Peculiar: A Tale of the Great Transition

“Hail, year of God’s farming! Hail, summer of an emancipated continent, which shall lay up in storehouse and barn the great truths that were worth the costly dressing of a people’s blood!”—Rev. John Weiss.

In one of the rooms of the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans a man sat meditating. The windows looked out on a street where soldiers were going through their drill amid occasional shouts from by-standers. As the noise grew louder, the man rose and went to a window. He was hardly above the middle stature, slim and compact, but as lithe as if jointed like an eel. His hair was slightly streaked with gray. His features, though not full, spoke health, vigor, and pure habits of life; while his white, well-preserved teeth, neatly trimmed beard, and well-cut, well-adjusted clothes showed that, as he left his youth behind him, his attention to his personal appearance did not decrease. Fourteen years had made but little change in Vance. It had not tamed the fire of his eyes nor slackened the alertness of his tread.

As he caught sight of the “stars and bars” waving in the spring sunlight, an expression of scorn was emitted in his frown, and he exclaimed: “Detested rag! I shall yet live to trample you in the dirt on that very spot where you now flaunt so bravely. Shout on, poor fools! Continue, ye unreasoning cattle, to crop the flowery food, and lick the hand just raised to shed your blood. And you, too, leaders of the rank and file, led, in your turn, by South Carolina fire-eaters, go on and overtake that fate denounced by the prophet on evil-doers. Hug the strong delusion and believe the lie! Declare, with the smatterers of the Richmond press, that Christian civilization is a mistake, and that the new Confederacy is a God-sent missionary to the nations to teach them that pollution is purity, and incest a boon from heaven. The time is not far distant when you shall learn how far the Eternal Powers are the allies of human laziness, arrogance, and lust!”

Suddenly the soliloquist seemed struck by the appearance of some one in the crowd; for, taking from his pocket an opera-glass, and regulating the focus, he looked through it, then muttered: “Yes, it is he! Poor maggot! What haughtiness in his look!”

Just then a man on horseback, in the dress of a civilian, and followed by a slave, also mounted, rode forward nearer to where Vance sat at his window. A multitude gathered round the foremost equestrian, and called for a speech. “The Kunnle is jest frum South Kerlinay,” exclaimed a swarthy inebriate, who seemed to be spokesman for the mob. “A speech frum Kunnle Ratcliff! Hoorray!”

Ratcliff, with a gesture of annoyance, rose in his stirrups, and said: “Friends, I’ve nothing to tell you that you can’t find better told in the newspapers. This is no time for talk. We want action now. All’s right at Charleston. Sumter has fallen. That’s the first great step. The Yankees may bluster, but they’ll never fight. The meanest white man at the South is more than a match for any five Yankees. We’ll have them begging to be let into our Southern Confederacy before Christmas. But we won’t receive ’em. No! As Jeff Davis well says, sooner hyenas than Yankees! But we must whip them into decency. And so, before the next Fourth of July, we mean to have our flag flying over Faneuil Hall. We are the master race, my friends! We must show these nigger stealing, beggarly Yankees that they must stand cap in hand when they venture to come into our presence. Don’t believe the croakers who tell you slavery will be weakened by secession. It’s going to be strengthened. So convinced am I of it, that I’ve doubled my number of slaves; and if any of you wish to sell, bring on your niggers! Do you see that flag? Well, that flag has got to wave over all Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. In five years from now every man of you shall own his score of niggers and his hundred acres of land. So go ahead, and aim low when you sight a Yankee.”

The speech was received with cheers, and Ratcliff started his horse; but the leading loafer of the crowd seized the reins, and said: “Can’t let yer off so, Kunnle,—can’t no how you kun fix it. We want a reg’lar game speech, sich as you kun make when you dam please. So fire up, and do your prettiest. Be n’t we the master race?”

“Pshaw! Let go those reins,” said Ratcliff, cutting the vagabond over his face with the but-end of a riding-whip.

The crowd laughed, and the loafer, astonished and sobered, dropped the reins, and put his hand to his eye, which had been badly hit. Ratcliff rode on, but a muttered curse went after him.

Seeing the loafer stand feeling of his eye as if had been hurt, Vance said to him from the window: “Go to the apothecary’s, and tell him to give you something to bathe it in.”

“Go ter the ’pothecary’s! With nary a red in my pocket! Strannger, don’t try to fool this child.”

“Here’s money, if you want it.”

“Money? I should like ter see the color of it, strannger.”

“Hold your hat, then.”

