Part 4

Great was the grief of Lucy at parting with her Jack, as she called him. But consoling herself with the thought that she should see him often and that the next autumn she should be obliged to leave Boston for some dreadful seminary and thus they would be separated under any circumstances, she dried her eyes and entered with enthusiasm into his preparations for sea, saying, “I have a good mind to dress up as a boy and go with Jack! I declare I would do it, were it not for grandfather and Uncle John.”

Jack’s kit on his first voyage was a marvel in the way of a sailor’s outfit; Lucy had made a bankrupt of herself in the purchase of the most extraordinary handkerchiefs, caps, shirts and things of that kind that could be found in Boston, saying proudly to Mrs. Church when displaying the assortment:

“Nothing is too good for my sailor boy.”

After several years of sea service Mr. James Dunlap, during the residence of his brother in Haiti, had tendered to Jack a position in the office, hoping that having seen enough of the ocean he would be willing to remain ashore and possibly with a half-formed hope that Jack would win Lucy’s hand and thus the house of Dunlap continue to survive for other generations.

Much to the chagrin of Lucy’s grandfather, Jack absolutely refused to entertain the proposition, saying:

“I should be of no earthly use in the office. I am not competent to fill any position there, and I positively will not accept a sinecure. If you wish to advance me, do so in the line of my profession! Make me master of your ship Lucy and let me take her for a two years’ cruise in Eastern waters.”

Thus it happened that Jack was absent from Boston for two years and returned to find that he had lost that, that all the gold of El Dorado could not replace—the woman whom he loved.

V.

“Mother Sybella, Mother Sybella! May I approach?” yelled every few minutes the man seated on a rock half way up the hill that rose steep from the Port au Prince highway.

The neglected and broken pavement of the road that remained as a monument to the long-departed French governors of Haiti was almost hidden by the rank, luxurious growth of tropical plants on either side of it. As seen from the hillside, where the man was sitting, it seemed an impracticable path for even the slowly moving donkeys which here and there crawled between the overhanging vegetation.

The man looked neither to the right nor to the left, but throwing back his head, at intervals of possibly fifteen minutes, as if addressing the blazing sun above, bawled out at the top of his voice:

“Mother Sybella! Mother Sybella! May I approach?”

The man was a mulatto, though with features markedly of the negro type; around his head he wore a much soiled white handkerchief. His body was fairly bursting out of a tight-fitting blue coat of military fashion, adorned with immense brass buttons. His bare feet and long thin shanks appeared below dirty duck trousers that once had been white.

There evidently was something awe-inspiring about the name that he shouted even though the rest of the words were unintelligible to the natives. The man shouted his request in the English language; the natives of Haiti used a jargon of French, English and native dialect difficult to understand and impossible to describe or reproduce in writing.

If, when the man called, a native were passing along the highway, as sometimes happened, he would spring forward so violently as to endanger the safety of the huge basket of fruit or vegetables that he carried upon his head, and glancing over his shoulder with dread in his distended, white and rolling eyes, would break into a run and speed forward as if in mortal terror.

The man had just given utterance to a louder howl than usual when he felt the grip of bony claw-like fingers on his shoulder; with one unearthly yell he sprang to his feet, turned and fell upon his knees before the figure that so silently had stolen to his side.

“Has the yellow dog brought a bone to his mother?” The words were spoken in the patois of the native Haitians with which the man was familiar.

The speaker was a living, animated but mummified black crone of a woman. She leaned upon a staff made of three human thigh bones, joined firmly together by wire. Her fleshless fingers looked like the talons of a vulture as she gripped the top of her horrid prop and bent forward toward the man.

Her age seemed incalculable in decades; centuries appeared to have passed since she was born. The wrinkles in her face were as gashes in black and aged parchment, so deep were they. The skin over her toothless jaws was so drawn and stretched by untold time that the very hinges of the jaw were plainly traced; in cavernous, inky holes dug deep beneath the retreating forehead sparkled, like points of flame, eyes so bright and glittering that sparks of electric fire shot forth in the gaze by which she transfixed the groveling wretch at her feet.

“Answer, Manuel; what have you brought for Mother Sybella?”

