Mamba's daughters

The coming of the Reverend Thomas Grayson to the Phosphate Mining Camp created surprisingly little comment at the time. Later, when the man became an all-absorbing topic to both white and black, it was said that he had deliberately misled the Company, from whom he had rented the cabin in which he lived and the larger one near it that he converted into a church. He had come, it was then remembered, in rather shabby clothes, and had been civil-spoken enough, although reticent as to his plans. It is a more plausible theory, however, that he went about his business in a perfectly natural manner, having not the least suspicion that he would encounter any opposition. He attended to his affairs with his characteristic deliberation and persistence, and said very little about them, for the man was not a large talker. It is possible that the season might have contributed to the lack of questioning, for he arrived during that period that lies between summer and fall, when the long pressure of the sultry months had laid a lethargy upon both white and black, reducing their vitality to a point at which they did only what became absolutely necessary with the hands, and waited to reason until the bracing days should come to wake them for their season’s work. Grayson had simply gone to the office and asked whether they had any vacant cabins. They had taken his money for six months’ rent in advance, and, if the tide had been at flood, had continued to doze on the veranda, if at the ebb, to fish in a shady spot on the river bank.

It was not until well into October, when the scrub oaks were commencing to blaze against the dark green of the pines, that the new preacher finished the little belfry that he had erected over the gable end of the larger of his cabins, hung a cheap farm bell in it, installed some benches and a reading desk, donned his vestments, and opened for service.

The negroes, in the meantime, were becoming aware of his presence. He had been visiting quietly among them, talking his strange speech, like that of a white man, telling them of the new church that he was going to open, and inviting them to attend. Slowly their interest in him awakened. He was so utterly unlike any preacher, or negro for that matter, that they had ever seen, that the element of curiosity accomplished for him what no eloquence could have done.

It is likely that Saint Wentworth alone guessed the potentialities of his advent. Grayson had gone to the commissary immediately after his arrival, purchased some supplies, and asked Saint if he could recommend some good woman whom he could get to come and cook for him.

The hour of the visit was a quiet one at the store, and after he had waited on his customer Saint seated himself on the counter with his legs swinging and asked idly: “Going to settle here?”

“Yes,” the man answered, and Saint noticed that he did not use the “sir” in addressing him, “yes, I think I am needed here, and, in God’s name, I am going to do what I can.”

The white man studied him intently from under half-closed lids. Grayson was rather under middle height, about thirty-five years old, and probably a shade darker than quadroon. His face was serious to the point of solemnity, and there were directness and sincerity in his gaze. He spoke with deliberation and with a careful choice of words, but neither then nor at any subsequent time did Saint detect so much as a single gleam of racial humour or imagination in the otherwise strongly marked negroid face.

“Preacher?” Wentworth inquired.

“Yes, but I hope to be a little more than just that. There are so many things that my people need here. I hope to do more than merely preach to them.”

Saint’s interest in the man extended to his attitude. It was different, strange. He was neither servile nor assertive. He seemed to take for granted a relationship that did not exist in the camp. He appeared to think it a matter of course that he and Saint should discuss on an equal basis. Neither respectful nor lacking in respect, he was merely himself. The white man was intrigued and continued his questioning.

“From the North, I suppose?”

“New York City, and I studied divinity in New England. But I don’t like the big cities, I want to get started in the home mission field, and this is my first venture. You will realise that all of this is very new to me,” and he swept his arm inclusively toward the settlement.

Saint felt a pang of pity for his customer, more acute because it was the last thing that he would have wanted of him. He spoke impulsively:

“Say, I’m not much of an advice giver, but you had better go slow around here. Take your good time and learn the lay of the land. There are lots of things you ought to know about. The magistrate, for instance—your rival, Reverend Whaley—the way your own people feel about certain things.”

“That’s very good of you, but, to be quite frank, I haven’t a great deal of money. My mission is not backed by the board, and must get quick results. The people whom I have interested in the venture expect me to open for service in a month. They said up North that ought to be time enough.”

“All right, only remember this isn’t New York. Better watch your step.”

Saint went to the back door and whooped for Davy. The young negro entered smiling. He had a dark intelligent face quick with an irrepressible sense of humour.

“The Reverend wants a cook,” Saint said. “Can’t your ma go and look after him?”

“Ah reckon so, suh.”

“Well, take him along with you and see. She’s level-headed, as well as a good cook, and she knows how things stand around here. You better see something of the Reverend yourself, and, for God’s sake, try to keep him out of mischief.”

