A WISE CHILD
‘The Bashful Maid’ was still lying peacefully at anchor in the harbour of
Port Welcome, yards squared, sails furled, decks polished to a dazzling
white, every article of gear and tackle denoting profound repose, even
the very pennon from her truck drooping motionless in the heat. Captain
George spent much of his time below, making up his accounts, with the
invaluable assistance of Beaudésir, who, having landed soon after their
arrival, remained an hour or two in the town, and returned to the
brigantine, expressing no desire for further communication with the shore.
George himself postponed his visit to the island until he had completed
the task on which he was engaged. In the meantime he gave plenty of
liberty to the crew, an indulgence of which none availed themselves more
freely than Slap-Jack and his two friends.
These last indeed seldom stirred beyond the town. Here they found all
they wanted in the shape of luxury or amusement: strong tobacco, new rum,
an occasional scrape of a fiddle with a thrumming accompaniment on the
banjo, nothing to do, plenty to drink, and a large room to smoke in.
But the foretopman was not so easily satisfied. Much to the disgust of
his comrades, he seemed to weary of their society, to have lost his
relish for fiery drinks and sea stories; nay, to have acquired diverse
tastes and habits foreign to his nature and derogatory to his profession.
“Gone cruisin’ thereaway,” observed Bottle-Jack, vaguely waving his pipe
in the direction of the mountains. “Never taken no soundings, nor kept
no dead reckoning, nor signalled for a pilot, but just up foresail,
drive-ahead, stem on, happy-go-lucky, an’ who cares!” While Smoke-Jack,
puffing out solemn clouds of fragrant Trinidado, enunciated sententiously
that he “Warn’t a-goin’ to dispute but what every craft should hoist
her own ensign, an’ lay her own course; but when he see a able seaman
clearing out from such a berth as this here, leaving the stiffest of grog
and the strongest of ‘bacca’ a-cause of a old yaller woman with a red
burgee; why, _he_ knowed the trim on ’em, that was _where_ it was. See if
it wasn’t. Here’s my service to you, mate—All ships at sea!”
Long ere the two stanch friends, however, had arrived at this
intelligible conclusion, the object of their anxiety was half-way up the
mountain, in fulfilment of the promise he had made Célandine to meet her
at an appointed place.
In justice to Slap-Jack, it is but fair to admit that his sentiments in
regard to the Quadroon were those of keen curiosity mingled with pity for
the obvious agitation under which she seemed to labour in his presence.
Fair Alice herself, far off in her humble home among the downs, need
not have grudged the elder woman an hour of her young seaman’s society,
although every minute of it seemed so strangely prized by this wild,
energetic, and mysterious person, with her swarthy face, her scarlet
head-dress, and her flashing eyes, gleaming with the fierce anxious
tenderness of a leopardess separated from her whelps.
Slap-Jack’s sea legs had hardly time to become fatigued, ere at a turn
in the mountain-path he found Célandine waiting for him, and somewhat to
his disgust, peering about in every direction, as if loth to be observed;
a clandestine interpretation of their harmless meeting which roused the
young seaman’s ire, and against which he would have vehemently protested,
had she not placed her hand over his mouth and implored him urgently,
though in a whisper, to keep silence. Then she bade him follow, still
below her breath, and so preceded him up the steep ascent with cautious,
stealthy steps, but at a pace that made the foretopman’s unaccustomed
knees shake and his breath come quick.
The sun was hot, the mountain high, the path overgrown with cactus and
other prickly plants, tangled with creepers and not devoid of snakes.
Monkeys chattered, parrots screamed, glittering insects quivered like
tinsel in the sun, or darted like flashes of coloured light across the
forest-shade. Vistas of beauty, such as he had never dreamed of, opened
out on either side, and looking back more than once to take breath while
he ascended, the deep blue sea lay spread out beneath him, rising broader
and broader to meet the blue transparent sky.
But Slap-Jack, truth to tell, was sadly indifferent to it all. Uneasiness
of the legs sadly counteracted pleasure of the eye. It was with
considerable gratification that he observed his leader diverge from the
upward path, and rounding the shoulder of the hill, take a direction
somewhat on the downward slope. Then he wiped his brows, with a sigh of
relief, and asked audibly enough for something to drink.
