"Only the slightest sound came from her dry throat.""Only the slightest sound came from her dry throat."
"That is what I must know of you, child," he replied, watching her intently.
She pressed closer with sudden desperate courage, her voice full of wistful friendliness:
"Oh, major, what have I done to offend you? I've tried so hard to win your love and respect. All my life I've been alone in a world of strangers, friendless and homesick——"
He lifted his hand with a firm gesture:
"Come, child, to the point! I must know the truth now. Tom has made love to you?"
She blushed:
"I—I—wish to see Tom before I answer——"
Norton dropped his uplifted arm with a groan:
"Thank you," he murmured in tones scarcely audible. "I have your answer!"—he paused and looked at her curiously—"And you love him?"
The girl hesitated for just an instant, her blue eyes flashed and she drew her strong, young figure erect:
"Yes! And I'm proud of it. His love has lifted me into the sunlight and made the world glorious—made me love everything in it—every tree and every flower and every living thing that moves and feels——-"
She stopped abruptly and lifted her flushed face to his:
"I've learned to love you, in spite of your harshness to me—I love you because you are his father!"
He turned from her and then wheeled suddenly, his face drawn with pain:
"Now, I must be frank, I must be brutal. I must know the truth without reservation—how far has this thing gone?"
"I—I—don't understand you!"
"Marriage is impossible! I told you that and you must have realized it."
Her head drooped:
"You said so——"
"Impossible—utterly impossible! And you know it"—he drew a deep breath. "What—what are your real relations?"
"My—real—relations?" she gasped.
"Answer me now, before God! I'll hold your secret sacred—your life and his may depend on it"—his voice dropped to a tense whisper. "Your love is pure and unsullied?"
The girl's eyes flashed with rage:
"As pure and unsullied as his dead mother's for you!"
"Thank God!" he breathed. "I believe you—but I had to know, child! I had to know—there are big, terrible reasons why I had to know."
A tear slowly stole down Helen's flushed cheeks as she quietly asked:
"Why—why should you insult and shame me by asking that question?"
"My knowledge of your birth."
The girl smiled sadly:
"Yet you might have guessed that I had learned to cherish honor and purity before I knew I might not claim them as my birthright!"
"Forgive me, child," he said contritely, "if in my eagerness, my fear, my anguish, I hurt you. But I had to ask that question! I had to know. Your answer gives me courage"—he paused and his voice quivered with deep intensity—"you really love Tom?"
"With a love beyond words!"
"The big, wonderful love that comes to the human soul but once?"
"Yes!"
His eyes were piercing to the depths now:
"With the deep, unselfish yearning that asks nothing for itself and seeks only the highest good of its beloved?"
"Yes—yes," she answered mechanically and, pausing, looked again into his burning eyes; "but you frighten me—" she grasped a chair for support, recovered herself and went on rapidly—"you mustn't ask me to give him up—I won't give him up! Poor and friendless, with a shadow over my life and everything against me, I have won him and he's mine! I have the right to his love—I didn't ask to be born. I must live my own life. I have as much right to happiness as you. Why must I bear the sins of my father and mother? Have I broken the law? Haven't I a heart that can ache and break and cry for joy?"
He allowed the first paroxysm of her emotion to spend itself before he replied, and then in quiet tones said:
"You must give him up!"
"I won't! I won't, I tell you!" she said through her set teeth as she suddenly swung her strong, young form before him. "I won't give him up! His love has made life worth living and I'm going to live it! I don't care what you say—he's mine—and you shall not take him from me!"
Norton was stunned by the fiery intensity with which her answer had been given. There was no mistaking the strength of her character. Every vibrant note of her voice had rung with sincerity, purity, the justiceof her cause, and the consciousness of power. He was dealing with no trembling schoolgirl's mind, filled with sentimental dreams. A woman, in the tragic strength of a great nature, stood before him. He felt this greatness instinctively and met it with reverence. It could only be met thus, and as he realized its strength, his heart took fresh courage. His own voice became tender, eager, persuasive:
"But suppose, my dear, I show you that you will destroy the happiness and wreck the life of the man you love?"
"Impossible! He knows that I'm nameless and his love is all the deeper, truer and more manly because he realizes that I am defenseless."
"But suppose I convince you?"
"You can't!"
"Suppose," he said in a queer tone, "I tell you that the barrier between you is so real, so loathsome——"
"Loathsome?" she repeated with a start.
"So loathsome," he went on evenly, "that when he knows the truth, whether he wishes it or not, he will instinctively turn from you with a shudder."
"I won't believe it!"
"Suppose I prove to you that marriage would wreck both your life and his"—he gazed at her with trembling intensity—"would you give him up to save him?"
She held his eye steadily:
"Yes—I'd die to save him!"
A pitiful stillness followed. The man scarcely moved. His lips quivered and his eyes grew dim. He looked at her pathetically and motioned her to a seat.
"And if I convince you," he went on tenderly, "you will submit yourself to my advice and leave America?"
The blue eyes never flinched as she firmly replied:
"Yes. But I warn you that no such barrier can exist."
"Then I must prove to you that it does." He drew a deep breath and watched her. "You realize the fact that a man who marries a nameless girl bars himself from all careers of honor?"
"The honor of fools, yes—of the noble and wise, no!"
"You refuse to see that the shame which shadows a mother's life will smirch her children, and like a deadly gangrene at last eat the heart out of her husband's love?"
"My faith in him is too big——"
"You can conceive of no such barrier?"
"No!"
"In the first rush of love," he replied kindly, "you feel this. Emotion obscures reason. But there are such barriers between men and women."