Saint smiled at his visitor. For the moment he had spoken in the usual offhand manner employed with the negroes that he knew, but he was now conscious of the fact that it had not been understood by Grayson. The man stood before him, trying in his deliberate way to decide how it had been meant—whether the white man was taking him and his mission trivially. Finally, without answering Saint’s smile, he said briefly, “Thank you,” and went out with his guide.

Saint thought, “He can’t laugh—that’s bad. No matter how bad a tangle things get in out here, if we can laugh together there’s a chance. He can’t get hold here without it— I wonder.”

The first Sunday in October had the blue cleanness of a tempered blade. It clove the sluggish September vapours to ribbons and rang audibly against the straight, naked boles of the pines.

The new church stood at a little distance from the old meeting house. Brave in a coat of fresh whitewash and topped by its small sky-blue belfry, it stood sharply transfigured by the clear autumnal sunlight.

From a comfortable cabin at the end of the village, the heavy form of the Reverend Quintus Whaley lowered itself into the road, and proceeded ponderously toward the old meeting house. At the same time, Thomas Grayson arrived at the door of the new church. Presently the Sunday silence was sent clattering by the rival clamour of the two bells.

During the last month the Reverend Quintus had elected openly to ignore the presence of Grayson in the village, in private, however, poking sly fun at his speech and referring to him as “Dat Yankee nigger.”

But now the gauge was fairly cast. There was the new church, and there was no denying that its bell had at least as loud a voice as the old one.

Presently the negroes began to leave the cabins and straggle toward the summoning bells. They gathered in little knots midway between the two buildings and discussed the situation. The talk grew in volume and bred excitement. Whaley was by no means a universally popular figure. The men especially distrusted him, and, with that play instinct that is so often their undoing, they now recognised in the situation a game of large possibilities. Eyes rolled toward the old meeting house, where the Reverend could be seen through a window peering hopefully toward them while he tugged away at the bell rope.

They hung on in the middle of the road deliberately, tantalisingly, and emitted explosive bursts of frank African laughter. The laughter increased in shrillness as the women became infected by the spirit of the occasion. No one thought of God now, and His gentle Son. Even the devil was a pallid figure of the imagination. They stood there deliberately baiting the two perspiring divines, and having the time of their lives in the doing of it. They knew what Whaley could give them, and even those who doubted his sincerity had always been proud of his ability to “slap it to them good and hot.” There was no other preacher for miles around who could kick up such a lather in a sermon or shake the timbers as he could with a spiritual. But across the way hid the lure of the unknown.

A quarter of an hour passed, and the hilarity increased rather than diminished. Upon which one should they lay their bets? That was the all-absorbing question. Then a small negro boy came from behind the new church, his eyes showing white. He arrived at the group scarcely able to speak for excitement. Finally he managed to articulate: “Great Gawdamighty! De new preacher done all dress up in a long white shroud, same like uh corpse.”

They had never seen a surplice, Whaley having always preached in his vaunted tail-coat. Now a silence fell upon them. Here was a sensation indeed.

Davy seized the opportune moment and announced: “Ah goin’ to de new church. Come on, folks.” He took his mother by the arm and, followed closely by Maum Vina and Baxter, who had postponed her Sunday morning visit with Mamba in order to be present, started toward the new building. In a moment the whole crowd was stampeded. They jammed their way through the door and stood looking about them. They were impressed by what they saw. The benches had backs, and the reading desk was an imposing structure covered with fair white cloth. Behind the desk stood the preacher in his flowing robe, and at the side of the platform a small organ glistened in a shaft of sunlight.

Across the way the old bell gave up the fight slowly, dying, as it were, by inches—a clap—a wait—a clap—silence. A face was thrust from a window and regarded the new church with an expression that one would have scarcely expected to discover upon the visage of a man of God. Then, after a moment, Whaley emerged like a black and menacing cloud and set off in the direction of the Company’s office.

In the new church Grayson stood face to face with a tremendous opportunity. The congregation was in a state of repressed excitement, and, had he possessed the touch of a true evangelist, he could have bound them to his cause then and there. His rival would have known so well how to go about it. He would have flung the coils of his mellifluous voice about them and released that excitement into the all-possessing rhythm of a spiritual.

But Grayson saw in the moment a miraculous turning to his God from the half-pagan, and wholly undignified, worship of the old church. He saw them as already converted, and asking merely that he lead them. Hymnals and prayer books had been placed in the pews, but as scarcely any of his flock could read they were useless. And so he read the full morning service through by himself. Strange words flowing out over the serried benches—a beautiful rhythm—a vague loveliness of sound—a thing utterly separate and apart from themselves. Slowly the excited faces went cold. Feet commenced to shuffle, benches to creak under shifting bodies. Now and then there was a brief recrudescence of life when Grayson seated himself at the organ and sang the hymns, but in this, no less than in the reading, he was alone, and after the brief animation of each hymn the congregation’s interest went flat.

