RUE VICTOR HUGO
White umbrellas, striped verandahs, black shadows, laughter, motion,
colour, coloured people, coloured clothes, lemon-tinted houses,
flower-blue sky, a street of light beneath a roof of azure, the Rue
Victor Hugo lay before Gaspard.
Looking straight before one, the scene recalled Naples, Marseilles,
Alexandria, with an extra touch as though a gleam, a perfume, a voice,
had stolen from some vanished coloured city of the remote past; as
though Pompeii had sent an idler, Carthage a trader, Tunis a coloured
child, to lose themselves in the crowd and lend it, scarcely seen, a
heart-catching subtlety.
* * * * *
There is no sound of feet; everyone is shoeless; they walk in a whisper
under the wonderful blue light of the sky, these people, these men and
women of all shades of yellow, graceful, dignified, gracious, who might
seem the inhabitants of a dream city but for the sounds of everyday
life, cries of cigar vendors, and pastry vendors, and fruit sellers,
children’s voices, laughter; now comes from far away the music of a
mirliton; it is playing in a street below—Pouf! up a steep side street
comes the sound, louder, and carried on a breath of hot sea wind, and
there below the blue face of the harbour laughs up at you so high above
it. You pass on; the shops surround you again, and the crowd and the
voices; you reach a little square, a cube of colour; in its centre like
a diamond flower forever in motion, the jet of a fountain plays in
the sun, plays and sings to itself like the spirit of a happy child;
and here where human voices are less loud you hear the sound of other
fountains, the sound of rivulets, runnels racing by the side walks,
pipes that empty into moss-grown channels all drawing their water from
Mont Pelée, fatherly, and seated far above the great torrential woods,
sky-throned, and turbaned with cloud.
You go on; the endless street bends and dips and rises again, never
quite level; houses and blue bursts of sea alternating on the right,
on the left, high above you, houses that break with their sun-stricken
yellow the green foliage of the high woods. The torrent of yellow
houses up above seems tumbling to the sea, or, if you like it better,
the houses seem climbing to attack the woods. You can hear from up
there wood sounds, the piping of the _siffleur de montagne_, the wash
of moving foliage, just as you can hear from below the sounds of the
sea, the songs of the fishermen, and the wash of the water on the beach.
As a curious and beautiful poem leads you to read on, so the coloured
and sunlit street leads you to follow it; it brings you by a bridge
across the Rivière Roxelane, where the washerwomen work from dawn
till dark, and the boulders are snowed with linen, and so to the
market-place, where the strangest things from sea and land are sold.
Beyond lie the mornes, green to the water’s edge; the sea, the sky;
great blue wastes of sun and silence.
* * * * *
From a flower-seller as they entered the Rue Victor Hugo, Sagesse had
bought a gaudy blossom which he put in his coat.
He was _en fête_ and his good humour was infectious; linking his arm
in that of Gaspard, he had led him into a café, a cool, spacious shop
set out with marble-topped tables. On every table there was a little
bowl filled with bright-coloured blossoms; men were seated about, men
in cool white clothes and broad panama hats. As Gaspard followed his
companion between the tables he noticed that all these men gave Sagesse
good-day as though he were an old acquaintance, but without enthusiasm,
and with a certain constraint.
Then, choosing a table in a corner, they sat down, and Sagesse beckoned
to the bartender. He came running.
He had been piling some glasses on a tray and had not caught sight of
the newcomers until just before Sagesse beckoned to him; instantly,
and almost upsetting the tray in his haste, he came, and now he stood,
a middle-aged quadroon, mild-eyed, subdued-looking, standing before
Sagesse as a slave might stand before his master.
“_Bonjour_, Jules.”
“_Bonjour_, missie.”
“How has trade been since I left?”
“Good, missie—Jules has been busy, very busy, for most a month—before
that not so good.” He spoke in the Creole _patois_, soft, fluent, a
language that seems made for the lips of children.
Sagesse ordered drinks. When they were on the table he lit a cigar,
handed Gaspard another, and then, crossing his legs and suddenly
changing his manner:
“Let us talk business,” said he.
“Business?”
“_Ma foi_, yes; that’s what they call it—business. See here. I want
the true story of the gold in that belt. I want to know more about that
island, and I want to know something about that treasure-ship.”
When you encounter a tropical centipede the thing that astonishes
you most is the way in which it changes form, now effacing itself
altogether in some coign of shadow, now drawn out, swollen, vicious,
and ready to attack you, now shrunken, drawn together, a mere nothing
that, next moment to a touch becomes distended and viciously alive.
