Thomas Dixon
The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South
CHAPTER XI
THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
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 admiration by 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.
CHAPTER XII
THE JUDGMENT BAR
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 mind as 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 compelled to 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 know how 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 them with 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 me sick! 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 innocence of 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 the Klan 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 are stunned?"
"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! There was something 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.