The sermon was long, for in it he told them of his plans and all that he hoped to mean to them. The collection followed, and was both a financial and social failure. Not that the congregation was stingy. Every one there had a coin for the occasion, but Grayson’s system was new to them. In Whaley’s church this was a moment replete with exquisite humour. It was during the collection time that the great man was truly at his best. A plate would be set before the reading desk, and the congregation would be cajoled, flattered, wheedled, twitted with sly personal allusions, told pointed jokes, until at last, in a gale of high spirits, they would disgorge the last penny and feel themselves well repaid.

Now, when Davy, who had been unwillingly commandeered for the occasion, passed a plate among them, they kept their pennies, hoping against hope that at last the new preacher would break through his restraint and give them the usual final run for their money.

When at long last the service was over, and the recessional hymn sung, it was after one o’clock. The exit was a hasty and a noisy one. They were anxious to escape in a hurry, and they did.

A strange sequel to Grayson’s first Sunday morning service was the fact that he did not in the least realise what had happened. He had triumphed, but he was not vainglorious over it. It had been God’s work. Now it remained for him to till the fertile field. He was up and out early on Monday morning, intent upon launching the first of his schemes for the village. By the merest luck, he hit upon the one thing that could possibly even temporarily have stemmed the tide that had started to ebb the day before, and that would have swept the entire congregation back to Whaley on the following Sunday.

This first inspired act was the installation of a vested choir. Robes for the ten best singers in the congregation! The men had gone to the fields when the new preacher set out to unfold his plan to the village, but the women gathered, and when they heard that the choir was to be given the robes and allowed to sit on the platform with the preacher, their flagging interest was immediately revived. Grayson set an hour during the afternoon for testing voices, and left them to talk it over among themselves.

That afternoon when he went to the church he found practically all the women in the camp present, dressed in their best, rolling their eyes, giggling, and nudging each other. But there was not a man to be seen, proving that his visit to the pits which had followed the talk with the women had been unproductive of results. Well, he would start without bass or tenor, and hope to bring them in later. In the meantime there was no lack of enthusiasm among the women. In fact, Grayson was a little at a loss how to cope with their lack of reverence, and decided that it would be wise to curb it at the start. He stood for a moment looking over the benches with their rows of laughing faces, their gorgeous accidental colour combinations wrought by head kerchiefs, hats, and dresses. Finally, the inevitable occurred, and his gaze was arrested by the vast magenta-clad bulk of Hagar.

“What is your name, my daughter?” he inquired.

She hesitated, then gave her adopted title of Baxter, her broad, ingenuous face wreathed in smiles. Immediately a chorus of giggles burst free among the benches.

Across the irreverent sound the pastor’s voice fell chill and authoritative: “Sing something, please. I want to try your voice.”

Baxter was undoubtedly enjoying the situation. She stood like a child at a party, deliberately hesitating for effect.

“Go on,” he encouraged, “sing anything. I only want to test your voice.”

Instantly from her silence, her deceptive air of embarrassment, she launched full-voiced into song. The voice might have been that of Mamba herself. It had the same depth and tenderness in the lower register, the same whimsical way of catching for an imperceptible beat on the high notes with the effect of laughter broken by a sob. But where Mamba’s voice lacked volume Hagar’s came from her great lungs with the magnitude of organ music. Unfortunately, in common with the other aspirants for robes, she had remained impervious to the reproof in the voice and manner of the pastor, and now her song, beating with the spirit of irrepressible and eternal youth, rolled forth and filled the building:

The performance was greeted with whoops of delight from the floor, and cries of “Dat right, Baxter.” “Tell um, Sistuh!” “Gawd know dat de trut’.” And after the general laughter had died down a fresh outburst was provoked by an ancient Gullah negress who called in a high cackling voice: “Dat gal woice loud succa guinea hen.”

Grayson stood regarding them in stern silence until the noise abated. Then he pointed out in a few brief but well-chosen words that the occasion was not one for ribaldry and that they were in the house of God. Down, down slid the mercurial spirits of the sisterhood. They sat in solemn rigid rows while one after another of their number was called forward to go through a constrained and self-conscious test on some familiar spiritual.

