THE TEST OF LOVE
Norton made a desperate effort to pull himself together for his appeal to
Helen. On its outcome hung the possibility of saving himself from the
terror that haunted him. If he could tell the girl the truth and make her
see that a marriage with Tom was utterly out of the question because her
blood was stained with that of a negro, it might be possible to save
himself the humiliation of the full confession of their relationship and of
his bitter shame.
He had made a fearful mistake in not telling her this at their first
interview, and a still more frightful mistake in rearing her in ignorance
of the truth. No life built on a lie could endure. He was still trying
desperately to hold his own on its shifting sands, but in his soul of souls
he had begun to despair of the end. He was clutching at straws. In moments
of sanity he realized it, but there was nothing else to do. The act was
instinctive.
The girl's sensitive mind was the key to a possible solution. He had felt
instinctively on the day he told her the first fact about the disgrace of
her birth, vague and shadowy as he had left it, that she could never adjust
herself to the certainty that negro blood flowed in her veins. He had
observed that her aversion to negroes was peculiarly acute. If her love for
the boy were genuine, if it belonged to the big things of the soul, and
were not the mere animal impulse she had inherited from her mother, he
would have a ground of most powerful appeal. Love seeks not its own. If she
really loved she would sink her own life to save his.
It was a big divine thing to demand of her and his heart sank at the
thought of her possible inheritance from Cleo. Yet he knew by an instinct
deeper and truer than reason, that the ruling power in this sensitive,
lonely creature was in the spirit, not the flesh. He recalled in vivid
flashes the moments he had felt this so keenly in their first pitiful
meeting. If he could win her consent to an immediate flight and the
sacrifice of her own desires to save the boy! It was only a hope--it was a
desperate one--but he clung to it with painful eagerness.
Why didn't she come? The minutes seemed hours and there were minutes in
which he lived a life.
He rose nervously and walked toward the mantel, lifted his eyes and they
rested on the portrait of his wife.
"'My brooding spirit will watch and guard!'"
He repeated the promise of her last scrawled message. He leaned heavily
against the mantel, his eyes burning with an unusual brightness.
"Oh, Jean, darling," he groaned, "if you see and hear and know, let me feel
your presence! Your dear eyes are softer and kinder than the world's
to-night. Help me, I'm alone, heartsick and broken!"
He choked down a sob, walked back to the chair and sank in silence. His
eyes were staring into space, his imagination on fire, passing in stern
review the events of his life. How futile, childish and absurd it all
seemed! What a vain and foolish thing its hope and struggles, its dreams
and ambitions! What a failure for all its surface brilliance! He was
standing again at the window behind the dais of the President of the
Senate, watching the little drooping figure of the Governor staggering away
into oblivion, and his heart went out to him in a great tenderness and
pity. He longed to roll back the years that he might follow the impulse he
had felt to hurry down the steps of the Capitol, draw the broken man into a
sheltered spot, slip his arms about him and say:
"Who am I to judge? You're my brother--I'm sorry! Come, we'll try it again
and help one another!"
The dream ended in a sudden start. He had heard the rustle of a dress at
the door and knew without lifting his head that she was in the room.
Only the slightest sound had come from her dry throat, a little muffled
attempt to clear it of the tightening bands. It was scarcely audible, yet
his keen ear had caught it instantly, not only caught the excitement under
which she was struggling, but in it the painful consciousness of his
hostility and her pathetic desire to be friends.
He rose trembling and turned his dark eyes on her white uplifted face.
A feeling of terror suddenly weakened her knees. He was evidently not angry
as she had feared. There was something bigger and more terrible than anger
behind the mask he was struggling to draw over his mobile features.
"What has happened, major?" she asked in a subdued voice.
[Illustration: "Only the slightest sound came from her dry throat."]
"That is what I must know of you, child," he replied, watching her
intently.
