entered the council of elders that he found there with the
determination to place himself on an equality with them. It was to his
credit that he accomplished this feat, but it was not surprising for
the humility of his mind at least was genuine. He joined in their
conversation, somewhat stiffly at first, but perhaps no more so than
became a stranger. Presently, because he saw that he could not refuse
without offending his host, he conquered prejudice and took a little
rum and sugar and water. It went to his head without his knowing it,
as rum has a habit of doing; he became cheerfully familiar with the
old men and made long strides into their friendship--or thought he
did. He did not once mention religion to them at that first meeting,
though he had to exercise considerable self-restraint to prevent
himself from doing so.
On his way home he met Father Antoine not far from Michaud's door. The
priest would have passed with his usual surly look if Simpson had not
stopped him.
"Well?" Antoine demanded.
"Why should we quarrel--you and I?" Simpson asked. "Can we not work
together for these people of yours?"
"Your friends are not my people, heretic!" Father Antoine retorted."
Rot in hell with them!"
He plunged past Simpson and was gone down the darkling alley.
"You are late, m'sieu'," remarked Madame Picard as he came into the
kitchen and sat down in a chair near the cripple. Her manner was less
rough than usual.
"I've been at Michaud's," he answered.
"Ah? But you were there this morning."
"He asked me to come this evening, when his friends came, madame.
There were several there."
"They are often there," she answered. There was nothing significant in
her tone, but Simpson had an uneasy feeling that she had known all the
time of his visit to the carpenter.
"I met Father Antoine on the way home," he said.
"A bad man!" She flamed into sudden violence. "A bad man!"
"I had thought so." Her loquacity this evening was amazing. Simpson
thought he saw an opening to her confidence and plunged in. "And he is
a priest. It is bad, that. Here are sheep without a shepherd."
"_Quoi_?"
"Here are many people--all good Christians." Simpson, eager and
hopeful, leaned forward in his chair. His gaunt face with the
down-drawn mouth and the hungry eyes--grown more hungry in the last
three weeks--glowed, took on fervour; his hand shot out expressive
fingers. The woman raised her head slowly, staring at him; more slowly
still she seated herself at the table that stood between them. She
rested her arms on it, and narrowed her eyelids as he spoke till her
eyes glittered through the slits of them.
"All good Christians," Simpson went on; "and there is none to lead
them save a black----" He slurred the word just in time. The woman's
eyes flashed open and narrowed again. "Save a renegade priest,"
Simpson concluded. "It is wrong, is it not? And I knew it was wrong,
though I live far away and came--was led--here to you." His voice,
though it had not been loud, left the room echoing. "It was a real
call." He whispered that.
"You are a Catholic?" asked Madame Picard.
"Yes. Of the English Catholic Church." He suspected that the
qualifying adjective meant nothing to her, but let the ambiguity rest.
"I was not sure," she said slowly, "though you told the boy." Her
eyes, velvet-black in the shadow upcast by the lamp, opened slowly.
"There has been much trouble with Father Antoine, and now small
numbers go to mass or confession." Her voice had the effect of
shrillness though it remained low; her hands flew out, grasping the
table-edge at arms' length with an oddly masculine gesture. "He
deserved that! To tell his _canaille_ that I--that we----He dared! But
now--now--we shall see!"
Her voice rasped in a subdued sort of a shriek; she sprang up from her
chair, and stood for the fraction of a second with her hands raised
and her fists clinched. Simpson, puzzled, amazed, and a little scared
at last, had barely time to notice the position before it dissolved.
The child, frightened, screamed from the floor.
"_Taisez-vous--taisez-vous, mon enfant. Le temps vient_."
She was silent for a long time after that. Simpson sat wondering what
she would do next, aware of an uncanny fascination that emanated from
her. It seemed to him as though there were subterranean fires in the
ground that he walked on.
"You shall teach us," she said in her usual monotone. "You shall teach
us--preach to many people. No house will hold them all." She leaned
down and caressed the child. "_Le temps vient, mon petit. Le temps
vient_."
