The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

Andy made an excuse to go in the garden and putter about some flowers just to watch them, laugh and chuckle over the exhibition. He was just in time as he softly approached behind a trellis of climbing roses to hear Tom say:

"Please give me that bud you're wearing?"

"Why?" she asked demurely.

"Just because I've taken a fancy to it."

She blushed scarlet, took the rosebud from her bosom and pinned it on his coat:

"All right – there!"

Andy suppressed a burst of laughter and hurried back to report to Minerva.

For four enchanted weeks the old comedy of life was thus played by the boy and girl in sweet and utter unconsciousness of its meaning. He worked only in the mornings and rushed home for lunch unusually early. The afternoon usually found them seated side by side slowly driving over the quiet country roads. Two battlefields of the civil war, where his father had led a regiment of troops in the last desperate engagement with Sherman's army two weeks after Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, kept them busy each afternoon for a week.

At night they sat on the moonlit porch behind the big pillars and he talked to her of the great things of life with simple boyish enthusiasm. Sometimes they walked side by side through the rose-scented lawn and paused to hear the love song of a mocking-bird whose mate was busy each morning teaching her babies to fly.

The world had become a vast rose garden of light and beauty, filled with the odors of flowers and spices and dreamy strains of ravishing music.

And behind it all, nearer crept the swift shadow whose tread was softer than the foot of a summer's cloud.

CHAPTER VII

TRAPPED

Norton's campaign during its first months was a continuous triumph. The opposition had been so completely stunned by the epoch-making declaration of principles on which he had chosen to conduct the fight that they had as yet been unable to rally their forces. Even the rival newspaper, founded to combat the ideas for which the Eagle and Phoenix stood, was compelled to support Norton's ticket to save itself from ruin. The young editor found a source of endless amusement in taunting the professor on this painful fact.

The leader had chosen to begin his tour of the state in the farthest mountain counties that had always been comparatively free from negro influence. These counties were counted as safe for the opposition before the startling program of the editor's party had been announced. Yet from the first day's mass meeting which he had addressed an enthusiasm had been developed under the spell of Norton's eloquence that had swept the crowds of mountaineers off their feet. They had never been slave owners, and they had no use for a negro as servant, laborer, voter, citizen, or in any other capacity. The idea of freeing the state forever from their baleful influence threw the entire white race into solid ranks supporting his ticket.

The enthusiasm kindled in the mountains swept the foothills, gaining resistless force as it reached the more inflammable feelings of the people of the plains who were living in daily touch with the negro.

Yet amid all the scenes of cheering and enthusiasm through which he was passing daily the heart of the leader was heavy with dread. His mind was brooding over the last scene with Cleo and its possible outcome.

He began to worry with increasing anguish over the certainty that when she struck the blow would be a deadly one. The higher the tide of his triumph rose, the greater became the tension of his nerves. Each day had its appointment to speak. Some days were crowded with three or four engagements. These dates were made two weeks ahead and great expense had been incurred in each case to advertise them and secure record crowds. It was a point of honor with him to make good these dates even to the smallest appointment at a country crossroads.

It was impossible to leave for a trip home. It would mean the loss of at least four days. Yet his anxiety at last became so intense that he determined to rearrange his dates and swing his campaign into the territory near the Capital at once. It was not a good policy. He would risk the loss of the cumulative power of his work now sweeping from county to county, a resistless force. But it would enable him to return home for a few hours between his appointments.

There had been nothing in Tom's reports to arouse his fears. The boy had faithfully carried out his instructions to give no information that might annoy him. His brief letters were bright, cheerful, and always closed with the statement: "Everything all right at home, and I'm still jollying the professor about supporting the cause he hates."

When he reached the county adjoining the Capital his anxiety had reached a point beyond endurance. It would be three days before he could connect with a schedule of trains that would enable him to get home between the time of his hours to speak. He simply could not wait.

He telegraphed to Tom to send Andy to the meeting next day with a bound volume of the paper for the year 1866 which contained some facts he wished to use in his speech in this district.

Andy's glib tongue would give him the information he needed.

