“What a God-send Jack Dunlap is at this time, sister. He has taken charge of everything,and in that steady, confident, masterful way of his has brought order out of the chaos that existed at the mansion. It may be the training and habits acquired at sea, but no matter what it is the transformation in the affairs at the house is wonderful. His decisive manner of directing everything and everybody and the correctness and promptness with which all people and things are disposed of by him is phenomenal. I thank Providence for the relief that Jack’s coming has brought.”
The total exhaustion of Chapman’s intense energy was best exhibited in the satisfaction he felt at having some one to assist him even in the affairs of the Dunlaps.
“Jack is one of the best and strongest minded men in the world. While I know that his heart is bleeding for all, especially for Lucy, he has maintained a self-control that is superb,” said the spinster.
“When he learned that Lucy’s hallucination led her to believe that the old family physician had conspired to deprive her of her baby, he promptly procured the attendance of anotherdoctor, saying positively, ‘Lucy’s mind must not be disturbed by sight of anything or person tending to aggravate her mental disorder.’ He forbade Mrs. Church going into Lucy’s apartments, dismissed the nurse and procured a new one, had that accursed infant put with his nurse into other apartments and did it all so firmly and quietly that no one dreamed of disputing any order given by him,” said David wearily, but evidently much relieved with the changes made by Jack.
“What of Lucy? How is she?” anxiously questioned Arabella.
“Her mental faculties are totally disarranged. She has not spoken coherently since she fell senseless on that dreadful night and was carried to her bed. Besides, her physical condition is precarious in the extreme,” replied the brother.
“Has Jack seen her yet?” inquired the old maid sadly.
“Yes, and it is very strange how rational she became as soon as she saw him enter the room. You know, Arabella, the steady, earnest, matter of fact manner he has. Well, he walked into her room with just that manner, they say hestopped to steady himself before going in, and said ‘How are you, Cousin Lucy? I’ve come home to see you,’ and without a quiver took her extended hands and pressed them to his breast.
“Lucy knew him at once when he stepped inside the door. She looked intently at him, then gave a glad, joyful cry and held out her hands, calling, ‘Jack, Oh Jack! Come to me, my champion! Now all will be well.’ Then she put her weak, white arms about his neck and began to weep as she sobbed out, ‘Jack, I have needed you. You said you would come from the end of the earth to me. I knew you would come; Jack, they have stolen my angel boy, my baby. Jack, find it, bring it to me. I know you can. You said until death you would love me, Jack. Oh! find my baby, my darling.’”
“Poor Lucy! Poor Jack!” broke in the old lady, as tears of pity ran down her withered cheek.
“But think of the strength of the man, Arabella. You and I know what he was suffering. Yet he answered with never a waver in his voice, ‘All right, little cousin, I am here and noharm shall come to you. I’ll help you, but you must be a good little girl and stay quiet and get well. Shall I have my mother come to sit with you?’ She cried out at once, ‘Please do, Jack, Cousin Martha did not steal my baby,’ and then he insisted that she put her head back on the pillow and close her eyes. When she did so Jack had the courage to sit on the bedside and sing softly some old song about the sea that they had sung together when children. The poor girl fell fast asleep as he sung, but still clung to Jack’s brown hand.”
Chapman gave a groan when he finished as if the harrowing scene was before him.
“Blessings on the stout hearted boy,” whimpered the old lady.
“Lucy never calls, as formerly, for her grandfather or husband. In fact, when Burton entered her room after that awful night she flew into a perfect frenzy, accusing him of stealing her child and putting some imp that, at some time, she had seen in Florida, in his place, notwithstanding his protestations and entreaties. Her mad fury increased to such a degree thatthe doctor insisted that Burton should leave the room, and has forbidden him to again visit his wife until there is a change in her mental condition. Of course, Lucy knows nothing of the death of her grandfather.” The man’s voice became choked as he uttered the last sentence.
