ANOTHER year of struggle and suffering, hope and fear, Gaston had passed, and still he was no nearer the dream of realised love. If anything had changed, the General’s pride had added new force to his determination that his daughter should not marry the man who had defied him.
His chief reliance for Gaston’s defeat was on time, and the broadening of Sallie’s mind by extended travel. He had sent her abroad twice, and this year he sent her to spend another three months in Europe.
These absences seemed only to intensify her longing for her lover. On her return the General would burst into a storm of rage at her persistence. She had ceased to give him any bitter answers, only smiling quietly and maintaining an ominous silence.
He had a new cause now of dislike for the man of her choice. Gaston had become a man of acknowledged power in politics and was the leader of a group of radical young men who demanded the complete reorganisation of the Democratic party, the shelving of the old timers, among whom he was numbered, and the announcement of a radical programme upon the Negro issue.
Radicalism of any sort he had always hated. Now, as advanced by this young upstart, it was doubly odious. The General had never given much time to his political duties, but his name was a power, and he gave regularly to the campaign committee the largest cash contribution they received.
He tried in a clumsy way to put Gaston off the State Executive Committee, but failed. He saw Gaston quietly laughing at him. Then he opened his pocket book and worked up a machine. It was a formidable power, and Gaston feared its influence in the coming convention.
While this fight was in progress, and Sallie was in Europe, the destruction of the Maine in Havana harbour stilled the world into silence with the echo of its sullen roar. There was a moment’s pause, and the nation lifted its great silk battle flags from the Capitol at Washington, and called for volunteers to wipe the empire of Spain from the map of the Western world.
The war lasted but a hundred days, but in those hundred days was packed the harvest of centuries.
War is always the crisis that flashes the search light into the souls of men and nations, revealing their unknown strength and weakness, and the changes that have been silently wrought in the years of peace.
In these hundred days, statesmen who were giants suddenly shrivelled into pigmies and disappeared from the nation’s life. Young men whose names were unknown became leaders of the republic and won immortal fame.
We were afraid that our nation still lacked unity. The world said we were a mob of money-grubbers, and had lost our grasp of principle. The President called for 125,000 men to die for their flag, and next morning 800,000 were struggling for place in the line.
We feared that religion might threaten the future with its bitter feud between the Roman Catholic and Protestant in a great crisis. We saw our Catholic regiments march forth to that war with screaming fife and throbbing drum and the flag of our country above them, going forth to fight an army that had been blessed by the Pope of Rome. The flag had become the common symbol of eternal justice, and the nation the organ through which all creeds and cults sought for righteousness.
We feared the gulf between the rich and the poor had become impassable, and we saw the millionaire’s son take his place in the ranks with the workingman. The first soldier wearing our uniform who fell before Santiago with a Spanish bullet in his breast, was an only son from a palatial home in New York, and by his side lay a cowboy from the West and a plowboy from the South. Once more we showed the world that classes and clothes are but thin disguises that hide the eternal childhood of the soul.
Sectionalism and disunity had been the most terrible realities in our national history. Our fathers had a poet leader whose soul dreamed a beautiful dream called E Pluribus Unum.. But it had remained a dream. New England had threatened secession years before South Carolina in blind rage led the way. The Union was saved by a sacrifice of blood that appalled the world. And still millions feared the South might be false to her plighted honour at Appomattox. The ghost of Secession made and unmade the men and measures of a generation.
Then came the trumpet call that put the South to the test of fire and blood. The world waked next morning to find for the first time in our history the dream of union a living fact. There was no North, no South,—but from the James to the Rio Grande the children of the Confederacy rushed with eager flushed faces to defend the flag their fathers had once fought.
And God reserved in this hour for the South, land of ashes and tombs and tears, the pain and the glory of the first offering of life on the altar of the new nation. Our first and only officer who fell dead on the deck of a warship, with the flag above him, was Worth Bagley, of North Carolina, the son of a Confederate soldier. The gallant youngster who stood on the bridge of the Merrimac, and between two towering mountains of flaming cannon, in the darkness of night blew up his ship and set a new standard of Anglo-Saxon daring, was the son of a Confederate soldier of North Carolina.
