Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction

by Thomas Nelson Page

Steve Allen, and the other young soldiers who were there, found themselves sufficiently entertained, fighting over their battles, as though they had been the commanding generals, and laying off new campaigns in a fresh and different field; meantime, getting their hands in, adoring and teasing their young hostess, who was related to, or connected with, most of them. They had left Blair Cary, a dimple-faced, tangle-haired romp of thirteen or fourteen, with saucy eyes, which even then, as they danced behind their dark lashes, promised the best substitute for beauty. They now found her sprung up to a slender young lady of “quite seventeen,” whose demureness and new-born dignity were the more bewitching, because they were belied by her laughing glances. Mars has ever been the captive of Venus as well as her conqueror, and more than Steve Allen and Jacquelin Gray fell victims at the first fire from those “deadly batteries,” as Steve afterward characterized Blair Cary’s eyes, in his first poem to Belinda—published in the Brutusville Guardian. But they all declared they saw at once that they stood no chance with Jack Gray, whose face wore “that sickly look,” as Steve called it, which, he said, “every woman thought interesting and none could resist.” Over all of which nonsense, Miss Blair’s dark eyes twinkled with the pleasure of a girl who is too young to comprehend it quite fully, but yet finds it wonderfully delightful. As for Jacquelin, to him she was no longer mortal: he had robed her in radiance and lifted her among the stars.

The older people found not less pleasure in the reunion than their juniors, and appeared to have grown young again. And while the youngsters were out on the grass at Miss Blair’s feet, in more senses than one, the General and Dr. Cary and the other seniors were on the vine-covered portico, discussing grave questions of state-craft, showing precisely how and when the Confederacy might have been saved and made the greatest power on earth—together with other serious matters. The General teased himself as of old about Miss Thomasia, and the Doctor teased them both. The General had been noted formerly as a great precisionist in matters of dress, as well as in all other matters, and now, when he stalked about the veranda, with his old uniform-coat buttoned to the chin as jauntily as ever, and with a limp bit of white showing above the collar and at the wrists, in which he evidently took much pride, the Doctor, who knew where the shirt came from, and that, like the one which he himself had on, it was made from an under-garment of one of the ladies, could not help rallying him a little. The Doctor wisely took advantage of Mrs. Cary’s absence from the room to do this, but had got no farther than to congratulate the General on the luxury of fresh linen and to receive from him the gallant assurance that he had felt on putting it on that morning, as a knight of old might have felt when he donned his armor prepared by virgin hands, when Mrs. Cary entered and, recognizing instantly from her husband’s look of suspicious innocence and Miss Thomasia’s expression, that some mischief was going on, pounced on him promptly and bore him off. When he returned from the “judgment chamber,” as he called it, he was under a solemn pledge not to open the subject again to the General, which he observed to the best of his ability, though he kept Miss Thomasia on thorns, by coming as near to it as he dared with a due regard to himself in view of his wife’s watchfulness.

In fact, these men were thoroughly enjoying home life after the long interval of hardship and deprivation, and neither the sorrow of the past nor the gloom of the present could wholly depress them. The future, fortunately, they could not know. Then, among young people there must be joy, if there be not death; and fun is as natural as grass or flowers in spring or any other outbudding of a new and bounding life.

So, even amid the ruins, the flowers bloomed and there were fun and gayety. Hope was easily worth all the other spirits in Pandora’s box put together.

Before the company separated they began to talk even of a party, and, to meet the objections of old Mr. Langstaff and some others, it was agreed that it should be a contribution-entertainment and that the proceeds should go to the wounded soldiers and soldiers’ widows, of the county. This Steve declared was a deep-laid scheme on the part of Jacquelin Gray. It was already decided on when the Doctor returned to the sitting-room, after Mrs. Cary had summoned him thence, and the question under advisement was whether the Yankee officers at the court-house should be invited. Steve Allen had started it. The ladies were a unit.

“No, indeed; not one of them should set his foot inside the door; not a girl would dance with one of them.” On this point Miss Blair was very emphatic, and her laughing eyes lost their gleam of sunlight and flashed forth a sudden spark which showed deeper depths behind those dark lashes than had appeared at any time before.

“I’ll bet you do,” said Steve. He stretched out his long legs, settled himself, and looked at Blair with that patronizing air which always exasperated her.

“I’ll bet I don’t!”—with her head up, and her color deepening a little at the bravado of using such a word.

“I’ll bet my horse you’ll break a set with Jack for the Yankee captain,” declared Steve.