“How’s that, Crippy, old chum?” exclaimed Biglow.
Then the Frenchman informed them that his grandfather had been sanitary inspector of the high-roads in Hayti for thirty years, and though he had been dead twenty-one years, he, de Cripsny, his grandson, still received the old man’s salary, no one having missed his grandfather, or noticed any neglect of his duties as inspector of roads in Port-au-Prince. Ask Haytians why they do not clean or mend their streets, they answer, “Bon Dieu, gâté li; bon Dieu paré li” (“God spoilt them, and God will mend them”). So de Cripsny was not a man of deep integrity, neither did he trouble himself to delve deeply into the mysteries of the vaudoux. His information was something that could have been given to Biglow and Clensy by any negro in Hayti. Only a few days before, a nurse had been out walking on the Champs de Mars when a huge negro, who had presumably been prowling about on watch, suddenly snatched a white child from her arms and ran off with it into the forest. The child was never seen again. And more: It was known that human flesh, dried and salted in tubs, was for sale in the markets of Port-au-Prince! When Clensy and Biglow were given these unappetising bits of information about the revolting practices of the lower orders of the vaudoux, they thought more than their tongues could adequately express on the matter.
When Clensy arrived back at his lodgings that night, he turned about and tossed on his bed, and could not sleep. De Cripsny’s hint that many of the Haytian ladies went in for fetish dancing and the terrible debauchery of the vaudoux, had upset his mind. He thought of President Gravelot’s jealous care over his daughter’s life, and how Sestrina was seldom allowed out without being accompanied by the negress servant.
“A man who is particular like that is not likely to persuade his daughter to attend cannibal fetishes!—impossible!” Then he thought of Sestrina’s eyes, her innocent ways, her girlish laughter and tears, for sometimes she had wept while in his company. “Never! the last girl in the world to succumb to the temptations of her father, however much she respected his wishes.” So thought Royal Clensy in the final summing up of his haunting thoughts about Sestrina and the possibility of her being an adherent to the vaudoux. “She’s too wide-minded, too pure in heart and soul to kneel before the altars of cruelty and lust!” Then the young Englishman pulled the mosquito curtain together and settled himself for sleep, happy in the thought that Sestrina was innocent. And he was right.
CHAPTER VI
TWO nights after de Cripsny had given the three Englishmen the information about vaudoux worship, Clensy, who had been haunting the vicinity of the presidential palace grounds, met Sestrina. She had managed to slip out of the palace unobserved. She was trembling in her delight.
“Away, Monsieur Royal, away from here, or we be seen!” she whispered as she gazed appealingly up into Clensy’s face.
“Where shall we go, Sestrina?” said the young Englishman, as he tenderly gripped the Haytian girl’s arm and stared about him.
“Away to the forest, the orange groves at H—; anywhere away from here!” said Sestrina, as she looked around with frightened eyes, waved her arms, and then pointed towards the big mahogany trees in the direction of Gonaives. The aftermath of the sunset had left a blue twilight in the skies, which were faintly dazzled with the gleams of a thousand stars. In a moment they had passed away into the shadows.
“Oh, glad am I to be away from the palace walls. You be killed, monsieur, if they see you there!” said Sestrina, as she fondly pressed Clensy’s arm over the thought that harm should come to him through her.