Under Simpson's sudden horror quivered an eerie thrill. He mistook it
for joy at the promised fulfilment of his dreams. He stepped to his
own doorway and hesitated there with his hand on the latch.
"To many people? Some time, I hope."
"Soon." She looked up from the child; there was a snakiness in the
angle of her head and neck. "Soon."
He opened the door, slammed it behind him, and dropped on tense knees
beside his bed. In the kitchen the cripple laughed--laughed for a long
time. Simpson's tightly pressed palms could not keep the sound from
his ears.
IV
Each night the gathering at Vieux Michaud's became larger; it grew too
large for the house, and presently overflowed into the yard behind,
where Michaud kept his lumber. Generally thirty or forty natives
collected between six and seven in the evening, roosting on the piled
boards or sitting on the dusty ground in little groups, their
cigarettes puncturing the blue darkness that clung close to the earth
under the young moon. There were few women among them at first and
fewer young men; Simpson, who knew that youth ought to be more
hospitable to new ideas than age, thought this a little strange and
spoke to Michaud about it.
"But they are my friends, m'sieu'," answered Michaud.
The statement might have been true of the smaller group that Simpson
had first encountered at the carpenter's house; it was not true of the
additions to it, for he was evidently not on intimate terms with them.
Nor did he supply rum for all of them; many brought their own. That
was odd also, if Simpson had only known it; the many _cantinas_
offered attractions which the carpenter's house did not. That fact
occurred to him at length.
"They have heard of you, m'sieu'--and that you have something new to
say to them. We Haytians like new things."
Thus, very quietly, almost as though it had been a natural growth of
interest, did Simpson's ministry begin. He stepped one evening to the
platform that overhung the carpenter's backyard, and began to talk.
Long study had placed the missionary method at his utter command, and
he began with parables and simple tales which they heard eagerly.
Purposely, he eschewed anything striking or startling in this his
first sermon. It was an attempt to establish a sympathetic
understanding between himself and his audience, and not altogether an
unsuccessful one, for his motives were still unmixed. He felt that he
had started well; when he was through speaking small groups gathered
around him as children might have done, and told him inconsequent,
wandering tales of their own--tales which were rather fables, folklore
transplanted from another hemisphere and strangely crossed with
Christianity. He was happy; if it had not been that most of them wore
about their necks the leather pouches that were not scapulars he would
have been happier than any man has a right to be. One of these
pouches, showing through the ragged shirt of an old man with thin lips
and a squint, was ripped at the edge, and the unmistakable sheen of a
snake's scale glistened in the seam. Simpson could not keep his eyes
from it.
He dared to be more formal after that, and on the next night preached
from a text--the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us." That sermon
also was effective: toward the end of it two or three women were
weeping a little, and the sight of their tears warmed him with the
sense of power. In that warmth certain of his prejudices and
inhibitions began to melt away; the display of feelings and
sensibilities could not be wicked or even undesirable if it prepared
the way for the gospel by softening the heart. He began to dabble in
emotion himself, and that was a dangerous matter, for he knew nothing
whatever about it save that, if he felt strongly, he could arouse
strong feeling in others. Day by day he unwittingly became less sure
of the moral beauty of restraint, and ardours which he had never
dreamed of began to flame free of his soul.
He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first
had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely,
so secretly--both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at
the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He
wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came
fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the
deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her--that seemed
somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at
times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable
intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was
afraid to seek for. It was there, however--a nervous determination,
not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and
with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it--and he was
not far wrong.
Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce
ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous;
rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that
in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and,
since he could find in French none that had associations for himself,
he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those
of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes
forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or
three times in a single service. He liked that repetition; he thought
it laid the groundwork for the enthusiasm which he aroused more and
more as time went on, and which he took more pains to arouse.
Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears
and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful
before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and
brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted
and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding
suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as
their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only
for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed
by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost courage and stopped so
soon. These were an emotional and not an intellectual people--if they
were to be reached at all, it must be through the channels of their
emotions. Thus far he thought clearly, and that was as far as he did
think, for he was discovering in himself a capacity for religious
excitement that was only in part a reflex of the crowd's fervour, and
the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great
moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders,
thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and
afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West
Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed
that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him
brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern
them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and
lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might
draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few days in
the hinterland.
