CHAPTER VI—THE TRAIN FOR THE NORTH
ONE by one the boys engaged in the masquerade at the Judge’s the night of his death slipped out of Independence from various nearby stations and left for the West. An hour before the time for Billy’s train going North John went to his room for a chat before saying good-bye. Billy had begun to unpack his trunk.
John seized his arm.
“What’s this—what’s the matter?”
“I’m not going!” he snapped.
“Why not?”
“I’ve found out that you may be put on trial for your life.”
“Well, what’s that got to do with your education?”
“You’re just packing me off to get me out of danger.”
“Suppose I am?”
“I’m not going to sneak out of trouble and leave you to stand for what I’ve done.”
“I’m responsible, my boy.”
“You’re not. You tried to keep me out of it. I got Steve Hoyle to take me in. I knew what I was doing. I was a headstrong fool.”
“Because you’ve been a fool is no reason why you should keep it up. Don’t talk any more nonsense. Hurry—put your clothes back in that trunk—you must catch this train.”
“No!” was the dogged answer.
John put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“You must do it for me, Billy. I’m trying to make good my failure. I ought to have been both father and mother to you. I was neither—I didn’t know how—forgive me! I let you slip away. It seems to me now it would have been very easy for me to have taken you by the hand, and with a jolly word or two and a little pains and a little friendly comradeship, I could have kept you out of trouble. I’m heartsick over it, boy. You must let me atone in this way. You can do no good by staying. You’ll be in the way when trouble comes. You’ll promise me now, because I ask you—won’t you?”
The boy choked back a sob.
“I’ll go on one condition——”
“Well?”
“If you get in trouble about this thing, that you’ll let me know.”
John grasped his hand:
“I promise you.”
Mrs. Wilson and Susie accompanied them to the station. As the train signalled to pull out Billy shook hands with Susie awkwardly and tried to take leave of her mother in the same way, but Mrs. Wilson broke down, threw her arms around his neck and sobbed:
“Billy, darling, you’re my own sweet boy—I love you—I love you! You’ll write to me every week—won’t you?”
Billy promised, disengaging himself in evident embarrassment and trying to hide his tears.
Moved by a sudden impulse Susie smiled, drew Billy’s head down and kissed him.
“For the high honour you once paid me. I shall expect great things of you, Billy.”
As the train started, he gripped John’s hand:
“Remember, we stand together. We are Grahams—I’ll hold you to your promise!”
John saw Ackerman join Susie and caught the sudden flash of his keen eye.
He touched his lip in sign of warning to Billy and waved his hand.
“I’ll remember! Good luck!”
CHAPTER VII—THE DAUGHTER OF EVE
STELLA had piled on the big oblong oak table in the library the letters and legal documents relating to her father’s estate.
She had determined to treat John Graham’s first visit as a purely business one, and make her approach to him by the more subtle way of child-like dependence on his help and advice.
She wore on purpose the same simple green dimity dress in which she had called at his office. Each step in her plans must be taken with the utmost care. He had masked his feelings with an iron will and she could as yet form no conception of the impression she had made.
Seated beside the table, idly turning the papers, she awaited his coming to-night with the keenest interest, every faculty of her being keyed to the highest pitch of power.
A letter from Ackerman had aroused anew her curiosity over every detail of the murder of her father and had given her a definite purpose toward which to work during John’s visit. She studied carefully again the paragraph in which he said:
“I have made several important discoveries in the past twenty-four hours. (1) That old Isaac has left the county and is not holding a sanctification meeting as he told his wife. (2) That Larkin and your father had a violent quarrel on the day of the Convention. (3) That a dozen young men, one at a time, have left Independence recently. (4) And most important, that the tradition that there is a secret passage somewhere into the Graham house must be true. If you can confirm this fourth fact for me by its discovery my work will be greatly helped.”
Stella had quietly ransacked the house from cellar to attic in vain searching for this secret way. She had questioned Aunt Julie Ann without results, and had made up her mind to gain from John first this important fact.
