The night was a memorable one in Norton's life. The members of the Legislature and the leaders of his party from every quarter of the state gave a banquet in his honor in the Hall of the House of Representatives. Eight hundred guests, the flower and chivalry of the Commonwealth, sat down at the eighty tables improvised for the occasion.
Fifty leading men were guests of honor and vied with one another in acclaiming the brilliant young Speaker the coming statesman of the Nation. His name was linked with Hamilton, Jefferson, Webster, Clay and Calhoun. He was the youngest man who had ever been elected Speaker of a Legislative Assembly in American history and a dazzling career was predicted.
Even the newly installed Chief Executive, a hold-over from the defeated party, asked to be given a seat and in a glowing tribute to Norton hailed him as the next Governor of the state.
He had scarcely uttered the words when all the guests leaped to their feet by a common impulse, raised their glasses and shouted:
"To our next Governor, Daniel Norton!"
The cheers which followed were not arranged, they were the spontaneous outburst of genuine admirationby men and women who knew the man and believed in his power and his worth.
Norton flushed and his eyes dropped. His daring mind had already leaped the years. The Governor's chair meant the next step—a seat in the Senate Chamber of the United States. A quarter of a century and the South would once more come into her own. He would then be but forty-nine years old. He would have as good a chance for the Presidency as any other man. His fathers had been of the stock that created the Nation. His great-grandfather fought with Washington and Lafayette. His head was swimming with its visions, while the great Hall rang with his name.
While the tumult was still at its highest, he lifted his eyes for a moment over the heads of the throng at the tables below the platform on which the guests of honor were seated, and his heart suddenly stood still.
Cleo was standing in the door of the Hall, a haunted look in her dilated eyes, watching her chance to beckon to him unseen by the crowd.
He stared at her a moment in blank amazement and turned pale. Something had happened at his home, and by the expression on her face the message she bore was one he would never forget.
As he sat staring blankly, as at a sudden apparition, she disappeared in the crowd at the door. He looked in vain for her reappearance and was waiting an opportune moment to leave, when a waiter slipped through the mass of palms and flowers banked behind his chair by his admirers and thrust a crumpled note into his hand.
"The girl said it was important, sir," he explained.
Norton opened the message and held it under the banquet table as he hurriedly read in Cleo's hand:
"It's found out—she's raving. The doctor is there. I must see you quick."
He whispered to the chairman that a message had just been received announcing the illness of his wife, but he hoped to be able to return in a few minutes.
It was known that his wife was an invalid and had often been stricken with violent attacks of hysteria, and so the banquet proceeded without interruption. The band was asked to play a stirring piece and he slipped out as the opening strains burst over the chattering, gay crowd.
As his tall figure rose from the seat of honor he gazed for an instant over the sparkling scene, and for the first time in his life knew the meaning of the word fear. A sickening horror swept his soul and the fire died from eyes that had a moment before blazed with visions of ambition. He felt the earth crumbling beneath his feet. He hoped for a way out, but from the moment he saw Cleo beckoning him over the heads of his guests he knew that Death had called him in the hour of his triumph.
He felt his way blindly through the crowd and pushed roughly past a hundred hands extended to congratulate him. He walked by instinct. He couldn't see. The mists of eternity seemed suddenly to have swept him beyond the range of time and sense.
In the hall he stumbled against Cleo and looked at her in a dazed way.
"Get your hat," she whispered.
He returned to the cloakroom, got his hat and hurried back in the same dull stupor.
"Come down stairs into the Square," she said quickly.
He followed her without a word, and when they reached the shadows of an oak below the windows of the Hall, he suddenly roused himself, turned on her fiercely and demanded:
"Well, what's happened?"
The girl was calm now, away from the crowd and guarded by the friendly night. Her words were cool and touched with the least suggestion of bravado. She looked at him steadily:
"I reckon you know——"
"You mean——" He felt for the tree trunk as if dizzy.
"Yes. She has found out——"
"What—how—when?" His words came in gasps of fear.
"About us——"
"How?"
"It was mammy. She was wild with jealousy that I had taken her place and was allowed to sleep in the house. She got to slipping to the nursery at night and watching me. She must have seen me one night at your room door and told her to get rid of me."
The man suddenly gripped the girl's shoulders, swung her face toward him and gazed into her shifting eyes, while his breath came in labored gasps:
"You little yellow devil! Mammy never told that to my wife and you know it; she would have told me and I would have sent you away. She knows that story would kill my baby's mother and she'd have cut the tongue out of her own head sooner than betray me. She has always loved me as her own child—she'd fight for me and die for me and stand for me against every man, woman and child on earth!"
"Well, she told her," the girl sullenly repeated.
"Told her what?" he asked.
"That I was hanging around your room." She paused.
"Well, go on——"
"Miss Jean asked me if it was true. I saw that we were caught and I just confessed the whole thing——"
The man sprang at her throat, paused, and his hands fell limp by his side. He gazed at her a moment, and grasped her wrists with cruel force:
"Yes, that's it, you little fiend—you confessed! You were so afraid you might not be forced to confess that you went out of your way to tell it. Two months ago I came to my senses and put you out of my life. You deliberately tried to commit murder to bring me back. You knew that confession would kill my wife as surely as if you had plunged a knife into her heart. You know that she has the mind of an innocent child—that she can think no evil of any one. You've tried to kill her on purpose, willfully, maliciously, deliberately—and if she dies——"
Norton's voice choked into an inarticulate groan and the girl smiled calmly.
The band in the Hall over their heads ended the music in a triumphant crash and he listened mechanically to the chairman while he announced the temporary absence of the guest of honor:
"And while he is out of the Hall for a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen," he added facetiously, "we can say a lot of fine things behind his back we would have blushed to tell him to his face——"
Another burst of applause and the hum and chatter and laughter came through the open window.
With a cry of anguish, the man turned again on the girl:
"Why do you stand there grinning at me? Why did you do this fiendish thing? What have you to say?"
"Nothing"—there was a ring of exultation in her voice—"I did it because I had to."
Norton leaned against the oak, placed his hands on his temples and groaned:
"Oh, my God! It's a nightmare——"
Suddenly he asked:
"What did she do when you told her?"
