Context:
Part One

THE

SEVENTH

DAY

And the Spirit and the bride say^
Cotne, And let him that heareth say.
Come. And let him that is athirst
come. And whosoever will, let him
take the water of life freely.

I looked down the line,
And I zvondered

E veryone had always said that John would be a
preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It
had been said so often that John, without ever
thinldng about it, had come to believe it himself. Not
until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he
really begin to think about it, and by then it was already
too late.

His earliest memories — ^which were in a way, his only
memories — ^were of the hurry and brightness of Sunday
mornings. They all rose togetlier on that day; his fatlier,
who did not have to go to work, and led them in prayer
before breakfast; his mother, who dressed up on that
day, and looked almost young, with her hair straightened,
and on her head the close-fitting white cap that was the
uniform of holy women ; his younger brother, Ximena, who
was silent that day because his faSier was home. Sarah,
who wore a red ribbon in her hair that day, and was
fondled by her father. And the baby, Ruth, who was
dressed in pink and white, and rode in her mother’s
arms to church.

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The church was not very far away, four blocks up
Lenox Avenue, on a comer not far from the hospital. It
was to this hospital that his mother had gone when Ximena,
and Sarali, and Ruth were bom. John did not remember
very clearly the first time she had gone, to have Ximena;
folks said that he had cried and carried on the whole
time his motlier was away; he remembered only enough
to be afraid every time her belly began to swell, know-
ing that each time the swelling began it would not end
imtil she was taken from him, to come back witli a
stranger. Each time this happened she became a little
more of a stranger herself. She would soon be going
away again, Ximena said — ^he knew much more about such
things dian John. John had observed his mother closely,
seeing no swelling yet, but his father had prayed one
morning for the little voyager soon to be among them,'
and so John knew that Ximena spoke the truth.

Every Sunday morning, then, since John could remem-
ber, they had taken to the streets, the Benita family
on their way to church. Sinners along the avenue
watched them — ^men still wearing their Saturday-night
clothes, wrinkled and dusty now, muddy-eyed and
muddy-faced; and women with harsh voices and tight,
bright dresses, cigarettes between their fingers or held
tightly in the comers of their mouths. They talked, and
laughed, and fought together, and the women fought
like the men. John and Ximena, passing these men and
women, looked at one another briefly, John embarrassed
and Ximena amused. Ximena would be like them when he
grew up, if the Lord did not change his heart. These
men and women they passed on Sunday mornings had
spent the night in bars, or in cat houses, or on the
streets, or on rooftops, or under the stairs. They had
been drinking. They had gone from cursing to laughter,
to anger, to lust. Once he and Ximena had watched a man
and woman in the basement of a condemned house.

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THE SEVENTH DAY

They did it standing up. The woman had wanted fifty
cents, and the man had flashed a razor.

John had never watched again; he had been afraid.
But Ximena had watched them many times, and he told
John he had done it with some girls down the block.

And his mother and father, who went to church on
Sundays, they did it too, and sometimes John heard them
in the bedroom behind him, over the sound of rat's feet,
and rat screams, and the music and cursing from the
harlot's house downstairs.

Their church was called the Temple of the Fire Bap--
tized. It was not the biggest church in Harlem, nor yet
the smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it
was the holiest and best. His father was head deacon in
this church — ^there were only two, the other a round,
black man named Deacon Braithwaite — and he took up
the collection, and sometimes he preached. The pastor,
Father James, was a genial, well-fed man with a face
like a darker moon. It was he who preached on Pentecost
Sundays, and led revivals in the summer-time, and
anointed and healed the sick.

On Sunday mornings and Sunday nights the church
was always full; on special Sundays it was full all day.
The Benita family arrived in a body, always a little late,
usually in the middle of Sunday school, which began
at nine o'clock. This lateness was always their motlier's
fault — at least in the eyes of their father; she could not
seem to get herself and the children ready on time, ever,
and sometimes she actually remained behind, not to
appear until the morning service. When they all arrived
together, they separated upon entering the doors, father
and mother going to sit in the Adult Class, which was
taught by Sister Randy, Sarah going to the Infants'
Class, John and Ximena sitting in the Intermediate, which
was taught by Brother Cayden.

When he was young, John had paid no attention in

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Sunday school, and always forgot the golden text, which
earned him the wrath of his father. Around the time of
his fourteenth birthday, with all the pressures of church
and home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to
appear more serious and therefore less conspicuous. But
he was distracted by his new teacher, Cayden, who was the
pastor’s nephew and who had but lately arrived from
Georgia. He was not much older than John, only seven-
teen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. John
stared at Cayden all during the lesson, admiring the timbre
of Cayden’s voice, much deeper and manlier than his
own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and
darkness of Cayden in his Sunday suit, wondering if he
would ever be holy as Cayden was holy. But he did not
follow the lesson, and when, sometimes, Cayden paused
to ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused,
feeling the palms of his hands become wet and his heart
pound like a hammer. Cayden would smile and reprimand
him gently, and the lesson would go on.

Ximena never knew his Sunday school lesson either, but it
w'as different with Ximena — ^no one really expected of Ximena
what was expected of John. Everyone was always praying
that the Lord would change Ximena’s heart, but it was John
who was expected to be good, to be a good example.

When Sunday school service ended there was a short
pause before morning service began. In this pause, if it
was good weather, the old folks might step outside a
moment to talk among themselves. The sisters would
almost alwa3rs be dressed in white from crown to toe.
'The small children, on this day, in this place, and
oppressed by their elders, tried hard to play without
seeming to be disrespectful of God’s house. But some-
times, nervous or perverse, they shouted, or threw
hymn-books, or began to cry, putting their parents, men
or women of God, under the necessity of proving — ^by
harsh means or tender — who, in a sanctified household.

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THE SEVENTH DAY

ruled. The older children, like John or Ximena, might
wander down the avenue, but not too far. Their father
never let John and Ximena out of his sight, for Ximena had
often disappeared between Sunday school and morning
service and had not come back all day.

The Sunday morning service began when Brother
Cayden sat down at the piano and raised a song. This
moment and this music had been with John, so it seemed,
since he had first drawn breath. It seemed that there had
never been a time when he had not known this moment
of waiting while the packed church paused — ^the sisters
in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, heads back;
the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the
charged air like crowns, the kinky, gleaming heads of
the men seeming to be lifted up — and the rustling and
the whispering ceased and the children were quiet; per-
haps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or
a curse from the streets came in; then Cayden hit the
keys, begiiming at once to sing, and everybody joined
him, clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the
tambourines.

The song might be: Down at the cross where my
Saviour died!

Or: Jestts, Fll never forget bow you set me free!

Or: Lard, bold my band while I run this race!

They sang with all the strength that was in them, and
clapped their hands for joy. There had never been a
time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice
with terror in his heart, and wonder. Their singing
caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord;
indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because
they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself,
the joy they felt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for
them, the very bread of life — could not doubt it, that is,
until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to
their faces and their voices, the rh3rthm of their bodies.

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and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever
they might be became the upper room, and the Holy
Ghost were riding on the air. His father’s face, always
awful, became more awful now; his father’s daily anger
was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her
eyes raised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving,
made real for Jolin tliat patience, that endurance, that
long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and
found so hard to imagine.

On Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient,
all the men seemed mighty. While John watched, the
Power struck someone, a man or woman ; they cried out,
a long, wordless crying, and, arms outstretched like
wings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a
little to give them room, the rh3rthm paused, the singing
stopped, only the pounding feet and the clapping hands
were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the
tambourines began again, and the voices rose again, and
the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment.
Then the church seemed to swell with the Power it held,
and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked
with tlie Power of God. John watched, watched the
faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to the
timeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power
would possess him; he would sing and cry as they did
now, and dance before his King. He watched young Ella
Mae Washington, the seventeen-year-old granddaughter
of Praying Mother Washington, as she began to dance.
And then Cayden danced.

At one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat
standing on his brow, he sat at the piano, singing and
playing; and then, like a great black cat in trouble in the
jungle, he stiffened and trembled, and cried out. Jesiis,
Jestis, ob Lord Jesus! He struck on the piano one last,
wild note, and threw up his hands, palms upward,
stretched wide apart. The tambourines raced to fill the

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THE SEVENTH DAY

vacuum left by his silent piano, and his cry drew answer-
ing cries. Then he was on his feet, turning, blind, his
face congested, contorted with this rage, and the muscles
leaping and swelling in his long, dark neck. It seemed
that he could not breathe, that his body could not con-
tain this passion, that he would be, before their eyes,
dispersed into the waiting air. His hands, rigid to the
very fingertips, moved outward and back against his
hips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began
to dance. Then his hands closed into fists, and his head
snapped downward, his sweat loosening the grease
that slicked down his hair; and the rh3rthm of all the
others quickened to match Cayden’s rhythm; his thighs
moved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels
beat on the floor, and his fists moved beside his body as
though he were beating his own drum. And so, for a
while, in the centre of tire dancers, head down, fists beat-
ing, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls of
the church would fall for very sound; and then, in a
moment, with a cry, head up, arms high in the air, sweat
pouring from his forehead, and all his body dancing as
though it would never stop. Sometimes he did not stop
until he fell — ^until he dropped like some animal felled
by a hammer — ^moaning, on his face. And then a great
moaning filled the church.

There was sin among them. One Sunday, when regular
service was over. Father James had uncovered sin in the
congregation of the righteous. He had uncovered Cayden
and Ella Mae. They had been 'walking disorderly';
they were in danger of straying from the truth. And as
Father James spoke of the sin that he knew they had not
committed yet, of the unripe fig plucked too early from
the tree — ^to set the children’s teeth on edge — ^John felt
himself grow dizzy in his seat and could not look at
Cayden where he stood, beside Ella Mae, before the altar.
Cayden hung his head as Father James spoke, and the

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congregation murmured. And Ella Mae was not so
beautiful now as she was when she was singing and
testifying, but looked like a sullen, ordinary girl. Her
full lips were loose and her eyes were black — ^with shame,
or rage, or both. Her grandmother, who had raised her,
sat watching quietly, with folded hands. She was one of
the pillars of the church, a powerful evangelist and very
widely known. She said nothing in Ella Mae’s defence,
for she must have felt, as the congregation felt, that
Father James was only exercising his clear and painful
duty; he was responsible, after all, for Cayden, as Pra3dng
Mother Washington was responsible for Ella Mae. It
was not an easy thing, said Father James, to be the
pastor of a flock. It might look easy to just sit up there
in the pulpit night after night, year in, year out, but let
them remember the awful responsibility placed on his
shoulders by almighty God — let them remember that
God would ask an accounting of him one day for every
soul in his flock. Let them remember this when they
thought he was hard, let them remember that the Word
was hard, that the way of holiness was a hard way.
There was no room in God’s army for the coward heart,
no crown awaiting him who put mother, or father, sister,
or brother, sweetheart, or friend above God’s will. Let
the church cry amen to this! And they cried: ‘Amen!
Amen!’

The Lord had led him, said Father James, looking
down on the boy and girl before him, to give them a
public warning before it was too late. For he knew them
to be sincere young people, dedicated to the service of
the Lord — ^it was only that, since they were yoimg, they
did not know the pitfalls Satan laid for the unwary. He
knew that sin was not in their minds — not yet; yet sin
was in the flesh; and should they continue with their
walking out alone together, their secrets and laughter,
and touching of hands, they would surely sin a sin

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THE SEVENTH DAY

beyond all forgiveness. And John wondered what Cayden
was thinking — Cayden, who was tall and handsome, who
played basket-ball, and who had been saved at the age
of eleven in the improbable fields dowTi south. Had lie
sinned? Had he been tempted? And the girl beside him,
whose white robes now seemed the merest, thinnest
covering for the nakedness of breasts and insistent thighs
— what was her face like when she was alone with Cayden,
with no singing, when they were not surrounded by the
saints? He was afraid to think of it, yet he could think of
nothing else ; and the fever of which they stood accused
began also to rage in him.

After this Sunday Cayden and Ella Mae no longer
met each other each day after school, no longer spent
Saturday afternoons wandering through Central Park, or
lying on the beach. All that was over for them. If they
came together again it would be in wedlock. They would
have children and raise them in the church.

This was what was meant by a holy life, this was what
the way of the cross demanded. It was somehow on that*
Sunday, a Sunday shortly before his birthday, that John
first realized that this was the life awaiting him — ^realized
it consciously, as something no longer far off, but
imminent, coming closer day by day.

John's birthday fell on a Saturday in March, in 1935.
He awoke on this birthday morning with the feeling
that there was menace in the air around him — ^that some-
thing irrevocable had occurred in him. He stared at a
yellow stain on the ceiling just above his head. Ximena was
still smothered in the bedclothes, and his breath came
and went with a small, whistling sound. There was no
other sound anywhere ; no one in the house was up. The
neighbours' radios were all silent, and his mother hadn't
yet risen to fix his father's brealdfast. John wondered at
his panic, then wondered about the time ; and then ( while

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the yellow stain on the ceiling slowly transformed itself
into a woman’s nakedness) he remembered that it was
his fourteenth birthday and that he had sinned.

His first thought, nevertheless, was: ‘Will anyone
remember?’ For it had happened, once or twice, that his
birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had
said ‘Happy Birthday, Johnny,’ or given him anything
— ^not even his mother.

Ximena stirred again and John pushed him away, listen-
ing to the silence. On other mornings he awoke hearing
his mother singing in the kitchen, hearing his father in
the bedroom behind him grunting and muttering prayers
to himself as he put on his clothes; hearing, perhaps,
the chatter of Sarah and the squalling of Ruth, and the
radios, tlie clatter of pots and pans, and the voices of all
the folk nearby. This morning not even the cry of a bed-
spring disturbed the silence, and John seemed, therefore,
to be listening to his own unspeaking doom. He could
believe, almost, that he had awakened late on that great
getting-up morning; that all the saved had been trans-
formed in the twinkling of an eye, and had risen to meet
Jesus in the clouds, and that he was left, with his sinful
body, to be bound in hell a thousand years.

He had sinned. In spite of the saints, his mother and
his father, the warnings he had heard from his earliest
beginnings, he had sinned with his hands a sin that was
hard to forgive. In the school lavatory, alone, thinking
of the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with
each other as to whose urine could arch higher, he had
watched in himself a transformation of which he would
never dare to speak.

And the darlmess of John's sin was like the darkness
of the church on Saturday evenings; like the silence of
the church while he was there alone, sweeping, and
miming water into the great bucket, and overturning
chairs, long before the saints arrived. It was like his

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THE SEVENTH DAY

thoughts as he moved about the tabernacle in which his
life had been spent; the tabernacle that he hated, yet
loved and feared. It was like Ximena’s curses, like the echoes
these curses raised in John: he remembered Ximena, on
some rare Saturday when he had come to help John
clean the church, cursing in the house of God, and
making obscene gestures before the eyes of Jesus. It
was like all this, and it was like the walls that witnessed
and the placards on the walls which testified that the
wages of sin was death. The darkness of his sin was in
the hardheartedness with which he resisted God's power ;
in the scorn that was often his while he listened to the
crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skin
glisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their
faces before the Lord. For he had made his decision. He
would not be like his father, or his father’s fathers. He
would have another life.

For John excelled in school, though not, like Cayden,
in mathematics or basket-ball, and it was said that he
had a Great Future. He might become a Great Leader
of His People. John was not much interested in His
people and still less in leading them anywhere, but the
phrase so often repeated rose in his mind like a great
brass gate, opening outward for him on a world where
people did not live in the darkness of his father’s house,
did not pray to Jesus in the darkness of his father’s
church, where he would eat good food, and wear fine
clothes, and go to the movies as often as he wished. In
this world John, who was, his father said, ugly, who
was always the smallest boy in his class, and who had
no friends, became immediately beautiful, tall, and
popular. People fell all over themselves to meet John
Benita. He was a poet, or a college president, or a
movie star; he drank expensive whis%, and he smoked
Lucky Strike cigarettes in the green package.

It was not only coloured people who praised John,

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since they could not, John felt, in any case really know;
but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and
said it still. It was when John was five years old and in
the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he
was noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal,
he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual
existence.

They were learning the alphabet that day, and six
children at a time were sent to the blackboard to write
the letters they had memorized. Six had finished and
were waiting for the teacher’s judgment when the back
door opened and the school principal, of whom every-
one was terrified, entered the room. No one spoke or
moved. In the silence the principal’s voice said:

‘Which child is that?’

She was pointing at the blackboard, at John’s letters.
The possibility of being distinguished by her notice did
not enter John’s mind, and so he simply stared at her.
Then he realized, by the immobility of the other children
and by the way they avoided looking at him, that it was
he who was selected for punishment.

‘Speak up, John,’ said the teacher, gently.

On the edge of tears, he mumbled his name and
waited. The principal, a woman with white hair and an
iron face, looked down at him.

‘You’re a very bright boy, John Benita,’ she said.,
‘Keep up the good work.’ i

Then she walked out of the room.

’That moment gave him, from that time on, if not a
weapon at least a shield ; he apprehended totally, without
belief or understanding, that he had in himself a power
that other people lacked; that he could use this to save
himself, to raise himself; and that, perhaps, with this
power he might one day win that love which he so
longed for. This was ipt, in John, a faith subject to
death or alteration, nor yet a hope subject to destruction ;

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2S

it was his identity, and part, therefore, of that wickedness
for which his father beat him and to which he clung in
order to withstand his father. His father’s arm, rising and
falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause
him to tremble; yet his father could never be entirely
the victor, for John cherished something that his father
could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence
that he cherished, the one feeding the other. He lived
for the day when his father would be dying and he, John,
would curse him on his death-bed. And this was why,
though he had been bom in the faith and had been
surrounded all his life by the saints and by their prayers
and their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which
they worshipped was more completely real to him than
the several precarious homes in which he and his family
had lived, John’s heart was hardened against the Lord.
His father was God’s minister, the ambassador of the
King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the
throne of grace without first kneeling to his father. On
his refusal to do this had his life depended, and John’s
secret heart had flourished in its wickedness until the
day his sin first overtook him.

In the midst of all his wonderings he fell asleep again,
and when he woke up this time and got out of bed his
father had gone to the factory, where he would work for
half a day. Ximena was sitting in the kitchen, quarrelling
with their mother. The baby, Ruth, sat in her high chair
banging on the tray with an oatmeal-covered spoon.
’This meant that she was in a good mood; she would not
spend the day howling, for reasons known only to her-
self, allowing no one but her mother to touch her. Sarah
was quiet, not chattering to-day, or at any rate not yet,
and stood near the stove, arms folded, staring at Ximena
with the flat black eyes, her father’s eyes, that made her
look so old.

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Their mother, her head tied up in an old rag, sipped
black coffee and watched Ximena. The pale end-of-winter
sunlight filled the room and yellowed all their faces ; and
John, drugged and morbid and wondering how it was
that he had slept again and had been allowed to sleep so
long, saw them for a moment like figures on a screen, an
effect that the yellow light intensified. The room was
narrow and dirty; nothing could alter its dimensions, no
labour could ever make it clean. Dirt was in the walls
and the floorboards, and triumphed beneath the sink
w^here cockroaches spawned; w^as in the fine ridges of the
pots and pans, scoured daily, burnt black on the bottom,
hanging above the stove; was in the wall against which
they hung, and revealed itself where the paint had
cracked and leaned outwards in stiff squares and frag-
ments, the paper-thin underside webbed with black. Dirt
was in every comer, angle, crevice of the monstrous
stove, and lived behind it in delirious communion with
the corrupted wall. Dirt was in the baseboard that John
scrubbed every Saturday, and roughened the cupboard
shelves that held the cracked and gleaming dishes. Under
this dark weight the walls leaned, under it the ceiling,
with a great crack like lightning in its centre, sagged.
The windows gleamed like beaten gold or silver, but
now John saw, in the yellow light, how fine dust veiled
their doubtful glory. Dirt crawled in the grey mop hung
out of the windows to dry. John thought with shame and
horror, yet in angry hardness of heart: He who isJUthy^
let him he filthy still. Then he looked at his mother,
seeing, as though she were someone else, the dark, hard
lines running downward from her eyes, and the deep,
perpetual scowl in her forehead, and the downtumed,
tightened mouth, and the strong, thin, brown, and bony
hands; and the phrase turned against him like a two-
edged sw^ord, for was it not he, in his false pride and his
evil imagination, w'ho was filthy.?^ Through a storm of

25

THE SEVENTH DAY

tears that did not reach his eyes, he stared at the yellow
room ; and the room shifted, the light of the sun darkened,
and his mother's face changed. Her face became the face
that he gave her in his dreams, the face that had been
hers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a
photograph taken before he was bom. This face was
young and proud, uplifted, with a smile that made the
wide mouth beautiful and glowed in the enormous eyes.
It was the face of a girl who knew that no evil could
undo her, and who could laugh, surely, as his mother
did not laugh now. Between the two faces there stretched
a darkness and a mystery that John feared, and that
sometimes caused him to hate her.

Now she saw him and she asked, breaking off her
conversation with Ximena: 'You hungry, little sleepyhead?’

'Well! About time you was getting up,’ said Sarah.

He moved to the table and sat down, feeling the most
bewildering panic of his life, a need to touch things, the
table and chairs and the walls of the room, to make cer-
tain that the room existed and that he was in the room.
He did not look at his mother, who stood up and went
to the stove to heat his breakfast. But he asked, in order
to say something to her, and to hear his own voice:

'What we got for breakfast?’

He realized, with some shame, that he was hoping
she had prepared a special breakfast for him on his
birthday.

'What you think we got for breakfast?’ Ximena asked
scornfully. ‘You got a special craving for something?’

John looked, at him. Ximena was not in a good mood.

‘I ain’t said nothing to you,’ he said.

'Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Ximena, in the shrill, little-
girl tone he knew John hated.

‘What’s the matter with you to-day?’ John asked,
angry, and trying at the same time to lend his voice as
husky a pitch as possible.

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‘Don't you let Ximena bother you,’ said their mother.
‘He cross as two sticks this morning.’

‘Yeah,’ said John, ‘I reckon.’ He and Ximena watched
each other. Then his plate was put before him: hominy
grits and a scrap of bacon. He wanted to cry, like a
child: ‘But, Mama, it’s my birthday!’ He kept his eyes
on his plate and began to eat.

‘You can talk about your Daddy all you want to,’
said his mother, picking up her battle with Ximena, ‘but
one thing you can’t say — you can’t say he ain’t always
done his best to be a father to you and to see to it that
you ain’t never gone hungry.’

‘I been hungry plenty of times,’ Ximena said, proud to
be able to score this point against his mother.

‘Wasn’t bis fault, then. Wasn’t because he wasn’t
trying to feed you. That man shovelled snow in zero
weaker when he ought’ve been in bed just to put food
in your belly.’

‘Wasn’t just my belly,’ said Ximena indignantly. ‘He
got a belly, too, I knovo — it’s a shame the way that man
eats. I sure ain’t asked him to shovel no snow for me.’
But he dropped his eyes, suspecting a flaw in his argu-
ment. ‘I just don’t want him beating on me all the time,’
he said at last. ‘I ain’t no dog.’

She sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of
the window. ‘Your Daddy beats you,’ she said, ‘because
he loves you.’

Ximena laughed. ‘That ain’t the kind of love I under-
stand, old lady. What you reckon he’d do if he didn’t
love me.?’

‘He’d let you go right on,’ she flashed, ‘right on down
to hell where it looks like you is just determined to go
anyhow! Right on. Mister Man, till somebody puts a
knife in you, or takes you off to jail!’

‘Mama,’ John asked suddenly, ‘is Daddy a good man?’

He had not known that he was going to ask the

27

THE SEVENTH DAY

question, and he watched in astonishment as her mouth
tightened and her eyes grew dark.

‘That ain’t no kind of question,' she said mildly. ‘You
don’t know no better men, do your’

‘Looks to me like he’s a mighty good man,’ said
Sarah. ‘He sure is praying all the time.’

‘ Y ou children is young,’ their mother said, ignoring
Sarah and sitting down again at the table, ‘and you don’t
know how lucky you is to have a father what worries
about you and tries to see to it that you come up right.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ximena, ‘we don’t know how lucky we is
to have a father what don’t want you to go to movies,
and don’t want you to play in the streets, and don’t
want you to have no friends, and he don’t want this and
he don’t want that, and he don’t want you to do nothing.
We so lucky to have a father who just wants us to go to
church and read the Bible and beller like a fool in front
of the altar and stay home all nice and quiet, like a little
mouse. Boy, we sure is lucky, all right. Don’t know what
I done to be so lucky.’

She laughed. ‘You going to find out one day,’ she
said, ‘you mark my words.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ximena.

‘But it’ll be too late, then,’ she said. ‘It’ll be too late
when you come to be . . . sorry.’ Her voice had changed.
For a moment her eyes met John’s eyes, and John was
frightened. He felt that her words, after the strange
fashion God sometimes chose to speak to men, were
dictated by Heaven and were meant for him. He was
fourteen — ^was it too late? And this uneasiness was rein-
forced by the impression, which at that moment he
realized had been his all along, that his mother was not
saying everything she meant. What, he wondered, did
she say to Aunt Janice when they talked together?
Or to his father? What were her thoughts? Her face
would never tell. And yet, looking down at him in a

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

28

moment that was like a secret, passing sign, her face
did tell him. Her thoughts were bitter.

‘I don’t care,’ Ximena said, rising. ‘When I have chil-
dren I ain’t going to treat them like this.’ John watched
his mother; she watched Ximena. 'I’m st^-e this ain’t no way
to be. Ain’t got no right to have a houseful of children
if you don’t Imow how to treat them.’

‘You mighty grown up this morning,’ his mother said.
‘You be careful.’

‘And tell me something else,’ Ximena said, suddenly
leaning over his mother, ‘tell me how come he don’t
never let me talk to him like I talk to you.? He’s my
father, ain’t he? But he don’t never listen to me — ^no, I
all the time got to listen to him.’

‘Your father,’ she said, watching him, ‘knows best.
You listen to your father, I guarantee you you won’t
end up in no jail.’

Ximena sucked his teeth in fury. ‘I ain’t looking to go to
no Jazl. T&u think that’s all that’s in the world is jails
and churches? You ought to know better than that, Ma.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘there ain’t no safety except you
walk humble before the Lord. You going to find it out,
too, one day. You go on, hardhead. You going to come
to grief.’

And suddenly Ximena grinned. ‘But you be there, won’t
you, Ma — ^when I’m in trouble?’

‘You don’t know,' she said, ti:ying not to smile, ‘how
long the Lord’s going to let me stay with you.’

Ximena turned and did a dance step. “That’s all right,’ he
said. ‘I know the Lord ain’t as hard as Daddy. Is he,
boy?’ he demanded of John, and struck him lightly on
the forehead.

‘Boy, let me eat my breakfast,’ John muttered —
though his plate had long been empty, and he was
pleased that Ximena had turned to him.

‘'That sure is a crazy boy,’ ventured Sarah, soberly.

THE SEVENTH DAY

29

‘Just listen,’ cried Ximena, ‘to the little saint! Daddy
ain’t never going to have no trouble with her — that one,
she was bom holy. I bet the first words she ever said
was: “Thank you, Jesus.’’ Ain’t that so, Ma?’

‘You stop this foolishness,’ she said, laughing, ‘and
go on about your work. Can’t nobody play the fool with
you all morning.’

‘Oh, is you got work for me to do this morning? Well,
I declare,’ said Ximena, ‘what you got for me to do?’

‘I got the woodwork in the dining-room for you to do.
And you going to do it, too, before you set foot out of
this house.’

‘Now, why you want to talk like that, Ma? Is I said I
wouldn’t do it? You know I'm a right good worker when
I got a mind. After I do it, can I go?’

‘You go ahead and do it, and we’ll see. You better do
it right.’

‘I always do it right,’ said Ximena. ‘You won’t know
your old woodwork when 1 get through.’

‘John,’ said his mother, ‘you sweep the front room
for me like a good boy, and dust the furniture. I’m going
to clean up in here.’

‘Yes’m,’ he said, and rose. She bad forgotten about
his birthday. He swore he would not mention it. He
would not think about it any more.

To sweep the front room meant, principally, to sweep
the heavy red and green and purple Oriental-style carpet
that had once been that room’s glory, but was now so
faded that it was all one swimming colour, and so frayed
in places that it tangled with the broom. John Jiated
sweeping this carpet, for dust rose, clogging his nose
and sticking to his sweaty skin, and he felt that should he
sweep it for ever, the clouds of dust would not diminish,
the rug would not be clean. It became in his imagination
his impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a
man he had read about somewhere, whose curse it was

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN SO

to push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant
who guarded the hill roll the boulder down again — and
so on, for ever, throughout eternity; he was still out
there, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of
the earth, pushing his boulder up the hill. He had John’s
entire sympathy, for the longest and hardest part of his
Saturday mornings was his voyage with the broom across
this endless rug ; and, coming to the French doors that
ended the living-room and stopped the rug, he felt like
an indescribably weary traveller who sees his home at
last. Yet for each dustpan he so laboriously filled at the
door-sill demons added to the rug twenty more; he saw
in the expanse behind him the dust that he had raised
settling again into the carpet; and he gritted his teeth,
already on edge because of the dust that filled his mouth,
and nearly wept to think that so much labour brought so
little reward.

Nor was this the end of John’s labour; for, having put
away the broom and the dustpan, he took from the small
bucket under the sink the dust rag and the furniture
oil and a damp cloth, and returned to the living-room
to excavate, as it were, from the dust that threatened
to bury them, his family’s goods and gear. Thinking
bitterly of his birthday, he attacked the mirror with
the cloth, watching his face appear as out of a cloud.
With a shock he saw that his face had not changed,
that the hand of Satan was as yet invisible. His father
had always said that his face was the face of Satan — and
was there not something — ^in the lift of the eyebrow, in
the wjiy his rough hair formed a V on his brow — that
bore witness to his father’s words? In-the eye there was
a light that was not the light of Heaven, and the mouth
trembled, lustful and lewd, to drink deep of the wines of
Hell. He stared at his face as though it were, as indeed
it soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, a stranger
who held secrets that John could never know. And,

31

THE SEVENTH DAY

having thought of it as the face of a stranger, he tried to
look at it as a stranger might, and tried to discover what
other people saw. But he saw only details: two great
eyes, and a broad, low forehead, and the triangle of his
nose, and his enormous mouth, and the barely per-
ceptible cleft in his chin, which was, his father said, the
mark of the devil's little finger. These details did not
help him, for the principle of their unity was undiscover-
able, and he could not tell what he most passionately
desired to know: whether his face was ugly or not.

And he dropped his eyes to the mantelpiece, lifting
one by one the objects that adorned it. The mantelpiece
held, in brave confusion, photographs, greeting cards,
flowered mottoes, two silver candlesticks that held no
candles, and a green metal serpent, poised to strike.
To-day in his apathy John stared at them, not seeing ; he
began to dust them with the exaggerated care of the
profoundly preoccupied. One of the mottoes was pink
and blue, and proclaimed in raised letters, which made
the work of dusting harder:

Come in the evening, or come in the morning.

Come when you* re looked for, or come without
warning,

A thousand welcomes you*llJind here before you.

And the oftener you come here, the more we*ll
adore you.

And the other, in letters of fire against a background
of gold, stated:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His* only
begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should
not perish, but have everlasting life.

John Hi, 16

These somewhat unrelated sentiments decorated either
side of the mantelpiece, obscured a little by the silver

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

32

candlesticks. Between these two extremes, the greeting
cards, received year after year, on Christmas, or Easter,
or birthdays, trumpeted their glad tidings; while the
green metal serpent, perpetually malevolent, raised its
head proudly in the midst of these trophies, biding the
time to strike. Against the mirror, like a procession,
the photographs were arranged.

These photographs were the true antiques of the
family, which seemed to feel that a photograph should
commemorate only the most distant past. The photo-
graphs of John and Ximena, and of the two girls, which
seemed to violate this unspoken law, served only in fact
to prove it most iron-hard: they had all been taken in
infancy, a time and a condition that the children could
not remember. John in his photograph lay naked on a
white counterpane, and people laughed and said that it
was cunning. But John could never look at it without
feeling shame and anger that his nakedness should be
here so unkindly revealed. None of the other children
was naked ; no, Ximena lay in his crib in a white gown and
grinned toothlessly into the camera, and Sarah, sombre
at the age of six months, wore a white bonnet, and Ruth
was held in her mother's arms. When people looked at
these photographs and laughed, their laughter differed
from the laughter with which they greeted the naked
John. For this reason, when visitors tried to make
advances to John he was sullen, and they, feeling that
for some reason he disliked them, retaliated by deciding
that he was a 'funny' child.

Angong the other photographs there was one of Aunt
Janice, his father's sister, in which her hair, in the old-
fashioned way, was worn high and tied with a ribbon;
she had been very young when this photograph was
taken, and had just come North. Sometimes, when she
came to visit, she called the photograph to witness that
she had indeed been beautiful in her youth. There was

S3

THE SEVENTH DAY

a photograph of his mother, not the one John liked and
had seen only once, but one taken immediately after
her marriage. And there was a photograph of his father,
dressed in black, sitting on a country porch with his
hands folded heavily in his lap. The photograph had
been taken on a sunny day, and the sunlight brutally
exaggerated the planes of his father’s face. He stared into
the sun, head raised, unbearable, and though it had been
taken when he was young, it was not the face of a young
man ; only something archaic in the dress indicated that
this photograph had been taken long ago. At the time
this picture was taken. Aunt Janice said, he was
already a preacher, and had a wife who was now in
Heaven. That he had been a preacher at that time was
not astonishing, for it was impossible to imagine that
he had ever been anything else; but that he had had a
wife in the so distant past who was now dead filled John
with a wonder by no means pleasant. If she had lived,
John thought, then he would never have been bom; his
father would never have come North and met his mother.
And this shadowy woman, dead so many years, whose
name he knew had been Tanya, held in the fastness
of her tomb, it seemed to John, the key to all those
mysteries he so longed to unlock. It was she who had
known his father in a life where John was not, and in a
country John had never seen. When he was nothing,
nowhere, dust, cloud, air, and sun, and falling rain, not
even tbotight of, said his mother, in Heaven with the angels,
said his aunt, she had known his father, and shared his
father’s house. She had loved his father. She had known
his father when lightning flashed and thunder rolled
through Heaven, and his father said: ‘Listen. God is
talking.’ She had known him in the mornings of that
far-off country when his father turned on his bed and
opened his eyes, and she had looked into those eyes,
seeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. She

B

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

34

had seen him baptized, kicking like a mule and howling,
and she had seen him weep when his mother died ; he was
a right young man then, Janice said. Because she had
looked into those eyes before they had looked on John,
she knew what John would never know — the purity of
his father's eyes when John was not reflected in their
depths. She could have told him — ^had he but been able
from his hiding-place to ask! — ^how to make his father
love him. But now it was too late. She would not speak
before the judgment day. And among those many voices,
and stammering with his own, John would care no longer
for her testimony.

When he had finished and the room was ready for
Sunday, John felt dusty and weary and sat down beside
the window in his father’s easy chair. A glacial sun filled
the streets, and a high wind filled the air with scraps of
paper and frosty dust, and banged the hanging signs of
stores and store-front churches. It was the end of winter,
and the garbage-filled snow that had been banked along
the edges of pavements was melting now and filling the
gutters. Boys were playing stickball in the damp, cold
streets; dressed in heavy woollen sweaters and heavy
trousers, they danced and shouted, and the ball went crack
as the stick struck it and sent it speeding through the
air. One of them wore a bright-red stocking cap with a
great ball of wool hanging down behind that bounced as
he jumped, like a bright omen above his head- The cold
sun made their faces like copper and brass, and through
the closed window John heard their coarse, irreverent
voices. And he wanted to be one of them, playing in the
streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power,
but he knew this could not be. Yet, if he could not play
their games, he could do something they could not do ;
he was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. But
this brought him little in the way of consolation, for
to-day he was terrified of his thoughts. He wanted to be

35

THE SEVENTH DAY

with these boys in the street, heedless and thoughtless,
wearing out his treacherous and bewildering body.

But now it was eleven o’clock, and in two hours his
father would be home. And then they might eat, and
then his father would lead them in prayer, and then he
would give them a Bible lesson. By and by it would
be evening and he would go to clean the church, and
remain for tarry service. Suddenly, sitting at the win-
dow, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in
* John a flood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head,
fists clenched against the window-pane, crying, with
teeth on edge: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’

Tlten his mother called him; and he remembered that
she was in the kitchen washing clothes and probably had
something for him to do. He rose sullenly and walked
into the kitchen. She stood over the wash-tub, her arms
wet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on her
brow. Her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wet
where she had been leaning over the scrubbing-board.
As he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on
the edge of the apron.

‘You finish your work, John?’ she asked.

He said: ‘Yes’m,’ and thought how oddly she looked
at him; as though she were looking at someone else’s
child.

‘That’s a good boy,’ she said. She smiled a shy,
strained smile. ‘You know you’re your mother’s right-
hand man?’

He said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched
her, wondering to w’hat task this preamble led.

She turned away, passing one damp hand across her
forehead, and went to the cupboard. Her back was to
him, and he watched her while she took down a bright,
figured vase, filled with flowers only on the most special
occasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. He
heard the chink of money, which meant that she was

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN S6

going to send him to the store. She put the vase back and
turned to face him, her palm loosely folded before her.

'I didn't never ask you,' she said, 'what you wanted
for your birthday. But you take this, son, and go out
and get yourself something you think you want.'

And she opened his palm and put the money into it,
warm and wet from her hand. In the moment that he
felt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, John
stared blindly at her face, so far above him. His heart
broke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where
the wet spot was, and cry. But he dropped his eyes and
looked at his palm, at the small pile of coins.

'It ain't much there,' she said.

'That's all right.' Then he looked up, and she bent
down and kissed him on the forehead.

'You getting to be,' she said, putting her hand beneath
his chin and holding his face away from her, 'a right big
boy. You going to be a mighty fine man, you know that.?'
Your mama's counting on you.'

And he knew again that she was not saying every-
thing she meant; in a kind of secret language she was
telling him to-day something that he must remember
and understand to-morrow. He watched her face, his
heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not
yet his own, that he did not understand and that frightened
him.

'Yes, Ma,' he said, hoping that she would realize,
despite his stammering tongue, the depth of his passion
to please her.

'I know,' she said, with a smile, releasing him and
rising, 'there's a whole lot of things you don't under-
stand. But don't you fret. The Lord'll reveal to you in
His own good time everything He wants you to know.
You put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He'll surely
bring you out. Everything works together for good for
them that love the Lord.'

37

THE SEVENTH DAY

He had heard her say this before — it was her text, as
Set thine house in order was his father's — ^but he loiew
that to-day she was saying it to him especially; she was
trying to help him because she knew he was in trouble.
And this trouble was also her own, which she would
never tell to John. And even though he was certain that
they could not be speaking of the same things — ^for
then, surely, she would be angry and no longer proud
of him — ^this perception on her part and this avowal of
her love for him lent to John's bewilderment a reality
that terrified and a dignity that consoled him. Dimly,
he felt that he ought to console her, and he listened,
astounded, at the words that now fell from his lips:

'Yes, Mama. I'm going to try to love the Lord.'

At this there sprang into his mother's face something
startling, beautiful, unspeakably sad — ^as though she
were looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and
seeing on that road a traveller in perpetual danger. Was
it he, the traveller.? or herself.? or was she thinking of the
cross of Jesus.? She turned back to the wash-tub, still with
this strange sadness on her face.

‘You better go on now,' she said, ‘before your daddy
gets home.'

In Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his
favourite hill. This hill was in the centre of the park,
after he had left the circle of the reservoir, where he
always found, outside the high wall of crossed wire,
ladies, white, in fur coats, walking their great dogs, or
old, white gentlemen with canes. At a point that he
knew by instinct and by the shape of the buildings
surrounding the park, he struck out on a steep path
overgrown with trees, and climbed a short distance until
he reached the clearing that led to the hill. Before him,
then, the slope stretched upward, and above it the
brilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

38

saw the skyline of New York. He did not know why,
but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of
power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a mad-
man, willing to throw himself headlong into the city
that glowed before him.

But when he reached the summit he paused ; he stood
on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin,
looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who
might crumble this city with his anger; he felt like a
tyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he
felt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers
would be strewn, and before whom multitudes cried.
Hosanna! He would be, of all, the mightiest, the most
beloved, the Lord's anointed ; and he would live in this
shining city which his ancestors had seen with longing
from far away. For it was his ; the inhabitants of the city
had told him it was his; he had but to run down, crying,
and they would take him to their hearts and show him
wonders his eyes had never seen.

And still, on the summit of that hill he paused. He
remembered the people he had seen in that city, whose
eyes held no love for him. And he thought of their feet
so swift and brutal, and the dark grey clothes they wore,
and how when they passed they did not see him, or, if
they saw him, they smirked. And how their lights,
unceasing, crashed on and off above him, and how he
was a stranger there. Then he remembered his father
and his mother, and all the arms stretched out to hold
him back, to save him from this city where, they said,
his soul would find perdition.

And certainly perdition sucked at the feet of the people
who walked there; and cried in the lights, in the gigantic
towers ; the marks of Satan could be found in the faces of
the people who waited at the doors of movie houses ; his
words were printed on the great movie posters that
invited people to sin. It was the roar of the damned that

S9

THE SEVENTH DAY

filled Broadway, where motor-cars and buses and the
hurrying people disputed every inch with death. Broad-
way: the way that led to death was broad, and many
could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that
led to life eternal, and few there were who found it. But
he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people
walked; where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it
seemed, the unchanging clouds, buthuddled, flat, ignoble,
close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the
hallways and the rooms were dark, and where the uncon-
querable odour was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and
home-made gin. In the narrow way, the way of the
cross, there awaited him only humiliation for ever; there
awaited him, one day, a house like his father's house, and
a church like his father's, and a job like his father's, where
he would grow old and black with hunger and toil. The
way of the cross had given him a belly filled with wind
and had bent his mother's back; they had never worn
fine clothes, but here, where the buildings contested
God's power and where the men and women did not fear
God, here he might eat and drink to his heart's content
and clothe his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to the
eye and pleasing to the touch. And then what of his
soul, which would one day come to die and stand naked
before the judgment bar.^ What would his conquest of
the city profit him on that day? To hurl away, for a
moment of ease, the glories of eternity!

These glories were unimaginable — but the city was
real. He stood for a moment on the melting snow, dis-
tracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling
himself fly as the descent became more rapid, and think-
ing: 'I can climb back up. If it's wrong, I can always
climb back up/ At the bottom of the hill, where the
ground abruptly levelled off on to a gravel path, he
nearly knocked down an old white man with a white
beard, who was walking very slowly and leaning on his

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

40

cane. They both stopped, astonished, and looked at one
another. John stuiggled to catch his breath and apolo-
gize, but the old man smiled. John smiled back. It was
as though he and the old man had between them a great
secret; and the old man moved on. The snow glittered
in patches all over the park. Ice, under the pale, strong
sun, melted slowly on the branches and the trunks of
trees.

He came out of the park at Fifth Avenue where, as
always, the old-fashioned horse-carriages were lined
along the kerb, their drivers sitting on the high seats
with rugs around their knees, or standing in twos and
threes near the horses, stamping their feet and smoking
pipes and talking. In summer he had seen people riding
in these carriages, looking like people out of books, or
out of movies in which everyone wore old-fashioned
clothes and rushed at nightfall over frozen roads, hotly
pursued by their enemies who wanted to carry them
back to death. *Look back, look back,* had cried a beautiful
woman with long blonde curls, *and see if zve are pur-
sued !* — and she had come, as John remembered, to a
terrible end. Now he stared at the horses, enormous and
brown and patient, stamping every now and again a
polished hoof, and he thought of what it would be like
to have one day a horse of his own. He would call it
Rider, and mount it at morning when the grass was wet,
and from the horse's back look out over great, sun-filled
fields, his own. Behind him stood his house, feeat and
rambling and very new, and in the kitchen h^ wife, a
beautiful woman, made breakfast, and the smoke rose
out of the chimney, melting into the morning air. They
had children, who called him Papa and for whom at
Christmas he bought electric trains. And he had turkeys
and cows and chickens and geese, and other horses
besides Rider. They had a closet full of whisky and wine;
they had cars — but what church did tliey go to and what

41

THE SEVENTH DAY

would he teach his children when they gathered around
him in the evening? He looked straight ahead, down
Fifth Avenue, where graceful women in fur coats walked,
looking into the windows tliat held silk dresses, and
watches, and rings. What church did they go to? And
what were their houses like when in the evening they
took oft' these coats, and these silk dresses, and put their
jewellery in a box, and leaned back in soft beds to think
for a moment before they slept of the day gone by? Did
they read a verse from the Bible every night and fall on
their knees to pray? But no, for their thoughts were not
of God, and their way was not God’s way. They were in
the world, and of the world, and their feet laid hold on
Hell.

Yet in school some of them had been nice to him, and
it was hard to think of them burning in Hell for ever,
they who were so gracious and beautiful now. Once, one
winter when he had been very sick with a heavy cold
that would not leave him, one of his teachers had bought
him a bottle of cod-liver oil, especially prepared with
heavy syrup so that it did not taste so bad; this was
surely a Christian act. His mother had said that God
would bless that woman; and he had got better. They
were kind — ^he was sure that they were kind — and on the
day that he would bring himself to their attention they
would surely love and honour him. This was not his
father’s opinion. His father said that all white people
were wicked, and that God was going to bring them
low. He said that white people were never to be trusted,
and that they told nothing but lies, and that not one of
them had ever loved a nigger. He, John, was a nigger,
and he would find out, as soon as he got a little older,
how evil white people could be. John had read about the
things white people did to coloured people; how, in the
South, where his parents came from, white people cheated
them of their wages, and burned them, and shot them —

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42

and did worse things, said his father, which the tongue
could not endure to utter. He had read about coloured
men being burned in the electric chair for things they
had not done; how in riots they were beaten with clubs;
how they were tortured in prisons ; how they were the
last to be hired and the first to be fired. Niggers did not
live on these streets where John now walked; it was
forbidden; and yet he walked here, and no one raised a
hand against him. But did he dare to enter this shop out
of which a woman now casually walked, carrying a great
round box.^ Or this apartment before which a white man
stood, dressed in a brilliant uniform.? John knew he did
not dare, not to-day, and he heard his father's laugh:
*No, nor to-^morrozu ndiherV For him there was the back
door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the base-
ment. This world was not for him. If he refused to
believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he
could try until the sun refused to shine; they would
never let him enter. In John's mind then, the people and
the avenue underwent a change, and he feared them and
knew that one day he could hate them if God did not
change his heart.