She seemed less afraid of observation now, although she did not comply
with his request, but pointed downward to a dark hollow, from which
ascended a thin, white, spiral line of smoke, the only sign denoting
human habitation in the midst of this luxuriant wilderness of tropical
growth and fragrance. Then, parting the branches with both hands, she
dived into the thicket, to stop at the door of a hut, so artfully
concealed amongst the dense luxuriant foliage that a man might have
passed within five yards and never known it was there but for the smoke.
Célandine closed the door cautiously behind her visitor, handed him a
calabash of water, into which she poured some rum from a goodly stone
jar—holding at least a gallon—watched him eagerly while he drank, and
when he set the measure down, flung both arms round his neck, and kissing
him all over the eyes and face, murmured in fondest accents—
“Do you not know why I have brought you here? Do you not know who and
what you are?”
“I could have told you half an hour back,” answered Slap-Jack, with a
puzzled air, “but so many queer starts happen hereaway, mother, that I’m
blessed if I can tell you now.”
Tears shone in the fierce black eyes that never left his face, but
seemed to feast on its comeliness with the desire of a famished appetite
for food.
“Call me mother again!” exclaimed the Quadroon. “You called me mother
down yonder at the store, and my heart leaped to hear the word. Sit ye
down, my darling, there in the light, where I can see your innocent face.
How like you are to your father, my boy. You’ve got his own bold eyes,
and broad shoulders, and large, strong hands. I could not be deceived. I
knew you from the first. Tell me true; you guessed who I was. You would
never have gone up to a stranger as you did to me!”
Slap-Jack looked completely mystified. Wisely reflecting, however,
that if a woman be left uninterrupted she will never “belay,” as he
subsequently observed, “till she has payed-out the whole of her yarn,” he
took another pull at the rum-and-water, and held his peace.
“Look about you, boy,” continued Célandine, “and mark the wild,
mysterious retreat I have made myself, on your account alone. No other
white man has ever entered the Obi-woman’s hut. Not a negro in the island
but shakes with fear when he approaches that low doorway; not one but
leaves a gift behind when he departs. And now, chance has done for the
Obi-woman that which all her perseverance and all her cunning has failed
to effect. Influence I have always had amongst the blacks, for I am of
their kindred, and they believe that I possess supernatural powers. You
need not smile, boy. I can sometimes foretell the future so far as it
affects others, though blindly ignorant where it regards myself; just
as a man reads his neighbour’s face clearly, though he cannot see his
own. All my influence I have devoted to the one great object of making
money. For that, I left my sunny home to live years in the bleak, cold
plains of France; for that, I sold myself in my old age to one whom I
could not care for, even in my youth; for that I have been tampering of
late with the most desperate and dangerous characters in the island; and
money I only valued because, without it, I feared I could never find my
boy. Listen, my darling, and learn how a mother’s love outlives the fancy
of youth, the devotion of womanhood, and the covetousness of old age.
Look at me now, child. It is not so long since men have told me—even in
France, where they profess to understand such matters—that I retained my
attractions still. You may believe that thirty years ago the Quadroon of
Cash-a-crou, as they called her, had suitors, lovers, and admirers by
the score. Somehow, I laughed at them all. It seemed to me that a man’s
affection for a girl only lasted while she despised him, and I resolved
that no weakness of my own should ever bring me down a single step from
the vantage-ground I held. Planters, overseers, councillors, judges, all
were at my feet; not a white man in the island but would have given three
months’ pay for a smile from the yellow girl at Cash-a-crou; and the
yellow girl—slave though she was—carried her head high above them all.
“Well, one bright morning, a week before crop-time, a fine large ship,
twice the size of that brigantine in the harbour, came and dropped her
anchor off the town. The same night her sailors gave a dance at one of
the negro-houses in Port Welcome. I never hear a banjo in the still,
calm evenings but it thrills to my very marrow still, though it will
be five-and-twenty long years, when the canes are cut, since I went
into that dancing-room a haughty, wilful beauty, and came out a humble,
love-stricken maid. Turn a bit more to the light, my boy, that I may look
into your blue eyes; they shine like his, when he came across the floor
and asked me to dance. I’ve heard the Frenchwoman say that it takes a
long time for a man to win his way into a girl’s heart. Theirs is a cold
country, and they have no African blood in their veins. All I know is,
that your father had not spoken half-a-dozen words ere I felt for him
as I never felt for any creature on earth before. I’d have jumped off
the Sulphur Mountain, and never thought twice about it, if he had asked
me. When we walked home together in the moonlight—for he begged hard to
see me safe to my own door, and you may think I wasn’t very difficult to
persuade—I told him honestly that I had never loved any man but him, and
never would love another, come what might. He looked down into my eyes
for a moment astonished, just as you look now, and then he smiled—no face
ever I saw had such a smile as your father’s—and wound his great strong
arm round my waist, and pressed me to his heart. I was happy then. If
I might live over just one minute of my life again, it should be that
first minute when I felt I belonged no more to myself, but to him.
“So we were married by an old Spanish priest in the little white chapel
between the lighthouse and the town—yes, married right enough, my boy,
never doubt it, though I was but a slave.
“I do not know how a great lady like our Marquise feels who can give
herself and all her possessions, proudly and in public, to the man she
loves, but she ought to be very happy. I was very happy, though I might
only meet your father by stealth, and with the fear of a punishment I
shuddered to think of before my eyes. I thought of it very often, too,
yet not without pride and pleasure, to risk it all for his sake. What
I dreaded far worse than punishment—worse than death, was the day his
ship would sail, and though she lay weeks and months refitting in the
harbour, that day arrived too soon. Never tell me people die of grief, my
boy, since I came off the hill alive when I had seen the last of those
white sails. I could have cursed the ship for taking him away, and yet I
blessed her for his sake.
“There was consolation for me too. I had his solemn promise to come back
again, and I’ll never believe but he would have kept it had he been
alive. Nothing shall persuade me that my brave, blue-eyed Englishman has
not been sleeping many a year, rolled in his hammock, under the deep,
dark sea. It was well the conviction came on me by degrees that I was
never to see him again. I should have gone mad if I had known it that
last night when he bade me keep my heart up, and trust him to the end.
After a while I fretted less, for my time was near, and my beautiful boy
was born. Such an angel never lay on a mother’s knees. My son, my son,
you have the same eyes, and the same sweet smile still. I knew you that
day in the street, long before I turned your collar down, and saw the
little white mark like an anchor on your neck. How proud I was of you,
and how I longed to show my sturdy, blue-eyed boy, who began to speak at
eleven months, to every mother in the island, but I dared not—I dared
not, for your sake more than for my own. I was cunning then—ay, cunning,
and brave, and enduring as a panther. They never found me out—they never
so much as suspected me. I had money, plenty of it, and influence too,
with one man at least, who would have put his hand in the fire, coward as
I think he is, if I had only made him a sign. With his help, I concealed
the existence of my boy from every creature on the plantation—black or
white. In his house I used to come and nurse you, dear, and play with you
by the hour together. That man is my husband now, and I think he deserves
a better fate.
“At last he was forced to leave the island, and then came another
parting, worse than the first. It was only for myself I grieved when I
lost your father, but when I was forced to trust my beautiful boy to the
care of another, to cross the sea, to sleep in strange beds, to be washed
and dressed by other hands, perhaps to meet with hard words and angry
looks, or worse still, to clasp his pretty arms about a nurse’s neck, and
to forget the mother that bore him, I thought my heart would break. My
boy, there is no such thing—I tell you again, these are fables—grief does
not kill.
“For a long time I heard regularly of your welfare, and paid liberally
for the good news. I was sure the man to whom I had entrusted you looked
upon me as his future wife, and though I hated him for the thought, I—who
loved that bold, strong, outspoken sailor—I permitted it, I encouraged
it, for I believed it would make him kinder to my boy. When you were a
little older, I meant to buy my own freedom, and take you with me to live
in Europe—wherever you could be safe.
“At last a ship sailed into Port Welcome, and brought no letter for me,
no news of my child. Another, and yet another, till months of longing,
sickening anxiety had grown to years, and I was nearly mad with fear and
pain. The father I had long despaired of, but I thought I was never to be
used so hardly as to lose the child.
“I tell you again, my boy, grief does not kill. I lived on, but I was
a different creature now. My youth was gone, my beauty became terrible
rather than attractive. I possessed certain powers that rendered me an
object of dread more than love, and here, in this very hut, I devoted
myself to the practice of Obi, and the study of that magic which has
made the name of Célandine a word of fear to every negro in the island.
“One only aim, one only hope, kept me from going mad. Money I was
resolved to possess, the more the better, for by the help of money alone,
I thought, could I ever gain tidings of my boy. The slaves paid well in
produce for the amulets and charms I sold them. That produce I converted
into coin, but it came in too slow. In Europe I might calculate on better
opportunities for gain, and to Europe I took the first opportunity of
sailing, that I might join the mistress I had never seen, as attendant
on her and her child. In their service I have remained to this day. The
mother I have always respected for her indomitable courage; the daughter
I loved from the first for her blue eyes, that reminded me of my boy.
“And now look at me once more, my child—my darling. I have found you when
I had almost left off hoping; I have got you when I never expected to see
you again; and I am rewarded at last!”
Slap-Jack, whose sentiments of filial affection came out the mellower
for rum-and-water, accepted the Quadroon’s endearments with sufficient
affability, and being naturally a good-hearted, easy-going fellow, gladly
enacted the part of dutiful son to a mother who had suffered such long
anxiety on his account.
“A-course,” said he, returning her embrace, “now you’ve got a son, you
ain’t a-goin’ to keep him in this here round-house, laid up in lavender
like, as precious as a Blue Mountain monkey pickled in rum. We’ll just
wait here a bit, you and me, safe and snug, while the land-breeze holds,
and then drop easily down into the town, rouse out my shipmates, able
seamen every man of them, and go in for a regular spree. ’Tain’t every
day as a chap finds his mother, you know, and such a start as this here
didn’t ought to be passed over without a bobbery.”
She listened to him delighted. His queer phrases were sweet in her ears;
to her they were no vulgar sea-slang, but the echo of a love-music that
had charmed her heart, and drowned her senses half a lifetime ago; that
rang with something of the old thrilling vibration still; but the wild
look of terror that had scared him more than once gleamed again in her
eyes, and she laid her hand on his shoulder as if to keep him down by
force, while she whispered—“My child, not so! How rash, how reckless!
Just like your father; but he, at least, had not your fate to fear. Do
you not see your danger? Can you not guess why I concealed your birth,
hid you up in your babyhood, and smuggled you out of the island as soon
as you could run? Born of a slave, on a slave estate, do you not know, my
boy, that you, too, are a slave?”
“Gammon! mother,” exclaimed Slap-Jack, nothing daunted. “What
_me_?—captain of the foretop on board ‘The Bashful Maid,’—six guns on the
main-deck, besides carronades—master and owner, Captain George! and talk
to me as if I was one of them darkies what does mule’s work with monkey’s
allowance! Who’s to come and take me, I should like to know? Let ’em
heave ahead an’ do it, that’s all—a score at a spell if they can muster
’em. I’ll show ’em pretty quick what sort of a slave they can make out of
an able seaman!”
“Hush, hush!” she exclaimed, listening earnestly, and with an expression
of intense fear contracting her worn features; “I can hear them
coming—negroes by the footfall, and a dozen at least. They will be at
the door in five minutes. They have turned by the old hog-plum now. As
you love your life, my boy; nay, as you love your mother, who has pined
and longed for you all these years, let me hide you away in there. You
will be safe. Trust me, you will be safe enough; they will never think of
looking for you there!”
So speaking, and notwithstanding much good-humoured expostulation and
resistance from Slap-Jack, who, treating the whole affair as a jest, was
yet inclined to fight it out all the same, Célandine succeeded in pushing
her son into an inner division of the hut, containing only a bed-place,
shut off by a strong wooden door. This she closed hurriedly, at the very
moment a dozen pattering footsteps halted outside, and a rough negro
voice, in accents more imperative than respectful, demanded instant
admission.