"Name one!"
His brow clouded, his lips moved to speak and stopped. It was more difficult to frame in speech than he had thought. His jaw closed with firm decision at last and he began calmly:
"I take an extreme case. Suppose, for example, your father, a proud Southern white man, of culture, refinement and high breeding, forgot for a moment that he was white and heard the call of the Beast, and your mother were an octoroon—what then?"
The girl flushed with anger:
"Such a barrier, yes! Nothing could be more loathsome. But why ask me so disgusting a question? No such barrier could possibly exist between us!"
Norton's eyes were again burning into her soul as he asked in a low voice:
"Suppose it does?"
The girl smiled with a puzzled look:
"Suppose it does? Of course, you're only trying to prove that such an impossible barrier might exist! And for the sake of argument I agree that it would be real"—she paused and her breath came in a quick gasp. She sprang to her feet clutching at her throat, trembling from head to foot—"What do you mean by looking at me like that?"
Norton lowered his head and barely breathed the words:
"Thatisthe barrier between you!"
Helen looked at him dazed. The meaning was too big and stupefying to be grasped at once.
"Why, of course, major," she faltered, "you just say that to crush me in the argument. But I've given up the point. I've granted that such a barrier may exist and would be real. But you haven't told me the one between us."
The man steeled his heart, turned his face away and spoke in gentle tones:
"I am telling you the pitiful, tragic truth—your mother is a negress——"
With a smothered cry of horror the girl threw herself on him and covered his mouth with her hand, half gasping, half screaming her desperate appeal:
"Stop! don't—don't say it!—take it back! Tell me that it's not true—tell me that you only said it to convince me and I'll believe you. If the hideous thing is true—for the love of God deny it now! If it's true—lie to me"—her voice broke and she clung to Norton'sarms with cruel grip—"lie to me! Tell me that you didn't mean it, and I'll believe you—truth or lie, I'll never question it! I'll never cross your purpose again—I'll do anything you tell me, major"—she lifted her streaming eyes and began slowly to sink to her knees—"see how humble—how obedient I am! You don't hate me, do you? I'm just a poor, lonely girl, helpless and friendless now at your feet"—her head sank into her hands until the beautiful brown hair touched the floor—"have mercy! have mercy on me!"
Norton bent low and fumbled for the trembling hand. He couldn't see and for a moment words were impossible.
He found her hand and pressed it gently:
"I'm sorry, little girl! I'd lie to you if I could—but you know a lie don't last long in this world. I've lied about you before—I'd lie now to save you this anguish, but it's no use—we all have to face things in the end!"
With a mad cry of pain, the girl sprang to her feet and staggered to the table:
"Oh, God, how could any man with a soul—any living creature, even a beast of the field—bring me into the world—teach me to think and feel, to laugh and cry, and thrust me into such a hell alone! My proud father—I could kill him!"
Norton extended his hands to her in a gesture of instinctive sympathy:
"Come, you'll see things in a calm light to-morrow, you are young and life is all before you!"
"Yes!" she cried fiercely, "a life of shame—a life of insult, of taunts, of humiliation, of horror! The one thing I've always loathed was the touch of a negro——"
She stopped suddenly and lifted her hand, staring with wildly dilated eyes at the nails of her finely shaped fingers to find if the telltale marks of negro blood were there which she had seen on Cleo's. Finding none, the horror in her eyes slowly softened into a look of despairing tenderness as she went on:
"The one passionate yearning of my soul has been to be a mother—to feel the breath of a babe on my heart, to hear it lisp my name and know a mother's love—the love I've starved for—and now, it can never be!"
She had moved beyond the table in her last desperate cry and Norton followed with a look of tenderness:
"Nonsense," he cried persuasively, "you're but a child yourself. You can go abroad where no such problem of white and black race exists. You can marry there and be happy in your home and little ones, if God shall give them!"
She turned on him savagely:
"Well, God shall not give them! I'll see to that! I'm young, but I'm not a fool. I know something of the laws of life. I know that Tom is not like you"—she turned and pointed to the portrait on the wall—"he is like his great-grandfather! Mine may have been——"
Her voice choked with passion. She grasped a chair with one hand and tore at the collar of her dress with the other. She had started to say "mine may have been a black cannibal!" and the sheer horror of its possibility had strangled her. When she had sufficiently mastered her feelings to speak she said in a strange muffled tone:
"I ask nothing of God now—if I could see Him, I'd curse Him to His face!"
"Come, come!" Norton exclaimed, "this is but a passing ugly fancy—such things rarely happen——"
"But they do happen!" she retorted slowly. "I've known one such tragedy, of a white mother's child coming into the world with the thick lips, kinky hair, flat nose and black skin of a cannibal ancestor! She killed herself when she was strong enough to leap out the window"—her voice dropped to a dreamy chant—"yes, blood will tell—there's but one thing for me to do! I wonder, with the yellow in me, if I'll have the courage."
Norton spoke with persuasive tenderness:
"You mustn't think of such madness! I'll send you abroad at once and you can begin life over again——"
Helen suddenly snatched the chair to which she had been holding out of her way and faced Norton with flaming eyes:
"I don't want to be an exile! I've been alone all my miserable orphan life! I don't want to go abroad and die among strangers! I've just begun to live since I came here! I love the South—it's mine—I feel it—I know it! I love its blue skies and its fields—I love its people—they are mine! I think as you think, feel as you feel——"
She paused and looked at him queerly:
"I've learned to honor, respect and love you because I've grown to feel that you stand for what I hold highest, noblest and best in life"—the voice died in a sob and she was silent.
The man turned away, crying in his soul:
"O God, I'm paying the price now!"
"What can I do!" she went on at last. "What is life worth since I know this leper's shame? There are millions like me, yes. If I could bend my back and be a slave there are men and women who need my services. And there are men I might know—yes—but I can't—I can't! I'm not a slave. I'm not bad. I can't stoop. There's but one thing!"
Norton's face was white with emotion:
"I can't tell you, little girl, how sorry I am"—his voice broke. He turned, suddenly extended his hand and cried hoarsely: "Tell me what I can do to help you—I'll do anything on this earth that's within reason!"
The girl looked up surprised at his anguish, wondering vaguely if he could mean what he had said, and then threw herself at him in a burst of sudden, fierce rebellion, her voice, low and quivering at first, rising to the tragic power of a defiant soul in combat with overwhelming odds:
"Then give me back the man I love—he's mine! He's mine, I tell you, body and soul! God—gave—him—to—me! He's your son, but I love him! He's my mate! He's of age—he's no longer yours! His time has come to build his own home—he's mine—not yours! He's my life—and you're tearing the very heart out of my body!"
The white, trembling figure slowly crumpled at his feet.
He took both of her hands, and lifted her gently:
"Pull yourself together, child. It's hard, I know, but you begin to realize that you must bear it. You must look things calmly in the face now."
The girl's mouth hardened and she answered with bitterness:
"Yes, of course—I'm nobody! We must consider you"—she staggered to a chair and dropped limply into it, her voice a whisper—"we must consider Tom—yes—yes—we must, too—I know that——"
Norton pressed eagerly to her side and leaned over the drooping figure:
"You can begin to see now that I was right," he pleaded. "You love Tom—he's worth saving—you'll do as I ask and give him up?"
The sensitive young face was convulsed with an agony words could not express and the silence was pitiful. The man bending over her could hear the throb of his own heart. A quartet of serenaders celebrating the victory of the election stopped at the gate and the soft strains of the music came through the open window. Norton felt that he must scream in a moment if she did not answer. He bent low and softly repeated:
"You'll do as I ask now, and give him up?"
The tangled mass of brown hair sank lower and her answer was a sigh of despair:
"Yes!"
The man couldn't speak at once. His eyes filled. When he had mastered his voice he said eagerly:
"There's but one way, you know. You must leave at once without seeing him."
She lifted her face with a pleading look:
"Just a moment—without letting him know what has passed between us—just one last look into his dear face?"
He shook his head kindly:
"It isn't wise——"
"Yes, I know," she sighed. "I'll go at once."
He drew his watch and looked at it hurriedly:
"The first train leaves in thirty minutes. Get your hat, a coat and travelling bag and go just as you are. I'll send your things——"
"Yes—yes"—she murmured.
"I'll join you in a few days in New York and arrange your future. Leave the house immediately. Tom mustn't see you. Avoid him as you cross the lawn. I'll have a carriage at the gate in a few minutes."
The little head sank again:
"I understand."
He looked uncertainly at the white drooping figure. The serenaders were repeating the chorus of the old song in low, sweet strains that floated over the lawn and stole through the house in weird ghost-like echoes. He returned to her chair and bent over her:
"You won't stop to change your dress, you'll get your hat and coat and go just as you are—at once?"
The brown head nodded slowly and he gazed at her tenderly:
"You've been a brave little girl to-night"—he lifted his hand to place it on her shoulder in the first expression of love he had ever given. The hand paused, held by the struggle of the feelings of centuries of racial pride and the memories of his own bitter tragedy. But the pathos of her suffering and the heroism of her beautiful spirit won. The hand was gently lowered and pressed the soft, round shoulder.
A sob broke from the lonely heart, and her head drooped until it lay prostrate on the table, the beautiful arms outstretched in helpless surrender.
Norton staggered blindly to the door, looked back, lifted his hand and in a quivering voice, said:
"I can never forget this!"
His long stride quickly measured the distance to the gate, and a loud cheer from the serenaders roused the girl from her stupor of pain.
In a moment they began singing again, a love song, that tore her heart with cruel power.
"Oh, God, will they never stop?" she cried, closing her ears with her hands in sheer desperation.
She rose, crossed slowly to the window and looked out on the beautiful moonlit lawn at the old rustic seat where her lover was waiting. She pressed her hand on her throbbing forehead, walked to the center of the room, looked about her in a helpless way and her eye rested on the miniature portrait of Tom. She picked it up and gazed at it tenderly, pressed it to her heart, and with a low sob felt her way through the door and up the stairs to her room.
Tom had grown impatient, waiting in their sheltered seat on the lawn for Helen to return. She had gone on a mysterious mission to see Minerva, laughingly refused to tell him its purpose, but promised to return in a few minutes. When half an hour had passed without a sign he reconnoitered to find Minerva, and to his surprise she, too, had disappeared.
He returned to his trysting place and listened while the serenaders sang their first song. Unable to endure the delay longer he started to the house just as his father hastily left by the front door, and quickly passing the men at the gate, hurried down town.
The coast was clear and he moved cautiously to fathom, if possible, the mystery of Helen's disappearance. Finding no trace of her in Minerva's room, he entered the house and, seeing nothing of her in the halls, thrust his head in the library and found it empty. He walked in, peeping around with a boyish smile expecting her to leap out and surprise him. He opened the French window and looked for her on the porch. He hurried back into the room with a look of surprised disappointment and started to the door opening on the hall of the stairway. He heard distinctly the rustle ofa dress and the echo on the stairs of the footstep he knew so well.