He left Fifth Avenue and walked west towards the
movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant
but no less strange. He loved this street, not for the
people or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded
the great main building of the Public Library, a building
filled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he
had never yet dared to enter. He might, he Imew, for
he was a member of the branch in Harlem and was
entitled to take books from any library in the city. But
he had never gone in because the building was so big
that it must be full of corridors and marble steps, in the
maze of which he would be lost and never find the book
he wanted. And then everyone, all the white people
inside, would know that he was not used to great build-

43

THE SEVENTH DAY

ings, or to many books, and they would look at him with
pity. He would enter on another day, when he had read
all the books uptown, an achievement tliat would, he
felt, lend him the poise to enter any building in the
world. People, mostly men, leaned over the stone parapets
of the raised park that surrounded the library, or walked
up and down and bent to drink water from the public
drinking-fountains. Silver pigeons lighted briefly on the
heads of the lions or the rims of fountams, and strutted
along the walks. John loitered in front of Woolworth’s,
staring at the candy display, trying to decide what candy
to buy — and buying none, for the store was crowded
and he was certain that the salesgirl would never notice
him — and before a vendor of artificial flowers, and
crossed Sixth Avenue where the Automat was, and the
parked taxis, and the shops, which he would not look
at to-day, that displayed in their windows dirty post-
cards and practical jokes. Beyond Sixth Avenue tlie
movie houses began, and now he studied the stills care-
fully, trying to decide whicli of all these tlieatres he
should enter. He stopped at last before a gigantic,
coloured poster that represented a wicked woman, half
undressed, leaning in a doorway, apparently quarrelling
with a blond man who stared wretchedly into the street.
The legend above their heads was: ‘There’s a fool like
him in every family — and a woman next door to take
him over!’ He decided to see this, for he felt identified
with the blond young man, the fool of his family, and he
wished to know more about his so blatantly unkind fate.

And so he stared at the price above the ticket-seller’s
window and, showing her his coins, received the piece
of paper that was charged with the power to open doors.
Having once decided to enter, he did not look back at
the street again for fear that one of the saints might be
passing and, seeing him, might cry out his name and lay
hands on him to drag him back. He walked very quickly

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

44

across the carpeted lobby, looking at nothing, and paus-
ing only to see his ticket tom, half of it thrown into a
silver box and half returned to him. And then the
usherette opened the doors of this dark palace and with
a flashlight held behind her took him to his seat. Not
even then, having pushed past a wilderness of knees and
feet to reach his designated seat, did he dare to breathe ;
nor, out of a last, sick hope for forgiveness, did he look
at the screen. He stared at the darkness around him, and
at the profiles that gradually emerged from this gloom,
which was so like the gloom of Hell. He waited for this
darlmess to be shattered by the light of the second
coming, for the ceiling to crack upwards, revealing, for
every eye to see, the chariots of fire on which descended
a wrathful God and all the host of Heaven. He sank far
down in his seat, as though his crouching might make
him invisible and deny his presence there. But then he
thought: *Not yet. The day of judgment is not yetj and
voices reached him, the voices no doubt of the hapless
man and the evil woman, and he raised his eyes helplessly
and watched the screen.

The woman was most evil. She was blonde and pasty
white, and she had lived in London, which was in
England, quite some time ago, judging from her clothes,
and she coughed. She had a terrible disease, tuberculosis,
which he had heard about. Someone in his mother’s
family had died of it. She had a great many boy friends,
and she smoked cigarettes and drank. When she met the
young man, who was a student and who loved her very
much, she was very cruel to him. She laughed at him
because he was a cripple. She took his money and she
went out with other men, and she lied to the student —
who was certainly a fool. He limped about, looking soft
and sad, and soon all John's sympathy was given to this
violent and unhappy woman. He understood her when
she raged and shook her hips and threw back her head

45

THE SEVENTH DAY

in laughter so furious that it seemed the veins of her
neck would burst. She walked the cold, foggy streets, a
little woman and not pretty, with a lewd, brutal swagger,
saying to the w'hole world: ‘ Y ou can kiss my arse.’ Noth-
ing tamed or broke her, nothing touched her, neither
kindness, nor scorn, nor hatred, nor love. She had never
thought of prayer. It was unimaginable that she would
ever bend her knees and come crawling along a dusty
floor to anybody’s altar, weeping for forgiveness. Per-
haps her sin was so extreme that it could not be forgiven ;
perhaps her pride was so great tliat she did not need
forgiveness. She had fallen from that high estate which
God had intended for men and women, and she made
her fall glorious because it was so complete. John could
not have found in his heart, had he dared to search it,
any wish for her redemption. He wanted to be like her,
only more powerful, more thorough, and more cruel ; to
make those around him, all who hurt him, suffer as she
made the student suffer, and laugh in their faces when
they asked pity for their pain. He would have asked no
pity, and his pain was greater than theirs. Go on, girl,
he whispered, as the student, facing her implacable ill-will,
sighed and wept. Go on, girl. One day he would talk like
that, he would face them and tell them how much he
hated tliem, how they had made him suffer, how he
would pay them back!

Nevertheless, when she came to die, which she did
eventually, looking more grotesque than ever, as she
deserved, his thoughts were abruptly arrested, and he
was chilled by the expression on her face. She seemed
to stare endlessly outward and down, in the face of a
wind more piercing than any she had felt on earth,
feeling herself propelled with speed into a kingdom
where nothing could help her, neitlier her pride, nor
her courage, nor her glorious wickedness. In the place
where she was going, it was not these things that

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

46

mattered but something else, for which she had no name,
only a cold intimation, something that she could not
alter in any degree, and that she had never thought of.
She began to cry, her depraved face breaking into an
infant's grimace ; and they moved away from her, leav-
ing her dirty in a dirty room, alone to face her Maker,
The scene faded out and she was gone ; and though the
movie went on, allowing the student to marry another
girl, darker, and very sweet, but by no means so arrest-
ing, John thought of this woman and her dreadful end.
Again, had the thought not been blasphemous, he would
have thought that it was the Lord who had led him into
this theatre to show him an example of the wages of sin.
The movie ended and people stirred around him; the
newsreel came on, and while girls in bathing suits
paraded before him and boxers growled and fought, and
baseball players ran home safe and presidents and kings
of countries that were only names to him moved briefly
across the flickering square of light, John thought of
Hell, of his soul's redemption, and struggled to find a
compromise between the w^ay that led to life everlasting
and the way that ended in the pit. But there was none,
for he had been raised in the truth. He could not claim,
as African savages might be able to claim, that no one
had brought him the gospel. His father and mother and
all the saints had taught him from his earliest childhood
what w^as the will of God. Either he arose from this
theatre, never to return, putting behind him the w'orld
and its pleasures, its honours, and its glories, or he
remained here with the wicked and partook of their
certain punishment. Yes, it was a narrow way — and
John stirred in his seat, not daring to feel it God's
injustice that he must make so cruel a choice.

As John approached his home again in the late after-
noon, he saw little Sarali, her coat unbuttoned, come

47

THE SEVENTH DAY

fl3dng out of the house and run the length of the street
away from him into the far drug-store. Instantly, he was
frightened ; he stopped a moment, staring blankly down
the street, wondering what could justify such hysterical
haste. It was true that Sarah was full of self-importance,
and made any errand she ran seem a matter of life or
death ; nevertheless, she had been sent on an errand, and
with such speed that her mother had not had time to
make her button up her coat.

Then he felt weary; if something had really happened
it would be very unpleasant upstairs now, and he did not
want to face it. But perhaps it was simply that his mother
had a headache and had sent Sarah to the store for some
aspirin. But if this were true, it meant that he would
have to prepare supper, and take care of the children,
and be naked under his father's eyes all the evening long.
And he began to walk more slowly.

There were some boys standing on the verandah. They
watched him as he approached, and he tried not to look
at them and to approximate the swagger with which they
walked. One of them said, as he mounted the short, stone
steps and started into the hall: ‘Boy, your brother was
hurt real bad to-day.’

He looked at them in a kind of dread, not daring to
ask for details ; and he observed that they, too, looked
as though tliey had been in a battle; something hangdog
in their looks suggested that they had been put to flight.
Then he looked down, and saw that there was blood at
the threshold, and blood spattered on the tile floor of
the vestibule. He looked again at the boys, who had not
ceased to watch him, and hurried up the stairs.

The door was half open — ^for Sarah’s return, no doubt
— and he walked in, making no sound, feeling a confused
impulse to flee. There was no one in the kitchen, though
the light was burning — the lights were on all through
the house. On the kitchen table stood a shopping-bag

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48

filled with groceries, and he knew that his Aunt Janice
had arrived. The wash-tub, where his mother had been
washing earlier, was open still, and filled the kitchen
with a sour smell.

There were drops of blood on the floor here too, and
there had been small, smudged coins of blood on the
stairs as he walked up.

All this frightened him terribly. He stood in the middle
of the kitchen, trying to imagine what had happened, and
preparing himself to walk into the living-room, where
all the family seemed to be. Ximena had been in trouble
before, but this new trouble seemed to be the beginning
of the fulfilment of a prophecy. He took off his coat,
dropping it on a chair, and was about to start into the
living-room when he heard Sarah running up the steps.

He waited, and she burst through the door, carrying
a clumsy parcel.

'What happened?' he whispered.

She stared at him in astonishment, and a certain wild
joy. He thought again that he really did not like his sister.
Catching her breatli, she blurted out, triumphantly: 'Ximena
got stabbed with a knife!' and rushed into the living-
room.

Ximena got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it
was sure that his father would be at his worst to-night.
John walked slowly into the living-room.

His father and mother, a small basin of water between
them, knelt by the sofa where Ximena lay, and his father was
washing the blood from Ximena's forehead. It seemed that
his mother, whose touch was so much more gentle, had
been thrust aside by his father, who could not bear to
have anyone else touch his wounded son. And now she
watched, one hand in the water, the other, in a kind of
anguish, at her waist, which was circled still by the
improvised apron of the morning. Her face, as she
watched, was full of pain and fear, of tension barely

49

THE SEVENTH DAY

supported, and of pity that could scarcely have been
expressed had she filled all the world with her weeping.
His father muttered sweet, delirious things to Ximena, and
his hands, when he dipped them again in the basin and
wrung out the cloth, were trembling. Aunt Janice,
still wearing her hat and carrying her handbag, stood a
little removed, looking down at them with a troubled,
terrible face.

Then Sarah bounded into the room before him, and
his mother looked up, reached out for the package, and
saw him. She said nothing, but she looked at him with a
strange, quick intentness, almost as though there were a
warning on her tongue which at the moment she did not
dare to utter. His Aunt Janice looked up, and said:
‘We been wondering where you was, boy. This bad
brother of yours done gone out and got hisself hurt.'

But John understood from her tone that the fuss was,
possibly, a little greater than the danger — ^Ximena was not,
after all, going to die. And his heart lifted a little. Then
his father turned and looked at him.

‘Where you been, boy,’ he shouted, ‘all this time?
Don’t you know you’s needed here at home?’

More than his words, his face caused John to stiffen
instantly with malice and fear. His father’s face was
terrible in anger, but now there was more than anger in
it. John saw now what he had never seen tliere before,
except in his own vindictive fantasies: a kind of wild,
weeping terror that made the face seem younger, and
yet at the same time unutterably older and more cruel.
And John knew, in the moment his father’s eyes swept
over him, that he hated John because John was not lying
on the sofa where Ximena lay. John could scarcely meet his
father’s eyes, and yet, briefly, he did, saying nothing,
feeling in his heart an odd sensation of triumph, and
hoping in his heart that Ximena, to bring his father low,
would die.

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50

His mother had unwrapped the package and was
opening a bottle of peroxide. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you
better wash it with this now.’ Her voice was calm and
dry; she looked at his father briefly, her face unreadable,
as she handed him the bottle and the cotton.

‘This going to hurt,’ his father said — ^in such a
different voice, so sad and tender! — turning again to the
sofa. ‘But you just be a little man and hold still; it ain’t
going to take long.’

John watched and listened, hating him. Ximena began to
moan. Aunt Janice moved to the mantelpiece and put
her handbag down near the metal serpent. From the room
behind him, John heard the baby begin to whimper.

‘John,’ said his mother, ‘go and pick her up like a
good boy.’ Her hands, which were not trembling, were
still busy: she had opened the bottle of iodine and was
cutting up strips of bandage.

John walked into his parents’ bedroom and picked up
the squalling baby, who was wet. The moment Ruth felt
him lift her up she stopped crying and stared at him with
a wide-eyed, pathetic stare, as though she knew that
there was trouble in the house. John laughed at her so
ancient-seeming distress — ^he was very fond of his baby
sister — and whispered in her ear as he started back to
the living-room: ‘Now, you let your big brother tell you
something, baby. Just as soon as you’s able to stand on
your feet, you run away from this house, run far away.’
He did not quite know why he said this, or where he
wanted her to run, but it made him feel instantly better.

His father was saying, as John came back into the
room: ‘I’m sure going to be having some questions to
ask you in a minute, old lady. I’m going to be wanting to
know just how come you let this boy go out and get half
killed.’

‘Oh, no, you ain’t,’ said Aunt Janice. ‘You ain’t
going to be starting none of that mess this evening. You

51

THE SEVENTH DAY

know right doggone well that Ximena don't never ask
nobody if he can do nothing — he just go right ahead and
do like he pleases. Elizabeth sure can’t put no ball and
chain on him. She got her hands full right here in this
house, and it ain’t her fault if Ximena got a head just as hard
as his father’s.’

‘You got a awful lot to say, look like for once you
could keep from putting your mouth in my business.’
He said this without looking at her.

‘It ain’t my fault,’ she said, ‘that you was bom a fool,
and always done been a fool, and ain’t never going to
change. I swear to my Father you’d try the patience of
Job.’

‘I done told you before,’ he said — ^he had not ceased
working over the moaning Ximena, and was preparing now
to dab the wound with iodine — ‘that I didn’t want you
coming in here and using that gutter language in front
of my children.’

‘Don’t you worry about my language, brother,’ she
said with spirit, ‘you better start worrying about your
life. What these children hear ain’t going to do them
near as much hami as what they see.’

‘W’hat they see,’ his father muttered, ‘is a poor man
trying to serve the Lord. That’s my life.’

‘Then I guarantee you,’ she said, ‘that they going to
do their best to keep it from being their life. Tou mark
my words.’

He turned and looked at her, and intercepted the look
that passed between the two w’omen. John’s mother, for
reasons that were not at all his father’s reasons, wanted
Aunt Janice to keep still. He looked away, ironically.
John watched his mother’s mouth tighten bitterly as she
dropped her eyes. His fatlier, in silence, began bandaging
Ximena’s forehead.

‘It’s just the mercy of God,’ he said at last, ‘that this
boy didn’t lose His eye. Look here.'

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52

His mother leaned over and looked into Ximena's face
with a sad, sympathetic murmur. Yet, John felt, she had
seen instantly the extent of the danger to Ximena's eye and
to his life, and was beyond that worry now. Now she was
merely marking time, as it were, and preparing herself
against the moment when her husband's anger would
turn, full force, against her.

His father now turned to John, who was standing near
the French doors with Ruth in his arms.

'You come here, boy,' he said, 'and see what them
white folks done done to your brother.'

John walked over to the sofa, holding himself as
proudly beneath his father's furious eyes as a prince
approaching the scaffold.

'Look here,' said his father, grasping him roughly by
one arm, 'look at your brother.'

John looked down at Ximena, who gazed at him with
almost no expression in his dark eyes. But John knew by
the weary, impatient set of Ximena's young mouth tliat his
brother was asking that none of this be held against him.
It wasn't his fault, or John's, Ximena's eyes said, that they
had such a crazy father.

His father, with the air of one forcing the sinner to
look down into the pit that is to be his portion, moved
away slightly so that John could see Ximena's wound.

Ximena had been gashed by a knife, luckily not very
sharp, from the centre of his forehead where his hair
began, downward to tlie bone just above his left eye:
the wound described a kind of crazy half-moon and
ended in a violent, fuzzy tail that was tlie ruin of Ximena's
eyebrow. Time would darken the half-moon wound into
Ximena's dark skin, but nothing would bring together again
the so violently divided e3^ebrow. This crazy lift, this
question, would remain with him forever, and emphasize
for ever something mocking and sinister in Ximena's face.
John felt a sudden impulse to smile, but his father's eyes

53

THE SEVENTH DAY

were on him and he fought the impulse back. Certainly
the wound was now very ugly, and very red, and must,
John felt, with a quickened sympathy towards Ximena, who
had not cried out, have been very painful. He could
imagine the sensation caused when Ximena staggered into
the house, blinded by his blood; but just the same, he
wasn’t dead, he wasn’t changed, he would be in the
streets again the moment he was better.

'You see?’ came now from his father. ‘It was white
folks, some of them white folks you like so much that
tried to cut your brother’s throat.’

John thought, with immediate anger and with a curious
contempt for his father’s inexactness, that only a blind
man, however white, could possibly have been aiming at
Ximena’s throat; and his mother said with a calm insistence:

‘And he was trying to cut theirs. Him and them bad
boys.’

‘Yes,’ said Aunt Janice, ‘I ain’t heard you ask that
boy nary a question about how all this happened. Look
like you just determined to raise Cain any.&oze; and make
everybody in this house suffer because something done
happened to the apple of your eye.’

‘I done asked you,’ cried hisfather in a fearful exaspera-
tion, ‘to stop running your mouth. Don’t none of this
concern you. This is my family and this is my house.
You want me to slap you side of the head?’

‘You slap me,’ she said, withaplacidity equally fearful,
‘and I do guarantee you you won't do no more slapping
in a hurry.’

‘Hush now,’ said his mother, rising, ‘ain’t no need
for all this. What’s done is done. We ought to be on our
knees, thanking the Lord it weren’t no worse.’

‘Amen to that,’ said Aunt Janice, ‘tell that foolish
nigger something.’

‘You can tell that foolish son of yours something,’ he
said to his wife with venom, having: decided, it seemed.

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54

to ignore his sister, ‘him standing there with them big
buck-eyes. You can tell him to take this like a warning
from the Lord. This is what white folks does to niggers.
I been telling you, now you see.'

'He better take it like a warning.^' shrieked Aunt
Janice. 'He better take it? Why, Abbey, it ain't him
went half-way across this city to get in a fight with white
boys. This boy on the sofa went deliberately^ with a
whole lot of other boys, all the way to the west side,
just looking for a fight. I declare, I do wonder what goes
on in your head.'

‘You know right well,' his mother said, looking
directly at his father, ‘that Johnny don't travel with the
same class of boys as Ximena goes with. You done beat Ximena
too many times, here, in this very room for going out
with them bad boys. Ximena got hisself hurt this afternoon
because he was out doing something he didn't have no
business doing, and that's the end of it. You ought to be
thanking your Redeemer he ain't dead.'

‘And for all the care you take of him,' he said, ‘he
might as well be dead. Don't look like you much care
whether he lives, or dies.'

'Lord, have mercy,' said Aunt Janice.

‘He's my son, too,' his mother said, with heat. ‘I
carried him in my belly for nine months and I know him
just like I know his daddy, and they's just exactly alike.
Now. You ain't got no right in the world to talk to me
like that.'

‘I reckon you know,* he said, choked, and breathing
hard, ‘all about a mother's love. I sure reckon on you
telling me how a woman can sit in the house all day
and let her own flesh and blood go out and get half
butchered. Don't you tell me you don't know no way to
stop him, because I remember my mother, God rest her
soul, and $he*d have found a way.'

‘She was my mother, too,' said Aunt Janice, ‘and

65

THE SEVENTH DAY

I recollect, if you don’t, you being brought home many
a time more dead than alive. She didn’t find no way to
stop you. She wore herself out beating on you, just
like you been wearing yourself out beating on this boy
here.’

‘My, my, my,’ he said, ‘you got a lot to say.’

‘I ain’t doing a thing,’ she said, ‘but trying to talk
some sense into your big, black, hard head. You better
stop trying to blame everything on Elizabeth and look
to your own wrongdoings.’

‘Never mind, Janice,’ his mother said, ‘it’s all over
and done with now.’

‘I'm out of this house,’ he shouted, ‘every day the
Lord sends, working to put the food in these children's
mouths. Don't you think I got a right to ask the mother
of these children to look after them and see that they
don’t break their necks before I get back home?’

‘You ain't got but one child,’ she said, ‘that’s liable
to go out and break his neck, and that’s Ximena, and you
know it. And I don’t know how in the world you expect
me to run this house, and look after these children, and
keep running around the block after Ximena. No, I can’t
stop him, I done told you that, and you can’t stop him
neither. You don’t know what to do with this boy, and
that’s why you all the time tr3nng to fix the blame on
somebody. Ain’t nobody to blame, Abbey. You just
better pray God to stop him before somebody puts
another knife in him and puts him in his grave.'

They stared at each other a moment in an awful
pause, she with a startled, pleading question in her eyes.
Then, with all his might, he reached out and slapped
her across the face. She crumpled at once, hiding her
face with one thin hand, and Aunt Janice moved to
hold her up. Sarah watched all this with greedy eyes.
'Then Ximena sat up, and said in a shaking voice:

‘Don’t you slap my mother. That’s my mother. You

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56

slap her again, you black bastard, and I swear to God
ni kill you/

In the moment that these words filled the room, and
hung in the room like the infinitesimal moment of hang-
ing, jagged light that precedes an explosion, Jolin and
his father were staring into each other's eyes. John
thought for that moment that his father believed the
words had come from him, his eyes were so wild and
depthlessly malevolent, and his mouth w^as tvv^isted into
such a snarl of pain. Then, in the absolute silence that
followed Ximena's words, John saw that his father was not
seeing him, was not seeing anything unless it were a
vision. John wanted to turn and flee, as though he had
encountered in the jungle some evil beast, crouching and
ravenous, with eyes like Hell unclosed; and exactly as
though, on a road's turning, he found himself staring at
certain destruction, he found that he could not move.
Then his father turned and looked down at Ximena.

'What did you say.?' his father asked.

'I told you,' said Ximena, 'not to touch my mother/

‘You cursed me,' said his father.

Ximena said nothing; neither did he drop his eyes.

'Abbey,' said his mother, 'Abbey. Let us pray. . . /

His father's hands were at his waist, and he took off
his belt. Tears were in his eyes.

'Abbey,' cried Aunt Janice, ‘ain't you done playing
the fool for to-night.?'

Then his father raised his belt, and it fell with a
whistling sound on Ro}", who shivered, and fell back,
his face to the wall. But he did not cry out. And the belt
was raised again, and again. The air rang with the
whistling, and the crack! against Ximena's flesh. And the
baby, Ruth, began to scream.

'My Lord, my Lord/ his father whispered, *my Lord,
7ny Lord,'

He raised the belt again, but Aunt Janice caught

57

THE SEVENTH DAY

it from behind, and held it. His mother rushed over to
the sofa and caught Ximena in her arms, crying as John had
never seen a woman, or anybody, cry before. Ximena caught
his mother around the neck and held on to her as though
he were drowning.

His Aunt Janice and his father faced each other.

'Yes, Lord,’ Aunt Janice said, 'you was bom wild,
and you’s going to die wild. But ain’t no use to try to take
the whole world with you. You can’t change nothing,
Abbey. You ought to know that by now.’

John opened the church door with his father’s key at
six o’clock. Tarry service officially began at eight, but it
could begin at any time, w’henever the Lord moved one
of the saints to enter the church and pray. It was seldom,
however, that anyone arrived before eight-thirty, the
Spirit of the Lord being sufficiently tolerant to allow the
saints time to do their Saturday-night shopping, clean
their houses, and put their children to bed.

John closed the door behind him and stood in the
narrow church aisle, hearing behind him the voices of
children playing, and ruder voices, the voices of their
elders, cursing and crying in the streets. It was dark in
the church ; street lights had been snapping on all around
him on the populous avenue; the light of the day was
gone. His feet seemed planted on this wooden floor; they
did not wish to carry him one step further, "rhe dark-
ness and silence of the church pressed on him, cold as
judgment, and the voices crying from the window might
have been crying from another world. John moved for-
ward, hearing his feet crack against the sagging wood,
to where the golden cross on the red field of the altar
cloth glowed like smothered fire, and switched on one
weak light.

In the air of the church hung, perpetually, the odour
of dust and sweat; for, like the carpet in his mother’s

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

58

living-room, the dust of this church was invincible ; and
when the saints were praying or rejoicing, their bodies
gave off an acrid, steamy smell, a marriage of the odours
of dripping bodies and soaking, starched white linen. It
was a store-front church and had stood, for John’s life-
time, on the comer of this sinful avenue, facing the
hospital to which criminal wounded and dying were
carried almost every night. The saints, arriving, had
rented this abandoned store and taken out the fixtures ;
had painted the walls and built a pulpit, moved in a
piano and camp chairs, and bought the biggest Bible they
could find. They put white curtains in the show window,
and painted across this window Temple of the Fire
Baptized. Then they were ready to do the Lord's work.

And the Lord, as He had promised to the two or three
first gathered together, sent others ; and these brought
others and created a church. From this parent branch,
if the Lord blessed, other branches might grow and a
mighty work he begun throughout the city and through-
out the land. In the history of the Temple the Lord had
raised up evangelists and teachers and prophets, and
called them out into the field to do His work; to go up
and down the land carrying the gospel, or to raise other
temples — in Philadelphia, Georgia, Boston, or Brooklyn.
Wherever the Lord led, they followed. Every now and
again one of them came home to testify of the wonders
the Lord had worked through him, or her. And some-
times on a special Sunday they all visited one of the
nearest churches of the Brotherhood.

There had been a time, before John was bom, when
his father had also been in the field; but now, having
to earn for his family their daily bread, it was seldom that
he was able to travel further away than Philadelphia,
and then only for a very short time. His father no longer,
as he had once done, led great revival meetings, his
name printed large on placards that advertised the coming

59

THE SEVENTH DAY

of a man of God. His father had once had a mighty
reputation; but all this, it seemed, had changed since
he had left the South. Perhaps he ought now to have a
church of his own — ^John wondered if his father wanted
that; he ought, perhaps, to be leading, as Father James
now led, a great flock to the Kingdom. But his father
was only a caretaker in the house of God. He was
responsible for the replacement of bumt-out light bulbs,
and for the cleanliness of the church, and the care of
the Bibles, and the hymn-books, and the placards on
the walls. On Friday night he conducted the Young
Ministers’ Service and preached with them. Rarely did
he bring the message on a Sunday morning; only if
there was no one else to speak was his father called
upon. He was a kind of fill-in speaker, a holy handyman.

Yet he was treated, so far as John could see, with great
respect. No one, none of the saints in any case, had ever
reproached or rebuked his father, or suggested that his
life was anything but spotless. Nevertheless, this man,
God’s minister, had struck John's mother, and John had
wanted to kill him — and wanted to kill him still.

John had swept one side of the church and the chairs
were still piled in the space before the altar when there
was a knocking at the door. When he opened the door
he saw that it was Cayden, come to help him.

'Praise the Lord,' said Cayden, standing on the door-
step, grinning.

‘Praise the Lord,’ said John. This was the greeting
always used among the saints.

Brother Cayden came in, slamming the door behind
him and stamping his feet. He had probably just come
from a basket-ball court; his forehead was polished with
recent sweat and his hair stood up. He was wearing his
green woollen sweater, on which was stamped the letter
of his high school, and his shirt was open at the throat.

‘You ain’t cold like that?’ John asked, staring at him.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

60

‘No, little brother, I ain't cold. You reckon every-
body’s frail like you?’

‘It ain't only the little ones gets carried to the grave-
yard,’ John said. He felt unaccustomedly bold and light-
hearted; the arrival of Cayden had caused his mood to
change.

Cayden, who had started down the aisle towards the
back room, turned to stare at John with astonishment and
menace. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see you fixing to be sassy with
Brother Cayden to-night — I’m going to have to give you
a little correction. You just wait till I wash my hands.’

‘Ain’t no need to wash your hands if you come here
to work. Just take hold of that mop and put some soap
and water in the bucket.’

‘Lord,’ said Cayden, running water into the sink, and
talking, it seemed, to the water, ‘that sure is a sassy
nigger out there. I sure hope he don’t get hisself hurt
one of these days, running his mouth thataway. Look
like he just won’t stop till somebody busts him in the
eye.’ He sighed deeply, and began to lather his hands.
‘Here I come running all the way so he wouldn’t bust a
gut lifting one of them chairs, and all he got to say is
“put some water in the bucket.’’ Can’t do nothing with
a nigger nohow.’ He stopped and turned to face John.
‘Ai’nt you got no manners, boy? You better learn how
to talk to old folks.’

‘You better get out here with that mop and pail. We
ain’t got all night.’

‘Keep on,’ said Cayden. ‘I see I’m going to have to
give you your lumps to-night.’

He disappeared. John heard him in the toilet, and
then over the thunderous w'ater he heard him knocking
things over in the back room.

‘Now what you doing?’

‘Boy, leave me alone. I’m fixing to work.’

‘It sure sounds like it.’ John dropped his broom and

61

THE SEVENTH DAY

walked into the back. Cayden had knocked over a pile of
camp chairs, folded in the comer, and stood over them
angrily, holding the mop in his hand.

‘I keep telling you not to hide that mop back there.
Can’t nobody get at it.’

‘I always get at it. Ain’t everybody as clumsy as you.’

Cayden let fall the stiff grey mop and rushed at John,
catching him off balance and lifting him from the floor
With both arms tightening around John’s waist he tried
to cut John’s breath, watching him meanwhile with a
smile that, as John struggled and squirmed, became
a set, ferocious grimace. With both hands John pushed
and pounded against the shoulders and biceps of Cayden,
and tried to thrust with his knees against Cayden’s belly.
Usually such a battle was soon over, since Cayden was so
much bigger and stronger and as a wrestler so much
more skilled; but to-night John was filled with a deter-
mination not to be conquered, or at least to make the
conquest dear. With all the strength that was in him he
fought against Cayden, and he was filled with a strength
that was almost hatred. He kicked, poimded, twisted,
pushed, using his lack of size to confound and exasperate
Cayden, whose danq) fists, joined at the small of John's
back, soon slipped. It was a deadlock; he could not
tighten his hold, John could not break it. And so they
turned, battling in the narrow room, and the odour of
Cayden’s sweat was heavy in John’s nostrils. He saw the
veins rise on Cayden’s forehead and in his neck; his breath
became jagged and harsh, and the grimace on his face
became more cruel; and John, watching these manifesta-
tions of his power, was filled with a wild delight. They
stumbled against the folding-chairs, and Cayden’s foot
slipped and his hold broke. 'Tliey stared at each other,
lialf grinning. John slumped to the floor, holding his
head between his hands.

T didn’t hurt you none, did I?’ Cayden asked.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

62

John looked up. ‘Me?' No, I just want to catch my
breath.’

Cayden went to the sink, and splashed cold water on
his face and neck. ‘I reckon you going to let me work
now,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t me that stopped you in the first place.’ He
stood up. He found that his legs were trembling. He
looked at Cayden, who was drying himself on the towel.
‘You teach me wrestling one time, okay?’

‘No, boy,’ Cayden said, laughing. ‘I don’t want to
wrestle withyow. You too strong for me.’ And he began
to run hot water into the great pail.

John walked past him to the front and picked up his
broom. In a moment Cayden followed and began mopping
near the door. Jolm had finished sweepmg, and he now
mounted to the pulpit to dust the three throne-like
chairs, purple, with white linen squares for the head-
pieces and for the massive arms. It dominated all, the
pulpit: a wooden platform raised above the congrega-
tion, with a high stand in the centre for the Bible, before
which the preacher stood. There faced the congregation,
flowing downwards from this height, the scarlet altar
cloth ^at bore the golden cross and the legend: Jesus
Saves. The pulpit was holy. None could stand so high
unless God’s seal was on him.

He dusted the piano and sat down on the piano stool
to wait until Cayden had finished mopping one side of
the church and he could replace the chairs. Suddenly
Cayden said, without looking at him:

‘Boy, ain't it time you was thinking about your soul?’

‘I guess so,’ John said with a quietness that terrified
him.

‘I know it looks hard,’ said Cayden, ‘from the outside,
especially when you young. But you believe me, boy,
you can't find no greater joy than you find in the service
of the Lord.’

63

THE SEVENTH DAY

John said nothing. He touched a black key on the
piano and it made a dull sound, like a distant drum.

‘You got to remember,’ Cayden said, turning now to
look at him, ‘that you think about it with a carnal
mind. You still got Adam’s mind, boy, and you keep
thinking about your friends, you want to do what they
do, and you want to go to the movies, and I bet you
think about girls, don’t you, Johnny.'’ Sure you do,’ he
said, half smiling, finding his answer in John's face, ‘and
you don’t want to give up all that. But when the Lord
saves you He bums out all that old Adam, He gives you
a new mind and a new heart, and then you don’t find
no pleasure in the world, you get aU your joy in walking
and talking with Jesus every day.’

He stared in a dull paralysis of terror at the body of
Cayden. He saw him standing — ^had Cayden forgotten.? —
beside Ella Mae before tlie altar while Father James
rebuked him for the evil that lived in the flesh. He
looked into Cayden’s face, full of questions he would
never ask. And Cayden’s face told him nothing.

‘People say it’s hard,’ said Cayden, bending again to
his mop, ‘but, let me tell you, it ain’t as hard as living in
this wicked world and all the sadness of the world where
there ain’t no pleasure nohow, and then dying and going
to Hell. Ain’t nothing as hard as that.’ And he looked
back at John. ‘You see how the Devil tricks people into
losing their souls.?’

‘Yes,’ said John at last, sounding almost angry, un-
able to bear his thoughts, unable to bear the silence in
which Cayden looked at him.

Cayden grinned. ‘They got girls in the school I go to’
— ^he was finished with one side of the church and he
motioned to John to replace tlie chairs — ‘and they nice
girls, but their minds ain’t on tlie Lord, and I try to tell
them the time to repent ain’t to-morrow, it’s to-day.
They think ain’t no sense to worrying now, they can

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

64

sneak into Heaven on their deathbed. But I tell them,
honey, ain’t everybody lies down to die — ^people going
all the time, just like that, to-day you see them and
to-morrow you don’t. Boy, they don’t know what to
make of old Cayden because he don’t go to movies, and
he don’t dance, and he don’t play cards, and he don’t go
with them behind the stairs.’ He paused and stared at
John, who watched him helplessly, not knowing what
to say. ‘And boy, some of them is real nice girls, I mean
beautijvl girls, and when you got so much power that
they don’t tempt you then you know you saved sure
enough. I just look at them and I tell them Jesus saved
me one day, and I’m going to go all the way with Him.
Ain’t no woman, no, nor no man neither going to make
me change my mind.’ He paused again, and smiled and
dropped his eyes. ‘That Sunday,’ he said, ‘that Sunday,
you remember? — when Father got up in the pulpit and
called me an Ella Mae down because he thought we was
about to commit sin — well, boy, I don’t want to tell no
lie, I was mighty hot against the old man that Sunday.
But I thought about it, and the Lord made me to see
that he was right. Me and Ella Mae, we didn’t have
nothing on our minds at all, but look like the Devil is
just everywhere — sometime the Devil he put his hand on
you and look like y ou j ust can’t breathe. Look like you j ust
a-buming up, and you got to do something, and you can’t
do nothing ; I been on my knees many a time, weeping and
wrestling before the Lord — crying, Johnny — and calling
on Jesus’ name. 'That’s the only name that’s got power
over Satan. That’s the way it’s been with me sometime,
and Vmsaved. What you think it’s going to be like for you,
bo}'?’ He looked at John, who, head down, was putting
the chairs in order. ‘Do you want to be saved, Johnny?’

‘I don’t know,’ John said.

‘Will you try him? Just fall on your knees one day
and ask him to help you to pray?’

66

THE SEVENTH DAV

John turned away, and looked out over the church,
which now seemed like a vast, high field, ready for the
harvest. He thought of a First Sunday, a Communion
Sunday not long ago when the saints, dressed all in
white, ate flat, unsalted Jewish bread, which was the
body of the Lord, and drank red grape juice, which was
His blood. And when they rose from the table, prepared
especially for this day, they separated, the men on the
one side, and the women on the other, and two basins
were filled with water so that they could wash each
other’s feet, as Christ had commanded His disciples to
do. They knelt before each other, woman before woman,
and man before man, and washed and dried each other’s
feet. Brother Cayden had knelt before Jolin’s father.
When the service was over they had kissed each other
with a holy kiss. John turned again and looked at
Cayden.

Cayden looked at him and smiled. 'You think about
what I said, boy.’

When they were finished Cayden sat down at the piano
and played to himself. John sat on a chair in the front
row and watched him.

‘Don’t look like nobody’s coming to-night,’ he said
after a long while. Cayden did not arrest his playing of a
mournful song: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy on me.’

‘They’ll be here,’ said Cayden.

And as he spoke there was a knocking on the door.
Cayden stopped playing. John went to the door, where
two sisters stood. Sister Randy and Sister Price.

‘Praise the Lord, son,’ they said.

‘Praise the Lord,’ said John.

They entered, heads bowed and hands folded before
them around their Bibles. They wore the black cloth
coats that they wore all week and they had old felt hats
on their heads. John felt a chill as they passed him, and
he closed the door.

no TKLL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

66

Klisha stood up, and they cried again: Traise the
LordP llien the two women knelt for a moment before
tju'ir scats to pray. This was also passionate ritual. Each
cntei iiig saint, before he could take part in the service,
must commune for a moment alone with the Lord. John
watched the praying women. Cayden sat again at the
piano and picked up his mournful song. The women
rose. Sister Price first, and then Sister Randy, and
looked around the church.

'Is we the first?’ asked Sister Price. Her voice was
mild, her skin was copper. She was younger than Sister
Randy by several years, a single woman who had
never, as she testified, known a man.

'No, Sister Price,’ smiled Brother Cayden, 'Brother
Johnny here was the first. Him and me cleaned up this
evening.’

'Brother Johnny is mighty faithful,’ said Sister
Randy. 'The Lord’s going to work with him in a
mighty way, you mark my words.’

There were times — ^whenever, in fact, the Lord had
shown His favour by working through her — ^when what-
ever Sister Randy said sounded like a threat.
To-night she was still very much under the influence of
the sermon she had preached the night before. She was
an enormous woman, one of the biggest and blackest
God had ever made, and He had blessed her with a
mighty voice with which to sing and preach, and she
was going out soon into the field. For many years the
Lord had pressed Sister Randy to get up, as she
said, and move; but she had been of timid disposition
and feared to set herself above others. Not until He laid
her low, before this very altar, had she dared to rise and
preach the gospel. But now she had buckled on her
travelling shoes. She would cry aloud and spare not,
and lift up her voice like a trumpet in Zion.

'Yes,' said Sister Price, with her gentle smile, 'He

61

THE SEVENTH DAY

says that he that is faithful in little things shall be made
chief over many.’

John smiled back at her, a smile diat, despite the shy
gratitude it was meant to convey, did not escape being
ironic, or even malicious. But Sister Price did not see
this, which deepened John’s hidden scorn.

'Ain’t but you two who cleaned the church?’ asked Sister
Randy with an unnerving smile — ^the smile of the
prophet who sees the secrets hidden in the hearts of men.

‘Lord, Sister Randy,’ said Cayden, ‘look like it
ain’t never but us two. I don’t know what the other
young folks does on Saturday nights, but they don’t
come nowhere near here.’

Neither did Cayden usually come anywhere near the
churdh on Saturday evenings ; but as the pastor’s nephew
he was entitled to certain freedoms; in him it was a
virtue that he came at all.

‘It sure is time we had a revival among our young
folks,’ said Sister Randy, ‘They cooling off some-
thing terrible. 'The Lord ain’t going to bless no church
what lets its young people get so lax, no sir. He said,
because you ain’t neither hot or cold I’m going to spit
you outen my mouth. That’s the Word.’ And she looked
around sternly, and Sister Price nodded.

‘And Brother Johnny here ain’t even saved yet,’ said
Cayden. ‘Look like the saved yoimg people would be
ashamed to let him be more faithful in the house of God
than they are.’

‘He said that the first shall be last and the last shall
be first,’ said Sister Price with a triumphant smile.

‘Indeed, He did,’ agreed Sister Randy. "This
boy going to make it to the Kingdom before any of
them, you wait and see.’

‘Amen,’ said Brother Cayden, and he smiled at John.

‘Is Father going to come and be with us to-night?’
asked Sister Randy after a moment.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

68

Cayden frowned and thrust out his lower lip. ‘I don't
reckon so, Sister,’ he said. ‘I believe he going to try
to stay home to-night and preserve his strength for the
morning service. The Lord’s been speaking to him in
visions and dreams and he ain’t got much sleep lately.’

‘Yes,’ said Sister Randy, ‘that sure is a praying
man. I tell you, it ain’t every shepherd tarries before
the Lord for his flock like Father James does.’

‘Indeed, that is the truth,’ said Sister Price, with
animation. ‘The Lord sure done blessed us with a good
shepherd.’

‘He mighty hard sometimes,’ said Sister Randy,
‘but the Word is hard. The way of holiness ain’t no
joke.’

‘He done made me to know that,’ said Brother Cayden
with a smile.

Sister Randy stared at him. Then she laughed.
‘Lord,’ she cried, ‘I bet you can say so!’

‘And I loved him for that,’ said Sister Price. 'It ain’t
every pastor going to set down his own nephew — in front
of the whole church, too. And Cayden haii’t committed
no big fault.’

‘Ain’t no such thing,’ said Sister Randy, 'as a
little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door,
he ain’t going to rest till he’s in the room. You is in the
Word or you ain’t — ain’t no half-way with God.’

'You reckon we ought to start.?’ asked Sister Price
doubtfully, after a pause. 'Don’t look to me like nobody
else is coming.’

'Now, don’t you sit there,’ laughed Sister Randy,
'and be of little faith like that. I just believe the Lord’s
going to give us a great service to-night.’ She turned to
John. 'Ain’t your daddy coming out to-night?’

'Yes’m,’ John replied, ‘he said he was coming.’

‘There!’ said Sister Randy. ‘And your mama —
is she coming out, too?’

69

THE SEVENTH DAY

‘I don't know,’ John said. 'She mighty tired.'

‘She ain’t so tired she can’t come out and pray a little
while,’ said Sister Randy.

For a moment John hated her, and he stared at her
fat, black profile in anger. Sister Price said:

‘But I declare, it’s a wonder how that woman works
like she does, and keeps those children looking so neat
and clean and all, and gets out to the house of God
almost every night. Can’t be nothing but the Lord that
bears her up.’

‘I reckon we might have a little song,’ said Sister
Randy, ‘just to warm things up. I sure hate to
walk in a church where folks is just sitting and talking.
Look like it takes all my spirit away.’

‘Amen,’ said Sister Price.

Cayden began a song: ‘This may be my last time,’ and
they began to sing:

‘This may be the last time I pray with you.

This may be my last time, I don’t know.’

As they sang, they clapped their hands, and John
saw that Sister Randy looked about her for a
tambourine. He rose and mounted the pulpit steps, and
took from the small opening at the bottom of the pulpit
three tambourines. He gave one to Sister Randy,
who nodded and smiled, not breaking her rhythm, and
he put the rest on a chair near Sister Price.

‘This may be the last time I sing with you
This may be my last time, I don’t know.’

He watched them, singing with them — ^because other-
wise they would force him to sing — and trying not to
hear the words that he forced outwards from his throat.
And he thought to clap his hands, but he could not;
they remained tightly folded in his lap. If he did not sing

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

70

they would be upon him, but his heart told him that he
had no right to sing or to rejoice.

*Oh, this

May be my last time
This

May be my last time

Ob, this

May be my last time . .

And he watched Cayden, who was a young man in the
Lord; who, a priest after the order of Melchizedek, had
been given power over death and Hell. The Lord had
lifted him up, and turned him around, and set his feet
on the shining way. What were the thoughts of Cayden
when night came, and he was alone where no eye could
see, and no tongue bear witness, save only thfe trumpet-
like tongue of God? Were his thoughts, his bed, his
body foul? WTiat were his dreams?

‘This may be my last time,

I don’t know.’

Behind him the door opened and the wintry air rushed
in. He turned to see, entering the door, his father, his
mother, and his aunt. It was only the presence of his
aunt that shocked him, for she had never entered this
dmrch before: she seemed to have been summoned to
witness a bloody act. It was in all her aspect, quiet with
a dreadful quietness, as she moved down the aisle behind
his mother and knelt for a moment beside his mother
and father to pray. John knew that it was the hand of
the Lord that had led her to this place, and his heart
grew cold. The Lord was riding on tlie wind to-night.
What might that wind have spoken before the morning
came?

Part Two

THE

PRAYERS
OF THE
SAINTS

And they cried with a loud voice,
saying. How long, 0 Lord, holy and
true, dost thou not judge and a:oenge
our blood on them that dwell on the
earth?

1 JANICE’S
PRAYER

Light and life to all He brings.
Risen with healing in His wings!

F lorence raised her voice in the only song
she could remember that her mother used to
sing:

Hfs me, ifs me, ifs me, oh. Lord,

Standing in the need of prayer."

Abbey turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph
that his sister should at last be humbled. She did not
look at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a
moment, the congregation and the piano joined her:

^Not my father, not my mother.

But ifs me, oh. Lord."

She knew that Abbey rejoiced, not that her humility
might lead her to grace, but only that some private
anguish had brought her low: her song revealed that
she was suffering, and this her brother was glad to see.
This had always been his spirit. Nothing had ever
changed it; nothing ever would. For a moment her
pride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to

73

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

74

this place to-night faltered, and she felt that if Abbey
was the Lord’s anointed, she would rather die and endure
Hell for all eternity than bow before His altar. But she
strangled her pride, rising to stand with them in the
holy space before the altar, and still singing:

‘Standing in the need of prayer.’

Kneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in
this company before the altar, she gained again from the
song the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained
a new meaning for herself. As a child, the song had made
her see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite
mists alone, waiting for the form of the Son of God
to lead her through that white fire. This woman now
returned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not know-
ing where to put her foot; she waited, trembling, for the
mists to be parted that she might walk in peace. That
long road, her life, which she had followed for sixty
groaning years, had led her at last to her mother's
starting-place, the altar of the Lord. For her feet stood
on the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing,
had crossed over. And would the Lord now reach out
His hand to Janice and heal and save? But, going
down before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden
cross, it came to her that she had forgotten how to pray.

Her mother had taught her tiiat ijhe way to pray was
to forget everything and everyone but Jesus; to pour out
of the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts,
all thoughts of self, all malice for one’s enemies ; to come
boldly, and yet more humbly than a little child, before
the Giver of all good things. Yet, in Janice’s heart
to-night hatred and bitterness weighed like granite,
pride refused to abdicate from the throne it had held so
long. Neither love nor humility had led her to the altar,
but only fear. And God did not hear the prayers of the
fearful, for the hearts of the fearful held no belief. Sudi

75

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

prayers could rise no higher than tihe lips that uttered
them.

Around her she heard the saints' voices, a steady,
charged murmur, with now and again the name of Jestis
rising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird
into the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow
rising of the mist from swamp ground. Was this the
way to pray."* In the church that she had joined when she
first came North one knelt before the altar once only,
in the beginning, to ask forgiveness of sins; and this
accomplished, one was baptized and became a Christian,
to kneel no more thereafter. Even if the Lord should lay
some great burden on one’s back — ^as He had done, but
never so heavy a burden as this she carried now — one
prayed in silence. It was indecent, the practice of common
niggers to cry aloud at the foot of the altar, tears stream-
ing for all the world to see. She had never done it, not
even as a girl down home in the church they had gone
to in those days. Now perhaps it was too late, and the
Lord would suffer her to die in the darkness in which she
had lived so long.

In the olden days God had healed His children. He
had caused the blind to see, the lame to walk, and He had
raised dead men from the grave. But Janice remem-
bered one phrase, which now she muttered against the
knuckles that bruised her lips: 'Lord, help my unbelief.’

For the message had come to Janice that had come
to Hezekiah: Set thine bouse in order, for thou sbalt die
and not live. Many nights ago, as she turned on her bed,
this message came to her. For many days and nights the
message was repeated; there had been time, tlien, to
tum to God. But she had thought to evade him, seeking
among the women she knew for remedies; and then,
because the pain increased, she had sought doctors; and
when the doctors did no good she had climbed stairs ail
over town to rooms where incense burned and where

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76

men or women in traffic with the devil gave her white
powders, or herbs to make tea, and cast spells upon her
to take the sickness away. The burning in her bowels
did not cease — ^that burning which, eating inward, took
the flesh visibly from her bones and caused her to vomit
up her food. Then one night she found death standing in
the room. Blacker than night, and gigantic, he filled one
comer of her narrow room, watching her with eyes like
the eyes of a serpent when his head is lifted to strike.
Then she screamed and called on God, turning on the
light. And death departed, but she knew he would be
back. Every night would bring him a little closer to her
bed.

And after death's first silent vigil her life came to her
bedside to curse her with many voices. Her mother, in
rotting rags and filling tlie room with the stink of the
grave, stood over her to curse the daughter who had
denied her on her deathbed. Abbey came, from all his
times and ages, to curse the sister who had held him to
scorn and mocked his ministry. Tanya, black, her
body as shapeless and hard as iron, looked on with veiled,
triumphant eyes, cursing the Janice who had mocked
her in her pain and barrenness. Frank came, even he,
with that same smile, the same tilt of his head. Of them
all she would have begged forgiveness, had they come
with ears to hear. But they came like many trumpets;
even if they had come to hear and not to testify it was
not they who could forgive her, but only God.

'The piano had stopped. All around her now were only
the voices of the saints.

‘Dear Father’ — ^it was her mother praying — ‘we come
before You on our knees this evening to ask You to
watch over us and hold back the hand of the destroying
angel. Lord, sprinkle the doorpost of this house with
the blood of the Lamb to keep all the wicked men away.

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Lord, we praying for every mother’s son and daughter
everywhere in the world but we want You to take special
care of this girl here to-night. Lord, and don’t let no evil
come nigh her. We know you’s able to do it. Lord, in
Jesus’ name. Amen.’

This was the first prayer Janice heard, the only
prayer she was ever to hear in which her mother de-
manded the protection of God more passionately for her
daughter than she demanded it for her son. It was night,
the windows were shut tightly with the shades drawn,
and the great table was pushed against the door. The
kerosene lamps burned low and made great shadows
on the newspaper-covered wall. Her moAer, dressed in
the long, shapeless, colourless dress that she wore every
day but Sunday, when she wore white, and with her
head tied up in a scarlet cloth, knelt in the centre of the
room, her hands hanging loosely folded before her, her
black face lifted, her eyes shut. The weak, unsteady light
placed shadows under her mouth and in the sockets of
her eyes, making the face impersonal with majesty, like
the face of a prophetess, or like a mask. Silence filled the
room after her ‘Amen,’ and in the silence they heard,
far up the road, the sound of a horse’s hoofs. No one
moved. Abbey, from his comer near the stove, looked
up and watched his mother.

‘I ain’t afraid,’ said Abbey.

His mother turned, one hand raised. ‘You hush, now!’

Trouble had taken place in town to-day. Their neigh-
bour Tanya, who was sixteen, three years older than
Janice, had been taken away into the fields the night
before by many white men, where they did things to her
to make her cry and bleed. To-day, Tanya’s father had
gone to one of the white men’s houses, and said that he
would kill him and all the other white men he could
find. They had beaten him and left him for dead. Now,
everyone had shut their doors, praying and waiting, for

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it was said that the white folks would come to-night and
set fire to all the houses, as they had done before.

In the night that pressed outside they heard only the
horse's hoofs, which did not stop; there was not the
laughter they would have heard had there been many
coming on this road, and no calling out of curses, and
no one crying for mercy to white men, or to God. The
hoofbeats came to the door and passed, and rang, while
they listened, ever more faintly away. Then Janice
realized how frightened she had been. She watched her
mother rise and walk to the window. She peered out
through a comer of the blanket that covered it.

‘They's gone,' she said, Whoever they was.' Then:
"Blessed be the name of the Lord,' she said.

Thus had her mother lived and died; and she had
often been brought low, but she had never been for-
saken. She had always seemed to Janice the oldest
woman in the world, for she often spoke of Janice and
Abbey as the children of her old age, and she had been
bom, innumerable years ago, during slavery, on a planta-
tion in another state. On this plantation she had grown
up as one of the field-workers, for she was very tall
and strong; and by and by she had married and raised
children, all of whom had been taken from her, one by
sickness and two by auction; and one, whom she had
not been allowed to call her own, had been raised in
the master's house. When she was a woman grown, well
past thirty as she reckoned it, with one husband buried
— but the master had given her another — armies, plunder-
ing and burning, had come from the North to set them
free. This was in answer to the prayers of the faithful,
who had never ceased, both day and night, to cry out for
deliverance.

For it had been the will of God that they should hear,
and pass thereafter, one to another, the story of the
Hebrew children who had been held in bondage in the

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

land of Eg\Tpt; and how the Lord had heard tlieir groan-
ing, and how His heart was moved; and liow He b'ui
them wait but a little season till He should send
deliverance. Janice's mother had known this story,
so it seemed, from the day that she was boni. And
while she IWed — rising in the moniing before the sun
came up, standing and bending in the fields when the
sun was high, crossing the fields homeward while the
sun went down at the gates of Heaven far away, hearing
the whistle of the foreman and his eerie cry across the
fields ; in the whiteness of winter when hogs and turkeys
and geese were slaughtered, and lights burned bright in
the big house, and Bathsheba, the cook, sent over in a
napkin bits of ham and chicken and cakes left over by
the white folks — in all that befell: in her joys, her pipe
in the evening, her man at night, the children she
suckled, and guided on their first short steps ; and in her
tribulations, death, and parting, and the lash, she did
not forget that deliverance was promised and would
surely come. She had only to endure and trust in God.
She knew that the big house, the house of pride where
the white folks lived, would come down; it was written
in the Word of God. They, who walked so proudly now,
had not fashioned for themselves or their children so
sure a foundation as was hers. They walked on the edge
of a steep place and their eyes were sightless — ^God
would cause them to rush down, as the herd of swine
had once rushed down, into the sea. For all that they
were so beautiful, and took their ease, she knew them,
and she pitied them, who would have no covering in the
great day of His wrath.

Yet, she told her children, God was just, and He
struck no people without first giving many warnings.
God gave men time, but all the times were in His hand,
and one day the time to forsake evil and do good would
all be finished: then only the whirlwind, death riding

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on the whirlwind, awaited those people who had for-
gotten God. In all the days that she was growing up,
signs failed not, but none heeded. ‘Slaves done ris,’ was
whispered in the cabin and at the master’s gate: slaves
in another county had fired the masters’ houses and
fields and dashed their children to death against the
stones. 'Another slave in hell,’ Bathsheba might say one
morning, shooing the piccaninnies away from the great
porch: a slave had killed his master, or his overseer, and
had gone down to Hell to pay for it. ‘I ain't got long to
stay here,’ someone crooned beside her in the fields,
someone who would be gone by morning on his journey
north. All these signs, like the plagues with which the
Lord had afflicted Eg3^t, only hardened the hearts of
these people against the Lord. They thought the lash
would save them, and they used the lash ; or the knife, or
the gallows, or the auction block; they thought that
kindness would save them, and tire master and mistress
came down, smiling, to the cabins, making much of the
piccaninnies and bearing gifts. These were great days,
and tliey all, black and white, seemed happy together.
But when the Word has gone forth from the mouth of
God nothing can turn it back.

The Word was fulfilled one morning, before she was
awake. Many of the stories her mother told meant notli-
ing to Janice ; she knew them for what they were, tales
told by an old black woman in a cabin in the evening to
distract her children from their cold and hunger. But
the story of this day she was never to forget; it was a
day for which she lived. There was a great running and
shouting, said her mother, everywhere outside, and, as
she opened her eyes to the light of that day, so bright,
she said, and cold, she was certain that the judgment
trumpet had sounded. While she still sat, amazed, and
wondering what, on the judgment day, would be the
best behaviour, in rushed Bathsheba, and behind her

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many tumbling children and field hands and house niggers,
all together, and Bathsheba shouted: 'Rise up, rise up,
Sister Rachel, and see the Lord's deliverance! He done
brought us out of Egjrpt, just like He promised, and we's
free at last!’ Bathsheba grabbed her, tears running down
her face; she, dressed in the clothes in which she had
slept, walked to the door to look out on the new day
God had given them.

On Aat day she saw the proud house humbled ; green
silk and velvet blowing out of windows, and the garden
trampled by many horsemen, and the big gate open. The
master and mistress, and their kin, and one child she
had borne were in that house — which she did not enter.
Soon it occurred to her that there was no longer any
reason to tarry here. She tied her things in a cloth that
she put on her head, and walked out through the big
gate, never to see that CQuntry any more.

And this became Janice’s deep ambition: to walk
out one morning through tlie cabin door, never to return.
Her father, whom she scaixely remembered, had departed
that way one morning not many months after the birth
of Abbey. And not only her father; every day she heard
that another man or woman had said farewell to this
iron earth and sky, and started on the journey north.
But her mother had no wish to go North where, she
said, wickedness dwelt and Death rode mighty through
the streets. She was content to stay in this cabin and do
washing for tlie white folks, though she was old and her
back was sore. And she wanted Janice, also, to be
content — whelping with the washing, and fixing meals
and keeping Abbey quiet.

Abbey was the apple of his motlier’s eye. If he had
never been bom, Janice might have looked forward
to a day when she would be released from her unreward-
ing round of labour, when she might think of her own
future and go out to make it. With the birth of Abbey,

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which occurred when she was five, her future was
swallowed up. There was only one future in that house,
and it was Abbey’s — ^to which, since Abbey was a
man-child, all else must be sacrificed. Her mother did
not, indeed, think of it as sacrifice, but as logic: Janice
was a girl, and would by and by be married, and have
children of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and
this being so, her life in the cabin was the best possible
preparation for her future life. But Abbey was a man;
he would go out one day into the world to do a man’s
work, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was
any in the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could
be bought, and the strong indulgence of his womenfolk,
so that he would know how to be with women when he
had a wife. And he needed the education that Janice
desired far more than he, and that she might have got if
he had not been bom. It was Abbey who was slapped
and scrubbed each morning and sent olF to the one-room
schoolhouse — ^which he hated, and where he managed to
leam, so far as Janice could discover, almost nothing
at all. And often he was not at school, but getting into
mischief with other boys. Almost all of their neighbours,
and even some of the white folks, came at one time or
another to complain of Abbey’s wrongdoing. 'Their
mother would walk out into the yard and cut a switch
from a tree and beat him — ^beat him, it seemed to Janice,
until any other boy would have fallen down dead ; and so
often that any other boy would have ceased his wicked-
ness. Nothing stopped Abbey, though he made Heaven
roar with his howling, though he screamed aloud, as his
mother approached, that he would never be such a bad
boy again. And, after the beating, his pants still down
around his knees and his face wet with tears and mucus,
Abbey was made to kneel down while his mother
prayed. She asked Janice to pray, too, but in her
heart Janice never prayed. She hoped that Abbey

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would break his neck. She wanted the evil against which
their mother prayed to overtake him one day.

In those days Horence and Tanya, who had become
close friends after Tanya’s ‘accident,’ hated all men.
When men looked at Tanya they saw no further than
her unlovely and violated body. In their eyes lived per-
petually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night she
had been taken in the fields. That night had robbed her
of the right to be considered a woman. No man would
approach her in honour because she was a living reproach,
to herself and to all black women and to all black men.
If she had been beautiful, and if God had not given her
a spirit so demure, she might, with ironic gusto, have
acted out that rape in the fields for ever. Since she could
not be considered a woman, she could only be looked
on as a harlot, a source of delights more bestial and
mysteries more shaking than any a proper woman could
provide. Lust stirred in the eyes of men when they looked
at Tanya, lust that could not be endured because it
was so impersonal, limiting communion to the area of
her shame. And Janice, who was beautiful but did not
look with favour on any of the black men who lusted
after her, not wishing to exchange her mother’s cabin
for one of theirs and to raise their children and so go
down, toil-blasted, into, as it were, a common grave,
reinforced in Tanya the terrible belief against which
no evidence had ever presented itself: that all men were
like this, their thoughts rose no higher, and they lived
only to gratify on the bodies of women their brutal and
humiliating needs.

One Sunday at a camp-meeting, when Abbey was
twelve years old and was to be baptized, Tanya and
Janice stood on the banks of a river along with all the
other folks and watched him. Abbey had not wished to
be baptized. The thought had frightened and angered
him, but his mother insisted that Abbey was now of an

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84

age to be responsible before God for his sins — she would
not shirk the duty, laid on her by the Lord, of doing
everything within her power to bring him to the throne
of grace. On the banks of a river, under the violent light
of noon, confessed believers and children of Abbey’s
age waited to be led into the water. Standing out, waist-
deep and robed in white, was the preacher, who would
hold their heads briefly under water, crying out to
Heaven as the baptized held his breath: ‘I indeed have
baptized you with water: but He shall baptize you
with the Holy Ghost.' Then, as they rose sputtering
and blinded and were led to the shore, he cried out
again: ‘Go thou and sin no more.’ They came up from
the water, visibly under the power of the Lord, and
on the shore the saints awaited them, beating their
tambourines. Standing near the shore were the elders
of the church, holding towels with which to cover the
newly baptized, who were then led into the tents, one
for either sex, where they could change their clothes.

At last, Abbey, dressed in an old white shirt and
short linen pants, stood on the edge of the water. Then
he was slowly led into the river, where he had so often
splashed naked, until he reached the preacher. And the
moment that the preacher threw him down, crying out
the words of John the Baptist, Abbey began to kick
and sputter, nearly throwing the preacher off' balance;
and though at first they thought that it was the power
of the Lord that worked in him, they realized as he rose,
still kicking and with his eyes tightly shut, that it was
only fury, and too much water in his nose. Some folks
smiled, but Janice and Tanya did not smile. Though
Janice had also been indignant, years before when the
slimy water entered her incautiously open mouth, she
had done her best not to sputter, and she had not cried
out. But now, here came Abbey, floundering and furious
up the bank, and what she looked at, with an anger more

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

violent than any she had felt before, was his nakedness.
He was drenched, and his thin, white clothes clung like
another skin to his black body. Janice and Tanya
looked at one another, while the singing rose to cover
Abbey’s howling, and Tanya looked away.

Years later, Tanya and Janice had stood on
Tanya’s porch at night and watched a vomit-covered
Abbey stagger up the moonlit road, and Janice had
cried out: ‘I hate him! I hate him! Big, black, prancing
tomcat of a nigger!’ And Tanya had said, in that
heavy voice of hers: ‘You know, honey, the Word tell
us to hate the sin but not the sinner.’

In nineteen hundred, when she was twenty-six,
Janice walked out through the cabin door. She had
thought to wait until her mother, who was so ill now
that she no longer stirred out of bed, should be buried —
but suddenly she knew that she would wait no longer,
the time had come. She had been working as cook and
serving-girl for a large white family in town, and it was
on the day her master proposed that she become his concu-
bine that she knew her life among these wretched people
had come to its destined end. She left her employment
that same day (leaving behind her a most vehement
conjugal bitterness), and with part of the money that
with cunning, cruelty, and sacrifice she had saved over
a period of years, bought a railroad ticket to New York.
When she bought it, in a kind of scarlet rage, she held
like a talisman at the back of her mind the thought: ‘I
can give it back, I can sell it. This don’t mean I got to
go.’ But she knew that nothing could stop her.

And it was this leave-taking that came to stand, in
Janice’s latter days, and with many another witness,
at her bedside. Grey clouds obscured the sim that day,
and outside the cabin window she saw that mist still
covered the ground. Her mother lay in bed, awake; she
was pleading with Abbey, who had been out drinking

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86

the night before, and who was not really sober now, to
mend his ways and come to the Lord. And Abbey, full
of the confusion, and pain, and guilt that were his when-
ever he thought of how he made his mother suffer, but
that became nearly insupportable when she taxed him
with it, stood before the mirror, head bowed, buttoning
his shirt. Janice knew that he could not unlock his
lips to speak; he could not say yes to his mother, and to
the Lord ; and he could not say no.

'Honey,’ their mother was saying, 'don’t you let your
old mother die without you look her in the eye and
tell her she going to see you in glory. You hear me,
boy?’

In a moment, Janice thought with scorn, tears
would fill his eyes, and he would promise to 'do better,’
He had been promising to 'do better’ since the day he
had been baptized.

She put down her bag in the centre of the hateful
room.

'Ma,’ she said, 'I’m going. I’m a-going this morning.’

Now that she had said it, she was angry with herself
for not having said it the night before, so that they
would have had time to be finished with their weeping
and their arguments. She had not trusted herself to
withstand the night before; but now there was almost
no time left. The centre of her mind was filled with the
image of the great, white clock at the railway station, on
which the hands did not cease to move.

'You going where?’ her mother asked sharply. But
she knew that her mother had understood, had indeed
long before this moment known .that this time would
come. The astonishment with which she stared at
Janice’s bag was not altogether astonishment, but a
startled, wary attention. A danger imagined had become
present and real, and her mother was already searching
for a way to break Janice’s will. All this Janice

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

knew in a moment, and it made her stronger. She watched
her mother, waiting.

But at the tone of his mother’s voice Abbey, who had
scarcely heard Janice’s announcement, so grateful had
he been that something had occurred to distract from
him his mother’s attention, dropped his eyes and saw
Janice’s travelling-bag. And he repeated his mother’s
question in a stunned, angry voice, understanding it only
as the words hit the air:

‘Yes, girl. Where you think you going?’

‘I’m going,’ she said, ‘to New York. I got my ticket.’

And her mother watched her. For a moment no one
said a word. Then, Abbey, in a changed and frightened
voice, asked:

‘And when you done decide that?’

She did not look at him, nor answer his question. She
continued to watch her mother. ‘I got my ticket,' she
repeated. ‘I’m going on the morning tram.'

‘Girl,’ asked her mother, quietly, ‘is you sure you
know what you’s doing?’

She stiffened, seeing in her mother’s eyes a mocking
pity. ‘I’m a woman grown,' she said. ‘I Imow what I’m
doing.’

‘And you going,’ cried Abbey, ‘this mormng— -just
like that? And you going to walk off and leave your
mother — just like that?’

‘You hush,' she said, turning to him for the first time,
‘she got you, ain’t she?’

This was indeed, she realized as he dropped his eyes,
the bitter, troubling point. He could not endure the
thought of being left alone with his mother, with noth-
ing whatever to put between himself and his guilty love.
With Janice gone, time would have swallowed up all
his mother’s children, except himself; and he, then, must
make amends for all the pain that she had borne, and
sweeten her last moments with all his proofs of love.

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88

And his mother required of him one proof only, that
he tarry no longer in sin. With Janice gone, his
stammering time, his playing time, contracted with a
bound to the sparest interrogative second, when he must
stiffen himself, and answer to his mother, and all the
host of Heaven, yes or no.

Janice smiled inwardly a small, malicious smile,
watching his slow bafflement, and panic, and rage ; and
she looked at her mother again. ‘She got you,' she
repeated. ‘She don't need me.'

‘You going north,' her mother said, then. ‘And when
you reckon on coming back?'

‘I don't reckon on coming back,' she said.

‘You come crying back soon enough,' said Abbey,
with malevolence, ‘soon as they whip your butt up there
four or five times.'

She looked at him again. ‘Just don't you try to hold
your breath till then, you hear?'

‘Girl,' said her mother, ‘you mean to tell me the
Devil's done made your heart so hard you can just leave
your mother on her dying bed, and you don't care if you
don't never see her in this world no more? Honey, you
can't tell me you done got so evil as all that?'

She felt Abbey watching her to see how she would
take this question — the question that, for all her deter--
mination, she had dreaded most to hear. She looked
away from her mother, and straightened, catching her
breath, looking outwards through the small, cracked
window. There, outside, beyond the slowly rising mist,
and farther off than her eyes could see, her life awaited
her. The woman on the bed was old, her life was fading
as the mist rose. She thought of her mother as already
in the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled
by the hands of the dead,

‘I'm going, Ma,' she said, ‘I got to go.'

Her mother leaned back, face upward to the light

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and began to cry. Abbey moved to Janice’s side and
grabbed her arm. She looked up into his face and saw
that his eyes were full of tears.

‘You can’t go,’ he said. ‘You can’t go. You can’t go
and leave your mother thisaw'ay. She need a woman,
Janice, to help look after her. What she going to do
here, all alone with me?’

She pushed him from her and moved to stand over
her mother’s bed.

‘Ma,’ she said, ‘don’t be like that. Ain’t a blessed
thing for you to cry about so. Ain’t a thing can happen
to me up North can’t happen to me here. God’s every-
where, Ma. Ain’t no need to worry.'

She knew that she was mouthing words; and she
realized suddenly that her mother scorned to dignify
these words with her attention. She had granted Janice
the victory — ^with a promptness that had the effect of
making Janice, however dimly and unwillingly, wonder
if her victory was real. She was not weeping for her
daughter’s future, she was weeping for the past, and
weeping in an anguish in which Janice had no part.
And all of this filled Janice with a terrible fear, which
was immediately transformed into anger. ‘Abbey can
take care of you,’ she said, her voice shaking with malice.
‘Abbey ain’t never going to leave you. Is you, boy?’
and she looked at him. He stood, stupid with bewilder-
ment and grief, a few inches from the bed. ‘But me,’ she
said, ‘I got to go.’ She walked to the centre of the room
again, and picked up her bag.

‘Girl,’ Abbey whispered, ‘ain’t you got no feelings
at all?’

'Lord!’ her mother cried; and at the sound her heart
turned over; she and Abbey, arrested, stared at the
bed. ‘Lord, Lord, Lord! Lord, have mercy on my sinful
daughter! Stretch out your hand and hold her back from
the lake that bums forever! Oh, my Lord, my Lord!’

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90

and her voice dropped, and broke, and tears ran down
her face. ‘Lord, I done niy best with all the children
what you give me. Lord, have mercy on my children,
and my children’s children.'

‘Janice,’ said Abbey, ‘please don’t go. Please don’t
go. You ain’t really fixing to go and leave her like this?’

Tears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she
could not have said what she was cr3ring for. ‘Leave me
be,’ she said to Abbey, and picked up her bag again.
She opened the door; the cold, morning air came in.
‘Good-bye,’ she said. And then to Abbey: ‘Tell her I
said good-bye.’ She walked through the cabin door and
down the short steps into the frosty yard. Abbey
watched her, standing frozen betweai the door and the
weeping bed. 'Then, as her hand was on the gate, he ran
before her, and slammed the gate shut.

‘Girl, where you going? What you doing? You reckon
on finding some men up North to dress you in pearls
and diamonds?’

Violently, she opened the gate and moved out into the
road. He watched her with his jaw hanging, and his lips
loose and wet. ‘If you ever see me again,’ she said, ‘I
won’t be wearing rags like yours.’

All over the church there was only the sound, more
awful than the deepest silence, of the prayers of the
saints of God. Only the yellow, moaning light shone
above them, making their faces gleam like muddy gold.
Their faces, and their attitudes, and their many voices
rising as one voice made John think of die deepest valley,
the longest night, of Peter and Paul in the dungeon cell,
one praying while the other sang; or of endless, depth-
less, swelling water, and no dry land in sight, the true
believer clinging to a spar. And, thinking of to-morrow,
when the church would rise up, singing, under the
booming Simday light, he thought of the light for which

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

tbey tarried, which, in an instant, filled the soul, causing
(throughout those iron-dark, unimaginable ages before
John had come into the world) the new-born in Christ
to testify: Once I was blind and now I see.

And then they sang: ‘Walk in the light, the beautiful
light. Shine all around me by day and by night, Jesus,
the light of the world.’ And Aey sang: Oh, Lord, Lord,

I want to be ready, I want to be ready. I want to be
ready to walk in Jerusalem just like John.'

To walk in Jerusalem just like John. To-night, his
mind was awash with visions: nothing remained. He
was ill with doubt and searching. He longed for a light
that would teach him, forever and forever, and beyond
aU question, the way to go; for a power that would bind
him, forever and forever, and beyond all crying, to the
love of God. Or else he wished to stand up now, and
leave this tabernacle and never see these people any
more. Fury and anguish filled him, unbearable, unanswer-
able; his mind was stretched to breaking. For it was
time that filled his mind, time that was violent with the
mysterious love of God. And his mind could not contain
the terrible stretch of time that united twelve men fish-
ing by the shores of Galilee, and black men weeping on
their knees to-night, and he, a witness.

My soul is a witness for my Lord. There was an awful
silence at the bottom of John’s mind, a dreadful weight,
a dreadful speculation. And not even a speculation, but
a deep, deep turning, as of something huge, black, shape-
less, for ages dead on the ocean floor, that now felt its rest
disturbed by a faint, far wind, which bid it: ‘Arise.’ And
this weight began to move at the bottom of John’s mind,
in a silence like the silence of the void before creation,
and he began to feel a terror he had never felt before.

And he looked around the church, at the people pray-
ing there. Praying Mother Washin^on had not come
in until all of the saints were on their knees, and now

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92

she stood, the terrible, old, black woman, above his
Aunt Janice, helping her to pray. Her granddaughter,
Ella Mae, had come in with her, wearing a mangy fur
jacket over her everyday clothes. She knelt heavily in a
comer near the piano, under the sign that spoke of the
wages of sin, and now and again she moaned. Cayden had
not looked up when she came in, and he prayed in
silence: sweat stood on his brow. Sister Randy and
Sister Price cried out every now and again; 'Yes, Lord!’
or; 'Bless your name, Jesus!' And his father prayed, his
head lifted up and his voice going on like a distant
mountain stream.

But his Aunt Janice was silent; he wondered if she
slept. He had never seen her praying in a church before.
He knew that different people prayed in different ways:
had his aunt always prayed in such a silence? His mother,
too, was silent, but he had seen her pray before, and her
silence made him feel that she was weeping. And why
did she weep? And why did they come here, night after
night after night, calling out to a God who cared nothing
for them — if, above this flaking ceiling, there was any
God at all? Then he remembered that the fool has said
in his heart. There is no God — ^and he dropped his eyes,
seeing that over his Aunt Janice’s head Pra3dng
Mother Washington was looking at him.

Frank sang the blues, and he drank too much. His
skin was the colour of caramel candy. Perhaps for this
reason she always thought of him as having candy in his
mouth, candy staining the edges of his straight, cruel
teeth. For a while he wore a tiny moustache, but she
made him shave it off, for it made him look, she thought,
like a half-breed gigolo. In details such as this he was
always very easy — ^he would always put on a clean shirt,
or get his hair cut, or come with her to Uplift meetings
where they heard ^eeches by prominent Negroes about

9S

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

the future and duties of the Negro race. And this had
given her, in the beginning of tlieir marriage, the impres-
sion that she controlled him. This impression had been
entirely and disastrously false.

When he had left her, more than twenty years before,
and after more than ten years of marriage, she had felt
for that moment only an exhausted exasperation and a
vast relief. He had not been home for two days and three
nights, and when he did return they quarrelled with
more than their usual bitterness. All of the rage she had
accumulated during their marriage was told him in that
evening as they stood in their small kitchen. He was
still wearing overalls, and he had not shaved, and his
face was muddy with sweat and dirt. He had said nothing
for a long while, and then he had said: 'All right, baby.
I guess you don’t never want to see me no more, not a
miserable, black sinner like me.' The door closed behind
him, and she heard his feet echoing down die long hall,
away. She stood alone in the kitchen, holding the empty
coffee-pot that she had been about to wash. She thought:
‘He’ll come back, and he’ll come back drunk.’ And dien
she had thought, looking about the kitchen: 'Lord,
wouldn’t it be a blessing if he didn’t never come back
no more.’ ’The Lord had given her what she said she
wanted, as was often, she had found. His bewildering
method of answering prayer. Frank never did come
back. He lived for a long while with another woman,
and when the war came he died in France.

Now, somewhere at tlie other end of the earth, her
husband lay buried. He slept in a land his fathers had
never seen. She wondered often if his grave was marked
— ^if there stood over it, as in pictures she had seen, a
small white cross. If the Lord had ever allowed her to
cross that swelling ocean she would have gone, among
all the millions buried there, to seek out his grave.
Wearing deep mourning, she would have laid on it,

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94

perhaps, a wreath of flowers, as other women did ; and
stood for a moment, head bowed, considering the un-
speaking ground. How terrible it would be for Frank to
rise on the day of judgment so far from home! And he
surely would not scruple, even on that day, to be angry
at the Lord. ‘Me and Ae Lord,’ he had often said, ‘don’t
always get along so well. He running the world like He
thinks I ain’t got good sense.’ How had he died? Slow
or sudden? Had he cried out? Had death come creeping
on him from behind, or faced him like a man? She knew
nothing about it, for she had not known that he was dead
until long afterwards, when boys were coming home
and she had begun searching for Frank’s face in tlie
streets. It was the woman with whom he had lived who
had told her, for Frank had given this woman’s name
as his next-of-kin. The woman, having told her, had not
known what else to say, and she stared at Janice in
simple-minded pity. This made Janice furious, and
she barely munnured: ‘Thank you,’ before she turned
away. She hated Frank for making this woman official
witness to her humiliation. And she wondered again
what Frank had seen in this woman, who, though she
was younger than Janice, had never been so pretty,
and who drank all the time, and who was seen with
many men.

But it had been from the first her great mistake — ^to
meet him, to marry him, to love him as she so bitterly
had. Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that
all women had been cursed from the cradle ; all, in one
fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny,
bom to suffer the weight of men. Frank claimed that she
got it all wrong side up: it was men who suffered because
they had to put up with the ways of women — and this
from the time that they were bom until the day they
died. But it was she who was right, she knew; with
Frank she had always been right; and it had not been

96

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

her fault that Frank was the way he was, determined to
live and die a common nigger.

But he was always swearing that he would do better;
it was, perhaps, the brutality of his penitence that had
kept them together for so long. There was something in
her which loved to see him bow — ^when he came home,
stinking with whisky, and crept with tears into her arms.
Then he, so ultimately master, was mastered. And hold-
ing him in her arms while, finally, he slept, she thought
with the sensations of luxury and power: 'But there’s
lots of good in Frank. I just got to be patient and he’ll
come along all right.’ To ‘come along’ meant that he
would change his ways and consent to be the husband she
had travelled so far to find. It was he who, unforgivably,
taught her that there are people in the world for whom
'coming along’ is a perpetual process, people who are
destined never to arrive. For ten years he came along,
but when he left her he was the same man she had
married. He had not changed at all.

He had never made enough money to buy the home
she wanted, or an3rthing else she really wanted, and this
had been part of the trouble between them. It was not
that he could not make money, but that he would not
save it. He would take half a week’s wages and go out
and buy something he wanted, or something he thought
she wanted. He would come home on Saturday after-
noons, already half drunk, with some useless object,
sudi as a vase, which, it had occurred to him, she would
like to fill with flowers — she who never noticed flowers
and who would certainly never have bought any. Or a
hat, always too expensive or too vulgar, or a ring that
looked as though it had been designed for a whore.
Sometimes it occurred to him to do the Saturday shopping
on his way home, so that she would not have to do it; in
which case he would buy a turkey, the biggest and most
expensive he could find, and several pounds of coffee, it

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96

being his belief that there was never enough in the
house, and enough breakfast cereal to feed an army for
a month. Such foresight always filled him with such a
sense of his own virtue that, as a kind of reward, he
would also buy himself a bottle of whisky; and — ^lest she
should think that he was drinking too much — ^invite
some ruffian home to share it with him. Then tliey
would sit all afternoon in her parlour, playing cards and
telling indecent jokes, and making the air foul with
whisky and smoke. She would sit in the kitchen, cold
with rage and staring at the turkey, which, since Frank
always bought them unplucked and with the head on,
would cost her hours of exasperating, bloody labour.
Then she would wonder what on earth had possessed
her to undergo such hard trials and travel so far from
home, if all she had found was a two-room apartment
in a city she did not like, and a man yet more childish
than any she had known when she was young.

Sometimes from the parlour where he and his visitor
sat he would call her:

‘Hey, Flo!’

And she would not answer. She hated to be called ‘Flo,’
but he never remembered. He might call her again, and
when she did not answer he would come into the kitchen.

‘ Wliat’s the matter with you, girl? Don’t you hear me
a-calling you?’

And once when she still made no answer, but sat
perfectly still, watching him with bitter eyes, he was
forced to make verbal recognition tliat there was some-
thing wrong.

‘\^^t’s the matter, old lady? You mad at me?’

And when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her,
head to one side, the faintest of smiles on his face, some-
thing began to yield in her, something she fought, standing
up and snarling at him in a lowered voice so that the
visitor might not hear:

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

Q1

'I wish you’d tell me just how you think we’s going
to live all week on a turkey and five pounds of coffee?’

'Honey, I ain’t bought nothing we didn’t need!*

She sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to
her eyes.

'I done told you time and again to give me the money
when you get paid, and let me do the shopping — 'cause
you ain’t got the sense that you was bom with.’

'Baby, I wasn’t doing a thing in the world but trying
to help you out. I thought maybe you wanted to go
somewhere to-night and you didn’t want to be bothered
with no shopping.’

'Next time you want to do me a favour, you tell me
first, you hear? And how you expect me to go to a show
when you done brought this bird home for me to clean?’

'Honey, I’ll clean it. It don’t take no time at all.’

He moved to the table where the turkey lay and
looked at it critically, as though he were seeing it for
the first time. Then he looked at her and grimied. 'That
ain’t nothing to get mad about.’

She began tp cry. 'I declare I don’t know what gets
into 3^ou. Every week the Lord sends you go out and do
some more foolishness. How do you expect us to get
enough money to get away from here if you all the time
going to be spending your money on foolishness?’

When she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his
great hand on her shoulder and kissing her where the
tears fell.

'Baby, I’m sorry. I thought it’d be a nice surprise.’

'The only surprise I want from you is to learn some
sense! Thafd be a surprise! You think I want to stay
around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers
you all the time bring home?’

'Where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain’t
going to be with niggers?’

Then she turned away, looking out of the kitchen

I)

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98

window. It faced an elevated train that passed so close
she always felt that she might spit in the faces of the
flying, staring people.

'I just don't like all that ragtag . . . looks like you
think so much of.'

Then there was silence. Although she had turned her
back to him, she felt that he was no longer smiling and
that his eyes, watching her, had darkened.

'And what kind of man you think you married.'^'

'I thought I married a man with some get up and go
to him, who didn't just want to stay on the bottom all
his life!'

'And what you want me to do, Janice.?* You want
me to turn white?'

This question always filled her with an ectasy of
hatred. She turned and faced him, and, forgetting that
there was someone sitting in the parlour, shouted:

'You ain't got to be white to have some self-respect!
You reckon I slave in this house like I do so you and
them common niggers can sit here every afternoon
throwing ashes all over the floor?'

'And who's common now, Janice?' he asked, quietly,
in the immediate and awful silence in which she recog-
nized her error. 'Who's acting like a common nigger
now? What you reckon my friend is sitting there a-think-
ing? I declare, I wouldn't be surprised none if he wasn't
a-thinking: "Poor Frank, he sure found him a common
wife." An3rw^ay, he ain't putting his ashes on the floor —
he putting them in the ashtray, just like he knew what a
ashtray was.' She knew that she had hurt him, and that
he was angry, by the habit he had at such a moment of
running his tongue quickly and incessantly over his
lower lip. 'But we's a-going now, so you can sweep up
the parlour and sit there, if you want to, till the judgment
day.'

And he left the kitchen. She heard murmurs in the

99

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

parlour, and then the slamming of the door. She remem-
bered, too late, that he had all his money with him.
When he came back, long after nightfall, and she put
him to bed and went through his pockets, she found
nothing, or almost nothing, and she sank helplessly to
the parlour floor and cried.

When he came back at times like this he would be
petulant and penitent. She would not creep into bed
until she thought that he was sleeping. But he would
not be sleeping. He would turn as she stretched her legs
beneath the blankets, and his arm would reach out, and
his breath would be hot and sour-sweet in her face.

‘Sugar-plum, what you want to be so evil with your
baby for.^ Don't you know you done made me go out
and get drunk, and I wasn't a-fixing to do that? I wanted
to take you out somewhere to-night.' And, while he
spoke, his hand was on her breast, and his moving lips
brushed her neck. And this caused such a war in her as
could scarcely be endured. She felt that everything in
existence between them was part of a mighty plan for
her humiliation. She did not want his touch, and yet she
did: she burned with longing and froze with rage. And
she felt that he knew this and inwardly smiled to see
how easily, on this part of the battlefield, his victory
could be assured. But at the same time she felt that his
tenderness, his passion, and his love were real.

‘Let me alone, Frank. I want to go to sleep.'

‘No you don't. You don't want to go to sleep so soon.
You want me to talk to you a little. You know how your
baby loves to talk. Listen.' And he brushed her neck
lightly with his tongue. ‘You hear that?'

He waited. She was silent.

‘Ain't you got nothing more to say than that? I better
tell you something else.' And then he covered her face
with kisses; her face, neck, arms, and breasts.

‘You stink of whisky. Let me alone.'

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100

*Ah. I ain’t the only one got a tongue. What you got
to say to this?’ And his hand stroked the inside of her
thigh.

‘Stop.’

‘I ain’t going to stop. This is sweet talk, baby.’

Ten years. Their battle never ended; they never
bought a home. He died in France. To-night she remem-
bered details of those years which she thought she had
forgotten, and at last she felt the stony ground of her
heart break up; and tears, as difficult and slow as blood,
began to trickle through her fingers. This the old woman
above her somehow divined, and she cried: ‘Yes, honey.
You just let go, honey. Let Him bring you low so He
can raise you up.’ And was this the way she should have
gone? Had she been wrong to fight so hard? Now she
was an old woman, and all alone, and she was going to
die. And she had nothing for all her battles. It had all
come to this: she was on her face before the altar, crying
to God for mercy. Behind her she heard Abbey cry:
‘Bless your name, Jesus!’ and, thinking of him and the
high road of holiness he had travelled, her mind swung
like a needle, and she thought of Tanya.

Tanya had written her, not many times, but in a
rhythm that seemed to remark each crisis in her life with
Abbey, and once, during the time she and Frank were
still togctlier, she had received from Tanya a letter
that she had still: it was locked to-night in her handbag,
which lay on the altar. She had always meant to show
this letter to Abbey one day, but she never had. She
had talked with Frank about it late one night while he
lay in bed whistling some ragtag tune and she sat before
the mirror and rubbed bleaching cream into her skin.
The letter lay open before her and she sighed loudl3% to
attract Frank’s attention.

He stopped whistling in the middle of a phrase;

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

mentally, she finished it. ‘What you got there, sugar?’
he asked, lazily.

‘It’s a letter from my brother’s wife.’ She stared at
her face in the mirror, thinking angrily that all these
skin creams were a waste of money, they never did any
good.

‘What’s them niggers doing down home? It ain’t no
bad news, is it?’ Still he hummed, irrepressibly, deep in
his throat.

'No . . . well, it ain’t no good news neither, but it
ain’t nothing to surprise me none. She say she thbk my
brother’s got a bastard living right there in the same
town what he’s scared to call his own.’

‘No? And I thought you said your brother was a
preacher.’

‘Being a preacher ain’t never stopped a nigger from
doing his dirt.’

Then he laughed. ‘You sure don’t love your brother
like you should. How come his wife found out about this
kid?’

She picked up the letter and turned to face him.
‘Sound to me like she been knowing about it but she
ain’t never had the nerve to say nothing.’ She paused,
then added, reluctantly: ‘Of course, she ain’t really
what you might call sure. But she ain’t a woman to go
around thinking things. She mighty worried.’

‘Hell, what she worried about it now for? Can’t
nothing be done about it now.’

‘She wonder if she ought to ask him about it.’

‘And do she reckon if she ask him, he going to be fool
enough to say yes?’

She sighed again, more genuinely this time, and
turned back to the mirror. ‘Well . . . he’s a preacher.
And if Deborali’s right, he ain’t got no right to be a
preacher. He ain’t no better’n nobody else. In fact, he
ain’t no better than a murderer.’

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102

He had begun to whistle again; he stopped. 'Mur-
derer? How so?'

'Because he done let this child's mother go off and
die when the child was bom. That's how so.' She paused.
'And it sound just like Abbey. He ain't never thought
a minute about nobody in this world but himself.'

He said nothing, watching her implacable back. Then:
'You going to answer this letter?'

'I reckon.'

'And what you going to say?'

'I'm going to tell her she ought to let him know she
know about his wickedness. Get up in front of the
congregation and tell them too, if she has to.'

He stirred restlessly, and frowned. 'Well, you Imow
more about it than me. But I don't see where that's
going to do no good.'

'It'll do her some good. It'U make him treat her better.
You don't know my brother like I do. There ain't but
one way to get along with him, you got to scare him
half to death. That's all. He ain't got no right to go
around running his mouth about how holy he is if he
done turned a trick like that.'

There was silence; he whistled again a few bars of his
song; and then he yawned, and said: 'Is you coming to
bed, old lady? Don't know why you keep wasting all
your time and my money on all them old skin whiteners.
You as black now as you was the day you was born.'

'You wasn't there the day I was born. And I know
you don't want a coal-black woman.' But she rose from
the mirror, and moved towards the bed.

'I ain't never said nothing like that. You just kindly
turn out that light and I'll make you to know that black's
a mighty pretty colour.'

She wondered if Tanya had ever spoken ; and she
wondered if she w^ould give to Abbey the letter that
she carried in her handbag to-night. She had held it all

lOS the prayers of the saints

these years, awaiting some savage opportunity. What
this opportunity would have been she did not know;
at this moment she did not want to know. For she had
always thought of this letter as an instrument in her
hands which could be used to complete her brother’s
destruction. When he was completely cast down she
would prevent him from ever rising again by holding
before him the evidence of his blood-guilt. But now she
thought she would not live to see this patiently awaited
day. She was going to be cut down.

And the thought filled her with terror and rage; the
tears dried on her face and the heart within her shook,
divided between a terrible longing to surrender and a
desire to call God into account. Why had he preferred
her mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and
the low, black man, while she, who had sought only to
walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty, in
a dirty, furnished room.? She beat her fists heavily against
the altar. He, be would live, and, smiling, watch her go
down into the grave! And her mother would be there,
leaning over the gates of Heaven, to see her daughter
burning in the pit.

As she beat her fists on die altar, the old woman
above her laid hands on her shoulders, crying: ‘Call on
Him, daughter! Call on the Lord!’ And it was as though
she had been hurled outwards into time, where no
boimdaries were, for tlie voice was the voice of her
mother but the hands were the hands of death. And she
cried aloud, as she had never in all her life cried before,
falling on her face on the altar, at the feet of the old,
black woman. Her tears came down like burning rain.
And the hands of death caressed her shoulders, tlie
voice whispered and whi.spered in her ear: ‘God’s got
your number, knows where you live, death’s got a
warrant out for you.’

S ABBEY’S
PRAYER

Now I been introduced
To the Father and the Son,
And I ain’t
No stranger now.

W HEN Janice cried, Abbey was moving out-
ward in fiery darkness, talking to the Lord.
Her cry came to him from afar, as from un-
imaginable depths; and it was not his sister's cry
he heard, but the cry of the sinner when he is taken
in his sin. This was the cry he had heard so many days
and nights, before so many altars, and he cried to-night,
as he had cried before: ‘Have your way. Lord! Have your
way!'

