Page:Darkwater (Du Bois 1920).djvu/119



Three bishops sat in San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, peering gloomily into three flickering fires, which cast and recast shuddering shadows on book-lined walls. Three letters lay in their laps, which said:

"And thou, Valdosta, in the land of Georgia, art not least among the princes of America, for out of thee shall come a governor who shall rule my people."

The white bishop of New York scowled and impatiently threw the letter into the fire. "Valdosta?" he thought,—"That's where I go to the governor's wedding of little Marguerite, my white flower,—" Then he forgot the writing in his musing, but the paper flared red in the fireplace.

"Valdosta?" said the black bishop of New Orleans, turning uneasily in his chair. "I must go down there. Those colored folk are acting strangely. I don't know where all this unrest and moving will lead to. Then, there's poor Lucy—" And he threw the letter into the fire, but eyed it suspiciously as it flamed green. "Stranger things than that have happened," he said slowly, and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.

In San Francisco the priest of Japan, abroad to study strange lands, sat in his lacquer chair, with face like soft-yellow and wrinkled parchment. Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely bidden to the Val d' Osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm here will welcome a prophet. I shall go and report to Kioto."

So in the dim waning of the day before Christmas Rh