"Something new?" the carpenter rejoined. "But that is easy if it is something new. In Hayti we like new things."
"No one will listen to me," Simpson repeated.
The carpenter reflected for a moment, or seemed to be doing so.
"Many men come here about sunset," he said. "We sit and drink a little rum before dark; it is good against the fever."
"I will come also," said Simpson, rising. "It is every evening?"
"Every evening." The carpenter's right hand rose to the pouch which was not a scapular and he caressed it.
"'_Voir_," the carpenter replied, still immobile in his chair by the door.
Up to now a walk through the streets had been a night-mare to Simpson, for the squalor of them excited to protest every New England nerve in his body, and the evident hostility of the people constantly threatened his success with them. He had felt very small and lonely, like a man who has undertaken to combat a natural force; he did not like to feel small and lonely, and he did not want to believe in natural forces. Chosen vessel as he believed himself to be, thus far the island had successfully defied him, and he had feared more than once that it would do so to the end. He had compelled himself to frequent the markets, hoping always that he would find in them the key to the door that was closed against him; he had not found it, and, although he recognized that three weeks was but a fractional moment of eternity, and comforted himself by quoting things about the "mills of God," he could not approach satisfaction with what he had accomplished so far.
His interview with the carpenter had changed all that, and on his way home he trod the Grand Rue more lightly than he had ever done. Even the cathedral, even the company of half-starved conscripts that straggled past him in the tail of three generals, dismayed him no longer, for the cathedral was but the symbol of a frozen Christianity which he need no longer fear, and the conscripts were his people--his--or soon would be. All that he had wanted was a start; he had it now, though he deplored the rum which would be drunk at his first meeting with the natives. One must begin where one could.
Witherbee, sitting in the window of the consulate, called twice before Simpson heard him.