He gave a boyish laugh, tiptoed quickly to the old-fashioned settee, dropped behind its high back and waited her coming.
Helen had hastily packed a travelling bag and thrown a coat over her arm. She slowly entered the library to replace the portrait she had taken, kissed it and started with feet of lead and set, staring eyes to slip through the lawn and avoid Tom as she had promised.
As she approached the corner of the settee the boy leaped up with a laugh:
"Where have you been?"
With a quick movement of surprise she threw the bag and coat behind her back. Luckily he had leaped so close he could not see.
"Where've you been?" he repeated.
"Why, I've just come from my room," she replied with an attempt at composure.
"What have you got your hat for?"
She flushed the slightest bit:
"Why, I was going for a walk."
"With a veil—at night—what have you got that veil for?"
The boyish banter in his tones began to yield to a touch of wonder.
Helen hesitated:
"Why, the crowds of singing and shouting men on the streets. I didn't wish to be recognized, and I wanted to hear what the speakers said."
"You were going to leave me and go alone to the speaker's stand?"
"Yes. Your father is going to see you and I wasnervous and frightened and wanted to pass the time until you were free again"—she paused, looked at him intently and spoke in a queer monotone—"the negroes who can't read and write have been disfranchised, haven't they?"
"Yes," he answered mechanically, "the ballot should never have been given them."
"Yet there's something pitiful about it after all, isn't there, Tom?" She asked the question with a strained wistfulness that startled the boy.
He answered automatically, but his keen, young eyes were studying with growing anxiety every movement of her face and form and every tone of her voice:
"I don't see it," he said carelessly.
She laid her left hand on his arm, the right hand still holding her bag and coat out of sight.
"Suppose," she whispered, "that you should wake up to-morrow morning and suddenly discover that a strain of negro blood poisoned your veins—what would you do?"
Tom frowned and watched her with a puzzled look:
"Never thought of such a thing!"
She pressed his arm eagerly:
"Think—what would you do?"
"What would I do?" he repeated in blank amazement.
"Yes."
His eyes were holding hers now with a steady stare of alarm. The questions she asked didn't interest him. Her glittering eyes and trembling hand did. Studying her intently he said lightly:
"To be perfectly honest, I'd blow my brains out."
With a cry she staggered back and threw her hand instinctively up as if to ward a blow:
"Yes—yes, you would—wouldn't you?"
He was staring at her now with blanched face and she was vainly trying to hide her bag and coat.
He seized her arms:
"Why are you so excited? Why do you tremble so?"—he drew the arm around that she was holding back—"What is it? What's the matter?"
His eye rested on the bag, he turned deadly pale and she dropped it with a sigh.
"What—what—does this mean?" he gasped. "You are trying to leave me without a word?"
She staggered and fell limp into a seat:
"Oh, Tom, the end has come, and I must go!"
"Go!" he cried indignantly, "then I go, too!"
"But you can't, dear!"
"And why not?"
"Your father has just told me the whole hideous secret of my birth—and it's hopeless!"
"What sort of man do you think I am? What sort of love do you think I've given you? Separate us after the solemn vows we've given to each other! Neither man nor the devil can come between us now!"
She looked at him wistfully:
"It's sweet to hear such words—though I know you can't make them good."
"I'll make them good," he broke in, "with every drop of blood in my veins—and no coward has ever borne my father's name—it's good blood!"
"That's just it—and blood will tell. It's the law of life and I've given up."
"Well, I haven't given up," he protested, "rememberthat! Try me with your secret—I laugh before I hear it!"
With a gleam of hope in her deep blue eyes she rose trembling:
"You really mean that? If I go an outcast you would go with me?"
"Yes—yes."
"And if a curse is branded on my forehead you'll take its shame as yours?"
"Yes."
She laid her hand on his arm, looked long and yearningly into his eyes, and said:
"Your father has just told me that I am a negress—my mother is an octoroon!"
The boy flinched involuntarily, stared in silence an instant, and his form suddenly stiffened:
"I don't believe a word of it! My father has been deceived. It's preposterous!"
Helen drew closer as if for shelter and clung to his hand wistfully:
"It does seem a horrible joke, doesn't it? I can't realize it. But it's true. The major gave me his solemn word in tears of sympathy. He knew both my father and mother. I am a negress!"
The boy's arm unconsciously shrank the slightest bit from her touch while he stared at her with wildly dilated eyes and spoke in a hoarse whisper:
"It's impossible! It's impossible—I tell you!"
He attempted to lift his hand to place it on his throbbing forehead. Helen clung to him in frantic grief and terror:
"Please, please—don't shrink from me! Have pity on me! If you feel that way, for God's sake don't letme see it—don't let me know it—I—I—can't endure it! I can't——"
The tense figure collapsed in his arms and the brown head sank on his breast with a sob of despair. The boy pressed her to his heart and held her close. He felt her body shiver as he pushed the tangled ringlets back from her high, fair forehead and felt the cold beads of perspiration. The serenaders at the gate were singing again—a negro folk-song. The absurd childish words which he knew so well rang through the house, a chanting mockery.
"There, there," he whispered tenderly, "I didn't shrink from you, dear. I couldn't shrink from you—you only imagined it. I was just stunned for a moment. The blow blinded me. But it's all right now, I see things clearly. I love you—that's all—and love is from God, or it's not love, it's a sham——"
A low sob and she clung to him with desperate tenderness.
He bent his head close until the blonde hair mingled with the rich brown:
"Hush, my own! If a single nerve of my body shrank from your little hand, find it and I'll tear it out!"