Finally Grayson singled out ten of the number, including Baxter, and dismissed the others. Then, seating himself at the organ, he commenced to whip the raw material into shape for the début on the following Sunday.

The week that followed was a busy one in the village. Grayson had purchased the entire stock of white longcloth from the commissary, as well as many yards of black cotton goods. He had engaged the services of several women who could sew, and himself supervised the designing and fitting of the vestments. Then, late every afternoon, he called a rehearsal at the church, thus dislocating the supper hours of a number of hungry and tired negro labourers.

But during those days of busy preparation Grayson was not the only energetic divine in the neighbourhood. The huge bulk of the Reverend Quintus could be seen at all hours visiting among the cabins, and to judge by the gales of laughter that attended him wherever he went he must have been in his most entertaining vein. Also he paid several visits to the office of the Company. These last, however, were not humorous in intention, to judge from the denunciatory exclamations that punctuated the conferences.

But when Sunday again dawned, victory returned to perch upon the little sky-blue belfry. Not one shroud now, but eleven! The lure was irresistible. Again the Reverend Quintus swung in vain upon his bell rope. Again the cheerful summons lost heart—clanged—waited—clanged—stopped. Once more an irate face glared from the window.

The service was more effective in holding attention than it had been the previous week. The choir was an unqualified success. It knew the hymns, and even a simple chant, and the presence of the vestments awakened a new awe in the worshippers that held them sitting quietly with solemn faces. When Grayson commenced the sermon they were ready to listen.

He preached upon “the powers of darkness.” He had learned something during the week, and that was the necessity of plain speech. He had flown over their heads, perhaps, but now he would talk to them so simply that a child could understand. Accordingly, with directness and lucidity he struck at the hold of superstition upon the minds of his hearers. Fortune tellers and conjurers were children of hell, and their utterances were lies. Charms were devices of the devil, and those who believed in them were destined for destruction, unless they turned from their evil ways and prayed for forgiveness.

From where Baxter was sitting in the choir she saw a long shudder run through the frail old body of Maum Vina. She looked keenly at her friend and saw her eyes blur under a film of tears. Baxter had been listening to the sermon, but it had been a thing apart from her own needs. She had made no effort to personalise it, to relate it to herself. But Maum Vina, for all her years, took things in with remarkable clearness. What the new preacher was saying was meant for her. Had he not fixed her with his gaze while he talked? She made an heroic struggle to control herself. Baxter felt it, while only dimly beginning to grasp its cause. She got quickly to her feet and half carried her old friend into the open. Then she was shocked at what she saw in the ancient negress’s face. It seemed to have been suddenly extinguished, and there was a sag to the whole body. Then Maum Vina commenced to shake violently, as with a palsy, and to sob in long, weak breaths.

“Yo’ heah what he say, Baxter?” she asked between her sobs.

“Sho, but dat don’t mean nuttin’. Le’s we forget it an’ get ’long home.”

“Yes, it do mean somet’ing. Dat man ain’t like Whaley. He tellin’ de trut’. Ah know dat, an’ Ah ain’t nebber goin’ fin’ dat money in de road what de cunjer ’oman promise me.”

They were joined by several other members of the congregation who had walked out and had been none too quiet in the manner of their going.

“Don’t yo’ b’liebe um, Aunt Viny,” an old negro advised; “go ask Rev’rent Whaley. He know what he talkin’ ’bout.”

Baxter led her friend away, trying to console her with clumsy, tender pats, as though she were a child. Then she noticed that the eager light had gone out of the old eyes, and that they no longer searched the road with their incessant weaving motion.

“Better watch whar yo’ goin’,” Baxter cautioned. “Fus’ t’ing yo’ know, yo’ goin’ miss dat money.”

“’Tain’t no use, gal,” came the answer. “Ah’s goin’ be a care on strangers long as Ah las’. ’Tain’t no use to s’arch no mo’.”

During the ensuing week the new pastor was an industrious parochial visitor. There was something definitely wrong, some maladjustment between himself and his flock that pointed toward disaster if it were not quickly located and rectified. He reasoned that by adroit questioning he could draw his parishioners out and ascertain the trouble. But when he found the negroes at home he had encountered an attitude with which he was incapable of dealing. If they could not avoid him, they greeted him with a sort of negative cordiality. They would smile and ask him to sit, then disappear within themselves, speak only of abstractions, be deliberately vague and noncommittal. When he had touched on the subject of church or religion they had smiled again, and if it seemed the part of politeness to say something in reply, they had, still smiling, remarked that times were certainly hard for a country nigger, that last winter had been unusually cold, or that no food served so well to sweeten the mouth as hominy and a fat fried porgy.

There was nothing to lay hold upon. He began to experience a sense of vast futility. And his money was nearly exhausted. The experiment had been his own idea, and he had had to depend upon what he could raise from private sources. He had hoped to make an instantaneous success that would win full backing for the mission from the board. But now failure was staring him in the face.

Grayson was particularly puzzled by the behaviour of Cora, the mother of Davy, who served him as housekeeper. She had been a regular attendant at church, and when he had talked with her in her small, immaculately kept kitchen, she had a way of looking into his face with a candid and trustful gaze that seemed incapable of concealment or deception. But now, as the momentous week advanced, he noticed that there were long, unexplained absences, and that the dishes often stood unwashed after a meal. Finally, upon entering the kitchen silently, he found her with her face buried in her apron while her body shook with deep elemental sobs.

An overwhelming wave of pity rendered him suddenly speechless. He had tried so hard and so unsuccessfully to be understood that his self-confidence was shaken. This was the sort of opportunity for which he had been hoping, when he might enter into the sorrows of his people and let his heart speak in actions as well as words. But now he experienced a feeling of utter impotence. It came to him that the words that he would speak would be mere empty symbols uttered in a foreign tongue. He crossed the room and dropped a hand gently on the heaving shoulder. The startled woman looked up into his face with an expression that changed from grief to sudden fright.

“Tell me, Cora,” he urged, “what can I do for you?”

“Lemme go home,” she sobbed. “Ah gots to go now.”

“Certainly,” he assured her, “go at once, and I’ll go home with you. If you are in trouble I want to share it with you.”

“No, no,” she cried in panic. “Yo’ stay here. Ah’ll come back. Ain’t nuttin’ yo’ can do.” Then she was gone in a heavy lumbering run down the road in the direction of her cabin.

Two days passed and Cora failed to reappear. Now Grayson’s visits seemed even more fruitless than early in the week, for the village was deserted. For the most part he found only children at the cabins, children and the ubiquitous yellow curs. The pickaninnies gaped at him when he questioned, but the curs with their singular instinct for sensing the moods of their owners followed him to the gates, hanging just out of reach, with their small sharp teeth bared. Finally, on Friday morning, he met Wentworth, who was swinging along the sandy road with a package under his arm.

“I suppose you’re on your way to Cora’s,” hazarded the white man. “It’s too bad about her trouble, and Davy’s badly knocked out by it too. He was devoted to the little fellow, used to bring him to the store pretty much every afternoon.”

“Cora’s trouble?” inquired Grayson, and Saint was surprised by the agitation reflected in his face.

“Why, yes. She lost her youngest child last night. It has been in desperate shape for the week. The whole village has been sitting around out there with her. I thought you might have noticed. I am taking her along some mourning and a little money for the burial saucer.”

While the two had been talking they had proceeded in the direction of the cabin, which lay well beyond the regular confines of the village, and now, through the clear, resonant air they caught the distant strains of a spiritual. Very distinctly the music sounded across the distance, not the robust shouting like that of a Sunday morning service, but the shrill, agonised voices of many women, each of whom had personalised the desolation of the mother and made it her own, and, tramping along an octave below them, the mellow, flexible beauty of a single tremendous bass.

Saint cast a sidelong glance at his companion and saw the broad benevolent face go ashen, the eyes light with a spurt of naked pain. He spoke impulsively: “I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t think you cared so much, and I thought you would have known. They sent for Whaley three nights ago, and he hasn’t left the house since. He is going to hold the funeral services to-morrow afternoon. They don’t change quickly back here, you see, and he knows their ways.”

There was silence except for the sound of singing that shook the air with its unearthly harmonies. Grayson had stopped in the road. Finally, in a shaken voice, he said: “I can’t go on, Mr. Wentworth. My heart is breaking with that woman’s sorrow, and if I went to her I’d only give her pain.”

For a full minute he stood silently, his face working with emotion. Habit had carried his hand to a small gold cross that hung on a black cord from his neck, and he fingered it absently.

Saint could think of nothing to say but a trite, “I’m sorry.” Then he saw the face that he had come to think of as being insensitive, almost stolid, quiver, and the eyes fill slowly with tears. At last, still fingering the little cross with an unconscious mechanical movement, Grayson turned slowly on his heel and commenced to retrace his steps toward his cabin.

From the house of mourning swept the music of the dirge. Shrill, monotonous, unvarying, it throbbed across the sunny afternoon with its burden of human desolation, and always under the shrill grief of the women marched the sustaining beauty and power of the single enormously vital bass.