The town of Hambright furnished a whole company of eighty-six men, a Captain, three Lieutenants, and a Major, who saw service in the war.
When they were drawn up in the court house square under the old oak, the Preacher stood before them and called the roll from four browned parchments. They were Campbell county Confederate rosters. Every one of the eighty-six men was a child of the Confederacy. And the immortal company F, that was wiped out of existence at the battle of Gettysburg furnished more than half these children.
“Ah, boys, blood will tell!” cried the Preacher, shaking hands with each man as they left.
A single round from the guns, and it was over. The yellow flag of Spain, lit with the sunset splendour of a world empire, faded from the sky of the West.
A new naval power had arisen to disturb the dreams of statesmen. The Oregon, that fierce leviathan of hammered steel, had made her mark upon the globe. In a long black trail of smoke and ribbon of foam, she had circled the earth without a pause for breath. The thunder of her lips of steel over the shattered hulks of a European navy proclaimed the advent of a giant democracy that struck terror to the hearts of titled snobs.
He who dreamed this monster of steel, felt her heart beat, saw her rush through foaming seas to victory, before the pick of a miner had struck the ore for her ribs from a mountain side, was a child of the Confederacy—that Confederacy whose desperate genius had sent then Alabama spinning round the globe in a whirlwind of fire.
America united at last and invincible, waked to the consciousness of her resistless power.
And, most marvellous of all, this hundred days of war had re-united the Anglo-Saxon race. This sudden union of the English speaking people in friendly alliance disturbed the equilibrium of the world, and confirmed the Anglo-Saxon in his title to the primacy of racial sway.
ALMOST every problem of national life had been illumined and made more hopeful by the searchlight of war save one—the irrepressible conflict between the African and the Anglo-Saxon in the development of our civilisation. The glare of war only made the blackness of this question the more apparent.
While the well-drilled negro regulars, led by white officers acquitted themselves with honour at Santiago, the negro volunteers were the source of riot and disorder wherever they appeared. From the first, it was seen by thoughtful men that the Negro was an impossibility in the newborn unity of national life. When the Anglo-Saxon race was united into one homogeneous mass in the fire of this crisis, the Negro ceased that moment to be a ward of the nation.
A negro regiment had been in camp at Independence during the war and was still there awaiting orders to be mustered out. Its presence had inflamed the passions of both races to the danger point of riot again and again. The negro who was editing their paper at Independence had gone to the length of the utmost license in seeking to influence race antagonism.
When the regiment of which the Hambright company was a member was mustered out at Independence, Gaston was invited to deliver the address of welcome home to the soldiers, and a crowd of five thousand people were present, one-half of whom were negroes.
While Gaston was speaking in the square, a negro trooper passing along the street refused to give an inch of the sidewalk to a young lady and her escort, who met him. He ran into the girl, jostling her roughly, and the young white man knocked him down instantly and beat him to death. The wildest passions of the negro regiment were roused. McLeod was among them that day seeking to increase his popularity and influence in the coming election, and he at once denounced Gaston as the cause of the assault, and urged the leaders in secret to retaliate by putting a bullet through his heart.
The white regiment had been mustered out, and their guns in most cases had been retained by the men. The negro troops were to be mustered out the next day.
Late in the afternoon Gaston had received information that a plot was on foot to kill him that night, when a negro mob would batter down his door on the pretense of searching for the man who had assaulted the trooper. The Colonel of the regiment just disbanded heard it, and that night his men bivouacked in the yard of the hotel and slept on their guns.
A little after twelve o’clock, a mob of five hundred negroes attempted to force their way into the hotel. They met a regiment of bayonets, broke, and fled in wild confusion.
This event was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. In the morning paper a blazing notice in display capitals covered the first page, calling a mass meeting of white citizens at noon in Independence Hall.
The little city of Independence was one of the oldest in the nation. It boasted the first declaration of independence from Great Britain antedating a year the Philadelphia document. The people had never rested tamely under tyranny nor accepted insult.
The McLeod Negro-Farmer Legislature had remodelled the ancient charter of the city, and under the new instrument a combination of negroes and criminal whites had taken possession of every office.
