No Good Deed 32

We entered via a plain door. No key was required. The church was silent, but not empty: or rather, I should say, it fell silent, the moment I crossed the threshold behind Miss Winona Shepherd. Aside from our own there was but one white face in the building. It belonged to a soberly dressed man at the front of the congregation. The pulpit stood central to the rear of the large auditorium. Banked empty seats flanked it, they formed an arrow-head pointing to the stained glass window in the rear wall. This piece of glaziery did show a representational composition. In a crude, almost child-like style, the pieces of glass depicted a tall and stately-looking man. He wore a set of rags in remarkably clean condition, and had a skin-colour unlikely to have been seen at all on a native of Colossae, which location was conveniently if inexplicably inscribed on a signpost in English rather than Greek. The noble savage was being returned to a Philemon, whose name was also conveniently inscribed below his figure. In the background an older fellow in a green mantle with a red robe sat astride a horse attempting to juggle a book and a scroll whilst struggling with the reins. But for the long and pointed beard, it would have been the very image of the shepherd of the church's flock.

As he caught sight of Miss Shepherd and myself, he gave out a bellow worthy of a buck-shot buffalo, as a Missourian might have put it.

'Welllll-coooooooome! Sissssssssssssterrrrrr Shepherd and Brrrrrrrrrroootherrrr Norrrrthruuuppp!'

This long-drawn out greeting was greeted by cheering and whooping from the congregation. I looked at Miss Shepherd, who looked a little uncomfortable. This may well have been occasioned by the enthusiasm of the welcome, but - though it might have been vanity - I thought her discomfort more to my account than any other.

'You will join my brrroootherrs and ssssisssterrs in worship?'

The preacher appeared to be addressing me, but it seemed a purely rhetorical question, as he put a pitch-pipe to his lips. The congregation broke into a song heard once before by me, and I recognised immediately the endless round of exhortations to some fellows brothers to meet him. The tune was rousing enough and might have gone well in a comic song at the Canterbury in far-off London. Thankfully there appeared to be no more than thirteen choruses in the version performed by the assembled voices, several of which were almost as tuneful as a crow's.

The hymn being over, the preacher began a rambling prayer, which mentioned Philemon, St Paul, our negro brothers, servitude and manumission, several times more than strictly necessary. At last he performed a manumission of his own and released his congregation to the street, save for three ragged fellows who edged to the wall end of the pews on which they sat.

'So, Brrrooootherrrr Northrup, art come to save the Canaanites?' he asked.

Being quite tired of the manner in which the fellow rolled the word around his mouth as though it were a particularly hot and delicious sweetmeat, I replied,

'I am not your brother, Sir and am quite tired of being at a disadvantage in the matter of names.'

The preacher looked at Miss Shepherd open-mouthed.

'Pay him no mind, Reverend,he always talks like that, says he's been twenty years in England.'

'The Lord moves in mysterious ways indeed, Sir. I am the Reverend Erastus Newberry, shepherd to these sheep who take refuge in the House of God.'

He spread his arms wide as if the church were yet full, but he did fix his eyes on the negroes cowering at the side of the auditorium.

It took a modicum of self-control not to smite the fellow then and there. The humbug of the clergy had ever been a source of provocation to me.