CHAPTER XXXIV.
LIGHT FROM THE PIT.
Kenrick found Onslow seated at one of the tables of the large dining-hall and expecting his coming. The chair on his right was tipped over on its fore legs against the table as a signal that the seat was engaged. On Onslow’s left sat the scoffer, Robson.
As Kenrick advanced, Onslow rose, took him by the hand, and placed him in the reserved seat. Robson bowed, and filled three glasses with claret.
“But how grave and pale you look, Charles!” said Onslow. “What the deuce is the matter? Come on! Absit atra cura! Begone, dull care! Toss off that glass of claret, or Robson will scorn you as a skulker.”
“The wine is not bad,” said Robson, “but there should have been ice in the cooler. May the universal Yankee nation be eternally and immitigably consigned to perdition for depriving us of our ice. Every time I am thirsty,—and that is fifty times a day,—my temper is tried, and I wish I had a plenipotentiary power of cursing. With the thermometer at ninety, ’t is a lie to say Cotton is king. Ice is king. The glory of our juleps has departed. For my own part, I would grovel at old Abe’s feet if he would give us ice.”
Kenrick could not force a smile. He touched his lips with the claret.
“You will take soup?” inquired Onslow. “It is tomato, and very good.”
“What you please, I’m not hungry.”
Onslow ordered the servant to bring a plate of soup. Kenrick stirred it a moment, tasted, then pushed it from him. Its color reminded him of the precious blood, dear to his friend, which had been so ruthlessly shed.
“A plate of pompinoe,” said Onslow.
The dainty fish was put before Kenrick, and he broke it into morsels with his fork, then told the servant to take it away.
“But you’ve no appetite,” complained Onslow. “Is it the Perdita?”
Kenrick shook his head mournfully.
“Is it Bull Run?”
“No. Had not somebody been afraid of hurting slavery, and so played the laggard, the United States forces would have carried the day; and that would have been the worst thing for the country that could have happened!”
“Did I not promise there should be no politics? Nevertheless, expound.”
“He laughs best who laughs last. Let that suffice. It is not time yet for the Union to gain decisive victories; nor will it be time till the conscience of the people of the North is right and ripe for the uprooting of slavery. Their conservative politicians,—their Seymours and Pughs,—who complain of the ‘irrepressible negro,’—must find out it is the irrepressible God Almighty, and give up kicking against the pricks. Then when the North as one man shall say, ‘Thy kingdom come,’—Thy kingdom of justice and compassion,—then, O then! we may look for the glorious day-star that shall herald the dawn. God reigns. Therefore shall slavery not reign. I believe in the moral government of the world.”
“Isn’t it a pity, Robson, that so good a fellow as Charles should be so bitter an Abolitionist?”
“Wait till he’s tempted with a colonelcy in the Confederate army,” sneered Robson. “Ah! Mr. Kenrick, when you see Onslow charging into Philadelphia, at the head of his troop of horse, sacking that plethoric old city of rectangles,—leering at the pretty Quakeresses,—knocking down his own men for unsoldierly familiarities,—walking into those Chestnut Street jewelry stores and pocketing the diamond rings,—when you see all that, you’ll wish you’d gone with the winning side.”
“As I live,” cried Onslow, “there’s a tear in his eye! What does it mean, Charley?”
“If it is a tear, respect its sanctity,” replied Kenrick, gravely.
“Gentlemen, I must go,” said Robson, who found the atmosphere getting to be unjoyous and uncongenial. “Good by! I’ve a polite invitation to be present at a meeting to raise money for the outfit of a new regiment. Between ourselves, if it were a proposition to supply the alligators in our bayous with gutta-percha tails, I would contribute my money much more cheerfully, assured that it would do much more good, and be a far more profitable investment. Addio!”
No sooner had he gone than Kenrick said: “Let us adjourn to your room. I have something to say to you.”
In silence the friends passed out of the hall and up-stairs into Onslow’s sleeping apartment.
“Kenrick,” said he, “your manner is inexplicable. It chills and distresses me. If I can do anything for you before I go North to fight for the stars and bars—”
“Never will you lift the arm for that false flag!” interrupted Kenrick. “You will join me this very hour in cursing it and spurning it.”
“Charles, your hate of the Confederacy grows morbid. Let it not make us private as well as public enemies.”
“No, Robert, we shall be faster friends than ever.”
And Kenrick affectionately threw his arms round his friend and pressed him to his breast.
“But what does this mean, Charles?” cried Onslow. “There’s a terrible pity in your eyes. Explain it, I beseech you.”