And Vance dropped into the hat something wrapped in a newspaper which the loafer incredulously unfolded. Finding in it a five-dollar gold-piece, he stared first at the money, then at Vance, and said: “Strannger, I’d say, God bless yer, if I didn’t think, what a poor cuss like I could say would rayther harm than help. Haven’t no influence with God A’mighty, strannger. But you’re a man,—you air,—not a sneakin’ ’ristocrat as despises a poor white feller more ’n he does a nigger. I’ve seen yer somewhar afore, but can’t say whar.”

“Go and attend to your eye, my friend,” said Vance.

“I will. An’ if ever I kun do yer a good turn, jes call on——”

Vance could not hear the name; but he bowed, and the loafer moved on. Looking in another direction, Vance saw Ratcliff dismount, throw the reins to his attendant, and disappear in a vestibule of the hotel. Vance rose and wildly paced the room. His whole frame quivered to the very tips of his fingers, which he stretched forth as if to clutch some invisible antagonist. He muttered incoherent words, and, smiting his brow as if to keep back thoughts that struggled too tumultuously for expression, cried: “O that I had him here,—here, face to face,—weaponless, both of us! Would I not—The merciless villain! The cowardly miscreant! To lash a woman! That moment of horror! Often as I’ve lived it over, it is ever new. Can eternity make it fade? Again I see her,-pale, very pale and bleeding,—and tied,—tied to the stake. O Ratcliff! When shall this bridled vengeance overtake thee? Pshaw! What is he,—an individual,—what is the sum of pain that he can suffer? Would that be a requital? Will not his own devices work better for me than aught I can do?”

Seating himself in an arm-chair, Vance calmed his vindictive thoughts. In memory he went back to that day when he first heard Estelle sing; then to their first evening in Mrs. Mallet’s little house; then to the old magnolia-tree before it. That house he had bought and given in keeping to Mrs. Bernard, a married granddaughter of old Leroux, the Frenchman. Every tree and shrub in the area had been reverently cared for. Had not Estelle plucked blossoms from them all?

He thought of his marriage,—of his pleasant walks with Estelle in Jackson Square,—of their musical enjoyments,—of all her little devices to minister to his comfort and delight,—and then of the sudden clouding of this brief but most exquisite sunshine.

Vance took from the pocket of his vest a little circular box of rosewood. Unscrewing the cover, he revealed a photograph of Estelle, taken after her marriage. There was such a smile on the countenance as only the supreme happiness of a loving heart could have created. On the opposite circle was a curl of her hair of that strangely beautiful neutral tint which Vance had often admired. This he pressed to his lips. “Dear saint,” he murmured, “I have not forgotten thy parting words. For thy sake will I wrestle with this spirit that would seek a paltry revenge. Thy smile, O my beloved! shall dispel the remembrance of thy agony, and thy love shall conquer all earth-born hate. For thy dear sake will I still calmly meet thy murderer. O, lend me of thy divine patience to endure his presence! Sweet child, affectionate and pure, I can dream of nothing in heaven more precious than thyself. If from thee, O my beloved! come this spiritual refreshing and reinforcement,—if from thee these tender influences, so bright and yet so gentle,—then must thy sphere be one within which the angels delight to come.”

There was a knock at the door. Vance shut the box, replaced it in his pocket, and cried, “Come in!”

“Colored man down stars, sar, wants to see yer.”

“Did he give his name?”

“Yes, sar, he say his name is Jacobs.”

“Show him up.”

A negro now entered wearing green spectacles, and a wig of gray wool. Across his cheek there was a scar. No sooner was the door closed upon the waiter, than Vance exclaimed: “Is it possible? Can this be you, Peek?”

Peek threw off his disguises, and Vance seized him by the hand as he might have seized a returning brother.

“What of your wife and child? Have you found ’em?”

“No, Mr. Vance, I’m still a wanderer over the earth in search of them. I shall find them in God’s good time.”

“Sit down, Peek.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Vance, I’d rather stand.”

“Very well. Then I’ll stand too.”

“Since you make it a point of politeness, sir, I’ll sit.”

“That’s right. And now, my dear fellow, tell me what you’ve been about these many years. Surely you’ve discovered some traces of the lost ones?”

“None that have been of much use, Mr. Vance. I’m satisfied that Flora was lured on to Baltimore by some party who deceived her with the expectation of meeting me there. From Baltimore she and her child were taken to Richmond by the agent of her old master, and sold at auction to a dealer, who soon afterwards died. There the clew breaks.”

