LIGHT FROM THE PIT.
“There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and Man’s unconquerable mind.”—_Wordsworth._
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.”