Kenrick drew from his pocket a letter-envelope, and, taking from it four strands of hair, placed them on the white marble of the bureau before Onslow’s eyes. The Captain looked at them wonderingly; took up one after another, examined it, and laid it down. His breast began to heave, and his cheek to pale. He looked at Kenrick, then turned quickly away, as if dreading some foreshadowing of an evil not to be uttered. For five minutes he walked the room, and said nothing. Then he again went to the bureau and regarded the strands of hair.
“Well,” said he, speaking tremulously and quickly, and not daring to look at Kenrick, “I recognize these locks of hair. This white hair is my father’s; this half gray is my mother’s; this beautiful flaxen is my sister Emily’s; and this brownish black is my brother’s. Why do you put these before me? A sentimental way of telling me, I suppose, that they all send their love, and beg I would turn Abolitionist!”
“Yes,” sighed Kenrick. “From their graves they beg it.”
With a look of unspeakable horror, his hands pressed on the top of his head as if to keep down some volcanic throe, his mouth open, his tongue lolling out, idiot-like, Onslow stood speechless staring at his friend.
Kenrick led him gently to the sofa, forced him to sit down, and then, with a tenderness almost womanly in its delicacy, removed the sufferer’s hands from his head, and smoothed back his thick fine hair from his brow, and away from his ears. Onslow’s inward groanings began to grow audible. Suddenly he rose, as if resolved to master his weakness. Then, sinking down, he exclaimed, “God of heaven, can it be?” And then groans piteous but tearless succeeded.
At last, as if bracing himself to an effort that tore his very heart-strings, he rose and said, “Now, Charles, tell me all.”
Kenrick handed him the letter which Peek had brought. “Let me leave you while you read,” he said. Onslow did not object; and Kenrick went into the corridor, and walked there to and fro for nearly half an hour. Then he re-entered the chamber. Onslow was on his knees by the sofa; his father’s letter, smeared with his father’s life-blood, in his hand. The young man had been praying. And his eyes showed that prayer had so softened his heart that he could weep. He rose, calm, though very pale.
“Where can I see this negro?” he asked.
“He will be here at the hotel this evening,” replied Kenrick.
“And what,—what,” said Onslow hesitatingly, “what did they do with my father?”
“They hung him on the same tree with your brother.”
“Yes,” said Onslow, with a calmness more terrible than a frantic grief. “Yes! Of course his gray hairs were no protection.”
There was a pause; and then, “What do you mean to do?” said Kenrick.
“Can you doubt?” exclaimed Onslow.
A servant knocked at the door and left a package. It contained a complimentary letter and a Colonel’s commission, signed by the Confederate authorities. “You see these,” said Onslow, handing them to Kenrick. Then, taking them, he contemptuously tore them, and madly threw the pieces on the floor.
“Yes, my father is right,” he cried. “It is Slavery that has done this horror. On the head of Slavery lies the guilt. O the blind fool, the abject fawner, that I’ve been! Instead of being by the side of my brave brother, here I was wearing the detested livery of the brutal Power that smote down a whole family because they would not kneel at its bloody footstool! Who ever heard of a man being harmed at the North for defending Slavery? No! ’t is a foul lie to say that aught but Slavery can prompt and lend itself to such barbarities! The cowardly butchers! O, damn them! damn them!”
And he tore from his shoulders the badges of his military rank, and, spurning them with his foot, continued: “My noble father! the good, the devout, the heroic old man! How, even under his mortal agony, his belief in God, in right, in immortality, shines forth! Did ever an outcast creature apply to him in vain for help? Quick to resent, how much quicker he was to forgive! The soul of rectitude and truth! Did you ever see his seal, Charles? A straight line, with the motto Omnium brevissima recta! But he could not bow to Slavery as the supreme good. For that he and his must be slaughtered! And William, the brave and gentle! And Emily, the tenderly-bred and beautiful! And my sainted—”
He knelt, and, raising both arms to heaven, cried: “Hear me, O God! Eternal Justice, hear me! If ever again, in thought or act, I show mercy to this merciless Slave Power,—if ever again I palliate its crimes or utter a word in extenuation of its horrors,—that moment annihilate me as a wretch unfit either for this world or any other!”
Then, rising, he said, “Kenrick, your hand!”
“Not yet,” said Kenrick. “My friend, Slavery is no worse to-day than it was yesterday. You have known for the last three months that these minions and hirelings of the slave aristocracy were hounding, hanging, and torturing men throughout Slavedom, for the crime of being true to their country’s flag.”
