FATHER AND SON
Norton had ignored the scene between Helen and Tom and his stunned mind was making a desperate fight to prepare for the struggle that was inevitable.
The thing that gave him fresh courage was the promise the girl had repeated that she would go. Somehow he had grown to trust her implicitly. He hadn't time as yet to realize the pity and pathos of such a trust in such an hour. He simply believed that she would keep her word. He had to win his fight now with the boy without the surrender of his secret. Could he do it? It was doubtful, but he was going to try. His back was to the wall.
Tom took another step into the room and the father turned, drew his tall figure erect in an instinctive movement of sorrowful dignity and reserve and walked to the table.
All traces of anger had passed from the boy's handsome young face and a look of regret had taken its place. He began speaking very quietly and reverently:
"Now, Dad, we must face this thing. It's a tragedy for you perhaps——"
The father interrupted:
"How big a tragedy, my son, I hope that you may never know——"
"Anyhow," Tom went on frankly, "I am ashamed of the way I acted. But you're a manly man and you can understand."
"Yes."
"I know that all you've done is because you love me——"
"How deeply, you can never know."
"I'm sorry if I forgot for a moment the respect I owe you, the reverence and love I hold for you—I've always been proud of you, Dad—of your stainless name, of the birthright you have given me—you know this——"
"Yet it's good to hear you say it!"
"And now that I've said this, you'd as well know first as last that any argument about Helen is idle between us. I'm not going to give up the woman I love!"
"Ah, my boy——"
Tom lifted his hand emphatically:
"It's no use! You needn't tell me that her blood is tainted—I don't believe it!"
The father came closer:
"You do believe it! In the first mad riot of passion you're only trying to fool yourself."
"It's unthinkable, I tell you! and I've made my decision"—he paused a moment and then demanded: "How do you know her blood is tainted?"
The father answered firmly:
"I have the word both of her mother and father."
"Well, I won't take their word. Some natures are their own defense. On them no stain can rest, and I stake my life on Helen's!"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say—as a theory it's quite correct. But it's one thing to accept a theory, another to meet the thing in your own heart before God alone with your life in your hands."
"What do you mean by that?" the father asked savagely.
"That for the past hour I've been doing some thinking on my own account."
"That's just what you haven't been doing. You haven't thought at all. If you had, you'd know that you can't marry this girl. Come, come, my boy, remember that you have reason and because you have this power that's bigger than all passion, all desire, all impulse, you're a man, not a brute——"
"All right," the boy broke in excitedly, "submit it to reason! I'll stand the test—it's more than you can do. I love this girl—she's my mate. She loves me and I am hers. Haven't I taken my stand squarely on Nature and her highest law?"
"No!"
"What's higher? Social fictions—prejudices?"
The father lifted his head:
"Prejudices! You know as well as I that the white man's instinct of racial purity is not prejudice, but God's first law of life—the instinct of self-preservation! The lion does not mate with the jackal!"
The boy flushed angrily:
"The girl I love is as fair as you or I."
"Even so," was the quick reply, "we inherit ninety per cent. of character from our dead ancestors! Born of a single black progenitor, she is still a negress. Change every black skin in America to-morrow to the white of a lily and we'd yet have ten million negroes—ten million negroes whose blood relatives are living in Africa the life of a savage."
"Granted that what you say it true—and I refuse to believe it—I still have the right to live my own life in my own way."
"No man has the right to live life in his own way if by that way he imperil millions."
"And whom would I imperil?"
"The future American. No white man ever lived who desired to be a negro. Every negro longs to be a white man. No black man has ever added an iota to the knowledge of the world of any value to humanity. In Helen's body flows sixteen million tiny drops of blood—one million black—poisoned by the inheritance of thousands of years of savage cruelty, ignorance, slavery and superstition. The life of generations are bound up in you. In you are wrapt the onward years. Man's place in nature is no longer a myth. You are bound by the laws of heredity—laws that demand a nobler not a baser race of men! Shall we improve the breed of horses and degrade our men? You have no right to damn a child with such a legacy!"
