AFTER Sestrina had taken her sudden departure from the infatuated Clensy, she ran down the pathway by the fuchsia trees so that she might enter her home unobserved. She did not fear meeting a stray servant who might be abroad in the cool of the night, but she knew that her father had been absent from the Presidential ball since six o’clock. His absence was an ominous sign for Sestrina—when her parent returned from his mysterious nocturnal visits into the mountains he usually behaved like a frenzied maniac.

“I do hope I shall not see father to-night,” she thought, as she entered the little doorway by the wine vaults, and then peered in fright down the corridor. She was no longer the gay, inconsequential Sestrina whom Clensy had parted from a few moments before. The Englishman had dispelled all the heart-aching fear that had worried Sestrina’s mind for the last few weeks. Clensy little dreamed of the skeleton in the cupboard of the Haytian girl’s home, how it haunted her soul with a fearful wonder and terror when it roamed about before her eyes! Even as she peered along the silent corridor she gave a startled jump that made her shadow leap down the whole length of the white wall. A sigh of relief escaped her lips—it was only the shuffling footsteps of the old negro, Charoco; he was putting out the lights in the large rooms from which the festival guests had lately departed. The next moment Sestrina had slipped down the corridor, and had run across the large drawing-room where she had to pass through ere she could reach her chamber.

“Garou! nate! What’s that!” said a hushed, hoarse voice, speaking first in Creole and then in English.

Sestrina gave an instinctive crouch in her fright, and then swiftly turned round—a dark cloaked figure was standing behind her—it was her father, President Gravelot.

“I’ve been out on the verandas, it was so hot inside the palace,” said the girl quickly, for her parent’s face looked like the face of a fiend. It was not the calm, handsome President that the Haytians knew by daylight, but a demented, bloodthirsty fanatic who stared at Sestrina with burning eyes. Sestrina gazed on the man in horror. She had seen her father in a state of frenzy before, but that night he hardly resembled a human being at all. The bigotry and heathenish lust of his Southern blood shone in the brilliant cruel gaze of his eyes. It was not the juice of the grape that had fired the man’s brain, transmuting him from a human being into a devil of cruelty and lust, it was the living hot blood mixed with white rum he had swallowed that made him look like that. It was the blood of The Goat without Horns!—the symbolical term for the blood of little children and men and women who had been sacrificed at the terrible altars of the vaudoux!

Yes, and not far off either, for the altars were in the secret fetish temples near the mountains of Port-au-Prince. President Gravelot was a devotee to the vaudoux worship! It was a terrible creed, and though the French and Haytian authorities had taken drastic measures to put down the horrors indulged in by its worshippers (the negro adherents often indulged in cannibalistic orgies after they had slain the sacrificial victims), children were missing from their homes every week, were kidnapped and taken away to the temples of the terrible papaloi.

It seemed incredible that such a creed should be, but Sestrina’s trembling form, and the blood-frenzied man who stood before her in the dark corridor of her home, was sufficient evidence of the terrible truth. It was a cruel creed, and had been introduced into Hayti by the first negro emigrants from the West Coast of Africa. Hundreds of “high class” Haytians were staunch adherents to the vaudoux sacrificial altars and the monstrous demands of its deity—The Goat without Horns. These altars were situated as near as La CoupÉ, not more than five miles from Port-au-Prince. And the fury of the strange paroxysms that transformed the vaudoux devotees into fiends of blood and indescribable lust was exemplified by the distorted face and the burning eyes of the soul-powerless man who stood before Sestrina. The reeking atmosphere of the worship clung about its devotees like an evil spirit, the warm blood of the victims they had sacrificed gleaming in their eyes. The frenzied bigotry and uncontrollable lust of the vaudoux papaloi (head priests) stopped at nothing to satisfy their terrible desires. No man, woman or child was sacred enough to stay the knife and the bloody libations when once in the papalois’ merciless grip. Even graves were desecrated in the secrecy of the night.^[1]

“Father!” whispered Sestrina in her terror. She saw a wild look in his eyes that horrified her. She lifted her hands as though she would ward off a terrible blow. The gleam of the fevered eyes sent a death-like chill to the girl’s heart. She instinctively realised that the personality of the man before her was lost in some deadly sleep, though she did not dream that the fumes that had done this thing to her father were the fumes of human blood and white rum. Though Sestrina had heard the word “vaudoux” whispered in awestruck tones by the negresses and negroes of the palace, she had no idea as to what it really meant. All she knew was, that it caused madness among many people, for the blood and rum drinking, and the strain on the vaudoux worshippers’ frenzied imagination, generally ended in paralysis and idiocy, and often in violent madness.