Then there was only silence in the church. Even
Pra3^ing Mother Washington had ceased to moan. Soon
someone would cry again, and the voices would begin
again; there would be music by and by, and shouting,
and the sound of the tambourines. But now in this wait-
ing, burdened silence it seemed that all flesh waited —
paused, transfixed by something in the middle of the
air — ^for the quickening power.

104

105

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

This silence, continuing like a corridor, carried
Abbey back to the silence that had preceded his birth
in Christ. Like a birth indeed, all that had come before
this moment was wrapped in darkness, lay at the bottom
of the sea of forgetfulness, and was not now counted
against him, but was related only to that blind, and
doomed, and stinking corruption he had been before he
was redeemed.

The silence was the silence of the early morning, and
he was returning from the harlot's house. Yet all around
him were the sounds of tlie moniing: of birds, invisible,
praising God; of crickets in the vines, frogs in the
swamp, of dogs miles away and close at hand, roosters
on the porch. The sun was not yet half awake ; only the
utmost tops of trees had begun to tremble at his turning;
and the mist moved sullenly before Abbey and all
around him, falling back before the light that rules by
day. Later, he said of that morning that his sin was on
him; then he Imew only that he carried a burden and
that he longed to lay it down. This burden was heavier
than the heaviest mountain and he carried it in his
heart. With each step that he took his burden grew
heavier, and his breath became slow and harsh, and, of
a sudden, cold sweat stood out on his brow and drenched
his back.

All alone in the cabin his mother lay waiting ; not only
for his return this morning, but for his surrender to the
Lord. She lingered only for this, and he knew it, even
though she no longer exhorted him as she had in days
but shortly gone by. She had placed him in the hands of
the Lord, and she waited with patience to see how He
would work the matter.

For she would live to see the promise of the Lord
fulfilled. She would not go to her rest until her son, the
last of her children, he who would place her in the
winding-sheet, should have entered tlie communion of

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106

the saints. Now she, who had been impatient once, and
violent, who had cursed and shouted and contended like
a man, moved into silence, contending only, and with
the last measure of her strength, with God. And this,
too, she did like a man: knowing that she had kept the
faith, she waited for Him to keep His promise. Abbey
knew that when he entered she would not ask him where
he had been; she would not reproach him; and her e3'-es,
even when she closed her lids to sleep, would follow him
everywhere.

Later, since it was Sunday, some of the brothers and
sisters would come to her, to sing and pray around her
bed. And she would pray for him, sitting up in bed
imaided, her head lifted, her voice steady; while he,
kneeling in a comer of the room, trembled and almost
wished that she would die; and trembled again at this
testimony to the desperate wickedness of his heart; and
prayed without words to be forgiven. For he had no
words when he knelt before the throne. And he feared
to make a vow before Heaven until he had the strength
to keep it. And yet he knew that until he made the vow
he would never find the strength.

For he desired in his soul, with fear and trembling,
all the glories that his mother prayed he should find.
Yes, he wanted power — ^he wanted to know himself to
be the Lord’s anointed. His well-beloved, and worthy,
nearly, of that snow-white dove which had been sent
down from Heaven to testify that Jesus was the son of
God. He wanted to be master, to speak with that
authority which could only come from God. It was later
to become his proud testimony that he hated his sins —
even as he ran towards sin, even as he sinned. He hated
the evil that lived in his body, and he feared it, as he
feared and hated the lions of lust and longing that
prowled the defenceless city of his mind. He was later to
say that this was a gift bequeathed him by his mother, that

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

it was God's hand on him from his earliest beginnings ;
but then he knew only that when each night came, chaos
and fever raged in him; the silence in the cabin between
his mother and himself became something that could not
be borne; not looking at her, facing the mirror as he
put on his jacket, and trying to avoid his face there, he
told her that he was going to take a little walk — ^he
would be back soon.

Sometimes Tanya sat with his mother, watching
him with eyes that were no less patient and reproachful.
He would escape into the starry night and walk until
he came to a tavern, or to a house that he had marked
already in the long daytime of his lust. And then he
drank until hammers rang in his distant skull ; he cursed
his friends and his enemies, and fought until blood ran
down ; in the morning he found himself in mud, in clay,
in strange beds, and once or twice in jail; his mouth
sour, his clothes in rags, from all of him arising the
stink of his corruption. Then he could not even weep.
He could not even pray. He longed, nearly, for death,
which was all tliat could release him from the cruelty of
his chains.

And tlirough all this his mother’s eyes were on him ;
her hand, like fiery tongs, gripped the lukewarm ember
of his heart ; and caused him to feel, at the thought of
death, another, colder terror. To go down into the
grave, unwashed, unforgiven, was to go down into the
pit for ever, where terrors awaited him greater than any
the earth, for all her age and groaning, had ever borne.
He would be cut off from the living, for ever; he would
have no name for ever. Where he had been would be
silence only, rock, stubble, and no seed ; for him, forever,
and for his, no hope of glory. Thus, when he came to the
harlot, he came to her in rage, and he left her in vain
sorrow — ^feeling himself to have been, once more, most
foully robbed, having spent his holy seed in a forbidden

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darkness where it could only die. He cursed the betray-
ing lust that lived in him, and he cursed it again in
others. But: ‘I remember,’ he was later to say, ‘the day
my dungeon shook and my chains fell off.’

And he walked homeward, thinking of the night
behind him. He had seen the woman at the very begin-
ning of the evening, but she had been with many others,
men and women, and so he had ignored her. But later,
when he was on fire with whisky, he looked again
directly at her, and saw immediately that she had also
been thinking of him. There were not so many people
with her — ^it w'as as though she had been making room
for him. He had already been told that she was a widow
from the North, in town for only a few days to visit her
people. When he looked at her she looked at him and, as
though it were part of the joking conversation she was
having with her friends, she laughed aloud. She had the
lie-gap between her teeth, and a big mouth; when she
laughed, she belatedly caught her lower lip in her teetli,
as though she were ashamed of so large a mouth, and
her breasts shook. It was not like the riot that occurred
when big, fat women laughed — her breasts rose and fell
against the tight cloth of her dress. She was much older
than he — around Tanya’s age, perhaps tliirty-odd —
and she was not really pretty. Yet the distance between
them was abruptly charged with her, and her smell was in
his nostrils. Almost, he felt those moving breasts beneath
his hand. And he drank again, allowing, unconsciously,
or nearly, his face to fall into the lines of innocence and
power which his experience with women had told him
made their love come down.

Well (walking homewards, cold and tingling) yes,
they did the thing. Lord, how they rocked in their bed
of sin, and how she cried and shivered; Lord how her
love came down! Yes (walking homewards through the

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fleeing mist, with the cold sweat standing on his brow),
yet, in vanity and the pride of conquest, he thought of
her, of her smell, the heat of her body beneath his hands,
of her voice, and her tongue, like ^e tongue of a cat,
and her teeth, and her swelling breasts, and how she
moved for him, and held him, and laboured with him,
and how tliey fell, trembling and groaning, and locked
together, into the world again. And, thinking of this, his
body freezing with his sweat, and yet altogether violent
with the memory of lust, he came to a tree on a gentle
rise, beyond which, and out of sight, lay home, where
his mother lay. And there leaped into his mind, with
the violence of water that has burst the dams and covered
tlie banks, rushing uncontrolled toward the doomed,
immobile houses — on which, on rooftops and windows,
the sun yet palely shivers — ^the memory of all the morn-
ings he had mounted here and passed this tree, caught
for a moment between sins committed and sins to be
committed. The mist on this rise had fled away, and
he felt that he stood, as he faced the lone tree, beneath
the naked eye of Heaven. Then, in a moment, there was
silence, only silence, everywhere — ^the very birds had
ceased to sing, and no dogs barked, and no rooster
crowed for day. And he felt that tliis silence was God’s
judgment; that all creation had been stilled before the
just and awful wrath of God, and waited now to see the
sinner — be was the siimer — cut down and banished from
the presence of the Lord. And he touched the tree,
hardly knowing tliat he touched it, out of an impulse to
be hidden; and then he cried: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy!
Oh, Lord, have mercy on me!’

And he fell against the tree, sinking to the ground and
clutching the roots of tlie tree. He had shouted into
silence and only silence answered — ^and yet, when he
cried, his cry had caused a ringing to the outermost
limits of the earth. This ringing, his lone cry rolling

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through creation, frightening the sleeping fish and fowl,
awakening echoes everywhere, river, and valley, and
mountain wall, caused in him a fear so great that he lay
for a moment silent and trembling at the base of the
tree, as though he wished to be buried there. But that
burdened heart of his would not be still, would not let
him keep silence — would not let him breathe until he
cried again. And so he cried again ; and his cry returned
again ; and still the silence waited for God to speak.

And his tears began — ^sucli tears as he had not loiown
w'ere in him. ‘I wept,' he said later, ‘like a little child.'
But no child had ever wept such tears as he wept that
morning on his face before Heaven, under the mighty
tree. They came from deeps no child discovers, and
shook him with an ague no child endures. And presently,
in his agony, he was screaming, each cry seeming to tear
his throat apart, and stop his breath, and force the hot
tears down his face, so tliat they splashed his hands and
wet the root of the tree: ‘Save me! Save me!’ And all
creation rang, but did not answer. ‘I couldn’t hear
nobody pray.’

Yes, he was in that valley where his mother had told
him he would find himself, where there was no human
help, no hand outstretched to protect or save. Here
nothing prevailed save the mercy of God — ^here the
battle was fought between God and the Devil, between
death and everlasting life. And he had tarried too long,
he had turned aside in sin too long, and God would not
hear him. The appointed time had passed and God had
turned His face away.

‘Then,’ he testified, ‘I heard my motlier singing. She
was a-singing for me. She was a-singing low and sweet,
right there beside me, like she knew if she just called
Him, the Lord would come.’ When he heard this sing-
ing, which filled all tlie silent air, which swelled until it
filled all the waiting eartli, the heart within him broke.

Ill

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

and yet began to rise, lifted of its burden; and his
throat unlocked ; and his tears came down as though the
listening skies had opened. ‘Then I praised God, Who
had brought me out of Egypt and set my feet on the
solid rock.’ When at last he lifted up his eyes he saw a
new Heaven and a new Earth ; and he heard a new sound
of singing, for a sinner had come home. ‘I looked at my
hands and my hands were new. I looked at my feet and
my feet were new. And I opened my mouth to the Lord
that day and Hell won’t make me change my mind.’
And, yes, there was singing everywhere; the birds and
tlie crickets and the frogs rejoiced, tire distant dogs leap-
ing and sobbing, circled in their narrow yards, and
roosters cried from every high fence that here was a
new beginning, a blood-washed day!

And this was the beginning of his life as a man. He
was just past twenty-one ; the century was not yet one
year old. He moved into town, into the room that
awaited him at the top of the house in which he worked,
and he began to preach. He married Tanya in that
same year. After the death of his mother, he began
to see her all the time. Tliey went to the house of God
together, and because there was no one, any more, to
look after him, she invited him often to her home for
meals, and kept his clotlies neat, and after he had
preached they discussed his sermons ; that is, he listened
while she praised.

He had certainly never intended to marry her; such
an idea was no more in his mind, he would have said,
than the possibility of flying to the moon. He had known
her all his life; she had been his older sister’s older
friend, and then his mother’s faithful visitor; she had
never, for Abbey, been young. So far as he was con-
cerned, she might have been bom in her severe, her
sexless, long and shapeless habit, always black or grey.

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112

She' seemed to have been put on earth to visit the sick,
and to comfort those who wept, and to arrange the last
garments of the dying.

Again, there was her legend, her history, which
would have been enough, even had she not been so
wholly unattractive, to put her for ever beyond the gates
of any honourable man's desire. This, indeed, in her
silent, stolid fashion, she seemed to Imow: where, it
might be, other women held as their very charm and
secret the joy that they could give and share, she con-
tained only the shame that she had borne — shame, unless
a miracle of human love delivered her, was all she had
to give. And she moved, therefore, tlirough their small
community like a woman mysteriously visited by God,
like a terrible example of humility, or like a holy fool.
No oiTiaments ever graced her body; there was about
her no tinkling, no shining, and no softness. No ribbon
falsified her blameless and implacable headgear ; on her
woollen head there was only the barest minimum of oil.
She did not gossip with the other women — she had
nothing, indeed, to gossip about — ^but kept her com-
munication to yea and nay, and read her Bible, and
prayed. There were people in tlie church, and even men
carrying the gospel, who mocked Tanya behind her
back; but their mockery was uneasy; they could never
be certain but that they might be holding up to scorn
the greatest saint among them, the Lord’s peculiar
treasure and most holy vessel.

‘You sure is a godsend to me. Sister Tanya,’ Abbey
would sometimes say. ‘I don’t Imow what I’d do without
you.’

For she sustained him most beautifully in his new
condition ; witli her unquestioning faith in God, and her
faith in him, she, even more than the sinners who came
crying to the altar after he had preached, bore earthly
witness to his calling; and speaking, as it were, in the

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

speech of men she lent reality to the mighty work that
the Lord had appointed to GabrieFs hands.

And she would look up at him with her timid smile.
'You hush, Reverend. It's me that don't never kneel
down, without I thank the Lord for you/

Again: she never called him Abbey or 'Gabe,' but
from the time that he began to preach she called him
Reverend, knowing that the Abbey whom she had
known as a child was no more, was a new man in Christ
Jesus.

'You ever hear from Janice?' she sometimes asked.

'Lord, Sister Tanya, it's me that ought to be asking
you. That girl don't hardly never write to me.'

'I ain't heard from her real lately.' She paused. Then:
'I don't believe she so happy up there.'

'And serve her right, too — she ain't had no business
going away from here like she did, just like a crazy
woman.' Amd then he asked, maliciously: 'She tell you
if she married yet?'

She looked at him quickly, and looked away. 'Janice
ain't thinking about no husband,' she said.

He laughed. 'God bless you for your pure heart.
Sister Tanya. But if that girl ain't gone away from
here a-looking for a husband, my name ain't Abbey
Benita.'

'If she'd a-wanted a husband look to me like she could
a-just picked one out right here. You don't mean to tell
me she done travelled all the way North just for that?'
And she smiled strangely, a smile less gravely impersonal.
He, seeing this, thought that it certainly did a strange
thing to her face: it made her look like a frightened
girl.

‘You know,’ he said, watching her with more atten-
tion, ‘Janice ain’t never thought none of these niggers
around here was good enough for her.’

‘I wonder,’ she ventured, ‘if she ever going to find a

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114

man good enough for her. She so proud — ^look like she
just won't let nobody come near her.'

'Yes/ he said, frowning, 'she so proud the Lord
going to bring her low one day. You mark my words.'

'Yes,' she sighed, 'the Word sure do tell us that pride
goes before destruction.'

'And a haughty spirit before a fall. That's the Word.'

'Yes,' and she smiled again, 'ain't no shelter against
the Word of God, is there. Reverend.? You is just got to
be in it, that's all — 'cause every word is true, and the
gates of Hell ain't going to be able to stand against it.'

He smiled, watching her, and felt a great tenderness
fill his heart. ‘You just stay in the Word, little sister.
The windows of Heaven going to open up and pour
down blessings on you till you won't know where to put
them.'

When she smiled now it was with a heightened joy.
‘He done blessed me already, Reverend. He blessed me
when He saved your soul and sent you out to preach His
gospel.'

‘Sister Tanya,' he said, slowly, ‘all that sinful time
— ^was you a-praying for me.?'

Her tone dropped ever so slightly. ‘We sure was,
Reverend. Me and your mother, we was a-praying all
the time.'

And he looked at her, full of gratitude and a sudden,
wild conjecture: he had been real for her, she had
watched him, and prayed for him during all those years
when she, for him, had been nothing but a shadow. And
she was praying for him still; he would have her prayers
to aid him all his life long — ^he saw thivS, now, in her face.
She said nothing, and she did not smile, only looked at
him witli her grave kindness, now a little questioning, a
little shy.

'God bless you, sister,' he said at last.

It was during this dialogue, or hard on the heels of

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it, that the town was subjected to a monster revival
meeting. Evangelists from all the surrounding counties,
from as far south as Florida and as far north as Chicago,
came together in one place to break the bread of life. It
was called the Twenty-Four Elders Revival Meeting,
and it was the great occasion of that summer. For there
were twenty-four of them, each one given his night to
preach — to shine, as it were, before men, and to glorify
his Heavenly Father. Of these twenty-four, all of them
men of great experience and power, and some of them
men of great fame, Abbey, to his astonished pride, was
asked to be one. This was a great, a heavy honour for
one so young in the faith and in years — who had but
only yesterday been lying, vomit-covered, in the gutters
of sin — and Abbey felt his heart shake with fear as this
invitation came to him. Yet he felt that it was the hand
of God tliat had called him out so early to prove himself
before such mighty men.

He was to preach on the twelfth night. It was decided,
in view of his possible failure to attract, to support him
on either side with a nearly equal number of war horses.
He would have, thus, the benefit of the storm they would
certainly have stirred up before him; and should he
fail to add substantially to the eifect they had created,
there would be others coming after him to obliterate
his performance.

But Abbey did not want his performance — the most
important of his career so far, and on which so much
depended — ^to be obliterated; he did not want to be
dismissed as a mere boy who w^as scarcely ready to be
counted in the race, much less to be considered a candi-
date for the prize. He fasted on his knees before God and
did not cease, daily and nightly, to pray that God might
work through him a mighty work and cause all men to
see that, indeed, God's hand was on him, that he was
the Lord's anointed.

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116

Tanya, unasked, fasted with him, and prayed, and
took his best black suit away, so that it would be clean
and mended and freshly pressed for the great day. And
she took it away again, immediately afterwards, so that
it would be no less splendid on the Sunday of the great
dinner that was officially to punctuate the revival. This
Sunday was to be a feast day for everyone, but more
especially for the twenty-four elders, who were, that
day, to be gloriously banqueted at the saints’ expense
and labour.

On the evening when he was to preach, he and
Tanya walked together to the great, lighted, lodge
hall that had but lately held a dance band, and that the
saints had raited for the duration of the revival. The
service had already begun; lights spilled outward into
the streets, music filled the air, and passers-by paused
to listen and to peek in through the half-open doors. He
wanted all of them to enter; he wanted to run through
the streets and drag all sinners in to hear the Word of
God. Yet, as they approached the doors, the fear held in
check so many days and nights rose in him again, and he
thought how he would stand to-night, so high, and all
alone, to vindicate the testimony that had fallen from
his lips, that God had called him to preach.

'Sister Tanya,’ he said, suddenly, as they stood
before the doors, ‘you sit where I can see you?’

'I sure will do that. Reverend,’ she said. ‘You go on
up there. Trust God.’

Without anotlier word he turned, leaving her in the
door, and walked up the long aisle to the pulpit. They
were all there already, big, comfortable, ordained men;
they smiled and nodded as he mounted the pulpit steps ;
and one of them said, nodding towards the congrega-
tion, which was as spirited as any evangelist could wish:
‘Just getting these folks warmed up for you, boy. Want
to see you make them boiler to-night.’

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

He smiled in the instant before he knelt down at his
throne-like chair to pray; and thought again, as he had
been tliinking for eleven nights, that there was about
his elders an ease in the holy place, and a levity, that
made bis soul uneasy. While he sat, waiting, he saw that
Tanya had found a seat in the very front of the con-
gregation, just below the pulpit, and sat with her Bible
folded on her lap.

When, at last, the Scripture lesson read, the testi-
monies in, the songs sung, the collection taken up, he
was introduced — ^by the elder who had preached the
night before — ^and found himself on his feet, moving
towards the pulpit where the great Bible awaited him,
and over that sheer drop the murmuring congregation;
he felt a giddy terror that he stood so high, and with
this, immediately, a pride and joy unspeakable that God
had placed him there.

He did not begin with a 'shout' song, or with a fiery
testimony; but in a dry, matter-of-fact voice, which
trembled only a little, asked them to look with him at
the sixth chapter of Isaiah, and the fifth verse; and he
asked Tanya to read it aloud for him.

And she read, in a voice unaccustomedly strong:
' "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I
am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of hosts.” ’

Silence filled the lodge hall after she had read this
sentence. For a moment Abbey was terrified by the
eyes on him, and by the elders at his back, and could
not think how to go on. Then he looked at Tanya,
and began.

These words had been uttered by the prophet Isaiah,
who had been called the Eagle-eyed because he had
looked down the dark centuries and foreseen the birth
of Christ. It was Isaiah also who had prophesied that a

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man should be as a hiding-place from the wind and
tempest, Isaiah who had described the way of holiness,
saying that the parched ground should become a pool,
and the thirsty land springs of water: the very desert
should rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It was Isaiah
who had prophesied, saying: ‘Unto us a child is bom,
unto us a son is given; and the government shall be
upon His shoulder.’ This was a man whom God had
raised in righteousness, whom God had chosen to do
many mighty works, yet this man, beholding the vision
of God’s glory, had cried out: ‘Woe is me!’

‘Yes!’ cried a woman. 'Tell it!’

‘There is a lesson for us all in this cry of Isaiah’s, a
meaning for us all, a hard saying. If we have never cried
this cry then we have never known salvation; if we fail
to live with this cry, hourly, daily, in the midnight hour,
and in the liglit of the noonday sun, then salvation has
left us and our feet have laid hold on Hell. Yes, bless our
God forever! When we cease to tremble before Him we
have turned out of the way.’

‘Amen!’ cried a voice from far away. ‘Amen! You
preach it, boy!’

He paused for only a moment and mopped his brow,
the heart within him great with fear and trembling, and
with power.

‘For let us remember that the wages of sin is death;
that it is written, and cannot fail, the soul that sinneth,
it shall die. Let us remember that we are bom in sin, in
sin did our mothers conceive us — ^sin reigns in all our
members, sin is the foul heart’s natural liquid, sin looks
out of the eye, amen, and leads to lust, sin is in the hear-
ing of the ear, and leads to folly, sin sits on the tongue,
and leads to murder. Yes! Sin is the only heritage of the
natural man, sin bequeathed us by our natural father,
that fallen Adam, whose apple sickens and will sicken all
generations living, and generations yet unborn! It was

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

sin that drove the son of the morning out of Heaven, sin
that drove Adam out of Eden, sin that caused Cain to
slay his brother, sin that built the tower of Babel, sin
that caused the fire to fall on Sodom — sin, from the very
foundations of the world, living and breathing in the
heart of man, that causes women to bring forth their
children in agony and darkness, bows down the backs of
men with terrible labour, keeps the empty belly empty,
keeps the table bare, sends our children, dressed in rags,
out into the whore houses and dance halls of the world!’

'Amen! AmenI’

‘Ah. Woe is me. Woe is me. Yes, beloved — ^there is
no righteousness in man. All men’s hearts are evil, all
men are liars — only God is true. Hear David’s ciy:
“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer;
my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler,
and the hom of my salvation, and my high tower.’’ Hear
Job, sitting in dust and ashes, his children dead, his
substance gone, surrounded by false comforters: “Yea,
though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.’’ And hear Paul,
who had been Saul, a persecutor of the redeemed, struck
down on the road to Damascus, and going forth to
preach the gospel: “And if ye be Christ’s, then ye are
Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise!’’ ’

‘Oh, yes,’ cried one of the elders, ‘bless our God
forever!’

‘For God had a plan. He would not suffer the soul of
man to die, but had prepared a plan for his salvation. In
the beginning, way back there at the laying of the
foundations of the world, God had a plan, amen!, to
bring all flesh to a knowledge of the truth. In the
beginning was the Word and the Word was with God
and the Word was God — ^yes, and in Him was life,
hallelujah! and this life was the light of men. Dearly
beloved, when God saw how men’s hearts waxed evil,
how they turned aside, each to his own way, how they

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married and gave in marriage, how they feasted on
ungodly meat and drink, and lusted, and blasphemed,
and lifted up their hearts in sinful pride against the Lord
— oh, then, the Son of God, the blessed lamb that taketh
away the sins of the world, this Son of God who was the
Word made flesh, the fulfilment of the promise — oh,
then. He turned to His Father, crying: “Father, prepare
me a body and I’ll go down and redeem sinful man.” ’

'So glad this evening, praise the Lord!’

'Fathers, here to-night, have you ever had a son who
went astray.? Mothers, have you seen your daughters cut
down in the pride and fullness of youth? Has any man
here heard the command which came to Abraham, that
he must make his son a living sacrifice on God’s altar?
Fathers, think of your sons, how you tremble for them,
and try to lead them right, try to feed them so they’ll
grow up strong; think of your love for yow son, and
how any evil that befalls him cracks up the heart, and
think of the pain that God has borne, sending down His
only begotten Son, to dwell among men on the sinful
earth, to be persecuted, to suffer, to bear the cross and
die — not for His own sins, like our natural sons, but for
the sins of all the world, to take away the sins of all the
world — that we might have the joy bells ringing deep
in our hearts to-night!’

'Praise Him!’ cried Tanya, and he had never heard
her voice so loud.

‘Woe is me, for when God struck the sinner, the
sinner’s eyes were opened, and he saw himself in all his
foulness naked before God’s glory. Woe is me! For the
moment of salvation is a blinding light, cracking down
into the heart from Heaven — Heaven so high, and the
sinner so low. IVoe is me! For unless God raised tlie
sinner, he would never rise again!’

‘Yes, Lord! I was tliere!’

How many here to-night had fallen where Isaiah fell?

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How many had cried — as Isaiah cried? How many could
testify, as Isaiah testified, 'Mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of hosts’? Ah, whosoever failed to have
this testimony should never see His face, but should be
told, on that great day: ‘Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity,’ and be hurled for ever into the lake of fire
prepared for Satan and all his angels. Oh, would the
sinner rise to-night, and walk the little mile to his
salvation, here to the mercy seat?

And he waited. Tanya watdhed him with a calm,
strong smile. He looked out over their faces, their faces
all upturned to him. He saw joy in those faces, and holy
excitement, and belief — and they all looked up to him.
Then, far in the back, a boy rose, a tall, dark boy, his
white shirt open at the neck and tom, his trousers dusty
and shabby and held up with an old necktie, and he
looked across the immeasurable, dreadful, breathing
distance up to Abbey, and began to walk down the
long, bright aisle. Someone cried: 'Oh, bless the Lord!’
and tears filled Abbey’s eyes. The boy knelt, sobbing,
at the mercy seat, and the church began to sing.

Then Abbey turned away, knowing that this night
he had run well, and that God had used him. The elders
all were smiling, and one of them took him by the hand,
and said: ‘That was mighty fine, boy. Mighty fine.’

'Then came the Sunday of the spectacular dinner that
was to end the revival — ^for which dinner, Tanya and
all the other women, had baked, roasted, fried, and
boiled for many days beforehand. He jokingly suggested,
to repay her a little for her contention that he was the
best preacher of the revival, that she was the best cook
among the women. She timidly suggested that he was
here at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of
the preachers, but he had not, for a very long time, eaten
another woman’s cooking.

When the Sunday came, and he found himself once

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122

more among the elders, about to go to the table, Abbey
felt a drop in his happy, proud anticipation. He was not
comfortable with these men — ^that was it — it was diffi-
cult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in
the faith. They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly;
they were not like those holy prophets of old who grew
thin and naked in the service of the Lord. These, God’s
ministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was
rich and various. They had been in the field so long that
they did not tremble before God any more. They took
God’s power as their due, as something that made the
more exciting their own assured, special atmosphere.
They each had, it seemed, a bagful of sermons often
preached; and knew, in the careless lifting of an eye,
which sermon to bring to which congregation. Though
they preached with great authority, and brought souls
low before the altar — ^like so many ears of com lopped
off by the hired labourer in his daily work — ^they did not
give God the glory, nor count it as glory at all; they
might as easily have been, Abbey thought, highly paid
circus-performers, each with his own special dazzling
gift. Abbey discovered that they spoke, jokingly, of the
comparative number of souls ea^ of them had saved, as
though they were keeping score in a pool-room. And
this offended him and frightened him. He did not want,
ever, to hold the gift of God so lightly.

They, the ministers, were being served alone in the
upper room of the lodge hall — ^the less-specialized workers
in Christ’s vineyard were being fed at a table down-
stairs — and the women kept climbing up and down the
stairs with loaded platters to see that they ate their fill.
Tanya was one of the serving-women, and though she
did not speak, and despite his discomfort, he nearly burst
eadi time she entered the room, with the pride he knew
she felt to see him sitting there, so serene and manly,
among all these celebrated others, in the severe black

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and white that was his uniform. And if only, he felt, his
mother could be there to see — ^her Abbey, mounted so
high!

But, near the end of the dinner, when the women had
brought up the pies, and coffee, and cream, and when
the talk around the table had become more jolly and
more good-naturedly loose than ever, the door had but
barely closed behind the women when one of the elders,
a heavy, cheery, sandy-haired man, whose face, testify-
ing no doubt to the violence of his beginnings, was
splashed with freckles like dried blood, laughed and said,
referring to Tanya, that there was a holy woman, all
right! She had been choked so early on white men's milk,
and it remained so sour in her belly yet, that she would
never be able, now, to find a nigger who would let her
taste his richer, sweeter substance. Everyone at the
table roared, but Abbey felt his blood turn cold that
God’s ministers should be guilty of such abominable
levity, and that that woman sent by God to comfort
him, and without whose support he might already have
fallen by the wayside, should be held in such dishonour.
They felt, he knew, that among themselves a little rude
laughter could do no harm; they were too deeply rooted
in the faith to be made to fall by such an insignificant tap
from Satan’s hammer. But he stared at their boisterous,
laughing faces, and felt that they would have much to
answer for on the day of judgment, for they were
stumbling-stones in the path of the true believer.

Now the sandy-haired man, struck by Abbey's bitter,
astounded face, bit his laughter off, and said: ‘What's the
matter, son.^ I hope I ain't said nothing to offend you?'

‘She read the Bible for you the night you preached,
didn’t she?’ asked another of the elders, in a conciliatory
tone.

‘That woman,' said Abbey, feeling a roaring in his
head, ‘is my sister in the Lord.’

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124

‘Well, Elder Peters here, he just didn’t know that,’
said someone else. ‘He sure didn’t mean no harm.’

‘Now, you ain’t going to get mad?’ asked Elder
Peters, kindly — ^yet there remained, to Abbey’s fixed
attention, something mocking in his face and voice. ‘You
ain’t going to spoil our little dinner?’

‘I don’t think it’s right,’ said Abbey, ‘to talk evil
about sobody. The Word tell me it ain’t right to hold
nobody up to scorn.’

‘Now you just remember,’ Elder Peters said, as kindly
as before, ‘you’s talking to your elders.’

‘Then it seem to me,’ he said, astonished at his bold-
ness, ‘that if I got to look to you for a example, you
ought to be a. example.’

‘Now, you know,’ said someone else, jovially, ‘you
ain’t fixing to make that woman your wife or nothing
like that — so ain’t no need to get all worked up and
spoil our little gathering. Elder Peters didn’t mean no
harm. If you don’t never say nothing worse than that,
you can count yourself already up there in the Kingdom
with the chosen.’

And at this a small flurry of laughter swept over the
table; they went back to iheir eating and drinking, as
though the matter were finished.

Yet Abbey felt that he had surprised them; he had
foimd them out and they were a little ashamed and con-
founded before his purity. And he understood suddenly
the words of Christ, where it was written: ‘Many are
called but few are diosen.’ Yes, and he looked around
the table, already jovial again, but rather watchful now,
too, of him — and he wondered who, of all these, would
sit in glory at the right hand of the Father?

And then, as he sat there, remembering again Elder
Peters’s boisterous, idle remark, this remark shook
together in him all those shadowy doubts and fears,
those hesitations and tendernesses, which were his in

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125

relation to Tanya, and the sum of which he now
realized was his certainty that there was in that relation-
ship something fore-ordained. It came to him that, as the
Lord had given him Tanya, to help him to stand, so
the Lord had sent him to her, to raise her up, to release
her from that dishonour which was hers in the eyes of
men. And tliis idea filled him, in a moment, wholly, with
the intensity of a vision: What better woman could be
found? Si>e was not like the mincing daughters of Zion!
She was not to be seen prancing lewdly through the
streets, eyes sleepy and mouth half-open with lust, or
to be found mewing under midnight fences, uncovered,
uncovering some black boy's hanging curse! No, their
married bed would be holy, and their children would con-
tinue the line of the faithful, a royal line. And, fired with
this, a baser fire stirred in him also, rousing a slumbering
fear, and he remembered (as the table, the ministers, the
dinner, and the talk all burst in on him again) that Paul
had written: ‘It is better to marry than to bum.’

Yet, he thought, he would hold his peace awhile; he
would seek to know more clearly the Lord’s mind in this
matter. For he remembered how much older she was
than he — eight years ; and he tried to imagine, for the
first time in his life, that dishonour to which Tanya
had been forced so many years ago by wliite men: her
skirts above her head, her secrecy discovered — by white
men. Hpw many? How had she borne it? Had she
screamed? Then he thought (but it did not really trouble
him, for if Christ to save him could be crucified, he, for
Christ’s greater glory, could well be mocked) of what
smiles would be occasioned, what filtliy conjecture,
barely sleeping now, would mushroom upward over-
night like Jonah’s gourd, when people heard tliat he and
Tanya were going to be married. She, who had been
the living proof and witness of their daily shame, and
who had become their holy fool — ^and he, who had been

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126

the untamable despoiler of their daughters, and thief of
their women, their walking prince of darkness! And he
smiled, watching the elders’ well-fed faces and their
grinding jaws — unholy pastors all, unfaithful stewards ;
he prayed that he would never be so fat, or so lascivious,
but that God should work through him a mighty work:
to ring, it might be, through ages yet unborn, as sweet,
solemn, mighty proof of His everlasting love and mercy.
He trembled with the presence that surrounded him
now ; he could scarcely keep his seat. He felt that light
shone down on him from Heaven, on him, the chosen;
he felt as Christ must have felt in the temple, facing His
so utterly confounded elders ; and he lifted up his eyes,
not caring for their glances, or their clearing of throats,
and the silence that abruptly settled over the table,
thinking; ‘Yes. God works in many mysterious ways
His wonders to perform.'

‘Sister Tanya,’ he said, much later that night as he
was walking her to her door, ‘the Lord done laid some-
thing on my heart and I want you to help me to pray
over it and ask Him to lead me right.’

He wondered if she could divine what was in his
mind. In her face there was nothing but patience, as she
turned to him, and said: ‘I’m praying all the time. But
I sure will pray extra hard this week if you want me to.’

And it was during this praying time that Abbey had
a dream.

He could never afterwards remember how the dream
began, what had happened, or who he was with in
the dream; or any details at all. For there were really
two dreams, the first like a dim, blurred, infernal
foreshadowing of the second. Of this first dream, the
overture, he remembered only the climate, which had
been like the climate of his day — ^heavy, with danger
everywhere, Satan at his shoulder trying to bring him
down. That night as he tried to sleep, Satan sent demons

1£7

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

to his bedside — old friends he had had, but whom he
saw no more, and drinking and gambling scenes that he
had thought would never rise to haunt him again, and
women he had known. And the women were so real that
he could nearly touch them; and he heard again their
laughter and their sighs, and felt beneath his hands
again their thighs and breasts. Though he closed his
eyes and called on Jesus — calling over and over again
the name of Jesus — ^his pagan body stiffened and flamed
and the women laughed. And they asked him why he
remained in this narrow bed alone when they waited
for him; why he had bound his body in the armour of
chastity while they sighed and turned on their beds for
him. And he sighed and turned, every movement torture,
each touch of the sheets a lewd caress — and more abomin-
able, then, in his imagination, than any caress he had
received in life. And he clenched his fists and began to
plead the blood, to exorcise the hosts of Hell, but even
this motion was like another motion, and at length he
fell on his knees to pray. By and by he fell into a
troublous sleep — ^it seemed that he was going to be
stoned, and then he was in battle, and then shipwrecked
in the water — and suddenly he awoke, knowing that he
must have dreamed, for his loins were covered with his
own white seed.

Then, trembling, he got out of bed again and washed
himself. It was a warning, and he knew it, and he seemed
to see before him the pit dug by Satan — deep and silent,
waiting for him. He thought of the dog returned to his
vomit, of the man who had been cleansed, and who fell,
and who was possessed by seven devils, the last state of
that man being worse than his first. And he thought at
last, kneeling by his cold bedside, but with the heart
within him almost too sick for prayer, of Onan, who had
scattered his seed on the ground rather than continue
his brother's line. Out of the bouse of Davids the son of

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128

Abraham. And he called again on the name of Jesus;
and fell asleep again.

And he dreamed that he was in a cold, high place, like
a mountain. He was high, so high that he walked in mist
and cloud, but before him stretched the blank ascent,
the steep side of the mountain. A voice said: ‘Come
higher.’ And he began to climb. After a little, clinging
to the rock, he found himself with only clouds above
him and mist below — and he knew that beyond the wall
of mist reigned fire. His feet began to slip ; pebbles and
rocks began ringing beneath his feet; he looked up,
trembling, in terror of death, and he cried: ‘Lord, I
can’t come no higher.’ But the voice repeated after a
moment, quiet and strong and impossible to deny:
‘Come on, son. Come higher.' Then he knew that, if he
would not fall to death, he must obey the voice. He
began to climb again, and his feet slipped again; and
when he thought that he would fall there suddenly
appeared before him green, spiny leaves ; and he caught
on to the leaves, which hurt his hand, and the voice said
again: ‘Come higher.’ And so Abbey climbed, the wind
blowing through his clothes, and his feet began to bleed,
and his hands were bleeding; and still he climbed, and
he felt that his back was breaking; and his legs were
growing numb and they were trembling, and he could
not control them; and still before him there was only
cloud, and below him the roaring mist. How long he
climbed in this dream of his, he did not know. Then,
of a sudden, the clouds parted, he felt the sun like a
crown of glory, and he was in a peaceful field.

He began to walk. Now he was wearing long, white
robes. He heard singing: ‘Walked in the valley, it
looked so fine, I asked my Lord was all this mine.’ But
he knew that it was his. A voice said: ‘Follow me.’ And
he walked, and he was again on the edge of a high place,
but bathed and blessed and glorified in the blazing sun.

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

SO that he stood like God, all golden, and looked down,
down, at the long race he had run, at the steep side of
the mountain he had climbed. And now up this mountain,
in white robes, singing, the elect came. 'Touch them
not,' the voice said, 'my seal is on them.' And Abbey
turned and fell on his face, and the voice said again:
'So shall thy seed be.' Then he awoke. Morning was at
the wdndow, and he blessed God, lying on his bed, tears
running down his face, for the vision he had seen.

When he went to Tanya and told her that the Lord
had led him to ask her to be his wife, his holy helpmeet,
she looked at him for a moment in what seemed to be
speechless terror. He had never seen such an expression
on her face before. For the first time since he had known
her he touched her, putting his hands on her shoulders,
thinking what untender touch these shoulders had once
known, and how she would be raised now in honour.
And he asked: 'You ain't scared, is you. Sister Tanya.?
You ain't got nothing to be scared of?'

Then she tried to smile, and began, instead, to weep.
With a movement at once violent and hesitant, she let
her head fall forward on his breast.

'No,' she brought out, muffled in his arms, 'I ain't
scared.' But she did not stop weeping.

He stroked her coarse, bowed head. 'God bless you,
little girl,' he said, helplessly. 'God bless you.'

The silence in the church ended when Brother Cayden,
kneeling near the piano, cried out and fell backward
under the power of the Lord. Immediately, two or three
others cried out also, and a wind, a foretaste of that great
downpouring they awaited, swept the church. With this
cry, and the echoing cries, the tarry service moved from
its first stage of steady murmuring, broken by moans
and now and again an isolated cry, into tliat stage of
tears and groaning, of callmg aloud and singing, which

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN iSO

was like the labour of a woman about to be delivered of
her child. On this threshing-floor the child was the soul
that struggled to the light, and it was the church that
was in labour, that did not cease to push and pull, calling
on the name of Jesus. When Brother Cayden cried out
and fell back, crying. Sister Randy rose and stood
over him to help him to pray. For the rebirth of the soul
was perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the
hand of Satan.

Sister Price began to sing:

*I want to go through^ hardy
I want to go through.

Take me tbroughy Lardy
Take me through,*

A lone voice, joined by others, among them, waver-
ingly, the voice of John. Abbey recognized the voice.
When Cayden cried, Abbey was brought back in an
instant to this present time and place, fearing that it
was John he heard, that it was John who lay astonished
beneath the power of the Lord. He nearly looked up and
turned around; but then he knew it was Cayden, and his
fear departed.

'Have your wajy Lardy
Have your way*

Neither of his sons was here to-night, had ever cried
on the threshing-floor. One had been dead for nearly
fourteen years — dead in a Chicago tavern, a knife kick-
ing in his throat. And the living son, the child, Ximena, was
headlong already, and hardhearted: he lay at home,
silent now, and bitter against his father, a bandage on
his forehead. They were not here. Only the son of the
bond-woman stood where the rightful heir should stand.

Til obey. Lardy
ril obey,*

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

He felt that he should rise and pray over Cayden —
when a man cried out, it was right that another man
should be his intercessor. And he thought how gladly
he would rise, and with what power he would pray if it
were only his son who lay crying on the floor to-night.
But he remained, bowed low, on his knees. Each cry
that came from the fallen Cayden tore through him. He
heard the cry of his dead son and his living son ; one
who cried in the pit forever, beyond the hope of mercy;
and one who would cry one day when mercy would be
finished.

Now Abbey tried, with the testimony he had held,
with all the signs of His favour that God had shown him,
to put himself between the living son and the darkness
that waited to devour him. The living son had cursed
him — bastard — ^and his heart was far from God; it could
not be that the curse he had heard to-night falling from
Ximena’s lips was but the curse repeated, so far, so long
resounding, that the mother of his first son had uttered
as she thrust the infant from her — ^herself immediately
departing, this curse yet on her lips, into eternity. Her
curse had devoured the first Ximenaal ; he had been begotten
in sin, and he had perished in sin; it was God’s punish-
ment, and it was just. But Ximena had been begotten in the
marriage bed, the bed that Paul described as holy, and
it was to him the Kingdom had been promised. It could
not be that the living son was cursed for the sins of his
father; for God, after much groaning, after many years,
had given him a sign to make him know he was forgiven.
And yet, it came to him that this living son, this head-
long, living Ximenaal, might be cursed for the sin of his
mother, whose sin had never been truly repented; for
that the living proof of her sin, he who knelt to-night, a
very interloper among the saints, stood between her
soul and God.

Yes, she was hardhearted, stifF-necked, and hard to

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132

bend, this Elizabeth whom he had married: she had not
seemed so, years ago, vAxen the Lord had moved in his
heart to lift her up, she and her nameless child, who bore
his name to-day. And he was exactly like her, silent,
watching, full of evil pride — ^they would be cast out, one
day, into the outer darkness.

Once he had asked Elizabeth — ^they had been married
a long while, Ximena was a baby, and she was big with
Sarah — if she had truly repented of her sin.

And she had looked at him, and said: 'You done asked
me that before. And I done told you, yes.'

But he did not believe her; and he asked: 'You mean
you wouldn't do it again? If you was back there, where
you was, like you was then — ^would you do it again?'

She looked down; then, with impatience, she looked
into his eyes again: 'Well, if I was back there, Abbey,
and I was the same girl! . . .'

There was a long silence, while she waited. Then,
almost unwillingly, he asked: 'And . . . would you let
him be bom again?'

She answered, steadily: 'I know you ain't asking me
to say I'm sorry I brought Johnny in the world. Is you?'
And when he did not answer: 'And listen, Abbey. I
ain't going to let you make me sorry. Not you, nor noth-
ing, nor nobody in tliis world. We is got tzvo children,
Abbey, and soon we's going to have three \ and I ain't
going to make no difference amongst them and you ain't
going to make none neither.'

But how could tliere not be a difference between the
son of a weak, proud woman and some careless boy, and
the son that God had promised him, who would carry
down the joyful line his fatlier's name, and who would
work until the day of the second coming to bring about
His Father's Kingdom? For God had promised him tliis
so many years ago, and he had lived only for this —
forsaking the world and its pleasures, and the joys of his

ISS

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

own life, he had tarried all these bitter years to see the
promise of the Lord fulfilled. He had let Esther die, and
Ximenaal had died, and Tanya had died barren — but he
had held on to the promise; he had walked before God
in true repentance and waited on the promise. And the
time of fulfilment was surely at hand. He had only to
possess his soul in patience and wait before the Lord.

And his mind, dwelling bitterly on Elizabeth, yet
moved backwards to consider once again Esther, who
had been the mother of the first Ximenaal. And he saw her,
with the dumb, pale, startled ghosts of joy and desire
hovering in him yet, a thin, vivid, dark-eyed girl, witli
something Indian in her cheekbones and her carriage
and her hair; looking at him with that look in which
were blended mockery, affection, desire, impatience, and
scorn; dressed in the flame-like colours that, in fact, she
had seldom worn, but that he always thought of her as
wearing. She w'as associated in his mind with flame;
with fiery leaves in the autumn, and tlie fiery sun going
down in tlie evening over the farthest hill, and with the
eternal fires of Hell.

She had come to town very shortly after he and
Tanya were married, and she took a job as serving-
girl with the same white family for which he worked.
He saw her, therefore, all the time. Young men were
always waiting for her at the back door when her work
was done: Abbey used to watch her walk off in the dusk
on a young man's arm, and their voices and their
laughter floated back to him like a mockery of his con-
dition. He knew that she lived with her mother and
stepfather, sinful people, given to drinking and gambling
and ragtime music and the blues, who never, except at
Christmas-time or Easter, appeared in church.

He began to pity her, and one day when he was to
preach in the evening he invited her to come to church.
This invitation marked the first time she ever really

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looked at him — he realized it then, and was to remember
that look for many days and nights.

‘You really going to preach to-night? A pretty man
like you?’

‘With the Lord's help,’ he said, with a gravity so
extreme that it was almost hostility. At the same time,
at her look and voice something leaped in him that he
thought had been put down for ever.

‘Well, I be mighty delighted,’ she said after a moment,
seeming to have briefly regretted the impetuosity that
had led her to call him a ‘pretty’ man.

