The Sins of the Father Part 20

The last appeal stirred the soul of the young editor to its depths. He was surprised and shocked to find the man he had so long ridiculed and hated so thoroughly, human and appealing in his hour of need.

He spoke with a kindly deliberation he had never dreamed it possible to use with this man.

"I'm sorry for you, Governor. Your appeal is to me a very eloquent one. It has opened a new view of your character. I can never again say bitter, merciless things about you in my paper. You have disarmed me. But as the leader of my race, in the crisis through which we are pa.s.sing, I feel that a great responsibility has been placed on me. Now that we have met, with bared souls in this solemn hour, let me say that I have learned to like you better than I ever thought it possible. But I am to-day a judge who must make his decision, remembering that the lives and liberties of all the people are in his keeping when he p.r.o.nounces the sentence of law. A judge has no right to spare a man who has taken human life because he is sorry for the prisoner. I have no right, as a leader, to suspend this penalty on you. Your act in destroying the civil law, arresting men without warrant and holding them by military force without bail or date of trial, was, in my judgment, a crime of the highest rank, not merely against me--one individual whom you happened to hate--but against every man, woman and child in the state. Unless that crime is punished another man, as daring in high office, may repeat it in the future. I hold in my hands to-day not only the lives and liberties of the people you have wronged, but of generations yet unborn. Now that I have heard you, personally I am sorry for you, but the law must take its course."

"You will deprive me of my citizenship?" he asked pathetically.

"It is my solemn duty. And when it is done no Governor will ever again dare to repeat your crime."

Norton turned away and the Governor laid his trembling hand on his arm:

"Your decision is absolutely final, Major Norton?"

"Absolutely," was the firm reply.

The Governor's shoulders drooped lower as he shuffled from the room and his eyes were fixed on s.p.a.ce as he pushed his way through the hostile crowds that filled the corridors of the Capitol.

The Court immediately rea.s.sembled and the Speaker rose to make his motion for a vote on the last count in the bill depriving the Chief Executive of the state of his citizenship.

The silence was intense. The crowds that packed the lobby, the galleries, and every inch of the floor of the Senate Chamber expected a fierce speech of impa.s.sioned eloquence from their idolized leader. Every neck was craned and breath held for his first ringing words.

To their surprise he began speaking in a low voice choking with emotion and merely demanded a vote of the Senate on the final clause of the bill, and the brown eyes of the tall orator had a suspicious look of moisture in their depths as they rested on the forlorn figure of the little Scalawag.

The crowd caught the spirit of solemnity and of pathos from the speaker's voice and the vote was taken amid a silence that was painful.

When the Clerk announced the result and the Chief Justice of the state declared the office of Governor vacant there was no demonstration. As the Lieutenant-Governor ascended the dais and took the oath of office, the Scalawag rose and staggered through the crowd that opened with a look of awed pity as he pa.s.sed from the chamber.

Norton stepped to the window behind the President of the Senate and watched the pathetic figure shuffle down the steps of the Capitol and slowly walk from the grounds. The sun was shining in the radiant splendor of early spring. The first flowers were blooming in the hedges by the walk and birds were chirping, chattering and singing from every tree and shrub. A squirrel started across the path in front of the drooping figure, stopped, c.o.c.ked his little head to one side, looked up and ran to cover. But the man with drooping shoulders saw nothing. His dim eyes were peering into the shrouded future.

Norton was deeply moved.

"The judgment of posterity may deal kindlier with his life!" he exclaimed.

"Who knows? A politician, a trimmer and a time-server--yes, so we all are down in our cowardly hearts--I'm sorry that it had to be!"

He was thinking of a skeleton in his own closet that grinned at him sometimes now when he least expected it.

CHAPTER XI

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST

The night was a memorable one in Norton's life. The members of the Legislature and the leaders of his party from every quarter of the state gave a banquet in his honor in the Hall of the House of Representatives.

Eight hundred guests, the flower and chivalry of the Commonwealth, sat down at the eighty tables improvised for the occasion.

Fifty leading men were guests of honor and vied with one another in acclaiming the brilliant young Speaker the coming statesman of the Nation.

His name was linked with Hamilton, Jefferson, Webster, Clay and Calhoun. He was the youngest man who had ever been elected Speaker of a Legislative a.s.sembly in American history and a dazzling career was predicted.

Even the newly installed Chief Executive, a hold-over from the defeated party, asked to be given a seat and in a glowing tribute to Norton hailed him as the next Governor of the state.

He had scarcely uttered the words when all the guests leaped to their feet by a common impulse, raised their gla.s.ses and shouted:

"To our next Governor, Daniel Norton!"

The cheers which followed were not arranged, they were the spontaneous outburst of genuine admiration by men and women who knew the man and believed in his power and his worth.

Norton flushed and his eyes dropped. His daring mind had already leaped the years. The Governor's chair meant the next step--a seat in the Senate Chamber of the United States. A quarter of a century and the South would once more come into her own. He would then be but forty-nine years old. He would have as good a chance for the Presidency as any other man. His fathers had been of the stock that created the Nation. His great-grandfather fought with Washington and Lafayette. His head was swimming with its visions, while the great Hall rang with his name.

While the tumult was still at its highest, he lifted his eyes for a moment over the heads of the throng at the tables below the platform on which the guests of honor were seated, and his heart suddenly stood still.

Cleo was standing in the door of the Hall, a haunted look in her dilated eyes, watching her chance to beckon to him unseen by the crowd.

He stared at her a moment in blank amazement and turned pale. Something had happened at his home, and by the expression on her face the message she bore was one he would never forget.

As he sat staring blankly, as at a sudden apparition, she disappeared in the crowd at the door. He looked in vain for her reappearance and was waiting an opportune moment to leave, when a waiter slipped through the ma.s.s of palms and flowers banked behind his chair by his admirers and thrust a crumpled note into his hand.

"The girl said it was important, sir," he explained.

Norton opened the message and held it under the banquet table as he hurriedly read in Cleo's hand:

"It's found out--she's raving. The doctor is there. I must see you quick."

He whispered to the chairman that a message had just been received announcing the illness of his wife, but he hoped to be able to return in a few minutes.

It was known that his wife was an invalid and had often been stricken with violent attacks of hysteria, and so the banquet proceeded without interruption. The band was asked to play a stirring piece and he slipped out as the opening strains burst over the chattering, gay crowd.

As his tall figure rose from the seat of honor he gazed for an instant over the sparkling scene, and for the first time in his life knew the meaning of the word fear. A sickening horror swept his soul and the fire died from eyes that had a moment before blazed with visions of ambition. He felt the earth crumbling beneath his feet. He hoped for a way out, but from the moment he saw Cleo beckoning him over the heads of his guests he knew that Death had called him in the hour of his triumph.

He felt his way blindly through the crowd and pushed roughly past a hundred hands extended to congratulate him. He walked by instinct. He couldn't see.

The mists of eternity seemed suddenly to have swept him beyond the range of time and sense.

In the hall he stumbled against Cleo and looked at her in a dazed way.

"Get your hat," she whispered.

He returned to the cloakroom, got his hat and hurried back in the same dull stupor.

"Come down stairs into the Square," she said quickly.

He followed her without a word, and when they reached the shadows of an oak below the windows of the Hall, he suddenly roused himself, turned on her fiercely and demanded:

"Well, what's happened?"

The girl was calm now, away from the crowd and guarded by the friendly night. Her words were cool and touched with the least suggestion of bravado. She looked at him steadily:

"I reckon you know----"