--"Missié makes photographs...."
--"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"
--"Oh! no, Missié, I am too ugly and too old. But I have a daughter. She
is beautiful--_yon bel bois_,--like a beautiful tree, as we say here. I
would like so much to have her picture taken."
A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested this
request to Cyrillia. I could not attempt such work successfully; but I
gave her a note to a photographer of much skill; and a few days later
the portrait was sent to the house. Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a
comely girl,--tall and almost gold-colored, with pleasing features; and
the photograph looked very nice, though less nice than the original.
Half the beauty of these people is a beauty of tint,--a tint so
exquisite sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare
no white complexion compares with it: the greater part of the charm
remaining is grace,--the grace of movement; and neither of these can be
rendered by photography. I had the portrait framed for Cyrillia, to hang
up beside her little pictures.
When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited to see
the effect. On returning, she entered there; and I did not see her for
so long a time that I stole to the door of the chamber to observe her.
She was standing before the portrait,--looking at it, talking to it as
if it were alive. "_Yche moin, yche moin!... Oui! ou toutt bel!--yche
moin bel_." (My child, my child!... Yes, thou art all beautiful: my
child is beautiful.) All at once she turned--perhaps she noticed
my shadow, or felt my presence in some way: her eyes were wet;--she
started, flushed, then laughed.
--"Ah! Missié, you watch me;--_ou guette moin_.... But she is my child.
Why should I not love her?... She looks so beautiful there."
--"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;--I love to see you love her."
She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;--then turned to me
again, and asked earnestly:--
--"_Pouki yo ja ka fai pòtrai palé--anh?... pisse yo ka tiré y toutt
samm ou: c'est ou-menm!... Yo douè fai y palé 'tou_."
(Why do they not make a portrait talk,--tell me? For they draw it just
all like you!--it is yourself: they ought to make it talk.)
--"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these
days, Cyrillia."
--"Ah! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. _C'est yon bel
moune moin fai--y bel, joli moune!... Moin sé causé épi y_."...
... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought:--Cursed
be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one soul may be
like another,--that one affection may be replaced by another,--that
individual goodness is not a thing apart, original, untwinned on earth,
but only the general characteristic of a class or type, to be sought and
found and utilized at will!...
Self-curséd he who denies the divinity of love! Each heart, each brain
in the billions of humanity,--even so surely as sorrow lives,--feels and
thinks in some special way unlike any other; and goodness in each
has its unlikeness to all other goodness,--and thus its own infinite
preciousness; for however humble, however small, it is something all
alone, and God never repeats his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no
gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common; and Death, in removing
a life--the simplest life ignored,--removes what never will reappear
through the eternity of eternities,--since every being is the sum of
a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others.... To some
Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile would seem
the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!...
[Illustration]
"PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"
I
More finely than any term in our tongue does the French word
_frisson_ express that faint shiver--as of a ghostly touch thrilling
from hair to feet--which intense pleasure sometimes gives, and which is
felt most often and most strongly in childhood, when the imagination is
still so sensitive and so powerful that one's whole being trembles
to the vibration of a fancy. And this electric word best expresses,
I think, that long thrill of amazed delight inspired by the first
knowledge of the tropic world,--a sensation of weirdness in beauty, like
the effect, in child-days, of fairy tales and stories of phantom isles.
For all unreal seems the vision of it. The transfiguration of all
things by the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the West Indian
sea,--the interorbing of flood and sky in blinding azure,--the sudden
spirings of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,--the iris-colors and
astounding shapes of the hills,--the unimaginable magnificence of
palms,--the high woods veiled and swathed in vines that blaze like
emerald: all remind you in some queer way of things half forgotten,--the
fables of enchantment. Enchantment it is indeed--but only the
enchantment of that Great Wizard, the Sun, whose power you are scarcely
beginning to know.
And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams one enters
into the life of a dead century. In all the quaint streets--over whose
luminous yellow façades the beautiful burning violet of the sky appears
as if but a few feet away--you see youth good to look upon as ripe
fruit; and the speech of the people is soft as a coo; and eyes of brown
girls caress you with a passing look.... Love's world, you may have
heard, has few restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out, like
the swart seller of corossoles:--"_ça qui le doudoux?_"...