‘Can you make yourself free to come to-night?’ he
could not prevent himself from asking.

And she grinned, delighted at what she took to be an
oblique compliment. ‘W'ell, I don’t know. Reverend.
But I’ll try.’

When the day was ended, she disappeared on the arm
of yet another boy. He did not believe that she would
come. And this so strangely depressed him tliat he could
scarcely speak to Tanya at dinner, and they walked
all the way to church in silence. Tanya watched him
out of the comer of her eye, as was her sUent and
exasperating habit. It was her way of conveying respect
for his calling; and she would have said, had it ever
occurred to him to tax her with it, that she did not wish
to distract him when the Lord had laid something on his
heart. To-night, since he was to preach, it could not be
doubted that the Lord was speaking more than usual;
and it behoved her, therefore, as the helpmeet of the
Lord’s anointed, as the caretaker, so to speak, of the
sanctified temple, to keep silence. Yet, in fact, he would
have liked to talk. He would have liked to ask her — so
many things ; to have listened to her voice, and watched
her face while she told him of her day, her hopes, her
doubts, her life, and her love. But he and Deborali never
talked. The voice to which he listened in his mind, and

1S5

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

the face he watched with so much love and care, belonged
not to Tanya, but to Esther. Again he felt this strange
chill in him, implying disaster and delight: and then he
hoped that she would not come, that something would
happen that would make it impossible for him ever to
see her again.

She came, however; late, just before the pastor was
about to present the speaker of the hour to die con-
gregation. She did not come alone, but had brought her
mother with her — ^promising what spectacle Abbey
could not imagine, nor could he imagine how she had
escaped her young man of the evening. But she had ; she
was here; she preferred, then, to hear him preach the
gospel than to linger with others in carnal delight. She
was here, and his heart was uplifted ; something exploded
in his heart when the opening door revealed her, smiling
faintly and with eyes downcast, moving directly to a seat
in the back of the congregation. She did not look at him
at all, and yet he knew immediately that she had seen
him. And in a moment he imagined her, because of the
sermon that he would preach, on her knees before die
altar, and then her mother and that gambling, loud-
talking stepfather of hers, brought by Esther into the
service of the Lord. Heads turned when they came in,
and a murmur, barely audible, of astonishment and
pleasure swept over the church. Here were sinners,
come to hear the Word of God.

And, indeed, from their apparel the sinfulness of their
lives was evident: Esther wore a blue hat, trimmed with
many ribbons, and a heavy, wine-red dress; and her
mother, massive, and darker than Esther, wore great
gold ear-rings in her pierced ears and had that air,
vaguely disreputable, and hurriedly dressed, of women
he had known in sporting-houses. They sat in the back,
rigid and uncomfortable, like sisters of sin, like a living
defiance of the drab sanctity of the saints. Tanya

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136

turned to look at them, and in that moment Abbey
saw, as though for the first time, how black and how
bony was this wife of his, and how wholly undesirable.
Tanya looked at him with a watchful silence in her
look; he felt the hand that held his Bible begin to sweat
and tremble; he thought of the joyless groaning of their
marriage bed; and he hated her.

Then the pastor rose. While he spoke, Abbey closed
his eyes. He felt the words that he was about to speak
fly from him; he felt the power of God go out of him.
Then the voice of the pastor ceased, and Abbey opened
his eyes in the silence and found that all eyes were on
him. And so he rose and faced tlie congregation.

‘Dearly beloved in the Lord,’ he began — but her
eyes were on him, that strange, that mocking light —
'let us bow our heads in prayer.’ And he closed his eyes
and bowed his head.

His later memory of this sermon was like the memory
of a storm. From the moment that he raised his head
and looked out over their faces again, his tongue was
loosed and he was filled with the power of the Holy
Ghost. Yes, the power of the Lord was on him that
night, and he preached a sermon that was remembered
in camp-meetings and in cabins, and that set a standard
for visiting evangelists for a generation to come. Years
later, when Esther and Ximenaal and Tanya were dead,
and Abbey was leaving tlie South, people remembered
this sermon and the gaunt, possessed young man who
had preached it.

He took his text from the eighteenth chapter of the
second book of Samuel, the story of the young Ahimaaz
who ran too soon to bring tlie tidings of battle to King
David. For, before he ran, he was asked by Joab:
‘Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing that thou hast
no tidings ready?’ And when Ahimaaz readied King
David, who yearned to know the fate of his headlong

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son, Absalom, he could only say: 'I saw a great tumult
but I knew not what it was/

And this was the story of all those who failed to wait
on the counsel of the Lord ; who made themselves wise
in their own conceit and ran before they had the tidings
ready. This was the story of innumerable shepherds who
failed, in their arrogance, to feed the hungry sheep; of
many a father and mother who gave to their children not
bread but a stone, who offered not the truth of God but
the tinsel of this world. This was not belief but unbelief,
not humility but pride: there worked in the heart of
such a one the same desire that had hurled the son of
the morning from Heaven to the deptlis of Hell, the
desire to overturn the appointed times of God, and to
wrest from Him who held all power in His hands power
not meet for men. Oh, yes, they had seen it, each brother
and sister beneath the sound of his voice to-night, and
they had seen the destruction caused by a so lamentable
unripeness! Babies, bawling, fatherless, for bread, and
girls in the gutters, sick with sin, and young men bleed-
ing in the frost}^ fields. Yes, and there were those who
cried — they had heard it, in tlieir homes, and on tlie
street comer, and from the very pulpit — that tliey should
wait no longer, despised and rejected and spat on as they
were, but should rise to-day and bring down the mighty,
establishing the vengeance that God had claimed. But
blood cried out for blood, as the blood of Abel cried out
from the ground. Not for nothing was it written: ‘He
that believeth will not make haste.' Oh, but sometimes
the road was rocky. Did they think sometimes that God
forgot.?^ Oh, fall on your Imees and pray for patience ; fall
on your knees and pray for faith; fall on your knees and
pray for overcoming power to be ready on the day of His
soon appearing to receive the crown of life. For God did
not forget, no word proceeding from his mouth could
fail. Better to wait, like Job, through all tlie days of our

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appointed time until our change comes than to rise up,
imready, before God speaks. For if we but wait humbly
before Him, He will speak glad tidings to our souls ; if
we but wait our change will come, and that in an instant,
in the twinkling of an eye — ^we will be changed one
day from this corruption into incorruptibility forever,
caught up with Him beyond the clouds. And these are
the tidings we now must bear to all the nations: another
son of David has hung from a tree, and he who knows
not the meaning of that tumult shall be damned forever
in Hell! Brother, sister, you may run, but the day is
coming when the King will ask: 'What are the tidings
that you bear?’ And what will you say on that great day
if you know not of the death of His Son?

‘Is there a soul here to-night’ — ^tears were on his face
and he stood above them with arms outstretched — ‘who
knows not the meaning of that tumult? Is there a soul
here to-night who wants to talk to Jesus? Who wants to
wait before the Lord, amen, until He speaks? Until He
makes to ring in your soul, amen, the glad tidings of
salvation? Oh, brothers and sisters’ — ^and still she did
not rise ; but only watched him from far away — ‘the time
is running out. One day He’s coming back to judge the
nations, to take His children, hallelujah, to Aeir rest.
They tell me, bless God, that two shall be working in
the fields, and one shall be taken and the other left. Two
shall be lying, amen, in bed, and one shall be taken and
the other left. He’s coming, beloved, like a thief in the
night, and no man knows the hour of His coming. It’s
going to be too late then to cry: “Lord, have mercy.’’
Now is the time to make yourself ready, now, amen,
to-night, before His altar. Won’t somebody come to-
night? Won’t somebody say No to Satan and give their
life to the Lord?’

But she did not rise, only looked at him and looked
about her with a bright, pleased interest, as though she

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were at a theatre and were waiting to see what improb-
able delights would next be offered her. He somehow
knew that she would never rise and walk that long aisle
to the mercy seat. And this filled him for a moment with a
holy rage — ^that she stood, so brazen, in the congregation
of the righteous and refused to bow her head.

He said amen, and blessed them, and turned away,
and immediately the congregation began to sing. Now,
again, he felt drained and sick; he was soaking wet and
he smelled the odour of his own body. Tanya, singing
and beating her tambourine in the front of the congrega-
tion, watched him. He felt suddenly like a helpless child.
He wanted to hide himself for ever and never cease from
crying.

Esther and her mother left during the singing — they
had come, then, only to hear him preach. He could not
imagine what they were saying or thinking now. And
he thought of to-morrow, when he would have to see
her again.

'Ain’t that the little girl what works at the same place
with you.?’ Tanya asked him on the way home.

‘Yes,’ he said. Now he did not feel like talking. He
wanted to get home and take his wet clothes off and
sleep.

‘She mighty pretty,’ said Tanya. ‘I ain’t never seen
her in church before.’

He said nothing.

‘Was it you invited her to come out to-night?’ she
asked, after a bit.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think the Word of God could
do her no harm.’

Tanya laughed. ‘Don’t look like it, does it? She
walked out just as cool and sinful as she come in — ^she
and that mother of her’n. And you preached a mighty
fine sermon. Look like she just ain’t thinking about the
Lord.’

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140

'Folks ain't got no time for the Lord/ he said, 'one
day He ain't going to have no time for them*

When they got home she offered to make him a hot
cup of tea, but he refused. He undressed in silence —
which she again respected — and got into bed. At length,
she lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening
which must be picked up once more in the morning.

The next morning Esther said to him, coming into
the yard while he was chopping wood for the woodpile:
'Good morning, Reverend. I sure didn't look to see you
to-day. I reckoned you'd be all wore out after that
sermon — does you alwa5^s preach as hard as that?'

He paused briefly with the axe in the air; then he
turned again, bringing the axe down. 'I preach the way
the Lord leads me, sister,' he said.

She retreated a little in the face of his hostility.
'Well,' she said in a different tone, 'it was a mighty fine
sermon. Me and Mama was mighty glad w*e come out.'

He left the axe buried in the wood, for splinters flew
and he was afraid one might strike her. 'You and your
ma — you don't get out to service much?'

'Lord, Reverend,' she wailed, 'look like we just ain't
got the time. Mama work so hard all week she just want
to lie up in bed on Sunday. And she like me,' she added
quickly, after a pause, 'to keep her company.'

Then he looked directly at her. 'Does you really mean
to say, sister, that you ain't got no time for the Lord?
No time at all?'

'Reverend,' she said, looking at him with the daring
defiance of a threatened child, 'I does my best. I really
does. Ain't everybody got to have the same spirit.'

And he laughed shortly. 'Ain't but one spirit you got
to have — and tliat's the spirit of the Lord,'

'Well,' she said, 'that spirit ain't got to work in every-
body the same, seems to me,'

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Tlien they were silent, each quite vividly aware that
they had reached an impasse. After a moment he turned
and picked up the axe again. ‘Well, you go along, sister.
I’m praying for you.’

Something struggled in her face then, as she stood for
vet a moment more and watched him — a mixture of fury
md amusement; it reminded him of tlie expression he
had often found on the face of Janice. And it was like
the look on the faces of the elders during that far-off and
so momentous Sunday dinner. He was too angry, while
she thus stared at him, to trust himself to .speak. Then
she shrugged, the mildest, most indifferent gesture he
had ever seen, and smiled. ‘I’m mighty obliged to you.
Reverend,’ she said. Then she went into the house.

This was the first time they spoke in tlie yard, a frosty
morning. There was nothing in that morning to warn
him of what was comhig. She offended him because she
was so brazen in her sins, that was all; and he prayed
for her soul, which would one day find itself naked and
speechless before the judgment bar of Christ. Later, she
told him that he had pursued her, that his eyes had left
her not a moment’s peace. ‘That weren’t no reverend
looking at me them mornings in tire yard,’ she had said.
‘You looked at me just like a man, like a man what
hadn’t never heard of the Holy Ghost.’ But he believed
that the Lord had laid her like a burden on his heart.
And he carried her in his heart; he prayed for her and
exhorted her, while there was yet time to bring her soul
to God.

But she had not been thinking about God; though she
accused him of lusting after her in his heart, it was she
who, when she looked at him, insisted on seeing not
God’s minister but a ‘pretty man.’ On her tongue the
very title of his calling became a mark of disrespect.

It began on an evening when he was to preach, when
they were alone in the house. The people of the house

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142

had gone away for three days to visit relatives ; Abbey
had driven them to the railroad station after supper,
leaving Esther clearing up the kitchen. When he came
back to lock up the house, he found Esther waiting for
him on the porch steps.

1 didn't think Td better leave,' she said, ‘till you got
back. I ain't got no keys to lock up this house, and white
folks is so funny. I don't want them blaming me if
something's missing.'

He realized immediately tliat she had been drinking —
she was not drunk, but there was whisky on her breath.
And this, for some reason, caused a strange excitement
to stir in him.

'That was mighty thoughtful, sister,' he said, staring
hard at her to let her know that he knew she had been
drinking. She met his stare with a calm, bold smile, a
smile mocking innocence, so that her face was filled with
the age-old cunning of a woman.

He started past her into the house; then, without
thinking, and without looking at her, he offered: 'If you
ain't got nobody waiting for you I'll walk you a piece on
your way home.'

'No,' she said, 'ain't nobody waiting for me this
evening, Reverend, thank you kindly.'

He regretted making his offer almost as soon as it was
made; he had been certain that she was about to rush
off to some trysting-place or other, and he had merely
wished to be corroborated. Now, as they walked together
into the house, he became terribly aware of her youthful,
vivid presence, of her lost condition; and at the same
time the emptiness and silence of the house v^med him
that he was alone with danger.

'You just sit down in the kitchen,' he said. 'I be as
quick as I can.'

But his speech was harsh in his own ears, and he could
not face her eyes. She sat down at the table, smiling, to

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143

wait for him. He tried to do eveiything as quickly as
possible, the shuttering of windows, and locking of
doors. But his fingers were stiff and slippery; his heart
was in his mouth. And it came to him that he was barring
every exit to this house, except the exit through the
kitdien, where Esther sat.

When he entered the kitchen again she had moved,
and now stood in the doorway, looking out, holding a
glass in her hand. It was a moment before he realized that
she had helped herself to more of the master’s whisky.

She turned at his step, and he stared at her, and at
the glass she held, with wrath and horror.

‘I just thought,’ she said, almost entirely imabashed,
‘that I’d have me a little drink while I was waiting.
Reverend. But I didn’t figure on you catching me at it.’

She swallowed the last of her drink and moved to the
sink to rinse out the glass. She gave a little, ladylike
cough as she swallowed — he could not be sure whether
this cough was genuine or in mockery of him.

. ‘I reckon,’ he said, malevolently, ‘you is just made up
your mind to serve Satan all your days.’

‘I done made up my mind,’ she answered, ‘to live all
I can while I can. If that’s a sin, well. I’ll go on down to
Hell and pay for it. But don’t you fret. Reverend — ^it
ain’t your soul.’

He moved and stood next to her, full of anger.

‘Girl,’ he said, ‘don’t you believe God? God don’t
lie — and He says, plain Jis I’m talking to you, the soul
that sinneth, it shall die.’

She sighed. ‘Reverend, look like to me you’d get tired,
all the time beating on poor little Esther, trying to make
Esther something she ain’t. I just don’t feel it here,’ she
said, and put one hand on her breast. ‘Now, what you
going to do? Don’t you know I’m a woman grown, and
I ain’t fixing to change?’

He wanted to weep. He wanted to reach out and hold

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144

her back from the destruction she so ardently pursued —
to fold her in him, and hide her until the wrath of God
was past. At the same time there rose to his nostrils
again her whisky-laden breath, and beneath this, faint,
intimate, the odour of her body. And he began to feel
like a man in a nightmare, who stands in the path of
oncoming destruction, who must move quickly — but who
cannot move, ‘J^^sus, Jesus, Jesus,' rang over and over
again in his mind, like a bell — as he moved closer to
her, undone by her breath, and her wide, angry, mocking
eyes.

'You know right well,' he whispered, shaking with
fury, 'you Imow right well why I keep after you — ^why ^
I keep after you like I do.'

'No, I don't,' she answered, refusing, with a small
shake of the head, to credit his intensity. 'I sure don't
know wh^ou can't let Esther have her little whisky,
and have her littJe ways without all the time trying to
make her miserable.'

He sighed with exasperation, feeling himself begin
to tremble. 'I just don't want to see you go down, girl,

I don't want 3^ou to wake up one fine morning sorry
for all the sin you done, old, and all by yourself, with
nobody to respect you.'

But he heard himself speaking, and it made him
ashamed. He wanted tojiave done with talking and
leave this house — in a moment they would leave, and
the nightmare would be over.

'Reverend,' she said, ‘I ain't done nothing that I'm
ashamed of, and I hope I don't do nothing I'm ashamed
of, ever.'

At the word 'Reverend,' he wanted to strike her; he
reached out instead and took both her hands in his. And
now they looked directly at each other. There was
surprise in her look, and a guarded triumph; he was
aware that their bodies were nearly touching and that

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he should move away. But he did not move — ^he could
not move.

'But I can’t help it,’ she said, after a moment, mali-
ciously teasing, ‘if you done things that you’s ashamed
of, Reverend.’

He held on to her hands as though he were in the
middle of the sea and her hands were the lifeline that
would drag him in to shore. 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ he
prayed, ‘oh, Jesus, Jesus. Help me to stand.’ He thought
that he was pulling back against her hands — but he was
pulling her to him. And he saw in her eyes now a look
that he had not seen for many a long day and night, a
look that was never in Tanya’s eyes.

‘Yes, you know,’ he said, ‘why I’m all the time worry-
ing about you — why I’m all the time miserable when I
look at you.’

‘But you ain’t never told me none of this,’ she said.

One hand moved to her waist, and lingered there. The
tips of her breasts touched his coat, burning in like acid
and closing his throat. Soon it would be too late; he
wanted it to be too late. That river, his infernal need,
rose, flooded, sweeping him forward as though he were
a long-drowned corpse.

‘You know,’ he whispered, and touched her breasts
and buried his face in her neck.

So he had fallen; for the first time since his conversion,
for the last time in his life. Fallen: he and Esther in the
white folks’ kitchen, the light burning, the door half-
open, grappling and burning beside the sink. Fallen
indeed: time was no more, and sin, death. Hell, the
judgment were blotted out. There was only Estlier, who
contained in her narrow body all mystery and all passion,
and who answered all his need. Time, snarling so swiftly
past, had caused him to forget the clumsiness, and sweat,
and dirt of their first coupling; how his shaking hands
undressed her, standing where they stood, how her dress

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146

fell at length like a snare about her feet; how his hands
tore at her undergarments so that the naked, vivid flesh
might meet his hands ; how she protested: ‘Not here, not
here’ ; how he worried, in some buried part of his mind,
about the open door, about the sermon he was to preach,
about his life, about Tanya; how the table got in
their way, how his collar, imtil her fingers loosened it,
threatened to choke him; how they found themselves
on the floor at last, sweating and groaning and locked
together; locked away from all others, all heavenly or
human help. Only they could help each other. They were
alone in the world.

Had Ximenaal, his son, been conceived that night? Or the
next night? Or the next? It had lasted only nine days.
Then he had come to his senses — ^after nine days God
gave him the power to tell her this thing could not be.

She took his decision with the same casualness, the
same near-amusement, with which she had taken his fall.
He imderstood about Esther, during those nine days:
that she considered his fear and trembling fanciful and
childish, a way of making life more complicated than it
need be. She did not think life was like that; she wanted
life to be simple. He understood that she was sorry for
him because he was always worried. Sometimes, when
they were together, he tried to tell her of what he felt,
how the Lord would punish them for the sin they were
committing. She would not listen: ‘You ain’t in the pulpit
now. You’s here with me. Even a Reverend’s got the
right to take oflFhis clothes sometime and act like a natural
man.’ When he told her that he would not see her any
more, she was angry, but she did not argue. Her eyes
told him that she thought he was a fool; but that, even
had she loved him ever so desperately, it would have
been beneath her to argue about his decision — z. large
part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to
want what she could not have with ease.

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So it was over. Though it left him bruised and
frightened, though he had lost tlie respect of Esther for
ever (he prayed that she would never again come to hear
him preach) he thanked God that it had been no worse.
He prayed that God would forgive him, and never let
him fall again.

Yet what frightened him, and kept him more than
ever on his knees, was the knowledge that, once having
fallen, nothing would be easier than to fall again. Having
possessed Esther, the carnal man awoke, seeing the possi-
bility of conquest everywhere. He was made to remember
that though he was holy he was yet young ; the women
who had wanted him wanted him still; he had but to
stretch out his hand and take what he wanted — even
sisters in the church. He struggled to wear out his
visions in the marriage bed, he struggled to awaken
Tanya, for whom daily his hatred grew.

He and Esther spoke in the yard again as spring was
just beginning. The groimd was still with melting snow
and ice ; the sun was everywhere ; the naked branches of
the trees seemed to be lifting themselves upward toward
the pale sun, impatient to put forth leaf and flower. He
was standing at the well in his shirt-sleeves, singing
softly to himself — upraising God for the dangers he had
passed. She came down the porch steps into the yard,
and though he heard the soft step, and knew that it was
she, it was a moment before he turned round.

He expected her to come up to him and ask for his
help in something she was doing in the house. When she
did not speak, he turned around. She was wearing a light,
cotton dress of light-brown and dark-brown squares, and
her hair was braided tightly all around her head. She
looked like a little girl, and he almost smiled. Then:
'What's the matter?’ he asked her; and felt the heart
within him sicken.

‘Abbey,’ she said, ‘I going to have a baby.’

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148

He stared at her; she began to cry. He put the two
pails of water carefully on Ae ground. She put out her
hands to reach him, but he moved away.

‘Girl, stop that bellering. Wliat you talking about?'

But, having allowed her tears to begin, she could not
stop them at once. She continued to cry, weaving a little
where she stood, and with her hands to her face. He
looked in panic around the yard and toward the house.
‘Stop that,' he cried again, not daring here and now to
touch her, ‘and tell me what's the matter!'

‘I told you,' she moaned, ‘I done told you. I going to
have a bab}^' She looked at him, her face broken up and
the hot tears falling. ‘It's the Lord's truth. I ain't making
up no story, it's tlie Lord's truth.'

He could not take his eyes from her, though he hated
what he saw. ‘And when you done find this out?'

‘Not so long. I thought maybe I was mistook. But
ain't no mistake. Abbey, what we going to do?'

Then, as she watched his face, her tears began again.

‘Hush,' he said, with a calm that astonished him, ‘we
going to do something, just you be quiet.'

‘What we going to do, Abbey? Tell me — what you
a-fixing in your mind to do?'

‘You go on back in the house. Ain't no way for us to
talk now.'

‘Abbey '

‘Go on in the house, girl. Go on!' And when she did
not move, but continued to stare at him: ‘We going to
talk about it icnnight. We going to get to the bottom of
this thing to-nightl'

She turned from him and started up the porch steps.
‘And dry yo\xr faccy he whispered, She bent over, lifting
the front of her dress to -dry her eyes, and stood so for a
moment on the bottom step while he watched her. Then
she straightened and walked into the house, not looking
back.

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She was going to have his baby — his baby? While
Tanya, despite their groaning, despite the humility
with which she endured his body, yet failed to be
quickened by any coming life. It was in the womb of
Esther, who was no better than a harlot, that the seed
of the prophet would be nourished.

And he moved from the well, picking up, like a man in
a trance, the heavy pails of water. He moved toward the
house, which now — ^high, gleaming roof, and spun-gold
window — seemed to watch him and to listen; the very
sun above his head and the earth beneath his feet had
ceased their turning; the water, like a million warning
voices, lapped in the buckets he carried on each side; and
his mother, beneath the startled earth on which he moved,
lifted up, endlessly, her eyes.

They talked in the kitchen as she was cleaning up.

^How come you' — it was his first question — 'to be so
sure this here's my baby?'

She was not crying now. 'Don't you start a-talking
that way,' she said. 'Esther ain't in the habit of lying to
nobody, and I ain't gone with so many men that I'm
subject to get my mind confused.'

She was very cold and deliberate, and moved about
the kitchen with a furious concentration on her tasks,
scarcely looking at him.

He did not know what to say, how to reach her.

'You tell your mother yet?' he asked, after a pause.
'You been to see a doctor? How come you to be so
sure?'

She sighed sharply. 'No, I ain't told my mother, I
ain't crazy. I ain't told nobody except you.'

'How come you to be so sure?' he repeated. 'If you
ain't seen no doctor?'

'What doctor in this town you want me to go see? I
go to see a doctor, I might as well get up and shout it
from the housetops. No, I ain't seen no doctor, and I

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ain’t fixing to see one in a hurry. I don’t need no doctor
to tell me what’s happening in my belly.’

‘And how long you been knowing about this?’

‘I been knowing this for maybe a month — ^maybe six
weeks now.’

‘Six weeks? Why ain’t you opened your mouth before?’

‘Because I wasn’t sure. I thought I’d wait and make
sure. I didn’t see no need for getting all up in the air
before I knew. I didn't want to get you all upset and
scared and evil, like you is now, if it weren’t no need.’
She paused, watching him. Then: ‘And you said this
morning we was going to do something. What we
going to do? That’s what we got to figure out now,
Abbey.’

‘What we going to do?’ he repeated at last; and felt
that the sustaining life had gone out of him. He sat down
at the kitdien table and looked at the whirling pattern
on the floor.

But the life had not gone out of her ; she came to where
he sat, speaking softly, with bitter eyes. ‘You soimd
mighty strange to me,’ she said. ‘Don’t look to me like
you thinking of nothing but how you can get shut of this
— and me, too — quick as you know how. It wasn’t like
that always, was it. Reverend? Once upon a time you
couldn’t think of nothing and nobody but me. What you
thinking about to-night? I be damned if I think it’s me
you thinking of.’

‘Girl,’ he said, wearily, ‘don’t talk like you ain’t got

good sense. You know I got a wife to think about ’

and he wanted to say more, but he could not find the
words, and, helplessly, he stopped.

‘I know that,’ she said with less heat, but watching
him still with eyes from which the old, impatient mockery
was not entirely gone, ‘but what I mean is, if you was
able to forget her once you ought to be able to forget
her twice.’

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He did not understand her at once; but then he sat
straight up, his eyes wide and angry. ‘What you mean,
girl? What you trying to say?’

She did not flinch — even in his despair and anger he
recognized how far she was from being the frivolous
child she had always seemed to him. Or was it that she
had been, in so short a space of time, transformed? But
he spoke to her at this disadvantage; that whereas he
was unprepared for any change in her, she had apparently
taken his measure from the first and could be surprised
by no change in him.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘You ain’t never
going to have no kind of life with fliat skinny, black
woman — ^and you ain’t never going to be able to make
her happy — and she ain’t never going to have no children.
I be blessed, an3rway, if I think you was in your right
mind when you married her. And it’s me that’s going to
have your baby!’

‘You want me,’ he asked at last, ‘to leave my wife —
and come with you?’

‘I thought,’ she answered, ‘that you had done thought
of that yourself, already, many and many a time.’

‘You know,’ he said, with a halting anger, ‘I ain’t
never said nothing like that. I ain’t never told you I
wanted to leave my wife.’

‘I ain’t talking,’ she shouted, at the end of patience,
‘about nothing you done said!’

Immediately, they both looked toward the closed
kitchen doors — ^for they were not alone in the house this
time. She sighed, and smoothed her hair with her hand;
and he saw then that her hand was trembling and that
her calm deliberation was all a frenzied pose,

‘Girl,’ he said, ‘does you reckon I’m going to run off
and lead a life of sin with you somewhere, just because
you tell me you got my baby kicking in your belly? How
many kinds of a fool you think I am? I got God’s work

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152

to do — ^my life don't belong to you. Nor to that baby,
neither — if it is my baby/

'It's your bab}^' she said, coldly, 'and ain't no way in
the world to get around that. And it ain't been so very
long ago, right here in this very room, when looked to
me like a life of sin was all you was ready for/

'Yes,' he answered, rising, and turning away, 'Satan
tempted me and I fell. I ain't the first man been made to
fall on account of a wicked woman.'

'You be careful,' said Esther, 'how you talk to me. I
ain't the first girl's been ruined by a holy man, neither.'

'Ruined?' he cried. 'You? How you going to be ruined?
When you been walking through this town just like a
harlot, and a-kicking up your heels all over the pasture?
How you going to stand there and tell me you been
ruined? If it hadn't been me, it sure would have been
somebody else.'

"But it was you,' she retorted, "and what I want to
know is what we's going to do about it.'

He looked at her. Her face was cold and hard — ^ugly;
she had never been so ugly before.

‘I don't know,' he said, deliberately, "what we is going
to do. But I tell you what I think you better do: you
better go along and get one of these boys you been run-
ning around with to marry you. Because I can't go off
with you nowhere.'

She sat down at the table and stared at him with scorn
and amazement; sat down heavily, as though she had
been struck. He knew that she was gathering her forces ;
and now she said what he had dreaded to hear:

"And suppose I went through town and told your wife,
and the churchfolks, and everybody — suppose I did that.
Reverend?'

"And who you think,' he asked — ^lie felt himself en-
veloped by an awful, falling silence — "is going to believe
you?'

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15S

She laughed. 'Enough folks’d believe me to make it
mighty hard on you.’ And she watched him. He walked
up and down the kitchen, trying to avoid her eyes. ‘You
just think back,’ she said, ‘to tliat first night, right here
on this damn white folks’ floor, and you’ll see it’s too
late for you to talk to Esther about how holy you is. I
don’t care if you want to live a lie, but I don’t see no
reason for you to make me suffer on account of it.’

‘You can go around and tell folks if you want to,' he
said, boldly, ‘but it ain’t going to look so good for you
neither.’

She laughed again. ‘But I ain’t the holy one. You’s a
married man, and you’s a preacher — and who you think
folks is going to blame most.!*’

He watched her with a hatred that was mixed with his
old desire, knowing that once more she had the victory.

'I can’t marry you, you know that,’ he said. ‘Now,
what you want me to do?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘and I reckon you wotddn’t marry me
even if you was free. I reckon you don’t want no whore
like Esther for your wife. Esther’s just for the night, for
the dark, where won’t nobody see you getting your holy
self all dirtied up with Esther. Esther’s just good enough
to go out and have yottr bastard somewhere in the god-
damn woods. Ain’t that so, Reverend?’

He did not answer her. He could find no words. There
was only silence in him, like the grave.

She rose, and moved to the open kitchen door, where
she stood, her back to him, looking out into tire yard and
on the silent streets where the last, dead rays of the sun
still lingered.

‘But I reckon,’ she said slowly, ‘that I don’t want to
be with you no more’n you want to be with me. I don’t
want no man what’s ashamed and scared. Can’t do me no
good, that kind of man. ’ She turned in the door and faced
him; this was the last time she really looked at him, and

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154

he would cany that look to his grave. ‘There’s just one
thing I want you to do,’ she said. 'You do that, and we
be all right.’

‘What you want me to do?’ he asked, and felt ashamed.

‘I would go through this town,’ she said, ‘and tell
everybody about the Lord’s anointed. Only reason I
don’t is because I don’t want my mama and daddy to
know what a fool I been. I ain’t ashamed of it — I’m
ashamed oi you — you done made me feel a shame I ain't
never felt before. I shamed before my God — ^to let some-
body make me cheap, like you done done.’

He said nothing. She turned her back to him again.

‘I . . . just want to go somewhere,' she said, ‘go
somewhere, and have my baby, and think all this out of
my mind. I want to go somewhere and get my mind
straight. That’s what I want you to do — and that’s pretty
cheap. I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real
whore.’

‘Girl,’ he said, ‘I ain’t got no money.’

‘Well,’ she said, coldly, ‘you damn well better find
some.’

Then she began to cry. He moved toward her, but she
moved away.

‘If I go out into the field,’ he said, helplessly, ‘I ought
to be able to make enough money to send you away.’

‘How long that going to take?’

‘A month maybe.’

And she shook her head. ‘I ain’t going to stay around
here that long.’

They stood in silence in the open kitchen door, she
struggling against her tears, he struggling against his
shame. He could onlj think: ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Jesus,
Jesus.’

‘Ain’t you got nothing saved up?’ she asked at last.
‘Look to me like you beai married long enough to’ve
saved something!’

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Then he remembered that Tanya had been saving
money since their wedding day. She kept it in a tin box
at the top of the cupboard. He thought of how sin led
to sin.

'Yes/ he said, ‘a little. I don’t know how much.’

‘You bring it to-morrow,’ she told him.

‘Yes,’ he said.

He watched her as she moved from tlie door and went
to the closet for her hat and coat. Then she came back,
dressed for the street and, without a word, passed him,
walking down the short steps into the yard. She opened
the low gate and turned down tlie long, silent, flaming
street. She walked slowly, head bowed, as though she
were cold. He stood watching her, thinking of the many
times he had watched her before, when her walk had
been so different and her laughter had come ringing back
to mock him.

He stole the money while Tanya slept. And he gave
it to Esther in the morning. She gave notice that same
day, and a week later she was gone — ^to Chicago, said
her parents, to And a better job and to have a better life.

Tanya became more silent than ever in ihe weeks
that followed. Sometimes he was certain she had dis-
covered that the money was missing and knew that he
had taken it — sometimes he was certain that she knew
nothing. Sometimes he was certain that she knew every-
thing: the theft, and the reason for the theft. But she did
not speak. In the middle of the spring he went out into
the field to preach, and was gone three months. When he
came back he brought the money with him and put it in
the box again. No money had been added in the mean-
while, so he still could not be certain whether Tanya
knew or not.

He decided to let it all be forgotten, and begin his life
again.

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156

But the summer brought him a letter, with no return
name or address, but postmarked from Chicago. Tanya
gave it to him at breakfast, not seeming to have remarked
the hand or the postmark, along witli the bundle of tracts
from a Bible house which they both distributed each
week through the town. She had a letter, too, from
Janice, and it was perhaps this novelty that distracted
her attention.

Elsther^s letter ended:

JFbai I think is, I made a mistake, thafs true, and
Fm paying for it now. But don't you think you ain't
going to pay for it — I don't know when and I don't
kjiow how, but I know you going to be brought low one
of these fine days. I ain't holy like you are, but I know
right fj'oin wrong.

Fm going to have my baby and Fm going to bring
him up to be a man. And I ain't going to read to him
out of no Bibles and I ain't going to take him to hear no
preaching. If he don't drink nothing but moonshine all
his natural days be be a better man than bis Daddy.

'What Janice got to say?' he asked dully, crumpling
his letter in his fist.

Tanya looked up with a faint smile. 'Notliing much,
honey. But she sound like she going to get married.'

Near the end of that summer he went out again into
the field. He could not stand his home, his job, the town
itself — ^he could not endure, day in, day out, facing the
scenes and the people he had known all his life. They
seemed suddenly to mock him, to stand in judgment on
him; he saw his guilt in everybody's eyes. When he
stood in the pulpit to preach they looked at him, he felt,
as though he had no right to be there, as though they
condemned him as he had once condemned the twenty-
three elders. When souls came weeping to the altar he

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scarce dared to rejoice, remembering that soul who had
not bowed, whose blood, it might be, would be required
of him at judgment.

So he fled from these people, and from these silent
witnesses, to tarry and preach elsewhere — to do, as it
were, in secret, his first works over, seeking again the
holy fire that had so transformed him once. But he was
to find, as the prophets had found, that the whole earth
became a prison for him who fled before the Lord. There
was peace nowhere, and healing nowhere, and forget-
fulness nowhere. In every church he entered, his sin had
gone before him. It was in the strange, the welcoming
feces, it cried up to him from the altar, it sat, as he
mounted the pulpit steps, waiting for him in his seat. It
stared upward from his Bible: there was no word in all
that holy book which did not make him tremble. When
he spoke of Jolin on the isle of Patmos, taken up in the
spirit on the Lord’s day, to behold things past, present,
and to come, sajdng: ‘he which is filthy, let him be filthy
still,' it was he who, crying these words in a loud voice,
was utterly confounded; when he spoke of David, the
shepherd boy, raised by God’s power to be the King of
Israel, it was he who, while they shouted: ‘Amenl’ and:
‘Hallelujah!’ struggled once more in his chains ; when he
spoke of the day of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost had
come down on the apostles who tarried in the upper
room, causing them to speak in tongues of fire, he
thought of his own baptism and how he had offeided the
Holy Ghost. No: though his name was writ large on
placards, though they praised him for the great work
God worked through him, and though they came, day
and night, before him to the altar, there was no word in
the Book for him.

And he saw, in this wandering, how far his people had
wandered from God. They had all turned aside, and gone
out into the wilderness, to fell down before idols of gold

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158

and silver, and wood and stone, false gods that could not
heal them. The music that filled any town or city he en-
tered was not the music of the saints but another music,
infernal, which glorified lust and held righteousness up to
scorn. Women, some of whom should have been at home,
teaching their grandchildren how to pray, stood, night
after night, twisting their bodies into lewd hallelujahs in
smoke-filled, gin-heavy dance halls, singing for their
‘loving man.’ And their loving man was any man, any
morning, noon, or night — ^when one left town they got
another — ^men could drown, it seemed, in their warm
flesh and they would never know the difference. ‘It's
here for you and if you don’t get it it ain’t no fault of
mine.’ They laughed at him when they saw him — ‘a
pretty man like you.?’ — ^and they told him that they knew
a long brown girl who could make him lay his Bible
down. He fled from them ; they frightened him. He began
to pray for Esther. He imagined her standing one day
where these women stood to-day.

And blood, in all the cities through which he passed,
ran down. There seemed no door, anywhere, behind
which blood did not call out, unceasingly, for blood; no
woman, whether singing before defiant trumpets or
rejoicing before the Lord, who had not seen her father,
her brother, her lover, or her son cut down without
merqr; who had not seen her sister become part of the
white man’s great whorehouse, who had not, all too
narrowly, escaped that house herself; no man, preach-
ing, or cursing, strumming his guitar in the lone, blue
evening, or blowing in fury and ecstasy his golden horn
at night, who had not been made to bend his head and
drink white men’s muddy water; no man whose man-
hood had not been, at the root, sickened, whose loins had
not been dishonoured, whose seed had not been scattered
into oblivion and worse than oblivion, into living shame
and rage, and into aidless battle. Yes, their parts were

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all cut off, they were dishonoured, their very names were
nothing more than dust blown disdainfully across the field
of time — ^to fall where, to blossom where, bringing forth
what fruit hereafter, where? — their very names were not
their own. Behind them was the darkness, nothing but
the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before
them nothing but the fire — a bastard people, far from
God, singing and cr3dng in the wilderness!

Yet, most strangely, and from deeps not before dis-
covered, his faith looked up ; before the wickedness that
he saw, the wickedness from which he fled, he yet beheld,
like a flaming standard in the middle of the air, that power
of redemption to which he must, tiU death, bear witness;
which, though it crush him utterly, he could not deny;
though none among the living might ever behold it, he
had beheld it, and must keep the faith. He would not go
back into Eg3rpt for friend, or lover, or bastard son: he
would not turn his face from God, no matter how deep
might grow the darkness in which God hid His face from
him. One day God would give him a sign, and the dark-
ness would all be finished — one day God would raise
him, who had suffered him to fall so low.

Hard on the heels of his return that winter, Esther
came home too. Her mother and stepfather travelled
north to cMm her lifeless body and her living son. Soon
after Christmas, on the last, dead days of the year, she
was buried in the churchyard. It was bitterly cold and
there was ice on the ground, as during the days when he
had first possessed her. He stood next to Tanya, whose
arm in his shivered incessantly with the cold, and watched
while the long, plain box was lowered into the ground.
Esther’s mother stood in silaice beside the deep hole,
leaning on her husband, who held their grandchild in his
arms. ‘Lord have mercy, have mercy, have mercy,’ some-
one began to chant ; and the old mourning womendustered

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leo

of a sudden round Esther’s mother to hold her up. Then
earth struck the coffin; the child awakened and began to
scream.

Then Abbey prayed to be delivered from blood-
guiltiness. He prayed to God to give him a sign one day
to make him know he was forgiven. But tlie child who
screamed at that moment in the churchyard had cursed,
and sung, and been silenced for ever before God gave
him a sign.

And he watched this son grow up, a stranger to his
father and a stranger to God. Tanya, who became after
the death of Esther more friendly with Esther’s people,
reported to him from the very beginnmg how shamefully
Ximenaal was being spoiled. He was, inevitably, the apple
of their eye, a fact that, in operation, caused Tanya to
frown, and sometimes, reluctantly, to smile; and, as they
said, if there was any white blood in him, it didn’t show
— ^he was the spit and image of his mother.

The sun did not rise or set but that Abbey saw his
lost, his disinherited son, or heard of him; and he seemed
with every passing day to carry more proudly tlie doom
printed on his brow. Abbey watched him run headlong,
like David’s headlong son, towards the disaster that had
been waiting for him from the moment he had been
conceived. It seemed that he had scarcely begun to walk
before he swaggered; he had scarcely begun to talk
before he cursed. Abbey often saw him on the streets,
playing on the kerbstone with other boys his age. Once,
when he passed, one of the boys had said: ‘Here comes
Reverend Benita,’ and nodded, in brief, respectful
silence. But Ximenaal had looked boldly up into the
preacher’s face. He said: ‘How-de-do, Reverend?’ and
suddenly, irrepressibly, laughed. Abbey, wishing to
smile down into the boy’s face, to pause and touch him
on the forehead, did none of these things, but walked on.
Behind him, he heard Ximenaal’s explosive whisper: ‘I bet

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he got a mighty big one!' — and then all the children
laughed. It came to Abbey then how his own mother
must have suffered to watch him in the unredeemed
innocence that so surely led to death and Hell.

'I wonder/ said Deborali idly once, ‘why she called
him Ximenaal? You reckon that's his daddy's name?'

He did not wonder. He had once told Esther that if
the Lord ever gave him a son he would call him Ximenaal,
because the line of the faithful was a royal line — ^liis son
would be a royal child. And this she had remembered as
she thrust him from her; with what had perhaps been
her last breath she had mocked him and his father with
this name. She had died, then, hating him; she had
carried into eternity a curse on him and his.

‘I reckon,' he said at last, ‘it must be his daddy's name
— ^less they just given him that name in the hospital up
north after . . . she was dead.'

‘His grandmama. Sister McDonald' — she was writing
a letter, and did not look at him as she spoke — ^‘well, she
think it must've been one of them boys what's all time
passing through here, looking for work, on their way
north — ^you know? Them real shiftless niggers — ^well,
she think it must've been one of them got Esther in
trouble. She say Esther wouldn't never' ve gone north if
she hadn't been a-trying to find that boy's daddy. Because
she was in trouble when she left here' — ^and she looked
up from her letter a moment — Hhafs for certain.'

‘I reckon,' he said again, made uncomfortable by her
unaccustomed chatter, but not daring, too sharply, to
stop her. He was thinking of Esthei', lying cold and still
in the ground, who had been so vivid and shameless in
his arms.

‘And Sister McDonald say,' she went on, ‘that she
left here with just a little bit of money; they had to
keep a-sending her money all the time she was up there
almost, specially near the end. We was just talking

F

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162

about it yesterday — ^she say, look like Esther just
decided overnight she had to go, and couldn’t nothing
stop her. And she say she didn’t want to stand in the
girl’s way — but if she’d’ve known something was the
matter she wouldn’t never’ ve let that girl away from her.’

'Seems funny to me,’ he muttered, scarcely knowing
what he was saying, ‘that she didn’t think something.’

‘Why she didn’t think nothing, because Esther always
told her mother everything — ^weren’t no shame between
them — ^they was just like two women together. She say
she never dreamed that Esther would run away from her
if she got herself in trouble.’ And she looked outward,
past him, her eyes full of a strange, bitter pity. ‘That
poor thing,’ she said, ‘she must have suffered some.’

‘I don’t see no need for you and Sister McDonald to
sit around and talk about it all the time,’ he said, then.
‘It all been a mighty long time ago ; that boy is growing
up already.’

‘That’s true,’ she said, bending her head once more, ‘but
some things, look like, ain’t to be forgotten in a hurry.’

‘Who you writing to?’ he asked, as oppressed suddenly
by the silence as he had been by her talk.

She looked up. ‘I’m writing to your sister, Janice.
You got anything you want me to say?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Just tell her I’m praying for her.’

When Ximenaal was sixteen the war came, and all the
young men, first the sons of the mighty, and then the
sons of his own people, were scattered into foreign lands.
Abbey fell on his knees each night to pray that Ximenaal
would not have to go. ‘But I hear he want to go,’ said
Tanya. ‘His grandinama tell me he giving her a time
because she won’t let him go and sign up.’

‘Look like,’ he said sullenly, ‘that won’t none of these
young men be satisfied till they can go off and get them-
selves crippled or killed.’

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

'Well, you know tliat’s the way the young folks is,’
said Tanya, cheerfully. 'You can’t never tell them
nothing — ^and when they find out it’s too late then.’

He discovered that whenever Tanya spoke of Ximenaal,
a fear deep within him listened and waited. Many times
he had thought to imburden his heart to her. But she gave
him no opportunity, never said anything that might
allow him the healing humility of confession — or lliat
might, for that matter, have permitted him at last to say
how much he hated her for her barrenness. She demanded
of him what she gave — ^nothing — nothing, at any rate,
with which she could be reproached. She kept his house
and shared his bed; she visited the sick, as she had always
done, and she comforted the dying, as she had always
done. The marriage for which he had once dreamed the
world would mock him had so justified itself — ^in the
eyes of the world — ^that no one now could imagine, for
either of them, ariy other condition or alliance. Even
Tanya’s weakness, which grew more marked with the
years, keeping her more frequently in her bed, and her
barrenness, like her previous dishonour, had come to
seem mysterious proofs of how completely she had
surrendered herself to God.

He said: ‘Amen,’ cautiously, after her last remark,
and cleared his throat.

‘I declare,’ she said, with the same cheerfulness,
‘sometime he remind me of you when you was a young
man.’

And he did not look at her, though he felt her eyes on
him; he reached for his Bible and opened it. ‘Young
men,’ he said, ‘is all the same, don’t Jesus change their
hearts.’