The brass knocker struck three sharp strokes on the front door. With a quick, cat-like movement she concealed Ackerman’s letter in her bosom, smoothed her dress, and as the young lawyer entered, rose and greeted him with a gracious smile.
“I must thank you again for undertaking this work for me,” she said, taking his hand. “It is such a relief to feel that it is now in the hands of one who understands—one I can trust implicitly.”
“It will be a pleasure if I can serve you,” he answered gravely.
“I have the papers all spread out here ready for you.”
“Pardon me, if I look about the room a moment,” John said with deep emotion. “You see I haven’t been in this room before for years. I spent many happy hours in it, in the old days.”
“I hope this will not be the last time you will enter, now that we are going to be friends. When we have time you must take me all through in every nook and corner—show me all the secret closets and dark passageways and tell me its history.”
“Yes, of course”—he answered with an absent look.
“I don’t believe you were listening to what I said at all,” she exclaimed with mock anger. “A penny for your real thoughts!”
“May I be bold enough to tell you just what I was thinking?”
“Yes.”
“I was thinking,” he said with a sober smile, “what a beautiful picture you make in this old oak panelled room. The delicate lines of your face seem at home here as though the master workman who carved the figure in that mantel had seen you in a vision while he was at work.”
“What a dreamer you are!” she laughed.
“And you are willing to trust me as a lawyer?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I must prove myself worthy, mustn’t I?”
“The papers are ready”—she said, bustling about the table and mixing the bundles in greater confusion with an attempt at arranging them in business order.
John seated himself and began to examine them. She bent over his shoulder saying with a light laugh:
“I’ll do my best to explain them—they are all Greek to me—but you’ll understand.”
“I’m sure there will be no great difficulty.”
He ran rapidly over the bundles and in half an hour had made memorandums of each division of the work before him. He took up one of the packages and began its careful reading, but the writing faded. He could hear Stella softly breathing as she bent near him and see the beautiful little hand resting on the table. He was seized with a mad impulse to grasp it and clasp her in his arms. He smiled and placed his hand on his forehead a moment lest she might see his confusion. He could endure it no longer. He must leave and regain control of himself.
He tied the packages of papers together and rose.
“You are going so soon?” she asked.
“Yes, I’ll take them down to my office. It will require several hours to go over them.”
“You will come again to-morrow?” she said softly.
“I’ll report to you again to-morrow evening.”
“I shall expect you at eight,” she said, extending her hand.
He held it unconsciously for an instant, and wondered if she could feel the pounding of his heart.
He came each evening for a week and spent two hours in the library with Stella until every letter and paper had been thoroughly examined. In a hundred little ways she had made him feel the power and charm of her personality; in no way so keenly, perhaps, as in the long silences during which she sat near with her great brown eyes watching him intently. He could feel their deep mysterious light in whatever direction he turned. In no other way could she have made so powerful an appeal to his imagination. To his poetic fancy, this capacity for silent comradeship in a girl so young revealed a depth of character which he had not suspected.
The real depth of its meaning he could not dream. The moments of exultant triumph, of breathless suspense, of merciless cruelty with which she watched him slowly entering the trap she had set, were safely concealed beneath the childlike expression of her beautiful face.
Each night he felt his resolution to allow no word of love to pass his lips harder and harder to keep. And each night she watched with increasing excitement his gradual approach to the brink of the precipice to which she silently beckoned.
On the night of his final report when the work was finished, she looked at him intently and said: “Now, I’m going to hold you to your promise.”
“And have I broken one?”
“Only forgotten it, I think—you must go over the old house with me—every nook and corner. But before we start, come, you are tired, I’ve some refreshments for you.”
She led the way into the dining room where she had prepared a dainty supper. Aunt Julie Ann in spotless white cap and apron, stood smiling her welcome. The table was lighted with a dozen wax candles set in two old silver candelabra which had belonged to the Graham family more than a hundred years, until they had fallen with the house and its furnishings into the Judge’s hands.
