A Gentleman from Mississippi Part 23

"Was there any particular reason for your not telling the truth?"

demanded the Mississippian in threatening tone.

"I told the truth," replied Norton. "You are interested in them."

For an instant Langdon seemed about to step toward him, then he controlled himself.

"I didn't know it," he said.

"You have several things to learn, Senator," declared the Congressman.

"I have things to learn and things to teach," he said. "But go on. Why am I interested?"

"You are interested, Senator," replied the trickster, making his big play, "through your son, Randolph, who invested $50,000 of your money in Altacoola, and also through your daughter, Miss Carolina, who, acting on my advice, has put her own money--$25,000--in Altacoola land also."

For a moment Langdon was speechless. It was too much at first for the honest old Southerner to comprehend.

"You mean," he gasped at last, "that you induce a boy to put $50,000 in Altacoola land when you knew I had to vote on the bill? And you even let my daughter put her money in the same scheme?"

"Of course, I did. It was a splendid chance, and I let your son in for friendship and your daughter because she has done me the honor to promise to become my wife."

"What! You have my daughter's promise to marry you, you--"

"She admits it herself."

"Then I reckon here's where I lose a prospective son-in-law," sneered Langdon. "But that's unimportant. Now, Norton, who's behind you?"

"I must decline to answer that."

Langdon looked at him sternly.

"Very well," he said. "You are too small to count. I'll find out for myself. Now you go to my study and wait there until I send for you. I must be alone with my children."

When Norton and Haines had left them, Langdon turned sadly to the two children who had disgraced him.

"Can you understand?" he said. "Do you know what you've done to me?"

"What, father? We've done nothing wrong!" protested Carolina.

"They told me it was perfectly legitimate," urged Randolph. "They said everybody--Peabody and Stevens and the rest--were in it, and Peabody is the boss of the Senate."

"Yes, my boy," a.s.sented the old planter, "he's the leader in the Senate, and that's the shameful part of all this--that a man of his high standing should set you so miserable an example."

Randolph Langdon was not a vicious lad, not a youth who preferred or chose wrongdoing for the increased rewards it offered. He was at heart a chivalrous, straightforward, trustful Southern boy who believed in the splendid traditions of his family and loved his father as a son should a parent having the qualities of the old hero of Crawfordsville. Jealous of his honor, he had been a victim of Norton's wiles because of the Congressman's position and persuasiveness, because this companion of his young days had won his confidence and had not hesitated to distort the lad's idea of what was right and what was wrong.

Randolph began an indignant protest against his father's reproof when the Senator cut him short.

"Don't you see?" said the Senator. "I can understand there being rascals in the outside world and that they should believe your careless, foolish old father lawful game, but that he should be thought a tool for dishonest thieving by members of his own family is incomprehensible.

"Randolph, my son, Carolina, my daughter, through all their generations the Langdons have been honorable. Your mother was a Randolph, and this from you! Oh, Carolina! And you, Randolph! How could you? How could you betray or seek to betray your father, who sees in you the image of your dear mother, who has gone?"

CHAPTER XX

THE CALL TO ARMS

Both Randolph, and Carolina were deeply affected by their father's words.

The daughter attempted to take on herself the blame for her brother's action.

"I was the older one. I might have stopped him if I had wished, and should bear the burden."

"No, no, father," exclaimed the youth, his inborn self-reliance prompting him to shoulder the consequences of his own mistakes. "I, and I alone, am responsible for what I did. I did not realize that it was wrong. I will not hide behind Carolina."

Carolina Langdon bore herself better than was to have been expected under the strain of the painful interview. She saw more clearly now how she had erred. She was undergoing an inward revolution that would make it impossible for her ever again to veer so far from the line of duty to her father, her family and to herself.

When Randolph had finished Carolina took up her own defense, and eloquently she pleaded the defense of many a woman who yearns for what she has not got, for what may be beyond her reach--the defense of the woman who chafes under the limitations of worldly position, of s.e.x and of opportunity. It was the defense of an ambitious woman.

"Perhaps I ought to have been a man of the Langdon family," she exclaimed. "Father, oh, can't you understand that I couldn't doze my life away down on those plantations? You don't know what ambition is.

I had to have the world. I had to have money. If I had been a man I would have tried big financial enterprises. I should have liked to fight for a fortune. You wouldn't have condemned me then. You might have said my methods were bold, but if I succeeded I would have been a great man. But just because I am a woman you think I must sit home with my knitting. No, father, the world does move. Women must have an equal chance with men, but I wish I had been a man!"

"Even then I hope you would have been a gentleman," rebuked her father sternly. "Women should have an equal chance, Carolina. They should have an equal chance for the same virtues as men, not for the same vices."

"But an equal chance," returned the girl fervidly. "There, father, you have admitted what I have tried to prove. The woman with the spirit of a man, the spirit that cries to a woman. 'Advance,' 'Accomplish,' 'Be something,' 'Strike for yourself,' cannot sit idly by while all the world moves on. If it is true that I have chosen the wrong means, the wrong way, to better my lot I did it through ignorance, and that ignorance is the fault of the times in which I live, of the system that guides the era in which I live.

"I am what the world calls 'educated,' but the world, the world of men, knows better. It laughs at me. It has cheated me because I am a woman. The world of men has fenced me in and hobbled me with convention, with precedent, with fict.i.tious sentiment. If I pursue the business of men as they themselves would pursue it I am called an ungrateful daughter. If I should adopt the morals of men I would be called a fallen woman. If I adopted the religion of men I would have no religion at all. Turn what way I will--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "YOU'LL HAVE TO TAKE YOUR MEDICINE LIKE A MAN."]

"But not every woman feels the way you do, my daughter," broke in the Senator.

"No, you are right, because their spirit has been crushed by generations, by centuries of forced subserviency to men. They tell us we should be thankful that we do not live in China, where women are physical slaves to men. In our country they are forced to be mental and social slaves to men. Is one very much worse than the other?"

"Then, dear," and her father's tone was very gentle, "if you want an equal chance--want to be equal to a man--you must take your medicine with Randolph, like a man."

"What are you going to do, sir?" she asked, afraid.

"I'm going to spoil all your little scheme, dear," he returned, smiling sadly. "I'm going, I fear, to make you lose all your money.

I'd like to make it easy for you, but I can't. You've got to take your medicine, children, and when it's all over back there in Mississippi I shall be able, I hope, to patch up your broken lives, and together we will work out your mistakes. I can't think of that now. The honor of the Langdons calls. This is the time for the fight, and any one who fights against me must take the consequences."

He walked over and touched the bell.

"Thomas," he said to the servant who responded, "take that letter at once to Senator Peabody, in the library."

"What is it, sir?" asked Randolph.

"It's the call to arms," responded his father grimly.