The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

He lifted his hand with a gesture of angry impatience:

"Enough of this now – you go your way in life and I go mine."

"I'll not give her up except on my conditions – "

"Then you can keep her and go where you please. If you return home you'll not find me. I'll put the ocean between us if necessary – "

He stepped quickly to the door and she knew it was needless to argue further.

"Come to my hotel to-morrow morning at ten o'clock and I'll make you a settlement through a lawyer."

"I'll be there," she answered in a low tone, "but please, major, before you go let me ask you not to remember the foolish things I said and the way I acted when you came. I'm so sorry – forgive me. I made you terribly mad. I don't know what was the matter with me. Remember I'm just a foolish girl here without a friend – "

She stopped, her voice failing:

"Oh, my God, I'm so lonely, I don't want to live! You don't know what it means for me just to be near you – please let me go home with you!"

There was something genuine in this last cry. It reached his heart in spite of anger. He hesitated and spoke in kindly tones:

"Good night – I'll see you in the morning."

This plea of loneliness and homesickness found the weak spot in his armor. It was so clearly the echo of his own feelings. The old home, with its beautiful and sad memories, his people and his work had begun to pull resistlessly. Her suggestion was a subtle and dangerous one, doubly seductive because it was so safe a solution of difficulties. There was not the shadow of a doubt that her deeper purpose was to ultimately dominate his personal life. He was sure of his strength, yet he knew that the wise thing to do was to refuse to listen.

At ten o'clock next morning she came. He had called a lawyer and drawn up a settlement that only waited her signature.

She had not said she would sign – she had not positively refused. She was looking at him with dumb pleading eyes.

Without a moment's warning the boy pushed his way into the room. Norton sprang before Cleo and shouted angrily to the nurse:

"I told you not to let him come into this room – "

"But you see I des tum!" the boy answered with a laugh as he darted to the corner.

The thing he dreaded had happened. In a moment the child saw Cleo. There was just an instant's hesitation and the father smiled that he had forgotten her. But the hesitation was only the moment of dazed surprise. With a scream of joy he crossed the room and sprang into her arms:

"Oh, Cleo – Cleo – my Cleo! You've tum – you've tum! Look, Daddy! She's tum – my Cleo!"

He hugged her, he kissed her, he patted her flushed cheeks, he ran his little fingers through her tangled hair, drew himself up and kissed her again.

She snatched him to her heart and burst into uncontrollable sobs, raised her eyes streaming with tears to Norton and said softly:

"Let me go home with you!"

He looked at her, hesitated and then slowly tore the legal document to pieces, threw it in the fire and nodded his consent.

But this time his act was not surrender. He had heard the call of his people and his country. It was the first step toward the execution of a new life purpose that had suddenly flamed in the depths of his darkened soul as he watched the picture of the olive cheek of the woman against the clear white of his child's.

Book Two – Atonement

CHAPTER I

THE NEW LIFE PURPOSE

Norton had been compelled to wait twenty years for the hour when he could strike the first decisive blow in the execution of his new life purpose.

But the aim he had set was so high, so utterly unselfish, so visionary, so impossible by the standards of modern materialism, he felt the thrill of the religious fanatic as he daily girded himself to his task.

He was far from being a religious enthusiast, although he had grown a religion of his own, inherited in part, dreamed in part from the depth of his own heart. The first article of this faith was a firm belief in the ever-brooding Divine Spirit and its guidance in the work of man if he but opened his mind to its illumination.

He believed, as in his own existence, that God's Spirit had revealed the vision he saw in the hour of his agony, twenty years before when he had watched his boy's tiny arms encircle the neck of Cleo, the tawny young animal who had wrecked his life, but won the heart of his child. He had tried to desert his people of the South and awaked with a shock. His mind in prophetic gaze had leaped the years and seen the gradual wearing down of every barrier between the white and black races by the sheer force of daily contact under the new conditions which Democracy had made inevitable.

