FATE
One day, M. Sartine sent Marie to call at a house on the highroad that
leads across the Morne Parnasse. Her business was to shew some lace to
a Spanish lady, Señora Vigil, and to sell it if possible.
The Señora had come to Martinique by chance; she had taken this
house—the Château Principe—by chance, and yesterday she had entered
M. Sartine’s shop by chance to buy some lace. She might just as easily
have gone to the shop of M. Custine, or to the Fleur d’Avril, or to the
Bon Marché, but chance—whose other name is Fate—led her into the shop
of M. Sartine.
Marie, who had sold the whole quantity of lace to the Señora, was
returning to St. Pierre well pleased and in high spirits. It was her
sixteenth birthday and it had brought her the pleasantest surprise in
the world.
Finotte, Dodotte, Florine, Honorine, all her girl friends and
acquaintances, had remembered the day; each had brought a little
present, a trifle, less than a trifle, a box of sea shells blazing with
colour, a scarf, a string of beads—the brazier across the way and the
baker, had remembered her; they did not bring presents, but they called
out good wishes as she passed. Her aunt gave her the rarest thing she
ever gave to anyone—a smile. She had not known that any of these
people had cared for her till this morning, when her birthday made them
speak. And she had told no one of her birthday, or only one girl,
Finotte—she must have spread the news.
Then, she had been entrusted with the lace selling by M. Sartine, a
most important business, in which she had succeeded. The Señora had
spoken kindly to her, asked her her age, and discovering that it was
her birthday, had given her a little old-fashioned cross wrought in
silver and with the blessed Saviour upon it. “It has been blessed by
the Archbishop of Santa Cruz,” said the Señora, “and whilst you keep it
nothing evil can hurt you.”
It had been a wonderful morning. The sun was full in the sky as she
came along the road past the Jardin des Plantes. The gates were open,
they were always open, rusty and gone to decay; she could see in
through the great arch of twilight made by the trees. In there amidst
the palms and great tropical trees a bird was singing, calling, filling
the echoes with its golden, flute-like notes. It was a _siffleur de
montagne_. She paused and looked in. The great garden, once carefully
tended, had gone to decay, the lianas hung like ropes between the
trees; palmiste and tree fern, cedar and locust, all were roped and
tangled by the lianas, the scent of vanilla came on the air from the
green gloom, vanilla, and green orange, wet mould, the sad odour of
decaying leaves.
It was a wonderful and mysterious place, the Jardin des Plantes;
laid out when Versailles was filled with courtiers, beautiful when
Josephine, not yet an empress, walked its paths, nothing dreaming of
Napoleon or her fate; long gone to decay and given over now to Nature,
who was slowly taking it back to herself.
Marie, when she passed the gates, always looked in fascinated and half
frightened at the silent riot of trees and shrubs; but to-day it seemed
less gloomy; the voice of the bird seemed to fill it with light.
“Marie! Marie! Marie! _Bonjour_, Marie—Marie de Morne Rouge,” sang
the bird. She made a lovely picture as she stood in the sunlit road,
listening with a half smile to the liquid golden notes of the _siffleur
de montagne_.
“Marie! Marie! Marie! _Bonjour_, Marie—Marie de Morne Rouge.”
Then she sighed, turned, and passed on her way. It was as though
the old garden where lovers had walked in days gone by had told her
something, just as the old street of the Precipice had told her
something. But what the garden told her was far less understandable;
something new and strange and sad had spoken in the voice of the bird,
in the silence of the green gloom. It was as though she had seen the
vision of some lovely country, unattainable, a moment glimpsed, and
then gone forever.
But she came through the Place du Fort and across the bridge spanning
the Rivière Roxelane.
The washerwomen below were busy; she could hear their voices and their
laughter; the Rue Victor Hugo was filled with people; she knew many of
them, sister _porteuses_, shop-keepers, idlers, and gave them good-day
as she passed.
The crowd was thinner as she drew near the little Place de la Fontaine,
and she could see the water of the fountain like a diamond flower in
the sunshine. As she was crossing the Place she saw a figure in white
clothes coming towards her. Her eye, keen and trained to observation,
noted at once that this was some stranger to St. Pierre, some man from
the foreign ships, no Creole.
As she passed him, she looked him straight in the face, frankly, just
as she looked everyone in the face, man or woman; his eyes met her eyes
full, lit up, and—she had passed on.
The crowd was around her, but she did not see it. Someone had spoken to
her without words; she had spoken to someone. The world for a moment
seemed empty of people, containing only herself and that mysterious
someone. She scarcely remembered his face except that it was dark, and
vaguely good-looking; but the eyes held her soul. He had spoken to her
as a man speaks to a woman with a glance; that was nothing compared
with the fact that she had spoken to him. It was as though something
dumb in her, something of which she had never suspected the existence,
had awoken from sleep, escaped from darkness, spoken in a strange
language, and then sank back to darkness, leaving her bewildered and
astonished.
For a moment as she went on her way the vision of the Jardin des
Plantes rose before her, and the voice of the _siffleur de montagne_
followed her: “Marie! Marie! Marie! Marie de Morne Rouge.” The
old love-haunted garden and the bird seemed trying to tell her
something—something impossible to understand, something beyond all
sadness sad, and beyond all beauty beautiful.
Then, drowning out everything, as though some belfry in the sky had
flung open, came the sound of bells; it was the _carillon_ of the
cathedral that rings twice daily, silver bells and golden bells, tenor
and alto, answered by a thousand singing echoes from high wood and
harbour, street and place, floating up to the blue sky, floating out
over the blue sea.
“Marie, Marie de Morne Rouge—_Bonjour_, Marie—Little _porteuse_,
child of the sun, listen to us, the bells, listen to us, the echoes—we
are speaking the language he spoke, birds and echoes, bells and
flowers, soul of woman and soul of man, one language only have they.”
“Marie de Morne Rouge—Marie.”