She pressed closer with sudden desperate courage, her voice full of wistful
friendliness:
"Oh, major, what have I done to offend you? I've tried so hard to win your
love and respect. All my life I've been alone in a world of strangers,
friendless and homesick----"
He lifted his hand with a firm gesture:
"Come, child, to the point! I must know the truth now. Tom has made love to
you?"
She blushed:
"I--I--wish to see Tom before I answer----"
Norton dropped his uplifted arm with a groan:
"Thank you," he murmured in tones scarcely audible. "I have your
answer!"--he paused and looked at her curiously--"And you love him?"
The girl hesitated for just an instant, her blue eyes flashed and she drew
her strong, young figure erect:
"Yes! And I'm proud of it. His love has lifted me into the sunlight and
made the world glorious--made me love everything in it--every tree and
every flower and every living thing that moves and feels-----"
She stopped abruptly and lifted her flushed face to his:
"I've learned to love you, in spite of your harshness to me--I love you
because you are his father!"
He turned from her and then wheeled suddenly, his face drawn with pain:
"Now, I must be frank, I must be brutal. I must know the truth without
reservation--how far has this thing gone?"
"I--I--don't understand you!"
"Marriage is impossible! I told you that and you must have realized it."
Her head drooped:
"You said so----"
"Impossible--utterly impossible! And you know it"--he drew a deep breath.
"What--what are your real relations?"
"My--real--relations?" she gasped.
"Answer me now, before God! I'll hold your secret sacred--your life and his
may depend on it"--his voice dropped to a tense whisper. "Your love is pure
and unsullied?"
The girl's eyes flashed with rage:
"As pure and unsullied as his dead mother's for you!"
"Thank God!" he breathed. "I believe you--but I had to know, child! I had
to know--there are big, terrible reasons why I had to know."
A tear slowly stole down Helen's flushed cheeks as she quietly asked:
"Why--why should you insult and shame me by asking that question?"
"My knowledge of your birth."
The girl smiled sadly:
"Yet you might have guessed that I had learned to cherish honor and purity
before I knew I might not claim them as my birthright!"
"Forgive me, child," he said contritely, "if in my eagerness, my fear, my
anguish, I hurt you. But I had to ask that question! I had to know. Your
answer gives me courage"--he paused and his voice quivered with deep
intensity--"you really love Tom?"
"With a love beyond words!"
"The big, wonderful love that comes to the human soul but once?"
"Yes!"
His eyes were piercing to the depths now:
"With the deep, unselfish yearning that asks nothing for itself and seeks
only the highest good of its beloved?"
"Yes--yes," she answered mechanically and, pausing, looked again into his
burning eyes; "but you frighten me--" she grasped a chair for support,
recovered herself and went on rapidly--"you mustn't ask me to give him
up--I won't give him up! Poor and friendless, with a shadow over my life
and everything against me, I have won him and he's mine! I have the right
to his love--I didn't ask to be born. I must live my own life. I have as
much right to happiness as you. Why must I bear the sins of my father and
mother? Have I broken the law? Haven't I a heart that can ache and break
and cry for joy?"
He allowed the first paroxysm of her emotion to spend itself before he
replied, and then in quiet tones said:
"You must give him up!"
"I won't! I won't, I tell you!" she said through her set teeth as she
suddenly swung her strong, young form before him. "I won't give him up! His
love has made life worth living and I'm going to live it! I don't care what
you say--he's mine--and you shall not take him from me!"
Norton was stunned by the fiery intensity with which her answer had been
given. There was no mistaking the strength of her character. Every vibrant
note of her voice had rung with sincerity, purity, the justice of her
cause, and the consciousness of power. He was dealing with no trembling
schoolgirl's mind, filled with sentimental dreams. A woman, in the tragic
strength of a great nature, stood before him. He felt this greatness
instinctively and met it with reverence. It could only be met thus, and as
he realized its strength, his heart took fresh courage. His own voice
became tender, eager, persuasive:
"But suppose, my dear, I show you that you will destroy the happiness and
wreck the life of the man you love?"
"Impossible! He knows that I'm nameless and his love is all the deeper,
truer and more manly because he realizes that I am defenseless."
