"It is enough to make one leave one's fishing, and take up a gun."
"I rejoice to hear you say so, brother," said Toussaint.
"Then, father, you will let me go," cried Moyse. "You will give me your
gun, and let me go to the camp."
"Yes, Moyse: rather you than I. You are a stout lad now, and I know
nothing of camps. You shall take the gun, and I will stay and fish."
"Leave your father his gun, if he chooses to remain, Moyse. We will
find arms for you. Placide! Isaac!" he continued, looking from one to
the other of his sons.
"And Denis," cried the boy, placing himself directly in his father's
eye, as he returned breathless from the discharge of his errand.
"Yes, my boy, by-and-bye, when you are as strong as Placide. You shall
come to the camp when we want you."
"I will go to-day, father," said Placide.
"What to do?" said Isaac. "I do not understand."
Other eyes besides Aimee's were fixed on Toussaint's face, in anxiety
for his reply.
"I do not know, my son, what we are to do next. When the parent of a
nation dies, it may take some time to decide what is the duty of those
who feel themselves bereaved. All I now am sure of is, that it cannot
but be right for my children to be fitted to serve their country in any
way that they may find to be appointed. I wish to train you to arms,
and the time has come. Do not you think so?"
Isaac made no direct reply, and Aimee had strong hopes that he was
prepared with some wise, unanswerable reason for remaining where he was.
Meanwhile, his father proceeded--
"In all that I have done, in all that I now say, I have the sanction of
Father Laxabon."
"Then all is right, we may be sure," said Margot. "I have no doubt you
would be right, if you had not Father Laxabon to consult; but if he
thinks you right, everything must be done as you wish. My boys,"
pursued the tearful mother, "you must go with your father: you hear
Father Laxabon thinks so."
"Do you think so?" whispered Aimee to Isaac.
He pressed her arm, which was within his, in token of silence, while his
father went on:
"You heard the proclamation I sent out among our people a few weeks
ago."
"Yes," said Placide; "that in which you tell them that you prefer
serving with Spaniards who own a king, than with French who own none."
"Yes. I have had to make the same declaration to the two commissaries
who have arrived at Cap under orders from the regicides at Paris. These
commissaries have to-day invited me to their standard by promises of
favour and consideration."
"What do they promise us?" asked Margot eagerly.
"Nothing that we can accept. I have written a letter in reply, saying
that I cannot yield myself to the will of any member of the nation,
seeing that, since nations began, obedience has been due only to kings.
We have lost the king of France; but we are beloved by the monarch of
Spain, who faithfully rewards our services, and never intermits his
protection and indulgence. Thus, I cannot acknowledge the authority of
these commissaries till they shall have enthroned a king. Such is the
letter which, guided by Father Laxabon, I have written."
"It is a beautiful letter, I am sure," said Margot. "Is it not, Paul."
"I don't doubt Father Laxabon is right," said Dessalines; "only I do not
see the use of having a king, if people are turned out of house and home
for being loyal--as we all are. If we had not cared anything about the
king's quarrel, we might have been under our vines at home, as I have
often said before."
"And how would it have been with us here?" said Toussaint, laying his
hand on his breast.
"Put your hand a little lower, and I say it would have been all the
better for us," said the old negro, laughing, "for we should not have
gone without wine all this time."
"What do you think?" Aimee, as usual, asked Isaac.
"I think it was good for my father to be loyal to the king, as long as
the king lived. I think it was good for us to be living here free, with
time to consider what we should do next. And I think it has happened
very well that my father has shown what a soldier he is, which he could
not so well have done if we had stayed at Breda. As for Dessalines, he
is best where the vines grow thickest, or where the cellars are deepest.
It is a pity he should have taken upon him to be loyal."
"And what do you think of going to the camp with my father? Look at
Moyse--how delighted he is!"
Moyse certainly did look possessed with joy. He was rapidly telling all
his warlike intentions to Genifrede, who was looking in his face with a
countenance of fear and grief.
"You think nothing of us," she cried at length, giving way to a passion
of tears. "We have been so happy here, all together; and now you are
glad to go, and leave us behind! You will go and fight, without caring
for us--you will be killed in this horrid war, and we shall never see
you again--we shall never know what has become of you."
Moyse's military fire was instantly quenched. It immediately appeared
to him the greatest of miseries to have to leave his cousins. He
assured Genifrede he could not really intend to go. He had only been
fancying what a war with the white masters would be. He hated the
whites heartily; but he loved this place much more. Placide and Isaac
might go, but he should stay. Nothing should part him from those he
loved best.
Toussaint was not unmindful of what was passing. Genifrede's tones of
distress, and Moyse's protestations, all reached his ear. He turned,
and gently drew his daughter towards him.
"My child," said he, "we are no longer what we have been--slaves, whose
strength is in the will of their masters. We are free; and to be free
requires a strong heart, in women as well as in men. When Monsieur
Bayou was our master, we rose and slept every day alike, and went out to
our work, and came in to our food, without having to think of anything
beyond. Now we are free, and God has raised us to the difficult duties
which we have always reverenced in the whites. We men must leave our
homes to live in camps, and, if necessary, to fight; and you, women and
girls, must make it easy for us to do our duty. You must be willing to
see us go--glad to spare us--and you must pray to God that we may not
return till our duty is done."
"I cannot--I shall not," Genifrede muttered to herself, as she cast down
her eyes under her father's compassionate gaze. He looked towards
Aimee, who answered, with tearful eyes--
"Yes, father. They must go; and we will not hinder them; but they will
soon be back, will not they?"
"That depends on how soon we can make good soldiers of them," said he,
cheerfully. "Come, Moyse, have you changed your mind again? Or will
you stay and plait hammocks, while my boys are trained to arms?"
"I shall not stay behind, if the others go. But why should not we all
go together? I am sure there is room enough in yonder valley for all
the people on this coast."
"Room enough, but my family are better beside your father than among
soldiers and the hunters of the mountains. Stay with them, or go with
me. Shoot ducks, and pick up shell-fish here; or go with me, and
prepare to be General Moyse some day."
Moyse looked as if he would have knocked his uncle down at the
supposition that he would stay to pick up shell-fish. He could not but
laugh, however, at hearing himself greeted as General Moyse by all the
boys; and even Genifrede smiled.
Margot moved, sighing, towards the rocks, to put up for her boys such
comforts as she could muster, and to prepare the meal which they must
have before they went. Her girls went with her; and Denis shouted after
them, that he was to get the cabbage from the palmetto, adding, that if
they gave him a good knife, he would take it off as neatly as the Paris
people took off the king. His father grasped his arm, and said--
"Never name the king, my boy, till you feel grieved that you have lost
him. You do not know what you say. Remember--never mention the king
unless we ask you."
Denis was glad to run after his cabbage. His father remembered to
praise it at dinner. No one else praised or liked anything. Margot and
Aimee were tearful; Genifrede was gloomy. The lads could think of
nothing but the new life before them, which yet they did not like to
question their father about, till they should have left the tears
behind. No sooner were they past the first turn up the ridge, than they
poured out their inquiries as to life in the camp, and the prospects of
the war. Their eager gestures were watched by those they left behind;
and there was a feeling of mortification in each woman's heart, on
seeing this evidence that home was already forgotten for busier scenes.
They persuaded themselves, and believed of each other, that their grief
was for the fearful death of the king; and they spoke as if this had
been really the case.
"We have no one to look up to, now," said Margot, sobbing; "no one to
protect us. Who would have thought, when I married, how desolate we
should be one day on the sea-shore--with our master at Baltimore, and
the king dead, and no king likely to come after him! What will become
of us?"
"But Margot," interposed Dessalines, "how should we be better off at
this moment, if the king were alive and flourishing at Paris?"
"How?" repeated Margot, indignantly. "Why, he would have been our
protector, to be sure. He would have done some fine thing for my
husband, considering what my husband has done for him. If our beloved
king (on his throne) knew of my husband's victory at Plaisance, and of
his expedition to Saint Marc, and of his keeping quiet all these
plantations near Marmalade, and of the thousands that he had brought
over from the rebels, do you think a good master like the king would
have left us to pine here among the rocks, while Jean Francais is
boasting all day long, as if he had done everything with his own hand?
No, our good king would never have let Jean Francais' wife dress herself
in the best jewels the white ladies left behind, while the wife and
daughters of his very best officer are living here in a hut, on a rock,
with no other clothes to wear than they brought away from Breda. No,
no; as my husband says, in losing the king we are orphans."
"I can get you as good clothes as ever Jean's wife wore, Margot," said
Paul, whose soft heart was touched by her grief. "I can run my boat
along to a place I know of, where there are silks and trinkets to be
had, as well as brandy. I will bring you and the girls some pretty
dresses, Margot."
"No, Paul, not here. We cannot wear them here. And we shall have no
pleasure in anything, now we have lost the only one who could take care
of us. And who knows whether we shall ever see our boys again?"
"Curse the war!" muttered Paul, wiping his brows.
"Mother," said Aimee in a low voice, "have we not God to protect us
still? One master may desert us, and another may die; but there is
still God above all. Will not he protect us?"
"Yes, my dear. God takes care of the world; but then He takes care of
our enemies as well as of us."
"Does he?" exclaimed Denis, in a tone of surprise.
"Yes; ask your father if Father Laxabon does not say so. The name of
God is for ever in the mouths of the whites at Cap; but they reviled the
king; and, true enough, the king was altogether on our side,--we had all
his protection."
"All that is a good deal changed now, I hear," said Paul. "The whites
at Cap are following the example of the rebels at Paris, and do not rely
upon God, as on their side, as they used to do."
"Will God leave off taking care of them, then?" asked Denis, "and take
care only of us?"
"No," said Aimee. "God is willing, Isaac says, to take care of all men,
whether they serve him or not."
Denis shook his head, as if he did not quite approve this.
"Our priest told Isaac," continued Aimee, "that God sends his rain on
the just and on the unjust. And do not you know that he does? When the
rains come next month, will they not fall on all the plantations of the
plain, as well as in the valley where the camp is? Our waterfalls will
be all the fresher and brighter for the rains, and so will the springs
in Cap."
"But if he is everybody's master, and takes care of everybody," said
Denis, "what is all this fighting about? We are not fighting for Him,
are we?"
"Your father is," said Margot; "for God is always on the side of kings.
Father Laxabon says so."