THE ROAD TO GRANDE ANSE
Next morning very early Marie made her way to the Rue Victor Hugo,
received her tray of goods, and started on her journey. It was a long
journey to-day, right away to Grande Anse on the eastern side of the
island.
She passed up the steep twilit streets, up, up, past the Rue Petit
Versailles, till the houses broke up and the way began to turn from a
street to a country road.
Just here she did what she had never done before, turned and looked
down at the city steeped in twilight.
With the heavy load of the tray she dared not bend her head. She stood
with head erect and eyes cast down, beautiful and statuesque as one of
the Greek Caniphori. She was thinking, “Ah, there is someone there, in
what house is he, in which street, is he awake yet or does he still
sleep?”
Then, raising her eyes, she looked far over the sea, bright beyond
the shadow of Pelée and the hills. She was thinking, “He came from
there—where from beyond that wonderful bright sea did he come?” The
sea had always been one of the mysteries of her life, and the ships
that came from away beyond the horizon.
Then she turned and resumed her way along the twilit road filled
with the early morning scent of tropical woods and flowers, she had
forgotten her fear of the _fer de lance_. _Zombis_ and evil shapes
had vanished from her path—those shadows of the mind that have no
existence when forgotten.
Yesterday, when she was leaving the market, she had heard the screams
of the market-women and had turned to see _him_ surrounded with people.
He had killed the _fer de lance_ with his naked hand; snakes could do
him no harm, so the market people had said. That fact made the _fer
de lance_ less fearful to her. He did not fear it, why should she? In
this tropical mind, sealed so long to love, Love had suddenly disclosed
himself full grown and statuesque.
It was as though in a tropical garden gone to a state of nature, some
wind had pushed the foliage aside revealing the marble form of the
garden god, the statue that had been there since the garden was planted
first, lurking amidst the leaves, and now seen for the first time. As
she turned the shadow of Pelée, the sunlight struck her, and the view
lay spread as of old. The wonderful view of Martinique, its hills, and
mountains, its fields of cane, and visions of distant sea.
She paused, as she always paused just here, to feel the trade wind
and the warmth of the sun. There lay the mountains she had known from
childhood with La Trace, the white highroad, winding away across them,
the mornes, the valleys, the glimpse of the distant sea towards Fort de
France. It seemed to her that she was looking at all this for the first
time. The world, since yesterday, had become new, a spirit, half gay,
half sad, had infused itself into everything, the hills, the sea, the
distance—the world, since yesterday, would never be the same again to
Marie of Morne Rouge.
The last time she had passed along that road, she had travelled without
thought, careless as a child, free as a bird—now it was all different.
She could not tell in the least what had happened to her, she never
connected the change with love, the thing Finotte and Pauline chattered
about so glibly. She only knew that the great old hills were speaking
a new language to her and that Distance had become Loneliness.
She had travelled the white highroad many a time alone, yet she had
never felt herself alone till to-day.
Then, as she went on her way along the road blazing in the sun and set
on either side with palmistes, tree ferns, bushes of grenadilla blossom
and sun-stricken tamarinds, a voice said to her:
“_Bonjour, mademoiselle._”
There was no one but herself upon the road, nothing moving but the
shadows of the palm fronds shaken by the wind and the green lizards
slipping across the dust in the sunlight. It was the voice of yesterday.
“_Bonjour, mademoiselle._”
She called it up again and again and made it repeat the words, then she
recalled his face as she had seen it when glancing up at him to thank
him for the flower.
She had a companion now.
Had you seen her passing, swift, silently, with her burden poised on
her head, straight as a palmiste, enveloped in a flame of sunlight,
with her luminous eyes gazing straight into the distance before her,
you might have fancied her a somnambulist, a person walking in a
dream—she was.
As she went on her way, she experienced a new sensation, it was as
though St. Pierre had attached itself to her by a thread, the further
she went, the tighter did this thread grow—“Come back” said St.
Pierre, “every step you take, takes you away from him, come back, you
do not know, he is a foreign sailor and may be carried away in one of
those mysterious ships, those ships that spread their sails and pass
away beyond the blue horizon to be lost forever.”
It was up on the Morne du Midi that the voice of St. Pierre said this
to her for the first time. She paused. The sun was high and pouring a
torrent of light on sea and land.
The sun rays seemed beaten back from the earth, rising in a vague and
dazzling spray as the water of a torrent rises in a spray-cloud. The
hills were indefinite, blue, and purple shapes, the sea had lost its
horizon and seemed part of the sky and the woods of the Morne du Midi
were as still as death. Nothing sings or stirs in the West Indian woods
when the sun is holding the world like this.
Marie, on the highest summit of the Morne, stood as though the silence
of the world had suddenly stricken her, taking away movement and life.
“Ah, if he were to leave St. Pierre! If she were to return and never
find him again!”
She had only seen him twice, she had only spoken to him a word, were
he to pass out of her life forever, it would be the passing away of
a spectre, a mist, a dream, but she would never love again. It was
as though she had been waiting for him since the beginning of the
world, as though she had lived through the remote past, through the
old Carib days, passing from re-incarnation to re-incarnation, through
the fervour of tropical days and nights, the silences of the tropical
forests, without finding him. And now that she had found him, how would
it be with her if she lost him?
Her mind, absolutely virgin and frank as the mind of the prehistoric
woman, never paltered with words, she stood there on the morne, gazing
at the vision of deathless love, supreme and mysterious happiness, torn
by the thought—“Ah, should I lose it!”
There were still miles before her to be travelled before she reached
Grande Anse, St. Pierre was calling her back, all her soul and being
craved to return; few women of Europe could have withstood that call
of the heart, she had only to return, to wander through the streets,
by the harbour, on the Place Bertine, and she would be almost sure to
meet him; but she had a trust to fulfil, the goods she was carrying had
to be delivered at Grande Anse, Death might have stopped but would not
have prevented her in her endeavour to fulfil her trust, and Love was
powerless over her in this simple matter as Death.
That was her character drawn in four lines. Capable of immortal
passion, yet bound by a simple duty as matter is bound by gravity.
Then she went on her road due east for Grande Anse, past the silent
woods, through the great white light of the day.