“It was good of you Jack, to have Mr. Dunlap invite me to dine with
him this evening. I am deucedly weary of the ‘off colored,’” exclaimed
Lieutenant Tom Maxon as he and his companion, Captain Jack Dunlap walked
in the twilight through the outskirts of Port au Prince.
“To tell you the truth, Tom, I was not thinking of your pleasure in the
visit half so much as I was about my old kinsman’s. You see we have been
here a month, and as my Cousin Lucy is an invalid and sees no company,
Mr. Dunlap has divided his great rambling house into two parts. He and
Burton occupy one part and the women folk the other; I join them as
often as possible but as Burton is exceedingly popular with the dusky
Haitians and often absent, my old cousin is apt to be lonely. I thought
your habitual jolliness would do him good, and at the same time secure
you a fine dinner, excellent wine and the best cigars in Haiti; hence the
invitation.”
“How is Mrs. Burton? I remember her from the days when you, the little
Princess and I used to make ‘Rome howl’ in the Dunlap attic.”
“Lucy is much improved by the sea voyage and change of climate, but must
have absolute quiet. For that reason my mother keeps up an establishment
in one part of the house to insure against noise, or intrusion,” said
Jack.
“I hope that you didn’t promise much jollity on my part this evening, old
chum, for the thought of our little Princess being an invalid and under
the same roof knocks all the laugh and joke out of even a mirthful idiot
like Tom Maxon,” said the lieutenant.
“It’s sailing rather close to tears, I confess, Tom, but I do wish you
to cheer the old gentleman up some if you can,” replied Jack as they
strolled along the highway between dense masses of tropical foliage.
“I say, Jack, is Mr. Dunlap’s place much further? I don’t half like its
location,” said Maxon as he looked about him and noticed the absence of
houses and the thick underbrush.
“Why? What’s the matter with it? Are you leg weary already, you
sea-swab?” cried Dunlap laughing.
“Not a bit; but I’ll tell you something that may be a little imprudent
in a naval officer, but still I think you ought to know. The American
Consul fears some trouble from the blacks on account of the concessions
that Dictator Dupree was forced to grant the whites before the English
and American bankers would make the loan that Mr. Dunlap negotiated. The
rumor is that the ignorant blacks from the mountains blame your kinsman
and mutter threats against him. When Admiral Snave received the order at
Gibraltar to call at Port au Prince on our way home with the flag-ship
Delaware and one cruiser, we all suspected something was up, and after we
arrived and the old fighting-cock placed guards at the American Consulate
we felt sure of it,” replied Lieutenant Tom seriously.
“Oh! pshaw, these black fellows are always muttering and threatening but
it ends at that,” said Jack with a contemptuous gesture.
“‘Luff round,’ shipmate,” suddenly called Tom Maxon grabbing hold of
Jack’s arm and pointing through a break in the jungle that lined the
roadway.
“Isn’t that a queer combination over there by that dead tree?” continued
the officer directing Jack’s gaze to a cleared spot on the edge of the
forest.
In the dim light could be distinguished the figure of a well-dressed man,
who was not black, in earnest conversation with a bent old hag of a black
woman who rested her hand familiarly and affectionately upon his arm.
Dunlap started when he first glanced at them. The figure and dress of the
man was strangely similar to that of Walter Burton.
“Some go-between in a dusky love affair doubtless,” said Jack shortly as
he moved on.
“Well, I think I could select a better looking Cupid,” exclaimed Tom
laughing at the suggestion of the old witch playing the part of love’s
messenger.
“By the way, Jack, speaking of Cupid, I received a peculiar communication
at Gibraltar. It was only a clipping from some society paper but
this was what it said: ‘Mr. T. DeMontmorency Jones has sailed in his
magnificent yacht the “Bessie” for the Mediterranean, where he will
spend the winter. _En passant_, rumor says the engagement between Mr.
Jones and one of Boston’s most popular belles has been terminated.’
This same spindle shanked popinjay of a millionaire was sailing in the
wake of my _inamorata_ and was said to have cut me out of the race
after my Trafalgar. So, when I tell you, old chap, that the writing on
the envelope looks suspiciously like the chirography of Miss Elizabeth
Winthrop, you can guess why I can sing
‘There’s a sweetheart over the sea’
‘And she’s awaiting there for me.’”
The light-hearted lieutenant aroused the birds from their roosts by the
gusto of his boisterous baritone in his improvised song. He stopped short
and said abruptly,
“Jack, why the deuce didn’t you fall in love with the little Princess and
marry her yourself?”
“Hold hard, Tom. My cousin Lucy is the object of too much serious concern
to us all to be made the subject of jest just now, even by you, comrade,
and what you ask is infernal nonsense anyhow,” replied Jack, somewhat
confused and with more heat than seemed justifiable.
“Oh! I beg your pardon, Jack. You know that I’m such a thoughtless fool,
I didn’t think how the question might sound,” said Tom quickly, in
embarrassment.
Captain Dunlap made no mistake in promising the lieutenant of the U.S.N.
a good dinner, rare wine and fine cigars. John Dunlap in the desert of
Sahara would have surrounded himself, somehow, with all the accessories
necessary to an ideal host.
Good-natured Tom Maxon exercised himself to the utmost in cheering the
old gentleman and dispelling any loneliness or gloom that he might
feel. Tom told amusing anecdotes of the irascible admiral, recounted
odd experiences and funny incidents in his term of service among the
Philippinoes and Chinese; he sang queer parodies on popular ballads,
and rollicking, jolly sea songs until the old gentleman, temporarily
forgetting his care and grief, was laughing like a schoolboy.
