LOVE
In the south, at night, the trees are full of voices. Dare you sit in
the woods of Martinique at night you would hear in the green twilight
that the moon makes through the leaves, an orchestra louder and more
fantastic than ever filled a midsummer’s night’s dream.
Here in the daytime there is silence. One can hear the waterfall, the
distant river, the wind in the trees above, sounds that only serve to
make the background of silence more apparent.
At high noon, when the light is fullest, when the heat is greatest, and
the wind above stricken dead, the silence of the woods is terrific.
There is no silence in the whole world like to this, unless it be the
dumbness of a great multitude.
Around you on all sides life is rocketing and blazing; orchids,
hibiscus, bursts of bloom, ceibas, sand-box trees, air shoots of the
wild pine blossom and riot, uncanny because of their demonstrative life
in this silence.
But at dark all changes. Night rushes into the high woods like some mad
musician, conductor of an orchestra crazy as himself.
The blue day outside closes up swiftly like a great painted fan, just
like the pictures on a fan rapidly closed, St. Pierre tucks itself into
a pocket of shadow, the mornes and mountains are shrivelled up, Pelée
alone remains sun-stricken still, then he, too, vanishes in a crease
and as suddenly reappears; for the fan, flirted open again to its full
extent, shews the same picture, only this time it is lit by starlight
or the light of the moon.
It is with the first closing out of the light that the orchestra of
the woods begins; shrill, tremulous, like the bleating of a flock of
lilliputian goats, the voices of the _cabritt-bois_ and his mates fill
the shadows, then the moon strikes the green heart of the forest and it
springs alive like a rattle. A million fantastic things give tongue.
One might fancy forms to fit the insect noises of the northern woods,
but the wildest imagination pauses before the possibilities of this
tropical band, these drummers and harpers whose burr and rattle sways
and surges beneath the farandole of the fireflies.
At four o’clock, just as Pelée sights the coming sun, and the dawn is
coming over the sea like a lilac-coloured breeze, the _cabritt-bois_
ceases his bleating and Plong! the last harper plucks the final note
from his harp-string. The drummers put up their drums, the oboe, and
piccolo, the microscopic sax-horn player, the bones, and flute, pocket
or shoulders their instruments and depart—for dreamland maybe.
They have made music all night, music that has reached even the
dreamers of St. Pierre. The people asleep in the city become aware in
their sleep that something has ceased, the faint haze of sound from the
great wood above surrounds them no longer and they wake.
Gaspard awoke just as the wood music ceased. On the black floor of
the room the dawn through the slats of the shutter was laying seven
blue-grey bars upon the floor.
He had been dreaming of the island and of Sagesse. They had burst into
the treasure ship and the strand was strewn with bars of gold. Then he
lost Sagesse and was hunting for him and for Yves. It was full day, and
the island lay sweltering under the sun. He could see nothing of the
man he was in search of; then, far away at the end of the little coral
pier he saw a form that made him forget both Yves and Sagesse, the form
of a girl.
As he drew closer, he saw that it was the girl. The girl of the little
Place where the fountain played. The Place de la Fontaine as he called
it in his own mind, not knowing its real name.
She was standing with her tray balanced on her head as though she had
just landed, now she was laughing as she saw him coming towards her,
laughing as only the girls of Montpellier or Avignon can laugh and, as
he came along the ridge of coral he was laughing too, as he balanced
himself, fearful of falling. Then the ridge of coral became the yard of
a ship, the blue water below became distant, and the dream broke up.
Happy dream. He had almost forgotten her last night, chatting and
smoking with foreign sailors at the bar of a tavern. She must have
struck him hard to make him dream about her like that, for in the dream
it seemed to him he had known her a long time, that he was her declared
lover; this girl whom he had never seen before and whom he might never
meet again.
Now, a tap came to the door, and his landlady’s voice offered him
coffee or syrup. She brought the coffee in, and placed it on the floor
beside him and put the shutters aside, so that the window space became
a square dim disc of light, through which, with a breathing of wind,
came a tang from the sea below and a breath from the woods above.