Sunday morning was ushered in with a triumphant clanging from the old meeting house. Groups arrived, laughing and chattering, and filled the building to its doors. When the crowd had jammed its way in, Reverend Whaley started them off with a rousing spiritual. With one accord they flung themselves into it. It was good to be back with the old agreeable God again, the God who wanted them to sing and shout, to pour their sorrow out in a flood of song, who minded his own business most of the time and had a pleasant, laughing way with him when he touched upon theirs. Yes, they were foolish to have strayed for even a few misguided weeks.

In the new church Grayson sat alone, listening to the uproar with an expression of deep sadness upon his habitually solemn face. Yes, this was the end. They needed so much—and they would not let him give it to them. He had come full of confidence to bring enlightenment. His own people! Now he saw no use remaining in the empty building that was so eloquent a reminder of failure.

He rose to go, then he saw that a woman had entered silently and was sitting on the last bench, just inside the door. He walked down the aisle and stopped before her. Then he saw that it was the woman known as Baxter.

“Have you come to worship with me?” he asked.

Hagar nodded violently but said nothing.

Grayson’s heavy face caught a fleeting gleam from an inner light. “Then we’ll have our service just as though the church was full,” he assured her.

He retired and donned his vestments, then asked her to come and sit just below the reading desk on the front bench while he held service. Vast and submissive, she went forward and took her seat before him.

While he went through the service, omitting only the sermon, she kept her eyes on his face with an expression of dumb, uncomprehending steadfastness.

Grayson pronounced the benediction, then came and sat beside her. Then he said, “I am very grateful to you for coming to-day. You have put new heart into me.”

Baxter was overcome with embarrassment, but she managed to say, “T’ank yo’, suh.”

A silence followed during which the woman’s embarrassment heightened to actual distress.

At last Grayson urged, “You do believe in the God that I preach about, do you not? A God of beauty and light and loving-kindness?”

Baxter’s gaze was on the floor. She was absolutely still. Then suddenly she shook her head in a violent negative.

Grayson almost jumped, so unexpected was her answer.

“Then why did you come in to-day?” he asked.

She had trouble getting started. Words eluded her, and she was trying terribly hard to be honest and yet not hurt him. At last she said, “Ah been lonely a lot too. Ah ain’t likes tuh be by myself in my trouble. Ah done set out fuh de ole church, and when Ah pass, Ah see yo’ here, an’ Ah can see yo’ lookin’ lonely. Den Ah come in. Dat’s all.”

The preacher got to his feet without a word and commenced to close the windows. Baxter sat on, watching him, not knowing what to do next. When finally the building was made fast and only the door remained open he came back to her and held out his hand. Then she saw that it contained a book.

“I want you to keep this to remember me by,” he said. “It is called the Book of Common Prayer. And see, here in the front is my name and address. You must remember it always as that of somebody who is grateful to you, who wants always to be your friend. You have been a real Christian to-day. And now, good-bye.”

He held out his hand, and Baxter took the book; then she dropped an awkward curtsy and said, “Good-bye, suh,” and stepped over the threshold into the bright autumn weather.

At the very moment when Baxter entered the new church, a conference which also bore directly upon the destinies of the Reverend Thomas Grayson was taking place upon the sunny piazza of a bungalow near the Company’s office. It had an appearance of great casualness about it. Two white men had been sitting there since breakfast, enjoying their pipes and the long Sunday quiet. The rattle of a vehicle sounded in the distance, the rumble of hoofs over a wooden bridge, and presently Proc Baggart turned into the private road behind his span of trotters. He alighted, hitched his horses, and stepped up on the piazza.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “this is a mighty pretty spell of weather we are having.”

One of the white men motioned toward a chair. “Have a seat, Cap’n, and make yourself at home. Yes, the weather’s set fair, I guess. When you can hear the town bells up here, it usually means a pretty spell.”

Silence then for a moment, except for the far, faint throb of chimes that followed the river all the way from the city, and stirred the air about the men with a soft humming. Baggart lighted a cigar, gripped it in his strong, stained teeth, and smiled his mirthless, muscular smile.

“They tell me that the Reverend Quintus is having a nervous spell,” he commented.

“Yes, and hard luck too,” remarked the taller of his two companions. “The old fellow has put in the greater part of his life working among these niggers, and he ought not to be interfered with.”