The girl answered with indifference:
"Screamed, called me a liar, jumped on me like a wild-cat, dug her nails in my neck and went into hysterics."
"And you?"
"I picked her up, carried her to bed and sent for the doctor. As quick as he came I ran here to tell you."
The speaker upstairs was again announcing his name as the next Governor and Senator and the crowd were cheering. He felt the waves of Death roll over and engulf him. His knees grew weak and in spite of all effort he sank to a stone that lay against the gnarled trunk of the tree.
"She may be dead now," he said to himself in a dazed whisper.
"I don't think so!" the soft voice purred with the slightest suggestion of a sneer. She bit her lips and actually laughed. It was more than he could bear. With a sudden leap his hands closed on her throat and forced her trembling form back into the shadows.
"May—God—hurl—you—into—everlasting—hell—for—this!" he cried in anguish and his grip suddenly relaxed.
The girl had not struggled. Her own hand had simply been raised instinctively and grasped his.
"What shall I do?" she asked.
"Get out of my sight before I kill you!"
"I'm not afraid."
The calm accents maddened him to uncontrollable fury:
"And if you ever put your foot into my house again or cross my path, I'll not be responsible for what happens!"
His face was livid and his fists closed with an unconscious strength that cut the blood from the palms of his hands.
"I'm not afraid!" she repeated, her voice rising with clear assurance, a strange smile playing about her full lips.
"Go!" he said fiercely.
The girl turned without a word and walked into the bright light that streamed from the windows of the banquet hall, paused and looked at him, the white rows of teeth shining with a smile:
"But I'll see you again!"
And then, with shouts of triumph mocking his soul, his shoulders drooped, drunk with the stupor and pain of shame, he walked blindly through the night to the Judgment Bar of Life—a home where a sobbing wife waited for his coming.
He paused at the gate. His legs for the moment simply refused to go any further. A light was burning in his wife's room. Its radiance streaming against the white fluted columns threw their shadows far out on the lawn.
The fine old house seemed to slowly melt in the starlight into a solemn Court of Justice set on the highest hill of the world. Its white boards were hewn slabs of gleaming marble, its quaint old Colonial door the grand entrance to the Judgment Hall of Life and Death. And the judge who sat on the high dais was not the blind figure of tradition, but a blushing little bride he had led to God's altar four years ago. Her blue eyes were burning into the depths of his trembling soul.
His hand gripped the post and he tried to pull himself together, and look the ugly situation in the face. But it was too sudden. He had repented and was living a clean life, and the shock was so unexpected, its coming so unforeseen, the stroke at a moment when his spirits had climbed so high, the fall was too great. He lay a mangled heap at the foot of a precipice and could as yet only stretch out lame hands and feel in the dark. He could see nothing clearly.
A curious thing flashed through his benumbed mindas his gaze fascinated by the light in her room. She had not yet sent for him. He might have passed a messenger on the other side of the street, or he may have gone to the Capitol by another way, yet he was somehow morally sure that no word had as yet been sent. It could mean but one thing—that his wife had utterly refused to believe the girl's story. This would make the only sane thing to do almost impossible. If he could humbly confess the truth and beg for her forgiveness, the cloud might be lifted and her life saved.
But if she blindly refused to admit the possibility of such a sin, the crisis was one that sickened him. He would either be compelled to risk her life with the shock of confession, or lie to her with a shameless passion that would convince her of his innocence.
Could he do this? It was doubtful. He had never been a good liar. He had taken many a whipping as a boy sooner than lie. He had always dared to tell the truth and had felt a cruel free joy somehow in its consequence. He had been reserved and silent in his youth when he had sowed his wild oats before his marriage. He had never been forced to lie about that. No questions had been asked. He had kept his own counsel and that side of his life was a sealed book even to his most intimate friends.
He had never been under the influence of liquor and knew how to be a good fellow without being a fool. The first big lie of his life he was forced to act rather than speak when Cleo had entered his life. This lie had not yet shaped itself into words. And he doubted his ability to carry it off successfully. To speak the truth simply and plainly had become an ingrained habit. He trembled at the possibility of being compelledto deliberately and continuously lie to his wife. If he could only tell her the truth—tell her the hours of anguish he had passed in struggling against the Beast that at last had won the fight—if he could only make her feel to-night the pain, the shame, the loathing, the rage that filled his soul, she must forgive.
But would she listen? Had the child-mind that had never faced realities the power to adjust itself to such a tragedy and see life in its wider relations of sin and sorrow, of repentance and struggle to the achievement of character? There was but one answer:
"No. It would kill her. She can't understand——"
And then despair gripped him, his eyes grew dim and he couldn't think. He leaned heavily on the gate in a sickening stupor from which his mind slowly emerged and his fancy began to play pranks with an imagination suddenly quickened by suffering into extraordinary activity.
A katydid was crying somewhere over his head and a whip-poor-will broke the stillness with his weird call that seemed to rise from the ground under his feet. He was a boy again roaming the fields where stalwart slaves were working his father's plantation. It was just such a day in early spring when he had persuaded Andy to run away with him and go swimming in Buffalo creek. He had caught cold and they both got a whipping that night. He remembered how Andy had yelled so loud his father had stopped. And how he had set his little jaws together, refused to cry and received the worst whipping of his life. He could hear Andy now as he slipped up to him afterward, grinning and chuckling and whispered:
"Lordy, man, why didn't ye holler? You don't knowhow ter take er whippin' nohow. He nebber hurt me no mo' dan a flea bitin'!"
And then his mind leaped the years. Cleo was in his arms that night at old Peeler's and he was stroking her hair as he would have smoothed the fur of a frightened kitten. That strange impulse was the beginning—he could see it now—and it had grown with daily contact, until the contagious animal magnetism of her nearness became resistless. And now he stood a shivering coward in the dark, afraid to enter his own house and look his wife in the face.
Yes, he was a coward. He acknowledged it with a grim smile—a coward! This boastful, high-strung, self-poised leader of men! He drew his tall figure erect and a bitter laugh broke from his lips. He who had led men to death on battlefields with a smile and a shout! He who had cried in anguish the day Lee surrendered! He who, in defeat, still indomitable and unconquered, had fired the souls of his ruined people and led them through riot and revolution again to victory!—He was a coward now and he knew it, as he stood there alone in the stillness of the Southern night and looked himself squarely in the face.
