THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPÉ, CONTINUED
Bras-Coupé let the autumn pass, and wintered in his den.
Don José, in a majestic way, endeavored to be happy. He took his señora
to his hall, and under her rule it took on for a while a look and
feeling which turned it from a hunting-lodge into a home. Wherever the
lady's steps turned--or it is as correct to say wherever the proud tread
of Palmyre turned--the features of bachelor's-hall disappeared; guns,
dogs, oars, saddles, nets, went their way into proper banishment, and
the broad halls and lofty chambers--the floors now muffled with mats of
palmetto-leaf--no longer re-echoed the tread of a lonely master, but
breathed a redolence of flowers and a rippling murmur of
well-contented song.
But the song was not from the throat of Bras-Coupé's "_piti zozo_."
Silent and severe by day, she moaned away whole nights heaping
reproaches upon herself for the impulse--now to her, because it had
failed, inexplicable in its folly--which had permitted her hand to lie
in Bras-Coupé's and the priest to bind them together.
For in the audacity of her pride, or, as Agricola would have said, in
the immensity of her impudence, she had held herself consecrate to a
hopeless love. But now she was a black man's wife! and even he unable
to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she had hoped to teach him. She
had heard of San Domingo; for months the fierce heart within her silent
bosom had been leaping and shouting and seeing visions of fire and
blood, and when she brooded over the nearness of Agricola and the
remoteness of Honoré these visions got from her a sort of mad consent.
The lesson she would have taught the giant was Insurrection. But it was
too late. Letting her dagger sleep in her bosom, and with an undefined
belief in imaginary resources, she had consented to join hands with her
giant hero before the priest; and when the wedding had come and gone
like a white sail, she was seized with a lasting, fierce despair. A wild
aggressiveness that had formerly characterized her glance in moments of
anger--moments which had grown more and more infrequent under the
softening influence of her Mademoiselle's nature--now came back
intensified, and blazed in her eye perpetually. Whatever her secret love
may have been in kind, its sinking beyond hope below the horizon had
left her fifty times the mutineer she had been before--the mutineer who
has nothing to lose.
"She loves her _candio_" said the negroes.
"Simple creatures!" said the overseer, who prided himself on his
discernment, "she loves nothing; she hates Agricola; it's a case of hate
at first sight--the strongest kind."
Both were partly right; her feelings were wonderfully knit to the
African; and she now dedicated herself to Agricola's ruin.
The señor, it has been said, endeavored to be happy; but now his heart
conceived and brought forth its first-born fear, sired by
superstition--the fear that he was bewitched. The negroes said that
Bras-Coupé had cursed the land. Morning after morning the master looked
out with apprehension toward the fields, until one night the worm came
upon the indigo, and between sunset and sunrise every green leaf had
been eaten up and there was nothing left for either insect or
apprehension to feed upon.
And then he said--and the echo came back from the Cannes Brulées--that
the very bottom culpability of this thing rested on the Grandissimes,
and specifically on their fugleman Agricola, through his putting the
hellish African upon him. Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown
before, fell upon his slaves. Those to whom life was spared--but to whom
strength did not return--wandered about the place like scarecrows,
looking for shelter, and made the very air dismal with the reiteration,
"_No' ouanga_ (we are bewitched), _Bras-Coupé fé moi des grigis_ (the
voudou's spells are on me)." The ripple of song was hushed and the
flowers fell upon the floor.
"I have heard an English maxim," wrote Colonel De Grapion to his
kinsman, "which I would recommend you to put into practice--'Fight the
devil with fire.'"
No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents.
But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one?
No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch Bras-Coupé, why, let him
go. The overseer tried the hounds once more and came home with the best
one across his saddle-bow, an arrow run half through its side.
Once the blacks attempted by certain familiar rum-pourings and nocturnal
charm-singing to lift the curse; but the moment the master heard the
wild monotone of their infernal worship, he stopped it with a word.
Early in February came the spring, and with it some resurrection of hope
and courage. It may have been--it certainly was, in part--because young
Honoré Grandissime had returned. He was like the sun's warmth wherever
he went; and the other Honoré was like his shadow. The fairer one
quickly saw the meaning of these things, hastened to cheer the young don
with hopes of a better future, and to effect, if he could, the
restoration of Bras-Coupé to his master's favor. But this latter effort
was an idle one. He had long sittings with his uncle Agricola to the
same end, but they always ended fruitless and often angrily.
His dark half-brother had seen Palmyre and loved her. Honoré would
gladly have solved one or two riddles by effecting their honorable union
in marriage. The previous ceremony on the Grandissime back piazza need
be no impediment; all slave-owners understood those things. Following
Honoré's advice, the f.m.c., who had come into possession of his
paternal portion, sent to Cannes Brulées a written offer, to buy Palmyre
at any price that her master might name, stating his intention to free
her and make her his wife. Colonel De Grapion could hardly hope to
settle Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an
opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung
over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He
referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up
to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the planter of the
Cannes Brulées.
