IN TAKING leave of Ackerman Stella went immediately to her room to
select her dress and plan her campaign for John Graham’s reception in
the evening.
A feeling of reaction depressed her. The passionate warmth and
tenderness of his love remained a haunting memory. A sense of loneliness
crept into her heart. She began to see that she was playing a
desperate game with the great stake of a human life as the issue. The
consciousness of its possible tragedy began to be dimly felt. She sat
staring idly at the gowns she had piled on the big tester bed without
being able to make a selection.
“I’ve begun a daring task,” she mused. “The wit and beauty of a girl of
twenty against the iron will and personality of a man of genius. A man
just entering his thirtieth year, who has looked Death in the face on
the field of battle and dared defy the power of the Government that has
crushed him. Can I win?”
The closer she had drawn to John Graham in their intimate daily
association the more impossible seemed the idea that such a man could
have murdered her father or known of such a crime. And yet the closer
each day drew the net of circumstantial evidence about him and the
fiercer grew her determination to demand the life of the murderer.
What had surprised her most of all in his character was the spirit of
eternal youth within him--youth strong, fresh, buoyant and throbbing
with poetic ideals. At first she had thought him sombre and morose, yet
in his presence she could never imagine him more than twenty years of
age. In many of his little ways and moods she found him more boy than
man. And she must acknowledge the truth--she had begun to think of his
possible death as a criminal with a pang of regret.
She rose and studied her beautiful figure in her mirror until self and
pride once more filled the universe.
“Bah! What to me is the life of the man who struck my father dead at my
feet! I’ll amuse myself by playing the game of love with him for a week,
and then for the master-stroke. I’ll watch him as a cat a mouse, and
when I’m ready, strike to kill. If he had no mercy, I shall have none.”
John found her in a mood of elusive girlishness. When he begged her to
remember her parting words, the half-pledged promise of a message for
which he waited, she only laughed and fenced.
She allowed him to call each afternoon and evening for a week until
he was drunk with the joy of her presence--until the sense of personal
intimacy and the growing consciousness of comradeship had made his will
obedient to her slightest whim. It amused her to watch the growth of
his powers of intuition, born of this daily life, which enabled him to
anticipate her wishes.
For the man, these days were as water to the lips of a thirsty dreamer.
In the heart of the girl, who studied his every movement with deep
sinister purpose, there had grown a cruel joy in the consciousness of
the tyranny she wielded over a powerful human life.
Toward the end of the week he began to beg her tenderly for a single
word of love. At last she promised him an answer on the evening
following, and forbade his afternoon call. She knew the effect of his
longer absence would be to give her greater power. At last she was sure
that the hour had struck toward which she had moved with such infinite
pains, the hour of his complete surrender and his utter trust, when she
had but to breathe her wish to know the guarded secrets of the Klan and
they would be whispered into her ear without a moment’s hesitation.
She had planned to lead him to the seat amid the shadows of the trees
near the house from which Isaac said he had watched the dance the night
of the tragedy, and if possible gain both important secrets at once.
She again selected the low cut white chiffon she wore the night he had
declared his love.
Maggie’s keen eyes watched her dress with a care never shown before. The
little black maid flashed her white teeth more than once behind her back
as she observed the delicate yet sure art with which, by a touch here
and there, her mistress managed to suggest with unusual daring the
physical charms of her extraordinary beauty. When the task was finished
and she surveyed her form in her mirror with a look of proud content,
Maggie laughed:
“You sho’ is trying ter kill ’im to-night!”
“Maggie, how dare you suggest such a thing!”
“De Laws a mussy, Miss Stella, I des mean dat you’se de purtiest thing
in de whole worl’ an’ he gwine drap dead quick as he sees ye!”
“That will do, Maggie,” she said severely.
“Yassum.”
But in spite of her severity, the mistress smiled at the maid, and
Maggie burst into a fit of laughter. When at length it subsided, she
stood with wide staring worshipful eyes gazing at Stella entranced.
“Ef I could look lak dat, Miss Stella, I’d let ‘em bile me in ile, roast
me on a red-hot stove and peel me!”
“You are breaking the Ten Commandments, Maggie.”
“Yassum, I’d bust a hundred commandments ef I could look lak you.”
“I accept the compliment, if I can’t commend your morals.”
“Yassum.”
A sudden flash of lightning revealed the clouds of a rapidly approaching
summer storm.
Stella frowned.
“It’s going to storm,” she said, fretfully,
“Yassum, but he’ll come.”
The mistress laughed in spite of herself.
“I’m not worrying about his coming, Maggie.”
“Nobum, you needn’t worry. He swim er river ef he couldn’t git here no
odder way--dar he is now!”
His familiar knock echoed through the hall and the maid hastened to open
the door.
When Stella stood before him, John seized both her hands and looked into
her deep eyes with silent rapture.
