He wondered now and then why Madame Picard, who almost from the first had been a constant attendant at his meetings, watched him so closely, so secretly—both when he sat with her and the cripple at meals and at the carpenter's house, where he was never unconscious of her eyes. He wondered also why she brought her baby with her, and why all who came fondled it so much and so respectfully. He did not wonder at the deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her—that seemed somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was afraid to seek for. It was there, however—a nervous determination, not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it—and he was not far wrong.
Soon after his first sermon he began little by little to introduce ritual into the meetings at Michaud's, so that they became decorous; rum-drinking was postponed till after the concluding prayer, and that in itself was a triumph. He began to feel the need of hymns, and, since he could find in French none that had associations for himself, he set about translating some of the more familiar ones, mostly those of a militant nature. Some of them, especially "The Son of God goes forth to war," leaped into immediate popularity and were sung two or three times in a single service. He liked that repetition; he thought it laid the groundwork for the enthusiasm which he aroused more and more as time went on, and which he took more pains to arouse. Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only for a moment, however, of course it was godly, as any rapture informed by religion must be. He was sorry he had lost courage and stopped so soon. These were an emotional and not an intellectual people—if they were to be reached at all, it must be through the channels of their emotions. Thus far he thought clearly, and that was as far as he did think, for he was discovering in himself a capacity for religious excitement that was only in part a reflex of the crowd's fervour, and the discovery quickened and adorned the memory of the few great moments of his life. Thus had he felt when he resolved to take orders, thus, although in a less degree, because he had been doubtful and afraid, had he felt when he heard the Macedonian cry from this West Indian island. He had swayed the crowd also as he had always believed that he could sway crowds if only the spirit would burn in him brightly enough; he had no doubt that he could sway them again, govern them completely perhaps. That possibility was cause for prayerful and lonely consideration, for meditation among the hills, whence he might draw strength. He hired a pony forthwith and set out for a few days in the hinterland.
It was the most perilous thing he could have done. There is neither sanctity nor holy calm in the tropic jungle, nothing of the hallowed quietude that, in northern forests, clears the mind of life's muddle and leads the soul to God. There lurks instead a poisonous anodyne in the heavy, scented air—a drug that lulls the spirit to an evil repose counterfeiting the peacefulness whence alone high thoughts can spring. In the North, Nature displays a certain restraint even in her most flamboyant moods: the green fires of spring temper their sensuousness in chill winds, and autumn is rich in suggestion not of love, but of gracious age, having the aloof beauty of age and its true estimates of life. The perception of its loveliness is impersonal and leaves the line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the man of no convictions at all, for rigid convictions rather often indicate inexperience and imperfect observation; experience, therefore—especially emotional experience—sometimes warps them into strange and hideous shapes.
Simpson did not find in the bush the enlightenment that he had hoped for. He did, however, anaesthetize his mind into the belief that he had found it. Returning, he approached Port au Prince by a route new to him. A well-beaten trail aroused his curiosity and he followed it into a grove of ceiba and mahogany. It was clear under foot, as no tropic grove uncared for by man can be clear; in the middle of it lay the ashes of a great fire, and three minaca-palm huts in good repair huddled almost invisible under the vast trees. The ground, bare of grass, was trodden hard, as though a multitude had stamped it down—danced it down, perhaps—and kept it bare by frequent use.
"What a place for a camp-meeting!" thought Simpson as he turned to leave it. "God's cathedral aisles, and roofed by God's blue sky."
His pony shied and whirled around, a long snake—a fer-de-lance—flowed across the path.
The desire to hold his services in the grove remained in his mind; the only reason he did not transfer them there at once was that he was not yet quite sure of his people. They came eagerly to hear him, they reflected his enthusiasm at his behest, they wept and praised God. Yet, underneath all his hopes and all his pride in what he had done ran a cold current of doubt, an undefined and indefinable fear of something devilish and malign that might thwart him in the end. He thrust it resolutely out of his mind.
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.