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Show IHHMWaww -at iiiiiiii, i i w A VOUDOO STOHY. T was the doctor who told tho story. We were sitting in the dusk on the wide gallery of Mine. Dunbar-rier's Dunbar-rier's villa at Hay St. Louis. Din-ner Din-ner was just over and madam was j Tn i '"Eh, mes jinny k-s pit is sans mam-an.' mam-an.' she wailed. (My poor little ones without a mother.) "Toward night, thinking that he who had listened so often to the sorrows sor-rows of this burdened heart, knew so well its weakness, its temptations, its ignorance, its fears, might comfort her, I smit for the little priest who confessed con-fessed her. He came, and through the long night knelt by that lowl conchy praying for tne soul about to voyage with all its guilt and sin into the unknown, un-known, and just as dawn broke and the last breath quivered over the pale lips he laid the crucifix upon her breast, and raising his hands to heaven, cried in the words of the All-pitiful: All-pitiful: '"Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.' "And so Loyette died, clinging with trembling hands.. to the crucifix, but next her heart, wound with endless filaments, was the votidoo charm, ami under her mattress was the knife, still red with the blood she had shed at the behest of her barbaric religion. "Did, at the end, some word of divine di-vine light break across that darkened soul, or at the last supreme moment did the forces of nature and heredity claim their own?" The doctor turned to us with his question. But we could not answer. The mystery mys-tery of death, the awful mystery of the soul lie beyond human fathoming or conjecture. Elizabeth M. Ciilmer in the Nashville American. reflecting with inward satisfaction that Litine, her Creole cook, had really real-ly surpassed herself the crawfish bisque had been perfection itself, the river shrimp, boiled in red-pepper water, was still a fine delight to be remembered, re-membered, an reste it had been a round table with only the friends she liked best men old enough to appreciate appre-ciate a good dinner, and women pretty enough to almost distract one's attention atten-tion from tho menu. "Mon dieu," madam was wont to say, with a shrug of her shapelyshoul-ders, shapelyshoul-ders, "one is inihicile to invite hoys to dine, they only cat, and a dinner without with-out a pretty woman is meat without grace." Coffee and a flask of amber liquor had been served out on the gallery as we sat watching night come across the water. The sweet south wind lifted the veil of moss on the trees, and in the dusk we could see the white-sailed sc hooners, like phantom ships, coming in or going out. Some one lit a cigarette cigar-ette and laughed softly tho servant comming out to remove thecoffee-cups had seen the pale crescent of the new moon through the tree-tops and had stopped to cross herself to ward off the bad luck such a misfortune wu-s sure to bring. It was such a familiar mingling of the Christian symbol with heathen superstition that we scarcely noticed it until the doctor said: "Do you know that is .one of qhe most interesting psychological problems prob-lems in the world how far nature and heredity have been overcome by education and civilization?" and then speaking almost as if to himself, and lighting one cigarette ci-garette from the ashes of another, the doctor told this story to illustrate his loint: "I hardly remember when or where I first met Loyette," he said, "it was so many years ago. But when I think of her I always see a tall, dark, little woman with clear olive skin, with black hair hidden under a gay tignon and eyes with such a tawny light in them such Hashes of passion, of love or hate it made you think of a summer sum-mer night when the soft darkness is cleft in twain by sudden gleams of lightning. "You would have noted all these things if you had known her, but what you would have remembered longest would have been a curious impression of strength and power in her, repressed and dormant perhaps, but you instinctively instinct-ively felt that the slim, straight figure could spring on an enemy out of a doorway door-way like a tiger on its prey, and that tho long sinewy lingers had a grip like steel. You had only to note the thin line of the quivering nostril and the quick light that leaped into the eye to know that she was a creature of tierce passions, under which she shook and writhed like a reed in a storm. "You may have seen many another quadroon like Loyette in the lower part of New Orleans, walking with their peculiarly free and swinging step along the banquette, or making picturesque bits of color among the truits and bizarre wares of the French market, or better still, you may have seen them in the old St. Louis cathedral cathe-dral prostrate before tho altar of Our Blessed Ladv, with nil thepassion in their half-savage blood died out before the calm gaze of infinite purity, and their tempest-tossed souls at rest for a moment on the bosom of God." The doctor unused a moment, and sion that half frightened me she would snatch me to her bosom, trying vainly vain-ly to feel with ol her childish ha mis the hungrv mother love of her heart. 'I had eight chillen,' she would say, 'eight chillen, en dey's all dead. My God, eight little ones en not one lef' to me. Dey died, my babies, firs' ono en den unuder, en Francois he live to be grown, so tall, so straight, so strong, en one day dey bringhini home from de river, dead likederes.' Ixiok,' she would exclaim passionately, 'it was not de little ones dat died, it was me; my body, my heart, my soul! It wus so long ago,' she wailed, 'ev'ry-body 'ev'ry-body forget. But me I am a mother; I do nothin' but remember.' "In the years in which we dwelt under un-der the some roof a strange intimacy and friendship grew tip between the old slave and myself. I knew her griefs and shared her sorrows, but above all I knew the perpetual warfare her soul waged with superstition and fears that were as much a part of ;her existence as her dusky ,skin. Like most negroes belonging to Creole fa'nii-lies fa'nii-lies she was a Catholic, but her religion, like the white blood within her veins I believe I told you she was a quadroondid quad-roondid not break the bonds of slavery or superstition, and there were times when, impelled by some blind instinct she was powerless to resist, she would slip away and join the voudoo worshipers in their horrible horri-ble and mysterious rites. After such backsliding there would be such passionate pas-sionate