“Have Jack and Mr. Burton been together since Jack’s return?” inquired Arabella, after a long silence.
“I think not, except once when they were closeted in the library for two hours the day after Jack arrived. When they came out I was in the hall and heard Jack say, as he left the library with Burton, ‘I shall hold you to your promise. You must wait until my cousin be in a condition of mind to express her wishes in that matter.’ Jack’s voice was firm and emphatic and his face was very stern. Burton replied, ‘I gave you my word of honor.’ He seemed in great distress and mental anguish. My opinion is that he had proposed disappearing forever, and I think so for the reason that he had asked me to dispose of a great amount of his personal securities, and to bring him currency for the proceeds in bills oflarge denomination, and Jack must have objected,” rejoined Chapman.
“I am sorry for Mr. Burton and am glad Jack would not let him go away,” said the kind spinster.
“Well I am not,” cried Chapman savagely, notwithstanding his fatigue.
“They would better let him go. This misfortune is the physical one that long ago I told you was possible. The next may be spiritual and result in some emotional or fanatic outburst of barbarous religious fervor that may again disgrace us all. Then may develop the bestial propensities of the sensual nature of savages and may result in crime and ruin the house of Dunlap forever.”
“David, go to bed and rest. You are worn out and conjure up imaginary horrors purely by reason of nervousness and weariness,” said the sister soothingly.
“You maintained months ago that the danger of breeding back was imaginary. What do you think now? The other things that I suggest as possible, are inherent in Burton’s blood and may tell their story yet.”
Chapman, though weak, became vehement immediately upon the mention of this unfortunate subject. It required all the persuasion and diplomacy of his good sister to get him to desist and finally to retire to his bed room for the rest that was so needed by the worn out man.
“You have been a tower of strength to me, Jack, in the grief and trouble of the last three months. I don’t know what would have become of us all without your aid and comfort.”
So spoke Mr. John Dunlap. He appeared many years older than he did when three months before he arrived in Boston on board the “Adams.” He was bent, and care worn. Deep sorrow had taken the fire and mirth from his honest, kindly eyes.
“I am rejoiced and repaid if I have been able to be of service to those whom I love, and who have always been so kind to me,” replied Jack Dunlap simply.
The two men were seated in the library of the Dunlap mansion in the closing hour of that late November day, watching the heavy snow flakes falling without.
“Jack, I have meditated for several days uponwhat I am about to say and can find no way but to beg you to make more sacrifices for us,” said the old gentleman, after a lapse of several minutes.
“The condition in which our family is demands the presence of some younger, stronger head and hand than mine is now. I know the ‘Adams’ is refitted, after her two years of service, and ready for sea. I know you, my lad, and your reluctance to remain idle when you think that you should be at work.”
“To be frank, sir, you have hit upon a subject about which I desired to talk with you but have hesitated for several days,” said the young man, with something of relief in his tone.
“Well then, Jack, to begin with, I wish to charter your ship for a voyage and to show that it is no subterfuge to hold you here, I say at once I wish you to sail in her.” Mr. Dunlap paused for a moment to note the effect of his proposal and then continued,
“Let me go over the situation, Jack, and tell me if you do not agree in my conclusions. Lucy, while apparently restored in a degree to her formerhealth, is still weak and looks fragile. The physicians advise me to take her to a warmer climate before our New England Winter sets in. Her dementia still continues, and while she is perfectly gentle and harmless, she will neither tolerate the presence of her husband, nor poor Mrs. Church, and is even not pleased or quiet in my company. I think my likeness to my beloved brother affects her. She clings to your good mother and to you, my lad, with the confident affection of a child. When she is not softly singing, as she rocks and smiles in a heartrending, far-off-way, some baby lullaby, she is flitting about the house like some sweet and sorrowful shadow. Can we, Jack, expose our girl in this condition to the unsympathetic gaze of strangers?”
“No, no, a thousand times no!” was the quick and emphatic answer of the younger man.