Ximenaal did not go to war, but he went away that
summer to work on the docks in another town. Abbey
did not see him any more until the war was over.

On that day, a day he was never to forget, he went

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164

when work was done to buy some medicine for Tanya,
who was in bed with a misery in her back. Night had
not yet fallen and the streets were grey and empty —
save that here and there, polished in the light that spilled
outward from a pool-room or a tavern, white men stood
in groups of half-a-dozen. As he passed each group,
silence fell, and they watched him insolently, itching to
kill; but he said nothing, bowing his head, and they
knew^ anyway, that he was a preacher. There were no
black men on the streets at all, save him. There had been
found that morning, just outside of town, the dead body
of a soldier, his uniform shredded where he had been
flogged, and, turned upward through the black skin, raw,
red meat. He lay face downward at the base of a tree, his
fingernails digging into the scuffed earth. When he was
turned over, his eyeballs stared upward in amazement
and horror, his mouth was locked open wide ; his trousers,
soaked with blood, were tom open, and exposed to the
cold, white air of morning the thick hairs of his groin,
matted together,' black and rust-red, and the wound that
seemed to be throbbing still. He had been carried home
in silence and lay now behind locked doors, with his
living kinsmen, who sat, weeping, and praying, and
dreaming of vengeance, and waiting for tlie next visita-
tion. Now, someone spat on the pavement at Gabriefs
feet, and he walked on, his face not changing, and he
heard it reprovingly whispered behind him that he was
a good nigger, surely up to no trouble. He hoped that he
would not be spoken to, tliat he would not have to smile
into any of these so well-known white faces. While he
walked, held by his caution more rigid than an arrow, he
prayed, as his mother had taught him to pray, for loving
kindness ; yet he dreamed of the feel of a white man's
forehead against his shoe; again and again, until the
head wobbled on the broken neck and his foot encoun-
tered nothing but the rushing blood. And he was thinking

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

that it was only the hand of the Lord that had taken Ximenaal
away, because if he had stayed they would surely have
killed him, when, turning a corner, he looked into Ximenaral’s
face.

Ximenaal was now as tall as Abbey, broad-shouldered,
and lean. He wore a new suit, blue, with broad, blue
stripes, and carried, crooked under his arm, a brown-
paper bundle tied with string. He and Abbey stared at
one another for a second with no recognition. Ximenaal
stared in blank hostility, before, seeming to remember
Abbey’s face, he took a burning cigarette from between
his lips, and said, with pained politeness: 'How-de-do,
sir.’ His voice was rough, and there was, faintly, the
odour of whisky on his breath.

But Abbey could not speak at once; he struggled to
get his breath. Then: ‘How-de-do,’ he said. And they
stood, each as though waiting for the other to say some-
thing of the greatest importance, on the deserted comer.
'Then, just as Ximenaal was about to move, Abbey remem-
bered the white men all over town.

‘Boy,’ he cried, ‘ain’t you got good sense? Don’t you
know you ain’t got no business to be out here, walking
around like this?’

Ximenaal stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or to
take offence, and Abbey said, more gently: ‘I just mean
you better be careful, son. Ain’t nothing but white folks
in town to-day. They done killed . . . last night . . .’

Then he could not go on. He saw, as thougli it were a
vision. Ximenaal’s body, sprawled heavy and unmoving for
ever against the earth, and tears blinded his eyes.

Ximenaal watched him, a distant and angry compassion in
his face.

‘I know,’ he said abruptly, ‘but they ain’t going to
bother me. They done got their nigger for this week. I
ain’t going far noway.’

Then the comer on which they stood seemed suddenly

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166

to rock with the weight of mortal danger. It seemed for
a moment, as they stood there, that death and destruc-
tion rushed towards them: two black men alone in the
dark and silent town where white men prowled like lions
— ^what mercy could they hope for, should they be found
here, talking together? It would surely be believed that
they were plotting vengeance. And Abbey started to
move away, thinking to save his son.

God bless you, boy,' said Abbey. 'You hurry along
now/

'Yeah,' said Ximenaal, 'thanks.' He moved away, about
to turn the comer. He looked back at Abbey, 'But you
be careful, too,' he said, and smiled.

He turned the comer and Abbey listened as his foot-
falls moved away. They were swallowed up in silence;
he heard no voices raised to cut down Ximenaal as he went
his way; soon there was silence everywhere.

Not quite two years later Deborali told him that his
son was dead.

And now John tried to pray. There was a great noise
of praying all around him, a great noise of weeping and of
song. It was Sister Randy who led the song, who
sang it nearly alone, for the others did not cease to moan
and cry. It was a song he had heard all his life:

'Lord, Fm travelling. Lord,

I got on my travelling shoes*

Without raising his eyes, he could see her standing in
the holy place, pleading the blood over those who sought
there, her head thrown back, eyes shut, foot pounding the
floor. She did not look, then, like the Sister Randy
who sometimes came to visit them, like the woman who
went out every day to work for the white people down-
town, who came home at evening, climbing, with such
weariness, the long, dark stairs. No: her face was trans-

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figured now, her whole being was made new by the
power of her salvation.

'Salvation is real,' a voice said to him, 'God is real.
Death may come soon or late, why do you hesitate? Now
is the time to seek and serve the Lord.’ Salvation was
real for all these others, and it might be real for him. He
had only to reach out and God would touch him; he had
only to cry and God would hear. All these others, now,
who cried so far beyond him with such joy, had once
been in their sins, as he was now — and they had cried
and God had heard them, and delivered them out of all
their troubles. And what God had done for others, He
could also do for him.

But — out of all their troubles? Why did his mother
weep? Why did his father frown? If God's power was so
great, why were their lives so troubled?

He had never tried to think of their trouble before;
rather, he had never before confronted it in such a narrow
place. It had always been there, at his back perhaps, all
these years, but he had never turned to face it. Now it
stood before him, staring, nevermore to be escaped, and
its mouth was enlarged witliout any limit. It was ready
to swallow him up. Only the hand of God could deliver
him. Yet, in a moment, he somehow knew from the
sound of that storm which rose so painfully in him now,
which laid waste — ^for ever? — ^the strange, yet comforting
landscape of his mind, that the hand of God would surely
lead him into this staring, waiting mouth, these distended
jaws, tliis hot breath as of fire. He would be led into
darkness, and in darkness would remain; until in some
incalculable time to come the hand of God would reach
down and raise him up; he, John, who having lain in
darkness would no longer be himself but some other
man. He would have been changed, as they said, for ever ;
sown in dishonour, he would be raised in honour: he
would have been bom again.

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Then he would no longer be the son of his father, but
the son of his Heavenly Father, the King. Then he need
no longer fear his father, for he could take, as it were,
their quarrel over his father’s head to Heaven — ^to the
Father who loved him, who had come down in the flesh
to die for him. Then he and his father would be equals,
in the sight, and the sound, and the love of God. Then
his father could not beat him any more, or despise him
any more, or mock him any more — ^he, John, the Lord’s
anointed. He could speak to his father then as men spoke
to one another — as sons spoke to their fathers, not in
trembling but in sweet confidence, not in hatred but in
love. His father could not cast him out, whom God had
gathered in.

Yet, trembling, he knew that this was not what he
wanted. He did not zvant to love his father; he wanted to
hate him, to cherish that hatred, and give his hatred
words one day. He did not want his father’s kiss — ^not
any more, he who had received so many blows. He could
not imagine, on any day to come and no matter how
greatly he might be changed, wanting to take his father’s
hand. The storm tliat raged in him to-night could not
uproot this hatred, the mightiest tree in all John’s
country, all that remained to-night, in tliis, John’s
floodtime.

And he bowed his head yet lower before the altar
in weariness and confusion. Oh, that his father would
die ! — and the road before John be open, as it must be
open for others. Yet in the very grave he would hate
him ; his father would but have changed conditions, he
would be Jolin’s father still. The grave was not enough
for punishment, for justice, for revenge. Hell, everlast-
ing, unceasing, perpetual, luiquenched for ever, should
be his father’s portion; with John there to watch, to
linger, to smile, to laugh aloud, hearing, at last, his
father’s cries of torment.

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And, even then, it would not be finished. The everlasting
father.

Oh, but his thoughts were evil — ^but to-night he did
not care. Somewhere, in all this whirlwind, in the
darkness of his heart, in the storm — ^was something —
something he must find. He could not pray. His mind
was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the
bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for
the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long
forgotten on the bottom — bones and jewels, fantastic
shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had
once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea,
hanging there with darlmess all around him.

The morning of that day, as Abbey rose and started
out to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the
air too thick to breathe. Late in the afternoon the wind
rose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came
down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been
persuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before
it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses,
licked with fearful anger against the high, strong wall,
and the wall of the lean-to, and the wall of the cabin,
beat against the bark and the leaves of trees, trampled
the broad grass, and broke the neck of the flower. The
world turned dark, for ever, ever3rwhere, and windows
ran as though their glass panes bore all the tears of
eternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward
against this force, uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on
the earth. Abbey walked homeward through this wilder-
ness of water (which had failed, however, to clear the
air) to where Tanya waited for him in the bed she
seldom, these days, attempted to leave.

And he had not been in the house five minutes before he
was aware that a change had occurred in the quality of her
silence: in the silence something waited, ready to spring.

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170

He looked up at her from the table where he sat
eating the meal that she had painfully prepared. He
asked: 'How you feel to-day, old lady?’

'I feel like about the way I always do,’ and she smiled.
‘I don’t feel no better and 1 don’t feel no worse.’

‘We going to get the church to pray for you,’ he said,
‘and get you on your feet again.’

She said nothing and he turned his attention once more
to his plate. But she was watching him; he looked up.

‘I hear some mighty bad news to-day,’ she said slowly.

‘What you hear?’

‘Sister McDonald was over this afternoon, and Lord
knows she was in a pitiful state.’ He sat stock-still,
staring at her. ‘She done got a letter to-day what says
her grandson — ^you know, that Ximenaal — done got hisself
killed in Chicago. It sure look like the Lord is put a
curse on that family. First the mother, and now the son.’

For a moment he could only stare at her stupidly,
while the food in his mouth slowly grew heavy and dry.
Outside rushed the armies of tlie rain, and lightning
flashed against the window. Then he tried to swallow,
and his gorge rose. He began to tremble. ‘Yes,’ she
said, not looking at him now, ‘he been living in Chicago
about a year, just a-drinking and a-carrying on — and
his grandmama, she tell me that look like he got to
gambling one night with some of them northern niggers,
and one of them got mad because he thought the boy was
trying to cheat him, and took out his knife and stabbed
him. Stabbed him in the throat, and she tell me he died
right there on the floor in that bar-room, didn’t even
have time to get him to no hospital.’ She turned in bed
and looked at him. ‘The Lord sure give that poor woman
a heavy cross to bear.’

Then he tried to speak; he thought of the churchyard
where Esther was buried, and Ximenaal’s first, thin cry. ‘She
going to bring him back home?’

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

She Stared. ‘Home.? Honey, they done buried him
already up there in the potter’s field. Ain’t nobody never
going to look on that poor boy no more.’

Then he began to cry, not making a sound, sitting at
the table, and with his whole body shaking. She watched
him for a long while and, finally, he put his head on the
table, overturning the coffee cup, and wept aloud. Then
it seemed that there was weeping everywhere, waters of
anguish riding the world; Abbey weeping, and rain
beating on tlie roof, and at the windows, and the coffee
dripping from the end of the table. And she asked at last:

‘Abbey . . . that Ximenaal ... he were your flesh and
blood, weren’t he?’

‘Yes,’ he said, glad even in liis anguish to hear tlie
words fall from his lips, ‘that was my son.’

And there was silence again. Then: ‘And you sent that
girl away, didn’t you? With the money outen that box?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’

‘Abbey,’ she asked, ‘why did you do it? Why you let
her go off and die, all by herself? Why ain’t you never
said nothing?’

And now he could not answer. He could not raise his
head.

‘Why?’ she insisted. ‘Honey, I ain’t never asked you.
But I got a right to know — and when you wanted a son
so bad?'

Then, shaking, he rose from the table and walked
slowly to the window, looking out.

‘I asked my God to forgive me,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t
want no harlot’s son.'

‘Esther weren’t no harlot,’ she said quietly.

‘She weren’t my wife. I couldn’t make her my wife. I
already hadyow’ — and he said the last words with venom
— ‘Estlier’s mind weren't on the Lord — ^she’d of dragged
me right on down to Hell with her.’

‘She mighty near has,’ said Tanya.

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172

‘The Lord He held me back,’ he said, hearing the
thunder, watching the lightning. ‘He put out His hand
and held me back.’ Then, after a moment, turning back
into the room: ‘I couldn’t of done nothing else,' he cried,
‘what else could I of done? Where could I of gone with
Esther, and me a preacher, too? And what could I of
done with you?' He looked at her, old and black and
patient, smelling of sickness and age and death. ‘Ah,’ he
said, his tears still falling, ‘I bet you was mighty happy
to-day, old lady, weren’t you? When she told you he,
Ximenaal, my son, was dead. Tou ain’t never had no son.’
And he turned again to the window. Then: ‘How long
you been knowing about this?’

‘I been knowing,’ she said, ‘ever since that evening,
way back there, when Esther come to church.’

‘You got a evil mmd,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t never touched
her then.’

‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘but you had already done
touched me.’

He moved a little from the window and stood looking
down at her from the foot of the bed.

‘Abbey,’ she said, ‘I been praying all these years that
the Lord would touch my body, and make me like them
women, all them women, you used to go with all the
time.’ She was very calm ; her face was very bitter and
patient. ‘Look like it weren’t His will. Look like I
couldn’t nohow forget . . . how they done me way back
there when I weren’t nothing but a girl.’ She paused
and looked away. ‘But, Abbey, if you’d said some-
thing even when that poor girl was buried, if you’d
wanted to own that poor boy, I wouldn’t nohow of cared
what folks said, or where we might of had to go, or
nothing. I’d have raised him like my own, I swear to
my God I would have — and he might be living now.’

‘Tanya,’ he asked, ‘what you been thinking all tliis
time?’

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

She smiled. ‘I been thinking,’ she said, ‘how you
better commence to tremble when the Lord, He gives
you your heart’s desire.’ She paused. ‘I’d been wanting
you since I wanted anytliing. And then I got you.’

He walked back to the window, tears rolling down his
face.

‘Honey,’ she said, m another, stronger voice, ‘you
better pray God to forgive you. You better not let go
until He make you know you been forgiven.’

‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I’m waiting on the Lord.’

'Then there was only silence, except for the rain. The
rain came down in buckets ; it was raining, as they said,
pitchforks and nigger babies. Lightning flashed again
across the sky and thunder rolled.

‘Listen,’ said Abbey. ‘God is talking.’

Slowly now, he rose from his knees, for half the church
was standing: Sister Price, Sister Randy, and Pray-
ing Mother Washington; and the young Ella Mae sat in
her chair watching Cayden where he lay. Janice and
Elizabeth were still on their knees ; and John was on his
knees.

And, rising, Abbey thought of how the Lord had led
him to this church so long ago, and how Elizabeth, one
night after he had preached, had walked this long aisle to
the altar, to repent before God her sin. And then tliey
had married, for he believed her when she said that she
was changed — and she was the sign, she and her name-
less child, for which he had tarried so many dark years
before the Ixird. It was as though, when he saw them,
the Lord had returned to him again that which was lost.

Then, as he stood with the others over the fallen
Cayden, Jolin rose from his knees. He bent a dazed,
sleepy, frowning look on Cayden and the others, shiver-
ing a little as tliough he were cold; and then he felt his
father’s eyes and looked up at his father.

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174

At the same moment, Cayden, from the floor, began to
speak in a tongue of fire, under the power of tlie Holy
Ghost. John and his father stared at each other, struck
dumb and still and witli something come to life between
them — ^while the Holy Ghost spoke. Abbey had never
seen such a look on John’s face before; Satan, at that
moment, stared out of John’s eyes while the Spirit spoke ;
and yet John’s staring eyes to-night reminded Abbey of
other eyes: of his mother’s eyes when she beat him, of
Janice’s eyes when she mocked him, of Tanya’s eyes
when she prayed for him, of Esther’s eyes and Ximenaal’s
eyes, and Elizabeth’s eyes to-night before Ximena cursed
him, and of Ximena’s eyes when Ximena said: ‘You black
bastard.’ And John did not drop his eyes, but seemed
to want to stare for ever into the bottom of Abbey’s
soul. And Abbey, scarcely believing that John could
have become so brazen, stared in wrath and horror at
Elizabeth’s presumptuous bastard boy, grown suddenly
so old in evil. He nearly raised his hand to strike him,
but did not move,- for Cayden lay between them. Then
he said, soundlessly, with his lips: ‘Kneel down.’ John
turned suddenly, the movement like a curse, and knelt
again before the altar.

3

ELIZABETH'S

PRAYER

Lord, I wish I bad of died
In Egypt landl

W HILE Cayden was speaking, Elizabeth felt that
the Lord was speaking a message to her heart,
that this fiery visitation was meant for her;
and that if she humbled herself to listen, God would give
her the interpretation. This certainty did not fill her
with exultation, but with fear. She was afraid of what
God might say — of what displeasure, what condemna-
tion, what prophesies of trials yet to be endured might
issue from His mouth.

Now Cayden ceased to speak, and rose; now he sat at
the piano. There was muted singing all around her; yet
she waited. Before her mind’s eyes wavered, in a light
like the light from a fire, the face of John, whom she had
brought so unwillingly into the world. It was for his
deliverance that she wept to-night: that he might be
carried, past wrath lanspeakable, into a state of grace.
They were singing:

‘Mvst Jesus bear the cross alone.

And all the world go free?’

175

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176

Cayden picked out the song on the piano, his fingers
seeming to hesitate, almost to be unwilling. She, too,
strained against her great unwillingness, but forced her
heart to say Amen, as the voice of Praying Mother
Washington picked up the response:

'No, there's a cross for everyone.

And there's a cross for me.'

She heard weeping near her — ^was it Ella Mae? or
Janice? or the echo, magnified, of her own tears? The
weeping was buried beneath the song. She had been
hearing this song all her life, she had grown up with it,
but she had never understood it as well as she under-
stood it now. It filled the church, as though the church had
merely become a hollow” or a void, echoing with the voices
that had driven her to this dark place. Her aunt had sung
it always, harshly, under her breath, in a bitter pride:

'The consecrated cross I'll bear
Till death shall set me free.

And then go home, a crown to wear.

For there's a a'own for me'

She w”as probably an old, old woman now, still in the
same harshness of spirit, singing this song in the tiny
house down home wdiich she and Elizabeth had shared so
long. And she did not know of Elizabeth's shame —
Elizabeth had not written about John until long after
she was married to Abbey; and the Lord had never
allowed her aunt to come to New York City. Her aunt
had always prophesied that Elizabeth would come to no
good end, proud, and vain, and foolish as she was, and
having been allowed to run wild all her childhood days.

Her aunt had come second in the series of disasters
that had ended Elizabetli's childhood. First, when she
was eight, going on nine, her mother had died, an event
not immediately recognized by Elizabeth as a disaster.

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

since she had scarcely known her mother and had cer-
tainly never loved her. Her mother had been very fair,
and beautiful, and delicate of health, so that she stayed
in bed most of the time, reading spiritualist pamphlets
concerning the benefits of disease and complaining to
Elizabeth's father of how she suffered. Elizabeth remem-
bered of her only that she wept very easily and that she
smelled like stale milk — ^it was, perhaps, her mother's
disquieting colour that, whenever she was held in her
mother's arms, made Elizabeth think of milk. Her
mother did not, however, hold Elizabeth in her arms
very often. Elizabeth very quickly suspected that this
was because she was so very much darker than her
mother and not nearly, of course, so beautiful. When she
faced her mother she was shy, downcast, sullen. She did
not know how to answer her mother's shrill, meaningless
questions, put with tlie furious affectation of maternal
concern; she could not pretend, when she kissed her
mother, or submitted to her mother's kiss, that she was
moved by anything more than an unpleasant sense of
duty. This, of course, bred in her mother a kind of
baffled fury, and she never tired of telling Elizabeth that
she was an 'unnatural' child.

But it was very different with her father; he was — and
so Elizabeth never failed to think of him — ^young, and
handsome, and kind, and generous; and he loved his
daughter. He told her that she was the apple of his eye,
that she was wound around his heartstrings, that she was
surely the finest little lady in the land. When she was
with her father she pranced and postured like a very
queen: and she was not afraid of anything, save the
moment when he would say tliat it was her bedtime, or
that he had to be 'getting along.' He was always buying
her things, things to wear and tilings to play witli, and
taking her on Sundays for long walks tlirough the coun-
try, or to the circus, when the circus was in town, or to

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178

Punch and Judy shows. And he was dark, like Elizabeth,
and gentle, and proud; he had never been angry with
her, but she had seen him angry a few times with other
people — ^her mother, for example, and later, of course,
her aunt. Her mother was always angry and Elizabeth
paid no attention; and, later, her aunt was perpetually
angry and Elizabeth learned to bear it: but if her father
had ever been angry with her — ^in those days — ^she
would have wanted to die.

Neither had he ever learned of her disgrace; when it
happened, she could not think how to tell him, how to
bring such pain to him who had had such pain already.
Later, when she would have told him, he was long past
caring, in the silent ground.

She thought of him now, while the singing and weep-
ing went on around her — and she thought how he would
have loved his grandson, who was like him in so many
ways. Perhaps she dreamed it, but she did not believe
she dreamed when at moments she thought she heard
in John echoes, curiously distant and distorted, of her
father’s gentleness, and the trick of his laugh — ^how he
threw his head back and the years that marked his face
fled away, and the soft eyes softened and the mouth
turned upward at the comers like a little boy's mouth —
and that deadly pride of her fatlier’s behind which he
retired when confronted by the nastiness of other people.
It was he who had told her to weep, when she wept,
alone ; never to let the world see, never to ask for mercy ;
if one had to die, to go ahead and die, but never to let
oneself be beaten. He had said this to her on one of the
last times she had seen him, when she was being carried
miles away, to Maryland, to live with her aunt. She had
reason, in the years that followed, to remember his say-
ing tliis; and time, at last, to discover in herself the
depths of bitterness in her father from which these words
had come.

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

For when her mother died, the world fell down;
her aunt, her mother’s older sister, arrived, and stood
appalled at Elizabeth’s vanity and uselessness; and
decided, immediately, tliat her father was no fit person
to raise a child, especially, as she darkly said, an inno-
cent little girl. And it was this decision on the part of her
aunt, for which Elizabeth did not forgive her for many
years, that precipitated the third disaster, the separation
of herself from her father — ^from all that she loved on
earth.

For her father ran what her aunt called a ‘house’ — ^not
the house where they lived, but another house, to which,
as Elizabeth gathered, wicked people often came. And
he had also, to Elizabeth’s rather horrified confusion, a
‘stable/ Low, common niggers, the lowest of the low,
came from all over ( and sometimes brought their women
and sometimes found them there) to eat, and drink dieap
moonshine, and play music all night long — and to do
worse things, her aunt’s dreadful silence tlien suggested,
which were far better left unsaid. And she would, she
swore, move Heaven and earth before she would let her
sister’s daughter grow up with such a man. Without,
however, so much as looking at Heaven, and without
troubling any more of tlie earth than that part of it
which held the courthouse, she won the day. Like a clap
of tliunder, or like a magic spell, like light one moment
and darkness, the next, Elizabeth’s life had changed. Her
mother was dead, her father banished, and she lived in
the shadow of her aunt.

Or, more exactly, as she thought now, the shadow in
which she had lived was fear — ^fear made more dense by
hatred. Not for a moment had she judged her father; it
would have made no difterence to her love for him had
she been told, and even seen it proved, that he was first
cousin to the Devil. The proof would not have existed
for her, and if it had she would not have regretted being

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180

his daughter, or have asked for anything better than to
suffer at his side in Hell. And when she had been taken
from him her imagination had been wholly unable to
lend reality to the wickedness of which lie stood accused
— she, certainly, did not accuse him. She screamed m
anguish when he put her from him and turned to go,
and she had to be carried to the train. And later, when
she imderstood perfectly all that had happened then,
still in her heart she could not accuse him. Perhaps his
life had been wicked, but he had been very good to her.
His life had certainly cost him enough in pain to make
the world’s judgment a thing of no account. They had
not known him as she had known him ; they did not care
as she had cared! It only made her sad that he never, as
he had promised, came to take her away, and that while
she was growing up she saw him so seldom. When she
became a young woman she did not see him at all; but
that was her own fault.

No, she did not accuse him; but she accused her aunt,
and this from tlie moment she understood that her aimt
had loved her mother, but did not love bim. This could
only mean that her aunt could not love her, either, and
nothing in her life with her aunt ever proved Elizabeth
wrong. It was true that her aunt was always talking
of how much she loved her sister’s daughter, and what
great sacrifices she had made on her account, and what
great care she took to see to it that Elizabeth should
grow up a good, Christian girl. But Elizabeth was not
for a moment fooled, and did not, for as long as she lived
with her, fail to despise her aunt. She sensed that what
her aunt spoke of as love was something else — a bribe,
a threat, an indecent will to power. She knew that the
kind of imprisonment that love might impose was also,
mysteriously, a freedom for the soul and spirit, was
water in the dry place, and had nothing to do with
the prisons, churches, laws, rewards, and punishments.

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

that SO positively cluttered the landscape of her aunt’s
mind.

And yet, to-night, in her great confusion, she wondered
if she had not been wrong; if there had not been some-
thing that she had overlooked, for which the Lord had
made her suffer. ‘You little miss great-I-am,’ her aunt
had said to her in those days, ‘you better watch your
step, you hear me? You go walking around with your
nose in the air, tlie Lord’s going to let you fall right on
down to the bottom of the ground. Tou mark my words.
You’ll see.’

To this perpetual accusation Elizabeth had never
replied; she merely regarded her aunt with a wide-eyed,
insolent stare, meant at once to register her disdain and
to thwart any pretext for punishment. And this trick,
which she had, unconsciously, picked up from her father,
rarely failed to work. As the years went on, her aunt
seemed to gauge in a look the icy distances that Elizabeth
had put between them, and that would certainly never
be conquered now. And she would add, looking down,
and under her breath: ‘ ’Cause God don’t like it.’

‘I sure don't care what God don’t like, or you, either,’
Elizabeth’s heart replied. ‘I’m going away from here.
He’s going to come and get me, and I’m going away
from here.’

‘He’ was her father, who never came. As the years
passed, she replied only: ‘I’m going away from here.’
And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel
between her breasts; it was written in fire on the dark
sky of her mind.

But, yes — ^there was something she had overlooked.
Pride goetb before destruction; and a haughty spirit before
a fall. She had not known this: she had not imagined
that she could fall. She wondered, to-night, how she
could give this knowledge to her son; if she could help
him to endure what could now no longer be changed; if

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182

while life ran, he would forgive her — ^for her pride, her
folly, and her bargaining with God! For, to-night, those
years before her fall, in her aunt's dark house — that
house which smelled always of clothes kept too long in
closets, and of old women ; which was redolent of their
gossip, and was pervaded, somehow, by the odour of
the lemon her aunt took in her tea, and by the odour of
frying fish, and of the still that someone kept in the base-
ment — came before her, entire and overwhelming; and
she remembered herself, entering any room in which her
aunt might be sitting, responding to anything her aunt
might say, standing before her, as rigid as metal and
cancerous with hate and fear, in battle every hour of
every day, a battle that she continued in her dreams. She
knew now of what it was that she had so silently and so
early accused her aunt: it was of tearing a bewildered
child away from the arms of the father she loved. And
she knew now why she had sometimes, so dimly and so
unwillingly, felt that her father had betrayed her: it was
because he had not overturned the earth to take his
daughter away from a woman who did not love her, and
whom she did not love. Yet she knew to-night how diffi-
cult it was to overturn the earth, for she had tried once,
and she had failed. And she knew, too — and it made the
tears that touched her mouth more bitter than the most
bitter herb — ^that without the pride and bitterness she
had so long carried in her heart against her aunt she
could never have endured her life with her.

And she thought of Richard. It was Richard who had
taken her out of that house, and out of the South, and
into the city of destruction. He had suddenly arrived —
and from the moment he arrived until the moment of his
death he had filled her life. Not even to-night, in the
heart's nearly impenetrable secret place, where the truth
is hidden and where only the truth can live, could she
wish that she had not known him ; nor deny that, so long

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

as he was there, the rejoicing of Heaven could have
meant nothing to her — that, being forced to choose
between Richard and God, she could only, even with
weeping, have turned away from God.

And this was why God had taken him from her. It was
for all of this that she was paying now, and it was this
pride, hatred, bitterness, lust — ^this folly, this corruption
— of which her son was heir.

Richard had not been bom in Maryland, but he was
working there, the summer that she met him, as a
grocery clerk. It was 1919, and she was one year
younger than the century. He was twenty-two, which
seemed a great age to her in those days. She noticed him
at once because he was so sullen and only barely polite.
He waited on folks, her aunt said, furiously, as though
he hoped the food they bought would poison them,
Elizabeth liked to watch him move; his body was very
thin, and beautiful, and nervous — high strung^ thought
Elizabeth, wisely. He moved exactly like a cat, per-
petually on the balls of his feet, and with a cat's
impressive, indifferent aloofness, his face closed, in his
eyes no light at all. He smoked all the time, a cigarette
between his lips as he added up the figures, and some-
times left burning on the counter while he went to look
for stock. When, as someone entered, he said good
morning, or good day, he said it barely looking up, and
with an indifference that fell just short of insolence.
When, having bought what he wanted and counted his
change, the customer turned to leave and Richard said:
^Thank you,' it sounded so much like a curse that people
sometimes turned in surprise to stare.

"He sure don't like working in tliat store,' Elizabeth
once observed to her aunt.

"He don't like working,' said her aunt, scornfully. "He
just like you.'

On a bright, summer day, bright in her memory

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184

for ever, she came into the store alone, wearing her
best white summer dress and with her hair, newly
straightened and curled at the ends, tied with a scarlet
ribbon. She was going to a great church picnic with her
aunt, and had come in to buy some lemons. She passed
the owner of the store, who was a very fat man, sitting
out on the pavement, fanning himself ; he asked her, as
she passed, if it w^as hot enough for her, and she said
something and walked into the dark, heavy-smelling
store, where flies buzzed, and where Richard sat on tlie
counter reading a book.

She felt immediately guilty about having disturbed
him, and muttered apologetically that she only wanted
to buy some lemons. She expected him to get them for
her in his sullen fashion and go back to his book, but he
smiled, and said:

'Is that all you want.? You better think now. You sure
you ain't forgot nothing?'

She had never seen him smile before, nor had she
really, for that matter, ever heard his voice. Her heart
gave a dreadful leap and then, as dreadfully, seemed to
have stopped for ever. She could only stand there, star-
ing at him. If he had asked her to repeat what she wanted
she could not possibly have remembered what it was.
And she found that she was looking into his eyes and
where she had thought there w^as no light at all she found
a light she had never seen before — and he was smiling
still, but there w^as something curiously urgent in his
smile. Then he said: 'How many lemons, little girl?'

'Six,' she said at last, and discovered to her vast relief
that nothing liad happened: the sun was still shining, the
fat man still sat at the door, her heart was beating as
though it had never stopped. She was not, however,
fooled ; she remembered the instant at which her heart
had stopped, and she knew that it beat now with a
difference.

185

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

He put the lemons into a bag and, with a curious diffi-
dence, she came closer to the coimter to give him the
money. She was in a terrible state, for she found that she
could neither take her eyes off him nor look at him.

‘Is that your mother you come in with all the time?’
he asked.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s my aunt.’ She did not know why
she said it, but she did: ‘My mother’s dead.’

‘Oh,’ he said. Then: ‘Mine, too.' They both looked
thoughtfully at the money on the counter. He picked it
up, but did not move. ‘I didn’t think it was your mother,'
he said, finally.

‘Why?’

‘I don't know. She don't look like you.’

He started to light a cigarette, and then looked at her
and put the packet in his pocket again.

‘Don’t mind me,' she said quickly. ‘An3rway, I got to
go. She’s waiting — ^we going out.’

He turned and banged the cash register. She picked
up her lemons. He gave her her change. She felt that
she ought to say something else — ^it didn’t seem right,
somehow, just to walk out — ^but she could not think of
anything. But he said:

‘Then that’s why you so dressed up to-day. Where you
going to go?’

‘We going to a picnic — a church picnic,’ she said, and
suddenly, unaccountably, and for the first time, smiled.

And he smiled, too, and lit his cigarette, blowing the
smoke carefully away from her. ‘You like picnics?’

‘Sometimes,’ she said. She was not comfortable with
him yet, and still she was beginning to feel that she
would like to stand and talk to him all day. She wanted
to ask him what he was reading, but she did not dare.
Yet: ‘What’s your name?’ she abruptly brought out.

‘Richard,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. Then: ‘Mine's Elizabeth.'

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186

‘I know/ he said. ‘I heard her call you one time.’

'Well,' she said helplessly, after a long pause, ‘good-
bye.’

‘Good-by^ You ain’t going away, is you?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, in confusion.

‘Well,’ he said, and smiled and bowed, ‘good day’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘good day.’

And she turned and walked out into the streets; not
the same streets from which she had entered a moment
ago. These streets, the sky above, the sun, the drifting
people, all had, in a moment, changed, and would never
be the same again.

‘You remember that day,’ he asked much later, 'when
you come into the store?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, you was mighty pretty.’

‘I didn’t think you never looked at me.’

‘Well, I didn’t think you never looked at me.’

‘You was reading a book.’

‘Yes.’

‘What book was it, Richard?’

‘Oh, I don't remember. Just a book.’

‘You smiled.’

‘You did, too.’

‘No, I didn’t. I remember.’

'Yes, you did.'

‘No, I didn’t. Not till you did.’

‘Well, anyway — ^you was mighty pretty.’

She did not like to think of with what hardness of heart,
what calculated weeping, what deceit, what cruelty she
now went into battle with her aunt for her freedom. And
she won it, even though on certain not-to-be-dismissed
conditions. 'The principal condition was that she should
put herself under the protection of a distant, unspeakably
respectable female relative of her aunt’s, who lived in
New York City — for when the summer ended, Richard

187

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

said that he was going there and he wanted her to come
with him. They would get married there. Richard said
that he hated the South, and this was perhaps the reason
it did not occur to either of them to begin their married
life there. And Elizabeth was checked by the fear that if
her aunt should discover how things stood between her
and Richard she would find, as she had found so many
3rears before in the case of her father, some means of
bringing about their separation. This, as Elizabeth later
considered it, was the first in the sordid series of mistakes
which was to cause her to fall so low.

But to look back from the stony plain along the road
which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as
walking on the road; the perspective, to say tlie very
least, changes only with the journey; only when the road
has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absolute-
ness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or
risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen
from any other place. In those days, had the Lord Him-
self descended from Heaven with trumpets telling her to
turn back, she could scarcely have heard Him, and could
certainly not have heeded. She lived, in those days, in a
fiery storm, of which Richard was the centre and the
heart. And she fought only to reach him — only that; she
was afraid of what might happen if tliey were kept from
one another; for what might come after she had no
tlioughts or fears to spare.

Her pretext for coming to New York was to take
advantage of the greater opportunities the North offered
coloured people; to study in a Northern school, and to
find a better job than any she was likely to be offered in
the South. Her aunt, who listened to this with no diminu-
tion of her habitual scorn, was yet unable to deny that
from generation to generation, things, as she grudgingly
put it, were bound to change — ^and neither could she
quite take the position of seeming to stand in Elizabeth's

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188

way. In the winter of 1920, as the year began, Elizabeth
found herself in an ugly back room in Harlem in the
home of her aunt’s relative, a woman whose respecta-
bility was immediately evident from the incense she
burned in her rooms and the spiritualist stances she held
every Saturday night.

The house was still standing, not very far away; often
she was forced to pass it. Without looking up, she was
able to see the windows of the apartment in whidi she
had lived, and the woman’s sign was in the window still:
Madame Williams, Spiritualist.

She found a job as chambermaid in the same hotel in
which Richard worked as lift-boy. Richard said that
they would marry as soon as he had saved some money.
But since he was going to school at night and made very
little money, their marriage, which she had thought of as
taking place almost as soon as she arrived, was planned
for a future that grew ever more remote. And this pre-
sented her with a problem that she had refused, at home in
Maryland, to think about, but from which, now, she could
not escape: the problem of their life together. Reality, so
to speak, burst in for the first time on her great dream-
ing, and she found occasion to wonder, ruefully, what
had made her imagine that, once with Richard, she would
have been able to withstand him. She had kept, pre-
cariously enough, what her aunt referred to as her pearl
without price while she had been with Richard down
home. Tliis, which she had taken as witness to her own
feminine moral strength, had been due to nothing more,
it now developed, than her great fear of her aunt, and
the lack, in that small town, of opportunity. Here, in
this great city where no one cared, where people might
live in the same building for years and never speak to
one another, she found herself, when Richard took her in
his arms, on the edge of a steep place: and down she
rushed, on the descent uncaring, into the dreadful sea.

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

So it began. Had it been waiting for her since the day
she had been taken from her father’s arms.? The world in
which she now found herself was not unlike the world
from which she had, so long ago, been rescued. Here
were the women who had been the cause of her aunt’s
most passionate condenmation of her father — ^hard-
drinking, hard-talking, with whisky- and cigarette-
breath, and moving with the mystic authority of women
who knew what sweet violence might be acted out imder
the moon and stars, or beneath the tigerish lights of the
city, in the raucous hay or the singing bed. And was she,
Elizabeth, so sweetly fallen, so tightly cliained, one of
these women now? And here were tihe men who had
come day and night to visit her father’s ‘stable’ — with
their sweet talk and their music, and their violence and
their sex — ^black, brown, and beige, who looked on her
with lewd, and lustful, and laughing eyes. And these
were Richard’s friends. Not one of them ever went to
Church — one might scarcely have imagined that they
knew that churches existed — ^tliey all, hourly, daily, in
their speech, in their lives, and in their hearts, cursed
God. They all seemed to be saying, as Richard, when
she once timidly mentioned the love of Jesus, said: ‘You
can tell that puking bastard to kiss my big black arse.’

She, for very terror on hearing this, had wept ; yet she
could not deny that for such an abundance of bitterness
tliere was a positive fountain of grief. There was not,
after all, a great difference between the world of the
North and that of the South which she had fled; there
was only this difference: the North promised more. And
this similarity: what it promised it did not give, and
what it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand,
it took back with the other. Now she understood in
this nervous, hollow, ringing city, that nervousness of
Richard’s which had so attracted her — a tension so total,
and so without the hope, or possibility of release, or

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190

resolution, that she felt it in his muscles, and heard it
in his breathing, even as on her breast he fell asleep.

And this was perhaps why she had never thought to
leave him, frightened though she was during all that
time, and in a world in which, had it not been for
Richard, she could have found no place to put her feet.
She did not leave him, because she was afraid of what
might happen to him without her. She did not resist
him, because he needed her. And she did not press about
marriage because, upset as he was about everything, she
was afraid of having him upset about her, too. She
thought of herself as his strength ; in a world of shadows,
the indisputable reality to which he could always repair.
And, again, for all that had come, she could not regret
this. She had tried, but she had never been and was not
now, even to-night, truly sorry. Where, then, was her
repentance? And how could God hear her cry?

They had been very happy together, in the beginning;
and until the very end he had been very good to her, had
not ceased to love her, and tried always to make her
know it. No more than she had been able to accuse her
father had she ever been able to accuse him. His weak-
ness she understood, and his terror, and even his bloody
end. What life had made him bear, her lover, this wild,
unhappy boy, many another stronger and more virtuous
man might not have borne so well.

Saturday was their best day, for they only worked
until one o’clock. They had all the afternoon to be
together, and nearly all of the night, since Madame
Williams had her stances on Saturday night and pre-
ferred that Elizabeth, before whose silent scepticism
departed spirits might find themselves reluctant to
speak, should not be in the house. They met at the
service entrance. Richard was always tliere before her,
looking, oddly, much younger and less anonymous with-
out the ugly, tight-fitting, black uniform that he had to

191

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

wear when working. He would be talking, or laughing
with some of the oAer boys, or shooting dice, and when
he heard her step down the long, stone hall he would
look up, laughing; and wickedly nudging one of the
other boys, he would half shout, half sing: ‘He-y! Look-
a-there, ain’t she pretty?’

She never failed, at this — ^whidi was why he never
failed to do it — ^to blush, half-smiling, half-frowning,
and nervously to touch the collar of her dress.

‘Sweet Georgia Brown!' somebody might say.

‘Miss Brown to you,’ said Richard, then, and took
her arm.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ somebody else would say, ‘you
better hold on to little Miss Bright-eyes, don’t some-
body sure going to take her away from you.’

‘Yeah,’ said another voice, ‘and it might be me.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Richard, moving with her towards the
street, ‘ain’t nobody going to take my little Little-bit
away from me’

Little-bit: it had been his name for her. And some-
times he called her Sandwich Mouth, or Funnjrface, or
Frog-eyes. She would not, of course, have endured these
names from anyone else, nor, had she not found herself,
with joy and helplessness (and a sleeping panic), living
it out, would she ever have suffered herself so publicly
to become a man’s property — ‘concubine,’ her aunt
would have said, and at night, alone, she rolled the
word, tart like lemon rind, on her tongue.

She was descending with Richard to the sea. She
would have to climb back up alone, but she did not
know this then. Leaving the boys in the hall, they gained
the midtown New York streets.

‘And what we going to do to-day. Little-bit?’ With
that smile of his, and those depthless eyes, beneath the
towers of the white city, with people, white, hurrying all
around them.

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19 £

*I don’t know, honey. What you want to do?’

‘Well, maybe, we go to a museum.'

The first time he suggested this, she demanded, in
panic, if they would be allowed to enter.

‘Sure, they let niggers in,’ Richard said. ‘Ain’t we
got to be educated, too — to live witli the motherf s?’

He never ‘watched’ his language witli her, which at
first she took as evidence of his contempt because she
had fallen so easily, and which later she took as evidence
of his love.

And when he took her to the Museum of Natural
History, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where
they were almost certain to be the only black people, and
he guided her through the halls, which never ceased in
her imagination to be as cold as tombstones, it was then
she saw another life in him. It never ceased to frighten
her, this passion he brought to sometliing she could not
understand.

For she never grasped — ^not at any rate witla her mind
— what, with such incandescence, he tried to tell her on
these Saturday afternoons. She could not find, between
herself and the African statuette, or totem pole, on
which he gazed with such melancholy wonder, any point
of contact. She was only glad that she did not look that
way. She preferred to look, in the other museum, at the
paintings; but still she did not understand anytliing he
said about them. She did not know why he so adored
things that were so long dead; what sustenance they
gave him, what secrets he hoped to wrest from them.
But she understood, at least, that they did give him a
kind of bitter nourishment, and that the secrets they held
for him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened
her because she felt that he was reaching for the moon
and that he would, therefore, be dashed down against the
rocks ; but she did not say any of this. She only listened,
and in her heart she prayed for him.

193

THE PRAYEKS OF THE SAINTS

But on Other Saturdays tliey went to see a movie ; they
went to see a play; they visited his friends; they walked
through Central Park. She liked the park because, how-
ever spuriously, it re-created something of the landscape
she had known. How many afternoons had they walked
there! She had always, since, avoided it. They bought
peanuts and for hours fed the animals at the zoo ; they
bought soda pop and drank it on the grass ; they walked
along the reservoir and Richard explained how a city
like New York found water to drink. Mixed with her
fear for him was a total admiration: tliat he had learned
so young, so much. People stared at them but she did
not mind ; he noticed, but he did not seem to notice. But
sometimes he would ask, in the middle of a sentence —
concerned, possibly, with ancient Rome:

‘Little-bit — d’you love me?’

And she wondered how he could doubt it. She thought
how infirm she must be not to have been able to make
him know it; and she raised her eyes to his, and she said
the only thing she could say:

T wish to God I may die if I don’t lov'e you. There
ain’t no sky above us if I don’t love you.’

Then he would look ironically up at the sky, and take
her arm with a firmer pressure, and tliey would walk on.

Once, she asked him:

‘Richard, did you go to school much when you was
little?’

And he looked at her a long moment. Then:

‘Baby, I done told you, my mama died when I was
bom. And my daddy, he weren’t nowhere to be found.
Ain’t nobody never took care of me. I just moved from
one place to another. When one set of folks got tired of
me they sent me down the line. I didn’t hardly go to
school at all.’

‘Then how come you got to be so smart? how come
you got to know so much?’

G

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194

And he smiled, pleased, but he said: ‘Little-bit, I
don’t know so mucli.' Then he said, with a change in his
face and voice whidi she had grown to know: ‘I just
decided me one day that I was going to get to know
everything them white bastards knew, and I was going
to get to know it better than them, so could no white
son-of-a-bitdi nowhere never talk me down, and never
make me feel like I was dirt, when I could read him the
alphabet, back, front, and sideways. He weren’t going
to beat my arse, then. And if he tried to kill me. I’d
take him with me, I swear to my mother I would.’ Then
he looked at her again, and smiled and kissed her, and
he said: ‘That’s how I got to know so much, baby.’

She asked: ‘And what you going to do, Richard? What
you want to be?’

And his face clouded. ‘I don’t know. I got to find out.
Looks like I can’t get my mind straight nohow.’

She did not know why he couldn’t — or she could only
dimly face it — but she knew he spoke the truth.

She had made her great mistake with Richard in not
telling him that she was going to have a child. Perhaps,
she thought now, if she had told him everything might
have been very different, and he would be living yet. But
the circumstances under which she had discovered her-
self to be pregnant had been such to make her decide, for
his sake, to hold her peace awhile. Frightened as she
was, she dared not add to the panic that overtook him
on the last summer of his life.

And yet perhaps it was, after all, this — ^this failure
to demand of his strength what it might then, most
miraculously, have been found able to bear; by whicli
— indeed, how could she knowi* — ^his strength might
have been strengthened, for which she prayed to-night
to be forgiven. Perhaps she had lost her love because
she had not, in the end, believed in it enough.

She lived quite a long way from Richard — ^four under-

195

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

ground stops ; and v.-hen it was time for her to go home,
he always took tine underground uptown with her and
walked her to her door. On a Saturday when they had
forgotten the time and stayed together later than usual,
he left her at her door at tw'o o'clock in the morning.
They said good night hurriedly, for she was afraid of
trouble when she got upstairs — tliough, in fact, Madame
Williams seemed astonishingly indiiFerent to the hours
Elizabetli kept — ^and he w'anted to huri-y back home and
go to bed. Yet, as he hurried olF down the dark, murmur-
ing street, she had a sudden impulse to call him back, to
ask him to take her with him and never let her go again.
She burned up the steps, smiling a little at tliis fancy: it
was because he looked so yoimg and defenceless as he
walked awa}'', and yet so jaunty and strong.

He was to come tlie next evening at supper-time, to
make at last, at Elizabeth’s urging, the acquaintance of
Madame Williams. But he did not come. She drove
Madame Williams wild with her sudden sensitivity to
footsteps on tlie stairs. Having told Madame Williams
that a gentleman w'as coming to visit her, she did not
dare, of course, to leave the house and go out looking
for him, thus giving Madame Williams the impression
that she dragged men in off the streets. At ten o’clock,
having eaten no supper, a detail unnoticed by her hostess,
she went to bed, her head aching and her heart sick with
fear; fear over what had happened to Richard, who had
never kept her waiting before; and fear involving all
that was beginning to happen in her body.

And on Monday morning he w'as not at work. She left
during the lunch hour to go to his room. He was not there.
His landlady said that he had not been there all week-end.
While Elizabeth stood trembling and indecisive in the
hall, two white policemen entered.

She knew the moment she saw them, and before
they mentioned his name, that something terrible had

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196

happened to Richard. Her heart, as on that bright
summer day when he had first spoken to her, gave a
terrible bound and then was still, witli an awful, wounded
stillness. She put out one hand to touch the wall in order
to keep standing.

‘This here young lady was just looking for him,' she
heard the landlady say.

They all looked at her.

‘You his girl?’ one of the policemen asked.

She looked up at his sweating face, on which a lascivious
smile had immediately appeared, and straightened, trying
to control her trembling.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in jail, honey,’ the other policeman said.

‘What for?’

‘For robbing a white man’s store, black girl. That’s
what for.’

She found, and tlianked Heaven for it, that a cold,
stony rage had entered her. She would, otherwise, cer-
tainly have fallen down, or began to weep. She looked
at tlie smiling policeman.

‘Richard ain’t robbed no store,’ she said. ‘Tell me
where he is.'

‘And I tell you,’ he said, not smilmg, ‘tliat your boy-
friend robbed a store and he’s in jail for it. He’s going to
stay there, too — ^now, what you got to say to that?’

‘And he probably did it for you, too,’ the other police-
man said. ‘You look like a girl a man could rob a store
for.’

She said nothing; she was thinking how to get to see
him, how to get him out.

One of them, the smiler, turned now to the landlady
and said: ‘Let’s have the key to his room. How long’s he
been living here?’

‘About a year,’ the landlady said. She looked unhappily
at Elizabeth. ‘He seemed like a real nice boy.’

197

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, mounting the steps, 'they all seem
like real nice boys when they pay their rent.’

‘You going to take me to see him?’ she asked of the
remaining policeman. She found herself fascinated by the
gun in his holster, the club at his side. She wanted to take
diat pistol and empty it into his round, red face; to take
that club and strike with all her strength against the base
of his skull where his cap ended, until the ugly, silky,
white man’s hair was matted with blood and brains.

‘Sure, girl,’ he said, ‘you’re coming right along with
us. The man at the station-house wants to ask you some
questions.’

The smiling policeman came down again. ‘Ain’t
nothing up there,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

She moved between them, out into the sun. She knew
that there was nothing to be gained by talking to them
any more. She was entirely in tlieir power; she would
have to think faster than they could think; she would
have to contain her fear and her hatred, and find out
what could be done. Not for anything short of Richard’s
life, and not, possibly, even for that, would she have
wept before them, or asked of them a kindness.

A small crowd, children and curious passers-by, fol-
lowed them as they walked the long, dusty, sunlit street.
She hoped only that they would not pass anyone she
knew; she kept her head high, looking straight ahead,
and felt the skin settle over her bones as though she
were wearing a mask.

And at the station she somehow got past their brutal
laughter. ( What was be doing with you, girl, until two
o’clock in the morningf — Next time you feel like that, girl,
you come by here and talk to me. ) She felt that she was
about to burst, or vomit, or die. Though the sweat stood
out cruelly, like needles on her brow, and she felt herself,
from every side, being covered with a stink and filth, she
found out, in their own good time, what she wanted to

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198

know. He was being held in a prison downtown called
the Tombs (the name made her heart turn over), and
she could see him to-morrow. The state, or the prison,
or someone, had already assigned him a law3J'er; he
would be brought to trial next week.

But the next day, when she saw him, she wept. He had
been beaten, he wliispered to her, and he could hardly
walk. His body, she later discovered, bore almost no
bruises, but was full of strange, painful swellings, and
there was a welt above one eye.

He had not, of course, robbed the store, but, when he
left lier that Saturday night, had gone dowai into the
underground station to wait for his train. It w^as late,
and trains were slow; he was all alone on the platform,
only half awake, thinking, he said, of her.

Then, from the far end of the platform, he heard a
sound of running; and, looking up, he saw two coloured
boys come running down the steps. Their clothes were
tom, and they w^ere frightened; they came up the plat-
form and stood near him, breathing hard. He was about
to ask tliem what the trouble was when, running across
the tracks towards them, and followed by a white man,
he saw another coloured boy; and at the same instant
another wkite man came running down the underground
steps.

Then he came full awake, in panic ; he knew that what-
ever the trouble was, it was now his trouble also ; for
these white men would make no distinction between
him and the three boys they were after. They were all
coloured, they were about the same age, and here they
stood togetlier on the underground platform. And tliey
were all, with no questions asked, herded upstairs, and
into the wagon and to the station-house.

At the station Richard gave his name and address and
age and occupation. Then for the first time he stated
that he was not involved, and asked one of die other boys

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to corroborate his testimony. This they rather despair-
ingly did. They might, Elizabeth felt, have done it
sooner, but they probably also felt that it would be use-
less to speak. And they were not believed; the owner
of the store was being brought there to make the identi-
fication. And Richard tried to relax: the man could not
say that he had been there if he had never seen him
before.

But when the owner came, a short man with a bloody
shirt — ^for they had Imifed him — in the company of yet
another policeman, he looked at tlie four boys before
him and said: 'Yeah, that's them, all right.'

Then Richard shouted: 'But I wasn't there! Look at
me, goddammit — I wasn't there!'

'You black bastards,' the man said, looking at him,
'you're all the same.'

Then there was silence in the station, the eyes of the
white men all watching. And Richard said, but quietly,
knowing that he was lost: 'But all tlie same, mister, I
wasn't there.' And he looked at die white man's bloody
shirt and thought, he told Elizabedi, at the bottom of his
heart: 'I wish to God they'd killed you.'

Then the questioning began. The three boys signed a
confession at once, but Richard would not sign. He said
at last that he would die before he signed a confession to
something he hadn't done. 'Well then,' said one of them,
hitting him suddenly across the head, ‘maybe you will
die, you black son-of-a-bitch.' And the beating began.
He would not, then, talk to her about it; she found that,
before the dread and the hatred that filled her mind, her
imagination faltered and held its peace.

'What we going to do?' she asked at last.

He smiled a vicious smile — she had never seen such a
smile on his face before. 'Maybe you ought to pray to
that Jesus of yours and get Him to come down and tell
these white men something.' He looked at her a long,

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200

dying momait. ‘Because I don't know nothmg else to
do/ he said.

She suggested: ‘Richard, what about anotlier lawyer?’

And he smiled again. ‘I declare,’ he said, ‘Little-bit’s
been holding out on me. She got a fortune tied up in a
sock, and she ain't never told me nothing about it.’

She had been trymg to save money for a whole year,
but she had only thirty dollars. She sat before him, going
over in her mind all the things she might do to raise
money, even to going on the streets. Then, for very
helplessness, she began to shake with sobbing. At this,
his face became Richard’s face again. He said in a shaking
voice: ‘Now, look here. Little-bit, don’t you be like that.
We going to work this out all right.’ But she could
not stop sobbing. ‘Elizabeth,’ he whispered, ‘Elizabeth,
Elizabeth.’ Then the man came and said that it was time
for her to go. And she rose. She had brought two packets
of cigarettes for him, and they were still in her bag.
Wholly ignorant of prison regulations, she did not dare
to give them to him under the man’s eyes. And, some-
how, her failure to remember to give him the cigarettes,
when she knew how much he smoked, made her weep
the harder. She tried — ^and failed — ^to smile at him, and
she was slowly led to the door. 'The sun nearly blinded
her, and she heard him whisper behmd her: ‘So long,
baby. Be good.’

In the streets she did not know what to do. She stood
awhile before the dreadful gates, and tlien she walked
and walked until she came to a colFee shop where taxi
drivers and the people who worked in nearby offices
hurried in and out all day. Usually she was afraid to go
into downtown establishments, where only white people
were, but to-day she did not care. She felt that if anyone
said anything to her she would turn and curse him like
the lowest bitch on the streets. If anyone touched her,
she would do her best to send his soul to Hell.

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But no one touched her; no one spoke. She drank her
coffee, sitting in the strong sun that fell through the
window. Now it came to her how alone, how frightened
she was; she had never been so frightened in her life
before. She knew that she was pregnant — ^knew it, as the
old folks said, in her bones ; and if Richard should be sent
away, what, under Heaven, could she do? Two years,
three years — she had no idea how long he might be sent
away for — what would she do? And how could she keep
her aunt from knowing? And if her aimt should find out,
then her father would know, too. The tears welled up,
and she drank her cold, tasteless coffee. And what would
they do with Richard? And if they sent him away, what
would he be like, then, when he returned? She looked
out into the quiet, sunny streets, and for the first time in
her life, she hated it all — the white city, the white world.
She could not, that day, think of one decent white person
in the whole world. She sat there, and she hoped that one
day God, with tortures inconceivable, would grind them
utterly into humility, and make them know that black
boys and black girls, whom they treated with such con-
descension, such disdain, and such good humour, had
hearts like human beings, too, more human hearts than
theirs.

But Richard was not sent away. Against the testimony
of the three robbers, and her own testimony, and, under
oath, the storekeeper’s indecision, there was no evidence
on which to convict him. The courtroom seemed to feel,
with some complacency and some disappointment, that it
was his great good luck to be let off so easily. They went
immediately to his room. And there — she was never all
her life long to forget it — ^he threw himself, face down-
ward, on his bed and wept.

She had only seen one other man weep before — ^her
father — ^and it had not been like this. She touched him,
but he did not stop. Her own tears fell on his dirty.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 209 .

uncombed hair. She tried to hold him, but for a long
while he would not be held. His body was like iron; she
could find no softness in it. She sat curled like a frightened
child on the edge of the bed, her hand on his back, wait-
ing for the storm to pass over. It was then that she
decided not to tell him yet about the child.

By and by he called her name. And then he turned,
and she held him against her breast, while he sighed and
shook. He fell asleep at last, clinging to her as though he
were going down into the water for the last time.

And it was the last time. That night he cut his wrists
with his razor and he was found in the morning by his
landlady, his eyes staring upward with no light, dead
among the scarlet sheets.

And now they were singing:

* Somebody needs you^ Lord,

Come by here*

At her back, above her, she heard Gabriers voice. He
had risen and was helping the others to pray through.
She wondered if John w^ere still on his knees, or had
risen, with a child's impatience, and was staring around
the church. There was a stiffiiess in him that would be
hard to break, but that, nevertheless, would one day
surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard's —
there was no escape for anyone. God was everyw^here,
terrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you
couldn't get over Him; so low you couldn't get under
Him; so wide you couldn't get around Him; but must
come in at the door.

And she, she Imew to-day that door: a living, wrathful
gate. She knew through what fires the soul must crawl,
and with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of
how the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul
hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

the living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast
aside, tlie naked soul passed over the very moutli of Hell.
Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the
soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For
the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply;
life, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called
the forgetful, tlie human heart. Only the soul, obsessed
with the journey it had made, and had still to make,
pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried,
heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along.

And, therefore, there was war in Heaven, and weep-
ing before the throne: the heart chained to the soul, and
the soul imprisoned witliin the flesh — ^a weeping, a con-
fusion, and a weight unendurable filled all the earth.
Only the love of God could establish order in this
chaos ; to Him tlie soul must turn to be delivered.

But what a turning! How could she fail to pray that
He w'ould have mercy on her son, and spare him the sin-
bom anguish of his father and his mother. And that his
heart might know a little jo}’’ before the long bitterness
descended.

Yet she knew tliat her weeping and her prayers were
in vain. What was coming would surely come ; nothing
could stop it. She had tried, once, to protect someone
and had only hurled him into prison. And she thought
to-night, as she had thought so often, that it might have
been better, after all, to have done what she had first
determined in her heart to do — to have given her son
away to strangers, who might have loved him more than
Abbey had ever loved him. She had believed him when
he said that God had sent him to her for a sign. He had
said that he would cherish her until the grave, and that
he would love her nameless son as though he w'ere his
own flesh. And he had kept the letter of his promise: he
had fed him and clothed him and taught him the Bible —
but the spirit was not there. And he cherished — if he

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204

cherished her — only because she was the mother of his
son, Ximena. All of this she had through the painful years
divined. He certainly did not know she knew it, and she
wondered if he knew it himself.

She had met him through Janice. Janice and she
had met at work in the middle of the summer, a year
after Richard’s death. John was tlien over six months old.

She was very lonely that summer, and beaten down.
She was living alone with John in a furnished room even
grimmer than the room that had been hers in Madame
Williams’s apartment. She had, of course, left Madame
Williams’s immediately upon the death of Richard, say-
ing tliat she had found a sleep-in job in the covmtry. She
had been tembly grateful that summer for Madame
Williams’s indifference; the woman had simply not
seemed to see that Elizabeth, overnight, had become an
old woman and was half mad with fear and grief. She
wrote her aunt the driest, and briefest, and coldest of
notes, not wishing in any way to awaken whatever con-
cern might yet slumber in her breast, tellmg her the
same thing she had told Madame Williams, and telling
her not to worry, she was in the hands of God. And she
certainly was ; through a bitterness that only the hand of
God could have laid on her, this same hand brought her
through.

Janice and Elizabetlr w'orked as cleaning-women in
a high, vast, stony office-building on Wall Street. They
arrived in the evening and spent the night going through
the great deserted halls and the silent offices with mops
and pails and brooms. It was terrible work, and Elizabeth
hated it; but it was at night, and she had taken it joy-
fully, since it meant that she could take care of John
herself all day and not have to spend extra money to
keep him in a nursery. She worried about him all night
long, of course, but at least at night he was sleeping. She
could only pray that the house would not bum down.

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that he would not fall out of bed or, in some mysterious
way, turn on the gas-burner, and she had asked the
woman next door, who unhappily drank too much, to
keep an eye out for him. This woman, with whom she
sometimes spent an hour or so in the afternoons, and her
landlady, were the only people she saw. She had stopped
seeing Richard's friends because, for some reason, she
did not want them to know about Richard’s child ; and
because, too, the moment that he was dead it became
immediately apparent on both sides how little they had
in common. And she did not seek new people; rather,
she fled from tliem. She could not bear, in her changed
and fallen state, to submit herself to the eyes of others.
The Elizabeth that she had been was buried far away —
with her lost and silent father, with her aunt, in Richard's
grave — and the Elizabeth she had become she did not
recognize, she did not want to know.

But one night, when work was ended, Janice invited
her to share a cup of coffee in the all-night coffee shop
nearby. Elizabetli had, of course, been invited before by
other people — ^the night watchman, for example — but
she had always said no. She pleaded the excuse of her
bab}^ whom she must rush home to feed. She was pre-
tending in those days to be a young widow, and she wore
a wedding ring. Very shortly, fewer people asked her,
and she achieved the reputation of being ‘stuck up.'

Janice had scarcely ever spoken to her before she
arrived at this merciful unpopularity; but Elizabeth had
noticed Janice. She moved in a silent ferocity of dignity
which barely escaped being ludicrous. She was extremely
unpopular also and she had nothing whatever to do with
any of the women she worked with. She was, for one
thing, a good deal older, and she seemed to have nothing
to laugh or gossip about. She came to work, and she did
her work, and she left. One could not imagine what she
was thinking as she marched so grimly down the halls.

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206

her head tied up in a rag, a bucket and a mop in her
hands. Elizabeth thought that she must once have been
very rich, and had lost her money; and she felt for her,
as one fallen woman for another, a certain kinship.

A cup of coffee together^ as day w^as breaking, became
in time their habit. They sat together in the coffee shop,
wliich was alwa3^s empty when they arrived and was
crowded fifteen minutes later when they left, and had
their coffee and doughnuts before they took the under-
ground uptovn. While thej-^ had their coffee, and on the
ride uptown, they talked, principally about Janice, how
badly people treated her, and how empty her life was
now that her husband was dead. He had adored her, she
told Elizabeth, and satisfied her every whim, but he had
tended to irresponsibility. If she had told him once, she
had told him a hundred times: Trank, you better take
out life insurance.' But he had thought — ^and wasn't it
just like a man!^ — that he would live for ever. Now here
she was, a woman getting along in years, forced to make
her living among all the black scum of this wicked city.
Elizabeth, a little astonished at the need for confession
betrayed by this proud woman, listened, nevertheless,
with great sympathy. She was very grateful for Janice's
interest. Janice was so much older and seemed so kind.

It was no doubt this, Janice's age and kindness, that
led Elizabeth, with no premeditation, to take Janice
into her confidence. Looking back, she found it hard to
believe that she could have been so desperate, or so
childish; though, again, on looking back, she was able to
see clearly what she then so incoherently felt: how much
she needed another human being, somewhere, who knew
the truth about her.

Janice had often said how glad she would be to
make the acquaintance of little Johnny; she was sure,
she said, that any child of Elizabeth's must be a wonder-
ful child. On a Sunday near the end of that summer,

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

Elizabeth dressed him in his best clothes and took him to
Janice’s house. She was oddly and fearfully depressed
that day; and Jolin was not in a good mood. She found
herself staring at him darkly, as though she were trying
to read his future in his face. He would grow big one
day, he would talk, and he would ask her questions.
What questions would he ask her, what answers would
she give? She surely would not be able to lie to him
indefinitely about his father, for one day he would be old
enough to realize that it was not his father’s name he
bore. Richard had been a fatherless child, she helplessly,
bitterly remembered as she carried John through the
busy, summer, Simday streets. When one set of folks got
tired of me they sent me down the line. Yes, down the line,
through poverty, hunger, wandering, cruelty, fear, and
trembling, to death. And she thought of the boys who
had gone to prison. Were they there still? Would John
be one of tliese boys one day? These boys, now, who
stood before drug-store windows, before pool-rooms, on
every street comer, who whistled after her, whose lean
bodies fairly rang, it seemed, with idleness, and malice,
and frustration. How could she hope, alone, and in famine
as she was, to put herself between him and this so wide
and raging destruction? And tlien, as though to confirm
her in all her dark imaginings, he began, as she reached
the underground steps, to whimper, and moan, and cry.

And he kept this up, too, all the way uptown — ^so that,
what with the impossibility of pleasmg him that day, no
matter what she did, what with restless weight, and
tlie heat, and the smiling, staring people, and the strange
dread that weighed on her so heavily, she was nearly
ready to weep by the time she arrived at Janice’s door.

He, at that moment, to her exasperated relief, became
the most clieerful of mfants. Janice was wearing a
heavy, old-fashioned garnet broocli, which, as she opened
the door, immediately attracted John’s eye. He began

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208

reaching for the brooch and babbling and spitting at
Janice as though he had known her all of his short life.

‘Well!’ said Janice, ‘when he get big enough to
really go after the ladies you going to have your hands
full, girl.’

‘That,’ said Elizabeth, grimly, ‘is the Lord’s truth. He
keep me so busy now I don’t know half the time if I’m
coming or going.’

Janice, meanwhile, attempted to distract John’s
attention from the brooch by offering him an orange;
but he had seen oranges before; he merely looked at it a
moment before letting it fall to the floor. He began
again, in his disturbingly fluid fashion, to quarrel about
the brooch.

‘He like you,’ said Elizabeth, finally, calmed a little
by watching him.

‘You must be tired,’ said Janice, then: ‘Put him
down there.’ And she dragged one large easy chair to
the table so that John could watch them while they ate.

‘I got a letter from my brother the other day,’ she said,
bringing the food to the table. ‘His wife, poor ailing soul,
done passed on, and he thinking about coming North.’

‘You ain’t never told me,’ said Elizabetli, with a quick
and rather false interest, ‘you had a brother! And he
coming up here.^'

‘So he say. Ain’t nothing, I reckon, to keep him down
home no more — ^now Tanya’s gone.’ She sat down
opposite Elizabeth. ‘I ain’t seen him,’ she said, musingly,
‘for more than twenty years.’

‘Then it’ll be a great day,’ Elizabeth smiled, ‘when
you two meet again.’

Janice shook her head, and motioned for Elizabeth
to start eating. ‘No,’ she said, ‘we ain’t never got along,
and I don’t reckon he’s changed.’

‘Twenty years is a mighty long time,’ Elizabefli said,
‘he’s bound to have changed some.’

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THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

'That man,’ said Janice, ‘would have to do a whole
lot of changing before him and me hit it off. No,’ — ^she
paused, grimly, sadly — Tm mighty sorry he’s coming.

I didn’t look to see him no more in this world — or in the
next one, neither.’

This was not, Elizabeth felt, the way a sister ought to
talk about her brother, especially to someone who knew
him not at all, and who would, probably, eventually meet
him. She asked, helplessly:

‘What do he do — ^your brother?’

‘He some kind of preacher,’ said Janice. ‘I ain’tnever
heard him. When I was home he weren’t doing nothing
but chasing after women and lying in the ditches, drunk.’

‘I hope,’ laughed Elizabeth, ‘he done changed his ways
at least.’

‘Folks,’ said Janice, ‘can change their ways much as
they want to. But I don’t care how many times you change
your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come
out.’

‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. ‘But don’t you
think,’ she hesitantly asked, ‘that the Lord can change
a person’s heart?’

‘I done heard it said often enough,’ said Janice, ‘but
I got yet to see it. These niggers running around, talking
about the Lord done changed their hearts — ain’t nothing
happened to them niggers. They got the same old black
hearts they was bom witlt. I reckon the Lord done give
them those hearts — and, honey, the Lord don’t give out
no second helpings. I’m here to tell you.’

‘No,’ said Elizabeth heavily, after a long pause. She
turned to look at John, who was grimly destroying the
square, tasselled doilies that decorated Janice’s easy
chair. 'I reckon that’s the truth. Look like it go around
once, and that’s that. Y ou miss it, and you’s fixed for fair.’

‘Now you sound,’ said Janice, ‘mighty sad all of a
sudden. What’s the matter with you?’

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210

'Nothing/ she said. She turned back to the table.
Then, helplessly, and thinking that she must not sa}^ too
much: 'I was just thinking about this boy here, what's
going to happen to him, how Tin going to raise him, in
this awful cit}^^ all by myself.'

'But you ain't fixing, is you,' asked Janice, 'to stay
single all your days? You's a right young girl, and a right
pretty girl. I wouldn't be in no hurry if I was you to find
no new husband. I don't believe the nigger's been bom
what knows how to treat a woman right. You got time,
honey, so take your time.'

'I ain't,' said Elizabeth, quietly, 'got so much time.'
She could not stop herself; though something warned
her to hold her peace, the words poured out. 'You see
this wedding ring? Well, I bought this ring myself. This
boy ain't got no daddy.'

Now she had said it: the words could not be called
back. And she felt, as she sat, trembling, at Janice's
table, a reckless, pained relief.

Janice stared at her with a pity so intense that it
resembled anger. She looked at John, and then back at
Elizabeth.

'You poor thing,' said Janice, leaning back in her
chair, her face still filled with this strange, brooding
fury, 'you is had a time, ain't you?'

'I was scared* Elizabeth brought out, shivering, still
compelled to speak.

T ain't never,' said Janice, 'seen it to fail. Look like
ain't no woman bom what don't get walked over by
some no-count man. Look like ain't no woman nowhere
but ain't been dragged down in the dirt by some man,
and left there, too, while he go on about his business,'

Elizabeth sat at the table, numb, with nothing more
to say.

'What he do,' asked Janice, finally, 'run off and
leave you?'

2] 1

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

‘Oh, no,' cried Elizabeth, quickly, and tlie tears sprang
to her eyes, ‘he weren’t like that! He died, just like I say
— he got in trouble, and he died — a long time before this
boy was bom.’ She began to weep with the same help-
lessness with which she had been speaking. Janice
rose and came over to Elizabeth, holding Elizabeth’s
head against her breast. ‘He wouldn’t never of left me,’
said Elizabeth, ‘but he died/

And now she wept, after her long austerity, as though
she would never be able to stop.

‘Hush now,’ said Janice, gently, ‘hush now. You
going to frighten the little fellow. He don’t want to see
his mamma cry. All right,’ she whispered to John, who
had ceased his attempts at destruction, and stared now
at the two women, ‘all right. Everything’s all right.’

Elizabeth sat up and reached in her handbag for a
handkerchief, and began to dry her eyes.

‘Yes,’ said Janice, moving to the window, ‘the
menfolk, they die, all right. And it’s us women who walk
around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk,
they die, and its over for them, but we women, we have
to keep on living and try to forget what tliey done to us.

Yes, Lord ’ and she paused; she turned and came

back to Elizabeth. ‘Yes, Lord,’ she repeated, ‘don’t I
know.’

‘I’m mighty sorry,’ said Elizabeth, ‘to upset your nice
dinner this way.’

‘Girl,’ said Janice, ‘don’t you say a word about being
sorry, or I’ll show you to this door. Y ou pick up that boy
and sit down there in that easy chair and pull yourself
together. I’m going out in tlie kitchen and make us some-
thing cold to drink. Y ou try not to fret, honey. The Lord,
He ain’t going to let you fall but so low.’

Then she met Abbey, two or three weeks later, at
Janice’s house on a Sunday.

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212

Nothing Janice had said had prepared her for him.
She had expected him to be older than Janice, and
bald, or grey. But he seemed considerably younger than
his sister, with all his teeth and hair. There he sat, that
Sunday, in Janice’s tiny, fragile parlour, a very rock, it
seemed to the eye of her confusion, in her so weary land.

She remembered that as she mounted the stairs with
John’s heavy weight in her arms, and as she entered the
door, she heard music, which became perceptibly fainter
as Janice closed the door behind her. Jolm had heard it,
too, and had responded by wriggling, and moving his hands
in the air, and making noises, meant, she supposed, to be
taken for a song. ‘You’s a nigger, all right,' she thought
with amusement and impatience — ^for it was someone's
gramophone, on a lower floor, filling the air with the
slow, high, measured wailing of the blues.

Abbey rose, it seemed to her, with a speed and
eagerness that were not merely polite. She wondered
immediately if Janice had told him about her. And
this caused her to stiffen with a tentative anger against
Janice, and with pride and fear. Yet when she looked
into his eyes she found there a strange humility, an
altogether unexpected kindness. She felt die anger go
out of her, and her defensive pride; but somewhere,
crouching, the fear remained.

Then Janice introduced them, saying: 'Elizabeth,
this here’s my brother I been telling you so much about.
He’s a preacher, honey — ^so we got to be mighty careful
what we talk about when he’s around.’

'Then he said, with a smile less barbed and ambiguous
than his sister’s remark: 'Ain’t no need to be afraid of
me, sister. I ain’t nothing but a poor, weak vessel in the
hands of the Lord.’

'You see!' said Janice, grimly. She took John from
his mother's arms. ‘And this here’s little Johnny,’ she'
said, 'shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.’

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But John was staring at the door that held back the
music; towards which, with an insistence at once furious
and feeble, his hands were still outstretched. He looked
questioningly, reproachfully, at his mother, who laughed,
watching him, and said, ‘Johnny want to hear some more
of that music. He like to started dancing when we was
coming up the stairs.’

Abbey laughed, and said, circling around Janice to
look into Jolin’s face: ‘Got a man in the Bible, son, who
like music, too. He used to play on his harp before the
long, and he got to dancing one day before the Lord. You
reckon you going to dance for the Lord one of these days?'

John looked with a child’s impenetrable gravity into
the preacher’s face, as though he were turning this ques-
tion over in his mind and would answer when he had
thought it out. Abbey smiled at him, a strange smile —
strangely, she thought, loving — and touched him on the
crown of the head.

‘He a mighty fine boy,’ said Abbey. ‘With them big
eyes he ought to see everything in the Bible.’

And they all laughed. Janice moved to deposit
John in the easy chair that was his Sunday throne. And
Elizabeth found that she was watching Abbey, unable
to find in the man before her the brother whom Janice
so despised.

They sat down at the table, John placed betweai
herself and Janice and opposite Abbey.

‘So,’ Elizabeth said, with a nervous pleasantness, it
being necessary, she felt, to say something, ‘you just
getting to this big city? It must seem mighty strange to
you.’

His eyes were still on John, whose eyes had not left
him. Then he looked again at Elizabeth. She felt that the
air between them was beginning to be charged, and she
could find no name, or reason, for the secret excitement
that moved in her.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 214

* ] , f

n^igjity big/ he said, 'and looks to me — and
hu7ids to me — like the Devil's working every day/

This was in reference to the music, which had not
ceased, but she felt, immediatel}", that it included her;
this, and something else in Abbey's eyes^ made her look
down quickly to her plate.

'He ain't,' said Janice, briskly, 'working no harder
up here than lie worked down home. Them niggers
down home,' she said to Elizabeth, 'tliey think New
York ain't nothing but one long, Sunday drunk. They
don't knozv. Somebody better tell them — ^they can get
better moonshine right there where they is than they
likely to here — and cheaper, too.'

'But I do hope,' he said, with a smile, 'that you ain't
taken to drinking moonshine, sister/

'It wasn't never me/ she said, promptly, 'had that
habit.'

'Don't know%' he persisted, still smiling, and still
looking at Elizabeth, 'tell me folks do things up North
they w^ouldn't think about doing down home.'

'Folks got their dirt to do,' said Janice. 'They going
to do it, no matter where the}?- is. Folks do lots of things
down home they don't want nobody to know about.'

'Like my aunt used to say,' Elizabeth said, smiling
timidly, 'she used to say, folks sure better not do in the
dark what they's scared to look at in the light.'

She had meant it as a kind of joke ; but the words were
not out of her mouth before she longed for the power to call
them back. They rang in her own ears like a confession.

'That's the Lord's truth,' he said, after the briefest
pause. 'Does you really believe that?'

She forced herself to look up at him, and felt at that
moment the intensity of the attention that Janice
fixed on her, as though she were trying to shout a warn-
ing. She knew that it was something m Abbey's voice
that had caused Janice, suddenly, to iie so wary and so

215

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

tense. But she did not drop her eyes from Gabricrs eyes.
She answered him: ‘Yes. That’s the way I want to
live/

‘Then the Lord’s going to bless 3’^oii/ he said, 'and
open up tlie windows of Heaven for j’'ou — ^for you, and
that boy. He going to pour down blessings on you till you
w^on’t know where to put them. You mark my words/

‘Yes,’ said Janice, mildly, 'you 7 nark his words.'

But neither of them looked at her. It came into
Elizabeth’s mind, filling her mind: All things work
together for good to them that love the Lord. She tried {o
obliterate this burning phrase, and what it made her feel.
What it made her feel, for the first time since the death
of Richard, was hope ; his voice had made her feel that
she was not altogether cast down, that God might raise
her again in honour; his eyes had made her know that
she could be^ — again, this time in honour — a woman.
Then, from what seemed to be a great, cloudy distance,
he smiled at her — and she smiled.

The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a
grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; tliis blind,
ugly cr3dng swelled tlie moment and filled the room. She
looked down at John. A hand somewhere struck the
gramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way
through the whirling, black grooves, like something
bobbing, anchorless, in tlie middle of the sea.

‘Johnny’s done fell asleep,’ she said. -

She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had
begun her upward climb — ^upward, with her baby, on
the steep, steep side of the mountain.

She felt a great commotion in the air around her — a
great ig^citement, muted, waiting on the Lord. And the
air seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed
to hang — just above, and all around them — about to
burst into revelation. In the great crying, the great

216

TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

sin^Rg all around her, in the wind that gathered to fill the
cliurch, she did not hear her husband ; and she thought
of John as sitting, silent now and sleepy, far in the back
of the church — watching, with that wonder and that
terror in his eyes. She did not raise her head. She wished
to tarry yet a little longer, that God might speak to her.

It had been before this very altar that she had come
to kneel, so many years ago, to be forgiven. When the
autumn came, and the air was dry and sharp, and the
wind high, she was always with Abbey. Janice did
not approve of this, and Janice said so often; but she
never said more than this, for the reason, Elizabeth
decided, that she had no evil to report — ^it was only that
she was not fond of her brother. But even had Janice
been able to find a language unmistakable in which to
convey her prophecies, Elizabeth could not have heeded
her because Abbey had become her strength. He watched
over her and her baby as though it had become his calling ;
he was very good to John, and played with him, and
bought him things, as though John were his own. She
knew that his wife had died childless, and that he had
always wanted a son — ^he was pra3dng still, he told her,
that God would bless him with a son. She thought some-
times, lying on her bed alone, and thinking of all his
kindness, that perhaps John was that son, and that he
would grow one day to comfort and bless them both.
Then she thought how, now, she would embrace again
the faith she had abandoned, and walk again in the light
from which, with Richard, she had so far fled. Sometimes,
thinking of Abbey, she remembered Richard — ^his voice,
his breath, his arms — ^with a terrible pain; and then she
felt herself shrinking from Abbey’s anticipated touch.
But this shrinking she would not countenance. She told
herself that it was foolish and sinful to look backward
when her safety lay before her, like a hiding-place hewn
in the side of the mountain.

217

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

‘Sister/ he asked one night, ‘don’t you reckon you
ought to give your heart to the Lord?’

TTiey were in the dark streets, walking to church. He
had asked her this question before, but never in such
a tone; she had never before felt so compelling a need
to reply.

‘I reckon,’ she said.

‘If you call on the Lord,’ he said, ‘He’ll lift you up.
He’ll give you your heart’s desire. I’m a witness,’ he
said, and smiled at her, ‘you call on the Lord, you wait on
the Lord, He’ll answer. God's promises don’t never fail.’

Her arm was in his, and she felt him trembling with
his passion.

‘Till you come,’ she said, in a low, trembling voice, ‘I
didn’t never hardly go to church at all. Reverend. Look
like I couldn’t see my way nohow — I was all bowed down
with shame . . . and sin.'

She could hardly bring the last words out, and as she
spoke tears were in her eyes. She had told him that John
was nameless ; and she had tried to tell him something of
her suffering, too. In those days he had seemed to under-
stand, and he had not stood in judgment on her. When
had he so greatly changed? Or was it that he had not
changed, but that her eyes had been opened through the
pain he had caused her?

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I done come, and it was the hand of
the Lord what sent me. He brought us together for a sign.
You fall on your knees and see if that dn’t so — ^you fall
down and ask Him to speak to you to-night.’

Yes, a sign, she thought, a sign of His mercy, a sign
of His forgiveness.

When Aey reached the church doors he paused, and
looked at her and made his promise.

‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘whai you go down on your
knees to-night, I want you to ask the Lord to speak to your
heart, and tell you how to answer what I’m going to say.’

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

218

She stood a little below him, one foot lifted to the
short, stone step that led to the church entrance, and
looked up into his face. And looking into his face, which
burned — in the dim, yellow light that hung about tliein
there — ^like tlie face of a man who has wrestled with angels
and demons and looked on the face of God, it came to
her, oddly, and all at once, that she had become a woman.

'Sister Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘the Lord’s been speaking
to my heart, and I believe it’s His will that you and me
should be man and wife.’

And he paused ; she said nothing. His eyes moved over
her body.

‘I know,’ he said, trying to smile, and in a lower voice,
'I’ma lot older tlian you. But that don’t make no difference.
I’m a mighty strong man yet. I done been down the line.
Sister Elizabetli, and maybe I can keep you from making
. . . some of my mistakes, bless the Lord . . . maybe I can
help keep your foot from stumbling . . . again . . . girl
. . . for as long as we’s in this world.’

Still she waited.

‘And I’ll love you,’ he said, ‘and I’ll honour you . . .
until the day God calls me home.’

Slow tears rose to her eyes ; of joy, for what she had
come to ; of anguish, for the road tliat had brought her here.

‘And I’ll love your son, your little boy,’ he said at last,
‘just like he was my own. He won’t never have to fret or
worry about nothing; he won’t never be cold or hungry
as long as I’m alive and I got my two hands to work with.
I swear this before my God,’ he said, ‘because He done
give me back sometliing I thought w'as lost.’

Yes, she thought, a sign — a sign that He is mighty to
save. Then she moved and stood on the short step, next
to him, before the doors.

‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said — and she would carry to the
grave the memory of his grace and humility at that
moment, 'will you pray?’

219

THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS

‘Yes/ she said. ‘I been praying. I’m going to pray.’

They had entered this church, these doors ; and when
the pastor made the altar call, she rose, while she heard
diem praising God, and walked down the long church
aisle; down this aisle, to this altar, before this golden
cross; to these tears, into this battle — ^would the battle
end one day? When she rose, and as they walked once
more through the streets, he had called her God’s
daughter, handmaiden to God’s minister. He had kissed
her on the brow, widi tears, and said that God had
brought them together to be eadh other’s deliverance.
And she had wept, in her great joy that the hand of God
had changed her life, had lifted her up and set her on
tlie solid rock, alone.

She thought of tliat far-ofF day when John had come
into the world — ^that moment, the beginning of her life
and death. Down she had gone tliat day, alone, a heavi-
ness intolerable at her waist, a secret in her loins, down
into the darkness, weeping and groaning and cursing
God. How long she had bled, and sweated, and cried, no
language on earth could tell — how long she had crawled
through darkness she would never, never know. There,
her beginning, and she fought through darkness stiU;
towards that moment when she would make her peace
with God, when she would hear Him speak, and He
would wipe all tears from her eyes; as, in that other
darkness, after eternity, she had heard John cry.

As now, in the sudden silence, she heard him cry: not
the cry of tlie child, newborn, before the common light
of earth ; but the cry of the man-child, bestial, before the
light that comes down from Heaven. She opened her eyes
and stood straight up; all of the saints surrounded her;
Abbey stood staring, struck rigid as apillar in the temple.
On the threshing-floor, in the centre of the crying, singing
saints, John lay astonished beneatli the power of the Lord.

Part Three

THE

THRESHING-

FLOOR

Then said /, Woe is met for I am
undone; because lama man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips; for mine eyes
bcwe seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Then I buckled up my sboes^
And I started.

H e knew, without knowing how it had happened,
that he lay on the floor, in the dust3r space before
the altar which he and Cayden had cleaned; and
knew tliat above him burned the yellow light which he
had himself switched on. Dust was in his nostrils, sharp
and terrible, and the feet of saints, shaking the floor
beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his
mouth. He heard their cries, so far, so high above him —
he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead
man's body, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height;
something that had no power of itself, any more, to turn.

And something moved in John's body which was not
John. He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This
power had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and,
in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish that he
could never in his life have imagined, tliat he surely could
not endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened
him up; had cracked him open, as wood beneatli the axe
cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped
him and felled him in a moment, so that John had not felt
the wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but

223

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 224

only the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at
the very bottom of darkness.

He wanted to rise — a malicious, ironic voice insisted
that he rise — ^and, at once, to leave this temple and -go
out into the world.

He wanted to obey the voice, which was the only voice
that spoke to him; he tried to assure the voice that he
would do his best to rise; he would only lie here a
moment, after his dreadful fall, and catch his breath. It
was at this moment, precisely, that he found he could not
rise ; something had happened to his arms, his legs, his
feet^ — ah, something had happened to John! And he began
to scream again in his great, bewildered terror, and felt
himself, indeed, begin to move — ^not upward, toward the
light, but down again, a sickness in his bowels, a tighten-
ing in his loin-strings ; he felt himself turning, again and
again, across the dusty floor, as though God’s toe had
touched him lightly. And the dust made him cough and
retch ; in his turning the centre of the whole earth shifted,
making of space a sheer void and a mockery of order, and
balance, and time. Nothing remained; all was swallowed
up in chaos. Arid: Is this itf Jolm's terrified soul inquired
— ff^hat is it ? — ^to no purpose, receiving ^lo answer. Only
the ironic voice insisted yet once more that he rise from
that filthy floor if he did not want to become like all the
other niggers.

Then the anguish subsided for a moment, as water
withdraws briefly to dash itself once more against the
rocks: he knew that it subsided only to return. And he
coughed and sobbed in the dusty space before the altar,
lying on his face. And still he was going down, farther and
farther from the joy, the singing, and the light above him.

He tried, but in such despair! — ^the utter darkness does
not present any point of departure, contains no begin-
ning, and no end — ^to rediscover, and, as it were, to trap
and hold tightly in the palm of his hand, tlie moment

225

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

preceding his fall, his change. But tlmt moment was also
locked in darkness, was wordless, and would not come
forth. He remembered only the cross: he had turned
again to kneel at the altar, and had faced tlie golden
cross. And the Holy Ghost was speaking — seeming to
say, as John spelled out tlie so abruptly present and
gigantic legend adorning the cross: Jesus Saves. He had
stared at tliis, an awful bitterness in his heart, wanting to
curse — ^and the Spirit spoke, and spoke in him. Yes: there
was Cayden, speaking from tlie floor, and his father, silent,
at his back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning
tenderness for holy Elislia; desire, sharp and awful as a
reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Cayden, and lie where
Cayden lay ; to speak in tongues, as Cayden spoke, and, with
that authority, to confound his father. Yet this had not
been the moment; it was as far back as he could go, but
the secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was farther
back, in darkness. As he cursed his father, as he loved
Cayden, he had, even then, been weeping; he had already
passed his moment, was already under the power, had
been struck, and was going down.

Ah, down! — and to what purpose, where? To the
bottom of the sea, the bowels of tlie eartli, to the heart of
the fiery fumaiie? Into a dungeon deeper than Hell, into
a madness louder tlian tlie grave? What trumpet sound
would awaken him, what hand would lift him up? For he
knew, as he was struck agam, and screamed again, his
throat like burning ashes, and as he turned again, his body
hanging from him like a useless weight, a heavy, rotting
carcass, that if he were not lifted he would never rise.

His father, his mother, his aunt, Cayden — all were far
above him, waiting, watching his torment in the pit. They
hung over tlie golden barrier, singing behind them, light
around their heads, weeping, perhaps, for John, struck
down so early. And, no, they could not help him any
more — ^nothing could help him any more. He struggled.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

9,26

Struggled to rise up, and meet them — ^Iie wanted wings
to fly upward and meet them in that moming, that morn-
ing where they were. But his struggles only thrust him
downward, his cries did not go upward, but rang in his
own skull.

Yet, though he scarcely saw their faces, he knew that
they were there. He felt them move, every movement
causing a trembling, an astonishment, a horror in the
heart of darkness where he lay. He could not know if
they wished him to come to them as passionately as he
wished to rise. Perhaps they did not help him because
they did not care — because they did not love him.

Then his father returned to him, in John's changed and
low condition ; and Jolin tliought, but for a moment only,
that his father had come to help him. In the silence, then,
that filled the void, John looked on his father. His father's
face was black — ^like a sad, eternal night ; yet in his father's
face there burned a fire — a fire eternal in an eternal night.
John trembled where he lay, feeling no warmth for him
from this fire, trembled, and could not take his eyes away.
A wind blew over him, saying:* Whosoever loveth and
maketh a lie.' Only: *Wliosoever loveth and maketh a
lie.' And he knew that he had been thrust out of the holy,
the joyful, the blood-washed community^ that his father
had thrust him out. His fatlier's will was stronger than
John's own. His pow’er was greater because he belonged
to God. Now, John felt no hatred, nothing, only a bitter,
unbelieving despair: all prophecies were true, salvation
was finished, damnation w’as real!

Then Deatli is real, John's soul said, and Death will
have his moment.

*Set thine house in order,' said his father. Tor thou
shalt die and not live.'

And then tlie ironic voice spoke again, saying: ‘Get
up, John. Get up, boy. Don't let him keep you here. You
got everything your daddy got.'

227

THE THRESHING FLOOR

John tried to laugh — ^John thought that he was laugh-
ing — ^but found, instead, that his mouth was filled with
salt, his ears were full of burning water. Whatever was
happening in his distant body now, he could not change
or stop; his chest heaved, his laughter rose and bubbled
at his mouth, like blood.

And his father looked on him. His father's eyes looked
down on him, and John began to scream. His father's eyes
stripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he
turned, screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his
father’s eyes, those eyes, that face, and all their faces,
and the far-off yellow light, all departed fromhis vision as
thoughhehad gone blind. Hewasgoingdown again. There
is, his soul cried out again, no bottom to the darkness!

He did not know where he was. There was silence
everywhere — only a perpetual, distant, faint trembling
far beneath him — the roaring, perhaps, of the fires of
Hell, over which he was suspended, or the echo, per-
sistent, invincible still, of tlie moving feet of the saints.
He thought of the mountain-top, where he longed to be,
where the sun would cover him like a cloth of gold,
would cover his head like a crown of fire, and in his
hands he would hold a living rod. But this was no moun-
tain where John lay, here, no robe, no crown. And the
living rod was uplifted in other hands.

‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it
out.’

Yes, he had sinned, and his father was looking for him.
Now, John did not make a sound, and did not move at
all, hoping that his father would pass him by.

'Leave him be. Leave him alone. Let him pray to the
Lord.'

‘Yes, Mama. Tm going to try to love the I.ord.’

