"Now," says the doctor, "tell me in as straight talk as you've got what all this damned foolishness among you niggers means."A queer kind of look passed over the bishop's face. He hadn't expected to be met jest that way, mebby. Whether he himself had really believed in the coming of that there new Messiah he had been perdicting, I never could settle in my mind. Mebby he had been getting ready to pass HIMSELF off fur one before we come along and the niggers all got the fool idea Doctor Kirby was it. Before the bishop spoke agin you could see his craziness and his cunningness both working in his face. But when he did speak he didn't quit being ceremonious nor dignified.
"De wohd has gone fo'th among de faiful an' de puah in heaht," he says, "dat er man has come accredited wi' signs an' wi' mahvels an' de poweh o' de sperrit fo' to lay his han' on de sons o' Ham an' ter make 'em des de same in colluh as de yuther sons of ea'th.""Then that word is a lie," says the doctor. "IDID come here to try out some stuff to change the colour of negro skins. That's all. And I find your idiotic followers are all stirred up and waiting for some kind of a miracle monger. What you have been preaching to them, you know best. Is that all you want to know?"The bishop hems and haws and fiddles with his stick, and then he says:
"Suh, will dish yeah prepa'shun SHO'LY do de wohk?" Doctor Kirby tells him it will do the work all right.
And then the bishop, after beating around the bush some more, comes out with his idea. Whether he expected there would be any Messiah come or not, of course he knowed the doctor wasn't him.
But he is willing to boost the doctor's game as long as it boosts HIS game. He wants to be in on the deal. He wants part of the graft. He wants to get together with the doctor on a plan before the doctor sees the niggers. And if the doctor don't want to keep on with the miracle end of it, the bishop shows him how he could do him good with no miracle attachment. Fur he has an awful holt on them niggers, and his say-so will sell thousands and thousands of bottles. What he is looking fur jest now is his little take-out.
That was his craftiness and his cunningness working in him. But all of a sudden one of his crazy streaks come bulging to the surface. It come with a wild, eager look in his eyes.
"Suh," he cries out, all of a sudden, "ef yo' kin make me white, fo' Gawd sakes, do hit! Do hit!
Ef yo' does, I gwine ter bless yo' all yo' days!
"Yo' don' know--no one kin guess or comper-hen'--what des bein' white would mean ter me!
Lawd! Lawd!" he says, his voice soft-spoken, but more eager than ever as he went on, and plead-ing something pitiful to hear, "des think of all de Caucasian blood in me! Gawd knows de nights er my youth I'se laid awake twell de dawn come red in de Eas' a-cryin' out ter Him only fo' ter be white! DES TER BE WHITE! Don' min' dem black, black niggers dar--don' think er DEM--dey ain't wuth nothin' nor fitten fo' no fate but what dey got-- But me! What's done kep' me from gwine ter de top but dat one thing: _I_ WASN'T WHITE! Hit air too late now--too late fo' dem ambitions Idone trifle with an' shove behin' me--hit's too late fo' dat! But ef I was des ter git one li'l year o' hit--ONE LI'L YEAR O' BEIN' WHITE!--befo'
I died--"
And he went on like that, shaking and stuttering there in the road, like a fit had struck him, crazy as a loon. But he got hold of himself enough to quit talking, in a minute, and his cunning come back to him before he was through trembling.
Then the doctor says slow and even, but not severe:
"You go back to your people now, bishop, and tell them they've made a mistake about me. And if you can, undo the harm you've done with this Messiah business. As far as this stuff of mine is concerned, there's none of it for you nor for any other negro. You tell them that. There's none of it been sold yet--and there never will be."Then we turned away and left him standing there in the road, still with his hat off and his face working.
Walking back toward the little tavern the doctor says:
"Danny, this is the end of this game. These people down here and that half-cracked, half-crooked old bishop have made me see a few things about the Afro-American brother. It wasn't a good scheme in the first place. And this wasn't the place to start it going, anyhow--I should have tried the niggers in the big towns. But I'm out of it now, and I'm glad of it. What we want to do is to get away from here to-morrow--go back to Atlanta and fix up a scheme to rob some widows and orphans, or something half-way respectable like that."Well, I drew a long breath. I was with Doctor Kirby in everything he done, fur he was my friend, and I didn't intend to quit him. But I was glad we was out of this, and hadn't sold none of that dope. We both felt better because we hadn't.
All them millions we was going to make--shucks!
We didn't neither one of us give a dern about them getting away from us. All we wanted was jest to get away from there and not get mixed up with no nigger problems any more. We eat supper, and we set around a while, and we went to bed purty middling early, so as to get a good start in the morning.
We got up early, but early as it was the devil had been up earlier in that neighbourhood. About four o'clock that morning a white woman about a half a mile from the village had been attacked by a nigger. They was doubt as to whether she would live, but if she lived they wasn't no doubts she would always be more or less crazy. Fur besides everything else, he had beat her insensible.
And he had choked her nearly to death. The country-side was up, with guns and pistols look-ing fur that nigger. It wasn't no trouble guessing what would happen to him when they ketched him, neither.
"And," says Doctor Kirby, when we hearn of it, "I hope to high heaven they DO catch him!"They wasn't much doubt they would, either.
They was already beating up the woods and bushes and gangs was riding up and down the roads, and every nigger's house fur miles around was being searched and watched.