The train was late and the papers did not arrive in time. He was compelled to leave his hotel and go to the meeting without them.

An enormous crowd had gathered. And for the first time on his tour he felt hostility in the glances that occasionally shot from groups of men as he passed. The county was noted for its gangs of toughs who lived on the edge of a swamp that had been the rendezvous of criminals for a century.

The opposition had determined to make a disturbance at this meeting and if possible end it with a riot. They counted on the editor's fiery temper when aroused to make this a certainty. They had not figured on the cool audacity with which he would meet such a situation.

When he reached the speaker's stand, the county Chairman whispered:

"They are going to make trouble here to-day."

"Yes?"

"They've got a speaker who's going to demand a division of time."

The editor smiled:

"Really?"

"Yes," the Chairman said, nodding toward a tall, ministerial-looking individual who was already working his way through the crowd. "That's the fellow coming now."

Norton turned and confronted the chosen orator of the opposition, a backwoods preacher of a rude native eloquence whose name he had often heard.

He saw at a glance that he was a man of force. His strong mouth was clean of mustache and the lower lip was shaved to the chin. A long beard covered the massive jaws and his hair reached the collar of his coat. He had been a deserter during the war, and a drunken member of the little Scalawag Governor's famous guard that had attempted to rule the state without the civil law. He had been converted in a Baptist revival at a crossroads meeting place years before and became a preacher. His religious conversion, however, had not reached his politics or dimmed his memory of the events of Reconstruction.

He had hated Norton with a deep and abiding fervor from the day he had escaped from his battalion in the Civil War down to the present moment.

Norton hadn't the remotest idea that he was the young recruit who had taken to his heels on entering a battle and never stopped running until he reached home.

"This is Major Norton?" the preacher asked.

"Yes," was the curt answer.

"I demand a division of time with you in a joint discussion here, sir."

Norton's figure stiffened and he looked at the man with a flush of anger:

"Did you say demand?"

"Yes, sir, I did," the preacher answered, snapping his hard mouth firmly. "We believe in free speech in this county."

Norton placed his hands in his pockets, and looked him over from head to foot:

"Well, you've got the gall of the devil, I must say, even if you do wear the livery of heaven. You demand free speech at my expense! I like your cheek. It cost my committee two hundred dollars to advertise this meeting and make it a success, and you step up at the last moment and demand that I turn it over to your party. If you want free speech, hire your own hall and make it to your heart's content. You can't address this crowd from a speaker's stand built with my money."

"You refuse?"

Norton looked at him steadily for a moment and took a step closer:

"I am trying to convey that impression to your mind. Must I use my foot to emphasize it?"

The long-haired one paled slightly, turned and quickly pushed his way through the crowd to a group awaiting him on the edge of the brush arbor that had been built to shelter the people from the sun. The Chairman whispered to Norton:

"There'll be trouble certain – they're a tough lot. More than half the men here are with him."

"They won't be when I've finished," he answered with a smile.

"You'd better divide with them – "

"I'll see him in hell first!"

Norton stepped quickly on the rude pine platform that had been erected for the speaker and faced the crowd. For the first time on his trip the cheering was given with moderation.

He saw the preacher walk back under the arbor and his men distribute themselves with apparent design in different parts of the crowd.

He lifted his hand with a gesture to stop the applause and a sudden hush fell over the eager, serious faces.

His eye wandered carelessly over the throng and singled out the men he had seen distribute themselves among them. He suddenly slipped his hand behind him and drew from beneath his long black frock coat a big revolver and laid it beside the pitcher of lemonade the Chairman had provided.

A slight stir swept the crowd and the stillness could be felt.

The speaker lifted his broad shoulders and began his speech in an intense voice that found its way to the last man who hung on the edge of the crowd:

"Gentlemen," he began slowly, "if there's any one present who doesn't wish to hear what I have to say, now is the time to leave. This is my meeting, and I will not be interrupted. If, in spite of this announcement, there happens to be any one here who is looking for trouble" – he stopped and touched the shining thing that lay before him – "you'll find it here on the table – walk right up to the front."

