Читать книгу The Hour and the Man, An Historical Romance - Harriet Martineau - Страница 14

Margot doubted much, at the end of the first week, and at the end of every following week, whether she liked freedom. Margot had had few cares during the many years that she had lived under the mild rule of Monsieur Bayou—her husband faithful and kind, and her children provided for without present anxiety on her part. Thoughts of the future would, it is true, occasionally trouble her, as she knew they weighed heavily on her husband’s mind. When she saw Génifrède growing up, handsome in her parents’ eyes, and so timid and reserved that her father sometimes said he wondered whether any one would ever know her mind better than her own family did—when Margot looked upon Génifrède, and considered that her lot in life depended on the will of Monsieur Bayou, she shuddered to think what it might be. When Monsieur Bayou told Génifrède that she was well coiffée, or that he wished she would show the other girls among the house-negroes how to make their Sunday gowns sit like hers, Génifrède invariably appeared not to hear, and often walked away in the midst of the speech; and then her mother could not but wonder how she would conduct herself, whenever the day should come that must come, when (as there was no one on the Breda estate whom Génifrède liked, or would associate with) Monsieur Bayou should bring some one to their cottage, and desire Génifrède to marry him. When Margot looked upon her sons, and upon Aimée, now so inseparable from Isaac, and considered that their remaining together depended not only on Monsieur Bayou’s will, but on his life, she trembled lest the day should be at hand when Placide might be carried away northward, and Isaac eastward, and poor Aimée left desolate. Such had been the mother’s passing cares in the situation in which nothing had been wanting to her immediate comfort. Now, amidst the perplexities of her new settlement, she was apt to forget that she had formerly had any cares.

Where to house the party had been the first difficulty. But for old Dessalines, who, being no soldier, had chosen to hide himself in the same retreat with them, they would hardly have had good shelter before the rains. Paul had received them kindly; but Paul’s kindness was of a somewhat indolent sort; and it was doubtful whether he would have proceeded beyond looking round his hut, and lamenting that it was no bigger, if his spirited son Moyse, a fine lad of sixteen, had not been there to do something more effectual, in finding the place and the materials for the old tiler to begin his work. It was Moyse who convinced the whole party from the plain that a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves would fall in an hour before one of the hail-storms of this rocky coast; and that it would not do to build on the sands, lest some high tide should wash them all away in the night. It was Moyse who led his cousins to the part of the beach where portions of wrecks were most likely to be found, and who lent the strongest hand to remove such beams and planks as Dessalines wanted for his work. A house large enough to hold the family was soon covered in. It looked well, perched on a platform of rock, and seeming to nestle in a recess of the huge precipices which rose behind it. It looked well, as Dessalines could obtain neither of his favourite paints to smear it with. It stood, neither red nor blue, but nearly the colour of the rocks, against which it leaned, and thatched with palm-leaves, which projected so far as to throw off the rains, even to a depth below.

Paul provided fish—as much as his relations chose to have; but the young people chose to have many other things, under the guidance of Moyse; and here lay their mother’s daily care. She believed that both boys and girls ran into a thousand dangers, and no one would help her to restrain them. Paul had always let Moyse have his own way; and Dessalines, when he had brought in drift-wood for her fires, which he daily chose to do, lay down in the sun when the sun shone, and before the fire when the clouds gathered, and slept away the hours. Paul wanted help in his fishing; and it was commonly Isaac who went with him; for Isaac was more fond of boating than rambling. Where Isaac was, there was Aimée. She gave no contemptible help in drawing in the nets; and when the fish was landed, she and Isaac sat for hours among the mangroves which bordered the neighbouring cove, under pretence of cleaning the fish, or of mending the nets, or of watching the cranes which stalked about the sands. Sometimes, in order to be yet more secure from disturbance, the brother and sister would put off again, when they had landed Paul with his prize, and get upon the coral reef, half a mile off—in calm weather collecting the shell-fish which were strewed there in multitudes, and watching the while the freaks and sports of the dolphins in the clear depths around; and in windy weather sitting in the midst of the spray, which was dashed over them from the heavy seas outside. Many times in a morning or evening did Margot look out from her doorway, and see their dusky forms upon the reef, now sitting motionless in talk, now stooping for mussels and crabs, and never till the last moment in the boat, on their way home. Sometimes Denis was with them—sometimes with her—but oftenest with the party led by Moyse.

Moyse had first enticed Génifrède up the rocks behind their dwelling, to get grass for hammocks, and to make matting for the floors. Almost from the first day, it appeared as if Génifrède’s fears all melted away in the presence of Moyse; and her mother became sure of this when, after grass enough had been procured, Génifrède continued to accompany Placide and Moyse in their almost daily expeditions for sporting and pleasure. They brought guanas, tender young monkeys, and cocoa-nuts from the wood, wild kids from the rock, delicate ducks from the mountain-ponds, and sometimes a hog or a calf from the droves and herds which flourished in the rich savannahs on the southern side, on which they looked down from their ridge. In the joy of seeing her children home again, gladsome as they were, and feeling that they brought plenty and luxury into her cottage, Margot kept her cares to herself, from day-to-day, and did not interfere with their proceedings. She sometimes thought she was foolish, and always was glad to see them enjoying their freedom; but still, she felt doubtful whether she herself had not been happier at Breda. The only time when her heart was completely at ease and exulting was when Toussaint came to see his family, to open his heart to his wife, and to smile away her troubles. Her heart exulted when she saw him cross the ridge, with a mounted private behind him, urge his horse down the ascent, gallop along the sands to the foot of the rocks, throw the bridle to his attendant, and mount to the platform, looking up as he approached, to see whether she was on the watch. She was always on the watch. She liked to admire his uniform, and to hear his sword clatter as he walked. She liked to see him looking more important, more dignified, than Bayou or Papalier had ever appeared in her eyes. Then, her heart was always full of thoughts about their children, which he was as anxious to hear as she to tell; and he was the only one from whom she could learn anything of what was going on in the world, or of what prospects lay before themselves. He brought news from France, from Cap and the plain, and, after a while, from America—that Monsieur Bayou was settled at Baltimore, where he intended to remain till, as he said, the pacification of the colony should enable him to return to Breda. There was no fear, as Toussaint always found, but that Margot would be looking out for him.

The tidings he brought were never very joyous, and often sad enough. He said little of his personal cares; but Margot gathered that he found it difficult to keep on good terms with Jean. Once he had resigned his rank of colonel, and had assumed an office of which Jean could not be jealous—that of physician to the forces—an office for which he was qualified by an early and extensive acquaintance with the common diseases of the country, and the natural remedies provided by its soil. When the Marquis d’Hermona had insisted upon his resuming his command, as the best officer the negro forces could boast, Jean had purposed to arrest him on some frivolous charge, and the foolish act had only been prevented by a frank and strong remonstrance from his old friend. All this time, Toussaint’s military successes had been great; and his name now struck such awe into the lawless forces of the insurgent blacks, that it was unnecessary for him to shed their blood. He held the post of Marmalade, and from thence was present with such unheard-of rapidity of march, wherever violence was expected, that the spirit of outrage throughout the colony was, at length, kept in check. This peaceful mode of standing by the rights of the king was more acceptable to the gentle Toussaint than the warfare by which he had gained his power over his own race; but he knew well that things could not go on as they were—that order of some kind must be established—order which could be reached only through a fierce final struggle; and of what nature this order was to be, depended wholly upon the turn which affairs took in Europe.

He rarely brought good news from abroad. His countenance always grew sad when Margot asked what ships had arrived from France since his last visit. First he had to tell her that the people of Paris had met in the Champ de Mars, and demanded the dethronement of the king; then, that Danton had audaciously informed the representatives of France that their refusal to declare the throne vacant would be the signal for a general insurrection. After this, no national calamity could surprise the loyal colonists, Toussaint said; for the fate of Louis as a king, if not as a man, was decided. Accordingly, there followed humiliations, deposition, imprisonment, during which little could be known of the mind, and even of the condition of the king: and those who would have served him remained in anxious suspense. It happened, one warm day in the spring, when every trace of the winter hail-storms had passed away, that the whole party were amusing themselves in trying to collect enough of the ripening sea-side grape for a feast. The bright round leaves were broad and abundant; but the clusters of the fruit were yet only of a pale yellow, and a berry here and there was all that was fit for gathering. The grape-gathering was little more than a pretence for basking in the sun, or for lounging in the shade of the abundant verdure, which seemed to have been sown by the hurricane, and watered by the wintry surf, so luxuriantly did it spring from the sands and the salt waves. The stately manchineel overhung the tide; the mangroves sprang out of the waters; the sea-side grape overspread the sands with a thick green carpet, and kept them cool, so that as the human foot sought the spot, the glittering lizards forsook it, and darted away to seek the hot face of the rock. For full half a mile this patch of verdure spread; and over this space were dispersed Margot and her household, when Toussaint crossed the ridge, on one of his frequent visits. As he descended, he heard laughter and singing; and among the singing voices, the cracked pipe of old Dessalines. Toussaint grieved to interrupt this mirth, and to think that he must leave dull and sad those whom he found so gay. But he came with bad news, and on a mournful errand, and there was no help for it. As he pricked on his horse towards the party, the young people set up a shout and began to run towards him, but stopped short on seeing how unusually large a train he brought. Five or six mounted soldiers, instead of one, followed him this time, and they led several horses.