repentance followed by such penance as only a strong soul can in-tiict in-tiict on itself. She would scourge herself her-self until the knotted cord was stained with blood, nnd kneel prostrate through the whole night beloro Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy. "But days, perhaps, weeks or months afterward the old restlessness would begin to stir within her, the mysterious mysteri-ous barbaric inheritance of a nature to which the Christian religion appealed appeal-ed but faintly, and then some morning morn-ing she would slip stealthily into the courtyard worn, haggard, , wild-eyed, with her gown half torn from her and stained with the dark, dank mud of the swamp. I knew only too well that she had yielded to tho old resistless resist-less impulse and had found her way to the hidden recess of the swamp, where tho voudoo jiire gleamed amid horrid vapors for its votaries, where the deathly breath of the marsh enfolded them and loathsome reptiles glided away, fold upon fold, from the little band of half-naked men and women dancing before the tire in horrible abandon. I knew that Loyette's lips had been smeared with human blood, that she had sworn an oath to do the behests of her religion, so terrible the very memory of it blanched her cheek, and that did she but repeat one word the voudoo queen uttered as she stood upon the boy in which the sacred serpent ser-pent writhed, her life must pay the penalty. "What alterations of horror and attraction, at-traction, what hopes and fears the Christian religion und this dark faith held for theqioor creature none might know. Her soul was like an angel standing by tho gates of paradise. Sometimes it yearned with unutterable unutter-able longing for the light, and aga-isi, like a thing of night, it sounded the abyssess of darkness. "Finally there came a timo when, after one of these orgies, Loyette appeared ap-peared tho next morning so haggard and with such a wild, hunted look in her eyes that even her dull mistress noticed it. '"But it was nothing,' Loyette protested. pro-tested. "She was not well. She had an ague. A tisane of orange leaves would cure her, but she would not lie down.'" The doctor paused in his story. The night seemed to have grown suddenly dark and chilly, and we drew more closely together as the narrator resumed. re-sumed. "The day passed.but the next morning morn-ing the city rang with the report of a terriblo murder. A man, a slave, had been found murdered near the Old basin murdered and horrible mutilated. muti-lated. Tho lips were cut off nnd the heart torn from out of the body. The community was aghast. "'Tiens.'it said, holding up its hands in horror, 'but lie was a tiend the assassin.' as-sassin.' "No clew could be found, no motive assigned for the deed. Robbery? A slave? it was absurd to suggest it, but there was something tigerish in the hate that not only slew but tore the heart out of tho victim, there was something so dramatic even in the cutting oil the lips that they might frame no accusing ppeech, that the murder was the ono topic of speculation. specula-tion. Tired at last of the gruesome subject I climbed the stairs that led to Loyette's room. She was very ill. Her eyes burned with a strange fire, and it needed not my professional knowledge to see that she was sick unto un-to death. "'You have heard' she began, eagerly, ea-gerly, as I entered the room. " 'They should not have brought such horrors here,' I answered, but she intertupted me " 'Hush,' she commanded, 'who knows about it if not me? Look, I am dying. It killed me, too. He was a traitor en must die, en de lot fell on me. I killed him, there by de ol' basin. My God, lie como along singin', singin'. I stan' in de dark, it was only a minute, min-ute, so. His blood run down on my ban', hot like fire. But see, little one, if it killed me, too? If I give my life, if I give my heart for his hear, my soul for his soul, how then? " 'Hush, hush,' I cried, thinking she raved in delirium, think now of the little children who used to play about your knee. They aro coming very swiftly to you, my poor Loyette.' "She raised herself on her pallet. Her face, on which the dampness of death had already begun to gather, broke into a smile of ineffable tenderness. tender-ness. She stretched out her long sinewy arms, and then her arms fell at her side and the light died out of her face. '"Ah, no,' she moaned, 'they will not come to me, my hands are red with blood.' "She rocked herself to nnd fro in inconsolable in-consolable misery; occasionally a deep sigh broke across her lips. then he went on: As I have said I hardly remember how or when 1 first knew Loyette. I have a faint recollection of my father who was a sugar planter ou the Teche dying, of being carried faint and grief-sick grief-sick to my guardian's house in New Orleans, of exchanging the light and freedom of the country for darkened rooms, of hot and narrow streets in place of waving cane, and then darkness closed in about me ami I knew no more. They told me afterward I was very ill for weeks, but at hist when that mysterious voyaging of mind and soul over unknown seas which we call delirium, delir-ium, was over, and like a half-wrecked bark I had drifted into port again, tho first thing I renieniberconseiously was Loyette. She was standing at the window, as I saw her so often in other years tall, statuesque and still as if carved in bronze. I stirred softly, and seeing I was awake and rational, she came swiftly to me. " 'Eh, mon bene,' she said softly,' but it is you who should burn a candle to the saints. It is the grace of le bon Dieu, or else it would be in the ceme-tairo ceme-tairo St. Louis you would wake. "'In my weakened state I did not greately care, but curiosity was beginning begin-ning to st ir in my numbed" brain. " 'And you,' I asked, 'who are you?' ' 'Oh,' she answered, with a shrug, 'as for me, I am Loyette, your nurse. Now, sleep, sleep, anil she held to niv lips a draught I unresistingly swallowed; swal-lowed; but even as I drifted off into unconsciousness I was haunted by the dark, s-id face that bent above me. "In the days of convnlcsccne, when I tossed from side to side of the great testered bed, lonely enough would I have beon but for Loyette, who told me a hundred st oiies of the past ond sang for me the gaychansonettes other race in the sweet negro voice that somehow always seems to have ft minor chord even in its gladness. Sometimes, but not often, she spoke of her chil.lreu, dead long years ago, and with a'p ts- |