"But I tell you I'm not trying to—I refuse to see in her this stain!"
The father strode angrily to the other side of the room in an effort to control his feelings:
"Because you refuse to think, my boy!" he cried in agony. "I tell you, you can't defy these laws! They are eternal—never new, never old—true a thousand years ago, to-day, to-morrow and on a million years, when this earth is thrown, a burnt cinder, into God's dust heap. I can't tell you what I feel—it strangles me!"
"No, and I can't understand it. I feel one thing, the touch of the hand of the woman I love; hear one thing, the music of her voice——"
"And in that voice, my boy, I hear the crooning of a savage mother! But yesterday our negroes were brought here from the West Soudan, black, chattering savages, nearer the anthropoid ape than any other living creature. And you would dare give to a child such a mother? Who is this dusky figure of the forest with whom you would cross your blood? In old Andy there you see him to-day, a creature half child, half animal. For thousands of years beyond the seas he stole his food, worked his wife, sold his child, and ate his brother—great God, could any tragedy be more hideous than our degradation at last to his racial level!"
"It can't happen! It's a myth!"
"It's the most dangerous thing that threatens the future!" the father cried with desperate earnestness. "A pint of ink can make black gallons of water. The barriers once down, ten million negroes can poison the source of life and character for a hundred million whites. This nation is great for one reason only—because of the breed of men who created the Republic! Oh, my boy, when you look on these walls at your fathers, don't you see this, don't you feel this, don't you know this?"
Tom shook his head:
"To-night I feel and know one thing. I love her! We don't choose whom we love——"
"Ah, but if we are more than animals, if we reason, we do choose whom we marry! Marriage is not merely a question of personal whim, impulse or passion. It's the one divine law on which human society rests. There are always men who hear the call of the Beast and fall below their ideals, who trail the divine standards of life in the dust as they slink under the cover of night——"
"At least, I'm not trying to do that!"
"No, worse! You would trample them under your feet at noon in defiance of the laws of man and God! You're insane for the moment. You're mad with passion. You're not really listening to me at all—I feel it!"
"Perhaps I'm not——"
"Yet you don't question the truth of what I've said. You can't question it. You just stand here blind and maddened by desire, while I beg and plead, saying in your heart: 'I want this woman and I'm going to have her.' You've never faced the question that she's a negress—you can't face it, and yet I tell you that I know it's true!"
The boy turned on his father and studied him angrily for a moment, his blue eyes burning into his, his face flushed and his lips curled with the slightest touch of incredulity:
"And do you really believe all you've been saying to me?"
"As I believe in God!"
With a quick, angry gesture he faced his father:
"Well, you've had a mighty poor way of showing it! If you really believed all you've been saying to me, you wouldn't stop to eat or sleep until every negro is removed from physical contact with the white race. And yet on the day that I was born you placed me in the arms of a negress! The first human face on which I looked was hers. I grew at her breast. You let her love me and teach me to love her. You keep only negro servants. I grow up with them, fall into their lazy ways, laugh at their antics and see life through their eyes, and now that my life touches theirs at a thousand points of contact, you tell me that we must live together and yet a gulf separates us! Why haven't you realized this before? If what you say about Helen is true, in God's name—I ask it out of a heart quivering with anguish—why haven't you realized it before? I demand an answer! I have the right to know!"
Norton's head was lowered while the boy poured out his passionate protest and he lifted it at the end with a look of despair:
"You have the right to know, my boy. But the South has not a valid answer to your cry. The Negro is not here by my act or will, and their continued presence is a constant threat against our civilization. Equality is the law of life and we dare not grant it to the negro unless we are willing to descend to his racial level. We cannot lift him to ours. This truth forced me into a new life purpose twenty years ago. The campaign I have just fought and won is the first step in a larger movement to find an answer to your question in the complete separation of the races—and nothing is surer than that the South will maintain the purity of her home! It's as fixed as her faith in God!"