Stella seated herself at one end of the table which had been shortened to its smallest size and placed John at the other. Her position, the lights and the effects of the picture in his imagination, she had carefully planned and rehearsed before his arrival. She meant to win to-night.
Behind her stood the rich old mahogany sideboard of Colonial pattern, the Graham silver flashing in the quaint gold mirror which hung above it. In the mirror her own image was clearly reflected. The man opposite could look into her face and at the same time see in the shining silvery picture above the sideboard the black ringlets of curling hair at the back of her neck, as well as the exquisite lines of her figure.
John gazed at her in silent wonder. Never had he seen a picture so appealing in its beauty to every sense of his being. He felt that she was born to sit at that table amid such surroundings.
She lifted the teapot to fill his cup:
“This little feast is to celebrate the completion of our work.”
“And seal our friendship, may I hope?” he broke in with a smile.
“Yes,” she answered in a whisper.
These soft notes of her voice thrilled the man before her, and his whole being quivered in response to their call. He wondered if he could conceal the hunger with which he was looking into her eyes.
He had always thought her the most beautiful being he had ever seen, but to-night for the first time she had dressed specially to receive him, and his imagination had not dreamed the picture—Her beauty fairly stunned him.
Her dress was of filmy zephyr-like white chiffon, cut low to show the full lines of the neck and shoulders. Around the upper part of her beautiful bare arms, where they melted into the shoulders, was drawn a scarf of delicate lace. Where it crossed the waist line in V shape, was pinned an ivorytype miniature portrait of her proud mother, painted at her own age of twenty, which looked so strikingly like the living form above, it might have been taken for the image of a twin sister. A sash of pink ribbon encircled her figure. The skirt hung in full puffy lines draped over a number of under-skirts after the fashion of the period. The bottom of the skirt was finished with a border of lace on the top of which were set at intervals clusters of little pink roses wrought in silk.
Her curly crown of black hair was parted in the middle and drawn low on the side of the face in two great waves and tied behind with a pink ribbon. The long ends were curled into four strands and thrown carelessly around her neck in front and hung to the waist. Her head was circled with a tiny wreath of the living pink roses from which the silk ones had been modelled. To John’s fancy this wreath against her black hair seemed the jewelled crown of a queen set in priceless rubies.
She poured the tea with her bare arm uplifted in a fascinating pose, the right arm curved just enough to tilt the teapot and yet preserve the dimple at her elbow. In all his life he could not remember an arm like these—so graceful, so seductive each little movement, they seemed to possess a conscious soul of their own. Her whole being spoke the charm of the boundless vitality of youth just budding into perfect womanhood. Her delicate skin flashed its tints in harmony with every mood of thought in her voice. She had as a divine gift a sensitiveness of expression, so acute that it could be controlled by the fierce will which hid beneath the velvet surface. She could blush at will because her imagination was so vivid that she could direct its powers by a subtle process of auto-suggestion.
John had not realised until he saw her eat how wonderful were the lines of her luscious lips. He felt that he could sit there forever and watch her dainty wrist and tapering fingers lift the cup. Her eyes were friendly to-night! They looked at him with dreamy tenderness, a childlike trust, and perfect faith.
How could he live through the evening without telling her of his love! Yet he must keep silent. He felt with deep foreboding an approaching catastrophe which must soon overwhelm the men who had created an Empire whose power they could not control. That Empire had left a stain of blood on the floor of this house—a stain that must forever darken his own life and hers—and yet—how could he give her up?
He rose from the table at her suggestion and followed her in a spell as she lifted a silver candlestick above her head and started to explore the house.
He found his tongue at last and told her with boyish enthusiasm the legends of the old mansion, the associations of each room, and sketched with good-humoured criticism the peculiarities of his people. In the gallery of the observatory he showed her the spots from which the slightest sounds were echoed to the hall below, and explained the origin of many of the ghost stories which the Negroes believed with such implicit faith.
Stella leaned over the railing and looked down into the hall at the chair in which her father had fallen the night of the dance, and a curious smile played about her lips.
“And what are you smiling at?” he asked softly.
Without the quiver of an eyelid, either in surprise or recognition of the fact that he had caught her in a moment off her guard, she replied:
“I was just wondering if you ever believed in ghosts?”
“Of course,” he laughed.
“Really?”
“Yes. When Aunt Julie Ann used to tell them to me at night in the nursery they were vivid and terrible realities.”
“And you’ve laughed away all the romances of childhood now?”
“No,” he answered firmly. “I halfway believe in ghosts still, and the old dreams of beauty and love, of honour and truth, seem to me more and more the only things in human life that have any value.”
They had returned to the hall. Stella placed the candle on the table and sat down on the davenport. John followed her instinctively and seated himself by her side.
Suddenly she placed her soft hand on his, exclaiming:
“Oh! There’s one thing we’ve forgotten!” She felt him tremble at her touch.
“What?”
“The legend of the secret way—tell me about it—how it originated and all—of course, I know it is only a legend. Such things are only found in stories.”
John looked at her, with a smile playing about the corners of his mouth.
“You have ceased to believe in romance, ghosts and fairies?”
“I’ll believe it if you tell me,” she said softly.
John took her hand and lifted her from the lounge.
“Have you faith enough to follow me through the dark secret way to-night if I can find it for you?”
“Yes!” she whispered, leaning toward him trustingly.
“Then I’m going to do what was never done before—show this secret way to one who does not answer to the name of Graham.”
Stella’s bosom rose and fell with deep emotion as she turned her brown eyes on John.
“But why not?” he continued. “The house is yours. And I’m haunted with the strange fancy that your spirit has lived here before.”
“I have grown to love it,” she said hesitatingly, “in spite of the tragedy. It’s strange. I wonder at myself for it.”
John turned toward the panel in the wainscoting whose location he knew so well, paused and said:
“I’d better wait and let you change your dress. You’ll soil it against the damp narrow walls.”
Stella’s eyes were sparkling now with excitement.
“No matter. I can’t wait a minute. The mystery and romance will be worth a dress. Show me the way. I’ll follow.”
“All right,” John answered, as he extended his hand and pressed the moulding behind which lay the spring. The panel flew open and a rush of cool air took Stella’s breath.
“Heavens!” she exclaimed, clinging suddenly to John’s arm, “why, I had no idea it could open here just behind us in the hall!”
He could feel her tremble.
“There’s not the slightest danger—you need not be afraid,” he said, tenderly. “Wait, I’ll get the candle and go before you.”
He took the candle from the centre table and entered the passage-way, closing the panel.
“Wait, you must hold my hand,” Stella cried timidly.
He took the soft little hand in his with a throb of joy and carefully led her down the tiny stairs into the basement, where the passage turned between two walls and again descended a half dozen steps to another door which led out of the house into the long straight way to the vault.
Trembling with excitement, she clung in silence to his hand as they entered the long damp passage. He closed the door suddenly, the sound crashing through the narrow walls in a thousand startling echoes.
Stella sprang into his arms, nestling close and whispered:
“Mercy! what was that?”
“Only the door,” he laughed.
“It scared me nearly to death,” she faltered, slowly withdrawing from his sheltering protection while she skilfully managed to press her soft bare arm against his hand. She felt him tremble, his breath deepen and quicken at the touch of her flesh.
“You’re sure there’s no danger?” she asked.
“Not the slightest,” he replied cheerily. “Just one more little surprise and we are out in the moonlight on the lawn.”
He led her clinging to his hand along the dark way, holding the flickering candle above her head, a hundred mad impulses of love surging through his brain.
They stopped at the stoneset door leading into the tomb, and he handed her the candle, gently disengaging his other hand. He drew the heavy door back, Stella stepped through and he followed close behind her.
She raised the candle high and looked about the vault. With a sudden cry, she staggered into his arms gasping:
“Why,—we’re—in—the—vault!”