Finally the startled and fearful Manuel found courage to reply:

“The coffee, sugar, ham and calico are in that bundle lying over there, Mother Sybella,” and the man pointed to a roll of matting near him.

“And I told you to gather all the gossip and news of Port au Prince. Have you done so?” queried the hag with a menacing gesture.

“Yes! yes! Mother; every command has been obeyed. I have learned what people are talking of, and, too, I have brought some printed talk from among the Yankees,” cried the mulatto quickly, anxious to propitiate the crone.

“Fool, you know I can’t make out the Yankee printed talk,” snarled the sunken lips.

“I can though, Mother Sybella; I lived among the Yankees many years. I will tell you what they talk of concerning our country,” said the man rising from his knees.

“I will listen here in the sun’s rays; I am cold. Sit there at my feet,” mumbled the hag, crouching down on the rock that had been occupied by Manuel.

“Begin,” she commanded fiercely, fixing her keen gaze upon the yellow face below her.

“Dictator Dupree is unable to obtain money to pay the army; the Yankees and English will not make a loan unless concessions be made to the whites.”

“What says Dupree?” muttered the old woman.

“Dupree fears an insurrection of the people if he make concessions to the whites, and an outbreak by the army if he fail to pay the arrears due to it. He is distracted and knows not which move to make,” answered the yellow man at the hag’s feet.

“Dupree is a coward! Let him come to me and see how quickly his difficulties disappear! The army is worthless, the people powerful,” cried Sybella.

“Go on! Squash-head,” she ordered.

“Twenty priests, with a Bishop at their head, have come from France, and go among the people urging them to attend the churches, and threatening them with awful punishment hereafter if they fail to heed the commands of the priests,” continued Manuel.

“Much good may it do the black-gowns,” chuckled the old creature, making a horrible grimace in so doing.

“My children fear Sybella more than the black-gowns’ hell,” she cackled exultantly.

“The priests are trying to persuade the Dictator to give them permission to re-open those schools that have been closed so long, but Dupree has not consented yet. He seems to fear the anger of the black party in Haiti,” said the witch’s newsman.

“He does well to hesitate!” exclaimed Sybella.

“If he consent, I shall set up my altar, call my children around me and then! and then! No matter, he is a coward; he will never dare consent,” she added. The mulatto here drew from his bosom a newspaper. Shading his eyes from the sun’s glare, he began searching for any item of news in the Boston paper that he had secured in Port au Prince, which might interest his terrifying auditor.

“Do you wish to know about the Yankee President and Congress?” he asked humbly, pausing as he turned the sheet of the newspaper.

“No! you ape, unless they mention our island,” replied the woman, her watchful eyes looking curiously at the printed paper that the man held.

“About the ships coming and going between the United States and Haiti?” he asked anxiously, as if fearing that he might miss something of importance to the black seeress.

“No! That is an old story; the accursed Yankees are ever coming and going, restless fools,” said the woman.

“Here is a long account of a grand wedding of a wealthy Haitien that has just taken place in Boston. He married the granddaughter and heiress of J. Dunlap, who is largely interested in our island,” remarked Manuel interrogatively.

“His name! fool, his name!” almost screamed the hag, springing to her feet with an agility fearful to contemplate in one so decrepit, suggesting supernatural power to the beholder. Manuel, with trembling lip, cried, as she fastened him in the shoulder with her claws:

“Burton! Walter Burton!”

Without changing, by even a line her fingers from the place where she had first fixed them in the flesh of the frightened man, she dragged him, bulky as he was, to his feet, and up the steep, pathless hillside with a celerity that was awful to the frightened mulatto.

A deep ravine cutting into the back of the hill formed a precipice. Along the face of the rocky wall thus formed a narrow, ill-defined footway ran, almost unsafe for a mountain goat. Nearly a thousand feet below, dark and forbidding in the gloom of jungle and spectral moss-festooned trees, roared the sullen mutterings of a mountain torrent.

When near the top of the hill, with a quick whirl the black crone darted aside and around the elbow of the hill, dragging Manuel along at a furious pace, she dashed down the precipitous path with the swiftness and confidence of an Alpine chamois.