It was the most perilous thing he could have done. There is neither
sanctity nor holy calm in the tropic jungle, nothing of the hallowed
quietude that, in northern forests, clears the mind of life's muddle
and leads the soul to God. There lurks instead a poisonous anodyne in
the heavy, scented air--a drug that lulls the spirit to an evil repose
counterfeiting the peacefulness whence alone high thoughts can spring.
In the North, Nature displays a certain restraint even in her most
flamboyant moods: the green fires of spring temper their sensuousness
in chill winds, and autumn is rich in suggestion not of love, but of
gracious age, having the aloof beauty of age and its true estimates of
life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the
line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a
straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no
orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the
senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a
single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as
though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man
of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the man of no
convictions at all, for rigid convictions rather often indicate
inexperience and imperfect observation; experience,
therefore--especially emotional experience--sometimes warps them into
strange and hideous shapes.
Simpson did not find in the bush the enlightenment that he had hoped
for. He did, however, anaesthetize his mind into the belief that he
had found it. Returning, he approached Port au Prince by a route new
to him. A well-beaten trail aroused his curiosity and he followed it
into a grove of ceiba and mahogany. It was clear under foot, as no
tropic grove uncared for by man can be clear; in the middle of it lay
the ashes of a great fire, and three minaca-palm huts in good repair
huddled almost invisible under the vast trees. The ground, bare of
grass, was trodden hard, as though a multitude had stamped it
down--danced it down, perhaps--and kept it bare by frequent use.
"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to
leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky."
His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake--a
fer-de-lance--flowed across the path.
The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the
only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not
yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they
reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God.
Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done
ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of
something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He
thrust it resolutely out of his mind.
V
"I have told your people--your _canaille_," said Father Antoine, "that
I shall excommunicate them all."
The priest had been graver than his wont--more dignified, less
volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having
none of it himself.
"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered.
Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given
that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new
power that had covered it.
"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their
damnation be on your head, then."
The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow
sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock.
From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven;
he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more
imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare
people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted
pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had
combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl
at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater
opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used
it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that
he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use.
His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his
mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before--he openly
attacked the Roman Church.
"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the
rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to
hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and
its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the
priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without
price, for all--for all--for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does
he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?"
There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned
from the platform.
"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson
could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see
the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!"
In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of
a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the
platform. Father Antoine--he was robed, and there were two acolytes
with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle--began to read
in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own.
"_Excommunicado_ ----"
The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame
snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the
doorway, and the priest was gone.
"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank
God for that, my people!"
They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them
incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a
charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson
immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it
had not been for Madame Picard.
From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled
louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing.
Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the
child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed
rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive
African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform
she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always.
Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their
feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales.
She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she
did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from
the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing
the white man in its flood.
"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!"
He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly
the chanting ceased.
"To the grove!" screamed the _mamaloi_. She leaped to the platform,
almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the
grove!"
The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under
the impact of it.
"To the grove!"
Doubt assailed him as his mind--a white man's mind--rebelled.
"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong."
Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the
talons which were her fingers she seemed calm.
"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement--atonement,
m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not
understand what they cannot see. They are behind you--you cannot leave
them now."
"But--the child?"
"The child shall show them--a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They
must see a _théâtre_ of atonement--then they will believe. Come."
Protesting, he was swept into the crowd and forward--forward to the
van of it, into the Grand Rue. Always the thunderous rumble of the mob
continued; high shrieks flickered like lightning above it; the name of
Christ dinned into his ears from foul throats. On one side of him the
cripple appeared; on the other strode the _mamaloi_--the child,
screaming with fear, on her hip. A hymn-tune stirred under the
tumult--rose above it.
"_Le fils de Dieu se va Pen guerre
Son drapeau rouge comme sang_."
