"At least you will have the decency to break your affair with Margaret Cameron pending the issue of my struggle of life and death with her father and brother?"
"Never."
"Then I will do it for you."
"I warn you, sir," Phil cried, with anger, "that if it comes to an issue of race against race, I am a white man. The ghastly tragedy of the condition of society here is something for which the people of the South are no longer responsible----"
"I"ll take the responsibility!" growled the old cynic.
"Don"t ask me to share it," said the younger man emphatically.
The father winced, his lips trembled, and he answered brokenly:
"My boy, this is the bitterest hour of my life that has had little to make it sweet. To hear such words from you is more than I can bear. I am an old man now--my sands are nearly run. But two human beings love me, and I love but two. On you and your sister I have lavished all the treasures of a maimed and strangled soul--and it has come to this! Read the notice which one of your friends thrust into the window of my bedroom last night."
He handed Phil a piece of paper on which was written:
"The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal Union League, will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid this community of his presence.
"K. K. K."
"Are you an officer of the Union League?" Phil asked in surprise.
"I am its soul."
"How could a Southerner discover this, if your own children didn"t know it?"
"By their spies who have joined the League."
"And do the rank and file know the Black Pope at the head of the order?"
"No, but high officials do."
"Does Lynch?"
"Certainly."
"Then he is the scoundrel who placed that note in your room. It is a clumsy attempt to forge an order of the Klan. The white man does not live in this town capable of that act. I know these people."
"My boy, you are bewitched by the smiles of a woman to deny your own flesh and blood."
"Nonsense, father--you are possessed by an idea which has become an insane mania----"
"Will you respect my wishes?" the old man broke in angrily.
"I will not," was the clear answer. Phil turned and left the room, and the old man"s ma.s.sive head sank on his breast in helpless baffled rage and grief.
He was more successful in his appeal to Elsie. He convinced her of the genuineness of the threat against him. The brutal reference to his lameness roused the girl"s soul. When the old man, crushed by Phil"s desertion, broke down the last reserve of his strange cold nature, tore his wounded heart open to her, cried in agony over his deformity, his lameness, and the anguish with which he saw the threatened ruin of his life-work, she threw her arms around his neck in a flood of tears and cried:
"Hush, father, I will not desert you. I will never leave you, or wed without your blessing. If I find that my lover was in any way responsible for this insult, I"ll tear his image out of my heart and never speak his name again!"
She wrote a note to Ben, asking him to meet her at sundown on horseback at Lover"s Leap.
Ben was elated at the unexpected request. He was hungry for an hour with his sweetheart, whom he had not seen save for a moment since the storm of excitement broke following the discovery of the crime.
He hastened through his work of ordering the movement of the Klan for the night, and determined to surprise Elsie by meeting her in his uniform of a Grand Dragon.
Secure in her loyalty, he would deliberately thus put his life in her hands. Using the water of a brook in the woods for a mirror, he adjusted his yellow sash and pushed the two revolvers back under the cape out of sight, saying to himself with a laugh:
"Betray me? Well, if she does, life would not be worth the living!"
When Elsie had recovered from the first shock of surprise at the white horse and rider waiting for her under the shadows of the old beech, her surprise gave way to grief at the certainty of his guilt, and the greatness of his love in thus placing his life without a question in her hands.
He tied the horses in the woods, and they sat down on the rustic.
He removed his helmet cap, threw back the white cape showing the scarlet lining, and the two golden circles with their flaming crosses on his breast, with boyish pride. The costume was becoming to his slender graceful figure, and he knew it.
"You see, sweetheart, I hold high rank in the Empire," he whispered.
From beneath his cape he drew a long bundle which he unrolled. It was a triangular flag of brilliant yellow edged in scarlet. In the centre of the yellow ground was the figure of a huge black dragon with fiery red eyes and tongue. Around it was a Latin motto worked in scarlet: "_quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_"--what always, what everywhere, what by all has been held to be true. "The battle-flag of the Klan," he said; "the standard of the Grand Dragon."
Elsie seized his hand and kissed it, unable to speak.
"Why so serious to-night?"
"Do you love me very much?" she answered.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay his life at the feet of his beloved," he responded tenderly.
"Yes, yes; I know--and that is why you are breaking my heart. When first I met you--it seems now ages and ages ago--I was a vain, self-willed, pert little thing----"
"It"s not so. I took you for an angel--you were one. You are one to-night."
"Now," she went on slowly, "in what I have lived through you I have grown into an impa.s.sioned, serious, self-disciplined, bewildered woman. Your perfect trust to-night is the sweetest revelation that can come to a woman"s soul and yet it brings to me unspeakable pain----"
"For what?"
"You are guilty of murder."
Ben"s figure stiffened.
"The judge who p.r.o.nounces sentence of death on a criminal outlawed by civilized society is not usually called a murderer, my dear."
"And by whose authority are you a judge?"
"By authority of the sovereign people who created the State of South Carolina. The criminals who claim to be our officers are usurpers placed there by the subversion of law."
"Won"t you give this all up for my sake?" she pleaded. "Believe me, you are in great danger."