The neighbors were curious to know why Louise had left home and whither
she was gone. Day and night they came to ask questions, and though told
that she was visiting relatives in Kentucky, they departed suspecting
that something must be wrong. The gossips were more or less busy, and
Jim Taylor snatched another idler off the fence and trounced him in the
sand.
Weeks passed and no letter came from Louise. The Major worried over her
until at last he forbade the mention of her name. During the day Mrs.
Cranceford was calm and brave, but many a time in the night the Major
heard her crying. Every Sunday afternoon Jim Taylor's tread was heard on
the porch. To the Major he talked of various things, of the cotton which
was nearly all picked, of the weakening or strengthening tendency of the
market, but when alone with Mrs. Cranceford his talk began and ended
with Louise. But in this he observed the necessity for great care, lest
the Major might hear him, and he chose occasions when the old gentleman
was in his office or when with Gid he strolled down into the woods. In
the broad parlor, in the log part of the house, Jim and Mrs. Cranceford
would sit, hours at a time; and never did she show an impatience of his
long lapses of silence nor of his monotonous professions of faith in the
run-away. And upon taking his leave he would never fail to say: "I
believe we'll hear from her to-morrow; I am quite sure of it."
In the midst of the worry that followed the young woman's departure,
there had been but one mention of the young man's affair with the niece
of Wash Sanders. Mrs. Cranceford had spoken to him, not directly, but
with gentle allusion, and he had replied with an angry denunciation of
such meddlesomeness. "I'm not going to marry a dying woman," he
declared; "and I'm not going to take up any faded ninny that you and
father may pick out. I'm going to please myself, and when you decide
that I mustn't, just say the word and I'll hull out. And I don't want to
hear anything about crackers or white trash, either. That's me."
His mother must have agreed that it was, for the weeks went by and not
again did she drop a hint of her anxiety.
One rainy afternoon the Major and old Gid were sitting on a tool-box
under the barn shed, when Father Brennon came riding down the road.
"As they say over the creek, light and look at your saddle!" the Major
shouted.
With a nod and a smile the priest rode through the gate, dismounted,
gave his horse over to a negro who, in answer to a shout, had come
forward from some mysterious precinct of the barn-yard, shook hands with
the Major and Gid, and gracefully declining a seat on the tool-box,
rolled a barrel from against the wall and upon it seated himself.
"More in accordance with the life of a priest," he said, tapping the
barrel with his knuckles. "It is rolling."
"Ah," replied the Major, "and a barrel may also typify the reckless
layman. It is often full."
The priest gave to this remark the approval of a courteous laugh. Even
though he might stand in a slippery place, how well he knew his ground.
To call forth a weak joke and then to commend it with his merriment--how
delightful a piece of flattery. And it can, in truth, be said that in
his heart he was sincere. To be pleasing was to him an art, and this art
was his second nature.
"Mr. Brennon," said the Major (and under no compulsion would he have
said father), "I have thought a great deal of the argument we had some
time ago; and I have wondered, sir, that in coming to this community to
proselyte the negro, you did not observe the secrecy with which the
affairs of your church are usually conducted. But understand, please,
that I do not mean to reflect upon the methods of your creed, but
simply wonder that you have not followed a recognized precedent."
The priest had taken hold of the chine at each end of the barrel and was
slowly rolling himself backward and forward. "I fail to see why any
secrecy should be observed in my work," he replied. "The Catholic church
has never made a secret of doing good--for we believe in the potency of
example. If we elevate the moral condition of one man, it is well that
another man should know it. The Methodist holds his revival and implores
the sinner to come forward and kneel at the altar. And as it were, I am
holding a revival--I am persuading the negro and the white man as well
to kneel under the cross. Should there be any secrecy in such a work?"
"Well, no, not when you put it that way. But you know that we look upon
the Catholic religion as a foreign religion. It does not somehow seem
native to this soil. It is red with the pomp of monarchy, it has the
ceremonious restraint of the king's court; it hasn't the free noise of a
republic. I will not question its sincerity or the fact that it has in
view the betterment of man, but to us it will always seem an
importation."
"It was here first," the priest replied, gravely smiling. "It discovered
this country."
"We must grant that," the Major rejoined, "but still I insist that the
native born American regards it as a foreign institution, foreign to his
nature, to his sense of liberty, if not to his soul."
"My dear Major, Christ is foreign to no soil. The earth is His Father's
foot-stool. The soul of man is the abiding place of the love of the
Saviour, and no heart is out-landish. What you may call liberty is an
education, but the soul as God's province is not made so by training,
but came with the first twinkling of light, of reason, the dawn of
time."
"That's about as straight as any man can give it," old Gid joined in.
"But what puzzles me is why God is more at home in one man's heart than
in another. He fills some hearts with love and denies it to others; and
the heart that has been denied is cursed, through no fault of its
own--simply because it has not received--while the other heart is
blessed. I reckon the safest plan is to conclude that we don't know
anything about it. I don't, and that settles it so far as I'm concerned.
I can't accept man's opinion, for man doesn't know any more about it
than I do; so I say to myself, 'Gideon Batts, eat, drink and be merry,
for the first thing you know they will come along and lay you out where
the worm is whetting his appetite.' You have raked up quite a passle of
negroes, haven't you, colonel?"