One half of these office holders were incompetent and insolent negroes. The Chief of Police was an ignoramus in league with criminals, and their Mayor, a white demagogue elected by pandering to the lowest passions of a negro constituency.
Burglary and highway robbery were almost daily occurrences. The two largest stores in the city and four residences had been burned within a month. Appeal to the police became a farce, and it was necessary to hire and arm a force of private guards to patrol the city at night. When arrests were made, the servile authorities promptly released the criminals. Negro insolence reached a height that made it impossible for ladies to walk the streets without an armed escort, and white children were waylaid and beaten on their way to the public schools.
The incendiary organ of the negroes, a newspaper that had been noted for its virulent spirit of race hatred, had published an editorial defaming the virtue of the white women of the community.
At eleven o’clock the quaint old hall, built in Revolutionary days to seat five hundred people, was packed with a crowd of eight hundred stern-visaged men standing so thick it was impossible to pass through them and thousands were massed outside around the building.
Gaston, whose ancestors had been leaders in the great Revolution, was called to the chair. The speech-making was brief, fiery, and to the point.
Within one hour they unanimously adopted this resolution:
“Resolved, that we issue a second Declaration of Independence from the infamy of corrupt and degraded government. The day of Negro domination over the Anglo-Saxon race shall close, now, once and forever. The government of North Carolina was established by a race of pioneer white freemen for white men and it shall remain in the hands of freemen.
“We demand the overthrow of the criminal and semi-barbarian régime under which we now live, and to this end serve notice on the present Mayor of this city, its Chief of Police, and the six negro aldermen and their low white associates that their resignations are expected by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. We demand that the negro anarchist who edits a paper in this city shall close his office, remove its fixtures and leave this county within twenty-four hours.”
A committee of twenty-five, with Gaston as its Chairman, was appointed to enforce these resolutions.
By four o’clock an army of two thousand white men was organised, and placed under the command of the Rev. Duncan McDonald, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of the city, who had been a brave young officer in the Confederate army. Every minister in the county was enrolled in this guard and carried a musket on picket duty, or in a reserve camp that night.
At six o’clock, Gaston summoned thirty-five of the more prominent negroes of the county including two of the professors in Miss Susan Walker’s college, to meet the Committee of Twenty-Five and receive its ultimatum. Stern and hard of face sat the twenty-five chosen representatives of that world-conquering race of men at one end of the room, while at the other end sat the thirty-five negroes anxious and fearful, realising that their day of dominion had ended.
Gaston rose and handed them a copy of the resolutions.
“We give you till seven-thirty to-morrow morning as the leaders of your race to carry out these demands,” he said gravely.
“But we have no authority, sir,” replied the negro preacher to whom he handed the paper.
“Your authority is equal to ours—the authority of elemental manhood. If you can not execute them in peace, we will do it by force.”
“We must decline such responsibility unless”—the negro started to argue the question.
“The meeting stands adjourned!” quietly announced Gaston, taking up his hat and leaving the room followed by his Committee.
At seven-thirty next morning no answer had been received. Gaston called for seventy-five volunteers to execute the decrees.
Within thirty minutes, five hundred men swung into line at eight o’clock, and marched four abreast to the office of the negro paper. It was promptly burned to the ground, its editor paid its cash value, and with a rope around his neck, escorted to the depot and placed on a north bound train.
As Gaston handed him his ticket for Washington he quietly said to him, “I have saved your life this morning. If you value it, never put your foot on the soil of this state again.”
“Thank you, sir. I ’ll not return.”
While this guard, under strict military discipline, was executing this decree, a mob of a thousand armed negroes concealed themselves in a hedge-row and fired on them from ambush, killing one man and wounding six. Gaston formed his men in line, returned the fire with deadly effect, charged the mob, put them to flight, driving them into the woods outside the city limits, and placed the town under informal but strict martial law. By ten o’clock the resignation of every city and county officer was in his hand, and the Mayor and Chief of Police were at his feet begging for mercy.
He posted a notice over the county warning every negro and white associate that no further insolence or criminality would be tolerated.