The candle dropped from her hand and she threw her arm around John’s neck clinging to him frantically. Her hold relaxed and her head drooped against his breast. He clasped her tenderly for a moment and his lips instinctively touched the curling mass of her hair, as he cried in agony:
“God help me—I’m lost!”
She revived as quickly as she had collapsed and murmured:
“I was about to faint—quick, let’s get out!”
He led her through the iron grilled door into the moonlit shadows of the lawn.
“Oh!” she cried with a gasp of relief. “What a wild experience! I hope I didn’t do anything very silly—did I?” she asked dreamily.
“You did just what any little girl of your age might do under such conditions,” he replied, gazing at her with deep seriousness. “Come, let us find a seat on the lawn and I’ll tell you the story of the vault and the secret way.”
He led her to the seat on which he had sunk in despair the night he came half-mad with pain to watch the masqueraders whirl past her lighted windows.
The full moon wrapped the earth in the white mantle of Southern midsummer glory, and the night wind stirred, its breath laden with the rich perfume of every flower in full bloom. A katydid was singing a plaintive song in the tree above, and in the rose bushes near the porch a mocking-bird rehearsed in a burst of mad joy every love song of the feathered world.
In low, rapid tones John told her the story of Robert Graham’s great love for his Huguenot grandmother and why he built the vault and secret way.
She listened and furtively watched him struggling with his emotions.
Suddenly he turned, looked tenderly into her eyes and took her hand.
“After all, Miss Stella, what else matters on earth, when life has once been made glorious by a great, deathless love—such a love as that which has grown in my own heart for you.”
Stella turned away to hide the flash of triumph with which her face was flushed.
“Ah! don’t answer me now,” he rushed on. “I don’t ask it. I only beg the privilege of telling you—telling you how you have lifted my soul from the shadows of self and hate, and made life radiant and beautiful. I dare not hope that you love me yet—that you only hear me is enough. That I sit by your side and tell you is all I ask. My love is so deep, so full, so rich, so great, it is glory and life and strength within itself. I could die to-night and count my life a triumph, because I’ve seen you and loved you, and you have heard me. May I tell you all that is in my heart?”
He leaned closer and pressed her hand gently.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Why not?”
“I dare not tell you why I pause to ask the question. I’ve sometimes thought that an impassable gulf yawned between us. To-night I’ve thrown such rubbish to the winds. There’s no gulf so wide, so deep and dark the heart of love may not leap it. Nothing matters save that I love you, that you smile and hear me!”
“I am honoured in your love,” she answered gently.
“Ah! you can never know how sweet it is to hear that from your dear lips. I cannot tell you the madness of the joy that fills me, when I realise that I have found in you all I’ve ever dreamed of beauty, tenderness and purity. All the songs of life that poets dream and find no words in which to sing, I feel within. If you should send me from your presence now, I’d laugh at Death for I have tasted Life! To win your love is all I ask of this world or the next—You will let me try?”
“Yes,” said the low voice, as she placed her hand again in his.
“Then I must go,” he said, rising and lifting her from the seat—“I’ve said enough to-night. I must go before I dare say too much and break the spell of joy that holds me.”
At the door he asked.
“I may come again to-morrow?”
“Yes, at eight.”
He bowed and kissed the tips of her fingers.
“I may have something to say to you to-morrow,” she said seriously.
“I shall count the minutes of every hour that separates us.”
She watched the tall figure pass swiftly and joyously along the white gravelled moonlit walk, while a paean of fierce joy welled within her heart.
“I’ve won—I’ve won, beyond the shadow of a doubt!” she cried, exultantly.
CHAPTER VIII—THE TRACKS AT THE DOOR
WITHIN thirty minutes after Ackerman had received Stella’s message that she had found the secret entrance to the house he was waiting for her at the door of the vault as she had suggested.
He had entered by the rear wagon road and passed into the shrubbery without attracting the attention of the servants.
She showed him the way to the underground passage through the niche in the rear of the vault, and in ten minutes Ackerman entered the hall through the panel under the stairs.