“My poor Peek, your not finding her has probably saved you from a deeper disappointment.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Vance?”

“The chance is, she has been forced to marry some other man.”

“I know, sir, that would be the probability in the case of ninety-nine slave-women out of a hundred. But Flora once swore to me on the crucifix, she would be true to me or die. And I feel very certain she will keep her oath.”

“Ah! slavery is so crafty and remorseless in working on human passions,” sighed Vance. “But you are right, my dear Peek, in hoping on. Tell me of your adventures.”

“When you and I parted at Memphis, Mr. Vance, I went to Montreal. Flora had left there some weeks before. At New York I sought out Mr. Charlton; also the policemen. But I could get nothing out of them. At length a Canadian told me he had met Flora on board the Baltimore boat. I followed up the clew till it broke, as I’ve told you. Since then I’ve been seeking my wife and boy through all the Cotton States. The money you gave me from Mr. Berwick lasted me seven years; and then I had to work to get the means of continuing my search. There are not many counties in the Slave States which I have not visited.”

“During your travels, Peek, you must have had opportunities of helping on the good cause.”

“Yes, Mr. Vance. I needed some strong motive to send me far and wide among my poor brethren. Without it I might have led a selfish life, content with my own comforts. But God has ordered it all right. I bought a pass as an old slave preacher, and thus was able to visit the plantations, and establish secret societies in the cause of freedom. Give the slaves arms, treat them like men, and they will fight. But they will not rise unarmed in useless insurrection. As soon as the North will give them the means of defending their freedom, they will break their fetters. It is the North, and not the South, that now holds the slave in check.”

“Yes, Peek; public sentiment is almost as much poisoned at the North as at the South, by this slavery virus.”

“And what have you, sir, been about all these years?”

“Much of my time has been spent in Kansas. I’ve been a border ruffian.”

“A sham one, I suppose?”

“Well, Peek, so seriously did I play my part, that perhaps I shall go down in history as one of the pro-slavery leaders. John Brown of Ossawatomie would at one time have shot me on sight. He afterwards understood me better,—understood that, if I fraternized with the pro-slavery crew, it was to thwart their schemes. The rascals were continually astounded at finding their bloodiest secrets revealed to the Abolitionists, and little suspected that one of their most trusted advisers was the informer. Yes! I helped on the madness which God sends to those he means to destroy. Baffled in California, the devil of slavery set his heart on establishing his altars in Kansas. How effectually we have headed him off! And now the frenzied idiot wants secession and a slave empire. Heaven forbid I should arrest him in his fatuity! Let me rather help it on.”

“Are you, then, a secessionist, Mr. Vance?”

“In one sense: I’m for secession from slavery by annihilating it, holding on to the Union. I was at the great Nashville convention. I’ve been the last few months watching things here in conservative Louisiana. She will have to follow South Carolina. That little vixen among States cracks the overseer’s whip over our heads, and threatens us with her sovereign displeasure for our timidity. She has nearly frightened poor Governor Moore out of his boots.”

“I’ve been thinking much lately,” said Peek, “of our adventure on board the Pontiac. What ever became of Colonel Delancy Hyde?”

“The Colonel,” replied Vance, “for a time wooed fortune in Kansas, but didn’t win her. Since then I’ve lost him.”

“The last I heard of him,” said Peek, “he had quarrelled with a fellow at a cock-fight in Montgomery, and been wounded; and his sister, a decent woman, was tending on him.”

“I confess I’ve a weakness for the Colonel,” said Vance, “though unquestionably he’s a great scoundrel.”

“Did you ever learn, Mr. Vance, what became of that yellow girl he coveted?”

“She and the child were drowned,” was the reply.

“What proof of that did you ever have?”

“My first endeavor, after the accident,” said Vance, “was to serve the man to whom I had owed my own life; and it was not till I saw you secure from Hyde, and your scalds taken care of, I learnt from Judge Onslow that the Berwicks, husband and wife, had died from their wounds.”

“Were their bodies ever recovered?”

“Those of the husband and wife I saw and recognized. But not half the bodies of the drowned were recovered, so strong was the current. It was not surprising, therefore, that the child and nurse should be of this number. Two of the passengers testified to seeing them in the river,—tried ineffectually to save them, and saw them go under.”

“Did you ever learn who those passengers were?”

“No. But I satisfied myself, so far as I could from human testimony, that the child was not among the saved. Business called me suddenly to New Orleans. Why do you ask?”

“Excuse me. Were you never summoned as a witness on the trial which gave Mr. Charlton the Berwick property?”