“Oh, you are come to take us home!” cried Margot, joyfully, as she met him.

He shook his head as he replied—“No, Margot, not yet. But the time may come.”

“I wish you could tell us when it would come,” said Dessalines. “It is all very well gathering these things, and calling them grapes, for want of better; but give me the grapes that yield one wine. I wonder who has been gathering the grapes from my trellis all this time, while, the whole rainy season through, not a drop did I taste? I wish you had left your revolutions and nonsense till after my time, that I might have sat under my own vine and my own fig-tree, as the priest says, till the end of my days.”

“Indeed I wish so too, Dessalines. But you shall have some wine.”

“Ay, send us some. Jacques will tell you what I like. Don’t forget, Toussaint Breda. They talk of palm wine in the season; but I do not believe we shall get any worth drinking from the palms hereabouts.”

“What is the matter with our palms?” cried Moyse, firing up for the honour of the northern coast. “I will get you a cabbage for dinner every day for a month to come,” he added, moderating his tone under his uncle’s eye—“every day, till you say that our palms, too, are as good as any you have in the plain; and as for palm wine, when the season comes—”

“No, let me—let me cut the cabbage!” cried Denis. “I can climb as quick as a monkey now—a hundred feet in two minutes. Let me climb the palmetto, Moyse.”

“First take back my horse to those soldiers, my boy,” said his father, setting Denis upon his horse, “and then let us all sit down here in the shade.”

“All those horses,” said Margot, anxiously: “what is to be done with them to-day? There are so many!”

“They will return presently,” replied her husband. “I am not going to stay with you to-day. And, Margot, I shall take the lads with me, if they are disposed to go.”

“The lads! my boys!”

“Yes,” said Toussaint, throwing himself down in the shade. “Our country and its people are orphaned; and the youngest of us must now make himself a soldier, that he may be ready for any turn of affairs which Providences may appoint. Do you hear, my boys?”

“Yes, father,” answered Placide in an earnest tone.

“They have then murdered the king?” asked Margot; “or did he die of his imprisonment?”

“They brought him to trial, and executed him. The apes plucked down the evening star, and quenched it. We have no king. We and our country are orphaned.”

After a pause, Paul said—

“It is enough to make one leave one’s fishing, and take up a gun.”

“I rejoice to hear you say so, brother,” said Toussaint.

“Then, father, you will let me go,” cried Moyse. “You will give me your gun, and let me go to the camp.”

“Yes, Moyse: rather you than I. You are a stout lad now, and I know nothing of camps. You shall take the gun, and I will stay and fish.”

“Leave your father his gun, if he chooses to remain, Moyse. We will find arms for you. Placide! Isaac!” he continued, looking from one to the other of his sons.

“And Denis,” cried the boy, placing himself directly in his father’s eye, as he returned breathless from the discharge of his errand.

“Yes, my boy, by-and-bye, when you are as strong as Placide. You shall come to the camp when we want you.”

“I will go to-day, father,” said Placide.

“What to do?” said Isaac. “I do not understand.”

Other eyes besides Aimée’s were fixed on Toussaint’s face, in anxiety for his reply.

“I do not know, my son, what we are to do next. When the parent of a nation dies, it may take some time to decide what is the duty of those who feel themselves bereaved. All I now am sure of is, that it cannot but be right for my children to be fitted to serve their country in any way that they may find to be appointed. I wish to train you to arms, and the time has come. Do not you think so?”

Isaac made no direct reply, and Aimée had strong hopes that he was prepared with some wise, unanswerable reason for remaining where he was. Meanwhile, his father proceeded—

“In all that I have done, in all that I now say, I have the sanction of Father Laxabon.”

“Then all is right, we may be sure,” said Margot. “I have no doubt you would be right, if you had not Father Laxabon to consult; but if he thinks you right, everything must be done as you wish. My boys,” pursued the tearful mother, “you must go with your father: you hear Father Laxabon thinks so.”