“Vaudoux, loup garou!” whispered the man as he stared at the girl. Then he seemed slightly to recover himself.

“It’s you! you! Sestrina!” he murmured as the girl took his hand very gently, and in pathetic, mute appeal looked up into her father’s face. Her heart thumped violently as she watched the expression of his eyes. Then she gave a sigh of relief. And still she fawned before him, caressed his bloodstained hands, delight on her troubled face as she saw the gleam of reason stealing back into his bloodshot eyes.

“It’s me! me!” she whispered, as she once more caressed that hand in her terrifying eagerness to press her advantage. She saw the look of recognition leap into his eyes.

“Sestrina, what did I do? What have I said? help me!” he moaned, as he leaned forward and gazed into the terrified eyes of his daughter. What had he said? What had the devil that possessed him muttered for the girl’s hearing?

Gravelot’s stupefied brain had begun to realise the relationship and the wickedness of his own terrible nature as he threw off the vile spell that vaudoux worship had cast over him. The change in his manner was swift; already the fever of his eyes had changed to a look of tenderness. “Go to bed at once, Sestrina,” he muttered in a hoarse voice that Sestrina hardly recognised. He reeled about like a drunken man as he began to take off his flowing cloak, which he wore as a disguise whenever he stole away to the fetish temples in the mountains.

Sestrina fled. In a moment she had run along the corridor. Entering her room she had begun to cry. For a long time she could think of nothing else but the terrible expression which she had seen on her father’s face. After a while her heart ceased to thump, and her thoughts strayed into more pleasant channels. She began to think of the young Englishman. “Oh, if only I could fly from here with him, elope just as I have read folks do,” she murmured to herself as she rose and stared at her image in the large mirror. Then she turned away and pushed the settee against the door. Of late she had been very nervous at night, and this nervousness was due to her father’s strange madness, which was becoming worse of late. “What does it all mean? Why does he want me to go to the mountains with him? Is not PÈre Chaco, the Catholic priest, a good man? Did he not bless me with holy water and say beautiful things about the world? And yet he flung me from him, yes, only a week before, and raved like a madman when I refused to leave holy PÈre Chaco, and go away into the mountains to pray before strange priests.”

As Sestrina mused on, she began to remove her picturesque attire; first she cast aside the loose sarong; then she loosened her under-bodice. Her hair fell in confusion down to her shoulders, tumbling in shining ripples about her bosom, that was the whiter for being untouched by the hot rays of the tropical sunlight. She was fast leaving her girlhood behind; her footsteps, so to speak, were already on the threshold of womanhood, the rose of beauty and innocence on her lips and shining in her eyes. She half forgot the horror of her father’s distorted face as she gazed at her image in the mirror. Though her mind was naturally refined, the romantic passion of her Southern ancestry began to sigh in its sleep; and Sestrina’s lips echoed the sigh, though she knew not why they did so. She thought of the handsome Englishman, and of the sweet things he had whispered into her ears. She thought of the rapture of love, of the meeting of lips, and the romantic sorrows of parted lovers, and all those things which had influenced her mind as she poured over her French novels. “Ah me!” she sighed, then a startled look leapt into her eyes. She looked towards the window in fright. It was only the “Too-whoo-hee!” of the blue-winged Haytian owl that watched her from its perch in the mahogany tree just outside. She opened the vine-clad, latticed casement wide, and then stared out on the loveliness of the tropic night. She could just see the dark, palm-clad slopes of the mountains, faintly outlined by the moon’s pale light. “Ah, if he were only here, how happy I should be!” she murmured as she watched the swarms of fireflies dancing in the glooms of the bamboos, and then looked across the plains where she could see the twinkling lights of the homesteads near Gonaives. After that, she opened a little door that divided her chamber from another small room. It was where Claircine, the negress, slept.