The county and municipal election was but three days off and there was but one ticket on the field. When the white men elected were sworn in, the guards went to the woods and told the terrified and half starving negroes they could return to their homes, a competent police force was organised, and the volunteer organisation disbanded. Negro refugees and their associates once more filled the ear of the national government with clamour for the return of the army to the South to uphold Negro power, but for the first time since 1867, it fell on deaf ears. The Anglo-Saxon race had been reunited. The Negro was no longer the ward of the Republic. Henceforth, he must stand or fall on his own worth and pass under the law of the survival of the fittest.
This event made a tremendous impression on the imagination of the people. It increased the popularity and power of Gaston, its intended victim, The General was more than ever determined to destroy Gaston’s power in the convention which was to meet in a few weeks. He had his candidate for Governor well groomed and he had captured the largest number of pledged delegates. There were three other candidates, but none of them apparently were backed by Gaston. The General was puzzled at his methods, and failed to discover his programme, though he spent money with liberality and exhausted every resource at his command.
A strange thing had occurred that had upset all calculations. Beginning at Independence a race fire had broken into resistless fury and was sweeping along the line of all the counties on the South Carolina border and over the entire state with incredible rapidity. Everywhere, the white men were arming themselves and parading the streets and public roads in cavalry order dressed in scarlet shirts. This Red Shirt movement was a spontaneous combustion of inflammable racial power that had been accumulating for a generation.
The Democratic Executive Committee was called together in haste and made the most frantic efforts to stop it. But there was no head to it. It had no organisation except a local one, and it spread by a spark flying from one county to another.
McLeod laughed at the address of the Democratic Committee and swore Gaston was the organiser of the movement. He determined to nip it in the bud by putting Gaston under a cloud that would destroy his influence. He did not dare to attack him for his part in the Revolution at Independence. He preferred to belittle that affair as a local disturbance.
But at an election for Congressman to fill a vacancy, the Democratic candidate had won by a narrow margin in a campaign of great bitterness under Gaston’s leadership.
Charges of fraud were freely made on both sides. McLeod determined to utilise these charges, and by producing perjured witnesses before a packed court, place Gaston in jail without bail until the convention had met.
He had every advantage in such a conspiracy. The United States judge whom he intended to utilise was a creature of his own making, a trickster whose confirmation had been twice defeated in the Senate by the members of his own party on his shady record. But he had won the place at last by hook and crook, and McLeod owned him body and soul.
Accordingly Gaston was arrested with a warrant McLeod had obtained from his judge, arraigned before him and committed without bail. He was charged with a felony under the election laws, taken to Asheville and placed in jail.
The audacity of this arrest and the vehemence with which McLeod pressed his charges created a profound sensation in the state. It was rumoured that the graver charge of murder lay back of the charge of felony and would be pressed in due time. A murder had been committed in the district during the exciting campaign and no clue had ever been found to its perpetrator. McLeod knew he had no evidence connecting Gaston with this event, but he knew that he had henchmen who would swear to any thing he told them and stick to it.
A WEEK after Gaston’s imprisonment Sallie Worth arrived in New York from her last trip abroad. She had cut her trip short and cabled her father of her return.
She was in an agony of suspense and uncertainty about her lover. Gaston’s letters had failed to reach her for a month by reason of the war which had demoralised the mail service. Her own letters had failed to reach Gaston for a similar reason.
The General hastened to New York to meet his wife and daughter and persuade Sallie to remain in the North until December. He was hopeful now that her long absence and Gaston’s absorption in politics, his bitter opposition to him personally, and the cloud under which he rested in prison, would be the final forces that would give him the victory in the long conflict he had waged for the mastery of his daughter’s heart.
Before informing Sallie of the stirring events at Independence and the part Gaston had taken in them, or allowing her to learn of his imprisonment, the General sought to find the exact state of her mind.
“I trust, Sallie,” he began, “you are recovering from your infatuation for this man. You know how dearly I love you. I have never taken a step in life since I looked into your baby face that wasn’t for you and your happiness.”
She only looked at him wistfully and her eyes seemed to be dreaming, “I want you to have some pride. Gaston has attempted to kick me out of the councils of the party, and become the dictator of the state. His course is one of violence and radicalism. I regard him as a dangerous man, and I want you to have nothing to do with him.”
