"Where have you been, Ray?" said Vivia, approaching, with her glowing cheeks, her sparkling eyes. "And what are you doing now?"
"Trying camp-life again," replied Ray, looking up at her in a fixed admiration.
"I've had a letter from Beltran."
"Oh! where is he?" cried Ray.
"Beltran is in camp."
"And where?"
"Perhaps on the Rio Grande, perhaps on the Potomac."
"Do you mean to say," cried Ray, springing up, while string and all fell into the coals, "that Beltran, my brother"—
"Is a Rebel."
"Then I am a rebel, too," said Ray, chokingly, sitting down again, and mechanically stooping to pick up the burning string,—"a rebel to him!"
"You won't be a rebel to him, if you'll listen to reason,—his reason."
"He's got no reason. It's only because he was there."
"Now, Raymond Lamar! if you talk so, you sha'n't read the letter!"
"I don't want to read it."
"Have you left off loving Beltran, because he differs from you?"
"Left off loving Beltran!"
Vivia waited a moment, leaning on the back of his chair, and then Ray, bending, covered his face with his hands, and the large tears oozed from between his brown fingers.
Little Jane, whipping the frothy snow of her eggs, went on whipping all the harder for fear Ray should know she saw him. And Vivia, with one hand upon his head, took away the brown fingers, that her own cool, fragrant palm might press upon his burning lids. Such sudden tears belong to such tropical natures. For there was no anger or sullenness in Ray's grief; he was just and simply sorry.
"He must have forgotten me," said Ray, after a sober while.
"There was this note for you in mine, and a draft on New York, because he thought you might be in arrears."
"No, I'm not. Aunty can have the draft, though; she may need it before I come back," said Ray, brokenly, gazing into the fire. "Do you suppose Beltran wrote mine or yours first?"
"Yours."
"Then you've the last thing he ever set his hand to, perhaps!"
"Don't talk so, child!" said Vivia, with an angry shiver. "Come back! Where are you going?"
"I enlisted, yesterday, in the Kansas Cavalry."
"Great heavens, Ray! was there not another regiment in all the world than one to be sent down to New Mexico to meet Beltran and the Texan Rangers?" cried Vivia, wringing her hands.
Ray was on his feet again, a swarm of expletives buzzing inarticulately at his lips.
"I never thought of that," said he, whiter than ashes.
"What made you? oh, what made you?"
"There was no other company. I liked this captain. He gave me to-day's furlough. I'm going to-night; little Jane's promised to fix my traps; she's making me these cookies now, you see. Pshaw! Beltran's up on the Potomac, or else you couldn't have gotten this letter,—don't you know? You made my heart jump into my mouth!"
And resuming his seat, to find his string and jack in cinders, he turned round astride his chair and commenced notching his initials into its back, with cautious glances at his aunt.
"That's for little Jane to cry over after I'm gone," said he.
"Ray—How do you think Beltran will like it?"
"I can't help what Beltran likes. I shall be doing God's work."
"Beltran says God does His own work. He only requires of us our duty."
"That is my duty."
"You feel, Ray, as if you were possessed by the holy ardor of another Sir Galahad!"
"I feel, Vivia, that I shall give what strength I have towards ridding the world of its foulest disease."
"With what a good grace that comes from you!"
"With all the better grace."
"The old Berserker rage over again!"
"Quite as fine as running amuck."
"Ray, the race that does not rise for itself deserves its fate."
"Vivia, no race deserves such a fate as this one has found."
"Idle! I have seen slavery; own slaves: there is nothing monstrous in it."
"In Maryland."
"Anywhere."
"Wailing children, sundered families, women under the lash"—
"You know very well, Ray, that there is a law against the separation of families."
"I never heard of it."
"Audubon says there is."
"A little bird told him," interpolated Jane.
"But I've seen them separated."
"I don't believe," urged Vivia, "but for exceptional abuses, there's a system providing for a happier peasantry on the face of the earth."
"It can't be a good system that allows such abuses."
"There are even abuses of the sacraments."
"Pshaw, Vivia!"
"Well, Ray, I don't believe in this pseudo-chivalry of yours, any more than Beltran does."
"If Beltran said black was white, you'd think that true!"
"If Beltran said so, it would be true."
"It's no more likely that he should be right than that I should be."
"You couldn't have spoken so about Beltran once!"
"Well, black or white, slave or free, never think I shall sit by and see my country fall to ruins."
"Your country? Do you suppose you love it any more than I do?"
"You're a woman."
"Suppose I am a woman, you unkind boy"—
"Well, you only love half of it,—the Southern half."
"I love my whole country!" cried Vivia, all aflame. "I love these purple, rust-stained granites here, the great savannas there,—the pine forests, the sea-like prairies,—every river rolling down its rocky bed,—every inch of its beautiful, glorious soil,—all its proud, free people. I love my whole country!"
"Only you hate some of its parasites. But Beltran would tell you that you haven't got any country. You may love your native State. As for country, it's nothing but a—what-you-may-call-it."
"Very true. It is in observing the terms of that what-you-may-call-it,—that federation, that bond,—in mutual concessions, in fraternal remembrances, that we gain a country. And what a country!"
"Yes, what a country, Vivia! And shall I consent to resign an atom of it while there's a drop of blood in my body, to lose a single grain of its dust? When Beltran brought me here three years ago, I sailed day and night up a mighty river, from one zone into another,—sailed for weeks between banks that were still my own country. And if I had ever returned, we should have passed by the thundering ledges of New England, Jersey surfs and shallows, the sand-bars of the Carolinas, the shores of Florida lying like a faint green cloud long and low upon the horizon,—sailing a thousand miles again in our own waters. Enormous borders! and throughout their vast stretch happiness and promise! And shall I give such dominion to the first traitor that demands it? No! nor to the thousandth! There she lies, bleeding, torn, prostrate, a byword! Why, Vivia, this was my country, she that made me, reared me, gladdened me! It is the now crusade. I understand none of your syllogisms. My country is in danger. Here's my hand!"
And Ray stood erect, bristling and fiery, as