A cheer rent the air. He stilled it with a quick gesture and plunged into his speech.

In the intense situation which had developed he had forgotten the fear that had been gnawing at his heart for the past weeks.

At the height of his power over his audience his eye suddenly caught the black face of Andy grinning in evident admiration of his master's eloquence.

Something in the symbolism of this negro grinning at him over the heads of the people hanging breathless on his words sent a wave of sickening fear to his heart. In vain he struggled to throw the feeling off in the midst of his impassioned appeal. It was impossible. For the remaining half hour he spoke as if in a trance. Unconsciously his voice was lowered to a strange intense monotone that sent the chills down the spines of his hearers.

He closed his speech in a silence that was strangling.

The people were dazed and he was half-way down the steps of the rude platform before they sufficiently recovered to break into round after round of cheering.

He had unconsciously made the most powerful speech of his life, and no man in all the crowd that he had hypnotized could have dreamed the grim secret which had been the source of his inspiration.

Without a moment's delay he found Andy, examined the package he brought and hurried to his room.

"Everything all right at home, Andy?" he asked with apparent carelessness.

The negro was still lost in admiration of Norton's triumph over his hostile audience.

"Yassah, you sho did set 'em afire wid dat speech, major!" he said with a laugh.

"And I asked you if everything was all right at home?"

"Oh, yassah, yassah – everything's all right. Of cose, sah, dey's a few little things always happenin'. Dem pigs get in de garden las' week an' et everything up, an' dat ole cow er own got de hollow horn agin. But everything else all right, sah."

"And how's aunt Minerva?"

"Des es big an' fat ez ebber, sah, an' er gittin' mo' unruly every day – yassah – she's gittin' so sassy she try ter run de whole place an' me, too."

"And Cleo?"

This question he asked bustling over his papers with an indifference so perfectly assumed that Andy never guessed his interest to be more than casual, and yet he ceased to breathe until he caught the laughing answer:

"Oh, she's right dar holdin' her own wid Miss Minerva an' I tells her las' week she's lookin' better dan ebber – yassah – she's all right."

Norton felt a sense of grateful relief. His fears had been groundless. They were preposterous to start with. The idea that she might attempt to visit Helen in his absence was, of course, absurd.

His next question was asked with a good-natured, hearty tone:

"And Mr. Tom?"

Andy laughed immoderately and Norton watched him with increasing wonder.

"Right dar's whar my tale begins!"

"Why, what's the matter with him?" the father asked with a touch of anxiety in his voice.

"Lordy, dey ain't nuttin' de matter wid him 'tall – hit's a fresh cut!"

Again Andy laughed with unction.

"What is it?" Norton asked with impatience. "What's the matter with Tom?"

"Nuttin' 'tall, sah – nuttin' 'tall – I nebber see 'im lookin' so well in my life. He gets up sooner den I ebber knowed him before. He comes home quicker an' stays dar longer an' he's de jolliest young gentleman I know anywhar in de state. Mo' specially, sah, since dat handsome young lady from de North come down to see us – "

The father's heart was in his throat as he stammered:

"A handsome young lady from the North – I don't understand!"

"Why, Miss Helen, sah, de young lady you invite ter spen' de summer wid us."

Norton's eyes suddenly grew dim, he leaned on the table, stared at Andy, and repeated blankly:

"The young lady I asked to spend the summer with us?"

"Yassah, Miss Helen, sah, is her name – she cum 'bout er week atter you lef – "

"And she's been there ever since?" he asked.

"Yassah, an' she sho is a powerful fine young lady, sah. I don't blame Mister Tom fer bein' crazy 'bout her!"

There was a moment's dead silence.

"So Tom's crazy about her?" he said in a high, nervous voice, which Andy took for a joke.

"Yassah, I'se had some sperience myself, sah, but I ain't nebber seen nuttin' like dis! He des trot long atter her day an' night like a fice. An' de funny thing, sah, is dat he doan' seem ter know dat he's doin' it. Everybody 'bout de house laffin' fit ter kill dersef an' he don't pay no 'tention. He des sticks to her like a sick kitten to a hot brick! Yassah, hit sho's funny! I des knowed you'd bust er laughin' when you sees 'em."

