The Clansman
BOOK IV
THE KU KLUX KLAN
CHAPTER III
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
THE discovery of the Captain of the African Guards lying in his full
uniform in Lynch's yard sent a thrill of terror to the triumphant
leagues. Across the breast of the body was pinned a scrap of paper on
which was written in red ink the letters K. K. K. It was the first
actual evidence of the existence of this dreaded order in Ulster
county.
The First Lieutenant of the Guards assumed command and held the full
company in their armory under arms day and night. Beneath his door he
had found a notice which was also nailed on the court-house. It
appeared in the Piedmont Eagle and in rapid succession in every
newspaper not under Negro influence in the state. It read as follows:
“HEADQUARTERS OF REALM NO. 4.
“DREADFUL ERA, BLACK EPOCH,
“HIDEOUS HOUR.
“GENERAL ORDER NO. I.
“The Negro Militia now organised in this State threatens the
extinction of civilisation. They have avowed their purpose to make war
upon and exterminate the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation which is now the
sole guardian of Society. All negroes are hereby given forty-eight
hours from the publication of this notice in their respective counties
to surrender their arms at the court-house door. Those who refuse must
take the consequences.
“By order of the G. D. of Realm No. 4.
“By the Grand Scribe.”
The white people of Piedmont read this notice with a thrill of
exultant joy. Men walked the streets with an erect bearing which said
without words:
“Stand out of the way.”
For the first time since the dawn of Black Rule negroes began to
yield to white men and women the right of way on the streets.
On the day following, the old Commoner sent for Phil. “What is the
latest news?” he asked.
“The town is in a fever of excitement—not over the discovery in
Lynch's yard—but over the blacker rumour that Marion and her mother
committed suicide to conceal an assault by this fiend.”
“A trumped-up lie,” said the old man emphatically.
“It's true, sir. I'll take Doctor Cameron's word for it.”
“You have just come from the Camerons?”
“Yes.”
“Let it be your last visit. The Camerons are on the road to the
gallows, father and son. Lynch informs me that the murder committed
last night, and the insolent notice nailed on the court-house door,
could have come only from their brain. They are the hereditary leaders
of these people. They alone would have had the audacity to fling this
crime into the teeth of the world and threaten worse. We are face to
face with Southern barbarism. Every man now to his own standard! The
house of Stoneman can have no part with midnight assassins.”
“Nor with black barbarians, father. It is a question of who
possesses the right of life and death over the citizen, the organised
virtue of the community, or its organised crime. You have mistaken for
death the patience of a generous people. We call ourselves the
champions of liberty. Yet for less than they have suffered, kings have
lost their heads and empires perished before the wrath of freemen.”
“My boy, this is not a question for argument between us,” said the
father with stern emphasis. “This conspiracy of terror and
assassination threatens to shatter my work to atoms. The election on
which turns the destiny of Congress, and the success or failure of my
life, is but a few weeks away. Unless this foul conspiracy is crushed,
I am ruined, and the Nation falls again beneath the heel of a
slaveholders' oligarchy.”
“Your nightmare of a slaveholders' oligarchy does not disturb me.”
“At least you will have the decency to break your affair with
Margaret Cameron pending the issue of my struggle of life and death
with her father and brother?”
“Never.”
“Then I will do it for you.”
“I warn you, sir,” Phil cried, with anger, “that if it comes to an
issue of race against race, I am a white man. The ghastly tragedy of
the condition of society here is something for which the people of the
South are no longer responsible—”
“I'll take the responsibility!” growled the old cynic.
“Don't ask me to share it,” said the younger man: emphatically.
The father winced, his lips trembled, and he answered brokenly:
“My boy, this is the bitterest hour of my life that has had little
to make it sweet. To hear such words from you is more than I can bear.
I am an old man now—my sands are nearly run. But two human beings
love me, and I love but two. On you and your sister I have lavished all
the treasures of a maimed and strangled soul—and it has come to this!
Read the notice which one of your friends thrust into the window of my
bedroom last night.”
He handed Phil a piece of paper on which was written:
“The old club-footed beast who has sneaked into our town, pretending
to search for health, in reality the leader of the infernal Union
League, will be given forty-eight hours to vacate the house and rid
this community of his presence.
“K. K. K.”
“Are you an officer of the Union League?” Phil asked in surprise.
“I am its soul.”
“How could a Southerner discover this, if your own children didn't
know it?”
“By their spies who have joined the League.”
“And do the rank and file know the Black Pope at the head of the
order?”
“No, but high officials do.”
“Does Lynch?”
“Certainly.”
“Then he is the scoundrel who placed that note in your room. It is a
clumsy attempt to forge an order of the Klan. The white man does not
live in this town capable of that act. I know these people.”
“My boy, you are bewitched by the smiles of a woman to deny your own
flesh and blood.”
“Nonsense, father—you are possessed by an idea which has become an
insane mania—”
“Will you respect my wishes?” the old man broke in, angrily.
“I will not,” was the clear answer. Phil turned and left the room,
and the old man's massive head sank on his breast in helpless baffled
rage and grief.
He was more successful in his appeal to Elsie. He convinced her of
the genuineness of the threat against him. The brutal reference to his
lameness roused the girl's soul. When the old man, crushed by Phil's
desertion, broke down the last reserve of his strange cold nature, tore
his wounded heart open to her, cried in agony over his deformity, his
lameness, and the anguish with which he saw the threatened ruin of his
life-work, she threw her arms around his neck in a flood of tears and
cried:
“Hush, father, I will not desert you. I will never leave you, or wed
without your blessing. If I find that my lover was in any way
responsible for this insult, I'll tear his image out of my heart and
never speak his name again!”
She wrote a note to Ben, asking him to meet her at sundown on
horseback at Lover's Leap.
Ben was elated at the unexpected request. He was hungry for an hour
with his sweetheart, whom he had not seen save for a moment since the
storm of excitement broke following the discovery of the crime.
He hastened through his work of ordering the movement of the Klan
for the night, and determined to surprise Elsie by meeting her in his
uniform of a Grand Dragon
Secure in her loyalty, he would deliberately thus put his life in
her hands. Using the water of a brook in the woods for a mirror, he
adjusted his yellow sash and pushed the two revolvers back under the
cape out of sight, saying to himself with a laugh:
“Betray me? Well, if she does, life would not be worth the living!”
When Elsie had recovered from the first shock of surprise at the
white horse and rider waiting for her under the shadows of the old
beech, her surprise gave way to grief at the certainty of his guilt,
and the greatness of his love in thus placing his life without a
question in her hands.
He tied the horses in the woods, and they sat down on the rustic.
He removed his helmet cap, threw back the white cape showing the
scarlet lining, and the two golden circles with their flaming crosses
on his breast, with boyish pride. The costume was becoming to his
slender graceful figure, and he knew it.
“You see, sweetheart, I hold high rank in the Empire,” he whispered.
From beneath his cape he drew a long bundle which he unrolled. It
was a triangular flag of brilliant yellow edged in scarlet. In the
centre of the yellow ground was the figure of a huge black dragon with
fiery red eyes and tongue. Around it was a Latin motto worked in
scarlet: “quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus”—what
always, what everywhere, what by all has been held to be true. “The
battle-flag of the Klan,” he said; “the standard of the Grand Dragon.”
Elsie seized his hand and kissed it, unable to speak.
“Why so serious to-night?”
“Do you love me very much?” she answered.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay his life at the
feet of his beloved,” he responded, tenderly.
“Yes, yes; I know—and that is why you are breaking my heart. When
first I met you—it seems now ages and ages ago—I was a vain,
self-willed, pert little thing—”
“It's not so. I took you for an angel-you were one. You are one
to-night.”
“Now,” she went on slowly, “in what I have lived through you I have
grown into an impassioned, serious, self- disciplined, bewildered
woman. Your perfect trust tonight is the sweetest revelation that can
come to a woman's soul and yet it brings to me unspeakable pain—”
“For what?”
“You are guilty of murder.”
Ben's figure stiffened.
“The judge who pronounces sentence of death on a criminal outlawed
by civilised society is not usually called a murderer, my dear.”
“And by whose authority are you a judge?”
“By authority of the sovereign people who created the State of South
Carolina. The criminals who claim to be our officers are usurpers
placed there by the subversion of law.”
“Won't you give this all up for my sake?” she pleaded. “Believe me,
you are in great danger.”
“Not so great as is the danger of my sister and mother and my
sweetheart—it is a man's place to face danger,” he gravely answered.
“This violence can only lead to your ruin and shame—”
“I am fighting the battle of a race on whose fate hangs the future
of the South and the Nation. My ruin and shame will be of small account
if they are saved,” was the even answer.
“Come, my dear,” she pleaded, tenderly, “you know that I have
weighed the treasures of music and art and given them all for one clasp
of your hand, one throb of your heart against mine. I should call you
cruel did I not know you are infinitely tender. This is the only thing
I have ever asked you to do for me—”
“Desert my people! You must not ask of me this infamy, if you love
me,” he cried.
“But, listen; this is wrong—this wild vengeance is a crime you are
doing, however great the provocation. We cannot continue to love one
another if you do this. Listen: I love you better than father, mother,
life or career—all my dreams I've lost in you. I've lived through
eternity to-day with my father—”
“You know me guiltless of the vulgar threat against him—”
“Yes, and yet you are the leader of desperate men who might have
done it. As I fought this battle to-day, I've lost you, lost myself,
and sunk down to the depths of despair, and at the end rang the one
weak cry of a woman's heart for her lover! Your frown can darken the
brightest sky. For your sake I can give up all save the sense of right.
I'll walk by your side in life—lead you gently and tenderly along the
way of my dreams if I can, but if you go your way, it shall be mine;
and I shall still be glad because you are there! See how humble I am—
only you must not commit crime!”
“Come, sweetheart, you must not use that word,” he protested, with a
touch of wounded pride.
“You are a conspirator—”
“I am a revolutionist.”
“You are committing murder!”
“I am waging war.”
Elsie leaped to her feet in a sudden rush of anger and extended her
hand:
“Good-bye. I shall not see you again. I do not know you. You are
still a stranger to me.”
He held her hand firmly.
“We must not part in anger,” he said slowly. “I have grave work to
do before the day dawns. We may not see each other again.”
She led her horse to the seat quickly and without waiting for his
assistance sprang into the saddle.
“Do you not fear my betrayal of your secret?” she asked.
He rode to her side, bent close, and whispered:
“It's as safe as if locked in the heart of God.”
A little sob caught her voice, yet she said slowly in firm tones:
“If another crime is committed in this county by your Klan, we will
never see each other again.”
He escorted her to the edge of the town without a word, pressed her
hand in silence, wheeled his horse, and disappeared on the road to the
North Carolina line.