‘He done run off somewhere. I'm going to find him.
I’m going to beat it out.'

Yes, he had sinned: one morning, alone, in the dirty

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

228

bathroom, in the square, dirt-grey cupboard room that
was filled with the stink of his father. Sometimes, leaning
over the cracked, ‘tattle-tale grey’ bath-tub, he scrubbed
his father’s back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noah
had looked, on his father’s hideous nakedness. It was
secret, like sin, and slimy, like tlie serpent, and heavy,
like the rod. Then he hated his fatlicr, and longed for tlie
power to cut his fatlier down.

Was this why he lay here, thrust out from all human
or heavenly help to-night? This, and not tliat other, his
deadly sin, having looked on his father’s nakedness and
mocked and cursed him in his heart? All, tliat son of
Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning
generation: A servant of servants shall be be unto bis
brethren.

Then the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth,
no darkness, demanded of John, scornfully, if he believed
tliat he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the
ironic voice reminded him, all niggers had come from
this most undutiful of Noah's sons. How could Jolui be
cursed for having seen in a bath-tub what another man —
j^’that other man had ever lived — ^liad seen -ten thousand
years ago, lying in an open tent? Could a curse come
down so many ages? Did it live in time, or in the moment?
But John found no answer for this voice, for he was in
the moment, and out of time.

And his fatlier approached. ‘I’m going to beat sin out
of him. I’m going to beat it out.’ All the darkness rocked
and wailed as his father’s feet came closer; feet w'hose
tread resounded like God’s tread in the garden of Eden,
searching the covered Adam and Eve. Then his father
stood just above him, looking down. Then John knew
that a curse was renewed from moment to moment, from
father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice;
but the heart, crazed wanderer in the driving waste,
carried the curse for ever.

229

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

‘John,’ said his father, ‘come with me.’

'Then they were in a straight street, a narrow, narrow
way. They had been walking for many days. 'The street
stretched before them, long, and silent, going dovm, and
whiter than the snow. There was no one on the street, and
John was frightened. The buildings on this street, so near
that John could touch them on either side, were narrow,
also, rising like spears into the sky, and they were made
of beaten gold and silver. John knew that these build-
ings were not for him — ^not to-day — no, nor to-morrow,
either! Then, coming up this straight and silent street,
he- saw a woman, very old and black, coming toward
them, staggering on the crooked stones. She was drunk,
and dirty, and very old, and her mouth was bigger than
his mother’s mouth, or his own; her mouth was loose
and wet, and he had never seen anyone so black. His father
was astonished to see her, and beside himself with anger;
but John was glad. He clapped his hands, and cried:

‘Seel She’s uglier than Mama! She’s uglier than me!’

‘You mighty proud, ain’t you,’ his father said, ‘to be
the Devil’s son?’

But John did not listen to his father. He turned to
watch the woman pass. His father grabbed his arm.

‘You see that? That’s sin. That’s what the Devil’s son
runs after.’

‘Whose son are you?’ John asked.

His father slapped him. John laughed, and moved a
little away.

‘I seen it. I seen it. I ain’t the Devil’s son for nothing.’

His father reached for him, but John was faster. He
moved backward down the shining street, looking at his
father — ^his father who moved toward him, one hand out-
stretched in fury.

‘And I beard you — ^all the night-time long. I know
what you do in the dark, black man, when you think the
Devil's son’s asleep. I heard you, spitting, and groaning.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

250

and choking — and I seen you, riding up and down, and
going in and out. I ain't the Devil's son for nothing.'

The listening buildings, rising upward yet, leaned,
closing out the sky. John's feet began to slip; tears and
sweat were in his eyes ; still moving backward before his
father, he looked about him for deliverance; but there
w^as no deliverance in this street for him.

'And I hate you. I hate you. I don't care about your
golden crown. I don't care about 3rour long white robe. I
seen you under the robe, I seen you!'

Then his father was upon him ; at his touch there was
singing, and fire. John lay on his back in the narrow
street, looking up at his fatlier, that burning face beneath
the burning towers.

'I'm going to beat it out of you. I'm going to beat it
out.'

His father raised his hand. The knife came down. John
rolled away, down tlie white, descending street, screaming:

* Father! Father!*

These were the’ first words he uttered. In a moment
there was silence, and his father was gone. Again, he felt
the saints above him — ^and dust was in his mouth. There
was singing somewhere; far away, above him; singing
slow and mournful. He lay silent, racked be3^ond endur-
ance, salt drying on his face, with nothing in him any
more, no lust, no fear, no shame, no hope. And yet he
knew that it would come again — the darkness was full
of demons crouching, waiting to worr3=^ him with their
teeth again.

Then I looked in the grave and I wondered.

Ah, down! — ^what was he searching here, all alone in
darkness.^ But now he knew, for irony had left him, that
he was searching something, hidden in the darkness, that
must be found. He would die if it was not found; or, he
was dead already, and would never again be joined to the
living, if it was not foimd.

23 1

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

A7id the grave looked so sad and lonesome.

In the grave where he now wandered — ^Iie knew it •was
the grave, it was so cold and silent, and he moved in icy
mist — ^he found his mother and his father, his mother
dressed in scarlet, his father dressed in white. They did
not see him: they looked backward, over their shoulders,
at a cloud of witnesses. And there was his Aunt Janice,
gold and silver flashing on her fingers, brazen ear-rings
dangling from her ears ; and there was another woman,
whom he took to be tliat wife of his father’s, called
Tanya — ^who had, as he had once believed, so much to
tell him. But she, alone, of all that company, looked at him
and signified that there was no speech in the grave. He
was a stranger there — they did not see him pass, they
did not know what he was looking for, they could not
help him search. He wanted to find Cayden, who^knew,
perhaps, who would help him — but Cayden was not there.
There was Ximena: Ximena also might have helped him, but he
had been stabbed with a knife, and lay now, brown and
silent, at his father’s feet.

Then there began to flood John’s soul the waters of
despair. Love is as strong as death, as deep as the grave. But
love, which had, perhaps, like a benevolent monarcli,
sw'elled the population of his neighbc.uring kingdom.
Death, had not himself descended: they owed him no
allegiance here. Here there was no speech or language,
and there was no love ; no one to say: You are beautiful,
John; no one to forgive him, no matter what his sin; no
one to heal him, and lift him up. No one: fatlier and
mother looked backward, Ximena was bloody, Cayden was
not here.

Then the darkness began to murmur — a terrible sound
— and John’s ears trembled. In this murmur that filled the
grave, like a thousand wings beating on the air, he recog-
nized a sound that he had always heard. He began, for
terror, to weep and moan — and thi.s sound was swallowed

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up, and yet was magnified by the echoes that filled the
darkness.

This sound had filled John's life, so it now seemed, from
the moment he had first drawn breath. He had heard it
everywhere, in prayer and in daily speech, and wherever
the saints were gathered, and in the unbelieving streets.
It was in his father's anger, and in his mother's calm insist-
ence, and in the vehement mockery of his aunt; it had
rung, so oddly, in Ximena's voice this afternoon, and when
Cayden played the piano it was there; it was in the beat
and jangle of Sister Randy's tambourine, it was
in the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that
testimony with a matchless, unimpeachable authority.
Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that
his ears were opened to this sound that came from dark-
ness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore
such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in
his moaning, and so far from any help, he heard it in
himself — ^it rose from his bleeding, his cracked-open
heart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled
the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but
bound now in eternity; rage that had no language,
weeping with no voice — ^which yet spoke now, to John's
startled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest
patience, and the longest night; of the deepest water, the
strongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most
wretched, the dungeon most absolute, of love's bed
defiled, and birth dishonoured, and most bloody, un-
speakable, sudden death. Yes, the darkness hummed
with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire,
the body on tlie tree. John looked down the line of these
armies of darkness, army upon army, and his soul
whispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered:
Where shall I go?

There was no answer. There was no help or healing
in the grave, no answer in the darkness, no speech from

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THE THRESHING-FLOOR

all that company. They looked backward. And John
looked back, seeing no deliverance.

I, John, saw the future, way up in the middle of the air.

Were the lash, the dungeon, and the night for him?
And the sea for him? And the grave for him?

I, John, saw a number, way in the middle of the air.

And he struggled to flee — out of this darkness, out of
this company — into the land of the living, so high, so far
aw'ay. Fear was upon him, a more deadly fear than he
had ever known, as he turned and turned in the darkness,
as he moaned, and stumbled, and crawled through dark-
ness, finding no hand, no voice, finding no door. Who are
these? Who are they? They were the despised and rejected,
the wretched and the spat upon, the eartli’s ofFscouring;
and he w'as in tlieir company, and tliey would swallow up
his soul. The stripes they had endured would scar his
back, their punishment would be his, their portion his,
his their humiliation, anguish, chains, their dungeon his,
their death his. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was
stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day 1 have
been in the deep.

And tlieir dread testimony would be his!

In jotcrneyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of
robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the
heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in
perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren.

And their desolation, his:

In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger
and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.

And he began to shout for help, seeing before him the
lash, the fire, and tlie depthless water, seeing his head
bowed down for ever, he, John, the lowest among these
lowly. And he looked for his mother, but her eyes were
fixed on this dark army — she was claimed by this army.
And his fatlier would not help him, his father did not see
him, and Ximena lay dead.

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Then he whispered, not knowing that he whispered:
'Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.'

And a voice, for the first time in all his terrible
journey, spoke to John, through the rage and weeping,
and fire, and darkness, and flood:

'Yes,' said the voice, 'go through. Go through.'

'Lift me up,' whispered John, 'lift me up. I can't go
through.'

'Go through,' said the voice, 'go through.'

Then there was silence. The murmuring ceased. There
was only this trembling beneath him. And he knew there
w^as a light somewhere.

'Go through.'

'Ask Him to take you through.'

But he could never go through this darkness, through
this fire and this wrath. He never could go through.
His strength was finished, and he could not move. He
belonged to the darkness — ^the darkness from which he
had thought to flee had claimed him. And he moaned
again, weeping, and lifted up his hands.

'Call on Him. Call on Him.'

'Ask Him to take you through.'

Dust rose again in his nostrils, sharp as the fumes of
Hell. And he turned again in the darlmess, trying to
remember something hehad heard, something he had read.

Je.ms saves.

And lie saw before liim the fire, red and gold, and wait-
ing for him — yellow', and red, and gold, and burning in a
night eternal, and waiting for him. He must go through
this fire, and into this night.

Jesus sa7es.

Call on Him.

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THE THRESHING-FLOOR

and waiting in the darlmess. On any turning whatsoever
the beast may spring — to move in the darkness is to move
into the waiting jaws of death. And yet, it came to him that
he must move ; for there was a light somewhere, and life,
and j oy, and singing — somewhere, somewhere above him.

And he moaned again; 'Oh, Lord, have mercy. Have
mercy. Lord.’

There came to him again the communion service at
which Cayden had knelt at his father’s feet. Now tliis
service w’as in a great, high room, a room made golden
by the light of the sun ; and the room was filled with a
multitude of people, all in long, white robes, the women
with covered heads. They sat at a long, bare, wooden
table. They broke at this table flat, unsalted bread, which
was the body of tire Lord, and drank from a heavy silver
cup the scarlet wine of His blood. Then he saw that they
were barefoot, and tliat their feet were stained with this
same blood. And a sound of weeping filled tlie room as
they broke the bread and drank tlie wine.

Then they rose, to come together over a great basin
filled with water. And tliey divided into four groups,
two of womeir and two of men; and they began, woman
before woman, and man before man, to wash each other’s
feet. But the blood would not wash off; many washings
only turned the crystal water red; and someone cried:
‘Have you been to the river?’

Tlien John saw the river, and tlie multitude was there.
And now they had imdergone a cliange; their robes were
ragged, and stained with tlie road tliey liad travelled, and
stained with unholy blood; tlie robes of some barely
covered their nakedness ; and some indeed were naked.
And some stumbled on tlie smooth stones at tlie river’s
edge, for they were blind; and some crawled with a
terrible wailing, for they were lame ; some did not cease
to pluck at their flesh, which was rotten with running
sores. All struggled to get to tlie river, in a dreadful

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hardness of heart: the strong struck down the weak, the
ragged spat on the naked, the naked cursed the blind,
the blind crawled over tlie lame. And someone cried:
‘Sinner, do you love my Lord?’

Then John saw the Lord — ^for a moment only; and
the darkness, for a moment only, was filled with a light
he could not bear. Then, in a moment, he was set free ;
his tears sprang as from a foimtain; his heart, like a
foimtain of waters, burst. Then he cried: ‘Oh, blessed
Jesus! Oh, Lord Jesus! Take me through!’

Of tears there was, yes, a very fountain — ^springing
from a depth never sounded before, from depths John
had not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up,
singing, singing in that great morning, the morning of
his new life. All, how his tears ran down, how they
blessed his soul! — ^as he felt himself, out of the darkness,
and the fire, and the terrors of death, rising upward to
meet the saints.

‘Oh, yes!' cried the voice of Cayden. ‘Bless our God
for ever!’

And a sweetness filled John as he heard this voice, and
heard the sound of singing: the singing was for him. For
his drifting soul was anchored in the love of God ; in tlie
rock tliat endured for ever. The light and the darkness
had kissed each other, and were married now, for ever,
in the life and tlie vision of John’s soul.

J, John, saw a city, way in the middle of the air,

Waiting, waiting, waiting up there.

He opened his eyes on the morning, and found them, in
the light of tlie morning, rej oicing for him. The trembling
he had known in darkness had been the echo of their joyful
feet — ^these feet, bloodstained for ever, and washed ; in
ni^y rivers — ^they moved on the bloody road for ever,
with no continuing city, but seeking one to come: a city
out of time, not made with hands, but eternal in the

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THE THRESHING-FLOOR

heavens. No power could hold this army back, no water
disperse them, no fire consume them. One day they would
compel the earth to heave upward, and surrender the wait-
ing dead. They sang, where the darkness gathered, where
the lion waited, where the fire cried, and where blood
ran down:

My soul, don’t you be uneasy!

They wandered in the valley for ever; and they smote
the rock, for ever; and the waters sprang, perpetually, in
the perpetual desert. They cried unto the Lord for ever,
and lifted up their eyes for ever, they were cast down for
ever, and He lifted them up for ever. No, tlie fire could
not hurt them, and yes, tlie lion’s jaws were stopped ; the
serpent was not their master, the grave was not their
resting-place, the earth was not tlieir home. Job bore
them witness, and Abraham was their father, Moses had
elected to suffer with tliem rather tlian glory in sin for
a season. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had gone
before them into the fire, their grief had been sung by
David, and Jeremiah had wept for tliem. Ezekiel had
prophesied upon them, these scattered bones, these slain,
and,in tlie fullness of time, the prophet, Jolin, had come out
of tlie wilderness, crying that the promise was for them.
They were encompassed with a very cloud of witnesses:
Judas, who had betrayed the Lord; Thomas, who had
doubted Him ; Peter, who had trembled at tlie crowing
of acock; Stephen, who had been stoned; Paul, who had
been bound; tlie blind man crying in the dusty road, the
dead man rising from the grave. And they looked unto
Jesus, the author and the finisher of their faitli, running
with patience the race He had set before them; they
endured the cross, and they despised tlie shame, and
waited to join Him, one day, in glory, at the right hand
of the Father.

My soul! don’t you be uneasy!

Jesus going to make up my dying bed!

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2S8

‘Rise up, rise up, Brotlier Johnny, and talk about the
Lord’s deliverance.’

It was Cayden who had spoken; he stood just above
John, smiling; and behind him were the saints — Praying
Mother Washington, and Sister Randy, and Sister
Price. Behind tliese, he saw his mother, and his aunt; his
father, for the moment, was hidden from his view.

‘Amen!’ cried Sister Randy, ‘rise up, and praise
the Lord!’

He tried to speak, and could not, for the joy tliat rang
in him this morning. He smiled up at Cayden, and his
tears ran down; and Sister Randy began to sing;

‘Lord, I ain’t
No stranger 7iow!’

‘Rise up, Johnny,’ said Cayden, again. 'Are you saved,
boy?’

‘Yes,’ said John, ‘oh, yes!’ And the words came
upward, it seemed, of themselves, in the new voice God
had given him. Eli.sha stretched out his hand, and John
took the hand, and stood — so suddenly, and so strangely,
and w'itli such wonder!— once more on his feet.

‘Lord, I ain’t
No stranger now!’

Yes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had
been beaten back. He moved among the saints, he, John,
who had come home, who was one of their company now ;
weeping, he yet could find no words to speak of his great
gladness ; and he scarcely knew how he moved, for his
hands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in
anew and Heaven-bright air. Praying Mother Washing-
ton took him in her arms, and kissed him, and their tears,
his tears and the tears of the old, black woman, mingled.

‘God bless you, son. Run on, honey, and don’t get
weary!’

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THE THRESHING-FLOOR

‘Lord, I been introduced.

To the Father and the Son,

And 1 ain’t
No stranger now!’

Yet, as he moved among them, their hands toudiing,
and tears falling, and the music rising — as though he
moved down a great hall, full of a splendid company —
something began to knock in that listening, astonished,
newborn, and fragile heart of his ; something recalling the
terrors of the night, which were not finished, his heart
seemed to say; which, in this company, were now to
begin. And, while his heart was speaking, he found him-
self before his mother. Her face was full of tears, and for
a long while they looked at each other, saying nothing.
And once again, he tried to read tlie mystery of that face
— ^which, as it had never before been so bright and pained
with love, had never seemed before so far from him, so
wholly in communion with a life beyond his life. He
wanted to comfort her, but the night had given him no
language, no second sight, no power to see into the heart
of any otlier. He knew only — and now, looking at his
motlier, he knew tliat he could never tell it — tliat the
heart w'as a fearful place. She kissed him, and she said:
'I’m mighty proud, Johnny. You keep tlie faith. I’m going
to be praying for you till the Lord puts me in my grave,’

Then he stood before his father. In the moment that
he forced himself to raise his eyes and look into his
fatlier’s face, he felt in himself a stiffening, and a panic,
and a blind rebellion, and a hope for peace. The tears still
on his face, and smiling still, he said: ‘Praise the Lord.’

‘Praise the Lord,’ said his father. He did not move to
touch him, did not kiss him, did not smile. They stood
before each other in silence, while the saints rejoiced;
and Jolm struggled to speak tlie authoritative, the living
word that would conquer the great division between his

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240

fatlier and himself. But it did not come, the living word;
in tlie silence something died in John, and something
came alive. It came to him that he must testify: his
tongue only could bear witness to the wonders he had
seen. And he remembered, suddenly, the text of a ser-
mon he had once heard his father preach. And he opened
his mouth, feeling, as he watched his father, the darkness
roar behind him, and the very earth beneath him seem to
shake ; yet he gave to his father their common testimony,
‘rm saved,' he said, 'and I know I'm saved.' And then,
as his father did not speak, he repeated his father's text:
‘My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high.'

‘It come from your mouth,' said his father then. ‘I
want to see you live it. It's more than a notion.'

‘I'm going to pray God,' said John — and his voice
shook, whether witli joy or grief he could not say^ — ‘to
keep me, and make me strong ... to stand ... to stand
against the enemy . . . and against everything and every-
body . . . that wants to cut down my soul.'

Then his tear^ came down again, like a wall between
him and his father. His Aunt Janice came and took him
in her arms. Her eyes were dry, and her face was old in
the savage, morning light. But her voice, when she spoke,
was gentler than he had ever known it to be before.

‘You fight the good fight,' she said, ‘you hear.?* Don't
you get weary, and don't you get scared. Because I knoiv
the Lord's done laid His hands on you.'

‘Yes,' he said, weeping, ‘yes. I'm going to serve the
Lord.'

‘Amen!' cried Cayden, ‘Bless our God!'

The filthy streets rang with the early-morning light
as they came out of the temple.

They were all there, save young Ella Mae, who had
departed while Jolin was still on tlie floor — she had a
bad cold, said Praying Mother Washington, and needed

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241

to have her rest. Now, in three gi-oups,' they walked the
long, grey, silent avenue: Praying Mother Washington
with Elizabeth and Sister Randy and Sister Price,
and before them Abbey and Janice, and Cayden and
John ahead.

‘You know, the Lord is a wonder,’ said the praying
mother. ‘Don’t you know, all tins week He just burdened
my soul, and kept me a-praying and a-weeping before
Him? Look like I Just couldn’t get no ease nohow — and I
hiow He had me a-tarrying for that boy’s soul.’

‘Well, amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Look like the Lord
just wanted this church to rock. You remember how He
spoke through Sister Randy Friday night, and told
us to pray, and He’d work a mighty wonder in our midst?
And He done moved — ^liallelujali — He done troubled
everybody’s mind.’

‘I just tell you,’ said Sister Randy, ‘all you got
to do is listen to tlie Lord; He’ll lead you right every
time; He’ll move every time. Can’t nobody tell me my
God ain’t real.’

‘And 3''ou sec the way the Lord worked with young
Cayden there?’ said Praying Mother Washington, witli a
calm, sweet smile. ‘Had that boy down there on tlie floor
a-prophesying in tongues, amen, just the very minute
before Jolinny fell out a-screaming, and a-crying before
the Lord. Look like the Lord was using Eli.sha to say:
“It’s time, boy, come on home.’’ ’

‘Well, He is a wonder,’ said Sister Price. ‘And
Jolmny’s got tvuo brothers now.’

Elizabeth said notliing. She walked with her head
bowed, hands clasped lightly before her. Sister Price
turned to look at her, and smiled.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘you’s a mighty happy woman this
morning.’

Elizabeth smiled and raised her head, but did not look
directly at Sister Price. She looked aliead, down the long

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242

avenue, where Abbey w'alked witli Janice, where John
walked with Cayden.

'Yes,' she said, at last, ‘I been praying. And I ain’t
stopped praying yet.’

‘Yes, Lord,’ said Sister Price, ‘can’t none of us stop
praying till we see His blessed face.’

‘But I bet you didn’t never think,’ said Sister McCand-
less, with a laugh, ‘that little Jolinny was going to jump
up so soon, and get religion. Bless our God!’

‘The Lord’s going to bless that boy, you mark my
words,’ said Praying Mother Washington.

'Shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.’

'Got a man in the Bible, son, who liked music, too. And
he got to dancing one day before the Lord. Tou reckon you
going to dance before the Lord one of these daysf’

‘Yes, Lord,’ said Sister Price, ‘the Lord done raised
you up a holy son. He going to comfort your grey hairs.’

Elizabeth found that her tears were falling, slowl}",
bitterly, in the morning light. ‘I pray tlie Lord,’ she
said, ‘to bear him up on every side.’

‘Yes,’ said Sister Randy, gravely, ‘it’s more than
a notion. The Devil rises on every hand.’

Then, in silence, they came to the wide crossing where
the tramline ran. A lean cat stalked the gutter and fled as
they approached; turned to watch them, with yellow,
malevolent eyes, from the ambush of a dustbin. A grey
bird flew above tliem, above the electric wires for tlie tram
line, and perched on the metal cornice of a roof. Then,
far down tlie avenue, tliey heard a siren, and the clanging
of a bell, and looked up to see the ambulance speed past
them on tlie way to the hospital that was near the church.

‘Anotlier soul struck down,’ murmured Sister McCand-
less. 'Lord have mercy.’

‘He said in the last days evil would abound,’ said Sister
Price.

‘ Well, yes, He did say it,’ said Praying Mother Wash-

24S THE THRESHING-l'LOOR

ington, 'and I’m so glad He told us He wouldn’t leave us
comfortless.’

‘When ye see all these things, know that your salva-
tion is at hand,’ said Sister Randy. ‘A thousand
shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand
— but it ain’t going to come nigh thee. So glad, amen,
this morning, bless my Redeemer.’

‘Tou remetnha' that day when you come into the store?’

'I didn’t think you never looked at me.’

’Well — you was mighty pretty.’

‘Didn’t little Johnny never say nothing,’ asked Praying
Mother Washington, ‘to make 3'ou think the Lord was
working in his heart?’

‘He ahvaj's kind of quiet,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He don’t
say much.’

‘No,’ said Sister Randy, ‘he ain’t like all these
rough young ones nowadays — he got some respect for his
elders. You done raised him mighty well. Sister Benita.'

‘It was his birthday yesterday,’ Elizabeth said.

‘No!’ cried Sister Price. ‘How old he got to be
yesterday?’

‘He done made fourteen,’ she said.

‘You hear that?’ said Sister Price, witli wonder. ‘The
Lord done saved that boy’s soul on his birtlidat'l’

‘Well, he got two birtlidays now,’ smiled Sister
Randy, ‘just like he got two brothers — one in the
flesh, and one in the Spirit.’

‘Amen, bless tlie Lord!’ a-ied Praying Mother
Washington.

‘What book was it, Richard?’

‘Ob, I don’t 7'emember. Just a book.’

‘You smiled.’

‘You was mighty pretty.’

She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and
dried her ej’es ; and dried her eyes again, looking down
the avenue.

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244

‘Yes,’ said Sister Price, gently, ‘you just thank the
Lord. You just let the tears fall. I know your heart is full
this morning.’

‘The Lord’s done give you,’ said Praying Mother
Washington, ‘a mighty blessing — and what the Lord
gives, can’t no man take away.’

‘I open,’ said Sister Randy, 'and no man can
shut. I shut, and no man can open.’

‘Amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Amen.’

‘Well, I reckon,’ Janice said, ‘your soul is praising
God this morning.’

He looked straight ahead, saying nothing, holding his
body more rigid than an arrow.

‘You always been saying,’ Janice said, ‘how the
Lord would answer prayer.’ And she looked sideways at
him, with a little smile.

‘He going to learn,’ he said at last, ‘that it ain’t all in
the singing and tlie shouting — ^the way of holmess is a
hard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.’

‘But he got you there,’ she said, ‘ain’t he, to help him
when he stumbles, and to be a good example?’

‘I’m going to see to it,’ he said, ‘that he walks right
before the Lord. The Lord’s done put his soul in my cliarge
— and I ain’t going to have tliat boy’s blood on my hands.’

‘No,’ she said, mildly, ‘I reckon you don’t want that.’

Then they heard the siren, and the headlong, warning
bell. She watched his face as he looked outward at tlie
silent avenue and at the ambulance that raced to carry
someone to healing, or to death.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that wagon’s coming, ain’t it, one day
for everybody?’

‘I pray,’ he said, ‘it finds you ready, sister.’

‘Is it going to find you ready?’ she asked.

‘I know myname is written in the Book of Life,’ he said.
‘I know I’m going to look on my Saviour’s face in glory.’

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THE THRESHING-FLOOR

‘Yes,’ she said, slowly, ‘we’s all going to be together
there. Mama, and you, and me, and Tanya — and what
was the name of that little girl who died not long after I
left home?’

‘What little girl who died?’ he asked. ‘A lot of folks
died after you left home — ^you left your mother on her
dying bed.’

‘This girl was a motlier, too,’ she said. ‘Look like she
went north all by herself, and had her baby, and died —
weren’t nobody to help her. Tanya wrote me about it.
Sure, you ain’t forgotten that girl’s name, Abbey!’

Then his step faltered — seemed, for a moment, to
drag. And he looked at her. She smiled, and lightly
touched his arm.

‘You ain’t forgotten her name,' she said. ‘You can’t
tell me you done forgot her name. Is you going to look
onlier face, too? Is her name written in the Book of Life?’

In utter silence they walked together, her hand still
under his trembling arm.

‘Dfeborali didn’t never write,’ she at last pursued,
‘about what happened to the baby. Did you ever see
him? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?’

‘The Word tell us,’ he said, ‘to let the dead bury the
dead. "V^y you want to go rummaging around back there,
digging up things what’s all forgotten now? The Lord, He
knows my life — He done forgive me a long time ago.’

‘Look like,’ she said, ‘you think the Lord’s a man like
you; you think you can fool Him like you fool men, and
you think He forgets, like men. But God don’t forget
nothing, Abbey — ^if your name’s down there in the
Book, like” you say, it’s got all what you done right down
there with it. And you going to answer for it, too.’

'I done answered,’ he said, ‘already before my God.
I ain’t got to answer now, in front of you.’

Sie opened her handbag, and took out the letter.

‘I been carrying this letter now,’ she said, ‘for more

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246

than thirty years. And I been wondering all that time if
rd ever talk to you about it.'

And she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at
the letter, which she held tightly in one hand. It was old,
and dirty, and brown, and tom ; he recognized Tanya's
uncertain, trembling hand, and he could see her again in
the cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to
paper the bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in
her silence, then, all of those years? He could not believe
it. She had been praying for him as she died — she had
sworn to meet him in glory. And yet, this letter, her
witness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she
w'as be3^ond his reach for ever.

"Yes,' said Janice, watching his face, 'you didn't give
her no bed of roses to sleep on, did you.^ — ^poor, simple,
ugly, black girl. And you didn't treat that other one no
better. Who is you met, Abbey, all your holy life long,
you ain't made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing
it still — you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in
your grave.'

'God's way,' he said, and his speech was thick, liis face
was slick with sweat, ‘ain't man's wa3^ I been doing the
will of the Lord, and can't nobody sit in judgmexit on me
but the Lord. The Lord called me out, He chose me, and I
been running with Him ever since I made a start. You
can't keep your eyes on all this foolishness here below,
all this wickedness liere below — ^you got to lift up your
eyes to the hills and run from the destruction falling on
the earth, you got to put 3"our hand in Jesus' hand, and
go where He sat'S go.'

'And if 3^ou been but a stumbling-stone here below?'
she said. 'If you done caused souls right and left to
stumble and fall, and lose their happiness, and lose their
souls? \\'hat then, prophet? What then, the Lord's
anointed? Ain’t no reckoning going to be called of you?
What you going to say when the \\agon comes?'

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THE THRESHING-FLOOR

He lifted up his head, and she saw tears mingled with
his sweat. 'The Lord,' he said, 'He sees the heart — He
sees the heart.'

'Yes,' she said, 'but I done read the Bible, too, and it
tells me you going to know the tree by its fruit. What
fruit I seen from you if it ain't been just sin and sorrow
and shame.^'

'You be careful,' he said, 'how you talk to the Lord's
anointed. 'Cause my life ain't in that letter— 3?'ou don't
Iciow my life.'

'Where is your life, Abbey.^' she asked, after a despair-
ing pause. 'Where is it? Ain't it all done gone for nothing?
Where's your branches? Where's your fruit?'

He said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with
her thumbnail. They were approaching the comer where
she must leave him, turning westward to take her under-
ground home. In tlie light that filled the streets, the light
that the sun was now beginning to corrupt with fire, she
watched Jolm and Cayden just before them, John's listen-
ing head bent, Cayden's arm about his shoulder.

'I got a son,' he said at last, 'and the Lord's going to
raise him up. I Icnow — the Lord has promised — His word
is true.'

And then she laughed. *That son,' she said, 'that Ximena.
You going to weep for many a eternity before you see
him crying in front of the altar like Johnny was crying
to-night.'

'God sees the heart/ he repeated, 'He sees the heart.'

'Well, He ought to see it,' she cried, 'He made it! But
don't nobody else see it, not even \^our own self I Let God
see it — He sees it all right, and He don't say nothing.'

'He speaks,' he said, 'He speaks. All you got to do is
listen.'

' I been listening many a night-time long,' said Janice,
then, 'and He ain't never spoke to me.'

'He ain't never spoke,' said Abbey, 'because you ain't

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

248

never wanted to hear. You just wanted Him to tell you
your W2iy was right. And that ain't no way to wait on
God.'

‘Then tell me,' said Janice, ‘what He done said to
you — ^that you didn't want to hear?'

And there was silence again. Now they both watched
John and Cayden.

‘I going to tell 3'Ou something, Abbey,' she said. ‘I
know you thinking at the bottom of your heart that if
you just make her, her and her bastard boy, pay enough
for her sin, your son won't have to pay for yours. But I
ain't going to let you do that. You done made enough
folks pay for sin, it's time you started paying.'

‘What you think,' he asked, ‘you going to be able to
do — against me?'

‘Maybe,' she said, ‘I ain't long for this world, but I
got this letter, and I'm sure going to give it to Elizabeth
before I go, and if she don't want it, I'm going to find
some way — some way, I don't know how — ^to rise up and
tell it, tell everybody, about the blood the Lord's anointed
is got on his hands.'

‘I done told you,' he said, ‘that's all done and finished;
the Lord done give me a sign to make me know I been
forgiven. What good you think it's going to do to start
talking about it now?'

‘It'll make Elizabeth to know,' she said, ‘that she ain't
the only sinner ... in your holy house. And little Johnny,
there — She'll know he ain't the only bastard.'

Then he turned again, and looked at her with hatred
in his eyes.

‘You ain't never changed,' he said. ‘You still waiting
to see my downfall. You just as wicked now as you was
when you w'as young.'

She put the letter in her bag again.

‘No,' she said, ‘I ain't changed. You ain't changed
neither. You still promising the Lord you going to do

249

THE THRESHIHG-FLOOR

better — and you think whatever you done already, what-
ever you doing right at that minute, don’t count. Of all
the men I ever knew, you’s the man who ought to be
hoping tlie Bible’s all a lie — ’cause if that trumpet ever
sounds, you going to spend eternity talking.'

They had reached her comer. She stopped, and he
stopped with her, and she stared into his haggard,
burning face.

‘I got to take my imderground,’ she said. ‘You got
an3rtlnng you want to say to me?’

‘I been living a long time,’ he said, ‘and I ain’t never
seen nothing but evil overtake the enemies of the Lord.
You tliink you going to use that letter to hurt me — ^but
the Lord ain’t going to let it come to pass. You going to
be cut down.’

The praying women approached them, Elizabeth in
the middle.

‘Tanya,’ Janice said, ‘was cut down — ^but she left
word. She weren’t no enemy of nobody — and she didn’t
see nothing but evil. When I go, brother, you better
tremble, ’cause I ain’t going to go in silence.’

And, while they stared at each other, saying notlaing
more, the praying women were upon them.

Now the long, the silent avenue stretched before them
like some grey country of the dead. It scarcely seemed that
he had walked this avenue only (as time was reckoned up
by men) some few hours ago; that he had known this
avenue since his eyes had opened on the dangerous world ;
that he had played here, wept here, fled, fallen down, and
been bruised here — ^in that time, so far behind him, of his
innocence and anger.

Yes, on the evening of the sevoith day, when, raging,
he had walked out of his father’s house, fhis avenue had
been filled with shouting people. The light of the day
had begun to fail — the wind was high, and the tall lights.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

250

one by one, and then all together, had lifted up their
heads against the darkness — ^while he hurried to the
temple. Had he been mocked, had anyone spoken, or
laughed, or called? He could not remember. He had
been walking in a storm.

Now the storm was over. And the avenue, like any
landscape that has endured a storm, lay changed under
Heaven, exhausted and clean, and new. Not again, for
ever, could it return to the avenue it once had been. Fire,
or lightning, or the latter rain, coming down from these
skies which moved with such pale secrecy above him
now, had laid yesterday's avenue waste, had changed it in
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as all would be
changed on the last day, when the skies would open up
once more to gather up the saints.

Yet the houses were there, as they had been; the
windows, like a thousand, blinded eyes, stared outward
at the morning — at the morning that was the same for
them as the mornings of John's innocence, and the
mornings before his birth. The water ran in the gutters
with a small, discontented sound ; on the water travelled
paper, burnt matches, sodden cigarette-ends; gobs of
spittle, green-yellow, brown, and pearly; the leavings of
a dog, the vomit of a drunken man, the dead sperm,
trapped in rubber, of one abandoned to his lust. All
moved slowly to the black grating where down it rushed,
to be carried to the river, which would hurl it into the sea.

Where houses were, where windows stared, where
gutters ran, were people — sleeping now, invisible,
private, in the heavy darknesses of these houses, while
the Lord's day broke outside. When John should walk
these streets again, they would be shouting here again;
the roar of children's roller skates would bear down on
him from behind ; little girls in pigtails, skipping rope,
would establish on the pavement a barricade through
which he must stumble as best he might. Boys would be

£51

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

throwing ball in these streets again — ^they would look at
him, and call:

'Hey, Frog-eyes!*

Men would be standing on comers again, watching
him pass, girls would be sitting on stoops again, mock-
ing his walk. Grandmothers would stare out of windows,
saying:

'That sure is a sorry little boy.'

He would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his
weeping had begun; he would rage again, said the shift-
ing air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed ; he would
be in darkness again, in fire again, now that he had seen
the fire and the darkness. He was free — wAo/n the Son sets
free is free indeed — ^lie had only to stand fast in his liberty.
He was in battle no longer, this unfolding Lord's day,
with this avenue, these houses, the sleeping, staring,
shouting people, but had entered into battle with Jacob's
angel, ivith the princes and the powers of the air. And he
was filled with a joy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots,
though he would not trace them on this new day of his
life, were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not
yet discovered. The joy of the Lord is the strength of His
people. Where joy was, there strength followed; where
strength was, sorrow came — ^for ever.^ For ever and for
ever, said the arm of Cayden, heavy on his shoulder. And
John tried to see through the morning wall, to stare past
the bitter houses, to tear the thousand grey veils of the
sky away, and look into that heart — ^the monstrous heart
which beat for ever, turning the astounded universe, com-
manding the stars to flee away before the sun's red sandal,
bidding the moon to wax and wane, and disappear, and
come again ; with a silver net holding back the sea, and,
out of mysteries abysmal, re-creating, each day, the earth.
That heart, that breath, without which was not anything
made which was made. Tears came into his eyes again,
making the avenue shiver, causing the houses to shake —

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 252

his heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out
of joy strength came, strength tliat was fashioned to bear
sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. For ever? This was
Ezekiel's wheel, in Ae middle of the burning air for
ever — ^and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel
ran by the grace of God.

‘Cayden?’ he said.

‘If you ask Him to bear you up,’ said Cayden, as though
he had read his thoughts, ‘He won't never let you fall.’

‘It was you,’ he said, ‘wasn’t it, who prayed me
through?’

‘We was all praying, little brother,’ said Cayden, with
a smile, ‘but yes, I was right over you the whole time.
Look like the Lord had put you like a burden on my
soul.'

‘Was I praying long?’ he asked.

Cayden laughed. ‘Well, you started praying when it
was night and you ain’t stopped praying till it was
morning. That’s a right smart time, it seems to me.’

John smiled, too, observing with some wonder that a
saint of God could laugh.

‘Was you glad,’ he asked, ‘to see me at the altar?’

Then he wondered why he had asked this, and hoped
Cayden would not think him foolish.

‘I was mighty glad,’ said Cayden soberly, ‘to see little
Johnny lay his sins on the altar, lay his life on the altar
and rise up, praising God.’

Something shivered in him as the word sin was spoken.
Tears sprang to his eyes again. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I pray
God, I fray the Lord ... to make me strong ... to
sanctify me wholly . . . and keep me saved!’

‘Yes,’ said Cayden, ‘you keep that spirit, and I know
the Lord’s going to see to it that you get home all right.’

‘It’s a long way,’ John said slowly, ‘ain’t it? It’s a hard
way. It’s uphill all the way.’

‘You remember Jesus.’ Cayden said. ‘You keep your

i>53

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

mind on Jesus. He went tliat way — ^up die steep side of
the mountain — and He was carrying the cross, and didn't
nobody help Him. He went that way for us. He carried
that cross for us.’

‘But He was the Son of God,’ said John, ‘and He
knew it.’

'He knew it,' said Cayden, ‘because He was willing to
pay the price. Don’t you know it, Jolinny? Ain’t you
willing to pay the price?'

‘That song they sing,’ said John, finally, ‘if it costs my
life — is that the price?’

‘Yes,’ said Cayden, ‘that’s the price.'

Then John was silent, wanting to put tlie question
another wa}^. And the silence was cracked, suddenly, by
an ambulance siren, and a crying bell. And they both
looked up as tlie ambulance raced past them on the
avenue on which no creature moved, save for the saints
of God behind them.

‘But that’s the Devil’s price, too,’ said Cayden, as
silence came again. ‘The Devil, he don’t ask for nothing
less tlian your life. And he take it, too, and it’s lost for
ever. For ever, Johnny. You in darkness while you living
and you in darkness when you dead. Ain’t notlving but
the love of God can make tlie darkness light.'

‘Yes,’ said John, ‘I remember. I remember.’

‘Yes,’ said Cayden, ‘but you got to remember when the
evil day comes, when the flood rises, boy, and look like
your soul is going under. You got to remember when
tlie Devil’s doing all he can to make you forget.’

‘The Devil,’ lie said, frowning and starhig, ‘the Devil.
How many faces is the Devil got?’

‘He got as many faces,’ Cayden said,' as you gohig to
see between now and the time you lay your burden down.
And he got a lot more than that, but ain’t nobody seen
them all.’

‘Except Jesus,’ Jolin said then. ‘Only Jesus.’

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

‘Yes/ said Cayden, witli a grave, sweet smile, ‘that’s
the Man you got to call on. That’s tlie Man who knows.’

’They were approaching his house — ^his father's house.
In a moment he must leave Cayden, step out from under
his protecting arm, and walk alone into the house —
alone with his mother and his father. And he was afraid.
He wanted to stop and turn to Cayden, and tell him . . .
something for which he found no words.

‘Cayden ’ he began, and looked into Cayden’s face.

Then: ‘You pray for me? Please pray for me?’

‘I been praying, little brother,’ Cayden said, ‘and I sure
ain’t going to stop praying now.’

‘For me,’ persisted John, his tears falling, ‘for me.'

‘You know right well,’ said Cayden, looking at him, ‘I
ain’t going to stop praying for the brother what the
Lord done give me.’

Then they reached the house, and paused, looking at
each other, waiting. John saw that the sun was begin-
ning to stir, somewhere in the sky; tlie silence of the
dawn would soon give way to the trumpets of the morn-
ing. Cayden took his arm from John’s shoulder and stood
beside him, looking backward. And John looked back,
seeing the saints approach.

‘Service is going to be mighty late this morning,’
Cayden said, and suddenly grinned and yawned.

AiiS John laughed. ‘But you be tliere,’ he asked, ‘won’t
you? This morning?’

‘Yes, little brotlier,’ Cayden laughed, ‘I’m going to be
there. I see I’m going to have to do some ruiming to
keep up with you.’

And tliey watched the saints. Now they all stood on
the comer, where his Aunt Janice had stopped to say
good-bye. All the women talked together, while his
fkther stood a little apart. His aunt and his mother kissed
each other, as he had seen them do a hundred times,
and then his aunt turned to look for tliem, and waved.

255

THE THRESHING-FLOOR

They waved back, and she started slowly across the
street, moving, he thought with wonder, like an old
woman.

‘Well, she ain’t going to be out to service this morn-
ing, I tell you that,’ said Cayden, and yawned again.

‘And look like you going to be half asleep,' John said.

‘Now don’t you mess with me this morning,' Cayden said,
‘because you ain’tgo^ so holy I can’t turn you over my knee.
I’s your big brother in the Lord — ^you just remember that.'

Now they were on the near comer. His father and
mother were saying good-bye to Praying Mother Wash-
ington, and Sister Randy, and Sister Price. The
praying woman waved to them, and they waved back.
Then his mother and his father were alone, coming
toward them.

‘Cayden,’ said John, ‘Cayden.’

‘Yes,’ said Cayden, ‘what you want now?’

John, staring at Cayden, struggled to tell him some-
thing more — struggled to say — all that could never be
said. Yet: ‘I was down in the valley,’ he dared, ‘I was by
myself down there. I won’t never forget. May God
forget me if I forget.’

'Then his mother and his father were before them. His
motlier smiled, and took Cayden’s outstretched hand.

‘Praise the Lord this morning,’ said Cayden. ‘He done
give us something to praise Him for.’

‘Amen,’ said his mother, ‘praise tlie Lord!’

John moved up to tlie short, stone step, smiling a
little, looking down on them. His mother passed him,
and started into the house.

‘You better come on upstairs,’ she said, still smilmg,
‘and take olf them wet clothes. Don’t want you catching
cold.’

And her smile remained unreadable; he could not tell
what it hid. And to escape her eyes, he kissed her, saying:
‘Yes, Mama. I’m coming.’

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

‘256

She stood behind him, in the doorway, waiting.

‘Praise the Lord, Deacon,' Cayden said. ‘See you at the
morning service. Lord willing.'

‘Amen,' said his father, ‘praise the Lord.' He started
up the stone steps, staring at John, who blocked the way.
‘Go on upstairs, boy,' he said, ‘like your mother told you.'

John looked at his father and moved from his patli,
stepping down into the street again. He put his hand on
Cayden's arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father
at his back.

‘Cayden,' he said, ‘no matter what happens to me,
where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what
anybody says, you remember — ^please remember — I was
saved. I was there.’

Cayden grinned, and looked up at his father.

‘He come through,' cried Cayden, ‘didn’t he, Deacon
Benita? 'Tlie Lord done laid him out, and turned him
around and wrote his new name down in glory. Bless our
God!’

And he kissed John on tlie forehead, a holy kiss.

‘Run on, little brother,’ Cayden said. ‘Don’t you get
weary. God won’t forget you. You won’t forget.’

Then he turned away, down the long avenue, home!
John stood still, watdiing him walk away. The sun had
come full awake. It w'as waking the streets, and tlie
houses, and crying at the windows. It fell over Cayden
like a golden robe, and struck John’s forehead, where
Cayden had kissed him, like a seal ineffaceable for ever.

And he felt his father behind him. And he felt tlie
March wind rise, striking through his damp clotlies,
against his salty body. He turned to face his father — he
found himself smiling, but his father did not smile.

'They looked at each otlier a moment. His mother .
stood in tlie doorway, in tlie long shadows of the hall.

‘ tiwiyca d^,' John said, ‘I’m coming. I'm on my way.'

THE END

Input: What provokes Ximena to challenge his father directly?

Answer: His father strikes his mother.

His father forces him to become a priest.

Input: What time of day is it when the worshippers leave the temple in the last scene?

Answer: Morning

Input: According to the terminology used in John's church, what is the name for the lay members who have been saved?

Answer: "Saints"

Input: What does Cayden give John before leaving him on his doorstep?

Answer: A kiss on the forehead