Half way down the cliff, a ledge of rock made scanty foundation for a hut of roughly hewn saplings, thatched with the palm plants of the ravine below. So scarce was room for the hovel that but one step was necessary to reach the brink of the declivity.

As the excited hag reached the aperture that served as the doorway of her den, a hideous, blear-eyed owl, who like an evil spirit kept watch and ward at the witch’s castle, gave forth a ghostly “Hoot! Hoot!” of welcome to his mistress. At the unexpected sound the mulatto’s quivering knees collapsed and he sank down, nearly rolling over the edge of the precipice.

Sybella seemed not to feel the weight of the prostrate man whom she still clutched and hauled into the dark interior of her lair.

Dropping the almost senseless man, she threw some resinous dry brush upon a fire that was smouldering in the center of the hut. As the flame shot up Manuel opened his eyes. With a shriek he sprang to his feet, terror shaking his every limb as he stared about him.

Two giant rats were tugging at some bone, most human in shape; each trying to tear it from the teeth of the other, as squealing they circled around the fire. In corners toads blinked their bead-like eyes, while darting lizards flashed across the floor. Slowly crawling along between the unplastered logs of the walls snakes of many colors moved about or coiled in the thatch of the roof hung head downward and hissed as they waved their heads from side to side.

Along the wall a bark shelf stood. On it were two small skulls with handles made of cane. These ghastly vessels were filled with milk. Conch shells and utensils made of dried gourds were scattered on the shelf, among which a huge and ugly buzzard stalked about.

An immense red drum hung from a pole fixed in a crevice of the rock and by its side dangled a long and shining knife. A curtain of woven grass hanging at the rear of the hovel seemed to conceal the entrance to some cavern within the hill’s rock-ribbed breast.

When the blaze of the burning fagots cast a glow over the grewsome interior of this temple of Voo Doo, Sybella, the High Priestess, turned upon the cowering man, upon whose ashy-hued face stood great drops of ice-cold sweat, tearing from her head the scarlet turban that had hidden her bare, deathly skull, and beckoning him with her skeleton hand to approach, in guttural, hissing voice commanded:

“Say over what you told me on the hill! Say, if you dare, you dog, here in my lair where Tu Konk dwells, that my daughter’s grandson, the last of my blood, has mated with a white cow.”

Benumbed by the dazzling light that poured from the black pits in her naked, fleshless skull, the mulatto could not walk, but falling on his hands and knees he moved toward her; prostrate at her feet, overcome by fear, he whined faintly:

“Burton, Walter Burton, married a white woman in Boston the twentieth of last month.”

The hag grasping his ears drew his head up toward her face, and thrusting her terrible head forward she plunged her gaze like sword points down into the man’s very soul.

With a cry like that of a wounded wild-cat, she jumped back and throwing her skinny arms up in the air began waving them above her head, screaming:

“He does not lie! It is true! It is true!”

In impotent rage she dug the sharp nails of her fingers into the skin of her bald head and tore long ridges across its smooth bare surface.

Suddenly she seized the mulatto, now half-dead from terror, crying:

“Come! Goat without horns, let us tell Tu Konk.”

Manuel, limp, scarcely breathing, staggered to his feet. The hag held him by the bleeding ears that she had half torn from his head. Pushing him before her they passed behind the curtain suspended against the rock wall at the rear of the room.

The cave they entered was of small dimensions. It was illuminated by four large candles, which stood at each of the four corners of a baby’s cradle. This misplaced article occupied the center of the space walled in by the rocky sides of the apartment. The place otherwise was bare.

Sybella as soon as the curtain fell behind her began a monotonous chant. Moving slowly with shuffling side-long steps around the cradle, sang:

“Awake, my Tu Konk, awake and listen; Hear my story; My blood long gone to white dogs; Daughter, granddaughter, all gone to white dogs; One drop left to me now gone to white cow; Tu Konk, Tu Konk, awake and avenge me.”

Manuel saw something move beneath the covering in the cradle.

“Awake, Oh! my Tu Konk; Awake and avenge me!”

Manuel saw a black head thrust itself from below the cover, and rest upon the dainty pillow in the cradle. The head was covered by an infant’s lacy cap.

