University of Virginia Library

34. 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.”

“Is n'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.”