“Oui, Madamselle Sessy!” said the ebony-hued negress servant as she sat up in bed and rubbed her large, sleepy eyes, wondering why her mistress should disturb her at so late an hour.

“Claircine, I feel so unhappy.”

“Why so, mamselles, there am nothings to be misleraable ‘bout, is there?”

Sestrina responded by giving a deep sigh. Then the old negress started to gabble away, as Sestrina sat on her bed for companionship. The woman’s inconsequential chatter cheered Sestrina.

“You look so beautiful nows you be coming womans,” said Claircine as she touched her mistress’s mass of glittering hair and ran the shining tresses through her dark fingers, and sighed in the thought that her own locks were so short and woolly. “Ah, Sessy, you ams like your mother,” said Claircine, who had been her mother’s maid from the time of Sestrina’s birth. Then the old negress continued: “She too had nicer hair and white flesh, for she had a father who was a real handsome white mans!”

After a while the conversation changed. Sestrina and the negress began whispering. Several times they glanced as though in some fright towards the bedroom door as a moan came to their ears. It was only the noise of the wind sighing down the orange groves that murmured like sad phantoms just outside the open casement as the girl and negress talked on. There was something eerie and dreadful sounding in the slightest noise that night! Claircine had also seen President Gravelot come home under the terrible influence of the vaudoux fetish. The old negress had seen the President behave like a maniac, and had then seen the after effects as he came round, laid his head on the table, and moaned in remorseful despair.

“’Tis the terrible, but wonderful papaloi who he see at the secret mountain temples where they do drink ze blood and rum; yes, dey make your father look like dat!” said Claircine. Then the negress added: “I no tell you such tings, Madamselle Sessy, but I now tink it be best dat you know such tings since dat you be getting older.”

“Do you really believe in such things, that the papaloi are the chosen priests of the heavens?” whispered Sestrina, as she heard such things as she had never heard before or dreamed of. Claircine had spoken to the girl in an awestruck, reverent way, about the terrible vaudoux priests.

“No, madamselle, it am no good me believing, I am only low-caste, and so am not allowed to attend great vaudoux worships.” Then the old negress sighed, and added: “If I’d been good enough, I would have marry handsome Chaicko, for you know that women who am vaudoux worshippers are watched over by ze god of the Goat without Horns, and am always happy in dere love affairs.”

“Surely you don’t mean that, or believe that my father would drink human blood?” whispered Sestrina, as she looked despairingly into the negress’s eyes. Her face looked pallid, almost death-like, dark rings about her eyes.

“Ah, Madamselle Sessy, this chile does believe in the greatness of ze papaloi. I do often see ze zombis (ghosts) creep ’bout under de mahogany trees when the great papaloi chant in ze forest.”

“But what about my father? Do you think that he really does visit these awful places which you have just described to me?”

“P’raps not; I may be wrongs, madamselle,” said the old negress, who felt upset to think she had told her innocent charge so much about the vaudoux. And though Claircine rambled on, telling Sestrina many things about the cruelty of the fetish worshippers and the attendant superstitions of the bigoted adherents, she adroitly made it appear to Sestrina that she spoke of a far-off time.

“’Tis not like that now. Oh, no! ze officials did shoot mens and womens for drinking ze sacred wines from the Goat without Horns, and so ’tis long past!”

So did Claircine attempt to undo the harm she had done by making Sestrina feel so miserable and ashamed. But though the negress had chatted on till the night grew old, the girl was still full of trouble and fear over her own thoughts.

Bewildered over all she had heard, Sestrina crept back to her chamber to dream of the dark papaloi who chanted somewhere up in the black mountains. For a long time she could not sleep. She thought of the terrible look she had seen in her parent’s eyes, and, wondering what was really the matter with him, forgot all else. For Sestrina, deep down in her heart, had a great love and reverence for her father. “He looks so different, so good and kind when the evil spirit does not possess him,” she thought, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. Then she thought of the young Englishman, of his blue eyes, his manly ways, and wondered what he would have thought had he seen her father that night! Then her reflections ran into a calmer channel, and with the pretty words that Clensy had whispered that night still lingering in her ears, she at last fell asleep.