plan for the preservation of order. Even this was informal and unpremeditated; but when it reached the ears of Colonel Krafton, the new commander of that district, who had just arrived, it had taken on quite another complexion, and the “Cary Conference,” as it came to be called, was productive of some very far-reaching consequences to certain of those who participated in it, and to the county itself.