The priest looked at him, but not resentfully. "My work has not been
without a fair measure of success," he answered, now sitting upright and
motionless. "You must have noticed that we are building quite a large
church."
"So I see," said the Major. "And you still believe that you are going to
preserve the negro's body as well as save his soul."
"We are going to save his soul, and a soul that is to be saved serves to
protect its habitation."
"But you foresee a race war?"
"I foresee racial troubles, which in time may result in a war of
extermination."
"I agree with you, Mr. Brennon," the Major replied. "As time passes it
will become more and more clear that the whites and the negroes cannot
live together. Their interests may be identical, but they are of a
different order and can never agree. And now let us face the truth. What
sowed the seeds of this coming strife? Emancipation? No,
enfranchisement. The other day Mr. Low gave me a copy of the London
Spectator, calling my attention to a thoughtful paper on this very
subject. It deeply impressed me, so much so that I read parts of it a
number of times. Let me see if I can recall one observation that struck
me. Yes, and it is this: 'We want a principle on which republicans can
work and we believe that the one which would be the most fruitful is
that the black people should be declared to be foreign immigrants,
guests of the state, entitled to the benefit of every law and every
privilege, education, for example, but debarred from political power and
from sitting on juries, which latter, indeed, in mixed cases, ought to
be superseded by properly qualified magistrates and judges.' The paper
goes on to show that this would not be oppressive, and that the blacks
would be in the position of a majority of Englishmen prior to 1832, a
position compatible with much happiness. But the trouble is we have gone
too far to retrace our steps. It was easy enough to grant suffrage to
the negro, but to take it away would be a difficult matter. So what are
we to do? To let the negro exercise the full and unrestrained measure of
his suffrage, would, in some communities, reduce the white man to the
position of political nonentity. And no law, no cry about the rights of
a down-trodden race, no sentiment expressed abroad, could force the
white man to submit quietly to this degradation. Upon the negro's head
the poetry of New England has placed a wreath of sentiment. No poet has
placed a wreath upon the brow of the California Chinaman, nor upon the
head of any foreign element in any of the northern states. Then why this
partiality? Is the negro so gentle that he must always be defended, and
is the white man of the south so hard of heart that he must always be
condemned?"
"What you say is perfectly clear to me," the priest replied, "and it is
natural that you should defend your position."
"It is the only position and the only course left to a thinking and a
self-respecting white man," the Major rejoined.
"Yes, I will agree to that, too."
"Ah, and that's the trouble, Mr. Brennon. You agree while you oppose."
"My dear Major, I am not here to oppose, nor to destroy, but to save
fragments when the hour of destruction shall have come."
"But if your church believes that it can save fragments why doesn't it
exert itself to save the whole?"
"Major, salvation comes of persuasion and persuasion is slow."
"Yes, and let me tell you that your form of religion will never become
popular among the negroes. The negro is emotional, and to make a display
of his religious agitation is too great a luxury to be given up. Your
creed entails too much belief and too little excitement; upon the layman
it doesn't confer sufficient importance. The negro must shout and hug.
The quiet mysticism of the divine spirit does not satisfy him. He wants
to be exorcised; he wants what is known as the mourners'-bench jerks. If
his brother loves him he doesn't want a quiet assurance of that fact,
conveyed by a year of conduct; he demands a noisy proof, the impulse of
a moment of joy."
With a slow shake of his head old Gid confirmed this view, and the
priest looked on, gravely smiling. "You have now touched upon a mistaken
phase of the negro's character," said he. "And to make my point clear, I
must speak plainly with regard to the appearance of our form of worship.
I must present it as it impresses the ignorant and the superstitious. In
doing so I make myself appear almost irreverent, but in no other way can
I show you the possibilities of my work among the colored race. Mystery
appeals to the negro. Behind all mystery there is power. Under the
influence of the sensationalist the negro may shout, demand an impulsive
proof of love, hug his brother; but in his heart God is a fearful and
silent mystery. And the Catholic church shows him that the holy spirit
is without noise. In the creation of the great tree there has not been a
sound; all has been the noiseless will of God. It is not difficult to
show him that ours was the first church; it may be shown that the
Protestant Bible held him a slave; and above all we prove to him that in
the Catholic church there is no discrimination against his color, that a
negro may become a Cardinal. We convince him that shouting is but a
mental agitation and a physical excitement. I have know many a negro, on
the scaffold, to renounce the religion which for years he had
practiced, and with cool discernment embrace the parent church. The germ
of Catholicism is in his blood. He cannot be a free thinker. The
barbarian is subdued by the solemn and majestic form of the Church of
Rome, while he might regard with disdain the intricate reason of the
Presbyterian faith. And in this respect the negro is akin to the
barbarian. He is moved by music and impressed by ceremony."
"You are plain-spoken, indeed," the Major replied. "The boldness with
which you recount your shams is most surprising. I didn't expect it."
"I told you that I would be bold."
"But you didn't say that you would acknowledge your insincerity."
"Nor have I done so. I have simply shown you why our church appeals to
the superstitious blood of the African. To accomplish a good we must use
the directest means. If I were seeking to convert you, I should adopt a
different method. I would appeal to your reason; convince you of a truth
which the wisest men have known and still know--that the Catholic church
is God's church. It is now time for me to go," he added, after a short
pause. "Please tell your man that I want my horse."