When they were seated, feet upon the railing, _a la Americaine_, on the
broad piazza, listening to the songs of the tropical night birds, as they
smoked their cigars, the lieutenant recalled the subject of the location
of Mr. Dunlap’s house, by saying,
“I mentioned to Jack, while on my way here, sir, that it seemed to me
that you would be safer nearer the American Consulate in case any trouble
should arise concerning the concessions to the whites made by Dupree.”
“Oh! I don’t think that there is any occasion for alarm. To bluff and
bluster is part of the negro nature. The whole talk is inspired by
the agitation caused by the Voo Doo priests and priestesses among the
superstitious blacks from the mountains. By the way, Jack, our old friend
the witch who wished to sail in your ship with us when we left for
Boston, still haunts my premises.” As if to corroborate what the speaker
had just said, a wailing chant arose on the tranquil night air, coming
from just beyond the wall around the garden,
“Oh! Tu Konk, my Tu Konk”
“Send back the black blood.”
“There she is now,” exclaimed Jack and Mr. Dunlap at the same time.
“My black boy who waits at the table told me that the old crone was
holding meetings nightly in worship of Voo Doo, and that too in the very
suburbs of the city,” said Mr. Dunlap when the sound of old Sybella’s
voice died away in the distance.
“Where is Burton tonight?” asked Jack as if recalling something.
“I don’t know. When he does not appear at the established dinner hour I
take it for granted that he is at the club in the city or dining with
some of his newly made friends. He is quite popular here, being a Haitian
himself,” replied the old gentleman.
* * * * *
It was late that night when Walter Burton entered the apartments reserved
for his exclusive use in the house of John Dunlap. Throwing off his coat
he sat down in a great easy chair in the moonlight by the open window and
lighted a cigar.
“I wish that I were free to fly to the mountains and hide myself here in
Haiti among my own people forever,” sighed the young man glancing away
off to the shadowy outline of the hills against the moonlit sky.
“The sensation of being pitied is humiliating and hateful, and that was
what I endured during the voyage from Boston, and have suffered ever
since I arrived and have been in enforced association with the Dunlaps.
The devoted love for Lucy, my wife, is a source of pain, not pleasure.
Her unreasoning antipathy now is more bearable than will surely be the
repulsion that must arise if, when restored to reason, she learn that I
am the author of the cause of her disappointment, horror and dementia.
Woe is mine under any circumstances! The evil consequences of attempted
amalgamation of the negro and white races are not borne alone by the
white participants but fall as heavily upon those of the negro blood who
share in the abortive effort.”
Burton seemed to ruminate for a long while, smoking in silence, then he
muttered,
“Am I much happier when with my own race? Hardly! When I am in the
society of even the most highly cultivated Haitian negroes I am unable
to free myself from the thought that we are much like a lot of monkeys,
such as Italian street musicians carry with them. We negroes are togged
out in the dignity, education and culture of the white race, but we are
only aping the natural, self-evolved civilization and culture of the
whites. The clothing does not fit us, the garments were not cut according
to our mental and moral measurements, and we appear ridiculous when we
don the borrowed trappings of the white race’s mind, and pompously strut
before an amused and jeering world.”
“When I imagined the mantle that I wore was my own it set lightly and
comfortably on me. Now that I realize that it is the property of another,
it has become cumbersome, unwieldy, awkward and is slipping rapidly from
my shoulders.”
“On the other side of the subject are equal difficulties. If, weary of
imitation and affectation, I seek the society of my race in all its
natural purity and ignorance, my senses have become so acute, softened
and made tender by the long use of my borrowed mantle that I am shocked,
horrified or disgusted. Oh! Son of Ham, escape from the doom pronounced
against you while yet time was new seems impossible. In My Book it is
writ, saith the Lord!”
In melancholy musing the man tortured by so many contrary emotions and
feelings, sat silently gazing at the distant stars and then cried out in
anguish of spirit,
“Oh! that I should be forced to feel that the Creator of all this grand
universe is unjust! That I should regard education and culture as a curse
to those foredoomed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. That I
should realize that refinement is a cankerous limb, a clog and hindrance
to a negro, unfitting him for association with his own race and yet
impotent to change those innate characteristics inherited by him from his
ancestors, that disqualify him from homogeneousness with the white race.”
The young man’s voice was full of despair and even something of reproach
as his subtle intellect wove the meshes of the adamantine condition that
bound him helpless, in agony, to the rack of race inferiority.
“Mother Sybella, who has proven herself my great-grandmother, urges
me to fly and seek among my own people that surcease from suffering
unattainable among the whites. While she fascinates me, she fills me with
horror. I am drawn toward her yet I am repelled by something loathsome
in the association with her. She seems to possess hypnotic power over my
senses; she leads me by some magnetic influence that exerts control over
the negro portion of my nature.”
“I am ashamed to be seen by the white people, especially the Dunlaps,
in familiar conversation with the grandmother of my mother, but in our
secret and frequent interviews she has told me much that I was unaware
of concerning my ancestors and my mother. I have promised to attend a
meeting of my kinsmen tomorrow night, which will be held in a secluded
spot near the city, whither she herself will guide me. I do not wish to
go. I did not wish to make the promise and appointment to meet her, but
was compelled by the overmastering power she wields over the natural
proclivities within me. I must meet her and go with her.”
The struggle in the dual nature of the man between the contending forces
of the innate and the acquired was obvious in the reluctant tone in
which, while he admitted that he would obey the innate, he lamented the
abandonment of the acquired.
“I must go, I feel that I must! My destiny was written ere Shem, Ham
and Japhet separated to people the world. I bow to the inevitable! I am
pledged to Dupree for dinner tomorrow evening, but I shall excuse myself
early, and keep my appointment with Mother Sybella, and accompany her to
the meeting of my kindred.”