She withdrew herself slowly from his embrace, and brushed the tears from her eyes with a little movement of quiet resignation:
"It's all right. I'm calm again and it's all over. I won't mind now if you shrink a little. I'm really glad that you did. It needed just that to convince me that your father was right. Our love would end in the ruin of your life. I see it clearly now. It would become to you at last a conscious degradation.ThatI couldn't endure."
"I have your solemn vow," he interrupted impatiently, "you're mine! I'll not give you up!"
She looked at him sadly:
"But I'm going, dear, in a few minutes. You can't hold me—now that I know it's for the best."
"You can't mean this?"
She clung to his hand and pressed it with cruel force:
"Don't think it isn't hard. All my life I've been a wistful beggar, eager and hungry for love. In your arms I had forgotten the long days of misery. I've been happy—perfectly, divinely happy! It will be hard, the darkness and the loneliness again. But I can't drag you down, my sweetheart, my hero! Your life must be big and brilliant. I've dreamed it thus. You shall be a man among men, the world's great men—and so I am going out of your life!"
"You shall not!" the boy cried fiercely. "I tell you I don't believe this hideous thing—it's a lie, I tell you—it's a lie, and I don't care who says it! Nothing shall separate us now. I'll go with you to the ends of the earth and if you sink into hell, I'll follow you there, lift you in my arms and fight my way back through its flames!"
She smiled at him tenderly:
"It's beautiful to hear you say that, dearest, but our dream has ended!"
She stooped, took up the bag and coat, paused and looked into his face with the hunger and longing of a life burning in her eyes:
"But I shall keep the memory of every sweet and foolish word you have spoken, every tone of your voice, every line of your face, every smile and trick of your lips and eyes! I know them all. The old darkness willnot be the same. I have loved and I have lived. A divine fire has been kindled in my soul. I can go into no world so far I shall not feel the warmth of your love, your kisses on my lips, your strong arms pressing me to your heart—the one true, manly heart that has loved me. I shall see your face forever though I see it through a mist of tears—good-by!"
The last word was the merest whisper.
The boy sprang toward her:
"I won't say it—I won't—I won't!"
"But you must!"
He opened his arms and called in tones of compelling anguish:
"Helen!"
The girl's lips trembled, her eyes grew dim, her fingers were locked in a cruel grip trying to hold the bag which slipped to the floor. And then with a cry she threw herself madly into his arms:
"Oh, I can't give you up, dearest! I can't—I've tried—but I can't!"
He held her clasped without a word, stroking her hair, kissing it tenderly and murmuring little inarticulate cries of love.
Norton suddenly appeared in the door, his face blanched with horror. With a rush of his tall figure he was by their side and hurled them apart:
"My God! Do you know what you're doing?"
He turned on Tom, his face white with pain:
"I forbid you to ever see or speak to this girl again!"
Tom sprang back and confronted his father:
"Forbid!"
Helen lifted her head:
"He's right, Tom."
"Yes," the father said with bated breath, "in the name of the law—by all that's pure and holy, by the memory of the mother who bore you and the angels who guard the sanctity of every home, I forbid you!"
The boy squared himself and drew his figure to its full height:
"You're my father! But I want you to remember that I'm of age. I'm twenty-two years old and I'm a man! Forbid? How dare you use such words to me in the presence of the woman I love?"
Norton's voice dropped to pitiful tenderness:
"You—you—don't understand, my boy. Helen knows that—I'm right. We have talked it over. She has agreed to go at once. The carriage will be at the door in a moment. She can never see you again"—he paused and lifted his hand solemnly above Tom's head—"and in the name of Almighty God I warn you not to attempt to follow her——"
He turned quickly, picked up the fallen bag and coat and added:
"I'll explain all to you at last if I must."
"Well, I won't hear it!" Tom cried in rage. "I'm a free agent! I won't take such orders from you or any other man!"
The sound of the carriage wheels were heard on the graveled drive at the door.
Norton turned to Helen and took her arm:
"Come, Helen, the carriage is waiting."
With a sudden leap Tom was by his side, tore the bag and coat from his hand, hurled them to the floor and turned on his father with blazing eyes:
"Now, look here, Dad, this thing's going too far!You can't bulldoze me. There's one right no American man ever yields without the loss of his self-respect—the right to choose the woman he loves. When Helen leaves this house, I go with her! I'm running this thing now—your carriage needn't wait."
With sudden decision he rushed to the porch and and called:
"Driver!"
"Yassah."
"Go back to your stable—you're not wanted."
"Yassah."
"I'll send for you if I want you—wait a minute till I tell you."
Norton's head drooped and he blindly grasped a chair.
Helen watched him with growing pity, drew near and said softly:
"I'm sorry, major, to have brought you this pain——"
"You promised to go without seeing him!" he exclaimed bitterly.
"I tried. I only gave up for a moment. I fought bravely. Remember now in all you say to Tom that I am going—that I know I must go——"
"Yes, I understand, child," he replied brokenly, "and my heart goes out to you. Mine is heavy to-night with a burden greater than I can bear. You're a brave little girl. The fault isn't yours—it's mine. I've got to face it now"—he paused and looked at her tenderly. "You say that you've been lonely—well, remember that in all your orphan life you never saw an hour as lonely as the one my soul is passing through now! The loneliest road across this earth is the way of sin."
Helen watched him in amazement:
"The way of sin—why——"
Tom's brusque entrance interrupted her. With quick, firm decision he took her arm and led her to the door opening on the hall:
"Wait for me in your room, dear," he said quietly. "I have something to say to my father."