“Do you think so?” whispered Aimée to Isaac.

He pressed her arm, which was within his, in token of silence, while his father went on:

“You heard the proclamation I sent out among our people a few weeks ago.”

“Yes,” said Placide; “that in which you tell them that you prefer serving with Spaniards who own a king, than with French who own none.”

“Yes. I have had to make the same declaration to the two commissaries who have arrived at Cap under orders from the regicides at Paris. These commissaries have to-day invited me to their standard by promises of favour and consideration.”

“What do they promise us?” asked Margot eagerly.

“Nothing that we can accept. I have written a letter in reply, saying that I cannot yield myself to the will of any member of the nation, seeing that, since nations began, obedience has been due only to kings. We have lost the king of France; but we are beloved by the monarch of Spain, who faithfully rewards our services, and never intermits his protection and indulgence. Thus, I cannot acknowledge the authority of these commissaries till they shall have enthroned a king. Such is the letter which, guided by Father Laxabon, I have written.”

“It is a beautiful letter, I am sure,” said Margot. “Is it not, Paul.”

“I don’t doubt Father Laxabon is right,” said Dessalines; “only I do not see the use of having a king, if people are turned out of house and home for being loyal—as we all are. If we had not cared anything about the king’s quarrel, we might have been under our vines at home, as I have often said before.”

“And how would it have been with us here?” said Toussaint, laying his hand on his breast.

“Put your hand a little lower, and I say it would have been all the better for us,” said the old negro, laughing, “for we should not have gone without wine all this time.”

“What do you think?” Aimée, as usual, asked Isaac.

“I think it was good for my father to be loyal to the king, as long as the king lived. I think it was good for us to be living here free, with time to consider what we should do next. And I think it has happened very well that my father has shown what a soldier he is, which he could not so well have done if we had stayed at Breda. As for Dessalines, he is best where the vines grow thickest, or where the cellars are deepest. It is a pity he should have taken upon him to be loyal.”

“And what do you think of going to the camp with my father? Look at Moyse—how delighted he is!”

Moyse certainly did look possessed with joy. He was rapidly telling all his warlike intentions to Génifrède, who was looking in his face with a countenance of fear and grief.

“You think nothing of us,” she cried at length, giving way to a passion of tears. “We have been so happy here, all together; and now you are glad to go, and leave us behind! You will go and fight, without caring for us—you will be killed in this horrid war, and we shall never see you again—we shall never know what has become of you.”

Moyse’s military fire was instantly quenched. It immediately appeared to him the greatest of miseries to have to leave his cousins. He assured Génifrède he could not really intend to go. He had only been fancying what a war with the white masters would be. He hated the whites heartily; but he loved this place much more. Placide and Isaac might go, but he should stay. Nothing should part him from those he loved best.

Toussaint was not unmindful of what was passing. Génifrède’s tones of distress, and Moyse’s protestations, all reached his ear. He turned, and gently drew his daughter towards him.

“My child,” said he, “we are no longer what we have been—slaves, whose strength is in the will of their masters. We are free; and to be free requires a strong heart, in women as well as in men. When Monsieur Bayou was our master, we rose and slept every day alike, and went out to our work, and came in to our food, without having to think of anything beyond. Now we are free, and God has raised us to the difficult duties which we have always reverenced in the whites. We men must leave our homes to live in camps, and, if necessary, to fight; and you, women and girls, must make it easy for us to do our duty. You must be willing to see us go—glad to spare us—and you must pray to God that we may not return till our duty is done.”

“I cannot—I shall not,” Génifrède muttered to herself, as she cast down her eyes under her father’s compassionate gaze. He looked towards Aimée, who answered, with tearful eyes—

“Yes, father. They must go; and we will not hinder them; but they will soon be back, will not they?”

“That depends on how soon we can make good soldiers of them,” said he, cheerfully. “Come, Moyse, have you changed your mind again? Or will you stay and plait hammocks, while my boys are trained to arms?”

“I shall not stay behind, if the others go. But why should not we all go together? I am sure there is room enough in yonder valley for all the people on this coast.”

“Room enough, but my family are better beside your father than among soldiers and the hunters of the mountains. Stay with them, or go with me. Shoot ducks, and pick up shell-fish here; or go with me, and prepare to be General Moyse some day.”

Moyse looked as if he would have knocked his uncle down at the supposition that he would stay to pick up shell-fish. He could not but laugh, however, at hearing himself greeted as General Moyse by all the boys; and even Génifrède smiled.

