LIAISONS DANGEREUSES--RALPH DIVETH INTO THE DILEMMA OF LOVE, AND
ADMIRETH THE FATHERLY CONDUCT OF THE PARENT OF HIS DULCINEA--YET RAGETH
AND WEEPETH THAT SHE IS A SLAVE WHO HATH ENSLAVED HIM.
At this time I had begun to look fierce, if anyone did not concede to me
the rights and privileges of a man; and especially since I had received
my bayonet wound: my vanity upon this score became insupportable.
"Younker" was now a term of bitternesss to me; on the word "lad" I
looked with sovereign contempt; "boy" I had long done with. Heartily I
prayed for a beard, but it came not; so, in order to supply the
deficiency, I used to practise looking stern before my dressing-glass.
But all my efforts at an outward semblance of manliness were vain; my
face was much too fair and feminine, though my stature, and the firmness
of my frame, were just what I wished. I was not on board the vessel
after the first week that she lay in the port of Aniana, nor did I
rejoin her until she as in the very act of sailing out of it.
How am I to approach this subject, so romantic, so delicious, and so
delicate! How can I record events, that, in proving to me that I had a
heart, first destroyed its strength by the sweet delirium of ecstasy,
and thus, having enfeebled, almost broke it! Before, the poetic ardour
had often been upon me; but the fire was lighted up at the shrine of
vanity, and I sang for applause. It was to be rekindled by love; but to
burn with a concealed fury, to be whispered only to my own soul--a
feeling too great for utterance, too intense for song, was to devour me.
I experienced ecstasies that were not happiness; I learned the bitter
truth, that rapture is not bliss.
About a week after we had obtained a quiet settlement in the town, and
very many of us a quiet settlement in the hearts, as well as in the
houses, of the beautiful Creoles and half castes; I also went on shore,
with Modesty walking steadily on my right-hand, whilst Madam Temptation
was wickedly ogling me on the left. I looked in on the establishments
of several of my brother officers, and certainly admired the rapidity
with which they had surrounded themselves with all manner of domestic
comforts, including wives, and, in some instances, large families of
children. There was much more than ready-made love in these
arrangements; anyone may buy that for ready-money; but a ready-made
progeny, a ready-made household, and a ready-made wife, without one
stiver of ready money, was the astonishment; but English sailors can do
anything.
Well, at Number 14, Rue Coquine, I accepted the purser's invitation to
dinner at four, _en famille_. It seemed quite natural.
"My dove," said he, "you'll get us a bit of fish. Mr Rattlin loves
fish."
"Certainly, my love," said Mrs Purser _pro tempore_, looking a battery
of amiabilities.
"Allow me to introduce you to my sister-in-law, Ma'amselle D'Avalonge,"
said the purser, presenting a very well dressed young lady to me, with
all the ease of a family man.
The introduction took place immediately, and the lady and I found each
other charming; indeed, we said so. After a few more compliments, and a
very pretty song, accompanied by the guitar, from mademoiselle, I took
my leave, promising to be punctual to my appointment. I was not
punctual--I never saw their dear faces again.
I left the town, and strolled up into the interior, keeping, however,
our small fleet in sight, and walking seaward. I found the environs
well cultivated, and the houses in the various plantations solidly
built, and of stone. From every habitation that I passed I had pressing
invitations to enter and refresh myself. These I declined. At length I
arrived at a beautiful wood, evidently under the care of man; for the
different trees were so arranged, as to produce a romantic effect. The
shade that the lofty mahogany-trees afforded was very grateful, for it
was now a little after noon; and in this grove I paced slowly up and
down, nursing my pride with all manner of conceits.
At length, in the distance, and much below where I stood, I heard voices
in violent altercation; among which the "'vast heavings," "blow me
tights," "a stopper over all," with other such nautical expletives, were
predominant. I broke from my cover, and found myself immediately on a
slope, before a very respectable habitation, nearly surrounded by
boiling-houses, and other out-buildings necessary to a sugar and coffee
plantation. The group before me consisted of a small, energetic, old,
and white-haired Frenchman, neatly dressed in a complete suit of nankeen
with his broad-brimmed straw hat submissively in his hand, speaking all
manner of fair and unintelligible French words to two Jacks, not of my
ship, between which two, now pulled this way, now plucked that, was a
timid and beautiful girl, of about fifteen years of age. There were
several negroes, grinning and passive spectators of this scene. I
understood it in a moment. So did my gentlemen in the tarpaulin hats.
They were off to me in a less time than a top-gallant breeze takes to
travel aft from the flying jib-boom, supposing the ship to be at single
anchor.
I took out my pocket-book, wrote down their names (most likely purser's
ones), and ordered them on board their vessel directly. They obeyed, or
rather appeared to do so, and departed, casting many "a lingering,
longing look behind," leaving me the triumphant master of the field--the
paladin, who had rescued the fair, for which I received much clapping of
hands from the dark visages, and an intense look of gratitude from the
fair, pale creature, whom I had released from the very equivocal
rudeness of her admirers. The thanks from Monsieur Manuel, the father,
were neither silent nor few, and when he found that I could converse in
French, he exhausted the vocabulary of that copious language of all its
expressions of gratitude. I hardly could perceive that I had rendered
any service at all; I had struck no blows and had run no risk; I had
merely spoken, and obedience followed. However, as I could not stem the
torrent of his gratitude, I determined to divert its course, by yielding
to his urgent entreaties to accompany him to his house, and recruit
myself after my perilous and heroic deed.
We were soon seated in the coolest room of his mansion, and every West
Indian luxury was quickly produced to tempt my palate. In fifteen
minutes he had acquainted me with his parentage, his possessions, and
his history. He assured me, with gesticulations, and a few oaths, that
he was not at all connected with the brigands that inhabited the town
below--that he despised them, knew them all to be pirates, or abettors
of pirates, revolutionists, and republicans--that he was at heart, yea,
in heart and soul, a royalist, and devotedly attached to the _vieux
regime_; that the estate he now cultivated he had inherited from his
father, who had been one of the few spared in the revolt of the blacks;
that he had been educated at Paris, but, for the last five-and-thirty
years, had hardly been off his own grounds--that he had no wife, and,
indeed, never married, had no family at all, excepting Josephine, who
sat beside him, who was his very dear and only child.