She was gravely silent.
“Do you believe he has been faithfully dreaming of you in your absence?” asked the General.
“Yes, I do!”
“Then let me disabuse your mind. It is not the way of strong men. He is absolutely absorbed in a desperate political struggle in which his personal ambition’s are first. I have seen him paying the most devoted attentions to the daughter of our rival down east, whose influence he wants, and it is rumoured among his friends that he has proposed to her.”
“Who told you that?” she asked impetuously.
“I had it first from Allan, but I’ve heard it since from others.”
“I do not believe a word of it,” she declared.
“That’s because you’re a woman and hold such silly ideals. I tell you, he wants you only because he knows you are rich, and he wishes to brow-beat me. Such a man will try to whip you before you have been his wife five years. I know that kind of man. Why can’t you trust my judgment?”
“I had rather trust my heart’s intuitions, Papa, I can not be deceived in such a question.”
“Well, you are being deceived. He is anything but a languishing lover. At present he is a political tiger at bay. Unless you hold him to you by some pledge he has given, he will forget you, and marry another in two years. I am a man and I know men. I thought I was desperately in love twice before I met your mother. I got over both attacks without a scratch, fell in love with her, married and have lived happily ever since. You have overestimated your own importance to him and your influence over him.”
A great fear awed her into silence. For the first time in all her struggle with her father the sense suddenly came into her heart of her dependence on Gaston’s love for the very desire to live, and for the first time she realised the possibility of losing him. What if he should press his great ambitions to successful issue while she stood irresolute and tortured him with her indecision? If he could win the world’s applause without her, might he not, when successful, cease to need her? Her breast heaved with the tumult of uncertainty. What if another woman saw and loved him, and drew near to him in his hours of soul loneliness and struggle, and he had learned to see her face with joy! The conviction came crushing upon her that she had not responded bravely to this powerful man’s singular devotion into which he had poured without reserve his deepest passion. Had he weighed her and found her wanting in some dark hour in her absence? Her heart was in her throat at the thought!
The General watched her keenly for several moments, and thought at last he had broken the spell. He believed he could now tell her of the cloud that hung over Gaston.
“I said, Sallie, that I believed Gaston a dangerous man. I did not speak lightly. We have had terrible riots in Independence while you were absent in which Gaston was the leader of an armed revolution which overturned the city and county government. Two thousand men were under arms for a week and several were killed and wounded on both sides. The results were good as a whole, I confess. We have a decent government and we have security of property and life, but such methods will lead to civil war.”
Her face grew tense, and she looked at her father with breathless interest during this recital.
“Was he in danger in those riots?” she slowly asked.
“Yes, and I expect him to be killed at an early day if he continues his present methods. A mob of five hundred negroes attempted to kill him. This was one of the causes that led to the Revolution.”
She was on her feet now pale and trembling with excitement.
“Where is he?” she gasped.
“Now, my dear, it’s useless to get excited. The trouble is all over and a new Mayor and police force are in charge of the city. But he is resting under a serious cloud at present. He is held in jail at Asheville on a charge of felony, and a charge of murder is being pressed.”
“In jail! in jail!” she cried incredulously while her eyes filled with tears.
“Yes, and Allan believes these ugly charges will be proved in the United States court, and he will be convicted.”
She did not seem to hear the last sentence.
“In jail!” she repeated, “my lover, to whom I have given my life, and you, my father, while I was three thousand miles away stood by and did not lift a hand to help him?”
“Has he not been my bitterest enemy, seeking to insult me!” thundered the General.
“No, he never insulted you, or spoke one unkind word about you in his life. Oh! this is shameful! God forgive me that I was not here!” Tears were streaming down her face.
“You hold me responsible for the crazy young scamp’s career?” cried the General indignantly.
“Not another word to me!” she exclaimed. “You shall not abuse him in my presence.”
The General was afraid of her when she used the tone of voice in which she uttered that sentence. He had heard it but once before, and that was when she told him she was a free woman twenty-one years old, and he had broken down. He looked at her now, fearing to speak. At length he said, “I have engaged a suite of rooms for you here at the Waldorf-Astoria, my dear, for the winter. I hope you will enjoy the season. Let us change this painful subject.”