Stella, who had returned to the house across the lawn, watched the panel slowly open at his touch and her eyes gleamed with a cold, hard light as she saw reenacted in imagination the tragedy of her father’s death.
The detective made an accurate diagram of the hall, measured carefully the distance of the secret door from the chair in which the Judge had been found, and reëxamined the ballroom and all its possible exits and entrances.
Stella returned to the entrance of the vault and placed a padlock and chain on its iron door while Ackerman again entered the underground passage and spent two hours alone, making the most minute examinations and measurements of every track to be found at any point from the door of the vault to the panel in the wainscoting. The work of measurement was rendered easy by the accumulation of soft earth in the bottom of the underground way from the action of the water which had soaked through the brick ceiling and walls.
He discovered the footprints of eleven different men besides the dainty mark of Stella’s little shoe made the night before.
He returned to the hall and asked her permission to come from time to time and continue his study of the grounds.
“Certainly,” she answered eagerly. “And your discoveries?”
“Confirm so far my theory of the crime,” he answered quickly. “The assassins undoubtedly entered the house by this secret passage, committed the crime and passed quickly out without discovery. I did not know who was with you last night, but he has been there at least once before within the past few weeks.”
“Is it possible!” Stella exclaimed.
“I find,” he continued, “that he merely took a single step inside the door leading from the vault into the underground passage as if he were showing the way to others who traversed the entire length.”
Stella’s red lips were suddenly pressed tight and Ackerman watched her keenly.
“This may mean something or it may mean nothing. It all depends on what night he stepped inside the door.”
“I see,” she said cautiously.
“Other facts I have found are of significance,” he went on. “I have located Mr. Isaac A. Postle, and learned from him two startling things. First that he encountered John Graham at the gate on the night of the murder—collided with him, he declares, as he was running from the masked men who had just galloped past his cottage.”
The girl smothered a cry.
“He also says that later in the evening, just before the murder occurred, he passed by the front door and saw John Graham seated on a rustic bench in the shadows watching the house.”
“It’s horrible—it’s horrible!” Stella murmured. “The two statements contradict each other. Uncle Isaac is lying at some point of his story. If he ran for his life from the masqueraders he certainly would not have returned to the house in thirty minutes while they were still there. Until I can find the motive for that lie his story must be taken with a large grain of salt. In the meantime if you can confirm for me his statement that Graham was here on that night you will do me a service.”
“Within a week I’ll tell you,” she replied, the strange cold light flashing again from her eyes.
CHAPTER IX—A TEST OF STRENGTH
IN TAKING leave of Ackerman Stella went immediately to her room to select her dress and plan her campaign for John Graham’s reception in the evening.
A feeling of reaction depressed her. The passionate warmth and tenderness of his love remained a haunting memory. A sense of loneliness crept into her heart. She began to see that she was playing a desperate game with the great stake of a human life as the issue. The consciousness of its possible tragedy began to be dimly felt. She sat staring idly at the gowns she had piled on the big tester bed without being able to make a selection.
“I’ve begun a daring task,” she mused. “The wit and beauty of a girl of twenty against the iron will and personality of a man of genius. A man just entering his thirtieth year, who has looked Death in the face on the field of battle and dared defy the power of the Government that has crushed him. Can I win?”
The closer she had drawn to John Graham in their intimate daily association the more impossible seemed the idea that such a man could have murdered her father or known of such a crime. And yet the closer each day drew the net of circumstantial evidence about him and the fiercer grew her determination to demand the life of the murderer.
What had surprised her most of all in his character was the spirit of eternal youth within him—youth strong, fresh, buoyant and throbbing with poetic ideals. At first she had thought him sombre and morose, yet in his presence she could never imagine him more than twenty years of age. In many of his little ways and moods she found him more boy than man. And she must acknowledge the truth—she had begun to think of his possible death as a criminal with a pang of regret.
She rose and studied her beautiful figure in her mirror until self and pride once more filled the universe.
