Before the sun had touched the roofs of the town of Cap--while the
streets lay cool and grey under the heights, which glowed in the flames
of sunrise--most of the inhabitants were up and stirring. Euphrosyne
Revel was at her grandfather's chamber-door; first listening for his
call, and then softly looking in, to see whether he could still be
sleeping. The door opened and shut by a spring, so that the old man did
not hear the little girl as she entered, though his sleep was not sound.
As Euphrosyne saw how restless he was, and heard him mutter, she
thought she would rouse him: but she stayed her hand, as she remembered
that he might have slept ill, and might still settle for another quiet
doze, if left undisturbed. With a gentle hand she opened one of the
jalousies, to let in more air; and she chose one which was shaded by a
tree outside, that no glare of light might enter with the breeze.
What she saw from this window drew her irresistibly into the balcony.
It was a tree belonging to the convent which waved before the window;
and below lay the convent garden, fresh with the dews of the night.
There stretched the green walks, so glittering with diamond-drops and
with the gossamer as to show that no step had passed over them since
dawn. There lay the parterres--one crowded with geraniums of all hues;
another with proud lilies, white, orange, and purple; and another with a
flowering pomegranate in the centre, while the gigantic white and blue
convolvulus coveted the soil all around, mixing with the bright green
leaves and crimson blossoms of the hibiscus. No one seemed to be
abroad, to enjoy the garden during this the freshest hour of the day; no
one but the old black gardener, Raphael, whose cracked voice might be
heard at intervals from the depths of the shrubbery in the opposite
corner, singing snatches of the hymns which the sisters sung in the
chapel. When his hoarse music ceased, the occasional snap of a bough,
and movements among the bushes, told that the old man was still there,
busy at his work.
Euphrosyne wished that he would come out, within sight of the beckon of
her hand. She dared not call, for fear of wakening her grandfather: but
she very much wanted a flowering orange branch. A gay little
humming-bird was sitting and hovering near her; and she thought that a
bunch of fragrant blossoms would entice it in a moment. The little
creature came and went, flew round the balcony and retired: and still
old Raphael kept out of sight behind the leafy screen.
"It will be gone, pretty creature!" said Euphrosyne to herself; "and all
for want of a single bough from all those thickets!"
A thought struck her. Her morning frock was tied round the waist with a
cord, having tassels which hung down nearly to her feet. She took off
the cord, made a noose in it, and let it down among the shrubs below,
swinging the end this way and that, as she thought best for catching
some stray twig. She pursued her aim for a time, sending showers of
dew-drops paltering down, and knocking off a good many blossoms, but
catching nothing. She was so busy, that she did not see that a
grey-suited nun had come out, with a wicker cage in her hand, and was
watching her proceedings.
"What are you doing, my child?" asked the nun, approaching, as a new
shower of dew-drops and blossoms was shaken abroad. "If you desire to
fish, I doubt not our reverend mother will make you welcome to our pond
yonder."
"Oh, sister Christine! I am glad you are come out," said Euphrosyne,
bending over the balcony, and speaking in a low, though eager voice.
"Do give me a branch of something sweet,--orange, or citron, or
something. This humming-bird, will be gone if we do not make haste--
Hush! Do not call. Grandpapa is not awake yet. Please, make haste."
Sister Christine was not wont to make haste; but she did her best to
gratify Euphrosyne. She went straight to the corner of the shrubbery
where the abbess's mocking-bird spent all its summer days, hung up the
cage, and brought back what Euphrosyne had asked. The branch was drawn
up in the noose of the cord, and the nun could not but stand and watch
the event.
The bough was stuck between two of the bars of the jalousie, and the
girl withdrew to the end of the balcony. The humming-bird appeared,
hovered round, and at last inserted its long beak in a blossom,
sustaining itself the while on its quivering wings. Before proceeding
to another blossom it flew away. Euphrosyne cast a smile down to the
nun, and placed herself against the jalousie, holding the branch upon
her head. As she had hoped, two humming-birds returned. After some
hesitation, they came for more of their sweet food, and Euphrosyne felt
that her hair was blown about on her forehead by the motion of their
busy wings. She desired, above everything, to keep still; but this
strong desire, and the sight of sister Christine's grave face turned so
eagerly upwards, made her laugh so as to shake the twigs very fearfully.
Keeping her hand with the branch steady, she withdrew her head from
beneath, and then stole slowly and cautiously backward within the
window--the birds following. She now heard her grandfather's voice,
calling feebly and fretfully. She half turned to make a signal for
silence, which the old man so far observed as to sink his complaints to
a mutter. The girl put the branch into a water-jar near the window, and
then stepped lightly to the bed.
"What is all this nonsense?" said Monsieur Revel. "Why did not you come
the moment I called?"
"Here I am, grandpapa--and do look--look at my humming-birds!"
"Humming-birds--nonsense! I called you twice."
Yet the old gentleman rubbed his eyes, which did not seem yet quite
awake. He rubbed his eyes and looked through the shaded room, as if to
see Euphrosyne's new plaything. She brought him his spectacles from the
toilette, helped to raise him up, threw a shawl over his shoulders, and
placed his pillows at his back. Perceiving that he still could not see
very distinctly, she opened another blind, so as to let one level ray of
sunshine fall upon the water-jar, and the little radiant creatures that
were hovering about it.
"There! there!" cried Monsieur Revel, in a pleased tone.
"Now I will go and bring you your coffee," said Euphrosyne.
"Stop, stop, child! Why are you in such a hurry? I want to know what
is the matter. Such a night as I have had!"
"A bad night, grandpapa? I am sorry."
"Bad enough! How came my light to go out? And what is all this
commotion in the streets?"
Euphrosyne went to the night-lamp, and found that a very large flying
beetle had disabled itself by breaking the glass, and putting out the
light. There it lay dead--a proof at least that there were no ants in
the room.
"Silly thing!" said Euphrosyne. "I do wish these beetles would learn to
fly properly. He must have startled you, grandpapa. Did not you think
it was a thief, when you were left in the dark?"
"It is very odd that nobody about me can find me a lamp that will serve
me. And then, what is all this bustle in the town? Tell me at once
what is the matter."
"I know of nothing the matter. The trompettes have been by this
morning; and they say that the Commander-in-chief is here: so there will
be nothing the matter. There was some talk last night, Pierre said--
some fright about to-day. But L'Ouverture is come; and it will be all
right now, you know."
"You know nothing about it, child--teazing one with your buzzing,
worrying humming-birds! Go and get my coffee, and send Pierre to me."
"The birds will come with me, I dare say, if I go by the balcony. I
will take them away."
"No, no. Don't lose time with them. Let them be. Go and send Pierre."
When Euphrosyne returned with the coffee, she found, as Pierre had found
before her, Monsieur Revel so engrossed in looking through his
spectacles at the water-jar, as to have forgotten what he had to ask and
to say.
"You will find the bath ready whenever you want it, grandpapa," said
Euphrosyne, as she placed the little tray before him: "and it is a sweet
airy morning."
"Ay; I must make haste up, and see what is to be done. It is not safe
to lie and rest in one's bed, in this part of the world." And he made
haste to stir his coffee with his trembling hands.
"Oh, you have often said that--almost ever since I can remember--and
here we are, quite safe still."
"Tell the truth, child. How dare you say that we have been safe ever
since you remember?"
"I said `almost,' grandpapa. I do not forget about our being in the
woods--about--but we will not talk of that now. That was all over a
long time ago; and we have been very safe since. The great thing of all
is, that there was no L'Ouverture then, to take care of us. Now, you
know, the Commander-in-chief is always thinking how he can take the best
care of us."
"`No L'Ouverture then!' One would think you did not know what and where
Toussaint was then. Why, child, your poor father was master over a
hundred such as he."
"Do you think they were like him? Surely, if they had been like him,
they would not have treated us as they did. Afra says she does not
believe, anybody like him ever lived."
"Afra is a pestilent little fool."
"Oh, grandpapa!"
"Well, well! She is a very good girl in her way; but she talks about
what she does not understand. She pretends to judge of governors of the
colony, when her own father cannot govern this town, and she never knew
Blanchelande! Ah! if she had known Blanchelande, she would have seen a
man who understood his business, and had spirit to keep up the dignity
and honour of the colony. If that sort of rule had gone on till now, we
should not have had the best houses in the island full of these black
upstarts; nor a mulatto governor in this very town."
"And then I should not have had Afra for a friend, grandpapa."
"You would have been better without, child. I do not like to see you
for ever with a girl of her complexion, though she is the governor's
daughter. There must be an end of it--there shall be an end of it. It
is a good time now. There is a reason for it to-day. It is time you
made friends of your own complexion, child; and into the convent you
go--this very day."
"Oh, grandpapa, you don't mean that those nuns are of my complexion!
Poor pale creatures! I would not for the world look like them: and I
certainly shall, if you put me there. I had much rather look like Afra
than like sister Benoite, or sister Cecile. Grandpapa! you would not
like me to look like sister Benoite?"
"How do I know, child? I don't know one from another of them."
"No, indeed! and you would not know me by the time I had been there
three months. How sorry you would be, grandpapa, when you asked for me
next winter, to see all those yellow-faced women pass before you, and
when the yellowest of all came, to have to say, `Can this be my poor
Euphrosyne!'"
Monsieur Revel could not help laughing as he looked up at the girl
through his spectacles. He pinched her cheek, and said that there was
certainly more colour there than was common in the West Indies; but that
it must fade, in or out of the convent, by the time she was twenty; and
she had better be in a place where she was safe. The convent was the
only safe place.
"You have often said that before," replied she, "and the time has never
come yet. And no more it will now. I shall go with Afra to the
cacao-gathering at Le Zephyr, as I did last year. Oh, that sweet cool
place in the Mornes du Chaos! How different from this great ugly square
white convent, with nothing that looks cheerful, and nothing to be heard
but teaching, teaching, and religion, religion, for ever."
"I advise you to make friends among the sisters, however, Euphrosyne;
for there you will spend the next few years."
"I will not make friends with anything but the poor mocking-bird. I
have promised Afra not to love anybody instead of her; but she will not
be jealous of the poor bird. It and I will spend the whole day in the
thicket, mocking and pining--pining and mocking. The sisters shall not
get a word out of me--not one of them. I may speak to old Raphael now
and then, that I may not forget how to use my tongue; but I vow that
poor bird shall be my only friend."
"We shall see that. We shall see how long a giddy child like you can
keep her mocking-bird tone in the uproar that is coming upon us! What
will you do, child, without me, when the people of this colony are
cutting one another's throats over my grave? What will become of you
when I am gone?"
"Dear grandpapa, before that comes the question, What will you do
without me? What will become of you when I am gone into that dull
place? You know very well, grandpapa, that you cannot spare me."
The old man's frame was shaken with sobs. He put his thin hands before
his face, and the tears trickled between his fingers. Euphrosyne
caressed him, saying, "There! I knew how it would be. I knew I should
never leave you. I never will leave you. I will bring up your coffee
every morning, and light your lamp every night, as long as you live."
As she happened to be looking towards the door, she saw it opening a
little upon its noiseless hinges, and a hand which she knew to be
Pierre's beckoning to her. Her grandfather did not see it. She
withdrew herself from him with a sportive kiss, ordered him to rest for
a while, and think of nothing but her humming-birds, and carried the
tray out of the room.
Pierre was there, waiting impatiently with a note from Afra.
"I did not bring it in, Mademoiselle," said he, "because I am sure there
is something amiss. A soldier brought the note; and he says he has
orders to stay for my master's commands."