Even under the iron laws of slavery it was impossible for an inferior and superior race to live side by side for centuries as master and slave without the breaking down of some of these barriers. But the moment the magic principle of equality in a Democracy became the law of life they must all melt or Democracy itself yield and die. He had squarely faced this big question and given his life to its solution.

When he returned to his old home and installed Cleo as his housekeeper and nurse she was the living incarnation before his eyes daily of the problem to be solved – the incarnation of its subtleties and its dangers. He studied her with the cold intellectual passion of a scientist. Nor was there ever a moment's uncertainty or halting in the grim purpose that fired his soul.

She had at first accepted his matter of fact treatment as the sign of ultimate surrender. And yet as the years passed she saw with increasing wonder and rage the gulf between them deepen and darken. She tried every art her mind could conceive and her effective body symbolize in vain. His eyes looked at her, but never saw the woman. They only saw the thing he hated – the mongrel breed of a degraded nation.

He had begun his work at the beginning. He had tried to do the things that were possible. The minds of the people were not yet ready to accept the idea of a complete separation of the races. He planned for the slow process of an epic movement. His paper, in season and out of season, presented the daily life of the black and white races in such a way that the dullest mind must be struck by the fact that their relations presented an insoluble problem. Every road of escape led at last through a blind alley against a blank wall.

In this policy he antagonized no one, but expressed always the doubts and fears that lurked in the minds of thoughtful men and women. His paper had steadily grown in circulation and in solid power. He meant to use this power at the right moment. He had waited patiently and the hour at last had struck.

The thunder of a torpedo under an American warship lying in Havana harbor shook the Nation and changed the alignment of political parties.

The war with Spain lasted but a few months, but it gave the South her chance. Her sons leaped to the front and proved their loyalty to the flag. The "Bloody Shirt" could never again be waved. The negro ceased to be a ward of the Nation and the Union of States our fathers dreamed was at last an accomplished fact. There could never again be a "North" or a "South."

Norton's first brilliant editorial reviewing the results of this war drew the fire of his enemies from exactly the quarter he expected.

A little college professor, who aspired to the leadership of Southern thought under Northern patronage, called at his office.

The editor's lips curled with contempt as he read the engraved card:

"Professor Alexander Magraw"

The man had long been one of his pet aversions. He occupied a chair in one of the state's leading colleges, and his effusions advocating peace at any price on the negro problem had grown so disgusting of late the Eagle and Phoenix had refused to print them.

Magraw was nothing daunted. He devoted his energies to writing a book in fulsome eulogy of a notorious negro which had made him famous in the North. He wrote it to curry favor with the millionaires who were backing this African's work and succeeded in winning their boundless admiration. They hailed him the coming leader of "advanced thought." As a Southern white man the little professor had boldly declared that this negro, who had never done anything except to demonstrate his skill as a beggar in raising a million dollars from Northern sentimentalists, was the greatest human being ever born in America!

Outraged public opinion in the South had demanded his expulsion from the college for this idiotic effusion, but he was so entrenched behind the power of money he could not be disturbed. His loud protests for free speech following his acquittal had greatly increased the number of his henchmen.

Norton wondered at the meaning of his visit. It could only be a sinister one. In view of his many contemptuous references to the man, he was amazed at his audacity in venturing to invade his office.

He scowled a long while at the card and finally said to the boy:

"Show him in."

CHAPTER II

A MODERN SCALAWAG

As the professor entered the office Norton was surprised at his height and weight. He had never met him personally, but had unconsciously formed the idea that he was a scrub physically.

He saw a man above the average height, weighing nearly two hundred, with cheeks flabby but inclined to fat. It was not until he spoke that he caught the unmistakable note of effeminacy in his voice and saw it clearly reflected in his features.

He was dressed with immaculate neatness and wore a tie of an extraordinary shade of lavender which matched the silk hose that showed above his stylish low-cut shoes.

"Major Norton, I believe?" he said with a smile.