“Bah! What to me is the life of the man who struck my father dead at my feet! I’ll amuse myself by playing the game of love with him for a week, and then for the master-stroke. I’ll watch him as a cat a mouse, and when I’m ready, strike to kill. If he had no mercy, I shall have none.”
John found her in a mood of elusive girlishness. When he begged her to remember her parting words, the half-pledged promise of a message for which he waited, she only laughed and fenced.
She allowed him to call each afternoon and evening for a week until he was drunk with the joy of her presence—until the sense of personal intimacy and the growing consciousness of comradeship had made his will obedient to her slightest whim. It amused her to watch the growth of his powers of intuition, born of this daily life, which enabled him to anticipate her wishes.
For the man, these days were as water to the lips of a thirsty dreamer. In the heart of the girl, who studied his every movement with deep sinister purpose, there had grown a cruel joy in the consciousness of the tyranny she wielded over a powerful human life.
Toward the end of the week he began to beg her tenderly for a single word of love. At last she promised him an answer on the evening following, and forbade his afternoon call. She knew the effect of his longer absence would be to give her greater power. At last she was sure that the hour had struck toward which she had moved with such infinite pains, the hour of his complete surrender and his utter trust, when she had but to breathe her wish to know the guarded secrets of the Klan and they would be whispered into her ear without a moment’s hesitation.
She had planned to lead him to the seat amid the shadows of the trees near the house from which Isaac said he had watched the dance the night of the tragedy, and if possible gain both important secrets at once.
She again selected the low cut white chiffon she wore the night he had declared his love.
Maggie’s keen eyes watched her dress with a care never shown before. The little black maid flashed her white teeth more than once behind her back as she observed the delicate yet sure art with which, by a touch here and there, her mistress managed to suggest with unusual daring the physical charms of her extraordinary beauty. When the task was finished and she surveyed her form in her mirror with a look of proud content, Maggie laughed:
“You sho’ is trying ter kill ’im to-night!”
“Maggie, how dare you suggest such a thing!”
“De Laws a mussy, Miss Stella, I des mean dat you’se de purtiest thing in de whole worl’ an’ he gwine drap dead quick as he sees ye!”
“That will do, Maggie,” she said severely.
“Yassum.”
But in spite of her severity, the mistress smiled at the maid, and Maggie burst into a fit of laughter. When at length it subsided, she stood with wide staring worshipful eyes gazing at Stella entranced.
“Ef I could look lak dat, Miss Stella, I’d let ‘em bile me in ile, roast me on a red-hot stove and peel me!”
“You are breaking the Ten Commandments, Maggie.”
“Yassum, I’d bust a hundred commandments ef I could look lak you.”
“I accept the compliment, if I can’t commend your morals.”
“Yassum.”
A sudden flash of lightning revealed the clouds of a rapidly approaching summer storm.
Stella frowned.
“It’s going to storm,” she said, fretfully,
“Yassum, but he’ll come.”
The mistress laughed in spite of herself.
“I’m not worrying about his coming, Maggie.”
“Nobum, you needn’t worry. He swim er river ef he couldn’t git here no odder way—dar he is now!”
His familiar knock echoed through the hall and the maid hastened to open the door.
When Stella stood before him, John seized both her hands and looked into her deep eyes with silent rapture.
“How glorious you are to-night!” he whispered passionately.
She made no answer save the sensitive smile of triumph which lighted her face and quivered through her form.
“I meant to find a seat on the lawn to-night, but it’s going to rain.”
“Yes, I ran, to get here first,” he cried with boyish enthusiasm—“It’s raining now, but the old davenport under the stairs is cosey on a rainy night.”
She looked at the panel door and hesitated.
“You’re not afraid of ghosts from below I hope?” he laughed.
“No, I’ve locked the iron door,” she announced soberly, taking her seat by his side.
With a vivid flash of lightning followed by a crash of thunder the storm broke, the big raindrops mixed with hail rattling furiously against the windows.
