He looked helplessly at the stream of light from her window and turned again toward the cool, friendly darkness.
The night was one of marvellous stillness. The band was playing again in his banquet hall at the Capitol. So still was the night he could hear distinctly the softer strains of the stringed instruments, faint, sweet and thrilling, as they floated over the sleepy old town. A mocking-bird above him wakened by the call of melody answered, tenderly at first, and then, with the crash of cornet and drum, his voice swelled into a flood of wonderful song.
With a groan of pain, Norton rose and walked rapidly into the house. His bird-dog lay on the mat outside the door and sprang forward with a joyous whine to meet him.
He stooped and drew the s.h.a.ggy setter"s head against his hot cheek.
"I need a friend, to-night, Don, old boy!" he said tenderly. And Don answered with an eloquent wag of his tail and a gentle nudge of his nose.
"If you were only my judge!--Bah, what"s the use----"
He drew his drooping shoulders erect and entered his wife"s room. Her eyes were shining with peculiar brightness, but otherwise she seemed unusually calm. She began speaking with quick nervous energy:
"Dr. Williams told you?"
"Yes, and I came at once." He answered with an unusually firm and clear note of strength. His whole being was keyed now to a high tension of alert decision. He saw that the doctor"s way was the only one.
"I don"t ask you, Dan," she went on with increasing excitement and a touch of scorn in her voice--"I don"t ask you to deny this lie. What I want to know is the motive the little devil had in saying such a thing to me.
Mammy, in her jealousy, merely told me she was hanging around your room too often. I asked her if it were true. She looked at me a moment and burst into her lying "confession." I could have killed her. I did try to tear her green eyes out. I knew that you hated her and tried to put her out of the house, and I thought she had taken this way to get even with you--but it doesn"t seem possible. And then I thought the Governor might have taken this way to strike you. He knows old Peeler, the low miserable scoundrel, who is her father. Do you think it possible?"
"I--don"t--know," he stammered, moistening his lips and turning away.
"Yet it"s possible"--she insisted.
He saw the chance to confirm this impression by a cheap lie--to invent a story of old Peeler"s intimacy with the Governor, of his attempt to marry Lucy, of his hatred of the policy of the paper, his fear of the Klan and of his treacherous, cowardly nature--yet the lie seemed so cheap and contemptible his lips refused to move. If he were going to carry out the doctor"s orders here was his chance. He struggled to speak and couldn"t.
The habit of a life and the fibre of character were too strong. So he did the fatal thing at the moment of crisis.
"I don"t think that possible," he said.
"Why not?"
"Well, you see, since I rescued old Peeler that night from those boys, he has been so abjectly grateful I"ve had to put him out of my office once or twice, and I"m sure he voted for me for the Legislature against his own party."
"He voted for you?" she asked in surprise.
"He told me so. He may have lied, of course, but I don"t think he did."
"Then what could have been her motive?"
His teeth were chattering in spite of a desperate effort to think clearly and speak intelligently. He stared at a picture on the wall and made no reply.
"Say something--answer my question!" his wife cried excitedly.
"I have answered, my dear. I said I don"t know. I"m stunned by the whole thing."
"You are _stunned_?"
"Yes----"
"Stunned? You, a strong, innocent man, stunned by a weak contemptible lie like this from the lips of such a girl--what do you mean?"
"Why, that I was naturally shocked to be called out of a banquet at such a moment by such an accusation. She actually beckoned to me from the door over the heads of the guests----"
The little blue eyes suddenly narrowed and the thin lips grew hard:
"Cleo called you from the door?" she asked.
"Yes."
"You left the hall to see her there?"
"No, I went down stairs."
"Into the Capitol Square?"
"Yes. I couldn"t well talk to her before all those guests----"
"Why not?"
The question came like the crack of a pistol. Her voice was high, cold, metallic, ringing. He saw, when too late, that he had made a fatal mistake.
He stammered, reddened and then turned pale:
"Why--why--naturally----"
"If you are innocent--why not?"
He made a desperate effort to find a place of safety:
"I thought it wise to go down stairs where I could talk without interruption----"
"You--were--afraid," she was speaking each word now with cold, deadly deliberation, "to take-a-message-from-your-servant-at-the-door-of-a-public banquet-hall----" her words quickened--"then you suspected her possible message! There _was_ something between you----"
"My dear, I beg of you----"
He turned his head away with a weary gesture.
She sprang from the side of the bed, leaped to his side, seized him by both arms and fairly screamed in his face:
"Look at me, Dan!"
He turned quickly, his haggard eyes stared into hers, and she looked with slowly dawning horror.
"Oh, my G.o.d!" she shrieked. "It"s true--it"s true--it"s true!"
She sprang back with a shiver of loathing, covered her face with her hands and staggered to her bed, sobbing hysterically:
"It"s true--it"s true--it"s true! Have mercy, Lord!--it"s true--it"s true!"
She fell face downward, her frail figure quivering like a leaf in a storm.