His heart gave a throb of pity as he recalled the scenes during the war, when deserters and cowards had been led out in the gray dawn and shot to death for something they couldn't help.
It must be a dream. He couldn't realize the truth—grim, hideous and unthinkable. He had won every fight as the leader of his race against overwhelming odds. He had subdued the desperate and lawless among his own men until his word was law. He had rallied the shattered forces of a defeated people and inspired themwith enthusiasm. He had overturned the negroid government in the state though backed by a million bayonets in the hands of veteran battle-tried soldiers. He had crushed the man who led these forces, impeached and removed him from office, and hurled him into merited oblivion, a man without a country. He had made himself the central figure of the commonwealth. In the dawn of manhood he had lived already a man's full life. A conquered world at his feet, and yet a little yellow, red-haired girl of the race he despised, in the supreme hour of triumph had laid his life in ruins. He had conquered all save the Beast within and he must die for it—it was only a morbid fancy, yes—yet he felt the chill in his soul.
How long he had stood there doubting, fearing, dreaming, he could form no idea. He was suddenly roused to the consciousness of his position by the doctor who was hurrying from the house. There was genuine surprise in his voice as he spoke slowly and in a very low tone.
Dr. Williams had the habit of slow, quiet speech. He was a privileged character in the town and the state, with the record of a half century of practice. A man of wide reading and genuine culture, he concealed a big heart beneath a brutal way of expressing his thoughts. He said exactly what he meant with a distinctness that was all the more startling because of his curious habit of speaking harsh things in tones so softly modulated that his hearers frequently asked him to repeat his words.
"I had just started to the banquet hall with a message for you," he said slowly.
"Yes—yes," Norton answered vaguely.
"But I see you've come—Cleo told you?"
"Yes—she came to the hall——"
The doctor's slender fingers touched his fine gray beard.
"Really! She entered that hall to-night? Well, it's a funny world, this. We spend our time and energy fighting the negro race in front and leave our back doors open for their women and children to enter and master our life. I congratulate you as a politician on your victory——"
Norton lifted his hand as if to ward off a blow:
"Please! not to-night!"
The doctor caught the look of agony in the haggard face and suddenly extended his hand:
"I wasn't thinking of your personal history, my boy. I was—I was thinking for a moment of the folly of a people—forgive me—I know you need help to-night. You must pull yourself together before you go in there——"
"Yes, I know!" Norton faltered. "You have seen my wife and talked with her—you can see things clearer than I—tell me what to do!"
"There's but one thing you can do," was the gentle answer. "Lie to her—lie—and stick to it. Lie skillfully, carefully, deliberately, and with such sincerity and conviction she's got to believe you. She wants to believe you, of course. I know you are guilty——"
"Let me tell you, doctor——"
"No, you needn't. It's an old story. The more powerful the man the easier his conquest when once the female animal of Cleo's race has her chance. It's enough to make the devil laugh to hear your politicians howl against social and political equality while this cancer is eating the heart out of our society. It makes mesick! And she went to your banquet hall to-night! I'll laugh over it when I'm blue——"
The doctor paused, laughed softly, and continued:
"Now listen, Norton. Your wife can't live unless she wills to live. I've told you this before. The moment she gives up, she dies. It's the iron will inside her frail body that holds the spirit. If she knows the truth, she can't face it. She is narrow, conventional, and can't readjust herself——"
"But doctor, can't she be made to realize that this thing is here a living fact which the white woman of the South must face? These hundreds of thousands of a mixed race are not accidents. She must know that this racial degradation is not merely a thing of to-day, but the heritage of two hundred years of sin and sorrow!"
"The older women know this—yes—but not our younger generation, who have been reared in the fierce defense of slavery we were forced to make before the war. These things were not to be talked about. No girl reared as your wife can conceive of the possibility of a decent man falling so low. I warn you. You can't let her know the truth—and so the only thing you can do is to lie and stick to it. It's queer advice for a doctor to give an honorable man, perhaps. But life is full of paradoxes. My advice is medicine. Our best medicines are the most deadly poisons in nature. I've saved many a man's life by their use. This happens to be one of the cases where I prescribe a poison. Put the responsibility on me if you like. My shoulders are broad. I live close to Nature and the prattle of fools never disturbs me."
"Is she still hysterical?" Norton asked.
"No. That's the strange part of it—the thing that frightens me. That's why I haven't left her side since I was called. Her outburst wasn't hysteria in the first place. It was rage—the blind unreasoning fury of the woman who sees her possible rival and wishes to kill her. You'll find her very quiet. There's a queer, still look in her eyes I don't like. It's the calm before the storm—a storm that may leave death in its trail——"
"Couldn't I deny it at first," Norton interrupted, "and then make my plea to her in an appeal for mercy on an imaginary case? God only knows what I've gone through—the fight I made——"
"Yes, I know, my boy, with that young animal playing at your feet in physical touch with your soul and body in the intimacies of your home, you never had a chance. But you can't make your wife see this. An angel from heaven, with tongue of divine eloquence, can make no impression on her if she once believes you guilty. Don't tell her—and may God have mercy on your soul to-night!"
With a pressure on the younger man's arm, the straight white figure of the old doctor passed through the gate.
Norton walked quickly to the steps of the spacious, pillared porch, stopped and turned again into the lawn. He sat down on a rustic seat and tried desperately to work out what he would say, and always the gray mist of a fog of despair closed in.
For the first time in his life he was confronted squarely with the fact that the whole structure of society is enfolded in a network of interminable lies. His wife had been reared from the cradle in the atmosphere of beauty and innocence. She believed in the innocenceof her father, her brothers, and every man who moved in her circle. Above all, she believed in the innocence of her husband. The fact that the negro race had for two hundred years been stirring the baser passions of her men—that this degradation of the higher race had been bred into the bone and sinew of succeeding generations—had never occurred to her childlike mind. How hopeless the task to tell her now when the tragic story must shatter her own ideals!
The very thought brought a cry of agony to his lips:
"God in heaven—what can I do?"
He looked helplessly at the stream of light from her window and turned again toward the cool, friendly darkness.
The night was one of marvellous stillness. The band was playing again in his banquet hall at the Capitol. So still was the night he could hear distinctly the softer strains of the stringed instruments, faint, sweet and thrilling, as they floated over the sleepy old town. A mocking-bird above him wakened by the call of melody answered, tenderly at first, and then, with the crash of cornet and drum, his voice swelled into a flood of wonderful song.
With a groan of pain, Norton rose and walked rapidly into the house. His bird-dog lay on the mat outside the door and sprang forward with a joyous whine to meet him.
He stooped and drew the shaggy setter's head against his hot cheek.
"I need a friend, to-night, Don, old boy!" he said tenderly. And Don answered with an eloquent wag of his tail and a gentle nudge of his nose.
"If you were only my judge!—Bah, what's the use——"
He drew his drooping shoulders erect and entered his wife's room. Her eyes were shining with peculiar brightness, but otherwise she seemed unusually calm. She began speaking with quick nervous energy:
"Dr. Williams told you?"
"Yes, and I came at once." He answered with an unusually firm and clear note of strength. His whole being was keyed now to a high tension of alert decision. He saw that the doctor's way was the only one.
"I don't ask you, Dan," she went on with increasing excitement and a touch of scorn in her voice—"I don't ask you to deny this lie. What I want to know is the motive the little devil had in saying such a thing to me. Mammy, in her jealousy, merely told me she was hanging around your room too often. I asked her if it were true. She looked at me a moment and burst into her lying 'confession.' I could have killed her. I did try to tear her green eyes out. I knew that you hated her and tried to put her out of the house, and I thought she had taken this way to get even with you—but it doesn't seem possible. And then I thought the Governor might have taken this way to strike you. He knows old Peeler, the low miserable scoundrel, who is her father. Do you think it possible?"
"I—don't—know," he stammered, moistening his lips and turning away.
"Yet it's possible"—she insisted.
He saw the chance to confirm this impression by a cheap lie—to invent a story of old Peeler's intimacy with the Governor, of his attempt to marry Lucy, of his hatred of the policy of the paper, his fear of theKlan and of his treacherous, cowardly nature—yet the lie seemed so cheap and contemptible his lips refused to move. If he were going to carry out the doctor's orders here was his chance. He struggled to speak and couldn't. The habit of a life and the fibre of character were too strong. So he did the fatal thing at the moment of crisis.
"I don't think that possible," he said.
"Why not?"
"Well, you see, since I rescued old Peeler that night from those boys, he has been so abjectly grateful I've had to put him out of my office once or twice, and I'm sure he voted for me for the Legislature against his own party."
"He voted for you?" she asked in surprise.
"He told me so. He may have lied, of course, but I don't think he did."
"Then what could have been her motive?"
His teeth were chattering in spite of a desperate effort to think clearly and speak intelligently. He stared at a picture on the wall and made no reply.
"Say something—answer my question!" his wife cried excitedly.
"I have answered, my dear. I said I don't know. I'm stunned by the whole thing."
"You arestunned?"
"Yes——"
"Stunned? You, a strong, innocent man, stunned by a weak contemptible lie like this from the lips of such a girl—what do you mean?"
"Why, that I was naturally shocked to be called out of a banquet at such a moment by such an accusation.She actually beckoned to me from the door over the heads of the guests——"
The little blue eyes suddenly narrowed and the thin lips grew hard:
"Cleo called you from the door?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You left the hall to see her there?"
"No, I went down stairs."
"Into the Capitol Square?"
"Yes. I couldn't well talk to her before all those guests——"
"Why not?"
The question came like the crack of a pistol. Her voice was high, cold, metallic, ringing. He saw, when too late, that he had made a fatal mistake. He stammered, reddened and then turned pale:
"Why—why—naturally——"
"If you are innocent—why not?"
He made a desperate effort to find a place of safety:
"I thought it wise to go down stairs where I could talk without interruption——"
"You—were—afraid," she was speaking each word now with cold, deadly deliberation, "to take-a-message-from-your-servant-at-the-door-of-a-public banquet-hall——" her words quickened—"then you suspected her possible message! Therewassomething between you——"
"My dear, I beg of you——"
He turned his head away with a weary gesture.
She sprang from the side of the bed, leaped to his side, seized him by both arms and fairly screamed in his face:
"Look at me, Dan!"
He turned quickly, his haggard eyes stared into hers, and she looked with slowly dawning horror.
"Oh, my God!" she shrieked. "It's true—it's true—it's true!"
She sprang back with a shiver of loathing, covered her face with her hands and staggered to her bed, sobbing hysterically:
"It's true—it's true—it's true! Have mercy, Lord!—it's true—it's true!" She fell face downward, her frail figure quivering like a leaf in a storm.
He rushed to her side, crying in terror:
"It's not true—it's not true, my dear! Don't believe it. I swear it's a lie—it's a lie—I tell you!"
She was crying in sobs of utter anguish.
He bent low:
"It's not true, dearest! It's not true, I tell you. You mustn't believe it. You can't believe it when I swear to you that it's a lie——"
His head gently touched her slender shoulder.
She flinched as if scorched by a flame, sprang to her feet, and faced him with blazing eyes:
"Don't—you—dare—touch—me——"
"My dear," he pleaded.
"Don't speak to me again!"
"Please——"
"Get out of this room!"
He stood rooted to the spot in helpless stupor and she threw her little body against his with sudden fury, pushing him toward the door. "Get out, I say!"
He staggered back helplessly and awkwardly amazed at her strength as she pushed him into the hall. She stood a moment towering in the white frame of the door, the picture of an avenging angel to his tormented soul.Through teeth chattering with hysterical emotion she cried:
"Go, you leper! And don't you ever dare to cross this door-sill again—not even to look on my dead face!"
"For God's sake, don't!" he gasped, staggering toward her.
But the door slammed in his face and the bolt suddenly shot into its place.
He knocked gently and received no answer. An ominous stillness reigned within. He called again and again without response. He waited patiently for half an hour and knocked once more. An agony of fear chilled him. She might be dead. He knelt, pressed his ear close to the keyhole and heard a long, low, pitiful sob from her bed.
