THE GARDEN OF LOVE
“And now,” said Gaspard, “I must be going.”
He had been for half an hour in the Café Palmiste opposite M. Seguin, a
cup of coffee, and a box of cigars.
He rose from the table and his companion rose also, accompanying him to
the door.
“Well, if you have business, I will not detain you—so you start on
Friday? I may see you before you go, anyhow, remember Paul Seguin, who
is always your friend, and be careful with that shark of a Sagesse—you
say you will be back in a few months’ time, well, when you come back,
come right over to Grand Anse and we will arrange a future for you, you
must not leave the island, you will marry and settle here; I will find
you a home and work, not at St. Pierre, but over at Grande Anse where
it is cool and where the trade wind is always blowing.”
They shook hands and M. Seguin returned to his coffee and his eternal
cigars, whilst Gaspard struck up town, taking the Rue Carcenet which
was the nearest way to his destination.
Ten minutes later he was at the commencement of the road to Morne
Rouge, at the exact spot where on the evening before, he had stood with
Marie looking down at the lights of St. Pierre.
He was before his time; the sun would not reach the horizon for two
hours and a half, and leaning on the old, moss-grown, lizard-haunted
wall that protected the road to seaward, he looked down at the city,
the harbour and the bay.
It was that beneficial moment of the tropic day when, “getting towards
evening” the world, released from the ferocious kisses of the vertical
sun, breathes again.
The light was still tremendous and triumphant, but the shadows were
lengthening, and the old road broken, now, by wall and palm shadows,
shadows of tamarind and ceiba, filled with scents of tropical wood life
and perfumes from the sea, had regained the poetry robbed from it by
the glare of noon.
Ah, that old road to Morne Rouge, trodden by the feet of the _porteuse_
and the labourer, the gardeners bringing their fruit to the market of
St. Pierre, and the cane cutters with their heavy cane knives making
for the fields, how beautiful it seems, viewed across the past. He who
has seen from it the city below and the blue enchanted bay, will never
see a vision more beautiful—and no man will ever see it more.
And its true beauty, one would imagine, only revealed to a child like
Marie, fresh-sighted to the beauty of the world, or a man like Gaspard,
made clear-sighted by love.
He flung the cigarette he was smoking away, and, leaning on the wall,
looked down at the view, lazily tracing the streets below.
He could see the pale green stripe that indicated the verandahs of
the Rue Victor Hugo; the little Place de la Fontaine; the Rue Petit
Versailles, and, away below, the tamarinds on the Place Bertine. There
lay _La Belle Arlésienne_, a toy ship, and to southward of _La Belle
Arlésienne_, fussing along across the bay, the little steamer from Fort
de France; the indescribable splendour of the blue beyond lay unruffled
by the slightest breeze.
Never was there a more profound calm; towards Dominica where the deep
violet of the water proclaimed the great depths, an inter-island
schooner lay becalmed like a thing that had made part of the picture
forever. And the silence of it all, the coloured city, the painted
bay, the illimitable distance! With the help of that majestic silence
completing her work, Beauty could do nothing more.
“_Ché!_”
The word half whispered, spoken behind him, broke his reverie and made
him turn.
She had come along the road moving soundless as a breeze, she had
reached him without his knowing, she scarcely bore a stain or sign of
her long journey; straight as a caryatid beneath her burden, it was as
if she had carried with her through the long day all the freshness of
the dawn.
All day over morne and mountain, from Morne Rouge to Calabasse, through
the heat and blinding light, she had followed his image, and she told
him so, not with her lips, but with her eyes, cast straight at him
under their long, black, upcurving lashes.
The first breath of the evening breeze stirred the fronds of the palms
above her, fluted gently her robe of delicately-coloured striped
foulard. The western sunlight enveloped her in its flame as she stood
like the incarnation of the tropics, the spirit of the western islands,
a strophe from the poem of the palm tree, and the azure.
Gaspard took her hands in his and drew her towards him, she shuddered
slightly. He would have kissed her but they were not alone, a woman had
just turned the bend of the road, and from below, the bells of a mule
told of some market gardener coming up by the steep path from the Rue
Vauclin.
“You have come.”
“Ah, yes—did you not think I would come?”
“O, if I had not thought so I would have flung myself into the sea.”
(Provençal!)
“You would have cared, then?”
“Sweet—my only care is now for you.”
Straight as a flame beneath her load, she listened to him, and as she
listened, her gaze seemed to pass beyond him to some happy vision in
infinity. She seemed like a child listening for the first time to the
voice of Spring. The man holding her hands was quite taken away from
the world, it was as though she had led him to some extraordinary
height beyond the clouds and was holding him there by the hands lest he
should fall.
“Ah, yes, for you, that is all I care—just for you—”
He held her hands to his heart.
A bell bird from the trees beyond the road sent her golden notes
floating on the wind, a shadow passed them, it was a woman, a
mulatress, old, wrinkled, the picture of age.
Then the mule bells jangled as the mule driven by a negro scrambled
from the steep path on to the road and Marie, suddenly, like a person
awakening from a dream drew her hands away. Gaspard turned, more people
were coming up the steep way from the Rue Vauclin.
“Come,” said he, “let us go away from all these people, where is there,
here, that we may be quiet, and where you can rest after your journey?”
“Come with me,” she said.
She led the way down towards the town, they passed along one of the
higher streets and at the door of a heavily-built house, whose green
window shutters were drawn against the afternoon sun, she knocked.
A woman opened the door, she was a _calendeuse_, a friend of Marie’s,
and the girl asked her to take her tray to keep till the next morning.
Then, released from her load, she kissed the woman on the cheek,
thanked her, and turned to Gaspard.
“Come,” she said, and the woman closed the door as they passed away
down the road. They passed along by the highest streets and then down a
steep way by an old convent wall above which the palms of the convent
garden bent to the evening wind. Then, by a path between two great
cactus hedges she led him and lo! they were upon the road leading over
the Morne de Parnasse and close to the gates of the Jardin des Plantes.
The old garden had drawn her to it at last. Often and often she had
passed the gates, glancing in at the trees and the gloom, bright and
heedless as a butterfly. One might imagine the spirit of the place
watching the girl as she passed, singing, light-hearted, walking alone
and content, the spirit which is neither malignant nor benign, the
spirit which sets the _siffleur de montagne_ singing to his mate, calls
flowers into being, sets blossom calling to blossom and bird to bird,
one might imagine him casting his spell upon the bright figure, as she
passed his gates the other day, and, now, one might have fancied this
spirit of nature sighing contentedly in the wind-bent trees—she had
obeyed the spell and found a mate.
They passed the gateway and entered a world of twilight and perfume.
Palm stems soared away into the gloom above; air shoots of the wild
pine, ropes of convolvulus, lianas, festooned and trellised the
twilight; gigantic ferns called the eye into glades where orchids hung
like birds come to ruin, butterflies caught in some trap of the air.
There was not a sound except the sound of the evening wind bending the
palms and ceibas gently like the caress of a vast hand.
Here they found themselves alone at last.
He took her hands in his; then, releasing them, he held her round the
waist whilst their lips met and clung together in an endless kiss.