Kitabı oku: «The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South», sayfa 23
CHAPTER XXX
THE MILLS OF GOD
Norton had dropped into a seat with apparent carelessness, while Tom stood immovable, his face a mask.
The girl looked quickly from one to the other, her breath coming in quick gasps.
She turned to Tom:
"Why did you lock the door – what does it mean?"
Norton hastened to answer, his tones reassuringly simple:
"Why, only that we wished to be alone for a few moments – "
"Yes, we understand each other now," Tom added.
Helen's eyes flashed cautiously from one to the other:
"I heard a strange noise" – she turned to the boy – "and, oh, Tom, darling, I was so frightened! I thought I heard a struggle and then everything became so still. I was wild – I couldn't wait any longer!"
"Why, it was really nothing," Tom answered her bravely smiling. "We – we did have a little scene, and lost our temper for a moment, but you can see for yourself it's all right now. We've thrashed the whole thing out and have come to a perfect understanding!"
His words were convincing but not his manner. He hadn't dared to look her in the face. His eyes were on the rug and his foot moved nervously.
"You are not deceiving me?" she asked trembling.
The boy appealed to his father:
"Haven't we come to a perfect understanding, Dad?"
Norton rose:
"Perfect, my son. It's all right, now, Helen."
"Just wait for me five minutes, dear," Tom pleaded.
"Can't I hear what you have to say?"
"We prefer to be alone," the father said gravely.
Again her eyes flashed from one to the other and rested on Tom. She rushed to him and laid her hand appealingly on his arm:
"Oh, Tom, dear, am I not your wife?" the boy's head drooped – "must you have a secret from me now?"
"Just a few minutes," Norton pleaded, "that's a good girl!"
"Only a few minutes, Helen," Tom urged.
"Please let me stay. Why were you both so pale when I came in?"
Father and son glanced at each other over her head. Norton hesitated and said:
"You see we are perfectly calm now. All bitterness is gone from our hearts. We are father and son again."
"Why do you look so queerly at me? Why do you look so strangely at each other?"
"It's only your imagination, dear," Tom said.
"No, there's something wrong," Helen declared desperately. "I feel it in the air of this room – in the strange silence between you. For God's sake tell me what it means! Surely, I have the right to know" – she turned suddenly to Norton – "You don't hate me now, do you, major?"
The somber brown eyes rested on her in a moment of intense silence and he slowly said:
"I have never hated you, my child!"
"Then what is it?" she cried in anguish, turning again to Tom. "Tell me what I can do to help you! I'll obey you, dearest, even if it's to lay my life down. Don't send me away. Don't keep this secret from me. I feel its chill in my heart. My place is by your side – tell me how I can help you!"
Tom looked at her intently:
"You say that you will obey me?"
"Yes – you are my lord and master!"
He seized her hand and led her to the door
"Then wait for me just five minutes."
She lifted her head pleadingly:
"You will let me come to you then?"
"Yes."
"You won't lock the door again?"
"Not now."
While Tom stood immovable, with a lingering look of tenderness she turned and passed quickly from the room.
He closed the door softly, steadied himself before loosing the knob and turned to his father in a burst of sudden rebellion:
"Oh, Dad! It can't be true! It can't be true! I can't believe it. Did you look at her closely again?"
Norton drew himself wearily to his feet and spoke with despairing certainty:
"Yes, yes, as I've looked at her a hundred times with growing wonder."
"She's not like you – "
"No more than you, my boy, and yet you're bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh – it can't be helped – "
He paused and pointed to the revolver:
"Give it to me!"
The boy started to lift the cloth and the father caught his arm:
"But first – before you do," he faltered. "I want you to tell me now with your own lips that you forgive me for what I must do – and then I think, perhaps, I can – say it!"
Their eyes met in a long, tender, searching gaze:
"I forgive you," he softly murmured.
"Now give it to me!" the father firmly said, stepping back and lifting his form erect.
The boy felt for the table, fumbled at the cloth, caught the weapon and slowly lifted it toward his father's extended hand. He opened his eyes, caught the expression of agony in the drawn face, the fingers relaxed and the pistol fell to the floor. He threw himself blindly on his father, his arms about his neck:
"Oh, Dad, it's too hard! Wait – wait – just a moment!"
The father held him close for a long while. His voice was very low when he spoke at last:
"There's no appeal, my boy! The sin of your father is full grown and has brought forth death. Yet I was not all to blame. We are caught to-night in the grip of the sins of centuries. I tried to give my life to the people to save the children of the future. My shame showed me the way as few men could have seen it, and I have set in motion forces that can never be stopped. Others will complete the work that I have begun. But our time has come – "
"Yes, yes, I understand!"
