CHAPTER XIIAt the Dawn of Day
It was three o’clock before Marion regained consciousness, crawled to her mother, and crouched in dumb convulsions in her arms.
“What can we do, my darling?” the mother asked at last.
“Die—thank God, we have the strength left!”
“Yes, my love,” was the faint answer.
“No one must ever know. We will hide quickly every trace of crime. They will think we strolled to Lover’s Leap and fell over the cliff, and my name will always be sweet and clean—you understand—come, we must hurry——”
With swift hands, her blue eyes shining with a strange light, the girl removed the shreds of torn clothes, bathed, and put on the dress of spotless white she wore the night Ben Cameron kissed her and called her a heroine.
The mother cleaned and swept the room, piled the torn clothes and cord in the fireplace and burned them, dressed herself as if for a walk, softly closed the doors, and hurried with her daughter along the old pathway through the moonlit woods.
At the edge of the forest she stopped and looked back tenderly at the little home shining amid the roses, caught their faint perfume and faltered:
“Let’s go back a minute—I want to see his room, and kiss Henry’s picture again.”
“No, we are going to him now—I hear him calling us in the mists above the cliff,” said the girl—“come, we must hurry. We might go mad and fail!”
Down the dim cathedral aisles of the woods, hallowed by tender memories, through which the poet lover and father had taught them to walk with reverent feet and without fear, they fled to the old meeting-place of Love.
On the brink of the precipice, the mother trembled, paused, drew back, and gasped:
“Are you not afraid, my dear?”
“No; death is sweet now,” said the girl. “I fear only the pity of those we love.”
“Is there no other way? We might go among strangers,” pleaded the mother.
“We could not escape ourselves! The thought of life is torture. Only those who hate me could wish that I live. The grave will be soft and cool, the light of day a burning shame.”
“Come back to the seat a moment—let me tell you my love again,” urged the mother. “Life still is dear while I hold your hand.”
As they sat in brooding anguish, floating up from the river valley came the music of a banjo in a negro cabin, mingled with vulgar shout and song and dance. A verse of the ribald senseless lay of the player echoed above the banjo’s pert refrain:
“Chicken in de bread tray, pickin’ up dough;
Granny, will your dog bite? No, chile, no!”
The mother shivered and drew Marion closer.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! has it come to this—all my hopes of your beautiful life!”
The girl lifted her head and kissed the quivering lips.
“With what loving wonder we saw you grow,” she sighed, “from a tottering babe on to the hour we watched the mystic light of maidenhood dawn in your blue eyes—and all to end in this hideous, leprous shame. No—No! I will not have it! It’s only a horrible dream! God is not dead!”
The young mother sank to her knees and buried her face in Marion’s lap in a hopeless paroxysm of grief.
The girl bent, kissed the curling hair, and smoothed it with her soft hand.
A sparrow chirped in the tree above, a wren twittered in a bush, and down on the river’s bank a mocking-bird softly waked his mate with a note of thrilling sweetness. “The morning is coming, dearest; we must go,” said Marion. “This shame I can never forget, nor will the world forget. Death is the only way.”
They walked to the brink, and the mother’s arms stole round the girl.
“Oh, my baby, my beautiful darling, life of my life, heart of my heart, soul of my soul!”
They stood for a moment, as if listening to the music of the falls, looking out over the valley faintly outlining itself in the dawn. The first far-away streaks of blue light on the mountain ranges, defining distance, slowly appeared. A fresh motionless day brooded over theworld as the amorous stir of the spirit of morning rose from the moist earth of the fields below.
A bright star still shone in the sky, and the face of the mother gazed on it intently. Did the Woman-spirit, the burning focus of the fiercest desire to live and will, catch in this supreme moment the star’s Divine speech before which all human passions sink into silence? Perhaps, for she smiled. The daughter answered with a smile; and then, hand in hand, they stepped from the cliff into the mists and on through the opal gates of death.
Book IV—The Ku Klux Klan
Book IV—The Ku Klux Klan
CHAPTER IThe Hunt for the Animal
Aunt Cindy came at seven o’clock to get breakfast, and finding the house closed and no one at home, supposed Mrs. Lenoir and Marion had remained at the Cameron House for the night. She sat down on the steps, waited grumblingly an hour, and then hurried to the hotel to scold her former mistress for keeping her out so long.
Accustomed to enter familiarly, she thrust her head into the dining-room, where the family were at breakfast with a solitary guest, muttering the speech she had been rehearsing on the way:
“I lak ter know what sort er way dis—whar’s Miss Jeannie?”
Ben leaped to his feet.
“Isn’t she at home?”
“Been waitin’ dar two hours.”
“Great God!” he groaned, springing through the door and rushing to saddle the mare. As he left he called to his father: “Let no one know till I return.”
At the house he could find no trace of the crime he had suspected. Every room was in perfect order. Hesearched the yard carefully and under the cedar by the window he saw the barefoot tracks of a negro. The white man was never born who could make that track. The enormous heel projected backward, and in the hollow of the instep where the dirt would scarcely be touched by an Aryan was the deep wide mark of the African’s flat foot. He carefully measured it, brought from an outhouse a box, and fastened it over the spot.
It might have been an ordinary chicken thief, of course. He could not tell, but it was a fact of big import. A sudden hope flashed through his mind that they might have risen with the sun and strolled to their favourite haunt at Lover’s Leap.
In two minutes he was there, gazing with hard-set eyes at Marion’s hat and handkerchief lying on the shelving rock.
The mare bent her glistening neck, touched the hat with her nose, lifted her head, dilated her delicate nostrils, looked out over the cliff with her great soft half-human eyes and whinnied gently.
Ben leaped to the ground, picked up the handkerchief, and looked at the initials, “M. L.,” worked in the corner. He knew what lay on the river’s brink below as well as if he stood over the dead bodies. He kissed the letters of her name, crushed the handkerchief in his locked hands, and cried:
“Now, Lord God, give me strength for the service of my people!”
He hurriedly examined the ground, amazed to find no trace of a struggle or crime. Could it be possible they had ventured too near the brink and fallen over?
He hurried to report to his father his discoveries, instructed his mother and Margaret to keep the servants quiet until the truth was known, and the two men returned along the river’s brink to the foot of the cliff.
They found the bodies close to the water’s edge, Marion had been killed instantly. Her fair blonde head lay in a crimson circle sharply defined in the white sand. But the mother was still warm with life. She had scarcely ceased to breathe. In one last desperate throb of love the trembling soul had dragged the dying body to the girl’s side, and she had died with her head resting on the fair round neck as though she had kissed her and fallen asleep.
Father and son clasped hands and stood for a moment with uncovered heads. The doctor said at length:
“Go to the coroner at once and see that he summons the juryyouselect and hand to him. Bring them immediately. I will examine the bodies before they arrive.”
Ben took the negro coroner into his office alone, turned the key, told him of the discovery, and handed him the list of the jury.
“I’ll hatter see Mr. Lynch fust, sah,” he answered.
Ben placed his hand on his hip pocket and said coldly:
“Put your cross-mark on those forms I’ve made out there for you, go with me immediately, and summon these men. If you dare put a negro on this jury, or open your mouth as to what has occurred in this room, I’ll kill you.”
The negro tremblingly did as he was commanded.
The coroner’s jury reported that the mother and daughter had been killed by accidentally failing over the cliff.
In all the throng of grief-stricken friends who came to the little cottage that day, but two men knew the hell-lit secret beneath the tragedy.
When the bodies reached the home, Doctor Cameron placed Mrs. Cameron and Margaret outside to receive visitors and prevent any one from disturbing him. He took Ben into the room and locked the doors.
“My boy, I wish you to witness an experiment.”
He drew from its case a powerful microscope of French make.
“What on earth are you going to do, sir?”
The doctor’s brilliant eyes flashed with a mystic light as he replied:
“Find the fiend who did this crime—and then we will hang him on a gallows so high that all men from the rivers to ends of the earth shall see and feel and know the might of an unconquerable race of men.”
“But there’s no trace of him here.”
“We shall see,” said the doctor, adjusting his instrument.
“I believe that a microscope of sufficient power will reveal on the retina of these dead eyes the image of this devil as if etched there by fire. The experiment has been made successfully in France. No word or deed of man is lost. A German scholar has a memory so wonderful he can repeat whole volumes of Latin, German, and French without an error. A Russian officer has been known to repeat the roll-call of any regiment by reading it twice. Psychologists hold that nothing is lost from the memory of man. Impressions remain in the brain likewords written on paper in invisible ink. So I believe of images in the eye if we can trace them early enough. If no impression were made subsequently on the mother’s eye by the light of day, I believe the fire-etched record of this crime can yet be traced.”
Ben watched him with breathless interest.
He first examined Marion’s eyes. But in the cold azure blue of their pure depths he could find nothing.