“Now listen, Jack. Since the death of that poor, little misshapen black creature, which innocently brought so much trouble into our lives, and, Jack, your thoughtfulness in having it buried quietly in Bedford instead of here issomething I shall never forget. But to return to Lucy: Since that object is out of the way, and after the consultation of those great specialists in mental disorder cases, I am led to hope that Lucy may be restored to us in all the glory of her former mental condition.”
“God speed the day,” exclaimed Jack fervently and reverently.
“The specialists affirm that as this aberration of mind was produced by a shock and as there is no inherited insanity involved in the case, that the restoration may occur at any moment in the most unexpected manner. A surprise, shock or some accident may instantly produce the joyful change.
“It is for that very reason that I have insisted that Burton should remain near at hand, and ready to respond to a call from the restored wife for her husband’s presence. We must bear in mind the fact that Lucy, before this hallucination, was devotedly attached to her husband and grandfather. With the return of her reason we may justly expect the return of her former affections and feelings,” interrupted Jack by wayof explanation of something he had done.
“I know that, Jack, and approve of your course, but I am only a weak human creature, and notwithstanding the injunction of my dying brother to blame no one, I cannot eradicate from my mind a feeling of animosity toward Burton. I know that he is not culpable, but still I should be glad to have him pass out of our lives, if it were not for the probable effect upon Lucy if she ever be restored to reason. However, I was not displeased by his decision to return to his own house, the ‘Eyrie,’ until his presence was required here.”
“Burton’s position, sir, has been a very trying one. I may say a very dreadful one, and I think that he has acted in a very manly, courageous manner, sir, and I think it our duty, as Christian men, to put aside even our natural repugnance to the author of our misfortune and be lenient toward one who has suffered as well as ourselves.”
The young sailor stopped, hesitated, and then jerked out the words
“And to be frank and outspoken with you, sir,by heavens! I am saving him for Lucy’s sake; if she wish him, when she know all, she shall have him safe and sound if it cost my life.” There was a fierce determination in Jack’s voice that boded no good to Burton should he attempt to disappear, nor to any one who attempted to injure the man whom Lucy’s loyal sailor knight was safe-keeping for his hopeless love’s sake.
“Jack, I love you, lad.” was all that the old Dunlap said, but he knew and felt the grandeur of the character of the man, who pressed the dagger down into his own heart, to save a single pang to the woman whom he loved so unselfishly.
“But to resume the recital of my plans and our situation,” said the old gentleman settling back in his chair. He had leaned forward to pat Jack on the shoulder.
“We agree that Lucy cannot be subjected to the scrutiny and criticism of strangers. I propose, that as the physicians advise a warmer climate, to charter the ‘Adams,’ have the cabin remodeled to accommodate Lucy, your mother, the nurse and Lucy’s maid, and to take them all withme to Haiti, just as soon as the changes in the accommodations on your ship can be made.”
“Burton goes with us, of course,” said Jack, assertively.
“Well, I had not determined that point. What do you think?”
“Decidedly, yes! The business may suffer, but let it. What is business in comparison to the restoration of Lucy?” cried Jack in an aggressive tone of voice.
“It shall be as you think best, my lad. The business will not suffer in any event, for since Burton’s return to his position as manager, he has in some extraordinary manner become worthless in the management of the affairs of the house. He does not inspire the respect that he did formerly nor does he seem to possess the same self-confidence and decision of character that marked his manner before the events of the past few weeks. I don’t know what I should have done had it not been for Chapman. He has taken full charge of everything and will continue in control while I am absent, if you decide to take Burton along.”
“You surprise me, sir. I had noticed no alteration in Burton’s manner,” exclaimed Jack, sincerely astonished at what he heard.
“That is quite likely as he seems to regard you with a kind of awed respect, but nevertheless what I state is an absolute fact. When first he made his appearance at the office he endeavored by a brave, bold front to resume his position, but somehow his attempt was a lamentable failure. He seemed to feel that everyone was aware that there was something sham about his assumed dignity and authority and like an urchin caught masquerading in his father’s coat and hat, he has discarded the borrowed garments and relapsed into the character that nature gave him. Burton’s succeeding efforts to impress the office force and people with whom we do business with a sense of his importance have been absurdly laughable,” said Mr. Dunlap.
“The secret of the child, and all that concerns our family is confined to our own people, and a few old and faithful friends, is it not?” asked Jack in an anxious, troubled voice.
“Certainly, but that apparently does not lessenBurton’s sense of being garbed in stolen apparel. I can notice the dignity and culture of the white race growing less day by day in Burton’s speech and manner, just as frost-pictures on a window pane lessen each hour in the rays of the sun until naught remains but the naked and bared glass.”
“What will be the end of all this, if you be correct?” cried Jack.
“One by one the purloined habiliments of the superior race will disappear until finally he will stand forth stripped of the acquired veneering created by the culture of the white race, a negro. This transformation, which I think time will effect, recalls to me an example of the inordinate vanity and love of parading in borrowed plumage common to the negro race. During one of the numerous insurrections in Haiti I used to see one of the major generals of the insurgents—they had a dozen for every hundred privates—a big black fellow, strut about, puffed up with assumed importance and dignity. In less than one week after the insurrection was suppressed he was at my door selling fish. While there he beganto ‘pat Juba,’ as he called it, and dance, giggling with childish glee and winding up the performance by begging me for a quarter. There you see the negro of it. Prick the balloon and when the borrowed elevating gas escapes the skin collapses immediately,” said John Dunlap, with the positiveness of a prophet.
“God grant that the end be not as you surmise or let God in His mercy continue our Lucy in her present condition. It were more merciful. History gives the records of men of the negro race who did not end their lives in the manner you suggest, however,” replied Jack, extracting a crumb of comfort from the last statement.
“True! my lad, true! There have been white elephants and white crows; in every forest occasionally a rare bird is found. So with the negro race, rare exceptions to the general rule do appear but so infrequently as to only accentuate the accuracy of the general rule.”
Walter Burton was seated at a table in his bedroom at the “Eyrie.” Before him were scattered letters, papers and writing material. Itwas late at night and he had evidently been engaged in assorting and destroying the contents of an iron box placed beside him on the floor. His elbows were on the table and his chin rested in both of his hands while he gazed meditatively at the flame in the lamp before him.
“I am, oh! so weary of this farce. How I long to be able to run away and be free,” he sighed as he said this to himself. After a little while he continued.
“The farce has been played to the final act. I know it. What is the use to continue upon the stage longer? Should Lucy’s mind return to its normal condition she must be informed of what has transpired and then my happiness will terminate anyhow. Of what earthly use is it for me to remain here. She might call for me at first, but only to repulse me at last. I am tolerated by old John Dunlap, hated or despised by the others except the noblest of them all, Jack Dunlap. He relies upon my word of honor. I must not lose his respect. I would to God I had given another the promise not to disappear.”
The man paused for some time in his soliloquyand then broke out again by exclaiming,
“The moment that the nurse showed the child to me a curtain of darkness seemed to roll back. I saw clearly what produced the strange spells that for so long have mystified me. I am a negro. My blood and natural inclinations are those common to the descendants of Ham. It matters not that my skin is white, I am still a negro. The acquirement of the education, culture and refinement of the white race has made no change in my blood and inherent instincts. I am ever a negro. Like a jaded harlot I may paint my face with the hues of health but I am like her, a diseased imitator of the healthy. I may have every outward and visible sign but the inward and spiritual grace of the white race is not and can never be mine. I am a wretched sham, fraud and libel upon the white race with my fair skin and affected manner.”
