V
"I have told your people—your canaille," said Father Antoine, "that
I shall excommunicate them all."
The priest had been graver than his wont—more dignified, less volcanic, as though he was but the mouthpiece of authority, having none of it himself.
"They are better out of your Church than in it," Simpson answered.
Father Antoine trembled a little; it was the first sign he had given that his violent personality was still alive under the perplexing new power that had covered it.
"You are determined?" Simpson nodded with compressed lips. "Their damnation be on your head, then."
The priest stood aside. Simpson squeezed by him on the narrow sidewalk; as he did so, Antoine drew aside the skirts of his cassock.
From the beginning Simpson had preached more of hell than of heaven; he could not help doing so, for he held eternal punishment to be more imminent than eternal joy, and thought it a finer thing to scare people into heaven than to attract them thither. He took an inverted pleasure also in dwelling on the tortures of the damned, and had combed the minor prophets and Revelation for threatening texts to hurl at his congregation. Such devil-worship, furthermore, gave him greater opportunity for oratory, greater immediate results also; he had used it sometimes against his better judgment, and was not so far gone that he did not sometimes tremble at the possible consequences of its use. His encounter with the priest, however, had driven all doubts from his mind, and that evening he did what he had never done before—he openly attacked the Roman Church.
"What has it done for you?" he shouted, and his voice rang in the rafters of the warehouse where a hundred or so Negroes had gathered to hear him. "What has it done for you? You cultivate your ground, and its tithes take the food from the mouths of your children. Does the priest tell you of salvation, which is without money and without price, for all—for all—for all? Does he live among you as I do? Does he minister to your bodies? Or your souls?"
There was a stir at the door, and the eyes of the congregation turned from the platform.
"Father Antoine!" shrieked a voice. It was Madame Picard's; Simpson could see her in the gloom at the far end of the hall and could see the child astride of her hip. "Father Antoine! He is here!"
In response to the whip of her voice there was a roar like the roar of a train in a tunnel. It died away; the crowd eddied back upon the platform. Father Antoine—he was robed, and there were two acolytes with him, one with a bell and the other with a candle—began to read in a voice as thundering as Simpson's own.
"Excommunicado ——"
The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the doorway, and the priest was gone.
"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank
God for that, my people!"
They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it had not been for Madame Picard.
From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing. Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always. Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales. She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing the white man in its flood.
"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!"
He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly the chanting ceased.
"To the grove!" screamed the mamaloi. She leaped to the platform, almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the grove!"
The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under the impact of it.
"To the grove!"
Doubt assailed him as his mind—a white man's mind—rebelled.
"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong."
Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the talons which were her fingers she seemed calm.
"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement—atonement, m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not understand what they cannot see. They are behind you—you cannot leave them now."
"But—the child?"
"The child shall show them—a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They must see a théâtre of atonement—then they will believe. Come."
Protesting, he was swept into the crowd and forward—forward to the van of it, into the Grand Rue. Always the thunderous rumble of the mob continued; high shrieks flickered like lightning above it; the name of Christ dinned into his ears from foul throats. On one side of him the cripple appeared; on the other strode the mamaloi—the child, screaming with fear, on her hip. A hymn-tune stirred under the tumult—rose above it.
"Le fils de Dieu se va Pen guerre Son drapeau rouge comme sang."
Wild quavers adorned the tune obscenely; the mob marched to it, falling into step. Torches came, flaming high at the edges of the crowd, flaming wan and lurid on hundreds of black faces.
"Il va pour gagner sa couronne Qui est-ce que suit dans son train?"
"A crusade!" Simpson suddenly shouted. "It is a crusade!"
Yells answered him. Somewhere a drum began, reverberating as though unfixed in space; now before them, now behind; now, it seemed, in the air. The sound was maddening A swaying began in the crowd that took on cadence, became a dance. Simpson, his brain drugged, his senses perfervid marched on in exultation. These were his people at last.
The drum thundered more loudly, became unbearable. They were clear of the town and in the bush at last; huge fires gleamed through the trees, and the mob spilled into the grove. The cripple and the mamaloi were beside him still.
In the grove, with the drums—more than one of them now—palpitating unceasingly, the dancing became wilder, more savage. In the light of the fire the mamaloi swayed, holding the screaming child, and close to the flames crouched the cripple. The hymn had given place to the formless chant, through which the minors quivered like the wails of lost souls.
The scales fell from Simpson's eyes. He rose to his full height and stretched out his arm, demanding silence; there was some vague hope in him that even now he might guide them. His only answer was a louder yell than ever.
It took form. Vieux Michaud sprang from the circle into the full firelight, feet stamping, eyes glaring.
"La ch vre!" he yelled. "La chèvre sans cornes!"
The drums rolled in menacing crescendo, the fire licked higher. All sounds melted into one.
"La chèvre sans cornes!"
The mamaloi tore the child from her neck and held it high by one leg. Simpson, seeing clearly as men do before they die, flung himself toward her.
The cripple's knife, thrust from below, went home between his ribs just as the mamaloi's blade crossed the throat of the sacrifice.
"So I signed the death-certificate," Witherbee concluded. "Death at the hands of persons unknown."
"And they'll call him a martyr," said Bunsen.
"Who knows?" the consul responded gravely. "Perhaps he was one."