“I knew it, Kenrick; but my heart was hardened, and therefore have God’s hammers smitten it thrice,—nay, four times, terribly! I saw these things, but turned away from them! Idle and false to say, Slavery is not responsible for them! They are the very spawn of its filthy loins. I know it,—I, who have been behind the scenes, know what the leaders say as to the means of treading out every spark of Union fire. And I—heedless idiot that I was!—never once thought that the bloody instructions might return to plague me,—that my own father’s family might be among the foremost victims! I acknowledge the hand of God in this stroke! A voice cries to me, as of old to Saul, ‘Why persecutest thou me?’ And now there fall from my eyes as it were scales, and I arise and am baptized!”
“My dear friend,” said Kenrick, “I want your conversion to be, not the result of mere passion, but of calm conviction. I have been asking myself, What if a party of Unionists should outrage and murder those who are nearest and dearest to myself,—would I, therefore, embrace the pro-slavery cause? And from the very depths of my soul, I can cry No! Not through passion,—though I have enough of that,—but through the persuasion of my intellect, added to the affirmation of my heart, do I array myself against this hideous Moloch of slavery. By a terrible law of affinity, wrongs and crimes cannot stand alone. They must summon other wrongs and crimes to their support; and so does murder as naturally follow in the train of slavery, as the little parasite fish follows the shark. It is fallacy to say that the best men among slaveholders do not approve of these outrages; for these outrages are now the necessary and inseparable attendants of the system.”
“I believe it,” said Onslow. “O the wickedness of my apostasy from my father’s faith! O the sin, and O the punishment! It needed a terrible blow to reach me, and it has come. Kenrick, do not withhold your hand. Trust me, my conversion is radical. The ‘institution’ shall henceforth find in me its deadliest foe. ‘Delenda est!’ is now and henceforth my motto!”
Kenrick clasped his proffered hand, and, looking up, said, “So prosper us, Almighty Disposer, as we are true to the promises of this hour!”
“Charles,” said Onslow, “I did not think that Perdita would so soon have her prayer granted.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her last words to me were, ‘May this arm never be lifted except in the cause of right!’ I feel that God has heard her.”
It jarred on Kenrick’s heart for the moment to see that Onslow, in the midst of his troubles, still thought of Perdita; but soon, stilling the selfish tremor, he said: “What we would do we must do quickly. Will you go North with me and join the armies of the Union?”
“Yes, the first opportunity.”
“That opportunity will be this very night.”
“So much the better! I’m ready. I had but one tie to bind me here; and that was Perdita. And she has fled. And what would I be to her, were she here? Nothing! Charles, this day’s news has made me ten years older already. O for an army with banners, to go down into that bloody region of the Rio Grande, and right the wrongs of the persecuted!”
“Be patient. We shall live to see the old flag wave resplendent over free and regenerated Texas.”
“Amen! Good heavens, Charles!—it appalls me, when I think what a different man I am from what I was when I crossed this threshold, one little hour ago!”
“In these volcanic days,” said Kenrick, “such changes are not surprising. These terrible eruptions, ‘painting hell on the sky,’ uptear many old convictions, and illumine many benighted minds.”
“Yes,” rejoined Onslow, “in that infernal flash, coming from my own violated home, I see slavery as it is,—monstrous, bestial, devilish!—no longer the graceful, genteel, hospitable, and fascinating embodiment which I—fond fool that I was!—have been wont to think it. The Republicans of the North were right in declaring that not one inch more of national soil should be surrendered to the pollutions of slavery.”
“Time flies,” said Kenrick. “Have you any preparations to make?”
“Yes, a few bills to pay and a few letters to write.”
“Can you despatch all your work by quarter to nine?”
“Sooner, if need be.”
“That will answer. Have your baggage ready, and let it be compact as possible. I’ll call for you at your room at quarter to nine. Vance goes with us.”
“Is it possible? I supposed him an ultra Secessionist.”
“He has a stronger personal cause than even you to strike at slavery.”
“Can that be? Well, he shall find me no tame ally. Do you know, Charles, you resemble him personally?”
“Yes, there’s good reason for it. We are cousins.”
Onslow’s heart was too full to comment on the reply. He took up the strands of hair, kissed them fervently, and placed them with his father’s letter in a little silk watch-bag, which he pinned inside of his vest just over his heart.
“If ever my new faith should falter,” he said, “here are the mementos that will revive it. God! Did I need all this for my reformation?”
“Be firm,—be prudent, my friend,” said Kenrick. “And now good by till we meet again.”
Onslow pressed Kenrick’s proffered hand, and replied, “You shall find me punctual.”