St. Pierre was already astir; he could hear women’s voices and
the prattle of children, Creole street cries; unfamiliar voices,
scents, and sounds came through the open window space, awakening him
thoroughly, and awakening in him a keen sense of curiosity such as he
had never experienced in any other port.
The people here seemed different from the people anywhere else. Like
a child who, turning over the leaves of a dull book, comes upon a
surprising and joyously-coloured picture, he felt a pleasure he could
neither analyse nor understand. An educated man would have felt as he
felt, but cursed by convention and knowledge, and the catch words of
language, he would not have felt it so freshly as this child of the
south, who, like all the children of the south had some inborn love for
all that the true poets sing about and true artists paint.
Having dressed himself he left the house. Man’m Faly was nowhere to
be seen, and the Rue du Morne was steeped in curious twilight shewing
at its end an extraordinary vision of twilit sea, spreading out to
ghost-blue sea and out, away, and beyond the great mountain shadows, to
a sea of stainless azure.
He struck upwards to the street above, and then by a flight of steps
to the Rue Victor Hugo. The street was astir. _Blanchisseuses_ with
bundles making their way to the Rivière Roxelane, _calendeuses_ on
their way to their employment, shopkeepers, children, _porteuses_
balancing their loads upon their heads, starting on the long journeys
these women make daily over the island, all moving in the twilight of
very early dawn with, overhead, the hyacinth-blue sky of morning.
The great fan picture of starlit city, sea, and wood, had been snapped
to, and now the magic fan was slowly reopening to shew the same
picture sunlit. Pelée and the sea were already in view, and as Gaspard
made his way along the Rue Victor Hugo, the day bloomed brighter
overhead, dimness of hyacinths turning to the flashing of sapphires.
The air, though still surcharged with shadow, had in it now an obscure
brightness, a negative light that became positive where any bright
surface shewed, shadows were beginning to form, and the little fountain
in the Place de la Fontaine was returning from a dancing and whispering
ghost to the form of a dancing diamond flower.
He followed the street as it dipped and rose and dipped again to the
Rivière Roxelane. He was wondering in what house of all this strange
city, what street, was hidden the girl of yesterday.
He had taken his way along the Rue Victor Hugo and through the little
Place, perhaps because it was there he had met her; who knows; he was
quite unconscious of the manner in which she had taken hold upon him,
and, infecting him with that dark glance, had caused something to
stir and live in his blood; unconscious as the man who was yesterday
infected by malaria and to whom the first faint chill tells nothing of
the burning fever to follow.
He paused for a moment on the bridge and looked down at the ghost-dim
river raving along to the sea; the banks seemed strewn with snow, it
was the linen of the washerwomen, he could hear their voices above
the rushing of the river, and the sound they made beating the clothes
against the boulders.
Then he passed on and found himself in the market-place on the Place du
Fort.
Long before light, under the stars, boats from the fishing grounds had
been making for St. Pierre, laden with the catch of the night. From
Calebasse, Morne Rouge, Marigot, Vauclin, men and animals laden with
country produce had come into the city before dusk on the previous
evening.
Light was now striking through the trees of the market-place, the
stalls were set out and laden, boats had been dragged right up from
the shore on rollers, and their flashing cargoes were being unladen
right at the stalls, great fish still quivering and jumping with life,
an albicore, big almost as a shark, that took three men to lift, blue
fish, black fish, silver fish, fish that looked as though carefully
painted by hand, fish of all the forms that fish can possibly take, lay
exposed on the stalls or were being unladen from the boats.
When Gaspard entered the market the place was in shadow; flowers, fish,
fruit were there, merchants to sell them, and people to buy them, but
it was like a market-place in dreamland—a shadowy, yet living and
moving picture, almost voiceless—. Pelée is holding everything in his
mesmeric gloom.
* * * * *
It is morning, yet it is not. Then, almost in a moment everything
changes, golden sunbeams stray through the leaves of the trees, the
Place du Fort becomes beautiful with bright light and liquid shadow,
an unutterably blue sea is born suddenly, and as if by enchantment
beneath a sky of unutterable blue. The market-place thrills, fills
with voices, it is like a great cage of birds that break into chatter
and song at the first touch of sunlight; you can hear the songs of the
_canotiers_ from the sea, songs of the fishermen as they haul the last
boatful of fish—hale it right through the market, laughing as they
sing and followed by naked laughing children; girls’ voices, men’s
voices, buyers, sellers, idlers all mix and blend with the fresh voice
of the sea. It has a touch of the morning of the world before the smoke
of the first cities dimmed the beauty of the dawn, before man had
learned to weep and think. Here amidst the tamarinds and the early
sunlight of the Place du Fort, for a moment you can catch the blue robe
of the past, for a moment you can stand in the market-place of early
Alexandria, for a moment you can glimpse the Agora of Athens in her
early youth, touch the summer that vanished before Rome flung out her
bastions and those legions whose spears reflected the last gleams of
the Golden Age.
For a moment—then Finotte flutters before you in her wasp-coloured
turban, basket in hand, and beautiful as a butterfly in her striped
foulard, and you are back again in St. Pierre.
* * * * *
With these people a man of Gaspard’s class could fraternize and find
friends at sight. Touched with the spirit of the place, he laid hold of
the gunwale of the last boat and helped to haul her along, the Creole
boatman laughing and chattering with him in the _patois_ which he only
half understood. He was French and a man from the big ships, evidently
out for a spree, that was enough for them. When they had got the boat
in position at a corner of the fish market, for the place was divided,
the fish and meat being sold at one side, fruit, vegetables, and
flowers at the other, they began to sell their fish right from the boat
without troubling to put it on a stall.
Heavens! what fish were in that boat, and what a picture they made
fresh from the sea and still quivering; frilled, horned, spined,
fantastically coloured. Black and red _perroquets_, _souris_ pink
and orange, blue fish, yellow fish, all glittering like jewels;
gelatinous masses that came in clinging to the nets, seaweeds. It was
as though a great hand had been dipped in the tropical sea bringing
up everything it could grasp. One looked for a mermaid—now the
boatmen hammering with sticks were calling out their wares, holding
up their fish, joking with the crowd; Gaspard joining in, his white
teeth and dark eyes flashing, the picture of one of those boatmen one
sees on the sea-steps of Naples, only better dressed. He had seized
a huge eel and was holding it up, in a moment it was gone, bought,
and Pierre-Alphonse—so he had dubbed the chief boatman—nicknaming
him with any name that came first into his head, as these men do—was
pocketing the coins. Pierre-Alphonse had conducted the barter whilst
Gaspard had held the eel, a pretty girl had bought it and carried it
off in her basket, and now Pierre-Alphonse seizing a monster shaped
like a little barrel, a _barrique de vin_—thrust it into the new
salesman’s hands. “Sell him too, thou man from the sea—Fish! fish!
fish! who’ll buy?—all alive and breathing, all fresh from the water,
_tonne_, _volant_, _balaou_, all leaping at thee. Hi Dodotte—Pauline,
where are you going with your baskets—fill them.” He seemed to know
everyone; the little children crowded round, he gave them handfuls of
_sádines_, little white fish, let them pick seaweed out of the boat,
patted them on the head, all with his left hand, as it were, whilst
with his right hand and the whole energy of his mind and body he
continued selling. He was a big man, Pierre-Alphonse, with a big, dark,
smiling face good to look at altogether, and evidently a “character” of
the market, and a favourite.
Gaspard had sold the _barrique de vin_ to a syndicate of two old women
who had combined to buy it, and perhaps peddle it round town with other
produce, for they had with them a small cane truck, when, turning
to the boat to find something else to sell, he saw in the midst of
the surrounding crowd the girl. She was without her tray, her little
shapely head was bound with a yellow and blue madras, she had a basket
in her hand, and she was coming to buy fish. Then she saw Gaspard.
Their eyes met and she instantly looked away.
Pierre-Alphonse saw her, too.
Not only had she looked away, she had turned away.
Pierre-Alphonse’s mouth flew open:
“Hi, Marie—Marie de Morne Rouge—ho, Marie, are you deaf this morning?
Here are the fish calling thee—she’s gone—” Then to Gaspard, “Now
what devil has got into the girl—she often buys from me, she was
coming, and she is gone—no matter, here is another _barrique_—sell
him, O thou man from the sea—”
“Who is she?” asked Gaspard, taking the _barrique_.
“Marie—whose father lives at Morne Rouge.”
“Where does she live?”
“With her aunt in the street of the Precipice. Ho, there, Mayotte, here
is a fish for thee pretty as thyself—take it for nothing—next to
nothing, two sous and it is thine, ’tis as big as a baby—”
“What is she, this Marie?”
“A _porteuse_—there, ’tis thine—wait till I get the change, and thy
mother, how is she? All sweetly I hope—there, take thy change, little
one—” all in the _patois_ that takes the sharpness from words, makes
new words of old, a tropical growth of language, coloured, quaint,
infantile.
Gaspard turned to Pierre-Alphonse. “Well, I must be going, good luck—”
He disengaged himself from a fishy embrace and, followed by a shower of
good wishes from Pierre-Alphonse and his crew, mingled with the crowd.
The girl was nowhere to be seen, there were pretty girls everywhere,
but he had no eyes for them.
Was she angry with him? Why had she turned away? Five minutes ago,
as he stood there helping Pierre-Alphonse to sell his fish, he had
forgotten her; if he had never seen her again he would not have
troubled very much; but, now, something inexplicable had happened, the
world had altered in a flash, it was as though to a man going blindly
along a misty road the vision of a beautiful and unattainable country
had suddenly appeared through a rent in the mist which closed again
destroying the vision, but leaving the dream. He was in love.
He crossed the Place, and wandered amongst the stalls where fruit,
vegetables, and flowers were sold. Here the air had a heady and
intoxicating perfume, the place was glorious with colour, piles, and
mounds of colour, such fruit! such vegetables! such flowers! Egg
plants, pommes d’Haiti, oranges—green oranges, tiny monkey oranges,
giant oranges—giant apricots each the size of a turnip, osier baskets
filled with green nutmegs, custard apples, guavas, white and green
christophines, prickly pears—then the vegetables, palm tops, and sweet
potatoes, bread fruit—choux. And the flowers, grenadilla blossoms and
_fleurs d’amour_, flowers of the Loseille Bois, delicate butterfly
blossoms, poised as if forever in the act of taking flight. Gaspard had
ceased looking for the girl in the kaleidoscopic throng around him, he
was standing at a stall half of which was laden with fruit of every
colour, the other half with every coloured flowers when, turning, he
found that she was beside him.
She was quite unconscious of the fact. Wandering amidst the crowd she
had drifted against him, touched him with her elbow without being
aware of whom she was touching until he turned and their eyes met for
the third time in their lives; then, all at once, and as though the
faint reflection of a rose had been cast upon her face and neck, she
blushed—it was less a blush than a deepening of the southern dusk
beneath her skin.
It told him at once that she recognised him, not only that; in some
mysterious way it told him that she had been thinking of him. It gave
him courage.
“_Bonjour_, mademoiselle.”
“_Bonjou_, missie.”
It was the salutation that everyone gave to everyone else in St.
Pierre, strangers, friends, everyone. She was passing on when, picking
up a spray of the _fleur d’amour_ from the stall and flinging some
coins on the board, he handed the branch laden with delicate blossoms
to her. She took it, glanced at him with a half smile, then she looked
at the flowers as though she had never seen flowers before, her lips
were moving, she was murmuring something, speaking to the flowers, to
the branch, “Oh, thou art pretty—thou art sweet.” Then she had passed
away; with a glance and a little bow to the giver of the flowers she
had dissolved before his sight in the coloured moving throng.
But her voice remained with him, the caressing words she had spoken to
the flowers in the infantile French of the tropics.