Wild quavers adorned the tune obscenely; the mob marched to it,
falling into step. Torches came, flaming high at the edges of the
crowd, flaming wan and lurid on hundreds of black faces.
"_Il va pour gagner sa couronne
Qui est-ce que suit dans son train_?"
"A crusade!" Simpson suddenly shouted. "It is a crusade!"
Yells answered him. Somewhere a drum began, reverberating as though
unfixed in space; now before them, now behind; now, it seemed, in the
air. The sound was maddening A swaying began in the crowd that took on
cadence, became a dance. Simpson, his brain drugged, his senses
perfervid marched on in exultation. These were his people at last.
The drum thundered more loudly, became unbearable. They were clear of
the town and in the bush at last; huge fires gleamed through the
trees, and the mob spilled into the grove. The cripple and the
_mamaloi_ were beside him still.
In the grove, with the drums--more than one of them now--palpitating
unceasingly, the dancing became wilder, more savage. In the light of
the fire the _mamaloi_ swayed, holding the screaming child, and close
to the flames crouched the cripple. The hymn had given place to the
formless chant, through which the minors quivered like the wails of
lost souls.
The scales fell from Simpson's eyes. He rose to his full height and
stretched out his arm, demanding silence; there was some vague hope in
him that even now he might guide them. His only answer was a louder
yell than ever.
It took form. Vieux Michaud sprang from the circle into the full
firelight, feet stamping, eyes glaring.
"_La ch vre_!" he yelled. "_La chèvre sans cornes_!"
The drums rolled in menacing crescendo, the fire licked higher. All
sounds melted into one.
"_La chèvre sans cornes_!"
The _mamaloi_ tore the child from her neck and held it high by one
leg. Simpson, seeing clearly as men do before they die, flung himself
toward her.
The cripple's knife, thrust from below, went home between his ribs
just as the _mamaloi's_ blade crossed the throat of the sacrifice.
"So I signed the death-certificate," Witherbee concluded. "Death at
the hands of persons unknown."
"And they'll call him a martyr," said Bunsen.
"Who knows?" the consul responded gravely. "Perhaps he was one."
MARTIN GARRITY GETS EVEN
By COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER and LEO. F. CREAGAN
From _American Magazine_
The entrance of Martin Garrity, superintendent of the Blue Ribbon
Division of the O.R.& T. Railroad, had been attended by all the
niceties of such an occasion, when Martin, grand, handsome, and
magnificent, arrived at his office for the day. True to form, he had
cussed out the office boy, spoken in fatherly fashion to the
trainmaster over the telephone about the lateness of No. 210, remarked
to the stenographer that her last letter had looked like the exquisite
tracks of a cow's hoof--and then he had read two telegrams. A moment
later, white, a bit stooped, a little old in features, he had left the
office, nor had he paused to note the grinning faces of those in his
wake, those who had known hours before!
Home, and stumbling slightly as he mounted the steps of the veranda,
he faced a person in screaming foulard and a red toque, Mrs. Jewel
Garrity, just starting for the morning's assault upon the market.
Wordlessly he poked forward the first of the telegrams as he pulled
her within the hall and shut the door. And with bulging eyes Jewel
read it aloud:
Chicago, April 30.
GARRITY,
Montgomery City:
Effective arrival successor J.P. Aldrich must dispense your valuable
services. Kindly forward resignation by wire confirming this telegram.
W.W. WALKER,
Vice-President & General
Manager.
"And who is this Walker person?" Jewel asked, with a vindictive gasp.
"'Tis me that never heard of him. Why should he sign hisself vice
prisident and giniral manager when the whole world knows Mr. Barstow,
bless his soul, is the----"
"Will ye listen?" Martin bellowed with sorrowful asperity. "Somethin's
happened. And now:
GARRITY,
Montgomery City.
Alabaster abound celebrity conglomerate commensurate constituency
effective arrival successor. Meet me Planters Hotel St. Louis this
P.M.
LEMUEL C. BARSTOW."
And while Jewel gasped Martin went on:
"'Tis code it is, from Barstow. It says Walker's taken his place--and
I'm out."