The boy was quiet a moment and looked at the tall figure with a queer expression:
"Has she maintained it?"
"Yes."
"Is her home life clean?"
"And these millions of children born in the shadows—these mulattoes?"
The older man's lips trembled and his brow clouded:
"The lawless have always defied the law, my son, North, South, East and West, but they have never defended their crimes. Dare to do this thing that's in your heart and you make of crime a virtue and ask God's blessing on it. The difference between the two things is as deep and wide as the gulf between heaven and hell."
"My marriage to Helen will be the purest and most solemn act of my life——"
"Silence, sir!" the father thundered in a burst of uncontrollable passion, as he turned suddenly on him, his face blanched and his whole body trembling. "I tell you once for all that your marriage to this girl is a physical and moral impossibility! And I refuse to argue with you a question that's beyond all argument!"
The two men glared at each other in a duel of wills in which steel cut steel without a tremor of yielding. And then with a sudden flash of anger, Tom turned on his heel crying:
"All right, then!"
With swift, determined step he moved toward the door. The father grasped the corner of the table for support:
"Tom!"
His hands were extended in pitiful appeal when the boy stopped as if in deep study, turned, looked at him, and walked deliberately back:
"I'm going to ask you some personal questions!"
In spite of his attempt at self-control, Norton's face paled. He drew himself up with an attempt at dignified adjustment to the new situation, but his hands were trembling as he nervously repeated:
"Personal questions?"
"Yes. There's something very queer about your position. Your creed forbids you to receive a negro as a social equal?"
"Yes."
The boy suddenly lifted his head:
"Why did you bring Helen into this house?"
"I didn't bring her."
"You didn't invite her?"
"No."
"She says that you did."
"She thought so."
"She got an invitation?"
"Yes."
"Signed with your name?"
"Yes, yes."
"Who dared to write such a letter without your knowledge?"
"I can't tell you that."
"I demand it!"
Norton struggled between anger and fear and finally answered in measured tones:
"It was forged by an enemy who wished to embarrass me in this campaign."
"You know who wrote it?"
"I suspect."
"You don't know?"
"I said, I suspect," was the angry retort.
"And you didn't kill him?"
"In this campaign my hands were tied."
The boy, watching furtively his father's increasing nervousness and anger, continued his questions in a slower, cooler tone:
"When you returned and found her here, you could have put her out?"
"Yes," Norton answered tremblingly, "and I ought to have done it!"
"But you didn't?"
"No."
"Why?"
The father fumbled his watch chain, moved uneasily and finally said with firmness:
"I am Helen's guardian!"
The boy lifted his brows:
"You are supposed to be his attorney only. Why did you, of all men on earth, accept such a position?"
"I felt that I had to."
"And the possibility of my meeting this girl never occurred to you? You, who have dinned into my ears from childhood that I should keep myself clean from the touch of such pollution—why did you take the risk?"
"A sense of duty to one to whom I felt bound."
"Duty?"
"Yes."
"It must have been deep—what duty?"
Norton lifted his hand in a movement of wounded pride:
"My boy!"
"Come, come, Dad, don't shuffle; this thing's a matter of life and death with me and you must be fair——"
"I'm trying——"
"I want to know why you are Helen's guardian, exactly why. We must face each other to-day with souls bare—why are you her guardian?"
"I—I—can't tell you."
"You've got to tell me!"
"You must trust me in this, my son!"
"I won't do it!" the boy cried, trembling with passion that brought the tears blinding to his eyes. "We're not father and son now. We face each other man to man with two lives at stake—hers and mine! You can't ask me to trust you! I won't do it—I've got to know!"
The father turned away:
"I can't betray this secret even to you, my boy."
"Does any one else share it?"
"Why do you use that queer tone? What do you mean?" The father's last question was barely breathed.
"Nothing," the boy answered with a toss of his head. "Does any one in this house suspect it?"
"Possibly."
Again Tom paused, watching keenly:
"On the day you returned and found Helen here, you quarrelled with Cleo?"
