Part 67 (2/2)
Socola listened to Barton's fierce, unreasoning invective with a sense of dread. It was impossible to realize that this big-mouthed, bitter, vindictive, ridiculous politician was the father of the gentle girl he loved. There must be something of his power of malignant hatred somewhere in Jennie's nature. He had caught just a glimpse of it in the story she had told the Richmond papers.
She stood in the doorway at last, a smiling vision of modest beauty. Her dress of fine old lace seemed woven of the tender smiles that played about the sensitive mouth.
He sprang to his feet and took her hand, his heart thumping with joy.
She felt it tremble and laughed outright.
”So you have returned a fiercer rebel than ever, Miss Jennie?” he said hesitatingly.
He tried to say something purely conventional but it popped out when he opened his mouth--the ugly thought that was gnawing at his happiness.
”Yes,” she answered thoughtfully, ”I never realized before what it meant to be with my own people. I could have burned New Orleans and laughed at its ruins to have smoked Ben Butler out of it--”
”President Davis has proclaimed him an outlaw I see,” Socola added.
”If he can only capture and hang him, the people of Louisiana would be perfectly willing to lose all--”
”But your brother, the Judge, is still loyal to the Union--you can't hate him you know?”
Jennie's eyes flashed into Socola's.
Why had he asked the one question that opened the wound in her heart?
Perhaps her mind had suggested it. She had scarcely spoken the bitter words before she saw the vision of his serious face and regretted it.
”Strange you should have mentioned my brother's name at the very moment his image was before me,” the girl thoughtfully replied.
”Clairvoyance perhaps--”
”You believe in such things?” Jennie asked.
”Yes. My mother leaped from her bed with a scream one night and told me that she had seen my father's spirit, felt him bend over her and touch her lips. He had died at exactly that moment.”
”Wonderful, isn't it,” Jennie murmured softly, ”the vision of love!”
She was dreaming of the moments of her distress in the sacking of her home when the vision of this man's smiling face had suddenly set her to laughing.
”Yes,” Socola answered. ”I asked you about your older brother because I don't like the idea of you poisoning your beautiful young life with hatred. Such thoughts kill--they can't bring health and strength, Miss Jennie.”
”Of course,” the girl responded tenderly, ”you can see things more calmly. You can't understand how deep the knife has entered our hearts in the South.”
”That's just what I do understand. It's that against which I'm warning you. This war can't last always you know. There must be a readjustment--”
”Between the North and South?”
”Of course--”
”Never!”
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