Baggart’s eyes met those of the speaker, and his muscular smile broadened into a grin. “Yes, a nigger’s a simple soul,” he remarked, “and he’s got simple ideas on religion. It would be a pity to have them upset. This crowd here’s well behaved and an easy-going lot. They know what’s good for ’em, and they ain’t ready for new ideas yet.” He puffed in silence for a moment, then asked casually:

“How’d that fellow Grayson get in here, anyway?”

The shorter white man flushed slightly under his tan as he explained: “Oh, he came in one day when we were just shutting up and said he wanted to work here. Looked straight enough and laid the money down for the empty shacks. I never thought much about it at the time.”

“What sort of a lookin’ cuss is he—how dark?”

“High yaller, I guess you’d call it. Comes from New York, I hear, and talks like a college president.”

“Bad morals in New York, ’specially among the niggers. Can’t have these God-fearing labourers perverted, as you might say.” Baggart permitted a moment to pass, and a glint in his eyes like the refraction of light from blue granite paid tribute to his humorous subtlety.

The two white men laughed softly, and Baggart’s next question fell casually into the conversation: “Anybody told him yet that it’s pretty unhealthy ’round here?”

One of the men said, “Well, to tell you the truth, Cap’n, we’d rather not mess up in the affairs of the labour. We make it our business to keep hands off in matters that are their own concern.”

“Yes, very wise policy, I am sure, but some kind-hearted citizen ought to warn him. It’s a mighty sickly country for a stranger, ’specially one with a touch of white blood, what with malaria and all that. If you gentlemen would like, I’ll be passin’ through the village to-night, and I could stop and give him a friendly word of advice as easy as not, or I could get Bluton to stop and see him.”

The two white men were obviously relieved. The taller one said, “Well, that’s mighty good of you, Cap’n. And don’t forget, any time we can do any little thing for you, you know where to find us.”

“Sure,” Baggart answered, and his voice was almost hearty. “Always glad to co-operate in any way, and I know you gentlemen feel the same way about it.”

Suddenly all three men sat forward in listening attitudes, then exchanged glances of satisfaction and understanding. From the direction of the village came the full-bodied music of a spiritual, swelling out across the marshes and ringing clear and sweet along the river.

“Hello!” ejaculated the short man who had rented the cabins to Grayson. “Sounds like old Quintus has ’em all back in the fold again.”

Baggart got to his feet and threw away the stump of his cigar. “Sure he has,” he said. “They know what they want better’n we do. Anyhow, I may just as well drop by to-night—never believe in leaving loose ends. Good-day. See you gentlemen again.”

But that night when the trotters pulled up before the cottage in which Grayson had set up his simple housekeeping there was no one to answer Baggart’s peremptory hullo. He got down from the rig and rapped smartly on the door with his whip. Inside the empty house there was a desolate momentary reverberation, then silence.

The trotters were feeling the chill night air and were pawing trenches in the soft sand with their fore feet. Baggart went to their heads and caught a muzzle in each hand with a sudden fierce affection. They whinnied, and he felt the brush of soft, warm velvet against his jaw. “We all know what we want,” he thought. “Niggers—horses. You don’t have to tell a horse to leave spaghetti alone and eat hay.”

The spring of 1917, and half the world in fiery dissolution. America in at last. Money. Ships. Then, suddenly—man power. Up north at Washington the daily minting of beautiful illusory phrases—“A world made safe for democracy”—“Self-determination for all peoples”—“The war that will end war”—The mobilisation of a nation’s advertising power—the press—Committee on Public Information—Four-Minute Men—Ministers of the Gospel gone militant—The flag and the cross side by side on Sunday morning. That indomitable good fellow, the community song leader, abroad in the land—febrile meetings—campaigns—campaigns—campaigns.

Atrocities. Handless children. Violated women. Nuns. “The mad dog of nations” loose, and the clamour of the hunt ringing around the globe. Charleston, the deliberate old city, deliberate no longer, separate and self-sufficient no longer. Fort Sumter forgotten at last, and the futile agonies of the ’sixties. All one people now. One flag.

Again and again, from the stage, the pulpit, the press, atrocities. The women. Smashing like a cannonade against the traditional sanctities. Suppose it were your mother. Your wife. Saint Wentworth’s blood crawled cold to his heart, then flung back in a burning tide, leaving a red haze before his eyes and a taste like brass on his tongue. Now, if ever, he needed the heroic dreams to help him through. But they would not come to him. On the contrary, after the first flush of anger, there were hideous little tremors at the pit of his stomach. But he had certain knowledge of what he must do.

He turned the store over to Davy and went to town. In a week he was back. Crops were essential to victory—phosphates to crops—Saint, according to unanswerable departmental logic, was essential to phosphates. He was told to stick to the mines until he was called.

Back again into the quiet of black Carolina. He could scarcely believe that he inhabited the same planet as his friends a few miles away in town. Out in the wide solitudes of marsh and pine forest the shocks that were being delivered against the inertia of public opinion were muted to a far, faint murmur.

Then slowly the change commenced to come. Invading committees arrived. Groups of negroes from the coloured organisations in town, for the most part. Keen young mulattoes, very much in earnest, discovering their backwoods brethren for the first time, telling them that this was the great opportunity for the race—“A world made safe for democracy.” “After this war—the Negro’s chance”—getting pitiful little contributions to war funds. Then a young white lawyer from town with a gift for oratory, and two lovely girls in nurses’ costumes. The Red Cross. Not vague abstractions now like bond issues and saving stamps, but suffering humanity—the welter of the battlefield—blood—agony—“The Good Samaritan”—Who was going to help? The realism of the speaker was cut short by a piercing scream. A babblement of sobbing filled the room, punctuated by wails of agony. An unsteady voice called, “De blood put he maak on me.” The line was caught up by the packed assemblage, and the spiritual crashed out in the little meeting house.

In twos and threes the congregation commenced to slip out, while those that remained kept the spiritual going. Finally there were only a few left. The young lawyer was frankly disgusted. He had been wasting his time on a bunch of crazy negroes, and they had walked out on him without so much as a single donation. He got into his overcoat, and called the two pretty nurses. There was no use fooling around with this sort of thing.

Suddenly the chorus swelled up again, and he saw that they were coming back. Into the church they packed and commenced to come forward to the platform. Then he saw that they had money in their hands, coppers, nickels, and here and there even a dollar bill. They came and piled it before him. Every penny in the village. They gave their tears, and the outpouring of human sympathy was a presence in the room.

After that, in the black belt, there was the first glimmer of realisation of the stupendous tragedy that was raging beyond the city somewhere out in the void.

Then the draft: thirty prime boys from the camp, dressed in their Sunday clothes, waiting in the road before Baggart’s office, not knowing a great deal about it all—very excited and self-important—boasting inordinately. Women—lots of them, crowding about, with the memory of the Red Cross speech in their minds, and an old, dark jungle terror of the unknown stiffening their faces, widening their eyes, and here and there ripping free in a gust of hysteria. An incredibly ancient crone, whose mind had slipped a cog and snapped back seventy years, peering from half-blind eyes and wailing: “Dey’s goin’ tuh sell um tuh de sugar-cane fields. Ah knows it. Dey’s goin’ sen’ um tuh Louisiana, an’ we ain’t nebber goin’ see um no mo’. Oh, Gawd hab a little pity.”

A month since the men had gone; then, one bright day, Saint called the women to the commissary piazza and distributed envelopes from the government that contained the first separation allowances. Everybody rich now—excitement—laughter—and the dark fear forgotten. The thirty women who had been wept over when the men went away were now objects of envy in the village.

Strange talk in the air—something about “Gold Star mothers”—mystery. Then the spry little dentist who came and explained it all to everybody’s satisfaction. So it was not “Gold Star” after all, but gold-tooth mothers, and the government wanted the women to come to the dentist’s office in town every month and get a gold tooth out of the check—one tooth a month to make them beautiful and to show how long their men had been away. After that, Midas moving through the village—smiles showing wide, and ever wider stretches of glittering yellow metal. And the spry little dentist happening by now and then to see how things were getting along, driving a twin-six that pulled up a great dust cloud wherever he went.

Now the commissary was getting its share of checks that seemed to vie with one another to see how soon they could vanish the day they arrived, and Gilly Bluton, who, strangely enough, had not been called, with his eyes everywhere, keener than ever at discovering unlicensed curs about the yards, and participants in hidden crap games.

Now labour was growing scarce and wages were soaring. The result was obvious: three days a week in the pits for the men who were left, instead of six. Why should a man in his good senses work a whole week when in half that time he could earn enough to keep alive and have a plenty of time to lie perfectly flat in warm sand, absorbing sun, or gossip on the store piazza? And so the camp developed a leisure class that loitered gloriously through the late summer and into the long autumnal quiet.

Letters came from the boys in concentration and training camps which were brought to Saint to read. They were having the time of their lives and sent photographs of themselves with chests straining at bronze buttons. Truly the war cloud that hung over half the world and cast its malign shadow across millions of hearts had nothing for this forgotten corner of black America but a gleam from its silver lining.