"Thank God——"
He rose with sudden determination. She couldn't be left like that. He would call the doctor back at once, and, what was better still, he would bring her mother, a wise gray-haired little saint, who rarely volunteered advice in her daughter's affairs. The door would fly open at her soft command.
The doctor's house lay beyond the Capitol and in his haste Norton forgot that a banquet was being held in his honor. He found himself suddenly face to face with the first of the departing guests as they began to pour through the gates of the Square.
He couldn't face these people, turned in his tracks, walked back to the next block and hurried into an obscure side street by which he could avoid them.
The doctor had not retired. He was seated on his porch quietly smoking, as if he were expecting the call.
"Well, you've bungled it, I see," he said simply, as he rose and seized his hat.
"Yes, she guessed the truth——"
"Guessed?—hardly." The white head with its shining hair slowly wagged. "She read it in those haggard eyes. Funny what poor liars your people have always been! If your father hadn't been fool enough to tell the truth with such habitual persistence, that office of his would never have been burned during the war. It's a funny world. It's the fun of it that keeps us alive, after all."
"Do the best you can for me, doctor," he interrupted. "I'm going for her mother."
"All right," was the cheery answer, "bring her at once. She's a better doctor than I to-night."
Norton walked swiftly toward a vine-clad cottage that stood beside Governor Carteret's place. It sat far back on the lawn that was once a part of the original estate twenty odd years ago. The old Governor during his last administration had built it for Robert Carteret, a handsome, wayward son, whom pretty Jennie Pryor had married. It had been a runaway love match. The old man had not opposed it because of any objection to the charming girl the boy had fallen in love with. He knew that Robert was a wild, headstrong, young scapegrace unfit to be the husband of any woman.
But apparently marriage settled him. For two years after Jean's birth he lived a decent life and then slipped again into hopelessly dissolute habits. When Jean was seven years old he was found dead one night under peculiar circumstances that were never made public. The sweet little woman who had braved the world's wrath to marry him had never complained, and she alone (with one other) knew the true secret of his death.
She had always been supported by a generous allowance from the old Governor and in his last will the vigorous octogenarian had made her his sole heir.
Norton had loved this quiet, patient little mother with a great tenderness since the day of his marriage to her daughter. He had never found her wanting in sympathy or helpfulness. She rarely left her cottage, but many a time he had gone to her with his troubles and came away with a light heart and a clearer insight into the duty that called. Her love and faith in him was one of the big things in life. In every dream of achievement that had fired his imagination during thestirring days of the past months he had always seen her face smiling with pride and love.
It was a bitter task to confess his shame to her—this tender, gracious, uncomplaining saint, to whom he had always been a hero. He paused a moment with his hand on the bell of the cottage, and finally rang.
Standing before her with bowed head he told in a few stammering words the story of his sin and the sorrow that had overwhelmed him.
"I swear to you that for the past two months my life has been clean and God alone knows the anguish of remorse I have suffered. You'll help me, mother?" he asked pathetically.
"Yes, my son," she answered simply.
"You don't hate me?"—the question ended with a catch in his voice that made it almost inaudible.
She lifted her white hands to his cheeks, drew the tall form down gently and pressed his lips:
"No, my son, I've lived too long. I leave judgment now to God. The unshed tears I see in your eyes are enough for me."
"I must see her to-night, mother. Make her see me. I can't endure this."
"She will see you when I have talked with her," was the slow reply as if to herself. "I am going to tell her something that I hoped to carry to the grave. But the time has come and she must know."
The doctor was strolling on the lawn when they arrived.
"She didn't wish to see me, my boy," he said with a look of sympathy. "And I thought it best to humor her. Send for me again if you wish, but I think the mother is best to-night." Without further words hetipped his hat with a fine old-fashioned bow to Mrs. Carteret and hurried home.
At the sound of the mother's voice the door was opened, two frail arms slipped around her neck and a baby was sobbing again on her breast. The white slender hands tenderly stroked the blonde hair, lips bent low and kissed the shining head and a cheek rested there while sob after sob shook the little body. The wise mother spoke no words save the sign language of love and tenderness, the slow pressure to her heart of the sobbing figure, kisses, kisses, kisses on her hair and the soothing touch of her hand.
A long time without a word they thus clung to each other. The sobs ceased at last.
"Now tell me, darling, how can I help you?" the gentle voice said.
"Oh, mamma, I just want to go home to you again and die—that's all."
"You'd be happier, you think, with me, dear?"
"Yes—it's clean and pure there. I can't live in this house—the very air I breathe is foul!"
"But you can't leave Dan, my child. Your life and his are one in your babe. God has made this so."
"He is nothing to me now. He doesn't exist. I don't come of his breed of men. My father's handsome face—my grandfather's record as the greatest Governor of the state—are not merely memories to me. I'll return to my own. And I'll take my child with me. I'll go back where the air is clean, where men have always been men, not beasts——"
The mother rose quietly and took from the mantel the dainty morocco-covered copy of the Bible she had given her daughter the day she left home. Sheturned its first, pages, put her finger on the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Genesis, and turned down a leaf:
"I want you to read this chapter of Genesis which I have marked when you are yourself, and remember that the sympathy of the world has always been with the outcast Hagar, and not with the foolish wife who brought a beautiful girl into her husband's house and then repented of her folly."
"But a negress! oh, my God, the horror, the shame, the humiliation he has put on me! I've asked myself a hundred times why I lived a moment, why I didn't leap from that window and dash my brain out on the ground below—the beast—the beast!"
"Yes, dear, but when you are older you will know that all men are beasts."
"Mother!"
"Yes, all men who are worth while——"
"How can you say that," the daughter cried with scorn, "and remember my father and grandfather? No man passes the old Governor to-day without lifting his hat, and I've seen you sit for hours with my father's picture in your lap crying over it——"
"Yes, dear," was the sweet answer, "these hearts of ours play strange pranks with us sometimes. You must see Dan to-night and forgive. He will crawl on his hands and knees to your feet and beg it."
"I'll never see him or speak to him again!"
"You must—dear."
"Never!"