She looked at him timidly:
"You won't forget that he is your father, and loves you better than his own life?"
"I'll not forget."
She started with sudden alarm and whispered:
"You haven't got the pistol that you brought home to-day from the campaign, have you?"
"Surely, dear——"
"Give it to me!" she demanded.
"No."
"Why?" she asked pleadingly.
"I've too much self-respect."
She looked into his clear eyes:
"Forgive me, dear, but I was so frightened just now. You were so violent. I never saw you like that before. I was afraid something might happen in a moment of blind passion, and I could never lift my head again——"
"I'll not forget," he broke in, "if my father does. Run now, dear, I'll join you in a few minutes."
A pressure of the hand, a look of love, and she was gone. The boy closed the door, quickly turned and faced his father.
Norton had ignored the scene between Helen and Tom and his stunned mind was making a desperate fight to prepare for the struggle that was inevitable.
The thing that gave him fresh courage was the promise the girl had repeated that she would go. Somehow he had grown to trust her implicitly. He hadn't time as yet to realize the pity and pathos of such a trust in such an hour. He simply believed that she would keep her word. He had to win his fight now with the boy without the surrender of his secret. Could he do it? It was doubtful, but he was going to try. His back was to the wall.
Tom took another step into the room and the father turned, drew his tall figure erect in an instinctive movement of sorrowful dignity and reserve and walked to the table.
All traces of anger had passed from the boy's handsome young face and a look of regret had taken its place. He began speaking very quietly and reverently:
"Now, Dad, we must face this thing. It's a tragedy for you perhaps——"
The father interrupted:
"How big a tragedy, my son, I hope that you may never know——"
"Anyhow," Tom went on frankly, "I am ashamed of the way I acted. But you're a manly man and you can understand."
"Yes."
"I know that all you've done is because you love me——"
"How deeply, you can never know."
"I'm sorry if I forgot for a moment the respect I owe you, the reverence and love I hold for you—I've always been proud of you, Dad—of your stainless name, of the birthright you have given me—you know this——"
"Yet it's good to hear you say it!"
"And now that I've said this, you'd as well know first as last that any argument about Helen is idle between us. I'm not going to give up the woman I love!"
"Ah, my boy——"
Tom lifted his hand emphatically:
"It's no use! You needn't tell me that her blood is tainted—I don't believe it!"
The father came closer:
"Youdobelieve it! In the first mad riot of passion you're only trying to fool yourself."
"It's unthinkable, I tell you! and I've made my decision"—he paused a moment and then demanded: "How do you know her blood is tainted?"
The father answered firmly:
"I have the word both of her mother and father."
"Well, I won't take their word. Some natures are their own defense. On them no stain can rest, and I stake my life on Helen's!"
"My boy——"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say—as a theory it's quite correct. But it's one thing to accept a theory, another to meet the thing in your own heart before God alone with your life in your hands."
"What do you mean by that?" the father asked savagely.
"That for the past hour I've been doing some thinking on my own account."
"That's just what you haven't been doing. You haven't thought at all. If you had, you'd know that you can't marry this girl. Come, come, my boy, remember that you have reason and because you have this power that's bigger than all passion, all desire, all impulse, you're a man, not a brute——"
"All right," the boy broke in excitedly, "submit it to reason! I'll stand the test—it's more than you can do. I love this girl—she's my mate. She loves me and I am hers. Haven't I taken my stand squarely on Nature and her highest law?"
"No!"
"What's higher? Social fictions—prejudices?"
The father lifted his head:
"Prejudices! You know as well as I that the white man's instinct of racial purity is not prejudice, but God's first law of life—the instinct of self-preservation! The lion does not mate with the jackal!"
The boy flushed angrily:
"The girl I love is as fair as you or I."
"Even so," was the quick reply, "we inherit ninety per cent. of character from our dead ancestors! Born of a single black progenitor, she is still a negress. Change every black skin in America to-morrow to the white of a lily and we'd yet have ten million negroes—tenmillion negroes whose blood relatives are living in Africa the life of a savage."
"Granted that what you say it true—and I refuse to believe it—I still have the right to live my own life in my own way."
"No man has the right to live life in his own way if by that way he imperil millions."
"And whom would I imperil?"
"The future American. No white man ever lived who desired to be a negro. Every negro longs to be a white man. No black man has ever added an iota to the knowledge of the world of any value to humanity. In Helen's body flows sixteen million tiny drops of blood—one million black—poisoned by the inheritance of thousands of years of savage cruelty, ignorance, slavery and superstition. The life of generations are bound up in you. In you are wrapt the onward years. Man's place in nature is no longer a myth. You are bound by the laws of heredity—laws that demand a nobler not a baser race of men! Shall we improve the breed of horses and degrade our men? You have no right to damn a child with such a legacy!"
"But I tell you I'm not trying to—I refuse to see in her this stain!"
The father strode angrily to the other side of the room in an effort to control his feelings:
"Because you refuse to think, my boy!" he cried in agony. "I tell you, you can't defy these laws! They are eternal—never new, never old—true a thousand years ago, to-day, to-morrow and on a million years, when this earth is thrown, a burnt cinder, into God's dust heap. I can't tell you what I feel—it strangles me!"
"No, and I can't understand it. I feel one thing, the touch of the hand of the woman I love; hear one thing, the music of her voice——"
"And in that voice, my boy, I hear the crooning of a savage mother! But yesterday our negroes were brought here from the West Soudan, black, chattering savages, nearer the anthropoid ape than any other living creature. And you would dare give to a child such a mother? Who is this dusky figure of the forest with whom you would cross your blood? In old Andy there you see him to-day, a creature half child, half animal. For thousands of years beyond the seas he stole his food, worked his wife, sold his child, and ate his brother—great God, could any tragedy be more hideous than our degradation at last to his racial level!"
