Again and again such a.s.semblies had declared in vague terms for "White Supremacy." Campaign after campaign which followed the blight of negro rule twenty years before had been fought and won on this issue. But no man or party had dared to whisper what "White Supremacy" really meant. There was no fog about this platform. For the first time in the history of the party it said exactly what was meant in so many words.
Thoughtful men had long been weary of plat.i.tudes on this subject. The Negro had grown enormously in wealth, in numbers and in social power in the past two decades. As a full-fledged citizen in a Democracy he was a constant menace to society. Here, for the first time, was the announcement of a definite program. It was revolutionary. It meant the revision of the const.i.tution of the Union and a challenge to the negro race, and all his sentimental allies in the Republic for a fight to a finish.
The effect of its bare reading was electric. The moment the Chairman tried to lift his voice the cheers were renewed. The hearts of the people had been suddenly thrilled by a great ideal. No matter whether it meant success or failure, no matter whether it meant fame or oblivion for the man who proposed it, every intelligent delegate in that hall knew instinctively that a great mind had spoken a bold principle that must win in the end if the Republic live.
Norton rose at last to advocate its adoption as the one issue of the campaign, and again pandemonium broke loose--now they knew that he had written it! They suspected it from the first. Instantly his name was on a thousand lips in a shout that rent the air.
He stood with his tall figure drawn to its full height, his face unearthly pale, wreathed in its heavy shock of iron-gray hair and waited, without recognizing the tumult, until the last shout had died away.
His speech was one of pa.s.sionate and fierce appeal--the voice of the revolutionist who had boldly thrown off the mask and called his followers to battle.
Yet through it all, the big unspoken thing behind his words was the magic that really swayed his hearers. They felt that what he said was great, but that he could say something greater if he would. As he had matured in years he had developed this reserved power. All who came in personal touch with the man felt it instinctively with his first word. An audience, with its simpler collective intelligence, felt it overwhelmingly. Yet if he had dared reveal to this crowd the ideas seething in his brain behind the simple but bold political proposition, he could not have carried them with him. They were not ready for it. He knew that to merely take the ballot from the negro and allow him to remain in physical touch with the white race was no solution of the problem. But he was wise enough to know that but one step could be taken at a time in a great movement to separate millions of blacks from the entanglements of the life of two hundred years.
His platform expressed what he believed could be accomplished, and the convention at the conclusion of his eloquent speech adopted it by acclamation amid a scene of wild enthusiasm.
He refused all office, except the position of Chairman of the Executive Committee without pay, and left the hall the complete master of the politics of his party.
Little did he dream in this hour of triumph the grim tragedy the day"s work had prepared in his own life.
CHAPTER V
A WOMAN SCORNED
As the time drew near for Norton to take the field in the campaign whose fierce pa.s.sions would mark a new era in the state"s history, his uneasiness over the att.i.tude of Cleo increased.
She had received the announcement of his approaching long absence with sullen anger. And as the purpose of the campaign gradually became clear she had watched him with growing suspicion and hate. He felt it in every glance she flashed from the depth of her greenish eyes.
Though she had never said it in so many words, he was sure that the last hope of a resumption of their old relations was fast dying in her heart, and that the moment she realized that he was lost to her would be the signal for a desperate attack. What form the attack would take he could only guess. He was sure it would be as deadly as her ingenuity could invent. Yet in the wildest flight of his imagination he never dreamed the daring thing she had really decided to do.
On the night before his departure he was working late in his room at the house. The office he had placed in Tom"s hands before the meeting of the convention. The boy"s eager young face just in front of him when he made his speech that day had been an inspiration. It had beamed with pride and admiration, and when his father"s name rang from every lip in the great shout that shook the building Tom"s eyes had filled with tears.
Norton was seated at his typewriter, which he had moved to his room, writing his final instructions. The last lines he put in caps:
"UNDER NO CONCEIVABLE CIRc.u.mSTANCES ANNOY ME WITH ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS AT HOME, UNLESS A MATTER OF IMMEDIATE LIFE AND DEATH, ANYTHING ELSE CAN WAIT UNTIL MY RETURN."
He had just finished this important sentence when the sound of a footstep behind his chair caused him to turn suddenly.
Cleo had entered the room and stood glaring at him with a look of sullen defiance.
By a curious coincidence or by design, she was dressed in a scarlet kimono of the same shade of filmy j.a.panese stuff as the one she wore in his young manhood. His quick eye caught this fact in a flash and his mind took rapid note of the changes the years had wrought. Their burdens had made slight impression on her exhaustless vitality. Whatever might be her personality or her real character, she was alive from the crown of her red head to the tips of her slippered toes.
Her att.i.tude of tense silence sparkled with this vital power more eloquently than when she spoke with quick energy in the deep voice that was her most remarkable possession.
Her figure was heavier by twenty pounds than when she had first entered his home, but she never produced the impression of stoutness. Her form was too sinuous, pliant and nervous to take on flesh. She was no longer the graceful girl of eighteen whose beauty had drugged his senses, but she was beyond all doubt a woman of an extraordinary type, luxuriant, sensuous, dominant. There was not a wrinkle on her smooth creamy skin nor a trace of approaching age about the brilliant greenish eyes that were gazing into his now with such grim determination.
He wheeled from his machine and faced her, his eyes taking in with a quick glance the evident care with which she had arranged her hair and the startling manner in which she was dressed.
He spoke with sharp, incisive emphasis:
"It was a condition of your return that you should never enter my room while I am in this house."
"I have not forgotten," she answered firmly, her eyes holding his steadily.
"Why have you dared?"
"You are still afraid of me?" she asked with a light laugh that was half a sneer.
"Have I given you any such evidence during the past twenty years?"
There was no bitterness or taunt in the even, slow drawl with which he spoke, but the woman knew that he never used the slow tone with which he uttered those words except he was deeply moved.
She flushed, was silent and then answered with a frown:
"No, you haven"t shown any fear for something more than twenty years--until a few days ago."
The last clause she spoke very quickly as she took a step closer and paused.
"A few days ago?" he repeated slowly.
"Yes. For the past week you _have_ been afraid of me--not in the sense I asked you just now perhaps"--her white teeth showed in two even perfect rows--"but you have been watching me out of the corners of your eyes--haven"t you?"
"Perhaps."
"I wonder why?"
"And you haven"t guessed?"
"No, but I"m going to find out."
"You haven"t asked."
"I"m going to."
"Be quick about it!"
"I"m going to find out--that"s why I came in here to-night in defiance of your orders."
"All right--the quicker the better!"
"Thank you, I"m not in a hurry."
"What do you want?" he demanded with anger.
She smiled tauntingly: