Part 13

“I, in the presence of God and man, most solemnly pledge, promise and swear”--and so forth to the end. It was an oath of obedience to the sublime authority of the Tribe and to the head of the Tribe, Joseph Andrew Lister.

Then the oath of secrecy, in which the candidates swore that they would rather die than divulge any of the secrets.

Next an oath to work for the good of the Tribe in spite of personal or other conflicting motives.

Last of all an oath of fealty to the Tribe, of protection of members.

“I swear that I will keep secure to myself a secret of a Tribesman when same is committed to me in the sacred bond of Tribal fealty--the crime of violating THIS solemn oath, treason against the United States of America, rape and malicious murder alone excepted.” Malicious murder? What could that mean? Why the qualification of murder? For a fleeting moment Robert was puzzled. But he went on mechanically with the oath.

“I most solemnly assert and affirm that to the government of the United States of America and any state thereof of which I may become a resident I sacredly swear an unqualified allegiance above any other and every kind of government in the whole world. I here and now pledge my life, my property, my vote and my sacred honor to uphold its flag, its Constitution and its constitutional laws and will protect, defend and enforce same unto death.

“I swear that I will most zealously and valiantly shield and preserve by any and all justifiable means and methods (justifiable? Again a question came into Robert’s mind. But he dismissed it.) the sacred constitutional rights and privileges of free public schools, free speech, free press, separation of church and state, liberty, white supremacy, just laws and the pursuit of happiness against any encroachment of any nature by any person, persons, political party or parties, religious sect or people, native, naturalized or foreign, of any race, color, creed, lineage or tongue whatsoever.”

The head of the Tribe, himself, who had previously impressed on the candidates the sacredness of the oath now took from the altar a water bottle. Robert noticed, for the first time, that, beside the bottle, the altar held also an American flag, a Bible and a dagger.

“With this transparent, life-giving, powerful, God-given fluid,” he began, his voice rising and falling in even cadences, “more precious and far more significant than all the sacred oils of the ancients, I set you apart from the men of your daily association to the great and honorable task you have voluntarily allotted yourselves as citizens of the Fourth Dimension, Hunters of the Trick Track Tribe. You will kneel upon your right knee.”

Robert felt as though he were in the midst of some weird nightmare. He had had that impression all evening. Now it seemed deepened--the figures in white, the darkness, the eerie moon, the gleaming cross, the shadows. But what was happening now, or about to happen, seemed too utterly unreal. It was like one of those points in a dream where the dreamer cries out “I am only dreaming,” and strives desperately to awake. It could not be possible! Still the Tribal Head held the water bottle. Was he about to perform a baptismal rite? Robert had no particularly delicate religious scruples. Still, the burlesquing of the sacrament of baptism shocked his sensibilities. He would have been equally shocked if someone had trampled on the American flag--if someone had cruelly trampled on the flag of any other nation. It was fanatical. Robert was conscious of a quartette, somewhere far away, singing a hymn in low, yet distinct tones. Something about “Home, country and tribe.” He noticed that he was kneeling with the hundred other candidates.

The voice of the Tribal Head rose:

“I dedicate you in body, in mind, in spirit and in life to the holy service of our country and our tribe, our home, each other and humanity.”

He advanced and poured a few drops of water on each candidate’s neck.

“In body,” Hamilton heard him say as a drop fell on his back; “in mind,” a few drops fell on his head; “in spirit,” the officer sprinkled a few drops on his own hand and tossed them upward; “in life.” He moved his hand in a circle above the candidates’ heads. The baptism was ended. Officers and Tribesmen fell on their knees and prayed.

The fiery cross flickered above them. The black shadows danced faster. A cloud obscured the moon. Robert was a Tribesman.

XXV

It was the day after his initiation into the Tribe. Robert had slept late, the strange ceremony having run incessantly through his mind in a series of shadowy dreams. Words of the oaths had repeated themselves, the Tribal hymn, the threat of death to the disloyal: “Remember that to keep this oath means honor, happiness, and life; but to violate it means disgrace, dishonor and death. (Then, ironically)--May honor, happiness and life be yours.”

The ceremony had been impressive. It had impressed with an idea of primal power--the power of men, freed from all shackles, and united by a pure, strong, simple faith. Christianity. Racial purity. Patriotism. Womanhood. Ideals which it was well to raise up, to fight for if necessary. And Americanism. Through such an organization of men of common birth, religion and ideals, everything could be accomplished. Yes, he was proud of being a Tribesman!

Last night the baptism ritual had shocked him, but now the towering seriousness of the Tribe justified it. Exactly how the Tribe meant to function Robert did not know. Doubtless it would be explained to him later. He was eager to know. Griffith had given some hint at Pinkney’s office. He wished to know and to serve. Someone had said something about the Knights of Columbus trying to control politics. But that had been his mother. Yet she had overheard others, Tribesmen, talking about it. Could that be true? Could so un-American a thing be crushed by the Tribe?

Robert found Mr. Hamilton walking up and down the porch, chewing the end of his cigar.

“That was a tremendous thing, governor,” said Robert, “I think the most tremendous thing in my life.

“I shall never forget it as long as I live. And I want to take an active interest in it. Now--”

He hesitated. Mr. Hamilton cleared his throat.

“Now,” Robert continued. “I’m ready to start in again. My wound is practically well, I’ve had a good rest and I mean to pitch in wherever I’m wanted.”

“I wanted you to have a good rest, Bob, before I told you. Let’s sit down over here on the bench. We’ve seen this moment coming a long time--mother and I--and we’ve shrunk from it. I suppose you’ve noticed a change here?”

Robert had. Little changes. Only Mammy Chloe and George were left of the five servants. Only one car. Only one horse. Little things like that. And then, he suddenly remembered, the office had been closed in New York.

“Oh, I thought,” he was going to say that they were economizing, “I don’t know what I thought. I guess I didn’t think about it at all.”

“Well, the war has made some men, but it’s broken me. Not completely, but--” he waved his cigar. “There’s enough for us to live on the rest of our lives--that is the three of us--although on a slightly reduced scale. Oh, there’s nothing to worry about. Only, only, it isn’t what I had planned for you.” His voice broke and he pretended to relight his cigar.

They had often talked over their plans. Robert was to learn the more important aspects of the business, eventually succeed his father as president, leaving the details, however, to a competent staff. His income would enable him to live according to his own ideas of life--to ride, to hunt, to fish, to play tennis, to acquire the easy culture that comes with leisure, to surround himself with a society of men and women of similar tastes and to patronize, perhaps even essay, the arts. The older Hamilton had been able, in a measure, to live in accordance with these ideas.

Now perhaps they would have to take an apartment and cut down their expenditures. There would be an income ample for all necessities--even for the best apartment in Corinth, for a reasonable amount of entertaining.

“But can’t anything be done? Can’t I pitch in--?”

Mr. Hamilton laughed and looked at his son kindly.

“You’ve used that expression twice today, Bob,” he said. “It’s not like pitching hay or even pitching for a baseball team. I know you’re willing. But the smashup came while you were still in France--right after the armistice. It’s not as though anyone can help at this stage of the game, like a pinch hitter.”

Robert wondered how his father could take the matter so lightly. He suddenly gripped his father’s hand and stammered:

“It’s great how you can smile through everything like that. It’s--!”

Mr. Hamilton patted his shoulder.

“Wait until you’re my age, son. My loss is really nothing. There are things tremendously more important than money. Health, love, friendship. The ability to appreciate this cigar or to tell a good drink or a good book from a poor one. Money is valuable only in buying that appreciation. I’ve tried to give you that--to give you an education and a viewpoint. And we still have enough money left to buy a few good cigars and drinks and books.”

Mr. Hamilton sketched the decline of the Hamilton corporation. It had never been as important as Robert had thought--there had always been heavily mortgaged properties, for instance. During the war, most of the hardwood lands had been sold and the money used to expand the cotton mills. In the spring of 1918 it seemed certain that the war would last at least another year and so a huge plant had been erected near Charleston. Prices were high, the work lagged, the expense was enormous. In order to insure a sufficient supply of cotton and to guard against continued increases in price, Hamilton had bought heavily for future delivery. The armistice had come. The bottom had fallen out of the market. The demand for cotton goods had ceased. There was no foreign market. Well, it was hopeless. Out of the mess there would be left perhaps $200,000, anyway $100,000. He had disposed of most of his stock at a small figure. A set of Yankees and Jews were in control.

“Whatever you do,” said Mr. Hamilton, looking at Robert steadily, “whatever you do, don’t gamble on the exchange. Poker is all right, within your means. It’s a gentleman’s game. Dice has an honorable origin and at least you get a chance to hold the dice once in a while. But on the stock market or exchange you never hold the dice. You’ll remember, won’t you?

“Now, I suppose this may interfere with your plans about getting married. You are still young. I was thirty myself when I married mother. The world is still before you. There’s no hurry. Some day I know you will want to choose your road. If you care to take up a profession, there’s plenty to send you through. If you’re interested in business, I may still have some influence and, perhaps, a little cash, although all I have is tied up. As for myself, I’m too old to go into a new business now. I was nearly forty when you were born.”

“Of course I’ll want to do something now,” said Robert.

“You might talk it over with Pinkney. He’s a factor in Corinth today. He’s talked to me about you several times.”

“He seems to be interested in the Tribe mainly.”

“Yes, Robert, there are many influential Corinthians interested in the Tribe. It’s their hobby. I--I don’t know. I joined, of course. I think its objects are splendid, commendable, in fact. But after you’ve seen ten or twelve initiations the glamor wears off. Perhaps I shouldn’t talk to you like this. But you’re my son and you’ll understand. The ceremonial is not for us. It’s to impress others. And I’m a bit of a skeptic about any organization of human beings. Perhaps this may work the miracle. I hope it can. If you can prove useful in propagating its message, so much the better. Patriotism. Regard for laws. Chivalry. White supremacy. They’re all fine ideals.”

“Yes, they are, governor.”

“If you can prove valuable now to the Tribe, because of your personality or war experience or whatever it is, you will win the friendship of the most influential men in Corinth. This work will simply be a stepping stone. Pinkney’s a young man. He lacks certain qualities you have. He may not be all that you or I would seek in our ideal man, but he has brains enough to appreciate you. With the family name, the slight financial assistance I can give you and the good will of the best element of Corinth, the future is anything you care to make it. I don’t want you to be merely a successful man, but success is not to be despised and it may prove the open sesame to the life that we planned.”

“Yes, governor, I understand.”

They stood up. Robert had never quite understood his father before, it seemed. Smiling to the last. Well, he could be like that too.

XXVI

Robert found Pinkney, hat on head, about to leave the office.

“Come along,” he said, “you’re just in time. I’m going to the Tribe office. I’ll introduce you to the Sublime Headman--Joseph Andrew Lister.” Together they descended to the street.

“Lister? I heard the name at the concilium. Who is he otherwise? Is he a Corinthian?”

“Lister?--have a cigar, Robert. He’s the Rev. Mr. Lister, a very distinguished minister. Let me see. I think he was a Methodist divine. But he has given up his clerical work, he told me, to devote all his time to the Tribe. It was his idea, in fact. He began recruiting members in about 1915 or so and laid the foundation. The office is only a few blocks down.”

“I thought,” said Robert, “the initiation ceremony had a sort of ecclesiastical flavor. It was very impressive though. I dreamed about it all night.”

“Did you?” Pinkney grinned. “Lister and Griffith devised it. Lister is the man with the ideal of solidifying the best element in this country; while Griffith is the practical man. He really made it. He works out all the plans. He is really quite a capable fellow.”

They crossed the street, Pinkney, with his slightly annoying habit of politeness, or excessive friendliness, holding Hamilton’s arm and helping him. A persistent newsboy thrust a paper before him and Pinkney bought two copies.

“Want one? I have mine delivered at the office every day, but--”

Robert glanced at the streamer headline and discovered the meaning of what the newsboy had been shouting. A half-dozen masked men had taken a Negro from his place of employment in Corinth, driven him far into the country and tarred and feathered him. Members of the Trick Track Tribe were suspected. Howard’s cheeks were flushed and he moistened his lips with his tongue.

“Look at that,” said Robert, “they’re accusing the Tribe.”

“Oh, the police are friendly. The chief is one of us. There’s no danger. Whenever something like this happens, the Tribe is naturally blamed anyway. And if members of the Tribe did do it, no one would tell. There’s been altogether too much lawlessness among the niggers lately. The courts are cluttered with them. It should be a good lesson for them.”

“But isn’t this lawlessness?”

“The Tribe has its own law and metes out its own justice. You’ll see. You’ve taken only your first degree. You haven’t learned about the tribunal. It’s the fairest, justest institution in the United States. It fortifies the ordinary methods of law enforcement and insures justice to every one whose case is brought before it. If a man is condemned by it, be sure he is guilty.”

Robert noticed that Howard had not said that the Tribe had or had not been responsible for the affair. Yet he had vindicated it. There was a peculiar thing about the oath, too, or one of them: a person was permitted to deny a fact or even to falsify in defense of the Tribe. A phrase he had heard somewhere popped into his mind: “A good dose of tar taken externally with lots of feathers.”

Howard was detailing the offenses of the Negroes of Corinth. Of the entire black race. Of the colored races. What had they to do with this one individual human being who had been punished by these superior white men? Well, perhaps this man was guilty. The newspaper story hinted that the victim had distributed among his fellow Negroes white mule, a poisonous whiskey that incited the drinkers to violence--when it did not paralyze them, more or less permanently. After all, what was the law, but an institution to maintain justice? It was an instrument of man. It functioned through men. What difference was there fundamentally if men in long white gowns and masks sentenced you or a judge with a white wig and black robes or men in business suits! As long as the man was really guilty. And ordinary justice often lagged, allowed the criminal to escape, failed to impress its lesson on others.

“Oh, it was probably a good lesson at that,” said Robert.

“Probably!” exclaimed Pinkney. “Why there’s no doubt about it. It will do more to restore law and order, to stop the selling of white mule than raiding a dozen stills. I know the niggers. You know them too, Hamilton. They’ll become frightened and quit.”

The Rev. Mr. Lister was in his private office in conference with Mr. Griffith and another gentleman, according to the rather plump, middle-aged woman who sat typing in the outer room. Pinkney introduced Robert to her. Her name was Mrs. Ward. She had pleasant, a trifle flirtatious, brown eyes, assisted Mr. Griffith in editing the Tribe paper and various pamphlets, and chewed gum.

“Seen the last copy of the Clarion?” she asked, with a smile, turning to reach for something.

“No, what’s that?” asked Robert.

Mrs. Ward and Pinkney informed him simultaneously that it was a propaganda weekly, Mrs. Ward with a coquettish shake of her finger and a somewhat more pronounced appearance of her double chin.

“Captain Hamilton has just been initiated,” explained Pinkney apologetically. “Mrs. Ward, here, is the brains of the Tribe.”

She laughed.

“Here it is,” she said, handing the magazine to Robert. “Aren’t men the flatterers? There’s a corker in this week about the Catholics. You wanna read it. Didja see last week’s Jew article, Mr. Pinkney? Griffith wrote ’em. There’s some swell stuff about the Inquisition. I don’t see where he reads so much.”