“It’s as I feared with the child,” he said. “I can see nothing. It is on the mother I rely. In the splendour of life, at thirty-seven she was the full-blown perfection of womanhood, with every vital force at its highest tension——”
He looked long and patiently into the dead mother’s eye, rose and wiped the perspiration from his face.
“What is it, sir?” asked Ben.
Without reply, as if in a trance, he returned to the microscope and again rose with the little, quick, nervous cough he gave only in the greatest excitement, and whispered:
“Look now and tell me what you see.”
Ben looked and said:
“I can see nothing.”
“Your powers of vision are not trained as mine,” replied the doctor, resuming his place at the instrument.
“What do you see?” asked the younger man, bending nervously.
“The bestial figure of a negro—his huge black hand plainly defined—the upper part of the face is dim, as ifobscured by a gray mist of dawn—but the massive jaws and lips are clear—merciful God—yes—it’s Gus!”
The doctor leaped to his feet livid with excitement.
Ben bent again, looked long and eagerly, but could see nothing.
“I’m afraid the image is in your eye, sir, not the mother’s,” said Ben sadly.
“That’s possible, of course,” said the doctor, “yet I don’t believe it.”
“I’ve thought of the same scoundrel and tried blood hounds on that track, but for some reason they couldn’t follow it. I suspected him from the first, and especially since learning that he left for Columbia on the early morning train on pretended official business.”
“Then I’m not mistaken,” insisted the doctor, trembling with excitement. “Now do as I tell you. Find when he returns. Capture him, bind, gag, and carry him to your meeting-place under the cliff, and let me know.”
On the afternoon of the funeral, two days later, Ben received a cypher telegram from the conductor on the train telling him that Gus was on the evening mail due at Piedmont at nine o’clock.
The papers had been filled with accounts of the accident, and an enormous crowd from the county and many admirers of the fiery lyrics of the poet father had come from distant parts to honour his name. All business was suspended, and the entire white population of the village followed the bodies to their last resting-place.
As the crowds returned to their homes, no notice was taken of a dozen men on horseback who rode out of townby different ways about dusk. At eight o’clock they met in the woods near the first little flag-station located on McAllister’s farm four miles from Piedmont, where a buggy awaited them. Two men of powerful build, who were strangers in the county, alighted from the buggy and walked along the track to board the train at the station three miles beyond and confer with the conductor.
The men, who gathered in the woods, dismounted, removed their saddles, and from the folds of the blankets took a white disguise for horse and man. In a moment it was fitted on each horse, with buckles at the throat, breast, and tail, and the saddles replaced. The white robe for the man was made in the form of an ulster overcoat with cape, the skirt extending to the top of the shoes. From the red belt at the waist were swung two revolvers which had been concealed in their pockets. On each man’s breast was a scarlet circle within which shone a white cross. The same scarlet circle and cross appeared on the horse’s breast, while on his flanks flamed the three red mystic letters, K. K. K. Each man wore a white cap, from the edges of which fell a piece of cloth extending to the shoulders. Beneath the visor was an opening for the eyes and lower down one for the mouth. On the front of the caps of two of the men appeared the red wings of a hawk as the ensign of rank. From the top of each cap rose eighteen inches high a single spike held erect by a twisted wire. The disguises for man and horse were made of cheap unbleached domestic and weighed less than three pounds. They were easily folded within a blanket and kept under the saddle in a crowd without discovery. Itrequired less than two minutes to remove the saddles, place the disguises, and remount.
At the signal of a whistle, the men and horses arrayed in white and scarlet swung into double-file cavalry formation and stood awaiting orders. The moon was now shining brightly, and its light shimmering on the silent horses and men with their tall spiked caps made a picture such as the world had not seen since the Knights of the Middle Ages rode on their Holy Crusades.
As the train neared the flag-station, which was dark and unattended, the conductor approached Gus, leaned over, and said: “I’ve just gotten a message from the sheriff telling me to warn you to get off at this station and slip into town. There’s a crowd at the depot there waiting for you and they mean trouble.”
Gus trembled and whispered:
“Den fur Gawd’s sake lemme off here.”
The two men who got on at the station below stepped out before the negro, and as he alighted from the car, seized, tripped, and threw him to the ground. The engineer blew a sharp signal, and the train pulled on.
In a minute Gus was bound and gagged.
One of the men drew a whistle and blew twice. A single tremulous call like the cry of an owl answered. The swift beat of horses’ feet followed, and four white-and-scarlet clansmen swept in a circle around the group.
