The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South

by Jr. Thomas Dixon

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: