by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER IX
AT LOVER'S LEAP
In spite of the pitiful collapse of old Stoneman under his stroke ofparalysis, his children still saw the unconquered soul shining in hiscolourless eyes. They had both been on the point of confessing their loveaffairs to him and joining in the inevitable struggle when he wasstricken. They knew only too well that he would not consent to a dualalliance with the Camerons under the conditions of fierce hatreds andviolence into which the State had drifted. They were too high-minded toconsider a violation of his wishes while thus helpless, with his strangeeyes following them about in childlike eagerness. His weakness wasmightier than his iron will.
So, for eighteen months, while he slowly groped out of mental twilight,each had waited--Elsie with a tender faith struggling with despair, andPhil in a torture of uncertainty and fear.
In the meantime, the young Northerner had become as radical in hissympathies with the Southern people as his father had ever been againstthem. This power of assimilation has always been a mark of Southerngenius. The sight of the Black Hand on their throats now roused hisrighteous indignation. The patience with which they endured was to himamazing. The Southerner he had found to be the last man on earth to becomea revolutionist. All his traits were against it. His genius for command,the deep sense of duty and honour, his hospitality, his deathless love ofhome, his supreme constancy and sense of civic unity, all combined to makehim ultraconservative. He began now to see that it was reverence forauthority as expressed in the Constitution under which slavery wasestablished which made Secession inevitable.
Besides, the laziness and incapacity of the negro had been more than hecould endure. With no ties of tradition or habits of life to bind him, hesimply refused to tolerate them. In this feeling Elsie had grown early tosympathize. She discharged Aunt Cindy for feeding her children from thekitchen, and brought a cook and house girl from the North, while Philwould employ only white men in any capacity.
In the desolation of negro rule the Cameron farm had become worthless. Thetaxes had more than absorbed the income, and the place was only kept fromexecution by the indomitable energy of Mrs. Cameron, who made the hotelpay enough to carry the interest on a mortgage which was increasing fromseason to season.
The doctor's practice was with him a divine calling. He never sent billsto his patients. They paid something if they had it. Now they hadnothing.
Ben's law practice was large for his age and experience, but his clientshad no money.
While the Camerons were growing each day poorer, Phil was becoming rich.His genius, skill, and enterprise had been quick to see the possibilitiesof the waterpower. The old Eagle cotton mills had been burned during thewar. Phil organized the Eagle & Phoenix Company, interested Northerncapitalists, bought the falls, and erected two great mills, the dim hum ofwhose spindles added a new note to the river's music. Eager, swift,modest, his head full of ideas, his heart full of faith, he had pressedforward to success.
As the old Commoner's mind began to clear, and his recovery was sure, Phildetermined to press his suit for Margaret's hand to an issue.
Ben had dropped a hint of an interview of the Rev. Hugh McAlpin with Dr.Cameron, which had thrown Phil into a cold sweat.
He hurried to the hotel to ask Margaret to drive with him that afternoon.He would stop at Lover's Leap and settle the question.
He met the preacher, just emerging from the door, calm, handsome, serious,and Margaret by his side. The dark-haired beauty seemed strangely serene.What could it mean? His heart was in his throat. Was he too late? Wreathedin smiles when the preacher had gone, the girl's face was a riddle hecould not solve.
To his joy, she consented to go.
As he left in his trim little buggy for the hotel, he stooped and kissedElsie, whispering:
"Make an offering on the altar of love for me, Sis!"
"You're too slow. The prayers of all the saints will not save you!" shereplied with a laugh, throwing him a kiss as he disappeared in the dust.
As they drove through the great forest on the cliffs overlooking theriver, the Southern world seemed lit with new splendours to-day for theNortherner. His heart beat with a strange courage. The odour of the pines,their sighing music, the subtone of the falls below, the subtlelife-giving perfume of the fullness of summer, the splendour of the sungleaming through the deep foliage, and the sweet sensuous air, all seemedincarnate in the calm, lovely face and gracious figure beside him.
They took their seat on the old rustic built against the beech, which wasthe last tree on the brink of the cliff. A hundred feet below flowed theriver, rippling softly along a narrow strip of sand which its current hadthrown against the rocks. The ledge of towering granite formed a caveeighty feet in depth at the water's edge. From this projecting wall,tradition said a young Indian princess once leaped with her lover, fleeingfrom the wrath of a cruel father who had separated them. The cave belowwas inaccessible from above, being reached by a narrow footpath along theriver's edge when entered a mile downstream.
The view from the seat, under the beech, was one of marvellous beauty. Formiles the broad river rolled in calm, shining glory seaward, its banksfringed with cane and trees, while fields of corn and cotton spread inwaving green toward the distant hills and blue mountains of the west.
Every tree on this cliff was cut with the initials of generations oflovers from Piedmont.
They sat in silence for awhile, Margaret idly playing with a flower shehad picked by the pathway, and Phil watching her devoutly. The Southernsun had tinged her face the reddish warm hue of ripened fruit, doublyradiant by contrast with her wealth of dark-brown hair. The lustrousglance of her eyes, half veiled by their long lashes, and the graceful,careless pose of her stately figure held him enraptured. Her dress ofairy, azure blue, so becoming to her dark beauty, gave Phil the impressionof eiderdown feathers of some rare bird of the tropics. He felt that if hedared to touch her she might lift her wings and sail over the cliff intothe sky and forget to light again at his side.
"I am going to ask a very bold and impertinent question, Miss Margaret,"Phil said with resolution. "May I?"
Margaret smiled incredulously.
"I'll risk your impertinence, and decide as to its boldness."
"Tell me, please, what that preacher said to you to-day."
Margaret looked away, unable to suppress the merriment that played abouther eyes and mouth.
"Will you never breathe it to a soul if I do?"
"Never."
"Honest Injun, here on the sacred altar of the princess?"
"On my honour."
"Then I'll tell you," she said, biting her lips to keep back a laugh. "Mr.McAlpin is very handsome and eloquent. I have always thought him the bestpreacher we have ever had in Piedmont----"
"Yes, I know," Phil interrupted with a frown. "He is very pious," she wenton evenly, "and seeks Divine guidance in prayer in everything he does. Hecalled this morning to see me, and I was playing for him in the littlemusic-room off the parlour, when he suddenly closed the door and said:
"'Miss Margaret, I am going to take, this morning, the most important stepof my life----'
"Of course I hadn't the remotest idea what he meant----
"'Will you join me in a word of prayer?' he asked, and knelt right down. Iwas accustomed, of course, to kneel with him in family worship at hispastoral calls, and so from habit I slipped to one knee by the pianostool, wondering what on earth he was about. When he prayed with fervourfor the Lord to bless the great love with which he hoped to hallow mylife--I giggled. It broke up the meeting. He rose and asked me to marryhim. I told him the Lord hadn't revealed it to me----"
Phil seized her hand and held it firmly. The smile died from the girl'sface, her hand trembled, and the rose tint on her cheeks flamed toscarlet.
"Margaret, my own, I love you," he cried with joy. "You could have toldthat story only to the one man whom you love--is it not true?"
"Yes. I've loved you always," said the low, sweet voice.
"Always?" asked Phil through a tear.
"Before I saw you, when they told me you were as Ben's twin brother, myheart began to sing at the sound of your name----"
"Call it," he whispered.
"Phil, my sweetheart!" she said with a laugh.
"How tender and homelike the music of your voice! The world has never seenthe match of your gracious Southern womanhood! Snowbound in the North, Idreamed, as a child, of this world of eternal sunshine. And now everymemory and dream I've found in you."
"And you won't be disappointed in my simple ideal that finds its allwithin a home?"
"No. I love the old-fashioned dream of the South. Maybe you have enchantedme, but I love these green hills and mountains, these rivers musical withcascade and fall, these solemn forests--but for the Black Curse, the Southwould be to-day the garden of the world!"
"And you will help our people lift this curse?" softly asked the girl,nestling closer to his side.
"Yes, dearest, thy people shall be mine! Had I a thousand wrongs tocherish, I'd forgive them all for your sake. I'll help you build here anew South on all that's good and noble in the old, until its dead fieldsblossom again, its harbours bristle with ships, and the hum of a thousandindustries make music in every valley. I'd sing to you in burning verse ifI could, but it is not my way. I have been awkward and slow in love,perhaps--but I'll be swift in your service. I dream to make dead stonesand wood live and breathe for you, of victories wrung from Nature that areyours. My poems will be deeds, my flowers the hard-earned wealth that hasa soul, which I shall lay at your feet."
"Who said my lover was dumb?" she sighed, with a twinkle in her shiningeyes. "You must introduce me to your father soon. He must like me as myfather does you, or our dream can never come true."
A pain gripped Phil's heart, but he answered bravely:
"I will. He can't help loving you."
They stood on the rustic seat to carve their initials within a circle,high on the old beechwood book of love.
"May I write it out in full--Margaret Cameron--Philip Stoneman?" heasked.
"No--only the initials now--the full names when you've seen my father andI've seen yours. Jeannie Campbell and Henry Lenoir were once written thusin full, and many a lover has looked at that circle and prayed forhappiness like theirs. You can see there a new one cut over the old, thebark has filled, and written on the fresh page is 'Marion Lenoir' with theblank below for her lover's name."
Phil looked at the freshly cut circle and laughed:
"I wonder if Marion or her mother did that?"
"Her mother, of course."
"I wonder whose will be the lucky name some day within it?" said Philmusingly as he finished his own.