“Oh, thou art pretty—thou art sweet—” She had spoken to the flowers,
but it seemed to Gaspard she had spoken of herself. She had described
herself unconsciously in a sentence.
He passed on. He did not wish to find her again just then. The vision
held him satisfied for the moment. She was not angry, more than that,
she was not indifferent. To this man, direct and fierce in love as in
hate, this girl of his own class was a revelation, she seemed less a
woman than a flower that had suddenly blossomed in his path.
The elements of all the grandest poetry live in the commonest man;
deaf to the stuff of the drawing-room ballad maker, blind to the
embroideries of art, the eternal terrors and beauties of nature
move him much or little as the case may be, but they move him. The
commonest man would have felt something of the poetry, simple, and
sweet, yet exotic and beyond words fascinating, which this girl carried
with her—cast around her as the _fleur d’amour_ casts its colour and
perfume.
“O thou art pretty—thou art sweet—” He was turning to leave the
market-place when a scream from one of the market women made him wheel
round.
The stall just behind him had been upset, the crowd was scattering in
every direction.
“_Fer de lance—fer de lance!_”
The cry echoed from one end of the Place to the other, and Gaspard
found himself standing alone, face to face with an old gentleman
dressed in white and holding a white umbrella over his head.
The old man, though seemingly paralysed by terror, had not dropped his
umbrella. His eyes were fixed on the ground where, writhing in the
dust, a yellow snake was raising its head to strike him.
It was a _fer de lance_, young, about three feet in length, but
terrible as Death himself. It had come to market hidden in the great
clusters of yellow bananas, frightened and ferocious; hating the
sunlight, it was preparing to strike at the man before it, terror
striking at terror.
The sight of the reptile left Gaspard quite unperturbed. The smallest
minority of the great human race are certainly the people who have
no dread of snakes. Gaspard belonged to this few, a strange fact
considering his imaginative nature. It is true he knew nothing of the
_fer de lance_ and its terrors, but if he had, I doubt if he would have
done otherwise than he did.
The snake, obsessed by its objective, did not perceive the fearless
enemy behind it; springing forward in a flash Gaspard seized it
naked-handed just below the horrible triangular head; seizing it four
inches lower down with his left hand he almost twisted the head from
the body, breaking the spine at the neck. Then he flung the remains on
the ground and planted his heel on the head, crushing bone and demon
brain, and burning eyes into the dust.
The next moment it seemed to him that the world had gone mad and was
trying to smother him. The old man he had saved was clinging to his
neck, the whole market was surging round him; men laughing, women
weeping, and crying out to the Virgin. One might have thought Gaspard
the bearer of the news of some national triumph, the saviour of the
island—that is to say, if one were not acquainted with the Creole
mind and its excitability. Then a ring was formed and he found himself
in the centre of it, the old man—still with the umbrella over his
head—holding his hand, shaking it, and talking at the same time.
“I am Monsieur Seguin, any of these good people here know me—” murmurs
of assent from the crowd, “you have saved my life at the risk of your
own, I am your friend. Ask what you will, I am not poor, my house is
yours, and all I possess. My life is yours, for have you not saved it?”
“Nothing, nothing,” cried Gaspard, “I have done nothing. I am not
afraid of snakes—” then with a touch of Tartarin in his tone, “They
never bite me.”
They never bit him! He who had never handled one before—but the
crowd knew nothing of this, they took it as a statement of fact. This
man, then, was a prodigy, he handled the dreaded _fer de lance_ as a
poulterer handles a chicken. Before noon that fact had become the news
of the day in St. Pierre, and Gaspard half a hero, half a wizard.
“All the same,” said old M. Seguin, “you have saved my life, monsieur,
but I will thank you in another place than this—have you breakfasted?
No? Well then, I pray of you come with me and accept of my hospitality.”
With his hand upon Gaspard’s arm he led him away through the crowd
which divided before them, across the Place, across the Rivière
Roxelane, into the Rue Victor Hugo.
Here at a café they breakfasted.
During the meal the old gentleman who had a strong and vivacious
personality of his own, questioned his guest as to his past, present,
and future. Though good-hearted, evidently, and evidently a power in
St. Pierre, M. Seguin was not of the highest refinement. He shewed this
in the manner in which he cross-questioned his _vis-à-vis_, for at
once he had gauged Gaspard’s social position and his manner was that
of an employer standing treat to an employée, but his every movement
and every word, the tone of his voice and the kindness in his old eyes
proclaimed the fact that he was a “straight man.”
Gaspard told of the wreck, and sketched his story till he came to the
name of Sagesse.
“Sagesse!” cried his questioner. “Pierre Sagesse?”
“Yes—that is his name.”
One might have fancied that another _fer de lance_ had shown itself,
so great was the loathing and hatred that appeared in the face of M.
Seguin. Then he smothered his emotions and helped himself to more
coffee.
“Beware of that man. He is not a man, he is a _fer de lance_.
Poisonous. He landed you here? Well, you will of course have no more to
do with him.”
Gaspard explained that he was bound to go on an expedition with the
said _fer de lance_ as soon as _La Belle Arlésienne_ had cleared her
cargo. He said nothing of the treasure or the object of the expedition,
but I doubt if he had, whether M. Seguin would have heard him.
“But you will not go.”
“But I must—I have given my word.”
“Ah, you have given your word. Well, a word given must not be taken
back even from Pierre Sagesse. But do not get entangled with him if you
can help it. Look!” He pointed to a huge spider passing along the wall.
“That is Pierre Sagesse. He is a man-spider, who treats other men as a
spider treats flies. Gets them into his power, binds them up, and sucks
them dry. He is my greatest enemy,” said the old man frankly enough,
“and I am the only man who has ever got the better of him. He hates me.
I think I am the only man he really hates; a nature like his does not
give itself to hate, it would be a waste of energy.” Then suddenly,
“Has he bound you?”
Gaspard, surprised at the question and its far-reaching nature, was
about to reply. But the old man had read the fact in his face.
“Don’t trouble to say it—only this—if he has, Paul Seguin will be
your friend. Ah, you do not know Sagesse. He has numerous poor folk
here quite under his horrid thumb, men to whom he has lent money, men
whom he has got power over, and he works them like slaves, negroes.
Well, now, when you come back from this expedition you will stay in
St. Pierre, and you will let me put you in the way of making money. I
own many of those boats that go to the fishing. I can make you quite a
comfortable place, and you will settle amongst us and marry some pretty
girl. A fine fellow like you will have his pick of the best.”
Gaspard laughed. Here was a prospect if the treasure hunt turned out
fruitless.
“_Ma foi_,” said he. “I will take your offer righthanded. I have never
struck such a place as this, and I never hope to leave it when I return
from this voyage—and to think that I should have the luck to meet you
all through a snake.”
“My friend,” said M. Seguin, “there is a Martinique proverb that says,
‘He who kills a snake is forgiven seven deadly sins.’ So you have
purged yourself of seven sins and made a friend for life—do not let us
despise snakes.”
For the first time Gaspard felt the pleasantness of the fact that he
had that morning saved a life. Dead Yves appeared before him. Here was
a life to balance that life he had taken. Then in a flash appeared
before him Anisette, selling drinks at the bar of the Riga. Heavens!
was it possible that he had ever loved or thought of that tallow-faced,
under-sized creature!
Marie, Marie of Morne Rouge, had slain the evil shade of Anisette in
his mind, just as a sunbeam slays a shadow.
Then he said good-bye to M. Seguin, promising to call and see him at
the address which the old man gave him upon a card.
He turned down hill to the sea front where on the Place Bertine, amidst
the sugar hogsheads, talking to one of the port officials, he saw
Sagesse. The owner of _La Belle Arlésienne_ was laughing, gesticulating
and, as Gaspard passed to emphasise some remark, he brought his great
thumb down on the top of a sugar cask.
Gaspard could not but remember M. Seguin’s words about the unfortunate
people under that “horrid thumb.”