"But suppose I convince you?"
"You can't!"
"Suppose," he said in a queer tone, "I tell you that the barrier between
you is so real, so loathsome----"
"Loathsome?" she repeated with a start.
"So loathsome," he went on evenly, "that when he knows the truth, whether
he wishes it or not, he will instinctively turn from you with a shudder."
"I won't believe it!"
"Suppose I prove to you that marriage would wreck both your life and
his"--he gazed at her with trembling intensity--"would you give him up to
save him?"
She held his eye steadily:
"Yes--I'd die to save him!"
A pitiful stillness followed. The man scarcely moved. His lips quivered and
his eyes grew dim. He looked at her pathetically and motioned her to a
seat.
"And if I convince you," he went on tenderly, "you will submit yourself to
my advice and leave America?"
The blue eyes never flinched as she firmly replied:
"Yes. But I warn you that no such barrier can exist."
"Then I must prove to you that it does." He drew a deep breath and watched
her. "You realize the fact that a man who marries a nameless girl bars
himself from all careers of honor?"
"The honor of fools, yes--of the noble and wise, no!"
"You refuse to see that the shame which shadows a mother's life will smirch
her children, and like a deadly gangrene at last eat the heart out of her
husband's love?"
"My faith in him is too big----"
"You can conceive of no such barrier?"
"No!"
"In the first rush of love," he replied kindly, "you feel this. Emotion
obscures reason. But there are such barriers between men and women."
"Name one!"
His brow clouded, his lips moved to speak and stopped. It was more
difficult to frame in speech than he had thought. His jaw closed with firm
decision at last and he began calmly:
"I take an extreme case. Suppose, for example, your father, a proud
Southern white man, of culture, refinement and high breeding, forgot for a
moment that he was white and heard the call of the Beast, and your mother
were an octoroon--what then?"
The girl flushed with anger:
"Such a barrier, yes! Nothing could be more loathsome. But why ask me so
disgusting a question? No such barrier could possibly exist between us!"
Norton's eyes were again burning into her soul as he asked in a low voice:
"Suppose it does?"
The girl smiled with a puzzled look:
"Suppose it does? Of course, you're only trying to prove that such an
impossible barrier might exist! And for the sake of argument I agree that
it would be real"--she paused and her breath came in a quick gasp. She
sprang to her feet clutching at her throat, trembling from head to
foot--"What do you mean by looking at me like that?"
Norton lowered his head and barely breathed the words:
"That _is_ the barrier between you!"
Helen looked at him dazed. The meaning was too big and stupefying to be
grasped at once.
"Why, of course, major," she faltered, "you just say that to crush me in
the argument. But I've given up the point. I've granted that such a barrier
may exist and would be real. But you haven't told me the one between us."
The man steeled his heart, turned his face away and spoke in gentle tones:
"I am telling you the pitiful, tragic truth--your mother is a negress----"
With a smothered cry of horror the girl threw herself on him and covered
his mouth with her hand, half gasping, half screaming her desperate appeal:
"Stop! don't--don't say it!--take it back! Tell me that it's not true--tell
me that you only said it to convince me and I'll believe you. If the
hideous thing is true--for the love of God deny it now! If it's true--lie
to me"--her voice broke and she clung to Norton's arms with cruel
grip--"lie to me! Tell me that you didn't mean it, and I'll believe
you--truth or lie, I'll never question it! I'll never cross your purpose
again--I'll do anything you tell me, major"--she lifted her streaming eyes
and began slowly to sink to her knees--"see how humble--how obedient I am!
You don't hate me, do you? I'm just a poor, lonely girl, helpless and
friendless now at your feet"--her head sank into her hands until the
beautiful brown hair touched the floor--"have mercy! have mercy on me!"
Norton bent low and fumbled for the trembling hand. He couldn't see and for
a moment words were impossible.
He found her hand and pressed it gently:
"I'm sorry, little girl! I'd lie to you if I could--but you know a lie
don't last long in this world. I've lied about you before--I'd lie now to
save you this anguish, but it's no use--we all have to face things in the
end!"
With a mad cry of pain, the girl sprang to her feet and staggered to the
table:
"Oh, God, how could any man with a soul--any living creature, even a beast
of the field--bring me into the world--teach me to think and feel, to laugh
and cry, and thrust me into such a hell alone! My proud father--I could
kill him!"
Norton extended his hands to her in a gesture of instinctive sympathy:
"Come, you'll see things in a calm light to-morrow, you are young and life
is all before you!"
"Yes!" she cried fiercely, "a life of shame--a life of insult, of taunts,
of humiliation, of horror! The one thing I've always loathed was the touch
of a negro----"
She stopped suddenly and lifted her hand, staring with wildly dilated eyes
at the nails of her finely shaped fingers to find if the telltale marks of
negro blood were there which she had seen on Cleo's. Finding none, the
horror in her eyes slowly softened into a look of despairing tenderness as
she went on:
"The one passionate yearning of my soul has been to be a mother--to feel
the breath of a babe on my heart, to hear it lisp my name and know a
mother's love--the love I've starved for--and now, it can never be!"
She had moved beyond the table in her last desperate cry and Norton
followed with a look of tenderness:
"Nonsense," he cried persuasively, "you're but a child yourself. You can go
abroad where no such problem of white and black race exists. You can marry
there and be happy in your home and little ones, if God shall give them!"
She turned on him savagely:
"Well, God shall not give them! I'll see to that! I'm young, but I'm not a
fool. I know something of the laws of life. I know that Tom is not like
you"--she turned and pointed to the portrait on the wall--"he is like his
great-grandfather! Mine may have been----"
Her voice choked with passion. She grasped a chair with one hand and tore
at the collar of her dress with the other. She had started to say "mine may
have been a black cannibal!" and the sheer horror of its possibility had
strangled her. When she had sufficiently mastered her feelings to speak she
said in a strange muffled tone:
"I ask nothing of God now--if I could see Him, I'd curse Him to His face!"
"Come, come!" Norton exclaimed, "this is but a passing ugly fancy--such
things rarely happen----"
"But they do happen!" she retorted slowly. "I've known one such tragedy, of
a white mother's child coming into the world with the thick lips, kinky
hair, flat nose and black skin of a cannibal ancestor! She killed herself
when she was strong enough to leap out the window"--her voice dropped to a
dreamy chant--"yes, blood will tell--there's but one thing for me to do! I
wonder, with the yellow in me, if I'll have the courage."
Norton spoke with persuasive tenderness:
"You mustn't think of such madness! I'll send you abroad at once and you
can begin life over again----"
Helen suddenly snatched the chair to which she had been holding out of her
way and faced Norton with flaming eyes:
"I don't want to be an exile! I've been alone all my miserable orphan life!
I don't want to go abroad and die among strangers! I've just begun to live
since I came here! I love the South--it's mine--I feel it--I know it! I
love its blue skies and its fields--I love its people--they are mine! I
think as you think, feel as you feel----"
She paused and looked at him queerly:
"I've learned to honor, respect and love you because I've grown to feel
that you stand for what I hold highest, noblest and best in life"--the
voice died in a sob and she was silent.
The man turned away, crying in his soul:
"O God, I'm paying the price now!"
"What can I do!" she went on at last. "What is life worth since I know this
leper's shame? There are millions like me, yes. If I could bend my back and
be a slave there are men and women who need my services. And there are men
I might know--yes--but I can't--I can't! I'm not a slave. I'm not bad. I
can't stoop. There's but one thing!"
Norton's face was white with emotion:
"I can't tell you, little girl, how sorry I am"--his voice broke. He
turned, suddenly extended his hand and cried hoarsely: "Tell me what I can
do to help you--I'll do anything on this earth that's within reason!"