One of the strangers turned to the horseman with red-winged ensign on his cap, saluted, and said:
“Here’s your man, Night Hawk.”
“Thanks, gentlemen,” was the answer. “Let us know when we can be of service to your county.”
The strangers sprang into their buggy and disappeared toward the North Carolina line.
The clansmen blindfolded the negro, placed him on a horse, tied his legs securely, and his arms behind him to the ring in the saddle.
The Night Hawk blew his whistle four sharp blasts, and his pickets galloped from their positions and joined him.
Again the signal rang, and his men wheeled with the precision of trained cavalrymen into column formation three abreast, and rode toward Piedmont, the single black figure tied and gagged in the centre of the white-and-scarlet squadron.
CHAPTER IIThe Fiery Cross
The clansmen with their prisoner skirted the village and halted in the woods on the river bank. The Night Hawk signalled for single file, and in a few minutes they stood against the cliff under Lover’s Leap and saluted their chief, who sat his horse, awaiting their arrival.
Pickets were placed in each direction on the narrow path by which the spot was approached, and one was sent to stand guard on the shelving rock above.
Through the narrow crooked entrance they led Gus into the cave which had been the rendezvous of the Piedmont Den of the Clan since its formation. The meeting-place was a grand hall eighty feet deep, fifty feet wide, and more than forty feet in height, which had been carved out of the stone by the swift current of the river in ages past when its waters stood at a higher level.
To-night it was lighted by candles placed on the ledges of the walls. In the centre, on a fallen boulder, sat the Grand Cyclops of the Den, the presiding officer of the township, his rank marked by scarlet stripes on the white-cloth spike of his cap. Around him stood twenty or more clansmen in their uniform, completely disguised. One among them wore a yellow sash, trimmed in gold, abouthis waist, and on his breast two yellow circles with red crosses interlapping, denoting his rank to be the Grand Dragon of the Realm, or Commander-in-Chief of the State.
The Cyclops rose from his seat:
“Let the Grand Turk remove his prisoner for a moment and place him in charge of the Grand Sentinel at the door, until summoned.”
The officer disappeared with Gus, and the Cyclops continued:
“The Chaplain will open our Council with prayer.”
Solemnly every white-shrouded figure knelt on the ground, and the voice of the Rev. Hugh McAlpin, trembling with feeling, echoed through the cave:
“Lord God of our Fathers, as in times past thy children, fleeing from the oppressor, found refuge beneath the earth until once more the sun of righteousness rose, so are we met to-night. As we wrestle with the powers of darkness now strangling our life, give to our souls to endure as seeing the invisible, and to our right arms the strength of the martyred dead of our people. Have mercy on the poor, the weak, the innocent and defenceless, and deliver us from the body of the Black Death. In a land of light and beauty and love our women are prisoners of danger and fear. While the heathen walks his native heath unharmed and unafraid, in this fair Christian Southland our sisters, wives, and daughters dare not stroll at twilight through the streets or step beyond the highway at noon. The terror of the twilight deepens with the darkness, and the stoutest heart grows sick with fear for the red messagethe morning bringeth. Forgive our sins—they are many—but hide not thy face from us, O God, for thou art our refuge!”
As the last echoes of the prayer lingered and died in the vaulted roof, the clansmen rose and stood a moment in silence.
Again the voice of the Cyclops broke the stillness:
“Brethren, we are met to-night at the request of the Grand Dragon of the Realm, who has honoured us with his presence, to constitute a High Court for the trial of a case involving life. Are the Night Hawks ready to submit their evidence?”
“We are ready,” came the answer.
“Then let the Grand Scribe read the objects of the Order on which your authority rests.”
The Scribe opened his Book of Record, “The Prescript of the Order of the Invisible Empire,” and solemnly read:
“To the lovers of law and order, peace and justice, and to the shades of the venerated dead, greeting:
“This is an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism: embodying in its genius and principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood, and patriotic in purpose: its particular objects being,
“First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenceless from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and the oppressed: to succour the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and the orphans of Confederate Soldiers.
“Second: To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and all the laws passed in conformity thereto, and to protect the States and the people thereof from all invasion from any source whatever.
“Third: To aid and assist in the execution of all Constitutional laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by their peers in conformity to the laws of the land.”
“The Night Hawks will produce their evidence,” said the Cyclops, “and the Grand Monk will conduct the case of the people against the negro Augustus Cæsar, the former slave of Dr. Richard Cameron.”
Dr. Cameron advanced and removed his cap. His snow-white hair and beard, ruddy face and dark-brown brilliant eyes made a strange picture in its weird surroundings, like an ancient alchemist ready to conduct some daring experiment in the problem of life.
“I am here, brethren,” he said, “to accuse the black brute about to appear of the crime of assault on a daughter of the South——”
A murmur of thrilling surprise and horror swept the crowd of white-and-scarlet figures as with one common impulse they moved closer.
“His feet have been measured and they exactly tally with the negro tracks found under the window of the Lenoir cottage. His flight to Columbia and return on the publication of their deaths as an accident is a confirmation of our case. I will not relate to you the scientific experiment which first fixed my suspicion of this man’s guilt. My witness could not confirm it, and it might notbe to you credible. But this negro is peculiarly sensitive to hypnotic influence. I propose to put him under this power to-night before you, and, if he is guilty, I can make him tell his confederates, describe and rehearse the crime itself.”
The Night Hawks led Gus before Doctor Cameron, untied his hands, removed the gag, and slipped the blindfold from his head.
Under the doctor’s rigid gaze the negro’s knees struck together, and he collapsed into complete hypnosis, merely lifting his huge paws lamely as if to ward a blow.
They seated him on the boulder from which the Cyclops rose, and Gus stared about the cave and grinned as if in a dream seeing nothing.
The doctor recalled to him the day of the crime, and he began to talk to his three confederates, describing his plot in detail, now and then pausing and breaking into a fiendish laugh.
Old McAllister, who had three lovely daughters at home, threw off his cap, sank to his knees, and buried his face in his hands, while a dozen of the white figures crowded closer, nervously gripping the revolvers which hung from their red belts.
Doctor Cameron pushed them back and lifted his hand in warning.
The negro began to live the crime with fearful realism—the journey past the hotel to make sure the victims had gone to their home; the visit to Aunt Cindy’s cabin to find her there; lying in the field waiting for the last light of the village to go out; gloating with vulgar exultationover their plot, and planning other crimes to follow its success—how they crept along the shadows of the hedgerow of the lawn to avoid the moonlight, stood under the cedar, and through the open windows watched the mother and daughter laughing and talking within——
“Min’ what I tells you now—Tie de ole one, when I gib you de rope,” said Gus in a whisper.
“My God!” cried the agonized voice of the figure with the double cross—“that’s what the piece of burnt rope in the fireplace meant!”
Doctor Cameron again lifted his hand for silence.
Now they burst into the room, and with the light of hell in his beady, yellow-splotched eyes, Gus gripped his imaginary revolver and growled:
“Scream, an’ I blow yer brains out!”
In spite of Doctor Cameron’s warning, the white-robed figures jostled and pressed closer——
Gus rose to his feet and started across the cave as if to spring on the shivering figure of the girl, the clansmen with muttered groans, sobs, and curses falling back as he advanced. He still wore his full Captain’s uniform, its heavy epaulets flashing their gold in the unearthly light, his beastly jaws half covering the gold braid on the collar. His thick lips were drawn upward in an ugly leer and his sinister bead eyes gleamed like a gorilla’s. A single fierce leap and the black claws clutched the air slowly as if sinking into the soft white throat.
Strong men began to cry like children.
“Stop him! Stop him!” screamed a clansman, springing on the negro and grinding his heel into his big thickneck. A dozen more were on him in a moment, kicking, stamping, cursing, and crying like madmen.
Doctor Cameron leaped forward and beat them off:
“Men! Men! You must not kill him in this condition!”
Some of the white figures had fallen prostrate on the ground, sobbing in a frenzy of uncontrollable emotion. Some were leaning against the walls, their faces buried in their arms.
Again old McAllister was on his knees crying over and over again:
“God have mercy on my people!”
When at length quiet was restored, the negro was revived, and again bound, blindfolded, gagged, and thrown to the ground before the Grand Cyclops.
A sudden inspiration flashed in Doctor Cameron’s eyes. Turning to the figure with yellow sash and double cross he said:
“Issue your orders and despatch your courier to-night with the old Scottish rite of the Fiery Cross. It will send a thrill of inspiration to every clansman in the hills.”
“Good—prepare it quickly!” was the answer.
Doctor Cameron opened his medicine case, drew the silver drinking-cover from a flask, and passed out of the cave to the dark circle of blood still shining in the sand by the water’s edge. He knelt and filled the cup half full of the crimson grains, and dipped it into the river. From a saddle he took the lightwood torch, returned within, and placed the cup on the boulder on which the Grand Cyclops had sat. He loosed the bundle of lightwood,took two pieces, tied them into the form of a cross, and laid it beside a lighted candle near the silver cup.