Hamilton glanced over the first page of The Clarion. There was an engraving of de Torquemada with the caption, “Do You Want Him Here?” beneath. But before he could read beyond the first paragraph--a series of queries, as to whether we wanted this or that medieval institution here--he became conscious of voices raised in the office of the Sublime Headman. First an impassioned, angry voice. The words were indistinguishable. Then the angry voice of the minister. Robert recognized the cadences, rolling in anger:

“To violate your oath means disgrace, dishonor and _death_.”

A door flew open. The voices ceased abruptly. A white-faced man strode out of the room. He stopped in embarrassment as he saw Pinkney, twisted his hat, screwed his lips into a smile and mumbled a greeting, then stumbled out of the room. Robert’s hands involuntarily crushed the copy of The Clarion. A buzzer sounded.

“Come in, gentlemen,” called a sunny voice.

“Walk right in there,” beamed Mrs. Ward, adjusting a new sheet in her typewriter. “He’s in there alone with Griffith now.”

The Rev. Mr. Lister was seated at a mahogany desk--a tall impressive figure in frock coat, wing collar and black cravat--a dignified and picturesque survival of, say, the middle of the nineteenth century, with a wavy mane parted at one side and brushed back from a high forehead; thin lips of the orator; intent pale blue eyes.

Joseph Andrew Lister had been an itinerant Methodist preacher and later organizer for a fraternal society, before the inspiration came to him to revive a secret society for the reformation of humanity and the establishment of a more perfect justice on earth. He had been born on a farm in northern Georgia and had been obliged to rise at four o’clock every morning to begin the day’s chores. He hated farm life and, having at the age of seven, attended an Evangelistic meeting, presided over by a fiery preacher, decided to find solace in religion.

His parents, who were very religious, and an uncle, who ran a small store in a neighboring town, scraped together enough to send Joseph through a seminary, where he applied himself with such zeal that he led all his classes. He knew both testaments almost by heart and found in them the epitome of all wisdom. When not studying he was continually composing sermons and delivering them, under his breath in his room, or aloud in the fields or on the street. At sixteen he come home on Sunday to preach at the church where he had been confirmed and which his parents attended, to their inexpressible pride.

He might have continued to serve as a minister, assisting his parents with the less arduous duties of the farm between sermons, had he not been induced to join a fraternal society in his thirty-fifth year. He suddenly got an insight into a new world. The idea of fraternal association and benevolence in a lay organization fired his imagination and he saw in it a greater field for spreading practical Christianity. The position of organizer, besides, was somewhat more remunerative, and so, when it was offered him, he abandoned the pulpit. He was fairly successful in gaining new members, won a reputation as a fiery talker and was looked upon as a person of superior learning and godliness among his associates. These qualities alone would not have sufficed to build up the Trick Track Tribe had not the more practical genius of Griffith pointed the way. Lister remained, however, the figurehead and mouthpiece of the organization which he had been unable to build, while Griffith, the guiding genius, remained more or less in the background.

“Good morning, brother Pinkney,” said the Rev. Mr. Lister in orotund tones. “Isn’t this one of our initiates? Ah, yes, Captain Hamilton. I am delighted to enroll you in our Tribe. ‘I have an errand to thee, O captain.’” He smiled. “The Tribe is a military organization, a mighty host. And we need captains to spread the word.”

The Headman shook hands warmly with both Hamilton and Pinkney. Griffith, who had been leaning back in a chair, arose and followed his example.

“Let us be seated.” Robert noticed how the Headman’s eyes glowed, how the corners of his lips turned down and how he habitually pressed the tips of his fingers together. A sincere man, a man fairly burning with religious zeal. “In recruiting this magnificent army that is to bear the message of the Trick Track Tribe to every portion of the continent, we are in need of captains, even as the Kings of Israel needed captains of their hundreds.”

He complimented Robert magnificently on fighting the hosts of the enemy and now girding up his loins again to renew the fight for godliness here.