With swift hands, her blue eyes shining with a strange light, the girl removed the shreds of torn clothes, bathed, and put on the dress of spotless white she wore the night Ben Cameron kissed her and called her a heroine.
The mother cleaned and swept the room, piled the torn clothes and cord in the fireplace and burned them, dressed herself as if for a walk, softly closed the doors, and hurried with her daughter along the old pathway through the moonlit woods.
At the edge of the forest she stopped and looked back tenderly at the little home shining amid the roses, caught their faint perfume and faltered:
"Let"s go back a minute--I want to see his room, and kiss Henry"s picture again."
"No, we are going to him now--I hear him calling us in the mists above the cliff," said the girl--"come, we must hurry. We might go mad and fail!"
Down the dim cathedral aisles of the woods, hallowed by tender memories, through which the poet lover and father had taught them to walk with reverent feet and without fear, they fled to the old meeting-place of Love.
On the brink of the precipice, the mother trembled, paused, drew back, and gasped:
"Are you not afraid, my dear?"
"No; death is sweet now," said the girl. "I fear only the pity of those we love."
"Is there no other way? We might go among strangers," pleaded the mother.
"We could not escape ourselves! The thought of life is torture. Only those who hate me could wish that I live. The grave will be soft and cool, the light of day a burning shame."
"Come back to the seat a moment--let me tell you my love again," urged the mother. "Life still is dear while I hold your hand."
As they sat in brooding anguish, floating up from the river valley came the music of a banjo in a negro cabin, mingled with vulgar shout and song and dance. A verse of the ribald senseless lay of the player echoed above the banjo"s pert refrain:
"Chicken in de bread tray, pickin" up dough; Granny, will your dog bite? No, chile, no!"
The mother shivered and drew Marion closer.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! has it come to this--all my hopes of your beautiful life!"
The girl lifted her head and kissed the quivering lips.
"With what loving wonder we saw you grow," she sighed, "from a tottering babe on to the hour we watched the mystic light of maidenhood dawn in your blue eyes--and all to end in this hideous, leprous shame. No--No! I will not have it! It"s only a horrible dream! G.o.d is not dead!"
The young mother sank to her knees and buried her face in Marion"s lap in a hopeless paroxysm of grief.
The girl bent, kissed the curling hair, and smoothed it with her soft hand.
A sparrow chirped in the tree above, a wren twittered in a bush, and down on the river"s bank a mocking-bird softly waked his mate with a note of thrilling sweetness. "The morning is coming, dearest; we must go," said Marion. "This shame I can never forget, nor will the world forget. Death is the only way."
They walked to the brink, and the mother"s arms stole round the girl.
"Oh, my baby, my beautiful darling, life of my life, heart of my heart, soul of my soul!"
They stood for a moment, as if listening to the music of the falls, looking out over the valley faintly outlining itself in the dawn. The first far-away streaks of blue light on the mountain ranges, defining distance, slowly appeared. A fresh motionless day brooded over the world as the amorous stir of the spirit of morning rose from the moist earth of the fields below.
A bright star still shone in the sky, and the face of the mother gazed on it intently. Did the Woman-spirit, the burning focus of the fiercest desire to live and will, catch in this supreme moment the star"s Divine speech before which all human pa.s.sions sink into silence? Perhaps, for she smiled. The daughter answered with a smile; and then, hand in hand, they stepped from the cliff into the mists and on through the opal gates of death.
Book IV--The Ku Klux Klan
CHAPTER I
THE HUNT FOR THE ANIMAL
Aunt Cindy came at seven o"clock to get breakfast, and finding the house closed and no one at home, supposed Mrs. Lenoir and Marion had remained at the Cameron House for the night. She sat down on the steps, waited grumblingly an hour, and then hurried to the hotel to scold her former mistress for keeping her out so long.
Accustomed to enter familiarly, she thrust her head into the dining-room, where the family were at breakfast with a solitary guest, muttering the speech she had been rehearsing on the way:
"I lak ter know what sort er way dis--whar"s Miss Jeannie?"
Ben leaped to his feet.
"Isn"t she at home?"
"Been waitin" dar two hours."
"Great G.o.d!" he groaned, springing through the door and rushing to saddle the mare. As he left he called to his father: "Let no one know till I return."
At the house he could find no trace of the crime he had suspected. Every room was in perfect order. He searched the yard carefully and under the cedar by the window he saw the barefoot tracks of a negro. The white man was never born who could make that track. The enormous heel projected backward, and in the hollow of the instep where the dirt would scarcely be touched by an Aryan was the deep wide mark of the African"s flat foot. He carefully measured it, brought from an outhouse a box, and fastened it over the spot.
It might have been an ordinary chicken thief, of course. He could not tell, but it was a fact of big import. A sudden hope flashed through his mind that they might have risen with the sun and strolled to their favourite haunt at Lover"s Leap.
In two minutes he was there, gazing with hard-set eyes at Marion"s hat and handkerchief lying on the shelving rock.
The mare bent her glistening neck, touched the hat with her nose, lifted her head, dilated her delicate nostrils, looked out over the cliff with her great soft half-human eyes and whinnied gently.
Ben leaped to the ground, picked up the handkerchief, and looked at the initials, "M. L.," worked in the corner. He knew what lay on the river"s brink below as well as if he stood over the dead bodies. He kissed the letters of her name, crushed the handkerchief in his locked hands, and cried:
"Now, Lord G.o.d, give me strength for the service of my people!"
He hurriedly examined the ground, amazed to find no trace of a struggle or crime. Could it be possible they had ventured too near the brink and fallen over?
He hurried to report to his father his discoveries, instructed his mother and Margaret to keep the servants quiet until the truth was known, and the two men returned along the river"s brink to the foot of the cliff.
They found the bodies close to the water"s edge, Marion had been killed instantly. Her fair blonde head lay in a crimson circle sharply defined in the white sand. But the mother was still warm with life. She had scarcely ceased to breathe. In one last desperate throb of love the trembling soul had dragged the dying body to the girl"s side, and she had died with her head resting on the fair round neck as though she had kissed her and fallen asleep.
Father and son clasped hands and stood for a moment with uncovered heads.
The doctor said at length:
"Go to the coroner at once and see that he summons the jury _you_ select and hand to him. Bring them immediately. I will examine the bodies before they arrive."
Ben took the negro coroner into his office alone, turned the key, told him of the discovery, and handed him the list of the jury.