The silent figures watched his every movement. He lifted the cup and said:
“Brethren, I hold in my hand the water of your river bearing the red stain of the life of a Southern woman, a priceless sacrifice on the altar of outraged civilization. Hear the message of your chief.”
The tall figure with the yellow sash and double cross stepped before the strange altar, while the white forms of the clansmen gathered about him in a circle. He lifted his cap, and laid it on the boulder, and his men gazed on the flushed face of Ben Cameron, the Grand Dragon of the Realm.
He stood for a moment silent, erect, a smouldering fierceness in his eyes, something cruel and yet magnetic in his alert bearing.
He looked on the prostrate negro lying in his uniform at his feet, seized the cross, lighted the three upper ends and held it blazing in his hand, while, in a voice full of the fires of feeling, he said:
“Men of the South, the time for words has passed, the hour for action has struck. The Grand Turk will execute this negro to-night and fling his body on the lawn of the black Lieutenant-Governor of the State.”
The Grand Turk bowed.
“I ask for the swiftest messenger of this Den who can ride till dawn.”
The man whom Doctor Cameron had already chosen stepped forward:
“Carry my summons to the Grand Titan of the adjoining province in North Carolina whom you will find at Hambright. Tell him the story of this crime and what you have seen and heard. Ask him to report to me here the second night from this, at eleven o’clock, with six Grand Giants from his adjoining counties, each accompanied by two hundred picked men. In olden times when the Chieftain of our people summoned the clan on an errand of life and death, the Fiery Cross, extinguished in sacrificial blood, was sent by swift courier from village to village. This call was never made in vain, nor will it be to-night, in the new world. Here, on this spot made holy ground by the blood of those we hold dearer than life, I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men——”
High above his head in the darkness of the cave he lifted the blazing emblem——
“The Fiery Cross of old Scotland’s hills! I quench its flames in the sweetest blood that ever stained the sands of Time.”
He dipped its ends in the silver cup, extinguished the fire, and handed the charred symbol to the courier, who quickly disappeared.
CHAPTER IIIThe Parting of the Ways
The discovery of the Captain of the African Guards lying in his full uniform in Lynch’s yard send a thrill of terror to the triumphant leagues. Across the breast of the body was pinned a scrap of paper on which was written in red ink the letters K. K. K. It was the first actual evidence of the existence of this dreaded order in Ulster county.
The First Lieutenant of the Guards assumed command and held the full company in their armoury under arms day and night. Beneath his door he had found a notice which was also nailed on the courthouse. It appeared in the PiedmontEagleand in rapid succession in every newspaper not under negro influence in the State. It read as follows:
“Headquarters of Realm No 4.”Dreadful Era, Black Epoch,“Hideous Hour.“General Order No. I.“The Negro Militia now organized in this State threatens the extinction of civilization. They have avowed their purpose to make war upon and exterminate the Ku Klux Klan, an organization which is now the sole guardian of Society. All negroes are hereby given forty-eight hours from the publication of this notice in their respective counties to surrendertheir arms at the courthouse door. Those who refuse must take the consequences.“By order of the G. D. of Realm No. 4.“By the Grand Scribe.”
“Headquarters of Realm No 4.”Dreadful Era, Black Epoch,“Hideous Hour.
“Headquarters of Realm No 4.
”Dreadful Era, Black Epoch,
“Hideous Hour.
“General Order No. I.
“The Negro Militia now organized in this State threatens the extinction of civilization. They have avowed their purpose to make war upon and exterminate the Ku Klux Klan, an organization which is now the sole guardian of Society. All negroes are hereby given forty-eight hours from the publication of this notice in their respective counties to surrendertheir arms at the courthouse door. Those who refuse must take the consequences.
“By order of the G. D. of Realm No. 4.
“By the Grand Scribe.”
The white people of Piedmont read this notice with a thrill of exultant joy. Men walked the streets with an erect bearing which said without words:
“Stand out of the way.”
For the first time since the dawn of Black Rule negroes began to yield to white men and women the right of way on the streets.
On the day following, the old Commoner sent for Phil.
“What is the latest news?” he asked.
“The town is in a fever of excitement—not over the discovery in Lynch’s yard—but over the blacker rumour that Marion and her mother committed suicide to conceal an assault by this fiend.”