“I do not want the rooms,” she firmly replied, “I am going to Asheville on the first train.”
The General stormed and raged for an hour, but she made no reply. Her mother was suffering from the effects of the voyage and took no part in this storm.
“But your mother will not be able to accompany you. Surely you will not disgrace me by visiting that man in jail!”
“I will. And when he is released I will return. I will visit Stella Holt. I shall have ample protection.”
The General was afraid to oppose her in this dangerous mood, and begged her mother to try to prevent her going. Sallie sent Gaston a telegram that she was coming.
In obedience to the General’s request her mother called her into her room that night and they had a long talk and cry in each other’s arms.
Mrs. Worth did not try very hard to persuade her not to go. Down in her own woman’s soul she knew what she would do under similar conditions, and she was too honest with her child to try to deceive her. She only made love to her mother-fashion.
“Oh! Mama,” cried Sallie, burying her face beside her mother as she lay in bed. “I am at a great soul crisis. I don’t know what to do. I feel lonely, helpless and heart-sick. You are a woman. Put your dear arms about me and help me to know the truth and my duty. I want to ask you a question.”
“What is it, darling? I ’ll answer it, if I can,” she replied stroking her dark hair tenderly.
“Do you believe these stories about Charlie’s character?”
“Not one word of them!” she promptly answered.
An impulsive kiss and a sob!
“Dear Mother!” she said in a low tearful voice. “And now one more. Papa has been dinning into my ears his own fickleness in love when young and the fact that he knows in a long life that love is of little importance in a man’s existence. He says that I can forget and love again with equal intensity and bet’ter judgment. Can one treat thus lightly the soul’s deepest instincts and still find life rich and worthy of effort?” Her voice broke and she continued slowly and tremblingly, as she held one of her mother’s hands tightly, “Now, Mama dear, heart to heart, tell me as you would talk in your inmost soul to God, do you believe this is true? You have sounded life’s deep meaning Is this all you know of life? You love me. Tell me truly?”
“No, darling, a woman can not deny this deep yearning of her soul and live. I would tear my tongue out sooner than deceive you in such an hour.”
“Sweet Mother!” she softly murmured again as she kissed her good night.
WHEN Gaston received her telegram in jail he was seated by a window looking out through the bars on Mt. Pisgah’s distant peak looming in grandeur amid a sea of smaller blue mountain waves. He read the message and his soul was filled with a great peace.
“At last! at last! These prison bars, they are good! I could kiss them. I can never be grateful enough to my enemies!”
He had taken his prison as a joke from the first, sneering at the judge who had committed him. He knew that every day he stayed in that jail he was becoming more and more the master of the people. If McLeod had tried he could not have played into his hands with more fatal certainty. Five hundred citizens of Independence had wired him their congratulations and offered him any assistance he desired, from unlimited money for defence to a delegation to tear the jail down.
He declined any assistance. He knew the storm would break over their heads soon enough, and they would be delighted to get rid of him. In the meantime he gave himself up to his thoughts about the woman he loved, and wondered what change had suddenly come over her to send him that message. He felt sure the great crisis in their life had come. What would it be? A sorrowful surrender on her part to her father’s iron will and a tearful good-bye forever, or the full surrender of her woman’s soul and body to the dominion of his love?
He was glad the hour had struck that should decide. He trembled at the import of her answer but he was ready to receive it.
A carriage rolled into the jail enclosure and two young ladies alighted. One of them stopped in the sitting room for visitors, and he heard the tramp of a man’s heavy feet on the stairs and after it the tread of a woman like a soft echo.
The key grated in the lock, the door opened. She looked into his eyes for just an instant of searching soul revelation, saw the yearning and the grateful tears, and with a glad cry sprang into his arms.
“You do love me!” she passionately cried.
“Love you? I drew you back across the sea with my love. I knew you would come. I willed it with a power you couldn’t resist.”
“I never got your letters, and I was hungry to see you,” she whispered.
“And I never got yours, and drew you back by the power of a great heart purpose.”
