Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 2, 1922 — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

546 a colored church, he naturally turned to the magnificent and stormy passages of Isaiah for assistance. “Let us go, my brother, to the temple of your people.” He started for the door, stopped, and returned. “Ah! I was to go only on condition that the girl of the gaming table, the fallen Jazzabelle, attend- ed the services. Will she be there?” Dan Martin was smiling beatifically, nod- ding. In the presence of religious fervor a negro is never at a loss. To him religion is much more than mere religion; it is a Heaven-sent opportunity to relieve himself of pent-up racial emotions. His reactions are tumultuous, eruptive and as rhythmic as a Nigerian war drum. It was a perfect Sunday morning. With- out a calendar or a memory, you would have known that it was Sunday. Some- thing in the air said so. The sun shone warmly on the sand dunes and palms out of a flawless topaz sky. A soft wind from the Gulf Stream blew through the trees and rustled the stiff pal- mettos and bunch grass. An odor of orange blossoms came and went. The air was languorous and as dry as the South Pacific trades. A musical clanging reached them as they crossed the Florida East Coast tracks; and as they neared the camp Javalie discovered a colored boy in the act of banging away at a heavy wagon tire suspended by chains from a gallows. Services, as Dan Martin had informed him, were already under way. The clanging tire was a last call to the lingerers. The church was some distance away from the shanties and the juke. From its doorway the sticky, besmoked form of the still was discernible through the trees. The church was an airy structure with canvas side walls and a roof of thatched palm fronds. It was packed. The camp had turned out to a man, woman, and child. The women and chil- dren were segregated to the right of a crude pine pulpit which stood on a platform about a foot from the ground. There was no floor. Pine needles, dry and brown, formed a carpet; boards stretched between grocery boxes served for benches. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, When Javalie and Martin went in a girl was praying. She prayed in a high, sweet singsong. It was, in effect, a song, shrill and syncopated. Javalie could not make out the words she was singing, but he was thrilled. Here was true art, primitive and spon- taneous, as brilliant as the spectrum. The congregation hummed and beat time with bare feet on the ground, and with heavy, scarred hands on knees and benches, while the girl sang in her shrill, sweet voice, the prayer. At every break in her voice there oc- curred ecstatic approvals. *“* Have mercy, O Lawd!” “¢ Ay-men!” * Yea, Lawd!” Backs swayed with the beat of it, and murky eyes shone with tears. The girl’s voice rose and fell, went faster and faster with the effect of running and pathetically stumbling, now high, now low, like the rising and falling waves of the sea, incoher- ent except for a timely passionate, raptu- rous “ Have mercy, O Lawd!” The humming rose and fell also, follow- ing the intonation like the echo of a lost wind, melancholy, enraptured—a wordless and musical echo of the girl’s sweet chant. Her voice fell mournfully low as Javalie and Rev. Dan Martin reached the platform and sat on a rough bench behind the pulpit. It ended on a quavering minor note. There was a rustling. Javalie looked out over a sea of brilliant color: shirtwaists of coral pink, jade green, purple, magenta, blood red, chrome yellow, through which dusky warm skin shone. Jazzabelle sat in the front row looking up at him with an insolent smile on her lips. They were, in the dark gloom under the palm roof, of a brighter scarlet than last night. Her fascinating brown eyes gleamed as if with mirth. He marked again the curious delicacy of her features, the fragility of her arms, her almost translucent skin, with the red, hot blood coursing under it. She was, with the very posture of her fragile and beautiful body, daring him, mocking him. The imitation coral rings danced at her ears as she shook her head— . a taunt. Gomichbooks;com