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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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.

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? G.o.d 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 G.o.d have mercy on your soul to-night!"

With a pressure on the younger man's arm, the straight white figure of the old doctor pa.s.sed through the gate.

Norton walked quickly to the steps of the s.p.a.cious, 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 pa.s.sions 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:

"G.o.d in heaven--what can I do?"