Sybella saw the head appear. Dashing under the curtain and seizing one of the skull-cups she returned and filled a nursing bottle that lay in the cradle.

The head covered with its cap of lace rose from the pillow. Sybella, on her knees, with bowed head and adoring gestures, crept to the side of the cradle and extended the bottle. King of terrors! By all that is Horrible!

The nipple disappeared in the scarlet flaming mouth of an immense, fiery eyed, hissing black-snake. It was Tu Konk!

“Drink, my Tu Konk.” “Bring back my black blood.” “Leave me not childless.” “Curse then the white cow.” “Send her the black goat.” “Give her black kids.” “Black kids and white teats.” “Serve thus the white cow.”

Chanting these words, the Voo Doo priestess struck her head repeatedly upon the hard surface of the floor of the cave. Blood ran down her face to mingle with the froth that dropped from her shriveled and distorted lips.

The mulatto with bursting, straining eye-balls and chattering teeth gasped for breath. The hideous grotesqueness of the scene had frozen the very life-blood in his veins. The vestments of an angel adorning a fiend! Paralyzed by fear, with bulging eyes nearly popping from their sockets, the man stared at the horrible head surrounded by those trappings most closely associated with innocence.

Human nature could stand no more! With one frenzied shriek Manuel broke the spell that held him helpless. Tearing aside the curtain he leaped out of this Temple of Terrors; heedless of the danger of plunging over the precipice he raced along the treacherous path nor paused for breath until miles intervened between Tu Konk, Sybella and himself.

VI.

No social event of the season equalled the Burton-Dunlap wedding. For weeks prior to the date of the ceremony it had been the one all-engrossing theme of conversation with everybody; that is, everybody who was anybody, in the metropolis of the Old Bay State.

The immense settlement, the magnificent gifts, the exquisite trousseau from Paris, the surpassing beauty of the bride, the culture and accomplishments of the handsome groom, the exalted position of the Dunlap family, these formed the almost exclusive topics of Boston’s most exclusive set for many weeks before the wedding.

What a grand church wedding it was! The church was a perfect mass of flowers and plants of the rarest and most expensive kind. The music grandissimo beyond expression. A bishop assisted by two clergymen performed the ceremony. The bride, a dream of loveliness in lace, satin and orange blossoms; the groom a model of grace and chivalry; the tiny maids, earth-born angels; the ushers Boston’s bluest blooded scions of the Pilgrim Fathers, and finally everybody who was anybody was there.

And the reception! The Dunlap mansion and grounds were resplendent in a blaze of light; the beauty, talent, wealth and great names of New England were gathered there to congratulate the happy bride, Dunlap’s heiress, and the fortunate groom.

“A most appropriate match! How fortunate for all concerned! How delightful for the two old gentlemen!” declared everybody who was anybody.

Four special policemen guarded the glittering array of almost priceless wedding presents; in the splendid refreshment room, brilliant in glittering glass and silver, Boston’s best and gentlest pledged the happy bride and groom in many a glass of rarest wine and wished long life and happiness to that charming, well-mated pair.

The bride, radiant in her glorious beauty, rejecting as adornment for this occasion, diamond necklace and tiara, gifts of the groom, selected a simple coil of snowy pearls.

“The gift of my Cousin Jack,” she proudly said. “My earliest lover and most steadfast friend.”

The savings of years of sailor life had been expended ungrudgingly to lay this tribute of love on that fair bosom.

How well assured was the future of this fortunate couple! The prospect stretched before them like one long, joyous journey of uninterrupted bliss. Life’s pathway all lined with thornless roses beneath summer’s smiling sky.

Naught seemed lacking to make assurance of the future doubly sure. Youth, health, wealth, social position, culture, refinement, intelligence, amiability.

Soft strains of music floated on the perfumed air, bright eyes “spake love to eyes that spake again,” midst palms and in flower-garlanded recesses gentle voices whispered words of love to willing ears; in the center of this unalloyed blissfulness were Burton and his bride.

