The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

But one clause of the bill remained to be adjudged – the brand his accusers proposed to put upon his forehead. His final penalty should be the loss of citizenship. It was more than the Governor could bear. He begged an adjournment of the High Court for a conference with his attorneys and it was granted.

He immediately sought the Speaker, who made no effort to conceal the contempt in which he held the trembling petitioner.

"I've come to you, Major Norton," he began falteringly, "in the darkest hour of my life. I've come because I know that you are a brave and generous man. I appeal to your generosity. I've made mistakes in my administration. But I ask you to remember that few men in my place could have done better. I was set to make bricks without straw. I was told to make water run up hill and set at naught the law of gravitation.

"I struck at you personally – yes – but remember my provocation. You made me the target of your merciless ridicule, wit and invective for two years. It was more than flesh and blood could bear without a return blow. Put yourself in my place – "

"I've tried, Governor," Norton interrupted in kindly tones. "And it's inconceivable to me that any man born and bred as you have been, among the best people of the South, a man whose fiery speeches in the Secession Convention helped to plunge this state into civil war – how you could basely betray your own flesh and blood in the hour of their sorest need – it's beyond me! I can't understand it. I've tried to put myself in your place and I can't."

The little ferret eyes were dim as he edged toward the tall figure of his accuser:

"I'm not asking of you mercy, Major Norton, on the main issue. I understand the bitterness in the hearts of these men who sit as my judges to-day. I make no fight to retain the office of Governor, but – major" – his thin voice broke – "it's too hard to brand me a criminal by depriving me of my citizenship and the right to vote, and hurl me from the highest office within the gift of a great people a nameless thing, a man without a country! Come, sir, even if all you say is true, justice may be tempered with mercy. Great minds can understand this. You are the representative to-day of a brave and generous race of men. My life is in ruins – I am at your feet. I have pride. I had high ambitions – "

His voice broke, he paused, and then continued in strained tones:

"I have loved ones to whom this shame will come as a bolt from the clear sky. They know nothing of politics. They simply love me. This final ignominy you would heap on my head may be just from your point of view. But is it necessary? Can it serve any good purpose? Is it not mere wanton cruelty?

"Come now, man to man – our masks are off – my day is done. You are young. The world is yours. This last blow with which you would crush my spirit is too cruel! Can you afford an act of such wanton cruelty in the hour of your triumph? A small man could, yes – but you? I appeal to the best that's in you, to the spark of God that's in every human soul – "

Norton was deeply touched, far more than he dreamed any word from the man he hated could ever stir him. The Governor saw his hesitation and pressed his cause:

"I might say many things honestly in justification of my course in politics; but the time has not come. When passions have cooled and we can look the stirring events of these years squarely in the face – there'll be two sides to this question, major, as there are two sides to all questions. I might say to you that when I saw the frightful blunder I had made in helping to plunge our country into a fatal war, I tried to make good my mistake and went to the other extreme. I was ambitious, yes, but we are confronted with millions of ignorant negroes. What can we do with them? Slavery had an answer. Democracy now must give the true answer or perish – "

"That answer will never be to set these negroes up as rulers over white men!"

Norton raised his hand and spoke with bitter emphasis.

"Even so, in a Democracy with equality as the one fundamental law of life, what are you going to do with them? I could plead with you that in every act of my ill-fated administration I was honestly, in the fear of God, trying to meet and solve this apparently insoluble problem. You are now in power. What are you going to do with these negroes?"

"Send them back to the plow first," was the quick answer.

"All right; when they have bought those farms and their sons and daughters are rich and cultured – what then?"

"We'll answer that question, Governor, when the time comes."

"Remember, major, that you have no answer to it now, and in the pride of your heart to-day let me suggest that you deal charitably with one who honestly tried to find the answer when called to rule over both races.

"I have failed, I grant you. I have made mistakes, I grant you. Won't you accept my humility in this hour in part atonement for my mistakes? I stand alone before you, my bitterest and most powerful enemy, because I believe in the strength and nobility of your character. You are my only hope. I am before you, broken, crushed, humiliated, deserted, friendless – at your mercy!"

The last appeal stirred the soul of the young editor to its depths. He was surprised and shocked to find the man he had so long ridiculed and hated so thoroughly, human and appealing in his hour of need.

He spoke with a kindly deliberation he had never dreamed it possible to use with this man.

"I'm sorry for you, Governor. Your appeal is to me a very eloquent one. It has opened a new view of your character. I can never again say bitter, merciless things about you in my paper. You have disarmed me. But as the leader of my race, in the crisis through which we are passing, I feel that a great responsibility has been placed on me. Now that we have met, with bared souls in this solemn hour, let me say that I have learned to like you better than I ever thought it possible. But I am to-day a judge who must make his decision, remembering that the lives and liberties of all the people are in his keeping when he pronounces the sentence of law. A judge has no right to spare a man who has taken human life because he is sorry for the prisoner. I have no right, as a leader, to suspend this penalty on you. Your act in destroying the civil law, arresting men without warrant and holding them by military force without bail or date of trial, was, in my judgment, a crime of the highest rank, not merely against me – one individual whom you happened to hate – but against every man, woman and child in the state. Unless that crime is punished another man, as daring in high office, may repeat it in the future. I hold in my hands to-day not only the lives and liberties of the people you have wronged, but of generations yet unborn. Now that I have heard you, personally I am sorry for you, but the law must take its course."

"You will deprive me of my citizenship?" he asked pathetically.

"It is my solemn duty. And when it is done no Governor will ever again dare to repeat your crime."

Norton turned away and the Governor laid his trembling hand on his arm:

"Your decision is absolutely final, Major Norton?"

"Absolutely," was the firm reply.

The Governor's shoulders drooped lower as he shuffled from the room and his eyes were fixed on space as he pushed his way through the hostile crowds that filled the corridors of the Capitol.

The Court immediately reassembled and the Speaker rose to make his motion for a vote on the last count in the bill depriving the Chief Executive of the state of his citizenship.

The silence was intense. The crowds that packed the lobby, the galleries, and every inch of the floor of the Senate Chamber expected a fierce speech of impassioned eloquence from their idolized leader. Every neck was craned and breath held for his first ringing words.

To their surprise he began speaking in a low voice choking with emotion and merely demanded a vote of the Senate on the final clause of the bill, and the brown eyes of the tall orator had a suspicious look of moisture in their depths as they rested on the forlorn figure of the little Scalawag. The crowd caught the spirit of solemnity and of pathos from the speaker's voice and the vote was taken amid a silence that was painful.

When the Clerk announced the result and the Chief Justice of the state declared the office of Governor vacant there was no demonstration. As the Lieutenant-Governor ascended the dais and took the oath of office, the Scalawag rose and staggered through the crowd that opened with a look of awed pity as he passed from the chamber.

Norton stepped to the window behind the President of the Senate and watched the pathetic figure shuffle down the steps of the Capitol and slowly walk from the grounds. The sun was shining in the radiant splendor of early spring. The first flowers were blooming in the hedges by the walk and birds were chirping, chattering and singing from every tree and shrub. A squirrel started across the path in front of the drooping figure, stopped, cocked his little head to one side, looked up and ran to cover. But the man with drooping shoulders saw nothing. His dim eyes were peering into the shrouded future.

Norton was deeply moved.

"The judgment of posterity may deal kindlier with his life!" he exclaimed. "Who knows? A politician, a trimmer and a time-server – yes, so we all are down in our cowardly hearts – I'm sorry that it had to be!"

He was thinking of a skeleton in his own closet that grinned at him sometimes now when he least expected it.

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.