Norton had sunk to a seat too weak to stand. His face was pale and his breath came in short gasps as he turned to the negro, stared at him hopelessly for a moment and said:

"Andy, get me a good horse and buggy at the livery stable – we'll drive through the country to-night. I want to get home right away."

Andy's mouth opened and his eyes stared in blank amazement.

"De Lawd, major, hit's mos' sundown now an' hit's a hundred miles from here home – hit took me all day ter come on de train."

"No, it's only forty miles straight across the country. We can make it to-night with a good horse. Hurry, I'll have my valise packed in a few minutes."

"Do you know de way, sah?" Andy asked, scratching his head.

"Do as I tell you – quick!" Norton thundered.

The negro darted from the room and returned in half an hour with a horse and buggy.

Through the long hours of the night they drove with but a single stop at midnight in a quiet street of a sleeping village. They halted at the well beside a store and watered the horse.

A graveyard was passed a mile beyond the village, and Andy glanced timidly over his shoulder at the white marble slabs glistening in the starlight. His master had not spoken for two hours save the sharp order to stop at the well.

"Dis sho is er lonesome lookin' place!" Andy said with a shiver.

But the man beside him gave no sign that he heard. His eyes were set in a strange stare at the stars that twinkled in the edge of the tree tops far ahead.

Andy grew so lonely and frightened finally at the ominous silence that he pretended to be lost at each crossroads to force Norton to speak.

"I wuz afraid you gone ter sleep, sah!" he said with an apologetic laugh. "An' I wuz erfered dat you'd fall out er de buggy gwine down er hill."

In vain he tried to break the silence. There was no answer – no sign that he was in the same world, save the fact of his body's presence.

The first streak of dawn was widening on the eastern horizon when Norton's cramped legs limped into the gate of his home. He stopped to steady his nerves and looked blankly up at the window of his boy's room. He had given Tom his mother's old room when he had reached the age of sixteen.

Somewhere behind those fluted pillars, white and ghost-like in the dawn, lay the girl who had suddenly risen from the dead to lead his faltering feet up life's Calvary. He saw the cross slowly lifting its dark form from the hilltop with arms outstretched to embrace him, and the chill of death crept into his heart.

The chirp of stirring birds, the dim noises of waking life, the whitening sky-line behind the house recalled another morning in his boyhood. He had waked at daylight to go to his traps set at the branch in the edge of the woods behind the barn. The plantation at that time had extended into the town. A fox had been killing his fancy chickens. He had vowed vengeance in his boyish wrath, bought half a dozen powerful steel-traps and set them in the fox's path. The prowler had been interrupted the night before and had not gotten his prey. He would return sure.

He recalled now every emotion that had thrilled his young heart as he bounded along the dew-soaked path to his traps.

Before he could see the place he heard the struggles of his captive.

"I've got him!" he shouted with a throb of savage joy.

He leaped the fence and stood frozen to the spot. The fox was a magnificent specimen of his breed, tall and heavy as a setter dog, with beautiful appealing eyes. His fine gray fur was spotched with blood, his mouth torn and bleeding from the effort to break the cruel bars that held his foreleg in their death-like grip. With each desperate pull the blood spurted afresh and the steel cut deeper into bone and flesh.

The strange cries of pain and terror from the trapped victim had struck him dumb. He had come with murder in his heart to take revenge on his enemy, but when he looked with blanched face on the blood and heard the pitiful cries he rushed to the spot, tore the steel arms apart, loosed the fox, pushed his quivering form from him and gasped:

"Go – go – I'm sorry I hurt you like that!"

Stirred by the memories of the dawn he lived this scene again in vivid anguish, and as he slowly mounted the steps of his home, felt the steel bars of an inexorable fate close on his own throat.

CHAPTER VIII

BEHIND THE BARS

When Norton reached his room he locked the door and began to pace the floor, facing for the hundredth time the stunning situation which the presence of Helen had created.