“Old bachelors are as excitable concerning marriage as old spinsters can possibly be. See Mr. John Dunlap, how flushed and nervous he seems! He hovers about the bride like an anxious mother!” So said two elderly grand-dames behind their fans while watching the group about Burton’s fair young wife.

Among that gay and gallant company moved one restless figure and peering face. David Chapman, leaving his sister, Miss Arabella, under the protecting care of Mrs. Church, lest during the confusion of so large a gathering, some daring cavalier, enamored of her maiden-charms, should elope with the guileless creature, mingled with the throng of guests, unobtrusive, but ever vigilant and watchful.

Chapman’s countenance bore an odd expression, a mixture of satisfied curiosity, vindictiveness and regret.

That very day a superannuated sailor who for years had served the house of Dunlap, and now acted as ship-keeper for vessels in its employ, called to report to the superintendent some trifling loss. Before leaving he asked respectfully, knuckling his forehead.

“Is the manager goin’ to marry ter’day?”

“Yes; why?” said Chapman sharply.

“Nothin’ ’cept I’ve often seen his mother and took notice of him here,” replied the man.

“Where did you see Mr. Burton’s mother? Who was she?” Chapman asked eagerly in his keen way.

“In Port au Prince, mor’n twenty-five year er’go. She was Ducros’, the sugar planter’s darter, and the puttiest quadroon I ever seen. Yea, the puttiest woman of any kind I ever seen,” answered the old ship-keeper in a reminiscent tone.

Chapman’s eyes fairly sparkled with pleasure as he thus secured a clew for future investigation, but without asking other questions he dismissed the retired seaman. It was this information that gave to his face that singular expression during the reception.

A private palace car stood on the track in the station waiting for the coming of the bridal party. Naught less than a special train could be considered when it was decided that Florida should be the favored spot where the wealthy Haitien and his bride, the Dunlap heiress, would spend their honeymoon.

Soft and balmy are the breezes, that pouring through the open windows of the car, flood the interior with odors of pine cones and orange blooms, as Burton’s special train speeds through the Flower State of the Union.

The car is decked with the fresh and gorgeous blossoms of this snowless land; yet of all the fairest is that sweet bud that rests on Burton’s breast.

“Walter, how sweet is life when one loves and is beloved,” said Burton’s young wife dreamily, raising her head from his breast and gazing fondly into her husband’s eyes.

“Yes, love, life then is heaven on earth, sweet wife,” whispered the husband clasping closely the yielding figure in his arms.

“I am so happy, dearest Walter, I love you so dearly,” murmured Lucy clinging still closer to her lover.

“You will always love me thus, I hope, my darling,” said Walter, as he kissed the white forehead of his bride.

“Of course I shall, my own dear husband,” answered unhesitatingly the happy, trusting woman.

“Could nothing, no matter what, however unexpected and unforeseen, shake your faith in me, or take from me that love I hold so sacred and so dear?” asked Burton earnestly, pressing his wife to his heart.

“Nothing could alter my love for you, my husband,” answered Lucy quickly, as she raised her head and kissed him.

The special train slows up at a small station. Put on breaks! The whistle calls, and the train stops until the dispatcher can get a “clear track” message from the next station.

The crowd of negroes, male and female, large and small, stare with wondering admiration at the beautiful being who appears on the rear platform of the car accompanied by such a perfect Adonis of a man.

Lucy Burton was an object not likely to escape attention. Her full round form, slender, yet molded into most delicious curves, was shown to perfection by the tight-fitting traveling gown of some kind of soft stuff that she wore; her happy, beautiful face, bright with the love-light in her hazel eyes, presented a picture calculated to cause even the most fastidious to stare. To the ignorant black people she was a revelation of loveliness.

As the negroes, in opened-mouthed wonder, came closer and clustered about the steps of the car, their great eyes wide and white, Lucy drew back a little and somewhat timidly slipped her hand into her husband’s, whispering:

“I am afraid of them, they are so black and shocking with their rolling eyes and thick lips.”

“Nonsense! sweetheart,” said Walter with a laugh not all together spontaneous.

“They are a merry, gentle folk, gay and good-natured; the Southern people would have no other nurses for their babies. I thought New England people had long since ceased to notice the color of mankind’s skin.”