Читать книгу The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in Florida - William Gilmore Simms - Страница 5

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Showing how Guernache, the Musician, a great favorite with our Frenchmen, lost the favor of Captain Albert, and how cruelly he was punished by the latter.

Guernache, the drummer, was one of the finest fellows, and the handsomest of our little colony of Frenchmen. Though sprung of very humble origin, Guernache, with a little better education, might have been deemed to have had his training among the highest circles of the Court. He was of tall and erect figure, and of a carriage so noble and graceful that, even among his associates, he continued to be an object of admiration. Besides, he was a fellow of the happiest humor. His kindness of heart was proverbial. His merriment was contagious. His eye flashed out in gayety, and his spirit was ever on the alert to seize upon the passing pleasure, and subject it to the enjoyment of his companions. Never was fellow so fortunate in finding occasion for merriment; and happy, indeed, was the Frenchman who could procure Guernache as a comrade in the performance of his daily tasks. The toil was unfelt in which he shared—the weight of the task was dissipated, and, where it wore heavily, he came to the succor of his drooping companion, and his superior expertness soon succeeded in doing that which his pleasantry had failed to effect. He was the best fisherman and hunter—was as brave as he was light-hearted—was, altogether, so perfect a character, in the estimation of the little band of Albert, that he found no enemy among his equals, and could always choose his companion for himself. His successes were not confined to his own countrymen. He found equal favor in the sight of the Indians. Among his other accomplishments, he possessed the most wonderful agility—had belonged, at one time, to a company of strolling players, and his skill on tight and slack rope—if we are to credit old stories—would put to the blush the modern performances of the Ravels and Herr Cline. It was through his means, and partly by his ingenuity, that the Indian hunter was entrapped and brought into the fort—through whose agency the intimacy had been effected with the people of Audusta and the other chiefs; and, during this intimacy, Guernache had proved, in various ways, one of the principal instruments for confirming the favorable impressions which the Indian had received in his intercourse with the Frenchmen. He was everywhere popular with the red men. Nothing, indeed, could be done without him. Ignorant of his inferior social position among the whites, the simple savages sent for him to their feasts and frolics, without caring for the claims of any other person. He had but to carry his violin—for, among his other accomplishments, that of fiddling was not the smallest—to secure the smiles of the men and the favors of the women; and it was not long before he had formed, among the savages, a class for dancing, after the European fashion, upon the banks of the Edisto. Think of the red men of Apalachia, figuring under a Parisian teacher, by night, by torch-light, beneath the great oaks of the original forest! Such uncouth antics might well offend, with never-lessening wonder, the courtly nymphs of the Seine and the Loire. But the Indians suffered from no conventional apprehensions. They were not made to feel their deficiencies under the indulgent training of Guernache, and footed it away as merrily, as if each of their damsels sported on a toe as light and exquisite as that of Ellsler or Taglioni. King Audusta, himself, though well stricken in years, was yet seduced into the capricious mazes which he beheld with so much pleasure, and, for a season, the triumph of Guernache among the palms and pines of Grande Riviere, was sufficiently complete, to make him wonder at times how his countrymen ever suffered his departure from the shores of La Belle France!

At first, and when it was doubtful to what extent the favor of the red-men might be secured for the colony, Captain Albert readily countenanced the growing popularity of his fiddler among them. His permission was frequently given to Guernache, when king Audusta solicited his presence. His policy prompted him to regard it as highly fortunate that so excellent an agent for his purposes was to be found among his followers; and, for some months, it needed only a suggestion of Guernache, himself, to procure for him leave of absence. The worthy fellow never abused his privileges—never was unfaithful to his trust—never grew insolent upon indulgence. But Captain Albert, though claiming to be the cadet of a noble house, was yet a person of a mean and ignoble nature. Small and unimposing of person, effeminate of habit, and accustomed to low indulgences, he was not only deficient in the higher resources of intellect, but he was exceedingly querulous and tyrannical of temper. His aristocratical connexions alone had secured him the charge of the colony, for which nature and education had equally unfitted him. His mind was contracted and full of bitter prejudices; and, as is the case commonly with very small persons, he was always tenacious, to the very letter, of the nicest observances of etiquette. After a little while, and when he no longer had reason to question the fidelity of the red men, he began to exhibit some share of dislike towards Guernache; and to withhold the privileges which he had hitherto permitted him to enjoy. He had become jealous of the degree of favor in which his musician was held among the savages, and betrayed this change in his temper, by instances of occasional severity and denial, the secret of which the companions of Guernache divined much sooner than himself. Though not prepared, absolutely, to withhold his consent, when king Audusta entreated that the fiddler might be spared him, he yet accorded it ungraciously; and Guernache was made to suffer, in some way, for these concessions, as if they had been so many favors granted to himself.