The girl looked up surprised at his anguish, wondering vaguely if he could
mean what he had said, and then threw herself at him in a burst of sudden,
fierce rebellion, her voice, low and quivering at first, rising to the
tragic power of a defiant soul in combat with overwhelming odds:
"Then give me back the man I love--he's mine! He's mine, I tell you, body
and soul! God--gave--him--to--me! He's your son, but I love him! He's my
mate! He's of age--he's no longer yours! His time has come to build his own
home--he's mine--not yours! He's my life--and you're tearing the very heart
out of my body!"
The white, trembling figure slowly crumpled at his feet.
He took both of her hands, and lifted her gently:
"Pull yourself together, child. It's hard, I know, but you begin to realize
that you must bear it. You must look things calmly in the face now."
The girl's mouth hardened and she answered with bitterness:
"Yes, of course--I'm nobody! We must consider you"--she staggered to a
chair and dropped limply into it, her voice a whisper--"we must consider
Tom--yes--yes--we must, too--I know that----"
Norton pressed eagerly to her side and leaned over the drooping figure:
"You can begin to see now that I was right," he pleaded. "You love
Tom--he's worth saving--you'll do as I ask and give him up?"
The sensitive young face was convulsed with an agony words could not
express and the silence was pitiful. The man bending over her could hear
the throb of his own heart. A quartet of serenaders celebrating the victory
of the election stopped at the gate and the soft strains of the music came
through the open window. Norton felt that he must scream in a moment if she
did not answer. He bent low and softly repeated:
"You'll do as I ask now, and give him up?"
The tangled mass of brown hair sank lower and her answer was a sigh of
despair:
"Yes!"
The man couldn't speak at once. His eyes filled. When he had mastered his
voice he said eagerly:
"There's but one way, you know. You must leave at once without seeing him."
She lifted her face with a pleading look:
"Just a moment--without letting him know what has passed between us--just
one last look into his dear face?"
He shook his head kindly:
"It isn't wise----"
"Yes, I know," she sighed. "I'll go at once."
He drew his watch and looked at it hurriedly:
"The first train leaves in thirty minutes. Get your hat, a coat and
travelling bag and go just as you are. I'll send your things----"
"Yes--yes"--she murmured.
"I'll join you in a few days in New York and arrange your future. Leave the
house immediately. Tom mustn't see you. Avoid him as you cross the lawn.
I'll have a carriage at the gate in a few minutes."
The little head sank again:
"I understand."
He looked uncertainly at the white drooping figure. The serenaders were
repeating the chorus of the old song in low, sweet strains that floated
over the lawn and stole through the house in weird ghost-like echoes. He
returned to her chair and bent over her:
"You won't stop to change your dress, you'll get your hat and coat and go
just as you are--at once?"
The brown head nodded slowly and he gazed at her tenderly:
"You've been a brave little girl to-night"--he lifted his hand to place it
on her shoulder in the first expression of love he had ever given. The hand
paused, held by the struggle of the feelings of centuries of racial pride
and the memories of his own bitter tragedy. But the pathos of her suffering
and the heroism of her beautiful spirit won. The hand was gently lowered
and pressed the soft, round shoulder.
A sob broke from the lonely heart, and her head drooped until it lay
prostrate on the table, the beautiful arms outstretched in helpless
surrender.
Norton staggered blindly to the door, looked back, lifted his hand and in a
quivering voice, said:
"I can never forget this!"
His long stride quickly measured the distance to the gate, and a loud cheer
from the serenaders roused the girl from her stupor of pain.
In a moment they began singing again, a love song, that tore her heart with
cruel power.
"Oh, God, will they never stop?" she cried, closing her ears with her hands
in sheer desperation.
She rose, crossed slowly to the window and looked out on the beautiful
moonlit lawn at the old rustic seat where her lover was waiting. She
pressed her hand on her throbbing forehead, walked to the center of the
room, looked about her in a helpless way and her eye rested on the
miniature portrait of Tom. She picked it up and gazed at it tenderly,
pressed it to her heart, and with a low sob felt her way through the door
and up the stairs to her room.