“How glorious you are to-night!” he whispered passionately.
She made no answer save the sensitive smile of triumph which lighted her
face and quivered through her form.
“I meant to find a seat on the lawn to-night, but it’s going to rain.”
“Yes, I ran, to get here first,” he cried with boyish enthusiasm--“It’s
raining now, but the old davenport under the stairs is cosey on a rainy
night.”
She looked at the panel door and hesitated.
“You’re not afraid of ghosts from below I hope?” he laughed.
“No, I’ve locked the iron door,” she announced soberly, taking her seat
by his side.
With a vivid flash of lightning followed by a crash of thunder the storm
broke, the big raindrops mixed with hail rattling furiously against the
windows.
Stella nestled closer to his side, and John turned his swarthy, eager
face toward her.
“Now, while the storm roars,” he whispered, “and shuts out the world,
drawing us closer together--so close I feel that there is no world
beyond the touch of your hand and the music of your voice--won’t you
tell me what my heart is starving to hear?”
“Do you realise what it means for a girl to say to a man, ‘I love you?’”
she asked slowly.
“I do,” was the quick answer.
“In all its depths?”
“Yes. It means the utter surrender of soul and body or it means
nothing!”
“And yet, you ask that I say it?”
“I know that I’m not worthy, but Love has always dared to claim its own,
soul crying to soul, mate calling to mate--I love you! I love you!
Ah! The story is old as the throb of life, yet always new and full of
wonder. I know it’s too much to ask, yet I dare to ask it.”
“There should be no shadows between those who thus love, should there?”
she asked with a far-away dreamy look as if his burning words had caught
her spirit in their spell.
“No,” he answered, solemnly. “A thousand times I’ve longed to tell you
how tender was my sympathy for you in the tragedy that threw its shadow
across your young life in this hall a few months ago.”
“And yet you didn’t,” she said reproachfully, studying him keenly and
furtively, with her head bowed as if in grief for the memory of her
father.
“How could I without hypocrisy? The Judge and I had been uncompromising
enemies. Could I tear my heart open and let the vulgar world see the
deep secret of my love for you?”
“You loved me then?” she broke in with surprise.
“From the moment you crossed this old hall the night I met you.”
Loved me when you refused to answer my appeal in person the day I wrote
you?”
“I refused because I loved you.”
She looked at him a moment with a feeling of sudden fear. For the first
time she realised with a shock that her imperious will to master his
life was not the only force at work. The shadowy figure of Fate stood
grim and silent before her.
“The man who wins my heart,” she said firmly, “can hold no
reservations--he must be all mine, body and soul. He asks as much of me.
I demand the same. Are you ready to place your life in my hands as I am
asked to place mine in yours?”
“Without reservation,” he answered.
“I must be frank with you,” she said, turning her eyes appealingly on
him. “Since the awful night I saw my father sitting dead in that chair
with those masked figures, white, silent and terrible behind me, I have
had a morbid curiosity mingled with terror for everything and everyone
connected with the Klan. I have heard that you are a member?”
John suddenly knelt before her and took her hand.
“Here on my knees before you and before God--and when I am before you I
am in the presence of God!--I call the spirit of the dead back on the
wings of this storm to-night into this hall to witness when I swear to
you that I am innocent of any knowledge of his death!”
“And there shall be not one shadow between us?
“Not one. Every secret of my life shall be laid bare before I’d dare
claim you as my wife. I only beg to-night one word of love from your
dear lips. You believe me when I swear to you, on my honour, my life, my
love that I am innocent?”
“Yes, I believe and trust you!”
He bowed and kissed her fingers reverently.
“And now you must show that you trust me before I speak,” she went on
dreamily--“you are in reality the Chief of the Klan in North Carolina,
are you not?”
John’s hand trembled, his lips quivered, and a look of mortal anguish
overspread his face.
“Please don’t ask me that yet?” he begged. “You are afraid to trust me?”
she said reproachfully.
“I trust you implicitly,” he cried, pressing her hand, “but do not ask me
now!”
“The hands of Southern women made those white and scarlet costumes,” she
persisted. “May I not share at least one of its secrets with them?”
“Remember that conditions have changed!” he urged--“A price is set on
the head of every member of the Klan. The South now swarms with
spies--the Government is straining every nerve to learn the secrets of
the order--have I the right even to breathe the name of the Klan while
another’s life may hang on my word?”
“I see,” she cried with scorn, rising. “The daughter of a murdered
‘Scalawag’ judge may not be trusted as other loyal women of the proud
old aristocratic South!”
“Please, I beg of you----”
“You may go!” she said proudly.
And without another word she quickly turned, ascended the stairs and
disappeared.
John stood for a moment blind and dumb with pain, mechanically took his
hat and slowly passed through the door and out into the black, raging
storm.