The mother sat down on the lounge and drew the quivering figure close. Her face was hidden from the daughter's view when she began to speak and so thedeath-like pallor was not noticed. The voice was held even by a firm will:
"I hoped God might let me go without my having to tell you what I must say now, dearest"—in spite of her effort there was a break and silence.
The little hand sought the mother's:
"You know you can tell me anything, mamma, dear."
"Your father, my child, was not a great man. He died in what should have been the glory of young manhood. He achieved nothing. He was just the spoiled child of a greater man, a child who inherited his father's brilliant mind, fiery temper and willful passions. I loved him from the moment we met and in spite of all I know that he loved me with the strongest, purest love he was capable of giving to any woman. And yet, dearest, I dare not tell you all I discovered of his wild, reckless life. The vilest trait of his character was transmitted straight from sire to son—he would never ask forgiveness of any human being for anything he had done—that is your grandfather's boast to-day. The old Governor, my child, was the owner of more than a thousand slaves on his two great plantations. Many of them he didn't know personally—unless they were beautiful girls——"
"Oh, mother, darling, have mercy on me!"—the little fingers tightened their grip. But the mother's even voice went on remorselessly:
"Cleo's mother was one of his slaves. You may depend upon it, your grandfather knows her history. You must remember what slavery meant, dear. It put into the hands of a master an awful power. It was not necessary for strong men to use this power. Thehumble daughters of slaves vied with one another to win his favor. Your grandfather was a man of great intellect, of powerful physique, of fierce, ungovernable passions——"
"But my father"—gasped the girl wife.
"Was a handsome, spoiled child, the kind of man for whom women have always died—but he never possessed the strength to keep himself within the bounds of decency as did the older man——"
"What do you mean?" the daughter broke in desperately.
"There has always been a secret about your father's death"—the mother paused and drew a deep breath. "I made the secret. I told the story to save him from shame in death. He died in the cabin of a mulatto girl he had played with as a boy—and—the thing that's hardest for me to tell you, dearest, is that I knew exactly where to find him when he had not returned at two o'clock that morning——"
The white head sank lower and rested on the shoulder of the frail young wife, who slipped her arms about the form of her mother, and neither spoke for a long while.
At last the mother began in quiet tones:
"And this was one of the reasons, my child, why slavery was doomed. The war was a wicked and awful tragedy. The white motherhood of the South would have crushed slavery. Before the war began we had six hundred thousand mulattoes—six hundred thousand reasons why slavery had to die!"
The fire flashed in the gentle eyes for a moment while she paused, and drew her soul back from the sorrowful past to the tragedy of to-day:
"And so, my darling, you must see your husband and forgive. He isn't bad. He carried in his blood the inheritance of hundreds of years of lawless passion. The noble thing about Dan is that he has the strength of character to rise from this to a higher manhood. You must help him, dearest, to do this."
The daughter bent and kissed the gentle lips:
"Ask him to come here, mother——"
She found the restless husband pacing the floor of the pillared porch. It was past two o'clock and the waning moon had risen. His face was ghastly as his feet stopped their dreary beat at the rustle of her dress. His heart stood still for a moment until he saw the smiling face.
"It's all right, Dan," she called softly in the doorway. "She's waiting for you."
He sprang to the door, stooped and kissed the silken gray hair and hurried up the stairs.
Tears were slowly stealing from the blue eyes as the little wife extended her frail arms. The man knelt and bowed his head in her lap, unable to speak at first. With an effort he mastered his voice:
"Say that you forgive me!"
The blonde head sank until it touched the brown:
"I forgive you—but, oh, Dan, dear, I don't want to live any more now——"
"Don't say that!" he pleaded desperately.
"And I've wanted to live so madly, so desperately—but now—I'm afraid I can't."
"You can—you must! You have forgiven me. I'll prove my love to you by a life of such devotion I'll make you forget! All I ask is the chance to atone and make you happy. You must live because I ask it, dear! It'sthe only way you can give me a chance. And the boy—dearest—you must live to teach him."
She nodded her head and choked back a sob.
When the first faint light of the dawn of a glorious spring morning began to tinge the eastern sky he was still holding her hands and begging her to live.
The little wife made a brave fight. For a week there was no sign of a breakdown save an unnatural brightness of the eyes that told the story of struggle within. He gave himself to the effort to help her win. He spent but an hour at the Capitol, left a Speakerpro temin the chair, hurried to his office, gave his orders and by eleven o'clock he was at home, talking, laughing, and planning a day's work that would interest her and bring back the flush to her pale cheeks.
She had responded to his increasing tenderness and devotion with pathetic eagerness. At the beginning of the second week Doctor Williams gave him hope:
"It looks to me, my boy," he said thoughtfully, "that I'm seeing a miracle. I think she's not only going to survive the shock, but, what's more remarkable, she's going to recover her health again. The mind's the source of health and power. We give medicines, of course, but the thought that heals the soul will reach the body. Bah!—the body is the soul anyhow, for all our fine-spun theories, and the mind is only one of the ways through which we reach it——"
"You really think she may be well again?" Norton asked with boyish eagerness.
"Yes, if you can reconcile her mind to this thing, she'll not only live, she will be born again into a morevigorous life. Why not? The preachers have often called me a godless rationalist. But I go them one better when they preach the miracle of a second, or spiritual birth. I believe in the possibility of many births for the human soul and the readjustment of these bodies of ours to the new spirits thus born. If you can tide her over the next three weeks without a breakdown, she will get well."
The husband's eyes flashed:
"If it depends on her mental attitude, I'll make her live and grow strong. I'll give her my body and soul."
"There are just two dangers——"
"What?"
"The first mental—a sudden collapse of the will with which she's making this fight under a reaction to the memories of our system of educated ignorance, which we call girlish innocence. This may come at a moment when the consciousness of these 'ideals' may overwhelm her imagination and cause a collapse——"
"Yes, I understand," he replied thoughtfully. "I'll guard that."
"The other is the big physical enigma——"
"You mean?"
"The possible reopening of that curious abscess in her throat."