The mind of Captain Sagesse seemed to possess this centipede attribute.
Gaspard had imagined the affair of the island done with; he had
imagined that with the conclusion of the bargain over the gold pieces
Sagesse had passed the matter behind him. He had said nothing about a
treasure-ship. The ship of coral in the lagoon had been always present
in his mind as a ship that might contain treasure, but he had said
nothing about it. How, then, had Sagesse read his thoughts, and why had
he not spoken of it before?
He stared at the Captain for a moment without speaking. “But that’s all
done with,” said he at last. “I’ve told you my story; you’ve had your
share in the stuff—Don’t you believe me? And see here, what do you
mean about a treasure ship? I never said a word about such a thing.”
“My friend,” said Sagesse, “between the captain and the mate’s cabin
on my vessel there is only a plank, and when the man sleeping in the
mate’s cabin shouts out in his sleep ‘Hullo there, Yves, look, I can
see through her hatch; she’s full of gold; we’ll fetch it out—share
and share alike,’ the captain sets himself to think. He says to
himself, ‘this man talks of a ship full of gold in his sleep; he came
on board my ship from an island over there; he had in his possession a
number of old coins, old Spanish pieces; he confesses in drink that he
has killed Monsieur Yves, the gentleman to whom in his dreams he talks
of a ship full of treasure; well, don’t you see?”
“What?”
“The conclusion—come, confess, you have a secret; give me the full
story of that affair, or by my soul and on my honour I will call the
authorities right in here and tell them a lot of things I know.”
Sagesse, as he said the last words, changed completely, and in a
moment, the _bon bourgeois_ vanished, his upper lip raised slightly,
disclosing the teeth. Just in that moment he shewed himself what he
was, not a villain of romance, but that much more terrible individual,
the petty trader, heartless, careful, calculating. The squid of society
that, living on crabs and shell-fish, will, when opportunity offers,
seize and devour a man.
What numbed the mind of Gaspard was not fear of the authorities, but
fear of Sagesse and astonishment at his methods.
He felt as though in the grip of some gelatinous thing, this dusky
mind had gripped him on board the _Belle Arlésienne_ and had seemed to
let him go; its tentacles had fallen from his arms, and now they were
around his feet. It was useless to fight with Sagesse; he was at the
man’s mercy; betrayed by drink, he had put himself in the grasp of the
cuttlefish.
“Look here,” said he at last, “before I tell you anything, tell me
this: Why did you not spring this on me before? Why did you trade with
me for those coins? Why did you pretend to be my friend?”
“Why did I trade with you, _ma foi_? I traded with you because I wanted
those coins at a fair price; I brought you here because I wanted to
trade with you for your secret at a fair price with the law at my
elbow. I did not wish to conclude the bargain on board my own ship; it
gives a ship a bad name when men are brought off her in chains by the
police. I wanted no police on board _La Belle Arlésienne_. And as to
pretending to be your friend, _ma foi_, I am your friend, and you shall
have your share of the profits of your secret. But the truth I must
have, come—”
“_Dieu!_” cried Gaspard with a burst of irritation. “I was hiding
nothing from you. There _was_ a wreck on the island; I _did_ think
there was treasure on her, but I had put it from my mind. I talked of
it in my sleep, did I? Well, it must have been there in my mind. You
shall have the story.”
Then, with his elbows on the table, he told how Yves had discovered the
ship in the lagoon; he described her. Sagesse, also with his elbows on
the table, listening intently, putting in a question now and then.
“That’s all,” finished Gaspard, “she may be up to the hatches with gold
for all I know—and for the matter of that—for all I care.”
Sagesse sat, now that the tale was told, musing in his chair, and
pulling at his heavy moustache.
“And you were on that island,” said he at last, “you saw that wreck,
you found gold and the dead bones of a man, you fancied there might be
more stuff there, yet, if I had not got the tale from you you would
have said nothing to anyone about it; you would have perhaps gone back
to the stokehold. Pah! I believe you, for that’s the kind of thing that
fills stokeholds with fools who are good for nothing but stoking—well,
you will be fortunate despite yourself. I take the speculation up.”
“You intend—”
“I intend to dynamite her open and see what she contains. When _La
Belle Arlésienne_ has discharged her cargo, I will put her in ballast,
take some diving apparatus and what else is needful, and return to that
island; you will go with me.”
“I?”
“Yes, you; do you think I want the whole of St. Pierre in the business?
I will take only my coloured crew; several of them are good divers, but
I must have another white man on a job like this. You will have your
share of the profits, fifteen per cent. That may be much, or it may be
nothing, but you will have to work for it, for it will be horse work
getting the stuff off her if she lies as you tell me. I take it she has
been lying in that lagoon all of a hundred years; if she is a Spaniard
there may be a lot of stuff—” Then, after a moment’s pause, “There is
stuff on that island; I smell it.”
He fell into a moment’s reverie, then, as if talking to himself, “the
fellow those bones belonged to had something to do with her; he was one
of her crew, or he was there hunting for treasure. He may have died of
starvation or accident, or he may have discovered the stuff and been
killed by his companions; if that was so they would not have left that
belt and money behind them.”
Gaspard sat watching Sagesse; the man’s mind seemed ferreting about the
business like a hound; he seemed actually to smell money in the thing.
Perhaps he did. There are men who in some uncanny way have the power of
scenting fortune; their speculations rarely fail; they know what will
appreciate in value, whether in land or stocks, and they will throw up
the most likely venture just because their genius has discovered in it
some hidden and fatal flaw unperceived by other men.
As Gaspard sat watching Sagesse a faint glow of enthusiasm began to
warm his breast. What man is there to whom the thought of hidden
treasure does not appeal? The idea of returning to the island would
have been hateful to him half an hour a go, but already his heart was
stirring to the venture.
He would not be alone.
Already he had divined the main points of Sagesse’s character—or
fancied he had—. He felt him to be cold-blooded, heartless,
calculating, yet he fancied that if Sagesse offered him fifteen francs
out of every hundred he made on the business he would keep his word.
With such a small percentage in view it would be easier to keep his
word than break it and make trouble. Sagesse came out of his reverie.
“Well,” said he, relighting his cigar, which had gone out, “there’s
an end of the matter. I take the thing up; I put my money in it; I
offer you your fifteen per cent.; I put you in the way, perhaps, of a
small fortune. I make you, in fact, a small partner in what may be a
big concern. Half an hour ago you were a Moco, and your end was the
drinking bar and the stokehold; you had stuff in your head that was
valuable to me and I had to blast it out of your skull by threats
of the law, just as I will blast the stuff out of that hooker with
dynamite. Well, what do you think of Pierre Sagesse? Is he a man who
knows his way about? Is he a man worth following? I’m frank as day
when I choose to be frank, and I tell you now, you may take the offer
or leave it; come with me, well and good; refuse it, and I will get
another man. Only, remember this, if you refuse you get nothing.”
“What you offer is perhaps fair enough,” said Gaspard, “but this I
will say, straight out, you treated me as a friend this morning; you
took my arm, you brought me in here, you stood for drinks, and then you
threatened me with that affair. I don’t like that, and be you who you
may, I say so.”
Sagesse took a puff at his cigar and then patiently, as though
explaining things to a child:
“You, this morning, were going about like a man with a jewel in his
empty skull; I operated like a surgeon, and took it out; it was
unpleasant, but there is the jewel, and instead of charging you a fee I
offer you a percentage on the value. If I had not threatened, you would
not have told. Well? What do you say?”
“I don’t say I won’t come—on one condition—that you never name that
affair again or threaten me with it.”
Sagesse laughed. “Threaten you, why should I? I have used the
instrument, I fling it away. I have got all I want out of you, and now
it is your turn to profit a bit. You will be very useful, and I don’t
want a stranger in the business.”
“Look here,” said Gaspard, true Provençal that he was, “fifteen per
cent.—make it twenty—”
“Not a cent more than fifteen, not a cent, not a centime. I never go
back on an offer of that sort.”
“When do you start?”
“It will take me a week to clear the cargo and get ready; meanwhile you
have your pocket full of dollars, and you can amuse yourself.”
“I will come.”
“Your word on that.”
“I give you my word.”
You will perhaps have divined that in the character of Gaspard, a
character primitive enough, childlike in some ways, and swayed by
elemental passions, there lay a streak of straightness. To this man,
who would not have known the meaning of “ethics,” straight-dealing came
as a natural gift. Sagesse had divined this fact and valued it, for,
speaking generally, there is no man in the world who values honour in
another more than your rogue.
“Come,” said the Captain, rising from his seat. “I have business to
do, and so have you. The _Compagnie Transatlantique_ office is close
here; go and report yourself; the port authorities will have you up
before them too; you will most likely find their man at the shipping
office, for I said you would be there, and, see here, you will want a
suit or two of white drill; those clothes you have are too heavy for
Martinique. Then you’ll want a room; there are sailors’ boarding-houses
by the harbour, steer clear of them.”
He took a little notebook from his pocket and wrote a name and address
on a sheet of paper, tore it out and handed it to his companion.