The editor bowed without rising:

"At your service, Professor Magraw. Have a seat, sir."

"Thank you! Thank you!" the dainty voice murmured with so marked a resemblance to a woman's tones that Norton was torn between two impulses – one to lift his eyebrows and sigh, "Oh, splash!" and the other to kick him down the stairs. He was in no mood for the amenities of polite conversation, turned and asked bluntly:

"May I inquire, professor, why you have honored me with this unexpected call – I confess I am very curious?"

"No doubt, no doubt," he replied glibly. "You have certainly not minced matters in your personal references to me in the paper of late, Major Norton, but I have simply taken it good-naturedly as a part of your day's work. Apparently we represent two irreconcilable ideals of Southern society – "

"There can be no doubt about that," Norton interrupted grimly.

"Yet I have dared to hope that our differences are only apparent and that we might come to a better understanding."

He paused, simpered and smiled.

"About what?" the editor asked with a frown.

"About the best policy for the leaders of public opinion to pursue to more rapidly advance the interests of the South – "

"And by 'interests of the South' you mean?"

"The best interest of all the people without regard to race or color!"

Norton smiled:

"You forgot part of the pass-word of your order, professor! The whole clause used to read, 'race, color or previous condition of servitude' – "

The sneer was lost on the professor. He was too intent on his mission.

"I have called, Major Norton," he went on glibly, "to inform you that my distinguished associates in the great Educational Movement in the South view with increasing alarm the tendency of your paper to continue the agitation of the so-called negro problem."

"And may I ask by whose authority your distinguished associates have been set up as the arbiters of the destiny of twenty millions of white citizens of the South?"

The professor flushed with amazement at the audacity of such a question:

"They have given millions to the cause of education, sir! These great Funds represent to-day a power that is becoming more and more resistless – "

Norton sprang to his feet and faced Magraw with eyes flashing:

"That's why I haven't minced matters in my references to you, professor. That's why I'm getting ready to strike a blow in the cause of racial purity for which my paper stands."

"But why continue to rouse the bitterness of racial feeling? The question will settle itself if let alone."

"How?"

"By the process of evolution – "

"Exactly!" Norton thundered. "And by that you mean the gradual breaking down of racial barriers and the degradation of our people to a mongrel negroid level or you mean nothing! No miracle of evolution can gloss over the meaning of such a tragedy. The Negro is the lowest of all human forms, four thousand years below the standard of the pioneer white Aryan who discovered this continent and peopled it with a race of empire builders. The gradual mixture of our blood with his can only result in the extinction of National character – a calamity so appalling the mind of every patriot refuses to accept for a moment its possibility."

"I am not advocating such a mixture!" the professor mildly protested.

"In so many words, no," retorted Norton; "yet you are setting in motion forces that make it inevitable, as certain as life, as remorseless as death. When you demand that the patriot of the South let the Negro alone to work out his own destiny, you know that the mere physical contact of two such races is a constant menace to white civilization – "

The professor raised the delicate, tapering hands:

"The old nightmare of negro domination is only a thing with which to frighten children, major, the danger is a myth – "

"Indeed!" Norton sneered. "When our people saw the menace of an emancipated slave suddenly clothed with the royal power of a ballot they met this threat against the foundations of law and order by a counter revolution and restored a government of the wealth, virtue and intelligence of the community. What they have not yet seen, is the more insidious danger that threatens the inner home life of a Democratic nation from the physical contact of two such races."

"And you propose to prevent that contact?" the piping voice asked.

"Yes."

"And may I ask how?"

"By an ultimate complete separation through a process covering perhaps two hundred years – "

The professor laughed:

"Visionary – impossible!"

"All right," Norton slowly replied. "I see the invisible and set myself to do the impossible. Because men have done such things the world moves forward not backward!"

The lavender hose moved stealthily:

"You will advocate this?" the professor asked.