"But the specialist assured us it would never reappear——"
"Yes, and he knows just as much about it as you or I. It is one of the few cases of its kind so far recorded in the science of medicine. When the baby was born, the drawing of the mother's neck in pain pressed a bone of the spinal column into the flesh beside the jugular vein. Your specialist never dared to operatefor a thorough removal of the trouble for fear he would sever the vein——"
"And if the old wound reopens it will reach the jugular vein?"
"Yes."
"Well—it—won't happen!" he answered fiercely. "It can't happen now——"
"I don't think it will myself, if you can keep at its highest tension the desire to live. That's the magic thing that works the miracle of life in such cases. It makes food digest, sends red blood to the tips of the slenderest finger and builds up the weak places. Don't forget this, my boy. Make her love life, desperately and passionately, until the will to live dominates both soul and body."
"I'll do it," was the firm answer, as he grasped the doctor's outstretched hand in parting.
He withdrew completely from his political work. A Speakerpro tempresided daily over the deliberations of the House, and an assistant editor took charge of the paper.
The wife gently urged him to give part of his time to his work again.
"No," he responded firmly and gayly. "The doctor says you have a chance to get well. I'd rather see the roses in your cheeks again than be the President of the United States."
She drew his head down and clung to him with desperate tenderness.
For two weeks the wife held her own and the doctor grew more confident each day. When Norton began to feel sure the big danger was past his mind became alert once more to the existence of Cleo. He began to wonder why she had not made an effort to see or communicate with him.
She had apparently vanished from the face of the earth. In spite of his effort to minimize the importance of this fact, her silence gradually grew in sinister significance. What did it mean? What was her active brain and vital personality up to? That it boded no good to his life and the life of those he loved he couldn't doubt for a moment. He sent a reporter on a secret mission to Peeler's house to find if she were there.
He returned in three hours and made his report.
"She's at Peeler's, sir," the young man said with a smile.
"You allowed no one to learn the real reason of your visit, as I told you?"
"They never dreamed it. I interviewed old Peeler on the revolution in politics and its effects on the poor whites of the state——"
"You saw her?"
"She seemed to be all over the place at the same time, singing, laughing and perfectly happy."
"Run your interview to-morrow, and keep this visit a profound secret between us."
"Yes, sir."
The reporter tipped his hat and was gone. Why she was apparently happy and contented in surroundings she had grown to loathe was another puzzle. Through every hour of the day, down in the subconscious part of his mind, he was at work on this surprising fact. The longer he thought of it the less he understood it. That she would ever content herself with the dreary existence of old Peeler's farm after her experiences in the town and in his home was preposterous.
That she was smiling and happy under such conditions was uncanny, and the picture of her shining teeth and the sound of her deep voice singing as she walked through the cheap, sordid surroundings of that drab farmhouse haunted his mind with strange fear.
She was getting ready to strike him in the dark. Just how the blow would fall he couldn't guess.
The most obvious thing for her to do would be to carry her story to his political enemies and end his career at a stroke. Yet somehow, for the life of him he couldn't picture her choosing that method of revenge. She had not left him in a temper. The rage and curses had all been his. She had never for a moment lost her self-control. The last picture that burned into his soul was the curious smile with which she had spoken her parting words:
"But I'll see you again!"
Beyond a doubt some clean-cut plan of action was in her mind when she uttered that sentence. The one question now was—"what did she mean?"
There was one thought that kept popping into hishead, but it was too hideous for a moment's belief. He stamped on it as he would a snake and hurried on to other possibilities. There was but one thing he could do and that was to await with increasing dread her first move.
His mind had just settled into this attitude of alert watchfulness toward Cleo when the first danger the doctor dreaded for his wife began to take shape.
The feverish brightness in her eyes grew dimmer and her movements less vigorous. The dreaded reaction had come and the taut strings of weakened nerves could bear the strain no longer.
With a cry of despair she threw herself into his arms:
"Oh, Dan, dear, it's no use! I've tried—I've tried so hard—but I can't do it—I just don't want to live any more!"
He put his hands over the trembling, thin lips:
"Hush, dearest, you mustn't say that—it's just a minute's reaction. You're blue this morning, that's all. It's the weather—a dreary foggy day. The sun will be shining again to-morrow. It's shining now behind the mists if we only remember it. The trees are bare, but their buds are swelling and these days of cold and fog and rain must come to make them burst in glory. Come, let me put your shawl around you and I'll show you how the flowers have pushed up in the sheltered places the past week."
He drew the hands, limp and cold, from his neck, picked up her shawl, tenderly placed it about her shoulders,lifted her in his strong arms, and carried her to the old rose garden behind the house.
Don sniffed his leg, and looked up into his face with surprise at the unexpected frolic. He leaped into the air, barked softly and ran in front to show the way.
"You see, old Don knows the sun is shining behind the clouds, dear!"
She made no answer. The blonde head drooped limply against his breast. He found a seat on the south side of the greenhouse on an old rustic bench his father had built of cedar when he was a boy.
"There," he said cheerfully, as he smoothed her dress and drew her close by his side. "You can feel the warmth of the sun here reflected from the glass. The violets are already blooming along the walks. The jonquils are all gone, and the rose bushes have begun to bud. You mustn't talk about giving up. We haven't lived yet."
"But I'm tired, Dan, tired——"
"It's just for a moment, remember, my love. You'll feel differently to-morrow. The world is always beautiful if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear. Watch that smoke curling straight up from the chimney! That means the clouds are already lifting and the sun will burst through them this afternoon. You mustn't brood, dearest. You must forget the misery that has darkened our world for a moment and remember that it's only the dawn of a new life for us both. We are just boy and girl yet. There's nothing impossible. I'm going to prove to you that my love is the deathless thing in me—the thing that links me to God."
"You really love me so?" she asked softly.
"Give me a chance to prove it. That's all I ask. Men sometimes wait until they're past forty before they begin to sow their wild oats. I am only twenty-five now. This tragic sin and shame has redeemed life. It's yours forever—you must believe me when I say this, dearest——"
"I try," she broke in wearily. "I try, Dan, but it's hard to believe anything now—oh, so hard——"
"But can't you understand, my love, how I have been headstrong and selfish before the shock of my fall brought me to my senses? And that the terror of losing you has taught me how deep and eternal the roots of our love have struck and this knowledge led me into the consciousness of a larger and more wonderful life—can't—can't you understand this, dearest?"