The man’s arms fell upon the table and he hid his head in them and groaned. Thus he remained for a short time, then raised his head and cried out,
“I even doubt that my Christianity is genuineand not a hollow mockery! The doctrine of Mahomet is received more readily, and practiced more consistently by my native race in its ancient home of Africa than the pure and elevating teachings of Christ. The laws of Mahomet seem more consistent with the sensual nature of my race than the chaste commands of Christ. History relates that Islamism is able to turn an African negro from idolatry where the Christian religion utterly fails. Are my protestations of faith in Christianity like my refinement, culture and manners, merely outward manifestations in imitation of the white race and as deceitful as is the color of my skin?”
Burton sat silent for several moments and then said in a tone of sad reminiscence.
“I recall how everything in the Christian religion or service that appealed to the emotional element within me aroused me, but is my nature as a negro, susceptible of receiving, retaining and appreciating permanently the truths of that purest and noblest of all faiths?” Again the man paused as if silently struggling to solve the problem suggested.
“It has of late, I know, become the fashion to refuse to accept the Scriptures literally, but there is one prophecy concerning the descendants of Ham which thousands of years have demonstrated as true.”
“The sculpture of that oldest of civilizations, the mother of all culture, the Egyptian, proves beyond a doubt that the children of Ham came in contact with the source of Greek and Roman culture yet they advanced not one step. The profiles of some even of the early Pharaohs as seen on their tombs furnish unmistakable proof of that contact in the Negroid type of the features of Egypt’s rulers.”
“The Romans carried civilization to every people whom they conquered and to those who escaped the Roman domination they bequeathed an impetus that urged them forward, with the single exception of the accursed Hamites.”
“The Arabs occupied Northern Africa and kept burning the torch of civilization in the chaos of the Dark Ages in Europe. The Arabs fraternized more freely with the sons of Ham than all other branches of the human race, but failed topush, pull or drive them along the highway of culture.”
“The negro race seems bound by that old Scriptural prophecy concerning the descendants of Ham. It does not advance beyond being the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the balance of mankind, notwithstanding five thousand years of opportunity and inducement.”
“The negro race in Africa, its ancestral land, can point to no ruined temples, no not even mounds like can the American Indians. It borrowed not even the art of laying stones from Egypt. It has no written language though the Phoenicians gave that blessing to the world. It has no religion worthy of the name, neither laws nor well defined language. Notwithstanding its association with Egyptian, Roman and Arabian culture and civilization, fountains for all of the thirsty white race, the negro race has benefited not at all. It is where it was five thousand years ago. God’s will be done!”
Burton paused while a sneer came to his lips when he began again speaking.
“Haiti, after decades of freedom, starting withthe benefits conferred by the religion and civilization of one of the leading nations of earth, is the home today of ignorance, slothfulness and superstition. Every improvement made by the former white rulers neglected and passing away. In the hands of the white race it had now been a Paradise. Liberia is as dead, stagnant and torpid as if progress had vanished with the fostering care of the white nations that founded that republic.”
The young man ceased in recapitulating the failures of his race, but added with a sigh,
“In America! Well one may grow oranges in New England by covering the trees with glass and heating the conservatory, but break the glass or let the fire expire and the orange trees die. Break the civilization of the white race in America like the glass, let the fire of its culture become extinguished and alas for the exotic race and its artificial progress.”
“But enough of my race,” exclaimed Burton impatiently as he arose from the table and began walking about the room.
“Formerly I tried to curb an inclination thatwas incomprehensible. Now that I know the cause I rather enjoy the relapses into my natural self. I welcome the casting aside of the mask and affectation of the unreal. It is a relief. The restraint imposed by the presence of those who know me for what I am, is irksome. I long all day for the freedom of my isolation here in the ‘Eyrie’ where no prying eye is finely discriminating the real from the sham. I loath the office and the association there. Each day I seem to drop a link of the chain that binds me to an artificial existence.”
Suddenly an idea seemed to present some new phase to the soliloquizing man. He put his hand to his head as if in pain, and cried out,
“But the end! What shall it be?”