“Forgive me, for being away from you when you were in danger.”
“I was glad you were safe. Don’t let this jail alarm you. I ’ll be out too soon for my good I’m afraid.”
“No other woman has come into your heart to cheer it even with her friendship since I’ve been away, has she?”
“What a silly question. I’ve never looked at any other woman since the day I first saw you!”
“Tell me you love me again!”
“I—love—you, unto the uttermost, in life, in death, forever!” he whispered tenderly.
She sighed and smiled. “The sweetest music the ear of a woman ever heard!” she half laughed, half cried.
“Now, my dear, you are a full-grown woman in the beauty of a perfect womanhood. For five years and more, I have waited and suffered. My life is an open book before you. When are you going to end this suspense? You must decide now whether your father’s will shall rule your life or my love?”
“Must I decide to-day?” she asked tremblingly.
“Yes,” he answered. “It is not fair to torture me longer.”
“Then I give up!” she tearfully exclaimed. “God forgive me if I am doing wrong! I can not resist you longer. I do not desire to,—I will not! I am all yours, forever—soul, body, will, honour, life—all! I can not live without you. I love you. I love you!—Kiss me!—again—ah, your lips are sweeter than honey! Am I bold to say it? I do not care, I am yours. Your arms are the bonds of my slavery and they are sweet!”
Gaston was trembling with the joy that flooded his being with these the first words of perfect faith and submissive love that had come from her lips. And he winced at the memory now of those hours of dissipation when he had doubted her. He tried to confess it and receive her absolution.
“My dear, my joy is too great. It is pain, as well as joy. In the dark days of our first year of separation I thought once you had forgotten me. I went away into two weeks of debauchery. Your perfect love crushes me with its beauty and purity. I must confess this wrong to you. I must not deceive you in the smallest thing in this hour.”
She placed her hand over his lips, “I will not hear it. I ought to have been braver and fought for my rights and yours. I will not hear one word of humiliation from you. I love you. You are my king. I love you, good or bad. I would love you if you were a murderer on the gallows. I can not help it. I do not wish to help it. I will follow you to the bottomless pit or to the throne of God and say it without fear to devil or angel. Kiss me again!—There, do not cry—let me see your beautiful brown eyes. I ’ll kiss the tears away. Tears are for my eyes not yours!”
“Then you will fix the day, dear?” he softly urged.
“How soon would you like it?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Then I fix to-day,” she said impulsively.
“What, here, in this jail?”
“Yes, where you are is heaven to me. I haven’t noticed the jail,” she said soberly.
He looked at her a moment, strained her to his heart and brushed the tears of joy from his eyes.
“My beautiful queen! This hour is worth every pain and every throb of anguish I have suffered. Its memory will encompass life with a great light.”
“I ’ll go with Stella, see Dr. Durham who is here looking after your case, have him get the license, and we will be back in half an hour!”
The Preacher greeted her with delight. “Ah! Miss Sallie, if I had known a little thing like this would have brought you back, I would have hired a jail for him long ago, and put him in it.”
“Doctor, I want you to get the license and marry us now, will you do it?”
“Will I? Just watch me. I ’ll have the documents and be ready for the ceremony in fifteen minutes!” cried the preacher as he hurried to the office of the Register of Deeds.
Sallie ran up to Mrs. Durham’s room, told her, and asked her to be one of the witnesses.
“Of course, I will, Sallie. You are the one girl in the world I have always wanted Charlie to marry.”
Sallie slipped her arm around Mrs. Durham. “You don’t think I am doing wrong to disobey my parents thus, do you?” she faltered. “I feel just for a moment, now that I have decided, bruised and homesick,—I want my mother. Let me feel your arms about my neck just once. You are a woman. You love me as well as Charlie, tell me, am I doing wrong?”
Mrs. Durham kissed her. “I do love you child. It is a solemn hour for your soul. You alone can decide such a question. Any intrusion of advice in such a trial would be a sacrilege. Under ordinary conditions it would be a dangerous thing for a girl thus to leave her father’s roof and take this step that will decide forever her destiny. Marriage is something that swallows up life, the past, the present, the future. We seem to have never known anything else. I can only say, if I were in your place, knowing all I would do as you are doing.”