Stella nestled closer to his side, and John turned his swarthy, eager face toward her.
“Now, while the storm roars,” he whispered, “and shuts out the world, drawing us closer together—so close I feel that there is no world beyond the touch of your hand and the music of your voice—won’t you tell me what my heart is starving to hear?”
“Do you realise what it means for a girl to say to a man, ‘I love you?’” she asked slowly.
“I do,” was the quick answer.
“In all its depths?”
“Yes. It means the utter surrender of soul and body or it means nothing!”
“And yet, you ask that I say it?”
“I know that I’m not worthy, but Love has always dared to claim its own, soul crying to soul, mate calling to mate—I love you! I love you! Ah! The story is old as the throb of life, yet always new and full of wonder. I know it’s too much to ask, yet I dare to ask it.”
“There should be no shadows between those who thus love, should there?” she asked with a far-away dreamy look as if his burning words had caught her spirit in their spell.
“No,” he answered, solemnly. “A thousand times I’ve longed to tell you how tender was my sympathy for you in the tragedy that threw its shadow across your young life in this hall a few months ago.”
“And yet you didn’t,” she said reproachfully, studying him keenly and furtively, with her head bowed as if in grief for the memory of her father.
“How could I without hypocrisy? The Judge and I had been uncompromising enemies. Could I tear my heart open and let the vulgar world see the deep secret of my love for you?”
“You loved me then?” she broke in with surprise.
“From the moment you crossed this old hall the night I met you.”
Loved me when you refused to answer my appeal in person the day I wrote you?”
“I refused because I loved you.”
She looked at him a moment with a feeling of sudden fear. For the first time she realised with a shock that her imperious will to master his life was not the only force at work. The shadowy figure of Fate stood grim and silent before her.
“The man who wins my heart,” she said firmly, “can hold no reservations—he must be all mine, body and soul. He asks as much of me. I demand the same. Are you ready to place your life in my hands as I am asked to place mine in yours?”
“Without reservation,” he answered.
“I must be frank with you,” she said, turning her eyes appealingly on him. “Since the awful night I saw my father sitting dead in that chair with those masked figures, white, silent and terrible behind me, I have had a morbid curiosity mingled with terror for everything and everyone connected with the Klan. I have heard that you are a member?”
John suddenly knelt before her and took her hand.
“Here on my knees before you and before God—and when I am before you I am in the presence of God!—I call the spirit of the dead back on the wings of this storm to-night into this hall to witness when I swear to you that I am innocent of any knowledge of his death!”
“And there shall be not one shadow between us?
“Not one. Every secret of my life shall be laid bare before I’d dare claim you as my wife. I only beg to-night one word of love from your dear lips. You believe me when I swear to you, on my honour, my life, my love that I am innocent?”
“Yes, I believe and trust you!”
He bowed and kissed her fingers reverently.
“And now you must show that you trust me before I speak,” she went on dreamily—“you are in reality the Chief of the Klan in North Carolina, are you not?”
John’s hand trembled, his lips quivered, and a look of mortal anguish overspread his face.
“Please don’t ask me that yet?” he begged. “You are afraid to trust me?” she said reproachfully.
“I trust you implicitly,” he cried, pressing her hand, “but do not ask me now!”
“The hands of Southern women made those white and scarlet costumes,” she persisted. “May I not share at least one of its secrets with them?”
“Remember that conditions have changed!” he urged—“A price is set on the head of every member of the Klan. The South now swarms with spies—the Government is straining every nerve to learn the secrets of the order—have I the right even to breathe the name of the Klan while another’s life may hang on my word?”
“I see,” she cried with scorn, rising. “The daughter of a murdered ‘Scalawag’ judge may not be trusted as other loyal women of the proud old aristocratic South!”
“Please, I beg of you——”
“You may go!” she said proudly.
And without another word she quickly turned, ascended the stairs and disappeared.
John stood for a moment blind and dumb with pain, mechanically took his hat and slowly passed through the door and out into the black, raging storm.