“Never. Perhaps one of the inconveniences of my aliases is, that my friends do not often know where to find me, or how to address me. I was not aware there had been a trial.”

“Nor was I,” said Peek, “until a few weeks ago. At the Exchange Hotel in Montgomery, I waited on Captain Ireton of the army, who, learning that I had had dealings with Charlton, informed me that his (Ireton’s) grandfather had been a party to a lawsuit growing out of the loss of the Pontiac, but that the case had been decided in Charlton’s favor. When Captain Ireton learned that I, too, had been on the Pontiac, he put me many questions, in the course of which I learned that the evidence as to the death of the child and her nurse rested solely on the testimony of Colonel Delancy Hyde and his friend, Leonidas Quattles.”

Vance started up and paced the floor, striking both palms against his forehead. “Dupe and fool that I’ve been!” he exclaimed. “Deep as I thought myself, this thick-skulled Hyde has been deeper still. I’ve been outwitted by a low rascal and blockhead. In all my talk with Hyde about the explosion, he never intimated to me that he had ever testified as a witness in a suit growing out of the accident. Never would he have kept silent on such a point if he hadn’t been guilty. He and Quattles and Charlton! What possible rascality might not have been hatched among the three! Of course there was knavery! What was the amount of property in suit?”

“More than a million of dollars,—so Ireton told me.”

“A million? The father and mother dead,—then prove that the child—But stop. I’m going too fast. Hyde couldn’t have been interested in having it supposed that the child was dead. How could he have known about the Berwick property?”

“But might he not have tried to kidnap the yellow girl?”

“There you hit it, Peek! Dolt that I’ve been not to think of that! I remember now that Hyde once said to me, the yellow girl would bring sixteen hundred dollars in New Orleans. Well, supposing he took the yellow girl, what could he do with the white child?”

“Can you, of all men, Mr. Vance, not guess? He could sell the child as a slave. Or, if he wanted to make her bring a little better price, he could tinge her skin just enough to give it a slight golden hue.”

Vance wet a towel in iced water, and pressed it on his forehead.

“But you pierce my heart, Peek, by the bare suggestion of such things,” he said. “That poor child! Clara was her name,—a bright, affectionate little lady! Should Hyde have given false testimony in regard to her death, I shudder to think what may have become of her. She, born to affluence, may be at this moment a wretched menial, or worse, a trained Cyprian, polluted, body and soul. Why was I not more thorough in my investigations? But perhaps ’t is not too late to prove the villany, if villany there has been.”

“Hyde may be able to put you on the right track,” suggested Peek.

Vance sat down, and for five minutes seemed lost in meditation. Then, starting up, he said: “Where would you next go in pursuit of your wife and child?”

“To Texas,” replied Peek.

“To Texas you shall go. Would you venture to face Colonel Hyde?”

“With these green goggles I would face any of my old masters; and the scalds upon my face would alone prevent my being known.”

“I can get you a pass from the Mayor himself, so that you’d not be molested. Find Hyde, and bring him to me at any cost. Money will do it. When can you start?”

“By the next boat,—in half an hour.”

“All right. Make your home at Bernard’s when you return. The house is mine. Here’s the direction. Here’s a pass from the Mayor which I’ve filled up for you. And here’s money, which you needn’t stop to count. Good by!”

And, with a grasp of the hand, they parted, and Peek quitted the hotel to take the boat for Galveston.

He had no sooner gone than Vance went down-stairs to the dining-hall. Most of the guests had finished their dinners; but at a small table near that at which he took his seat were a company of four, lingering over the dessert.

Senator Wigman, a puffy, red-faced man, had been holding forth on the prospective glories of the Confederacy.

“Yes, sir,” said he, refilling his glass with Burgundy, “with the rest of the world we’ll trade, but never, never with the Yankees. Not one pound of cotton shall ever go from the South to their accursed cities; not one ounce of their steel or their manufactures shall ever cross our borders.” And Wigman emptied his glass at a single gulp.

“Good for Wigman!” exclaimed Mr. Robson, a round, full-faced young man, rather fat, and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. “But what about Yankee ice, Wigman? Will you deprive us of that also? And tell me, my Wigman, why is it that, since you despise these Yankees so intensely, you allow your children to remain at school in Massachusetts? Isn’t that a little inconsistent, my Wigman?”

Wigman was obliged to refill his glass before he could summon his thoughts for a reply.