The father's arms pressed the son in a last long embrace:
"What an end to all my hopes! Oh, my boy, heart of my heart!"
Tom's hand slowly slipped down and caught his father's:
"Good-by, Dad!"
Norton held the clasp with lingering tenderness as the boy slowly drew away, measured four steps and calmly folded his arms, his head erect, his broad young shoulders squared and thrown far back.
Cleo, who had crept into the hall, stood behind the curtains of the inner door watching the scene with blanched face.
The father walked quickly to the revolver, picked it up, turned and lifted it above his head.
With a smothered cry Cleo sprang into the room – but she was too late. Norton had quickly dropped the pistol to the level of the eye and fired.
A tiny red spot flamed on the white skin of the boy's forehead, the straight figure swayed, and pitched forward face down on the rug.
The woman staggered back, cowering in the shadows.
The father knelt beside the quivering form, clasped his left hand in Tom's, placed the revolver to his temple and fired. The silver-gray head sank slowly against the breast of the boy as a piercing scream from Helen's lips rang through the silent hall.
CHAPTER XXXI
SIN FULL GROWN
The sensitive soul of the girl had seen the tragedy before she rushed into the library. At the first shot she sprang to her feet, her heart in her throat. The report had sounded queerly through the closed doors and she was not sure. She had entered the hall, holding her breath, when the second shot rang out its message of death.
She was not the woman who faints in an emergency. She paused just a moment in the door, saw the ghastly heap on the floor and rushed to the spot.
She tore Tom's collar open and placed her ear over his heart:
"O God! He's alive – he's alive!"
She turned and saw Cleo leaning against the table with blanched face and chattering teeth.
"Call Andy and Aunt Minerva – and go for the doctor – his heart's beating – quick – the doctor – he's alive – we may save him!"
She knelt again on the floor, took Tom's head in her lap, wiped the blood from the clean, white forehead, pressed her lips to his and sobbed:
"Come back, my own – it's I – Helen, your little wife – I'm calling you – you can't die – you're too young and life's too dear. We've only begun to live, my sweetheart! You shall not die!"
The tears were raining on his pale face and her cries had become little wordless prayers when Andy and Minerva entered the room.
She nodded her head toward Norton's motionless body:
"Lift him on the lounge!"
They moved him tenderly:
"See if his heart's still beating," she commanded.
Andy reverently lowered his dusky face against the white bosom of his master. When he lifted it the tears had blinded his eyes:
"Nobum," he said slowly, "he's done dead!"
The tick of the little French clock on the mantel beneath the mother's portrait rang with painful clearness.
Helen raised her hand to Minerva:
"Open the windows and let the smoke out. I'll hold him in my arms until the doctor comes."
"Yassum – "
Minerva drew the heavy curtains back from the tall windows, opened the casements and the perfumed air of the beautiful Southern night swept into the room.
A cannon boomed its final cry of victory from the Square and a rocket, bursting above the tree-tops, flashed a ray of red light on the white face of the dead.
CHAPTER XXXII
CONFESSION
When Dr. Williams entered the room Helen was still holding Tom's head in her lap.
He had stirred once with a low groan.
"The major is dead, but Tom's alive, doctor!" she cried through her tears. "He's going to live, too – I feel it – I know it – tell me that it's so!"
The lips trembled pitifully with the last words.
The doctor felt the pulse and was silent.
"It's all right? He's going to live – isn't he?" she asked pathetically.
"I can't tell yet, my child," was the calm answer.
He examined the wound and ran his hand over the blonde hair. His fingers stopped suddenly and he felt the head carefully. He bent low, parted the hair and found a damp blood mark three inches above the line of the forehead.
"See!" he cried, "the ball came out here. His head was thrown far back, the bullet struck the inner skull bone at an angle and glanced."
"What does it mean?" she asked breathlessly.
The doctor smiled:
"That the brain is untouched. He is only stunned and in a swoon. He'll be well in two weeks."
Helen lifted her eyes and sobbed:
"O God!"
She tried to bend and kiss Tom's lips, her body swayed and she fell backward in a dead faint.
Andy and Minerva carried her to her room, left Cleo to minister to her and returned to help the doctor.
He examined Norton's body to make sure that life was extinct and placed the body on an improvised bed on the floor until he should regain his senses.
In half an hour Tom looked into the doctor's face:
"Why, it's Doctor Williams?"
"Yes."
"What – what's happened?"