“A trumped-up lie,” said the old man emphatically.
“It’s true, sir. I’ll take Doctor Cameron’s word for it.”
“You have just come from the Camerons?”
“Yes.”
“Let it be your last visit. The Camerons are on the road to the gallows, father and son. Lynch informs me that the murder committed last night, and the insolent notice nailed on the courthouse door, could have come only from their brain. They are the hereditary leaders of these people. They alone would have the audacity to fling this crime into the teeth of the world and threaten worse. We are face to face with Southern barbarism.Every man now to his own standard! The house of Stoneman can have no part with midnight assassins.”
“Nor with black barbarians, father. It is a question of who possesses the right of life and death over the citizen, the organized virtue of the community, or its organized crime. You have mistaken for death the patience of a generous people. We call ourselves the champions of liberty. Yet for less than they have suffered, kings have lost their heads and empires perished before the wrath of freemen.”
“My boy, this is not a question for argument between us,” said the father with stern emphasis. “This conspiracy of terror and assassination threatens to shatter my work to atoms. The election on which turns the destiny of Congress, and the success or failure of my life, is but a few weeks away. Unless this foul conspiracy is crushed, I am ruined, and the Nation falls again beneath the heel of a slaveholders’ oligarchy.”
“Your nightmare of a slaveholders’ oligarchy does not disturb me.”
“At least you will have the decency to break your affair with Margaret Cameron pending the issue of my struggle of life and death with her father and brother?”
“Never.”
“Then I will do it for you.”
“I warn you, sir,” Phil cried, with anger, “that if it comes to an issue of race against race, I am a white man. The ghastly tragedy of the condition of society here is something for which the people of the South are no longer responsible——”
“I’ll take the responsibility!” growled the old cynic.
“Don’t ask me to share it,” said the younger man emphatically.
The father winced, his lips trembled, and he answered brokenly:
“My boy, this is the bitterest hour of my life that has had little to make it sweet. To hear such words from you is more than I can bear. I am an old man now—my sands are nearly run. But two human beings love me, and I love but two. On you and your sister I have lavished all the treasures of a maimed and strangled soul—and it has come to this! Read the notice which one of your friends thrust into the window of my bedroom last night.”
He handed Phil a piece of paper on which was written:
“The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal Union League, will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid this community of his presence.“K. K. K.”
“The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal Union League, will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid this community of his presence.
“K. K. K.”
“K. K. K.”
“Are you an officer of the Union League?” Phil asked in surprise.
“I am its soul.”
“How could a Southerner discover this, if your own children didn’t know it?”
“By their spies who have joined the League.”
“And do the rank and file know the Black Pope at the head of the order?”
“No, but high officials do.”
“Does Lynch?”
“Certainly.”
“Then he is the scoundrel who placed that note in your room. It is a clumsy attempt to forge an order of the Klan. The white man does not live in this town capable of that act. I know these people.”
“My boy, you are bewitched by the smiles of a woman to deny your own flesh and blood.”
“Nonsense, father—you are possessed by an idea which has become an insane mania——”
“Will you respect my wishes?” the old man broke in angrily.
“I will not,” was the clear answer. Phil turned and left the room, and the old man’s massive head sank on his breast in helpless baffled rage and grief.
He was more successful in his appeal to Elsie. He convinced her of the genuineness of the threat against him. The brutal reference to his lameness roused the girl’s soul. When the old man, crushed by Phil’s desertion, broke down the last reserve of his strange cold nature, tore his wounded heart open to her, cried in agony over his deformity, his lameness, and the anguish with which he saw the threatened ruin of his life-work, she threw her arms around his neck in a flood of tears and cried:
“Hush, father, I will not desert you. I will never leave you, or wed without your blessing. If I find that my lover was in any way responsible for this insult, I’ll tear his image out of my heart and never speak his name again!”
She wrote a note to Ben, asking him to meet her at sundown on horseback at Lover’s Leap.
Ben was elated at the unexpected request. He was hungry for an hour with his sweetheart, whom he had not seen save for a moment since the storm of excitement broke following the discovery of the crime.
He hastened through his work of ordering the movement of the Klan for the night, and determined to surprise Elsie by meeting her in his uniform of a Grand Dragon.
Secure in her loyalty, he would deliberately thus put his life in her hands. Using the water of a brook in the woods for a mirror, he adjusted his yellow sash and pushed the two revolvers back under the cape out of sight, saying to himself with a laugh:
“Betray me? Well, if she does, life would not be worth the living!”
When Elsie had recovered from the first shock of surprise at the white horse and rider waiting for her under the shadows of the old beech, her surprise gave way to grief at the certainty of his guilt, and the greatness of his love in thus placing his life without a question in her hands.
He tied the horses in the woods, and they sat down on the rustic.
He removed his helmet cap, threw back the white cape showing the scarlet lining, and the two golden circles with their flaming crosses on his breast, with boyish pride. The costume was becoming to his slender graceful figure, and he knew it.
“You see, sweetheart, I hold high rank in the Empire,” he whispered.
From beneath his cape he drew a long bundle which he unrolled. It was a triangular flag of brilliant yellowedged in scarlet. In the centre of the yellow ground was the figure of a huge black dragon with fiery red eyes and tongue. Around it was a Latin motto worked in scarlet: “quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus”—what always, what everywhere, what by all has been held to be true. “The battle-flag of the Klan,” he said; “the standard of the Grand Dragon.”
Elsie seized his hand and kissed it, unable to speak.
“Why so serious to-night?”
“Do you love me very much?” she answered.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay his life at the feet of his beloved,” he responded tenderly.
“Yes, yes; I know—and that is why you are breaking my heart. When first I met you—it seems now ages and ages ago—I was a vain, self-willed, pert little thing——”
“It’s not so. I took you for an angel—you were one. You are one to-night.”
“Now,” she went on slowly, “in what I have lived through you I have grown into an impassioned, serious, self-disciplined, bewildered woman. Your perfect trust to-night is the sweetest revelation that can come to a woman’s soul and yet it brings to me unspeakable pain——”
“For what?”
“You are guilty of murder.”
Ben’s figure stiffened.
“The judge who pronounces sentence of death on a criminal outlawed by civilized society is not usually called a murderer, my dear.”
“And by whose authority are you a judge?”
“By authority of the sovereign people who created theState of South Carolina. The criminals who claim to be our officers are usurpers placed there by the subversion of law.”
“Won’t you give this all up for my sake?” she pleaded. “Believe me, you are in great danger.”
“Not so great as is the danger of my sister and mother and my sweetheart—it is a man’s place to face danger,” he gravely answered.
“This violence can only lead to your ruin and shame——”
“I am fighting the battle of a race on whose fate hangs the future of the South and the Nation. My ruin and shame will be of small account if they are saved,” was the even answer.
“Come, my dear,” she pleaded tenderly, “you know that I have weighed the treasures of music and art and given them all for one clasp of your hand, one throb of your heart against mine. I should call you cruel did I not know you are infinitely tender. This is the only thing I have ever asked you to do for me——”
“Desert my people! You must not ask of me this infamy, if you love me,” he cried.
“But, listen; this is wrong—this wild vengeance is a crime you are doing, however great the provocation. We cannot continue to love one another if you do this. Listen: I love you better than father, mother, life, or career—all my dreams I’ve lost in you. I’ve lived through eternity to-day with my father——”
“You know me guiltless of the vulgar threat against him——”
“Yes, and yet you are the leader of desperate men who might have done it. As I fought this battle to-day, I’ve lost you, lost myself, and sunk down to the depths of despair, and at the end rang the one weak cry of a woman’s heart for her lover! Your frown can darken the brightest sky. For your sake I can give up all save the sense of right. I’ll walk by your side in life—lead you gently and tenderly along the way of my dreams if I can, but if you go your way, it shall be mine; and I shall still be glad because you are there! See how humble I am—only you must not commit crime!”
“Come, sweetheart, you must not use that word,” he protested, with a touch of wounded pride.
“You are a conspirator——”
“I am a revolutionist.”
“You are committing murder!”
“I am waging war.”
Elsie leaped to her feet in a sudden rush of anger and extended her hand:
“Good-bye. I shall not see you again. I do not know you. You are still a stranger to me.”
He held her hand firmly.
“We must not part in anger,” he said slowly. “I have grave work to do before the day dawns. We may not see each other again.”
She led her horse to the seat quickly and without waiting for his assistance sprang into the saddle.
“Do you not fear my betrayal of your secret?” she asked.
He rode to her side, bent close, and whispered:
“It’s as safe as if locked in the heart of God.”
A little sob caught her voice, yet she said slowly in firm tones:
“If another crime is committed in this county by your Klan, we will never see each other again.”
He escorted her to the edge of the town without a word, pressed her hand in silence, wheeled his horse, and disappeared on the road to the North Carolina line.