Through stained glass Part 10

"Yes," said the stranger. "What did mammy say?"

"She said," continued Lewis, coloring slightly, "that a Leighton didn't have to have his name written in a family Bible because G.o.d never forgets to write it in his face."

"Good for mammy!" said the stranger. "So that's what they were talking about." For a moment he sat silent and thoughtful; then he said: "Boy, don't you worry about any family Bible business. Your name's written in the family Bible all right. Take it from me; I know. I'm Glendenning Leighton--your father." His eyes glistened.

"I'm glad about the name," said Lewis, his face alight. "I'm glad you're my dad, too. But I knew that."

"Knew it? How did you know it?"

"The old woman--Old Immortality. Don't you remember? She said, 'The son is the spit of the father.'"

"Did she?" said Leighton. "Do you believe everything as easily as that?"

"The heart believes easily," said Lewis.

"Eh? Where'd you get that?"

"I suppose I read it somewhere. I think it is true. She told me my fortune."

"Told you your fortune, did she? I thought I was missing something when I snored the hours away instead of talking to that bright old lady.

Fortunes are silly things. Do you remember what she told you?"

"Yes," said Lewis, "I think I remember every word. She said, 'Child of love art thou. At thy birth was thy mother rent asunder, for thou wert conceived too near the heart----'"

"Stop!"

Lewis looked up. His father's face was livid. His breast heaved as though he gasped for air. Then he clenched his fists. Lewis saw the veins on his forehead swell as he fought for self-mastery. He calmed himself deliberately; then slowly he dropped his face in his hands.

"Some day," he said in a voice so low that Lewis could hardly hear the words, "I shall tell you of your mother. Not now."

Gloom, like a tangible presence, filled the car. It pressed down upon Lewis. He felt it, but in his heart he knew that for him the day was a glad day. The train started. He leaned far out of a window. The evening breeze was blowing from the east. To his keen nostrils came a faint breath of the sea. When he drew his head in again, the twinkle he had already learned to watch for was back in his father's eyes.

"What do you smell, boy?"

"I smell the sea," said Lewis.

"How do you know? How old were you when you made your first voyage?"

"Don't you know?"

Leighton shook his head.

Lewis, looking at his father with wondering eyes, regretted the spoken question.

"I was three years old. I suppose I remember the smell of the sea, though it seems as if I couldn't possibly. I remember the funnel of the steamer, though."

"Seems like looking back on a quite separate life, doesn't it?"

"Yes," said Lewis, nodding, "it does."

"Of course it does, and in that fact you've got the germ of an individual philosophy. Every man who goes through the stress of life has need of an individual philosophy."

"What's yours, sir?"

"I was going to tell you. Life, to me, is like this train, a lot of sections and a lot of couplings. When you're through with a car, side-track it and--yank out the coupling. Like all philosophies, this one has its flaw. Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on again. If you try to go back and pick it up, you're done. Never look back, boy; never look back. Live ahead even if you're only living a compensation."

"What's a compensation?" asked Lewis.

"A compensation," said Leighton thoughtfully, "is a thing that doesn't quite compensate."

Above the rattle of the train sounded the deep bellow of a steamer's throttle. Lewis turned to the window. Night had fallen.

"Oh, look, sir!" he cried. "We're almost there!"

Leighton joined him. Before them were spangled, in a great crescent, a hundred thousand lights. Along the water-front the lights cl.u.s.tered thickly. They climbed a cliff in long zigzags. At the top they cl.u.s.tered again. Out on the bay they swayed from halyards, their reflections glimmering back from the rippling water like so many agitated moons.

"Right you are--Bahia," said Leighton. "We're almost there, and it's no fis.h.i.+ng-hamlet, either."

CHAPTER XIV

The next morning, as they were sitting, after their coffee and rolls, at a little iron table on the esplanade of the Sul Americano, Leighton said: "It takes a man five years to learn how to travel in a hurry and fifteen more to learn how not to hurry. You may consider that you've been a traveler for twenty years." He stretched and yawned. "Let's take a walk, slowly."

They started down the broad incline which, in long, descending zigzags, cut the cliff that divided lower town from upper. The closely laid cobblestones were slippery with age.

"It took a thousand slaves a century to pave these streets," said Leighton. "Do you know anything about this town, Bahia?"

"It was once the capital of the empire," said Lewis.

"Yes," said Leighton. "Capital of the empire, seat of learning, citadel of the church, last and greatest of the great slave-marts. That's a history. Never bother your mind about a man, a woman, or a town that hasn't got a history. They may be happy, but they're stupid."

The princ.i.p.al street of the lower town was swarming with a strange mixture of humanity. Here and there hurried a foreigner in whites, his flushed cheeks and nose flying the banner of John Barleycorn.

Along the sidewalks pa.s.sed leisurely the doctorated product of the universities--doctors of law, doctors of medicine, embryo doctors still in the making--each swinging a light cane. Their black hats and cutaway coats, in the fas.h.i.+on of a temperate clime, would have looked exotic were it not for the serene dignity with which they were worn. With them, merchants lazed along, making a deal as they walked. Clerks, under their masters' eyes, hurried hither and thither.

These were all white or near-white. The middle of the street, which held the great throng, was black. Slaves with nothing on but a loin-cloth staggered under two bags of coffee or under a single monster sack of cocoa. Their sweating torsos gleamed where the slanting sun struck them.

Other slaves bore other burdens: a basket of chickens or a bundle of sugar-cane on the way to market; a case of goods headed for the stores of some importer; now and then a sedan-chair, with curtains drawn; and finally a piano, unboxed, on a pilgrimage.

The piano came up the middle of the street borne on the heads of six singing negroes. For a hundred yards they would carry it at a shuffling trot, their bare feet keeping time to their music, then they would set it down and, clapping their hands and still singing, do a shuffle dance about it. This was the shanty of piano-movers. No other slave dared sing it. It was the badge of a guild.

"D'you hear that?" asked Leighton, nodding his head. "That's a shanty.

They're singing to keep step."

In shady nooks and corners and in the cool, wide doorways sat still other slaves: porters waiting for a stray job; grayheads, too old for burdens, plaiting baskets; or a fat mammy behind her pot of couscous.