"It's only a scratch for you, my boy. You'll be well in a few days – "
"Well in a few days" – he repeated blankly. "I can't get well! I've got to die" – his head dropped and he caught his breath.
The doctor waited for him to recover himself to ask the question that was on his lips. He had gotten as yet no explanation of the tragedy save Cleo's statement that the major had shot Tom and killed himself. He had guessed that the ugly secret in Norton's life was in some way responsible.
"Why must you die, my boy?" he asked kindly.
Tom opened his eyes in a wild stare:
"Helen's my wife – we married secretly without my father knowing it. He has just told me that Cleo is her mother and I have married my own – "
His voice broke and his head sank.
The doctor seized the boy's hand and spoke eagerly:
"It's a lie, boy! It's a lie! Take my word for it – "
Tom shook his head.
"I'll stake my life on it that it's a lie" – the old man repeated – "and I'll prove it – I'll prove it from Cleo's lips!"
"You – you – can do it!" the boy said hopelessly, though his eyes flashed with a new light.
"Keep still until I return!" the doctor cried, "and I'll bring Cleo with me."
He placed the revolver in his pocket and hastily left the room, the boy's eyes following him with feverish excitement.
He called Cleo into the hall and closed Helen's door.
The old man seized her hand with a cruel grip:
"Do you dare tell me that this girl is your daughter?"
She trembled and faltered:
"Yes!"
"You're a liar!" he hissed. "You may have fooled Norton for twenty years, but you can't fool me. I've seen too much of this sort of thing. I'll stake my immortal soul on it that no girl with Helen's pure white skin and scarlet cheeks, clean-cut features and deep blue eyes can have in her body a drop of negro blood!"
"She's mine all the same, and you know when she was born," the woman persisted.
He could feel her body trembling, looked at her curiously and said:
"Come down stairs with me a minute."
Cleo drew back:
"I don't want to go in that room again!"
"You've got to come!"
He seized her roughly and drew her down the stairs into the library.
She gripped the door, panting in terror. He loosed her hands and pushed her inside before the lounge on which the body of Norton lay, the cold wide-open eyes staring straight into her face.
She looked a moment in abject horror, shivered and covered her eyes:
"Oh, my God, let me go!"
The doctor tore her hands from her face and confronted her. His snow-white beard and hair, his tense figure and flaming anger seemed to the trembling woman the image of an avenging fate as he solemnly cried:
"Here, in the presence of Death, with the all-seeing eye of God as your witness, and the life of the boy you once held in your arms hanging on your words, I ask if that girl is your daughter?"
The greenish eyes wavered, but the answer came clear at last:
"No – "
"I knew it!" the doctor cried. "Now the whole truth!"
The color mounted Tom's cheeks as he listened.
"My own baby died," she began falteringly, "I was wild with grief and hunted for another. I found Helen in Norfolk at the house of an old woman whom I knew, and she gave her to me – "
"Or you stole her – no matter" – the doctor interrupted – "Go on."
Helen had slipped down stairs, crept into the room unobserved and stood listening.
"Who was the child's mother?" the doctor demanded.
Cleo was gasping for breath:
"The daughter of an old fool who had disowned her because she ran away and married a poor white boy – the husband died – the father never forgave her. When the baby was born the mother died, too, and I got the child from the old nurse – she's pure white – there's not a stain of any kind on her birth!"
With a cry of joy Helen knelt and drew Tom into her arms:
"Oh, darling, did you hear it – oh, my sweetheart, did you hear it?"
The boy's head sank on her breast and he breathed softly:
"Thank God!"
CHAPTER XXXIII
HEALING
The years brought their healing to wounded hearts. Tom Norton refused to leave his old home. He came of a breed of men who had never known how to quit. He faced the world and with grim determination took up the work for the Republic which his father had begun.
With tireless voice his paper pleads for the purity of the race. Its circulation steadily increases and its influence deepens and widens.
The patter of a baby's feet again echoes through the wide hall behind the white fluted columns. The young father and mother have taught his little hands to place flowers on the two green mounds beneath the oak in the cemetery. He is not old enough yet to understand, and so the last time they were there he opened his eyes wide at his mother's tears and lisped:
"Are 'oo hurt, mama?"
"No, my dear, I'm happy now."
"Why do 'oo cry?"
"For a great man I knew a little while, loved and lost, dearest – your grandfather for whom we named you."
Little Dan's eyes grew very serious as he looked again at the flower-strewn graves and wondered what it all meant.
But the thing which marks the Norton home with peculiar distinction is that since the night of his father's death, Tom has never allowed a negro to cross the threshold or enter its gates.