"It can't happen! It's a myth!"
"It's the most dangerous thing that threatens the future!" the father cried with desperate earnestness. "A pint of ink can make black gallons of water. The barriers once down, ten million negroes can poison the source of life and character for a hundred million whites. This nation is great for one reason only—because of the breed of men who created the Republic! Oh, my boy, when you look on these walls at your fathers, don't you see this, don't you feel this, don't you know this?"
Tom shook his head:
"To-night I feel and know one thing. I love her! We don't choose whom we love——"
"Ah, but if we are more than animals, if we reason, we do choose whom we marry! Marriage is not merely a question of personal whim, impulse or passion. It's the one divine law on which human society rests. Thereare always men who hear the call of the Beast and fall below their ideals, who trail the divine standards of life in the dust as they slink under the cover of night——"
"At least, I'm not trying to do that!"
"No, worse! You would trample them under your feet at noon in defiance of the laws of man and God! You're insane for the moment. You're mad with passion. You're not really listening to me at all—I feel it!"
"Perhaps I'm not——"
"Yet you don't question the truth of what I've said. You can't question it. You just stand here blind and maddened by desire, while I beg and plead, saying in your heart: 'I want this woman and I'm going to have her.' You've never faced the question that she's a negress—you can't face it, and yet I tell you that I know it's true!"
The boy turned on his father and studied him angrily for a moment, his blue eyes burning into his, his face flushed and his lips curled with the slightest touch of incredulity:
"And do you really believe all you've been saying to me?"
"As I believe in God!"
With a quick, angry gesture he faced his father:
"Well, you've had a mighty poor way of showing it! If you really believed all you've been saying to me, you wouldn't stop to eat or sleep until every negro is removed from physical contact with the white race. And yet on the day that I was born you placed me in the arms of a negress! The first human face on which I looked was hers. I grew at her breast. You let herlove me and teach me to love her. You keep only negro servants. I grow up with them, fall into their lazy ways, laugh at their antics and see life through their eyes, and now that my life touches theirs at a thousand points of contact, you tell me that we must live together and yet a gulf separates us! Why haven't you realized this before? If what you say about Helen is true, in God's name—I ask it out of a heart quivering with anguish—why haven't you realized it before? I demand an answer! I have the right to know!"
Norton's head was lowered while the boy poured out his passionate protest and he lifted it at the end with a look of despair:
"You have the right to know, my boy. But the South has not a valid answer to your cry. The Negro is not here by my act or will, and their continued presence is a constant threat against our civilization. Equality is the law of life and we dare not grant it to the negro unless we are willing to descend to his racial level. We cannot lift him to ours. This truth forced me into a new life purpose twenty years ago. The campaign I have just fought and won is the first step in a larger movement to find an answer to your question in the complete separation of the races—and nothing is surer than that the South will maintain the purity of her home! It's as fixed as her faith in God!"
The boy was quiet a moment and looked at the tall figure with a queer expression:
"Has she maintained it?"
"Yes."
"Is her home life clean?"
"Yes."
"And these millions of children born in the shadows—these mulattoes?"
The older man's lips trembled and his brow clouded:
"The lawless have always defied the law, my son, North, South, East and West, but they have never defended their crimes. Dare to do this thing that's in your heart and you make of crime a virtue and ask God's blessing on it. The difference between the two things is as deep and wide as the gulf between heaven and hell."
"My marriage to Helen will be the purest and most solemn act of my life——"
"Silence, sir!" the father thundered in a burst of uncontrollable passion, as he turned suddenly on him, his face blanched and his whole body trembling. "I tell you once for all that your marriage to this girl is a physical and moral impossibility! And I refuse to argue with you a question that's beyond all argument!"
The two men glared at each other in a duel of wills in which steel cut steel without a tremor of yielding. And then with a sudden flash of anger, Tom turned on his heel crying:
"All right, then!"
With swift, determined step he moved toward the door. The father grasped the corner of the table for support:
"Tom!"
His hands were extended in pitiful appeal when the boy stopped as if in deep study, turned, looked at him, and walked deliberately back:
"I'm going to ask you some personal questions!"
In spite of his attempt at self-control, Norton's facepaled. He drew himself up with an attempt at dignified adjustment to the new situation, but his hands were trembling as he nervously repeated:
"Personal questions?"
"Yes. There's something very queer about your position. Your creed forbids you to receive a negro as a social equal?"
"Yes."
The boy suddenly lifted his head:
"Why did you bring Helen into this house?"
"I didn't bring her."
"You didn't invite her?"
"No."
"She says that you did."
"She thought so."
"She got an invitation?"
"Yes."
"Signed with your name?"
"Yes, yes."
"Who dared to write such a letter without your knowledge?"
"I can't tell you that."
"I demand it!"
Norton struggled between anger and fear and finally answered in measured tones:
"It was forged by an enemy who wished to embarrass me in this campaign."
"You know who wrote it?"
"I suspect."
"You don'tknow?"
"I said, I suspect," was the angry retort.
"And you didn't kill him?"
"In this campaign my hands were tied."
The boy, watching furtively his father's increasing nervousness and anger, continued his questions in a slower, cooler tone:
"When you returned and found her here, you could have put her out?"
"Yes," Norton answered tremblingly, "and I ought to have done it!"
"But you didn't?"
"No."
