MARRIED AND YET NOT MARRIED. (Continued.)
At ten o'clock on the next day, Bernard called at Viola's residence.
Viola's mother invited him in and informed him that Viola had not
arisen. Thinking that her daughter had spent much of the night in
meditating on whatever was troubling her, She had thought not to
awaken her so early. Bernard informed her that Viola had made an
engagement with him for that morning at ten o'clock. Mrs. Martin
looked alarmed. She knew that Viola was invariably punctual to an
appointment and something unusual must be the matter. She left
the room hurriedly and her knees smote together as she fancied she
discovered the scent of escaping gas. She clung to the banisters for
support and dragged her way to Viola's door. As she drew near, the
smell of gas became unmistakable, and she fell forward, uttering a
loud scream. Bernard had noticed the anxious look on Viola's mother's
face and was listening eagerly. He beard her scream and dashed out
of the parlor and up the stairs. He rushed past Mrs. Martin and burst
open the door to Viola's door. He drew back aghast at the sight
that met his gaze. The next instant he had seized her lifeless form,
beautiful in death, and smothered those silent lips with kisses.
Mrs. Martin regained sufficient strength to rush into the room, and
when she saw her child was dead uttered a succession of piercing
shrieks and fell to the floor in a swoon.
This somewhat called Bernard's mind from his own grief. He lay Viola
down upon her own bed most tenderly and set about to restore Mrs.
Martin to consciousness. By this time the room was full of anxious
neighbors.
While they are making inquiry let us peruse the letters which the poor
girl left behind.
"MY DEAR, DEAR, HEART-BROKEN MAMA:--
"I am in the hands of God. Whatever He does is just, is right,
is the only thing to be done. Knowing this, do not grieve
after me. Take poor Bernard for your son and love him as you
did me. I make that as my sole dying request of you. One long
sweet clinging kiss ere I drop into the ocean of death to be
lost in its tossing waves.
"Viola."
"BELOVED PAPA:--
"Your little daughter is gone. Her heart, though torn,
bleeding, dead, gave, as it were, an after throb of pain as it
thought of you. In life you never denied me a request. I have
one to make from my grave, knowing that you will not deny me.
Love Bernard as your son; draw him to you, so that, when in
your old age you go tottering to your tomb in quest of me, you
may have a son to bear you up. Take my lifeless body on your
knee and kiss me as you did of old. It will help me to rest
sweetly in my grave.
"Your little Vie."
"DEAR BERNARD:--
"Viola has loved and left you. Unto you, above all others, I
owe a full explanation of the deed which I have committed; and
I shall therefore lay bare my heart to you. My father was a
colonel in the Civil War and when I was very young he would
make my little heart thrill with patriotic fervor as he told
me of the deeds of daring of the gallant Negro soldiers. As
a result, when nothing but a tiny girl, I determined to be a
heroine and find some outlet for my patriotic feeling. This
became a consuming passion. In 18-- just two years prior to
my meeting you, a book entitled, 'White Supremacy and
Negro Subordination,' by the merest accident came into my
possession. That book made a revelation to me of a most
startling nature.
"While I lived I could not tell you what I am about to tell
you. Death has brought me the privilege. That book proved to
me that the intermingling of the races in sexual relationship
was sapping the vitality of the Negro race and, in fact, was
slowly but surely exterminating the race. It demonstrated that
the fourth generation of the children born of intermarrying
mulattoes were invariably sterile or woefully lacking in vital
force. It asserted that only in the most rare instances were
children born of this fourth generation and in no case did
such children reach maturity. This is a startling revelation.
While this intermingling was impairing the vital force of our
race and exterminating it, it was having no such effect on the
white race for the following reason. Every half-breed, or for
that, every person having a tinge of Negro blood, the white
people cast off. We receive the cast off with open arms and he
comes to us with his devitalizing power. Thus, the white man
was slowly exterminating us and our total extinction was but
a short period of time distant. I looked out upon our strong,
tender hearted, manly race being swept from the face of the
earth by immorality, and the very marrow in my bones seemed
chilled at the thought thereof. I determined to spend my life
fighting the evil. My first step was to solemnly pledge God
to never marry a mulatto man. My next resolve was to part in
every honorable way all courting couples of mulatto people
that I could. My other and greatest task was to persuade the
evil women of my race to cease their criminal conduct with
white men and I went about pleading with them upon my knees to
desist. I pointed out that such a course was wrong before God
and was rapidly destroying the Negro race. I told them of my
resolve to never marry a mulatto man. Many had faith in me
and I was the means of redeeming numbers of these erring ones.
When you came, I loved you. I struggled hard against that
love. God, alone, knows how I battled against it. I prayed Him
to take it from me, as it was eating my heart away. Sometimes
I would appear indifferent to you with the hope of driving you
away, but then my love would come surging with all the more
violence and sweep me from my feet. At last, you seemed to
draw away from me and I was happy. I felt free to you. But you
at last proposed to me when I thought all such notions were
dead. At once I foresaw my tragic end. My heart shed bloody
tears, weeping over my own sad end, weeping for my beloved
parents, weeping for my noble Bernard who was so true, so
noble, so great in all things.
"Bernard, how happy would I have been, how deliriously happy,
could I but have stood beside you at the altar and sworn
fidelity to you. Ours would have been an ideal home. But it
was not to be. I had to choose between you and my race. Your
noble heart, in its sober moments will sanction my choice,
I would not have died if I could have lived without proving
false to my race. Had I lived, my love and your agony, which I
cannot bear, would have made me prove false to every vow.
"Dear Bernard, I have a favor to ask of you. Secure the
book of which I spoke to you. Study the question of the
intermingling of the races. If miscegenation is in reality
destroying us, dedicate your soul to the work of separating
the white and colored races. Do not let them intermingle.
Erect moral barriers to separate them. If you fail in this,
make the separation physical; lead our people forth from this
accursed land. Do this and I shall not have died in vain.
Visit my grave now and then to drop thereon a flower and a
flag, but no tears. If in the shadowy beyond, whose mists
I feel gathering about me, there is a place where kindred
spirits meet, you and I shall surely meet again. Though I
could not in life, I will in death sign myself,
"Your loving wife,
"Viola Belgrave."
Let us not enter this saddened home when the seals of those letters
were broken. Let us not break the solemn silence of those who bowed
their heads and bore the grief, too poignant for words. Dropping a
tear of regret on the little darling who failed to remember that we
have one atonement for all mankind and that further sacrifice was
therefore needless, we pass out and leave the loving ones alone with
their dead.
But, we may gaze on Bernard Belgrave as he emerges from the room where
his sun has set to rise no more. His eyes flash, his nostrils dilate,
his bosom heaves, he lifts his proud head and turns his face so that
the light of the sky may fall full upon it.
And lifting up his hands, trembling with emotion as though
supplicating for the strength of a god, he cries out; "By the eternal
heavens these abominable horrors shall cease. The races, whose union
has been fraught with every curse known to earth and hell, must
separate. Viola demands it and Bernard obeys." It was this that sent
him forth to where kings were eager to court his favor.