How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal almost
realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only when another,
another, and yet another, come to provoke the same aesthetic fancy,--to
win the same unspoken praise! How often does one long for artist's power
to fix the fleeting lines, to catch the color, to seize the whole exotic
charm of some special type!... One finds a strange charm even in the
timbre of these voices,--these half-breed voices, always with a tendency
to contralto, and vibrant as ringing silver. What is that mysterious
quality in a voice which has power to make the pulse beat faster, even
when the singer is unseen?... do only the birds know?
... It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this
picturesque life,--of studying the costumes, brilliant with butterfly
colors,--and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring hundreds,--and the
untaught grace of attitudes,--and the simplicity of manners. Each day
brings some new pleasure of surprise;--even from the window of your
lodging you are ever noting something novel, something to delight the
sense of oddity or beauty.... Even in your room everything interests
you, because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the
objects about you,--the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull to
sleep;--the immense bed (_lit-à-bateau_) of heavy polished wood, with
its richly carven sides reaching down to the very floor;--and its
invariable companion, the little couch or _sopha_, similarly shaped
but much narrower, used only for the siesta;--and the thick red earthen
vessels (_dobannes_) which keep your drinking-water cool on the hottest
days, but which are always filled thrice between sunrise and sunset with
clear water from the mountain,--_dleau toutt vivant_, "all alive";--and
the _verrines_, tall glass vases with stems of bronze in which your
candle will burn steadily despite a draught;--and even those funny
little angels and Virgins which look at you from their bracket in the
corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to kindle nightly in their
honor, however great a heretic you may be.... You adopt at once, and
without reservation, those creole home habits which are the result of
centuries of experience with climate,--abstention from solid food before
the middle of the day, repose after the noon meal;--and you find each
repast an experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all
difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar, eggs
mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith made into
salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes of titiri cooked
in oil,--the minuscule fish, of which a thousand will scarcely fill
a saucer. Above all, you are astonished by the endless variety of
vegetables and fruits, of all conceivable shapes and inconceivable
flavors.
And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little recurrences
of this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove wearisome by daily
repetition through the months and years. The musical greeting of
the colored child, tapping at your door before sunrise,--"_Bonjou',
Missié_,"--as she brings your cup of black hot coffee and slice of
corossole;--the smile of the silent brown girl who carries your meals
up-stairs in a tray poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who
stands by while you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading
quite silently with her pretty bare feet;--the pleasant manners of
the _màchanne_ who brings your fruit, the _porteuse_ who delivers your
bread, the _blanchisseuse_ who washes your linen at the river,--and all
the kindly folk who circle about your existence, with their trays and
turbans, their _foulards_ and _douillettes_, their primitive grace
and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for you. You
cannot fail to be touched also by the amusing solicitude of these good
people for your health, because you are a stranger: their advice about
hours to go out and hours to stay at home,--about roads to follow and
paths to avoid on account of snakes,--about removing your hat and
coat, or drinking while warm.... Should you fall ill, this solicitude
intensifies to devotion; you are tirelessly tended;--the good people
will exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you well,--will
climb the mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes and
fear of zombis, to gather strange plants by the light of a lantern.
Natural joyousness, natural kindliness, heart-felt desire to please,
childish capacity of being delighted with trifles,--seem characteristic
of all this colored population. It is turning its best side towards you,
no doubt; but the side of the nature made visible appears none the less
agreeable because you suspect there is another which you have not seen.
What kindly inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for you,
or in finding some queer thing to show you,--some fantastic plant,
or grotesque fish, or singular bird! What apparent pleasure in taking
trouble to gratify,--what innocent frankness of sympathy!... Childishly
beautiful seems the readiness of this tinted race to compassionate: you
do not reflect that it is also a savage trait, while the charm of its
novelty is yet upon you. No one is ashamed to shed tears for the death
of a pet animal; any mishap to a child creates excitement, and evokes an
immediate volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment is
often extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One
June morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay
took fire, and had to be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the
wharves; and I saw many curious manifestations of grief,--such grief,
perhaps, as an infant feels for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to
possess feeling, but not the less sincere because unreasoning. As the
flames climbed the rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as
though looking upon some human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear
such strange cries of pity as, "_Pauv' malhérè!_" (poor unfortunate),
"_pauv' diabe!_"... "_Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé, casse!_" (All its
things-to-go-with are broken!) sobbed a girl, with tears streaming down
her cheeks.... She seemed to believe it was alive....
... And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity touches you
more;--day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid Nature--delighting in
furious color--bewitches you more. Already the anticipated necessity
of having to leave it all some day--the far-seen pain of bidding it
farewell--weighs upon you, even in dreams.