They were, indeed, favors to the musician, though, to what extent, Albert entertained no suspicion. It so happened that among his other conquests, Guernache had made that of a very lovely dark-eyed damsel, a niece of Audusta, and a resident of the king’s own village. After the informal fashion of the country, into which our Frenchmen were apt readily to fall, he had made the damsel his wife. She was a beautiful creature, scarcely more than sixteen; tall and slender, and so naturally agile and graceful, that it needed but a moderate degree of instruction to make her a dancer whose airy movements would not greatly have misbeseemed the most courtly theatres of Paris. Monaletta—for such was the sweet name of the Indian damsel—was an apt pupil, because she was a loving one. She heartily responded to that sentiment of wonder—common among the savages—that the Frenchmen should place themselves under the command of a chief, so mean of person as Albert, and so inferior in gifts, when they had among them a fellow of such noble presence as Guernache, whose qualities were so irresistible. The opinions of her head were but echoes from the feelings in her heart. Her preference for our musician was soon apparent and avowed; but, in taking her to wife, Guernache kept his secret from his best friend. No one in Fort Charles ever suspected that he had been wived in the depth of the great forests, through pagan ceremonies, by an Indian Iawa,[10] to the lovely Monaletta. Whatever may have been his motive for keeping the secret, whether he feared the ridicule of his comrades, or the hostility of his superior, or apprehended a difficulty with rivals among the red men, by a discovery of the fact, it is yet very certain that he succeeded in persuading Monaletta, herself, and those who were present at his wild betrothal, to keep the secret also. It did not lessen, perhaps, the pleasure of his visits to the settlements of Audusta, that the peculiar joys which he desired had all the relish of a stolen fruit. It was now, only in this manner that Monaletta could be seen. Captain Albert, with a rigid austerity, which contributed also to his evil odor among his people, had interdicted the visits of all Indian women at the fort. This interdict was one, however, which gave little annoyance to Guernache. A peculiar, but not unnatural jealousy, had already prompted him repeatedly to deny this privilege to Monaletta. The simple savage had frequently expressed her desire to see the fortress of the white man, to behold his foreign curiosities, and, in particular, to hearken to the roar of that mimic thunder which he had always at command, and which, when heard, had so frequently shaken the very hearts of the men of her people.

In this relation stood the several parties, when, one day, a messenger came to Fort Charles from King Audusta, bearing a special invitation to Captain Albert to attend, with the savage tribes, the celebration of the great religious “feast of Toya.” He was invited to bring as many of his men as he thought proper, but, in particular, not to forget their favorite Guernache. The feast of Toya, seems to have constituted the great religious ceremonial of the nation. It took place about the middle, or the close of summer, and seems to have been a sort of annual thanksgiving, after the laws of a natural religion, for the maturing of their little crops. Much of the solemnities were obvious and ostentatious in their character. Much more, however, was involved and mysterious, and held particularly sacred by the priesthood. The occasion was one, at all events, to which the Indians attached the greatest importance; and, naturally anxious to acquire as great a knowledge as possible of their laws, customs and sentiments, Captain Albert very readily acceded to the invitation—preparing, with some state, to attend the rustic revels of Audusta. He took with him a fair proportion of his little garrison, and did not omit the inimitable Guernache. Ascending the river in his pinnace, he soon reached the territories of the Indian monarch. Audusta, with equal hospitality and dignity, anticipated his approach, and met him, with his followers, at the river landing. With a hearty welcome, he conducted him to his habitations, and gave him, at entrance, a draught of the cassina beverage, the famous tea of the country. Then came damsels who washed their hands in vessels of water over which floated the leaves of the odorous bay, and flowers of rare perfume; drying them after with branches of plumes, scarlet and white, which were made of the feathers of native birds of the most glorious variety of hue. Mats of reed, woven ingeniously together by delicate wythes of all colors, orange and green, and vermillion, dyed with roots of the forest, were then spread upon the rush-strewn floor of the royal wigwam; and, with a grace not unbecoming a sovereign born in the purple, Audusta invited our Frenchmen to place themselves at ease, each according to his rank and station. The king took his place among them, neither above the first, nor below the last, but like a friend within a favorite circle, in which some might stand more nearly than others to his affections. They were then attended with the profoundest deference, and served with the rarest delicacies of the Indian cuisine. As night came on, fresh rushes were strewed upon the floor, and they slept with the cheerful music of songs and laughter, which reached them at intervals, through the night, from the merry makers in the contiguous forests. With the dawning of the next day, preparations for the great festival were begun.