“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 timesecure 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 absenceof 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 myinamorataand 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.’”
‘There’s a sweetheart over the sea’‘And she’s awaiting there for me.’”
‘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 tobe 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.”
“Oh! Tu Konk, my Tu Konk”“Send back the black blood.”
“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 mountainsand 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 themost 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, horrifiedor 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.”
The cleared spot selected by Mother Sybella as the scene of her mystic ceremonies and the gathering place of the worshipers of Voo Doo, though scarcely beyond the outskirts of the city, was so screened by the umbrageous growth of tropical forest, interlaced with vanilla and grape-vines that festoon every woodland of Haiti, that its presence was not even suspected save by the initiated.
On the night that Dictator Dupree entertained, among other guests the wealthy Haitian, Walter Burton, partner in the great American house of “J. Dunlap,” and husband of the heiress to the millions accumulated by the long line of “J. Dunlaps” which had controlled the Haitian trade with the United States, a strange and uncanny drama was enacted almost within sound of the music that enlivened the Dictator’s banquet.
Through trees entwined by gigantic vines, resemblingmonstrous writhing serpents, glided silently many dark forms carrying blazing torches of resinous wood to guide the flitting figures through the intricacies of the hardly definable pathways that ran in serpentine indistinctness toward the clear spot, where Mother Sybella had set up the altar of Tu Konk, and was calling her children to worship by the booming of an immense red drum upon which she beat at short intervals.
In the center of the clearing, coiled upon the stump of a large tree, was a huge black snake, that occasionally reared its head and, waving it from side to side, emitted a fearful hissing sound as it shot forth its scarlet, flame-like tongue.
Torches and bonfires illuminated the spot and cast gleams of light upon the dark faces and distended, white and rolling eyes of the men and women who, squatting in a circle back in the shade of the underbrush, chanted a monotonous dirge-like invocation to the Voo Doo divinity called by them Tu Konk, and supposed to dwell in the loathsome body of the serpent on the stump.
By almost imperceptible degrees the blows upon the drum increased in frequency; old Sybella seemed some tireless fiend incarnate as gradually she animated the multitude and quickened the growing excitement of her emotional listeners by the ceaseless booming of her improved tom-tom. Soon the forest began to resound with hollow bellowing of conch shells carried by many of the squatters about the circle. The chant became quicker. Shouting took the place of the droning monotonous incantations to Tu Konk.
Higher and higher grew the gale of excitement. The shouting grew in volume and intensity. Wild whoops mingled with the more sonorous shouts that made the forest reverberate.
Suddenly the half-clad figure of a man sprang into the circle of light that girded the stump whereon the now irritated snake was hissing continuously. The man was bare to the waist and without covering on his legs and feet below the knees; his eyes glared about him, the revolving white balls in their ebony colored setting was something terrifying to behold. The man uttered whoop after whoop and began shuffling sidewaysaround the stump, every moment adding to the rapidity and violence of his motions until shortly he was madly bounding into the air and with savage shouts tearing at the wool on his head, while white foam flecked his bare black breast.
The man’s madness became contagious. Figure after figure sprang within the lighted space about the serpent. Men, women, and even children all more or less nude, the few garments worn presenting a heterogeneal kaleidoscope of vivid, garish colors as the frenzied dancers whirled about in the irregular light of the torches and bonfires.
Soon spouting streams of red stained the glistening black bodies, and joined the tide of white foam pouring from the protruding, gaping, blubber lips of the howling, frantic worshipers.
The fanatic followers of Voo Dooism were wounding themselves in the delirium of irresponsible emotion. Blood gushed from long gashes made by sharp knives on cheeks, breasts, backs and limbs. The gyrations of the gory, crazed and howling mass were hideous to behold.