Norton wheeled with sudden violence:
"We won't discuss this question further, sir!"
"Yes, we will," was the steady answer through set teeth. "Haven't you been afraid of Cleo?"
The father's eyes were looking into his now with a steady stare:
"I refuse to be cross-examined, sir!"
Tom ignored his answer:
"Hasn't Cleo been blackmailing you?"
The boy held his father's gaze until it wavered, and then in cold tones said:
"You are not telling me the truth!"
Norton flinched as if struck:
"Do you know what you are saying. Have you lost your senses?"
Tom held his ground with dogged coolness:
"Have you told me the truth?"
"Yes."
"It's a lie!"
The words were scarcely spoken when Norton's clenched fist struck him a blow full in the face.
A wild cry of surprise, inarticulate in fury, came from the boy's lips as he staggered against the table. He glared at his father, drew back a step, his lips twitching, his breath coming in gasps, and suddenly felt for the revolver in his pocket.
With a start of horror the father cried:
"My boy!"
The hand dropped limp, he leaned against the table for support and sobbed:
"O God! Let me die!"
Norton rushed to his side, his voice choking with grief:
"Tom, listen!"
"I won't listen!" he hissed. "I never want to hear the sound of your voice again!"
"Don't say that—you don't mean it!" the father pleaded.
"I do mean it!"
Norton touched his arm tenderly:
"You can't mean it, Tom. You're all I've got in the world. You mustn't say that. Forgive me—I was mad. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't mean to strike you. I forgot for a moment that you're a man, proud and sensitive as I am——"
The boy tore himself free from his touch and crossed the room with quick, angry stride and turned:
"Well, you'd better not forget it again"—he paused and drew himself erect. "You're my father, but I tell you to your face that I hate and loathe you——"
The silver-gray head drooped:
"That I should have lived to hear it!"
"And I want you to understand one thing," Tom went on fiercely, "if an angel from heaven told me that Helen's blood was tainted, I'd demand proofs! You have shown none, and I'm not going to give up the woman I love!"
Norton supported himself by the table and felt his way along its edges as if blinded. His eyes were set with a half-mad stare as he gripped Tom's shoulders:
"I love you, my boy, with a love beyond your ken, a love that can be fierce and cruel when God calls, and sooner than see you marry this girl, I'll kill you with my own hands if I must!"
The answer came slowly:
"And you can't guess what's happened?"
"Guess—what's—happened!" the father repeated in a whisper. "What do you mean?"
"That I'm married already!"
With hands uplifted, his features convulsed, the father fell back, his voice a low piteous shriek:
"Merciful God!—No!"
"Married an hour before you dragged me away in that campaign!" he shouted in triumph. "I knew you'd never consent and so I took matters into my own hands!"
With a leap Norton grasped the boy again and shook him madly:
"Married already? It's not true, I tell you! It's not true. You're lying to me—lying to gain time—it's not true!"
"You wish me to swear it?"
"Silence, sir!" the father cried in solemn tones. "You are my son—this is my house—I order you to be silent!"
"Before God, I swear it's true! Helen is my lawful——"
"Don't say it! It's false—you lie, I tell you!" Again the father shook him with cruel violence, his eyes staring with the glitter of a maniac.
Tom seized the trembling hands and threw them from his shoulders with a quick movement of anger:
"If that's all you've got to say, sir, excuse me, I'll go to my wife!"
He wheeled, slammed the door and was gone.
The father stared a moment, stunned, looked around blankly, placed his hands over his ears and held them, crying:
"God have mercy!"
He rushed to a window and threw it open. The band was playing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!" The mocking strains rolled over his prostrate soul. He leaned heavily against the casement and groaned:
"My God!"
He slammed the sash, staggered back into the room, lifted his eyes in a leaden stare at the portrait over the mantel, and then rushed toward it with uplifted arms and streaming eyes:
"It's not true, dearest! Don't believe it—it's not true, I tell you! It's not true!"
The voice sank into inarticulate sobs, he reeled and fell, a limp, black heap on the floor.