“Mr. Robson,” he then said, “you’re a scholar, and must be aware that the ancient Spartans, in order to disgust their children with intemperance, used to make their slaves drunk. If I send my children among the Yankees, it is that they may be struck by the superiority of the Southern character when they return home.”

“So you’ve no faith in the old maxim touching evil communications,” said Robson, taking a bottle of Champagne, and easing the cork so as to send it to the ceiling with a loud pop. “Now, gentlemen, bumpers all round! Onslow, let me fill your glass; Kenrick, yours. Drink to my sentiment. Here’s confusion to the old concern!”

Vance was just lifting a spoonful to his lips; but he returned it to his plate as he heard the name of Onslow, and looked round. Yes, it was surely he!—the boy of the Pontiac, now a handsome youth of twenty-four. On his right sat the young man addressed as Kenrick. At the latter Vance hardly looked, so intent was he on Onslow’s response.

Wigman spoke first. Holding up his glass, and amorously eyeing the salmon hue of the wine, he exclaimed: “Agreed! Here’s confusion to the old con-hiccup-concern!”

The Senator’s unfortunate hiccup elicited inextinguishable laughter from the rest, until Robson rapped with the handle of his knife on the table, and cried: “Order! order! Gentlemen, I consider that man a sneaking traitor who’ll not get drunk in behalf of sentiments like those our friend the Senator has been uttering.”

“Look here, young man, do you mean to insinuate that I’m getting drunk,” said Wigman, angrily.

“Far from it, Wigman. Any one can see you’re not getting drunk.”

“I accept the apology,” said Wigman, with maudlin dignity.

“Well, then, gentlemen,” cried Robson, “now for the previous question! Confusion to the old concern!”

Wigman and Onslow drank to the sentiment, but Kenrick, calling a negro waiter, handed the glass to him, and said: “Throw that to the pigs, and bring me a fresh glass.”

“Halloo! What the deuce do you mean by that?” cried Robson. “Have we a Bourbon among us? Have we a Yankee sympathizer among us? Is it possible? Does Mr. Charles Kenrick of Kenrick, son of Robert Kenrick, Esq., Confederate M. C., and heir to a thousand niggers, refuse to drink to the downfall of Abolitionism, and those other isms against which we’ve drawn the sword and flung away the scabbard?”

“Yes, by Jove!” interposed Wigman. “And we’ll welcome our invaders with—with—”

“With bloody hands to hospitable graves,” said Robson. “Speak quick, my Wigman. That’s the Southern formula, I believe, invented, like the new song of Dixie, by an impertinent Yankee. It’s devilish hard we have to import from these blasted Yankees the very slang and music we turn against them.”

“Answer me, Mr. Charles Kenrick,” said Wigman, assuming a front of judicial severity, “did you mean any offence to the Confederacy by dishonoring the sentiment of hostility to its enemy?”

“Damn the Confederacy!” said Kenrick.

“Hear him,” said Robson. “Was there ever such blasphemy? Please write it down, Onslow, that he damns the Confederacy. And write Wigman down an—No matter for that part of it! We shall hear Kenrick blaspheming slavery by and by.”

“Damn slavery!” said Kenrick.

“Kenrick is joking,” said Onslow.

“Kenrick was never more serious in his life, Mr. Onslow!”

“Look here, my dear fellow,” said Robson, “there are sanctities which must not be invaded, even under the privilege of Champagne. Insult the Virgin Mary, traduce the Holy Trinity, profane the Holy of holies, say that Jeff Davis isn’t a remarkable man, as much as you please, but beware how you speak ill of the peculiar institution. We’ll twist the noose for you with a pleased alacrity unless you retract those wicked words, and do penance in two tumblers of Heidsieck drunk in expiation of your horrible levity.”

“Damn slavery!” reiterated Kenrick.

“He’s a subject for the Committee of Safety,” suggested Wigman.

“Kenrick is playing with us all this while,” said Onslow. “Come! Confess it, old schoolfellow! You honor the new flag as much as I do.”

“I’ll show you how much I honor it,” said Kenrick; and, going to a table where a small Confederate flag was stuck in a leg of bacon, he tore off the silken emblem, ripped it in four parts, and, casting it on the floor, put his foot on the fragments and spat on them.

Wigman drew a small bowie-knife from a pocket inside of his vest, and, starting to his feet, kicked back his chair, and rushed with somewhat tortuous motion towards Kenrick; but, having miscalculated his powers of equilibrium, the Senator fell helplessly on the floor, and dropped his knife. Robson kicked it to a distant part of the room, and, helping Wigman to his feet, placed him in his chair, and counselled him not to try it again.

“It is to me that Mr. Kenrick must answer for this insult to the flag,” said Onslow.

Kenrick bowed. Then, resuming his seat, he took a fresh glass, and, filling it till it overflowed with Champagne, rose and exclaimed: “The Union! not as it was, but as it shall be, with universal freedom,—from the St. Croix to the Rio Grande,—from Cape Cod to the Golden Gate!” Kenrick touched his lips reverently to the wine, then put it down, and, taking from his bosom a beautiful American flag made of silk, shook it out, and said, “Here, gentlemen, is my religion.”

Onslow made a snatch at it, but Kenrick warded off his grip, and, folding and returning the flag to the inner pocket of his vest, calmly took his seat as if nothing had happened.

All this while Vance had been gazing on Kenrick intently, as if wrestling in thought with some inexplicable mystery. “Strange!” he murmured. “The very counterpart of my own person as I was at twenty-three! My very features! My very figure! The very color of my hair! And then,—what my mother often told me was a Carteret peculiarity,—when he smiles, that fan-like radiation of fine wrinkles under the temples from the outer corner of the eye! What does it all mean? I know of no relation of the name of Kenrick.”

“I shall not sit at table with a traitor,” cried Onslow.

“Then keep standing all the time,” said Kenrick.

“Nonsense! I thought we were all philosophers in this company,” interposed Robson, who, having had large commercial dealings with the elder Kenrick, was in no mood to see the son harmed. “Sit down, Onslow! Wigman, keep your seat. Now, waiter, green glasses all round, and a bottle of that sparkling Moselle. They’ll know at the bar what I mean.”

Onslow resumed his seat. Wigman stiffened himself up and drew nearer to the table, fired at the prospect of a fresh bottle.

At this juncture Mr. George Sanderson, a Northern man with Southern principles, in person short, vulgar, and flashily dressed, the very beau ideal of a bar-room rowdy, having heard the clink of glasses, and sighted from the corridor an array of bottles, was seized with one of his half-hourly attacks of thirstiness, and entered to join the party, although Wigman was the only one he knew. The latter introduced him to the rest. Robson uncorked the Moselle, and asked, “Now that Sumter has fallen, what’s next on the programme?”

“Washington must be taken,” said Sanderson.

“We must winter in Philadelphia,” said Wigman.

“In what capacity? As conquerors or as captives?” said Kenrick.

“Is the gentleman at all shaky?” asked Sanderson.

“He has been shamming Abolitionism,” replied Onslow.

“He damns slavery,” cried the indignant Wigman.

“He’s sure to go to hell for that,” said Robson; “intercession can’t save him. He has committed the unpardonable sin. The Rev. Dr. Palmer has recently made researches in theology which satisfy himself and me and the rest of the saints, that the sin against the Holy Ghost is in truth nothing less than to be an Abolitionist.”

“What is your private opinion of the Yankees, Mr. Sanderson?” asked Kenrick. “Do you think they’ll fight?”

“No, sir-r-r. Fifty thousand Confederates could walk through the Northern States, and plant their colors on every State capital north of Mason and Dixon’s line. They could whip any army the Yankees could bring against them.”

“Then you think the Yankees are cowards, eh?”

“Compared with the Southerners,—yes!” said Sanderson, holding up his glass for the waiter to refill.

“His opinion is that of an expert. He’s himself a Yankee!” cried Robson.

“I see Mr. Sanderson soars far above the spirit of the old proverb touching the bird that fouls its nest,” said Kenrick.

“Order!” cried Robson. “Mr. Sanderson is a philosopher. He disdains vulgar prejudices. To him the old nest is straw and mud, and the old flag is a bit of bunting. Isn’t it so, Sanderson?”

“Exactly so,” said Sanderson, a little puzzled by Robson’s persiflage, and seeking relief from it in another glass of wine. But, finding the Moselle bottle empty, he applied himself to a decanter labelled Old Monongahela.

A sudden snore from Wigman, who had fallen asleep in his chair, startled the party once more into laughter.

“Happy Wigman!” said Robson. “He smiles. He is dreaming of slavery extension into benighted, slaveless Mexico,—of Cuba annexed, and her stupidly mild slave-code reformed,—of tawny-hued houries, metifs, and quarteroons fanning him while he reposes,—of unnumbered Yankees howling over their lost trade, and kneeling vainly for help to him,—to Wigman! Profound Wigman! Behold the great man asleep! Happy Texas in having such a representative! Happy Jeff Davis in having such a counsellor! Gentlemen, my feelings grow too effusive. I must leave you. The dinner has been good. The wine has been good. I must make one criticism, however. The young gentlemen are degenerate. They do not drink. Look at them. They are perfectly sober. What is the world coming to? At our hotels, where twenty years ago we used to see fifty—yes, a hundred—champagne bottles on the dinner-table, we now don’t see ten. And yet men talk of the progress of the age! ’T is all a delusion. The day of juleps has gone by. We are receding in civilization. Wigman is a type of the good old times,—a landmark, a pattern for the rising generation. To his immortal honor be it recorded, that after that most heroic achievement of this or any other age, the subjugation of Anderson’s little starving garrison in Sumter by Beauregard, Wigman started in a small boat for the fort. Wigman landed. Wigman was the first to land. He entered one of the bomb-proofs. The first thought of a vulgar mind would have been to fly the victorious flag. Not so Wigman. On a shelf he saw a bottle. With a sublime self-abandonment he saw nothing else. He seized it; he uncorked it; he drank from it. And it was not till he had exhausted the last drop, that he learnt from the surgeon it was poison. O posterity! don’t be ungrateful and forget this picture when you think of Sumter. Our Wigman was saved to us by an emetic. Hand him down, ye future Hildreths and Motleys of America. Unconscious Wigman! He responds with another rhoncus. Mr. Sanderson, I leave him to your generous care. Gentlemen, good by!” And without waiting for a reply, Robson received his hat from the attentive waiter, waved a bow to the party, and waddled out of the hall.

Mr. Sanderson, seeing that a bottle of Chateau Margaux was but half emptied, sighed that he had not detected it sooner. Filling a goblet with the purple fluid, he drained it in long and appreciative draughts, rolling the smooth juice over his tongue, and carefully savoring the bouquet. Having emptied this bottle, he sighted another nearly two thirds full of champagne. Sanderson felt a pang at the thought that there was a limit to man’s ability to quaff good liquor. He, however, went up to the attack bravely, and succeeded in disposing of two full tumblers. Then a spirit of meek content at his bibulous achievements seemed to come over him. He put his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, leaned back, and benignantly said, “This warm weather has made me a trifle thirsty.”

Wigman suddenly started from his sleep, wakened by the cessation of noise. Sanderson rose, and assisted the Senator to his feet. “Come, my dear fellow,” said he, “it’s time to adjourn. Good by, young gentlemen!” And arm in arm the two worthies staggered out of the hall, each under the impression that the other was the worse for liquor, and each affectionately counselling the other not to expose himself.

Vance still sat at his table, and from behind a newspaper glanced occasionally at the two young men who had so excited his interest.

“Now, Kenrick,” said Onslow, “now that Robson the impenetrable, and Wigman the windy, and Sanderson the beastly, are out of the way, tell me what you mean by your incomprehensible conduct. When we met at table to-day, the first time for five years, I did not dream that you were other than you used to be, the enthusiastic champion of the South and its institutions.”

“You wonder,” replied Kenrick, “that I should express my detestation of the Rebellion and its cause,—of the Confederacy and its corner-stone,—that I should differ from my father, who believes in slavery. How much more reasonably might I wonder at your apostasy from truths which such a man as your father holds!”

“My father is an honorable man,—an excellent man,” said Onslow; “but—”

“But,” interrupted Kenrick, “if you were sincere just now in the epithet you flung at me, you consider him also a traitor. Now a traitor is one who betrays a trust. What trust has your father betrayed?”

“He does not stand by his native State in her secession from the old Union,” answered Onslow.

“But what if he holds that his duty to the central government is paramount to his duty to his State?” asked Kenrick.

“That I regard as an error,” replied Onslow.

“Then by your own showing,” said Kenrick, “all that you can fairly say is, that your father has erred in judgment,—not that he has been guilty of a base act of treason.”

“No, I didn’t mean that, Charles,—your pardon,” said Onslow, holding out his hand.

Kenrick cordially accepted the proffered apology, and then asked: “May I speak frankly to you, Robert,—speak as I used to in the old times at William and Mary’s?”

“Certainly. Proceed.”

“Your father literally obeyed the Saviour’s injunction. He gave up all he had, to follow where truth led. Convinced that slavery was a wrong, he ruined his fortunes in the attempt to substitute free labor for that of slaves. Through the hostility of the slave interest the experiment failed.”

“I think,” said Onslow, “my father acted unwisely in sacrificing his fortunes to an abstraction.”