"In due time. The Southern white man and woman still labor under the old delusion that the negro's lazy, slipshod ways are necessary and that we could not get along without him – "

"And if you dare to antagonize that faith?"

"When your work is done, professor, and the glorious results of Evolution are shown to mean the giving in marriage of our sons and daughters, my task will be easy. In the mean time I'll do the work at hand. The negro is still a voter. The devices by which he is prevented from using the power to which his numbers entitle him are but temporary. The first real work before the statesmen of the South is the disfranchisement of the African, the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment to our Constitution and the restoration of American citizenship to its original dignity and meaning."

"A large undertaking," the professor glibly observed. "And you will dare such a program?"

"I'll at least strike a blow for it. The first great crime against the purity of our racial stock was the mixture of blood which the physical contact of slavery made inevitable.

"But the second great crime, and by far the most tragic and disastrous, was the insane Act of Congress inspired by the passions of the Reconstruction period by which a million ignorant black men, but yesterday from the jungles of Africa, were clothed with the full powers of citizenship under the flag of Democracy and given the right by the ballot to rule a superior race.

"The Act of Emancipation was a war measure pure and simple. By that act Lincoln sought to strike the South as a political power a mortal blow. He did not free four million negroes for sentimental reasons. He destroyed four billion dollars' worth of property invested in slaves as an act of war to save the Union. Nothing was further from his mind or heart than the mad idea that these Africans could be assimilated into our National life. He intended to separate the races and give the Negro a nation of his own. But the hand of a madman struck the great leader down in the hour of his supreme usefulness.

"In the anarchy which followed the assassination of the President and the attempt of a daring coterie of fanatics in Washington to impeach his successor and create a dictatorship, the great crime against Democracy was committed. Millions of black men, with the intelligence of children and the instincts of savages, were given full and equal citizenship with the breed of men who created the Republic.

"Any plan to solve intelligently the problem of the races must first correct this blunder from which a stream of poison has been pouring into our life.

"The first step in the work of separating the races, therefore, must be to deprive the negro of this enormous power over Democratic society. It is not a solution of the problem, but as the great blunder was the giving of this symbol of American kingship, our first task is to take it from him and restore the ballot to its original sanctity."

"Your movement will encounter difficulties, I foresee!" observed the professor with a gracious smile.

He was finding his task with Norton easier than he anticipated. The editor's madness was evidently so hopeless he had only to deliver his ultimatum and close the interview.

"The difficulties are great," Norton went on with renewed emphasis, "but less than they have been for the past twenty years. Until yesterday the negro was the ward of the Nation. Any movement by a Southern state to remove his menace was immediately met by a call to arms to defend the Union by Northern demagogues who had never smelled powder when the Union was in danger.

"A foolish preacher in Boston who enjoys a National reputation has been in the habit of rousing his hearers to a round of cheers by stamping his foot, lifting hands above his head and yelling:

"'The only way to save the Union now is for Northern mothers to rear more children than Southern mothers!'

"And the sad part of it is that thousands of otherwise sane people in New England and other sections of the North and West believed this idiotic statement to be literally true. It is no longer possible to fool them with such chaff – "

The professor rose and shook out his finely creased trousers until the lavender hose scarcely showed:

"I am afraid, Major Norton, that it is useless for us to continue this discussion. You are quite determined to maintain the policy of your paper on this point?"

"Quite."

"I am sorry. The Eagle and Phoenix is a very powerful influence in this state. The distinguished associates whom I represent sent me in the vain hope that I might persuade you to drop the agitation of this subject and join with us in developing the material and educational needs of the South – "

Norton laughed aloud:

"Really, professor?"

The visitor flushed at the marked sneer in his tones, and fumbled his lavender tie:

"I can only deliver to you our ultimatum, therefore – "

"You are clothed with sovereign powers, then?" the editor asked sarcastically.

"If you choose to designate them so – yes. Unless you agree to drop this dangerous and useless agitation of the negro question and give our people a hearing in the columns of your paper, I am authorized to begin at once the publication of a journal that will express the best sentiment of the South – "

"So?"