To reveal to such a sensitive, cultured girl just as she was budding into womanhood the fact that her blood was tainted with a negro ancestor would be an act so pitifully cruel that every instinct of his nature revolted from the thought.

He began to realize that her life was at stake as well as his boy's. That he loved this son with all the strength of his being and that he only knew the girl to fear her, made no difference in the fundamental facts. He acknowledged that she was his. He had accepted the fact and paid the penalty in the sacrifice of every ambition of a brilliant mind.

He weighed carefully the things that were certain and the things that were merely probable. The one certainty that faced him from every angle was that Cleo was in deadly earnest and that it meant a fight for the supremacy of every decent instinct of his life and character.

Apparently she had planned a tragic revenge by luring the girl to his home, figuring on his absence for three months, to precipitate a love affair before he could know the truth or move to interfere. A strange mental telepathy had warned him and he had broken in on the scene two months before he was expected.

And yet he couldn't believe that Cleo in the wildest flight of her insane rage could have deliberately meant that such an affair should end in marriage. She knew the character of both father and son too well to doubt that such an act could only end in tragedy. She was too cautious for such madness.

What was her game?

He asked himself that question again and again, always to come back to one conclusion. She had certainly brought the girl into the house to force from his reluctant lips her recognition and thus fix her own grip on his life. Beyond a doubt the surest way to accomplish this, and the quickest, was by a love affair between the boy and girl. She knew that personally the father had rather die than lose the respect of his son by a confession of his shame. But she knew with deeper certainty that he must confess it if their wills once clashed over the choice of a wife. The boy had a mind of his own. His father knew it and respected and loved him all the more because of it.

It was improbable as yet that Tom had spoken a word of love or personally faced such an issue. Of the girl he could only form the vaguest idea. It was clear now that he had been stricken by a panic and that the case was not so desperate as he had feared.

One thing he saw with increasing clearness. He must move with the utmost caution. He must avoid Helen at first and find the boy's attitude. He must at all hazards keep the use of every power of body, mind and soul in the crisis with which he was confronted.

Two hours later when Andy cautiously approached his door and listened at the keyhole he was still pacing the floor with the nervous tread of a wounded lion suddenly torn from the forest and thrust behind the bars of an iron cage.

CHAPTER IX

ANDY'S DILEMMA

Andy left Norton's door and rapped softly at Tom's, tried the lock, found it unfastened, pushed his way quietly inside and called:

"Mister Tom!"

No answer came from the bed and Andy moved closer:

"Mister Tom – Mister Tom!"

"Ah – what's the matter with you – get out!" the sleeper growled.

The negro touched the boy's shoulder with a friendly shake, whispering:

"Yo' Pa's here!"

Tom sat up in bed rubbing his eyes:

"What's that?"

"Yassah, I fotch him through the country and we rid all night – "

"What's the matter?'

"Dat's what I wants ter see you 'bout, sah – an' ef you'll des slip on dem clothes an' meet me in de liberry, we'll hab a little confab an' er council er war – "

The boy picked up a pillow and hurled it at Andy:

"Well, get out, you old rascal, and I'll be down in a few minutes."

Andy dodged the pillow and at the door whispered:

"Yassah, an' don't disturb de major! I hopes ter God he sleep er month when he git started."

"All right, I won't disturb him."

Tom dressed, wondering vaguely what had brought his father home at such an unearthly hour and by such a trip across the country.

Andy, arrayed in a suit of broadcloth which he had appropriated from Norton's wardrobe in his absence, was waiting for Tom with evident impatience.

"Now, what I want to know is," the boy began, "what the devil you mean by pulling me out of bed this time of day?"

Andy chuckled:

"Well, yer see, sah, de major git home kinder sudden like en' I wuz jest er little oneasy 'bout dis here new suit er close er mine – "

"Well, that's not the first suit of his clothes you've swiped – you needn't be scared."

"Scared – who me? Man, I ain't er skeered er yo' Pa."

Minerva banged the dining-room door and Andy jumped and started to run. Tom laughed and seized his arm:

"Oh, don't be a fool! There's no danger."