The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

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.

CHAPTER XIII

AN OLD STORY

The doctor's house lay beyond the Capitol and in his haste Norton forgot that a banquet was being held in his honor. He found himself suddenly face to face with the first of the departing guests as they began to pour through the gates of the Square.

He couldn't face these people, turned in his tracks, walked back to the next block and hurried into an obscure side street by which he could avoid them.

The doctor had not retired. He was seated on his porch quietly smoking, as if he were expecting the call.

"Well, you've bungled it, I see," he said simply, as he rose and seized his hat.

"Yes, she guessed the truth – "

"Guessed? – hardly." The white head with its shining hair slowly wagged. "She read it in those haggard eyes. Funny what poor liars your people have always been! If your father hadn't been fool enough to tell the truth with such habitual persistence, that office of his would never have been burned during the war. It's a funny world. It's the fun of it that keeps us alive, after all."

"Do the best you can for me, doctor," he interrupted. "I'm going for her mother."

"All right," was the cheery answer, "bring her at once. She's a better doctor than I to-night."

Norton walked swiftly toward a vine-clad cottage that stood beside Governor Carteret's place. It sat far back on the lawn that was once a part of the original estate twenty odd years ago. The old Governor during his last administration had built it for Robert Carteret, a handsome, wayward son, whom pretty Jennie Pryor had married. It had been a runaway love match. The old man had not opposed it because of any objection to the charming girl the boy had fallen in love with. He knew that Robert was a wild, headstrong, young scapegrace unfit to be the husband of any woman.

But apparently marriage settled him. For two years after Jean's birth he lived a decent life and then slipped again into hopelessly dissolute habits. When Jean was seven years old he was found dead one night under peculiar circumstances that were never made public. The sweet little woman who had braved the world's wrath to marry him had never complained, and she alone (with one other) knew the true secret of his death.

She had always been supported by a generous allowance from the old Governor and in his last will the vigorous octogenarian had made her his sole heir.

Norton had loved this quiet, patient little mother with a great tenderness since the day of his marriage to her daughter. He had never found her wanting in sympathy or helpfulness. She rarely left her cottage, but many a time he had gone to her with his troubles and came away with a light heart and a clearer insight into the duty that called. Her love and faith in him was one of the big things in life. In every dream of achievement that had fired his imagination during the stirring days of the past months he had always seen her face smiling with pride and love.

It was a bitter task to confess his shame to her – this tender, gracious, uncomplaining saint, to whom he had always been a hero. He paused a moment with his hand on the bell of the cottage, and finally rang.

Standing before her with bowed head he told in a few stammering words the story of his sin and the sorrow that had overwhelmed him.

"I swear to you that for the past two months my life has been clean and God alone knows the anguish of remorse I have suffered. You'll help me, mother?" he asked pathetically.

"Yes, my son," she answered simply.

"You don't hate me?" – the question ended with a catch in his voice that made it almost inaudible.

She lifted her white hands to his cheeks, drew the tall form down gently and pressed his lips:

"No, my son, I've lived too long. I leave judgment now to God. The unshed tears I see in your eyes are enough for me."

"I must see her to-night, mother. Make her see me. I can't endure this."

"She will see you when I have talked with her," was the slow reply as if to herself. "I am going to tell her something that I hoped to carry to the grave. But the time has come and she must know."

The doctor was strolling on the lawn when they arrived.

"She didn't wish to see me, my boy," he said with a look of sympathy. "And I thought it best to humor her. Send for me again if you wish, but I think the mother is best to-night." Without further words he tipped his hat with a fine old-fashioned bow to Mrs. Carteret and hurried home.

At the sound of the mother's voice the door was opened, two frail arms slipped around her neck and a baby was sobbing again on her breast. The white slender hands tenderly stroked the blonde hair, lips bent low and kissed the shining head and a cheek rested there while sob after sob shook the little body. The wise mother spoke no words save the sign language of love and tenderness, the slow pressure to her heart of the sobbing figure, kisses, kisses, kisses on her hair and the soothing touch of her hand.

A long time without a word they thus clung to each other. The sobs ceased at last.

"Now tell me, darling, how can I help you?" the gentle voice said.

"Oh, mamma, I just want to go home to you again and die – that's all."

"You'd be happier, you think, with me, dear?"

"Yes – it's clean and pure there. I can't live in this house – the very air I breathe is foul!"

"But you can't leave Dan, my child. Your life and his are one in your babe. God has made this so."

"He is nothing to me now. He doesn't exist. I don't come of his breed of men. My father's handsome face – my grandfather's record as the greatest Governor of the state – are not merely memories to me. I'll return to my own. And I'll take my child with me. I'll go back where the air is clean, where men have always been men, not beasts – "

The mother rose quietly and took from the mantel the dainty morocco-covered copy of the Bible she had given her daughter the day she left home. She turned its first, pages, put her finger on the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Genesis, and turned down a leaf:

"I want you to read this chapter of Genesis which I have marked when you are yourself, and remember that the sympathy of the world has always been with the outcast Hagar, and not with the foolish wife who brought a beautiful girl into her husband's house and then repented of her folly."

"But a negress! oh, my God, the horror, the shame, the humiliation he has put on me! I've asked myself a hundred times why I lived a moment, why I didn't leap from that window and dash my brain out on the ground below – the beast – the beast!"

"Yes, dear, but when you are older you will know that all men are beasts."

"Mother!"

"Yes, all men who are worth while – "

"How can you say that," the daughter cried with scorn, "and remember my father and grandfather? No man passes the old Governor to-day without lifting his hat, and I've seen you sit for hours with my father's picture in your lap crying over it – "

"Yes, dear," was the sweet answer, "these hearts of ours play strange pranks with us sometimes. You must see Dan to-night and forgive. He will crawl on his hands and knees to your feet and beg it."

"I'll never see him or speak to him again!"

"You must – dear."

"Never!"

The mother sat down on the lounge and drew the quivering figure close. Her face was hidden from the daughter's view when she began to speak and so the death-like pallor was not noticed. The voice was held even by a firm will:

"I hoped God might let me go without my having to tell you what I must say now, dearest" – in spite of her effort there was a break and silence.

The little hand sought the mother's:

"You know you can tell me anything, mamma, dear."

"Your father, my child, was not a great man. He died in what should have been the glory of young manhood. He achieved nothing. He was just the spoiled child of a greater man, a child who inherited his father's brilliant mind, fiery temper and willful passions. I loved him from the moment we met and in spite of all I know that he loved me with the strongest, purest love he was capable of giving to any woman. And yet, dearest, I dare not tell you all I discovered of his wild, reckless life. The vilest trait of his character was transmitted straight from sire to son – he would never ask forgiveness of any human being for anything he had done – that is your grandfather's boast to-day. The old Governor, my child, was the owner of more than a thousand slaves on his two great plantations. Many of them he didn't know personally – unless they were beautiful girls – "

"Oh, mother, darling, have mercy on me!" – the little fingers tightened their grip. But the mother's even voice went on remorselessly: