I now looked upon her steadfastly for the first time, and with the most
intense emotion: but it was pity. I had been sufficiently long in the
West Indies to know exactly the relation in which she stood to her
father. However, he went on to relate how she had been born to him by a
beautiful mulatto, for whom he had given a great sum; yet at this she
startled not, moved not, blushed not. But hers was not the calmness of
obduracy, but of innocence.
Strongly did I commiserate her, and gently strove to draw her into
discourse. I found her ignorant, oh! how profoundly ignorant! She had
no ideas beyond the estate in which she lived, and those that she had
gathered from the gang of negroes that worked it. Her father had taught
her nothing but to play a few tunes by ear upon the guitar, and sing
some old French songs. Yet she had been accustomed to all the
observances of a lady--had slaves to wait upon her, and was always
elaborately, sometimes richly, dressed. Isolated as she had been, I
soon discovered that she was a compound of enthusiasm, talent, and
melancholy. She was little more than fifteen years old, yet that age,
in those tropical climates, answers fully to a European one-and-twenty.
In form, she was a perfect woman, light, rounded, and extremely active;
all her motions were as graceful, and as undulating as the
gently-swelling billow. If she moved quickly, she bounded; if slowly,
she appeared to glide on effortless through space. She had taken her
lessons of grace in the woods, and her gymnasium had been among the
sportive billows of the ocean. It is but of little use me describing
her face; for everyone supposes that, in these affairs, the author draws
at once, as largely as he can, upon his own imagination, and as he
dares, upon the credulity of his readers. Though a slave, she had but
little of the black blood in her--in her complexion none. She was not
fair, but her skin was very transparent, very pure, and of a dazzling
and creamy sort of whiteness. I have seen something like it on the
delicate Chinese paintings of the secluded ladies of that very secluded
empire, and should imagine it just such a permanent tint as the Roman
empress strove to procure by bathing every day in milk. Colour she had
none, and thrilling must have been the emotions that could call it into
her placid and pensive cheeks. Her features were not _chiselled_, and
had any sculptor striven to imitate them on the purest marble, he would
have discovered that chiselling would not do. They were at once formed
and informed by the Deity. It is of no use talking about her luxurious
and night-emulating hair, her lips, and those eyes, that seemed to
contain, in their small compass, a whole sea of melancholy, in which
love was struggling to support a half-drowned joy.
As I turned to converse with her, she looked up to me confidingly. She
appeared, as it were, incessantly to draw me to her with her large black
eyes; they seemed to say to me, "Come nearer to me, that I may
understand thee. Art thou not something distinct from the beings that I
see around me--something that can teach me what I am, and will also give
me something to venerate, to idolise, and to love!" As I continued to
speak to her, her attention grew into a quiet rapture, yet still a
sublime melancholy seemed to hold her feelings in a solemn thraldom.
My name, my rank, and my situation were soon disclosed to the father and
daughter; and the former seeing how entranced we were with each other's
company, like a prudent parent, left us to ourselves. My French was
much purer and more grammatical than hers, hers much more fluent than
mine. Yet, notwithstanding this deficiency on both sides, we understood
each other perfectly, and we had not been above two hours together
alone, before I told her that I loved her for her very ignorance, and
she had confessed to me that she loved me, because--because--the reader
will never guess why--because I was so like the good spirit that walked
gently through the forests and gathered up the fever-mists before they
reached the dwellings of man.
I very naturally asked her if she had seen this being. She said no, but
knew him as well as if she had; for old Jumbila, a negress, had so often
talked to her about him, that her idea of him was as familiar to her as
the presence of her father.
"You have much to unlearn, my sweet one," thought I, "and I shall be but
too happy to be your preceptor."
At sunset, Monsieur Manuel returned, led us into another apartment,
where a not inelegant dinner was served up to us. Knowing the habits of
my countrymen, we sat over some very fine claret, after Josephine had
retired. I took this opportunity to reproach him, in the mildest terms
that I could use, with the dreadful ignorance in which he had suffered a
creature so lovely, and so superior to remain.
His reply was a grimace, a hoisting of his shoulders above his head, an
opening of his hands and fingers to their utmost extent, and a most
pathetic "_Que voulez-vous_?"
"I will tell you, friend Manuel," I answered, for his wine had warmed me
much, his daughter more; "I would have had her taught, at least, to read
and write, that she had an immortal soul, a soul as precious to its
Maker as to herself. I would have had her taught to despise such
superstitious nonsense as Obeoism, mist spirits, and all the pernicious
jargon of spells and fetishes. I would, my dear Manuel, have made her a
fit companion for myself; for with such beauty and such a soul, I am
convinced that she would realise female perfection as nearly as poor
humanity is permitted to do."
"_Que voulez-vous_?" again met my ears; it was attended by some attempt
at justification of his very culpable remissness. He assured me, that,
according to the laws, social as well as judicial, a person of her
class, were she possessed of all the attributes of an angel, could never
be received into white society, nor wed with any but a person of colour.
The light of education, he asserted, would only the more show her her
own degradation: he said he felt for her, deeply felt for her, and that
he shuddered at the idea of his own death, for in that event he felt
assured that she would be sold with the rest of the negroes on the
estate, and be treated in all respects as a slave--and she had been so
delicately nurtured. She had, indeed: her long white fingers and
velvety hand bore sufficient testimony to this.
"But can you not manumit her?" said I.
"Impossible. When the island was more settled and better governed than
now, the legal obstructions thrown in the way of the act were almost
insuperable: at present it is impossible. I have no doubt that our
blood-thirsty enemies, the Spaniards, who are our nearest neighbours,
immediately you English leave the town, as you have dismantled our
forts, and carried away almost all the male population captive, will
come and take possession of this place--not that I care a _sou_ for the
brigands whom you have just routed out. I shall have to submit to the
Spanish authority, and their slave laws are still more imperative than
ours, though they invariably treat their slaves better than any other
nation. No, there is no hope for poor Josephine."
"Could you not send her to France?"
"_Sacre Dieu_! they guillotined all my relations, all my friends--all,
all--and, my friend, I never made gold by taking a share in those long
low schooners that you have kindly taken under your care. I have some
boxes of doubloons stowed away, it is true. But, after all, I am
attached to this place; I could not sell the estate for want of a
purchaser; and I am surrounded by such an infernal set of rascals, that
I never could embark myself with my hard cash without being murdered.
No, we must do at Rome as the Romans do."
"A sweet specimen of a Roman you are," thought I, and I fell into a
short reverie; but it was broken up most agreeably, by seeing Josephine
trip before the open jalousies with a basket of flowers in her hand.
She paused for a moment before us, and looked kindly at her father and
smilingly at me. It was the first joyous, really joyous smile that I
had seen in her expressive countenance. It went right to my heart, and
brought with it a train of the most rapturous feelings.
"God bless her heart; I do love her dearly!" said the old man. "I'll
give you a convincing proof of it, my young friend, Rattlin. Ah! bah--
but you other English have spoiled all--you have taken him with you."
"Who?"
"Why, Captain Durand. That large low black schooner was his. Yes, he
would have treated her well (said Monsieur le Pere, musing), and he
offered to sign an agreement, never to put her to field-work, or to have
her flogged."
"Put whom to field-work?--flog whom?" said I, all amazement.
"Josephine, to be sure; had you not taken him prisoner, I was going,
next month, to sell her to him for two hundred doubloons."
"Now, may God confound you for an unholy, unnatural villain!" said I,
springing up, and overturning the table and wine into the fatherly lap
of Monsieur Manuel. "If you did not stand there, my host, I would, with
my hand on your throat, force you on your knees to swear that--that--
that you'll never sell poor, poor Josephine for a slave. Flog her!"
said I, shuddering, and the tears starting into my eyes--"I should as
soon have thought of flogging an empress's eldest daughter."
"Be pacified, my son," said the old slave-dealer, deliberately clearing
himself of the _debris_ of the dessert--"be pacified, my son."
The words "my son" went with a strange and cheering sound into my very
heart's core. The associations that they brought with it were
blissful--I listened to him with calmness.
"Be pacified, my son," he continued, "and I will prove to you that I am
doing everything for the best. The old colonel, our late governor,
would have given three times the money for her. I could not do better
than make her over to a kind-hearted man, who would use her well, and
who, I think, is fond of her. Not to part with her for a heavy sum
would be fixing a stigma upon her;" and wretched as all this reasoning
appeared to be, I was convinced that the man had really meant to have
acted kindly by selling his own daughter. What a pernicious damnable,
atrocious social system that must have been where such a state of things
existed!