Sallie impulsively kissed her, bit her lips to keep back a tear, and held her hand.
“I know your father well,” she continued. “He is a man I greatly admire. But he is unreasonable with any one who dares to cross his will. You could never get his consent now that his pride is aroused except by forcing it. When it is over, he will forgive you, and when he knows your lover as I know him, he will be as proud of his son-in-law as a peacock of his plumage.”
“Oh, it is so sweet to hear just the advice one wishes in such an hour,” cried Sallie. “I shall always love you for these words.”
“Yes, I congratulate you on the end of your long hesitation. I know you will be happy. Any woman would be happy with the love of such a man, and he was made for you.”
“Then you don’t believe with Papa,” she said with a smile, “that his mouth is cruel, and that he will try to whip me in five years, do you?”
Mrs. Durham laughed. “Yes, he will whip you, but they will be love licks and you will cry for more. Your lover is a rare and brilliant man. He is strong, rugged, resistless in will, fierce in his passions from the blood of sunny France in his veins, and masterful in life from the iron heritage of the hardier races. You have seen these traits. Wait until you know him as I do in his daily life, and you will find a wealth of patience and a depth of tenderness that will startle. I envy you.”
“Thank you,” Sallie interrupted. “You don’t know how glad your words are to my heart. I’ve not seen much of that trait yet. I’ve been half afraid of him sometimes. Let me kiss you again.”
The keeper of the jail treated Gaston with every consideration and arranged for the marriage to take place in the little sitting room where he allowed him to come on parole.
The bride wore a plain travelling dress in which she had come from New York. She had driven from the depot past Stella Holt’s home, and with her straight to the jail.
Gaston thought her the fairest vision that ever greeted the eye of man as he stood by her side; for he had seen that day the soul of a radiantly beautiful woman in the splendour of shameless love. His own soul was drunk with the joy of it all and his eyes now devoured her with their intense light.
Standing there before the Preacher whom he loved as his father, and the foster mother who had wrapped his little shivering body in the warmth of a great heart that night the light of life went out in his own mother’s room, with Stella Holt’s sympathetic face reflecting her friend’s happiness, the marriage ceremony was performed. He took Sallie’s trembling hand in his and promised to love, honour and cherish her as long as life endured. And under his breath he added, “Here and hereafter—forever.” And then she looked into his smiling face with her blue eyes full of unspeakable love, and in a voice low and soft as the note of a flute, gave to him her life.
And the Preacher said, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!”
She stayed there with him until the gathering twilight.
“Now, I must hurry back to my father and win him. I will not come to you a beggar. My father shall not disinherit me. I am going to bring you my fortune, too.”
“Oh! curse that fortune, dear! I’ve feared it was that keeping us apart so long.”
“Don’t curse it. I like it, and I am going to win it for you. You are a man of genius. Your success is as sure as if it were already won. I will not come to you a helpless pauper. I have never been taught to do anything. I should like to cook for you if I knew how, and I am going to learn how. I am going to make you the most beautiful home that the heart of a woman can dream I’d rob the world for treasure for it. I am going to rob my dear old father. He has sworn to disinherit me if I marry without his consent. He shall not do it.”
“Then, don’t be long about it. You are my treasure. I can build you a snug little nest at Hambright.”
“I will only ask four weeks. Now do what I tell you. Sit down and write Papa a letter telling him I am your affianced bride and ask his consent to the celebration of our marriage within three weeks. That will produce an earthquake, and something will surely happen within four weeks.”
He wrote the letter, and she looked over his shoulder. “You see, dear,” she said as she kissed him good-bye, “I love Papa so tenderly. You can’t understand how close the tie is between us, perhaps some day in our own home of which I’m dreaming you may understand as you can not now,” she added softly.
“Then for your sake, dearest, I hope you can win him. But I’m afraid of this plan of yours.”
“Leave it with me for a month, do just as I tell you, and then I ’ll obey you all the rest of our lives,—if your orders suit me,” she playfully added.
She returned to Stella Holt’s, and Gaston went back to his jail room and dreamed that night he was sleeping in the Governor’s Palace.