"Why?"
The father fumbled his watch chain, moved uneasily and finally said with firmness:
"I am Helen's guardian!"
The boy lifted his brows:
"You are supposed to be his attorney only. Why did you, of all men on earth, accept such a position?"
"I felt that I had to."
"And the possibility of my meeting this girl never occurred to you? You, who have dinned into my ears from childhood that I should keep myself clean from the touch of such pollution—why did you take the risk?"
"A sense of duty to one to whom I felt bound."
"Duty?"
"Yes."
"It must have been deep—what duty?"
Norton lifted his hand in a movement of wounded pride:
"My boy!"
"Come, come, Dad, don't shuffle; this thing's a matter of life and death with me and you must be fair——"
"I'm trying——"
"I want to know why you are Helen's guardian, exactlywhy. We must face each other to-day with souls bare—why are you her guardian?"
"I—I—can't tell you."
"You've got to tell me!"
"You must trust me in this, my son!"
"I won't do it!" the boy cried, trembling with passion that brought the tears blinding to his eyes. "We're not father and son now. We face each other man to man with two lives at stake—hers and mine! You can't ask me to trust you! I won't do it—I've got to know!"
The father turned away:
"I can't betray this secret even to you, my boy."
"Does any one else share it?"
"Why do you use that queer tone? What do you mean?" The father's last question was barely breathed.
"Nothing," the boy answered with a toss of his head. "Does any one in this house suspect it?"
"Possibly."
Again Tom paused, watching keenly:
"On the day you returned and found Helen here, you quarrelled with Cleo?"
Norton wheeled with sudden violence:
"We won't discuss this question further, sir!"
"Yes, we will," was the steady answer through set teeth. "Haven't you been afraid of Cleo?"
The father's eyes were looking into his now with a steady stare:
"I refuse to be cross-examined, sir!"
Tom ignored his answer:
"Hasn't Cleo been blackmailing you?"
"No—no."
The boy held his father's gaze until it wavered, and then in cold tones said:
"You are not telling me the truth!"
Norton flinched as if struck:
"Do you know what you are saying. Have you lost your senses?"
Tom held his ground with dogged coolness:
"Haveyou told me the truth?"
"Yes."
"It's a lie!"
The words were scarcely spoken when Norton's clenched fist struck him a blow full in the face.
A wild cry of surprise, inarticulate in fury, came from the boy's lips as he staggered against the table. He glared at his father, drew back a step, his lips twitching, his breath coming in gasps, and suddenly felt for the revolver in his pocket.
With a start of horror the father cried:
"My boy!"
The hand dropped limp, he leaned against the table for support and sobbed:
"O God! Let me die!"
Norton rushed to his side, his voice choking with grief:
"Tom, listen!"
"I won't listen!" he hissed. "I never want to hear the sound of your voice again!"
"Don't say that—you don't mean it!" the father pleaded.
"I do mean it!"
Norton touched his arm tenderly:
"You can't mean it, Tom. You're all I've got in the world. You mustn't say that. Forgive me—I wasmad. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't mean to strike you. I forgot for a moment that you're a man, proud and sensitive as I am——"
The boy tore himself free from his touch and crossed the room with quick, angry stride and turned:
"Well, you'd better not forget it again"—he paused and drew himself erect. "You're my father, but I tell you to your face that I hate and loathe you——"
The silver-gray head drooped:
"That I should have lived to hear it!"
"And I want you to understand one thing," Tom went on fiercely, "if an angel from heaven told me that Helen's blood was tainted, I'd demand proofs! You have shown none, and I'm not going to give up the woman I love!"
Norton supported himself by the table and felt his way along its edges as if blinded. His eyes were set with a half-mad stare as he gripped Tom's shoulders:
"I love you, my boy, with a love beyond your ken, a love that can be fierce and cruel when God calls, and sooner than see you marry this girl, I'll kill you with my own hands if I must!"
The answer came slowly:
"And you can't guess what's happened?"
"Guess—what's—happened!" the father repeated in a whisper. "What do you mean?"
"That I'm married already!"
With hands uplifted, his features convulsed, the father fell back, his voice a low piteous shriek:
"Merciful God!—No!"
"Married an hour before you dragged me away in that campaign!" he shouted in triumph. "I knew you'dnever consent and so I took matters into my own hands!"
With a leap Norton grasped the boy again and shook him madly:
"Married already? It's not true, I tell you! It's not true. You're lying to me—lying to gain time—it's not true!"
"You wish me to swear it?"
"Silence, sir!" the father cried in solemn tones. "You are my son—this is my house—I order you to be silent!"
"Before God, I swear it's true! Helen is my lawful——"
"Don't say it! It's false—you lie, I tell you!" Again the father shook him with cruel violence, his eyes staring with the glitter of a maniac.
Tom seized the trembling hands and threw them from his shoulders with a quick movement of anger:
"If that's all you've got to say, sir, excuse me, I'll go to my wife!"
He wheeled, slammed the door and was gone.
The father stared a moment, stunned, looked around blankly, placed his hands over his ears and held them, crying:
"God have mercy!"
He rushed to a window and threw it open. The band was playing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!" The mocking strains rolled over his prostrate soul. He leaned heavily against the casement and groaned:
"My God!"
He slammed the sash, staggered back into the room, lifted his eyes in a leaden stare at the portrait overthe mantel, and then rushed toward it with uplifted arms and streaming eyes:
"It's not true, dearest! Don't believe it—it's not true, I tell you! It's not true!"
The voice sank into inarticulate sobs, he reeled and fell, a limp, black heap on the floor.