His voice sank to the lowest reverent whisper as he ceased to speak. She stroked his hand with a pathetic little gesture of tenderness.
"Yes, I believe you," she said with a far-away look in her eyes. "I know that I can trust you now implicitly, and what I can't understand is that—feeling this so clearly—still I have no interest in life. Something has snapped inside of me. Life doesn't seem worth the struggle any longer——"
"But it is, dear! Life is always good, always beautiful, and always worth the struggle. We've but to lift our eyes and see. Sin is only our stumbling in the dark as we grope toward the light. I'm going to be a humbler and better man. I am no longer proud and vain. I've a larger and sweeter vision. I feel my kinship to the weak and the erring. Alone in the night my soul has entered into the fellowship of the great Brotherhood through the gates of suffering. You must know this,Jean—you know that it's true as I thus lay my heart's last secret bare to you to-day.
"Yes, Dan," she sighed wearily, "but I'm just tired. I don't seem to recognize anything I used to know. I look at the baby and he don't seem to be mine. I look at you and feel that you're a stranger. I look at my room, the lawn, the street, the garden—no matter where, and I'm dazed. I feel that I've lost my way. I don't know how to live any more."
For an hour he held her hand and pleaded with all the eloquence of his love that she would let him teach her again, and all she could do was to come back forever in the narrow circle her mind had beaten. She was tired and life no longer seemed worth while!
He kissed the drooping eyelids at last and laughed a willful, daring laugh as he gathered her in his arms and walked slowly back into the house.
"You've got to live, my own! I'll show you how! I'll breathe my fierce desire into your soul and call you back even from the dead!"
Yet in spite of all she drooped and weakened daily, and at the end of a fortnight began to complain of a feeling of uneasiness in her throat.
The old doctor said nothing when she made this announcement. He drew his beetling eyebrows low and walked out on the lawn.
Pale and haggard, Norton followed him.
"Well, doctor?" he asked queerly.
"There's only one thing to do. Get her away from here at once, to the most beautiful spot you can find, high altitude with pure, stimulating air. The change may help her. That's all I can say"—he paused, laid his hand on the husband's arm and went on earnestly—"andif you haven't discussed that affair with her, you'd better try it. Tear the old wound open, go to the bottom of it, find the thing that's festering there and root it out if you can—the thing that's caused this break."
The end of another week found them in Asheville, North Carolina.
The wonderful views of purple hills and turquoise sky stretching away into the infinite thrilled the heart of the little invalid.
It was her first trip to the mountains. She never tired the first two days of sitting in the big sun-parlor beside the open fire logs and gazing over the valleys and watching the fleet clouds with their marvelous coloring. The air was too chill in these early days of spring for her to feel comfortable outside. But a great longing began to possess her to climb the mountains and feel their beauty at closer range.
She sat by his side in her room and held his hand while they watched the glory of the first cloud-flecked mountain sunset. The river lay a crooked silver ribbon in the deepening shadows of the valley, while the sky stretched its dazzling scarlet canopy high in heaven above it. The scarlet slowly turned to gold, and then to deepening purple and with each change revealed new beauty to the enraptured eye.
She caught her breath and cried at last:
"Oh, it is a beautiful world, Dan, dear—and I wish I could live!"
He laughed for joy:
"Then you shall, dearest! You shall, of course you shall!"
"I want you to take me over every one of those wonderful purple hills!"
"Yes, dear, I will!"
"I dream as I sit and look at them that God lives somewhere in one of those deep shadows behind a dazzling cloud, and that if we only drive along those ragged cliffs among them we'd come face to face with Him some day——"
He looked at her keenly. There was again that unnatural brightness in her eyes which he didn't like and yet he took courage. The day was a glorious one in the calendar. Hope had dawned in her heart.
"The first warm day we'll go, dear," he cried with the enthusiasm of a boy, "and take mammy and the kid with us, too, if you say so——"
"No, I want just you, Dan. The long ride might tire the baby, and I might wish to stay up there all night. I shall never grow tired of those hills."
"It's sweet to hear you talk like that," he cried with a smile.
He selected a gentle horse for their use and five days later, when the sun rose with unusual warmth, they took their first mountain drive.
Along the banks of crystal brooks that dashed their sparkling waters over the rocks, up and up winding, narrow roads until the town became a mottled white spot in the valley below, and higher still until the shining clouds they had seen from the valley rolled silently into their faces, melting into the gray mists of fog!
In the midst of one of these clouds, the little wife leaned close and whispered:
"We're in heaven now, Dan—we're passing through the opal gates! I shouldn't be a bit surprised to see Him at any moment up here——"
A lump suddenly rose in his throat. Her voicesounded unreal. He bent close and saw the strange bright light again in her eyes. And the awful thought slowly shaped itself that the light he saw was the shining image of the angel of Death reflected there.
He tried to laugh off his morbid fancy now that she had begun to find the world so beautiful, but the idea haunted him with increasing terror. He couldn't shake off the impression.
An hour later he asked abruptly:
"You have felt no return of the pain in your throat, dear?"
"Just a little last night, but not to-day—I've been happy to-day."
He made up his mind to telegraph to New York at once for the specialist to examine her throat.
The fine weather continued unbroken. Every day for a week she sat by his side and drifted over sunlit valleys, lingered beside beautiful waters and climbed a new peak to bathe in sun-kissed clouds. On the top of one of these peaks they found a farmhouse where lodgers were allowed for the night. They stayed to see the sunrise next morning. Mammy would not worry, they had told her they might spend the night on these mountain trips.
The farmer called them in time—just as the first birds were waking in the trees by their window.
It was a climb of only two hundred yards to reach the top of a great boulder that gave an entrancing view in four directions. To the west lay the still sleeping town of Asheville half hidden among its hills and trees. Eastward towered the giant peaks of the Blue Ridge, over whose ragged crests the sun was climbing.
The young husband took the light form in his strongarms and carried her to the summit. He placed his coat on the rocky ledge, seated her on it, and slipped his arm around the slim waist. There in silence they watched the changing glory of the sky and saw the shadows wake and flee from the valleys at the kiss of the sun.