"And I have unlimited capital to back it."

Norton's eyes flashed as he squared himself before the professor:

"I've not a doubt of your backing. Start your paper to-morrow if you like. You'll find that it takes more than money to build a great organ of public opinion in the South. I've put my immortal soul into this plant. I'll watch your experiment with interest."

"Thank you! Thank you," the thin voice piped.

"And now that we understand each other," Norton went on, "you've given me the chance to say a few things to you and your associates I've been wanting to express for a long time – "

Norton paused and fixed his visitor with an angry stare:

"Not only is the Negro gaining in numbers, in wealth and in shallow 'culture,' and tightening his grip on the soil as the owner in fee simple of thousands of homes, churches, schools and farms, but a Negroid party has once more developed into a powerful and sinister influence on the life of this state! You and your associates are loud in your claims to represent a new South. In reality you are the direct descendants of the Reconstruction Scalawag and Carpetbagger.

"The old Scalawag was the Judas Iscariot who sold his people for thirty pieces of silver which he got by licking the feet of his conqueror and fawning on his negro allies. The Carpetbagger was a Northern adventurer who came South to prey on the misfortunes of a ruined people. A new and far more dangerous order of Scalawags has arisen – the man who boldly preaches the omnipotence of the dollar and weighs every policy of state or society by one standard only, will it pay in dollars and cents? And so you frown on any discussion of the tragic problem the negro's continued pressure on Southern society involves because it disturbs business.

"The unparalleled growth of wealth in the North has created our enormous Poor Funds, organized by generous well-meaning men for the purpose of education in the South. As a matter of fact, this new educational movement had its origin in the same soil that established negro classical schools and attempted to turn the entire black race into preachers, lawyers, and doctors just after the war. Your methods, however, are wiser, although your policies are inspired, if not directed, by the fertile brain of a notorious negro of doubtful moral character.

"The directors of your Poor Funds profess to be the only true friends of the true white man of the South. By a 'true white man of the South' you mean a man who is willing to show his breadth of vision by fraternizing occasionally with negroes.

"An army of lickspittles have begun to hang on the coat-tails of your dispensers of alms. Their methods are always the same. They attempt to attract the notice of the Northern distributors by denouncing men of my type who are earnestly, fearlessly and reverently trying to face and solve the darkest problem the centuries have presented to America. These little beggars have begun to vie with one another not only in denouncing the leaders of public opinion in the South, but in fulsome and disgusting fawning at the feet of the individual negro whose personal influence dominates these Funds."

Again the lavender socks moved uneasily.

"In which category you place the author of a certain book, I suppose?" inquired the professor.

"I paused in the hope that you might not miss my meaning," Norton replied, smiling. "The astounding power for the debasement of public opinion developing through these vast corruption funds is one of the most sinister influences which now threatens Southern society. It is the most difficult of all to meet because its protestations are so plausible and philanthropic.

"The Carpetbagger has come back to the South. This time he is not a low adventurer seeking coin and public office. He is a philanthropist who carries hundreds of millions of dollars to be distributed to the 'right' men who will teach Southern boys and girls the 'right' ideas. So far as these 'right' ideas touch the negro, they mean the ultimate complete acceptance of the black man as a social equal.

"Your chief spokesman of this New Order of Carpetbag, for example, has declared on many occasions that the one thing in his life of which he is most proud is the fact that he is the personal friend of the negro whose influence now dominates your dispensers of alms! This man positively grovels with joy when his distinguished black friend honors him by becoming his guest in New York.

"With growing rage and wonder I have watched the development of this modern phenomenon. I have fought you with sullen and unyielding fury from the first, and you have proven the most dangerous and insidious force I have encountered. You profess the loftiest motives and the highest altruism while the effects of your work can only be the degradation of the white race to an ultimate negroid level, to say nothing of the appalling results if you really succeed in pauperizing the educational system of the South!