“An abstraction! The man who tries to undo a wrong is an abstractionist, is he? What a world this would be if all men would be guilty of similar abstractions. To such a one I would say, ‘Master, lead on, and I will follow thee, to the last gasp, with truth and loyalty!’ Strange! unaccountably strange, that his own son should have deserted him for the filthy flesh-pots of slavery!”

“May not good men differ as to slavery?” asked Onslow.

“Put that question,” replied Kenrick, “to nine tenths of the slaveholders,—men in favor of lynching, torturing, murdering, those opposed to the institution. Put it to Mr. Carson, who, the other day, in his own house, shot down an unarmed and unsuspecting visitor, because he had freely expressed views opposed to slavery. Abolitionists don’t hang men for not believing with them,—do they? But the whole code and temper of the South reply to you, that men may not differ, and shall not differ, on the subject of slavery. Onslow, give me but one thing,—and that a thing guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, though never tolerated in the Slave States,—give me liberty of the press in those States, and I, as a friend of the Union, would say to the government at Washington, ‘Put by the sword. Wait! I will put down this rebellion. I have the pen and the press! Therefore is slavery doomed, and its days are numbered.’”

“Why is it,” asked Onslow, “if slavery is wrong, that you find all the intelligence, all the culture, at the South, and even in the Border States, on its side?”

“Ah! there,” replied Kenrick, “there’s the sunken rock on which you and many other young men have made wreck of your very souls. Your æsthetic has superseded your moral natures. To work is in such shocking bad taste, when one can make others work for one!”

“Nine tenths of the men at the South of any social position,” said Onslow, “are in favor of secession.”

“I know it,” returned Kenrick, “and the sadder for human nature that it should be so! In Missouri, in Kentucky, in Virginia, in Baltimore, all the young men who would be considered fashionable, all who thoughtlessly or heartlessly prize more their social status than they do justice and right, follow the lead of the pro-slavery aristocracy. I know from experience how hard it is to break loose from those social and family ties. But I thank God I’ve succeeded. ’T was like emerging from mephitic vapors into the sweet oxygen of a clear, sun-bright atmosphere, that hour I resolved to take my lot with freedom and the right against slavery and the wrong!”

“How was your conversion effected?” asked Onslow. “Did you fall in love with some Yankee schoolmistress? I wasn’t aware you’d been living at the North.”

“I’ve never set foot in a Free State,” replied Kenrick. “My life has been passed here in Louisiana on my father’s plantation. I was bred a slaveholder, and lived one after the most straitest sect of our religion until about six months ago. See at the trunkmaker’s my learned papers in De Bow’s Review. They’re entitled ‘Slave Labor versus Free.’ Unfortunately for my admirers and disciples, there was in my father’s library a little stray volume of Channing’s writings on slavery. I read it at first contemptuously, then attentively, then respectfully, and at last lovingly and prayerfully. The truth, almost insufferably radiant, poured in upon me. Convictions were heaved up in my mind like volcanic islands out of the sea. I was spiritually magnetized and possessed.”

“What said your father?”

“My father and I had always lived more as companions than as sire and son. There is only a difference of twenty-two years in our ages. My own mother, a very beautiful woman who died when I was five years old, was six years older than my father. From her I derived my intellectual peculiarities. Of course my father has cast me off,—disowned, disinherited me. He is sincere in his pro-slavery fanaticism. I wish I could say as much of all who fall in with the popular current.”

“But what do you mean to do, Charles? ’T is unsafe for you to stay here in New Orleans, holding such sentiments.”

“My plans are not yet matured,” replied Kenrick. “I shall stand by the old flag, you may be sure of that. And I shall liberate all the slaves I can, beginning with my father’s.”

“You would not fight against your own State?”

“Incontinently I would if my own State should persist in rebellion against the Union; and so I would fight against my own county should that rebel against the State.”

“Well, schoolfellow,” said Onslow, with a fascinating frankness, “let us reserve our quarrels for the time when we shall cross swords in earnest. That time may come sooner than we dream of. The less can we afford to say bitter things to each other now. Come, and let me introduce you to a charming young lady. How long do you stay here?”

“Perhaps a week; perhaps a month.”

“I shall watch over you while you remain, for I do not fancy seeing my old crony hung.”

“Better so than be false to the light within me. Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

Onslow made no reply, but affectionately, almost compassionately, took Kenrick by the arm and led him away.

Vance put down his newspaper, and then, immersed in meditation, slowly passed out of the dining-hall and up-stairs into his own room.