“Go there. Manman Faly, Rue du Morne, No. 3. She’ll put you up and find
you a place. It’s off the Grande Rue. You’ll easily find it; come.”
He turned to leave.
“We haven’t paid for the drinks,” said Gaspard, putting his hand in his
pocket.
Sagesse laughed. “I never pay here; the place is mine; Jules there
manages it for me; he’s one of my people.”
Gaspard was soon to learn how many unfortunates in St. Pierre came
under that designation, “One of my people.”
They passed out into the blinding street, under the flower-blue sky.
Only twenty yards or so down lay the shop where clothes could be
bought. Here Gaspard for twenty-two francs bought two suits of white
drill, a pair of white canvas shoes, and an imitation panama. He put on
one of the suits, and ordering the other to be sent to the address in
the Rue du Morne, walked out again feeling a new man.
In all his past, a shore landing had meant a landing in grimy clothes,
smoking and drinking in grimy bars, the foetor of the dock-side. Never
before had he found himself walking in a clean, bright city, in clean,
new clothes. It was delightful, new, absolutely new, and filled with
the freshness of surprise.
A pretty capresse girl glanced at him, and that was the last touch to
his vanity; he entered the office of the _Compagnie Transatlantique_,
where Sagesse left him, walking with an assured step, made his
deposition before the manager and one of the port authorities who was
present, signed it, and then, quite sure of himself and disregarding
Sagesse’s advice, demanded an indemnity for his lost kit and his wages
up to date.
For once the wise Sagesse had given the wrong advice, for the manager,
on his own responsibility, and partly, perhaps, as a tribute to the
cleanest and most self-respecting stoker he had ever fallen in with,
made out an order for the money demanded, cashed it, and Gaspard left
the office richer by a hundred francs.
The tide of luck was in full flood that morning, and he did nothing to
spoil it; as he passed along with the moving crowd, cafés called out to
him to come in and celebrate the occasion, but he passed them by; he
had no need of the help of alcohol; the bright light, the colours, the
movement around him, and the light-hearted, yet languorous atmosphere
of the gay city set all his southern nature aglow; just as blue eyes
are made bluer by blue attire, so the opal of the south in his mind
took brighter colours from the bright colours around it.
The insect had found a leaf similar to the leaf on which it was born.
Unconscious of the fact that he was marching straight upon his fate,
he passed along looking into the shops, strange shops without glass
fronts or names, black shadows under arched doorways, shadows shewing
merchandise and coloured people, shadows casting perfumes of flowers
and fruit, garlic scents.
He was crossing the little square where the diamond fountain jet was
dancing and singing in the sun, when he saw before him the figure of
a girl. She was coming along in the full blaze of light, a girl of
scarcely sixteen, tall, swift moving, and graceful as Atalanta, a
_porteuse_, bearing on her head a tray of some merchandise covered over
with a wasp-coloured scarf.
The load would have taxed a man, yet she bore it as easily as a
feather; she wore no shoes, and her striped robe was caught up at the
waist to give her limbs free play, shewing her leg almost to the knee.
She was of that strange race, whose blood has been mixed with the blood
of the Caribs, coloured like that Grecian statuary to which during a
thousand years the sun has lent some trace of his gold, till one can
imagine the sunlight lingering in the honey tints of the marble.
The blue black of her hair just shewed, covered with the turban of
striped material on which rested the tray.
As she came, walking erect and without a motion of the head, her dark
eyes glanced from side to side, and as she reached Gaspard her eyes met
his full, nor did they lower nor turn away till she had passed him.
He felt blinded as if by a flame. He turned. She was vanishing amidst
the crowd in the Rue Victor Hugo. He made a step as if to follow her,
then he stopped dead as though before a barrier.
The glance had only lasted a moment, yet in that moment, in a flash,
they had spoken one to the other. It was as though they had recognized
one another.
He could read a mysterious something in her glance, and it was as
though she had said, “Ah, there you are, from away beyond the beginning
of time!”
The fountain was playing in the sun and a hundred men and women were
meeting and passing each other in the little Place, but it was the
meeting and passing of coloured phantoms.
A man and a woman had just met and passed one another.
A miracle of life had taken place, the old, strange miracle forever
fresh, forever new. Yet nothing told of it, till, as he watched the
moving crowd into which she had vanished, suddenly, as if some belfry
in the sky had swung to life, came the clash and ripple of bells.
It was the _carillon_ of the cathedral that rang thrice daily. Golden,
joyous, sonorous; tenor and alto; beating the echoes to silver, waking
ghostly voices in the mornes and high woods, floating out over the blue
sea.