When the tempest of curbless frenzy seemedto have reached a point beyond which increase appeared impossible, old Sybella rushed forward, like the wraith of the ancient witch of Endor, dashing the dancers aside, springing to the stump she seized the snake and winding its shining coils about her she waved aloft the long, glittering blade of the knife that she held in hand, and shrieked out, in the voice of an infuriated fiend,
“Bring forth the hornless goat. Let Tu Konk taste the blood of the hornless one!”
A crowd of perfectly naked and bleeding men darted forward bearing in their midst an entirely nude girl, who in a perfect paroxysm of terror fought, writhed and struggled fearfully, yelling wildly all the time, in the grip of her merciless and insensate captors.
The men stretched the screaming wretch across the stump on which the snake had rested, pressed back the agonized girl’s head until her slender neck was drawn taut. Quick as the serpent’s darting tongue, Sybella’s bright, sharp blade descended, severing at one stroke the head almost from the quivering body.
A fiercer, wilder cry arose from the insane devoteesas a great tub nearly full of fiery native rum was placed to catch the gushing stream that flowed in a crimson torrent from the still twitching body of the sacrifice to Voo Doo.
Sybella stirred the horrible mixture of blood and rum with a ladle, made of an infant’s skull affixed to a shin-bone of an adult human being, and having replaced the snake upon his throne, on the stump, in an abject posture presented to the serpent the ladle filled with the nauseating stuff. The re-incarnate Tu Konk thrust his head repeatedly into the skull-bowl and scattered drops of the scarlet liquid over his black and shining coils.
Then Sybella using the skull-ladle began filling enormous dippers made of gourds, that the eager, maddened crowd about the Voo Doo altar held expectantly forth, craving a portion in the libation to Tu Konk.
The maniacal host gorged themselves with the loathsome fluid, gulped down in frenzied haste, great draughts of that devilish brew, from the large calabashes that Sybella filled.
Now hell itself broke forth. No longer werethe worshipers men and women. The lid was lifted from hell’s deepest, most fiendish caldron. A crew of damned demons was spewed out upon earth. With demoniac screams that rent the calmness of the night, they beat and gashed themselves, their slabbering, thick lips slapping together as they gibbered, like insane monkeys, sending flying showers of foam over their bare and bleeding bodies. Human imps of hell’s creation fell senseless to the ground or writhing in hideous, inhuman convulsions twined their distorted limbs about the furious dancers who stamped upon their hellish faces and brought the dancers shrieking to the earth.
In the midst of this pandemonium, redolent with the odor of inferno, a dark figure, that, crouched in the deep shade of the clustering palm plants, and covered with a dark mantle, had remained unnoticed a spectator of the scene, sprang up, hurled to one side the concealing cloak and bounded toward the stump whereon the serpent hissed defiance at his adorers.
With an unearthly yell, half-groan, half-moan, but all insane, frantic and wild, the neophyteleaped about in erratic gyrations of adoration before the snake, that embodiment of Tu Konk, the Voo Doo divinity.
As whirling and, in an ecstacy of emotion, waving aloft his hands the howling dancer turned and the light of the bonfire fell upon his face, the brutalized features of Walter Burton were revealed.
Those refined, aesthetic features that had made the man “the observed of all observers” at Miss Stanhope’s musicale in Boston, had scarcely been recognized as the same in the strangely flattened nose, the thickened lips, the popped and rolling eyes of the man who, in the forest glade of Haiti danced before the Voo Doo god Tu Konk the serpent.
Burton’s evening dress was torn and disarranged, his hair disheveled, his immaculate linen spotted with blood, his shoes broken and muddy, his face contorted and agonized, as twisting and squirming in every limb he sprang and leaped in a fiercely violent dance before the snake. Yells of long pent-up savage fury rang through the dank night air, as Burton threw back his head and whooped in barbarous license.
Sybella’s flashing eyes gleamed with joy as she gazed at this reclaimed scion of the negro race. She stole toward the flying figure that spun around, transported to the acme of insane emotion, singing in triumphant screeches as she crept forward,