Margot moved, sighing, towards the rocks, to put up for her boys such comforts as she could muster, and to prepare the meal which they must have before they went. Her girls went with her; and Denis shouted after them, that he was to get the cabbage from the palmetto, adding, that if they gave him a good knife, he would take it off as neatly as the Paris people took off the king. His father grasped his arm, and said—

“Never name the king, my boy, till you feel grieved that you have lost him. You do not know what you say. Remember—never mention the king unless we ask you.”

Denis was glad to run after his cabbage. His father remembered to praise it at dinner. No one else praised or liked anything. Margot and Aimée were tearful; Génifrède was gloomy. The lads could think of nothing but the new life before them, which yet they did not like to question their father about, till they should have left the tears behind. No sooner were they past the first turn up the ridge, than they poured out their inquiries as to life in the camp, and the prospects of the war. Their eager gestures were watched by those they left behind; and there was a feeling of mortification in each woman’s heart, on seeing this evidence that home was already forgotten for busier scenes. They persuaded themselves, and believed of each other, that their grief was for the fearful death of the king; and they spoke as if this had been really the case.

“We have no one to look up to, now,” said Margot, sobbing; “no one to protect us. Who would have thought, when I married, how desolate we should be one day on the sea-shore—with our master at Baltimore, and the king dead, and no king likely to come after him! What will become of us?”

“But Margot,” interposed Dessalines, “how should we be better off at this moment, if the king were alive and flourishing at Paris?”

“How?” repeated Margot, indignantly. “Why, he would have been our protector, to be sure. He would have done some fine thing for my husband, considering what my husband has done for him. If our beloved king (on his throne) knew of my husband’s victory at Plaisance, and of his expedition to Saint Marc, and of his keeping quiet all these plantations near Marmalade, and of the thousands that he had brought over from the rebels, do you think a good master like the king would have left us to pine here among the rocks, while Jean Français is boasting all day long, as if he had done everything with his own hand? No, our good king would never have let Jean Français’ wife dress herself in the best jewels the white ladies left behind, while the wife and daughters of his very best officer are living here in a hut, on a rock, with no other clothes to wear than they brought away from Breda. No, no; as my husband says, in losing the king we are orphans.”

“I can get you as good clothes as ever Jean’s wife wore, Margot,” said Paul, whose soft heart was touched by her grief. “I can run my boat along to a place I know of, where there are silks and trinkets to be had, as well as brandy. I will bring you and the girls some pretty dresses, Margot.”

“No, Paul, not here. We cannot wear them here. And we shall have no pleasure in anything, now we have lost the only one who could take care of us. And who knows whether we shall ever see our boys again?”

“Curse the war!” muttered Paul, wiping his brows.

“Mother,” said Aimée in a low voice, “have we not God to protect us still? One master may desert us, and another may die; but there is still God above all. Will not he protect us?”

“Yes, my dear. God takes care of the world; but then He takes care of our enemies as well as of us.”

“Does he?” exclaimed Denis, in a tone of surprise.

“Yes; ask your father if Father Laxabon does not say so. The name of God is for ever in the mouths of the whites at Cap; but they reviled the king; and, true enough, the king was altogether on our side—we had all his protection.”

“All that is a good deal changed now, I hear,” said Paul. “The whites at Cap are following the example of the rebels at Paris, and do not rely upon God, as on their side, as they used to do.”

“Will God leave off taking care of them, then?” asked Denis, “and take care only of us?”

“No,” said Aimée. “God is willing, Isaac says, to take care of all men, whether they serve him or not.”

Denis shook his head, as if he did not quite approve this.

“Our priest told Isaac,” continued Aimée, “that God sends his rain on the just and on the unjust. And do not you know that he does? When the rains come next month, will they not fall on all the plantations of the plain, as well as in the valley where the camp is? Our waterfalls will be all the fresher and brighter for the rains, and so will the springs in Cap.”

“But if he is everybody’s master, and takes care of everybody,” said Denis, “what is all this fighting about? We are not fighting for Him, are we?”

“Your father is,” said Margot; “for God is always on the side of kings. Father Laxabon says so.”

The boy looked puzzled, till Aimée said—

“I think there would be none of this fighting if everybody tried to please God and serve Him, as is due to a master—as father did for the king. God does not wish that men should fight. So our priest at Breda told Isaac.”

“Unless wicked rebels force them to it, as your father is forced,” said Margot.

“I suppose so,” said Aimée, “by Isaac’s choosing to go.”