But the idea of retreat had left Citizen Fusilier.
"She is already married," said he to M. Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c. "She
is the lawful wife of Bras-Coupé; and what God has joined together let
no man put asunder. You know it, sirrah. You did this for impudence, to
make a show of your wealth. You intended it as an insinuation of
equality. I overlook the impertinence for the sake of the man whose
white blood you carry; but h-mark you, if ever you bring your Parisian
airs and self-sufficient face on a level with mine again, h-I will
slap it."
The quadroon, three nights after, was so indiscreet as to give him the
opportunity, and he did it--at that quadroon ball to which Dr. Keene
alluded in talking to Frowenfeld.
But Don José, we say, plucked up new spirit..
"Last year's disasters were but fortune's freaks," he said. "See,
others' crops have failed all about us."
The overseer shook his head.
"_C'est ce maudit cocodri' là bas_ (It is that accursed alligator,
Bras-Coupé, down yonder in the swamp)."
And by and by the master was again smitten with the same belief. He and
his neighbors put in their crops afresh. The spring waned, summer
passed, the fevers returned, the year wore round, but no harvest smiled.
"Alas!" cried the planters, "we are all poor men!" The worst among the
worst were the fields of Bras-Coupé's master--parched and shrivelled.
"He does not understand planting," said his neighbors; "neither does his
overseer. Maybe, too, it is true as he says, that he is voudoued."
One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever.
The third noon after--the sad wife sitting by the bedside--suddenly,
right in the centre of the room, with the door open behind him, stood
the magnificent, half-nude form of Bras-Coupé. He did not fall down as
the mistress's eyes met his, though all his flesh quivered. The master
was lying with his eyes closed. The fever had done a fearful three
days' work.
"_Mioko-Koanga oulé so' femme_ (Bras-Coupé wants his wife)."
The master started wildly and stared upon his slave.
"_Bras-Coupé oulé so' femme_!" repeated the black.
"Seize him!" cried the sick man, trying to rise.
But, though several servants had ventured in with frightened faces, none
dared molest the giant. The master turned his entreating eyes upon his
wife, but she seemed stunned, and only covered her face with her hands
and sat as if paralyzed by a foreknowledge of what was coming.
Bras-Coupé lifted his great black palm and commenced:
"_Mo cé voudrai que la maison ci là, et tout ça qui pas femme' ici,
s'raient encore maudits_! (May this house, and all in it who are not
women, be accursed)."
The master fell back upon his pillow with a groan of helpless wrath.
The African pointed his finger through the open window.
"May its fields not know the plough nor nourish the herds that overrun
it."
The domestics, who had thus far stood their ground, suddenly rushed from
the room like stampeded cattle, and at that moment appeared Palmyre.
"Speak to him," faintly cried the panting invalid.
She went firmly up to her husband and lifted her hand. With an easy
motion, but quick as lightning, as a lion sets foot on a dog, he caught
her by the arm.
"_Bras-Coupé oulé so' femme_," he said, and just then Palmyre would have
gone with him to the equator.
"You shall not have her!" gasped the master.
The African seemed to rise in height, and still holding his wife at
arm's length, resumed his malediction:
"May weeds cover the ground until the air is full of their odor and the
wild beasts of the forest come and lie down under their cover."
With a frantic effort the master lifted himself upon his elbow and
extended his clenched fist in speechless defiance; but his brain reeled,
his sight went out, and when again he saw, Palmyre and her mistress were
bending over him, the overseer stood awkwardly by, and Bras-Coupé
was gone.
The plantation became an invalid camp. The words of the voudou found
fulfilment on every side. The plough went not out; the herds wandered
through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones
and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and
throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room--rag-weed,
smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed--until the burning skies of
midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank
and dingy flowers.
"Why in the name of--St. Francis," asked the priest of the overseer,
"didn't the señora use her power over the black scoundrel when he stood
and cursed, that day?"
"Why, to tell you the truth, father," said the overseer, in a discreet
whisper, "I can only suppose she thought Bras-Coupé had half a right
to do it."
"Ah, ah, I see; like her brother Honoré--looks at both sides of a
question--a miserable practice; but why couldn't Palmyre use _her_ eyes?
They would have stopped him."
"Palmyre? Why Palmyre has become the best _monture_ (Plutonian medium)
in the parish. Agricola Fusilier himself is afraid of her. Sir, I think
sometimes Bras-Coupé is dead and his spirit has gone into Palmyre. She
would rather add to his curse than take from it."
"Ah!" said the jovial divine, with a fat smile, "castigation would help
her case; the whip is a great sanctifier. I fancy it would even make a
Christian of the inexpugnable Bras-Coupé."
But Bras-Coupé kept beyond the reach alike of the lash and of the Latin
Bible.
By and by came a man with a rumor, whom the overseer brought to the
master's sick-room, to tell that an enterprising Frenchman was
attempting to produce a new staple in Louisiana, one that worms would
not annihilate. It was that year of history when the despairing planters
saw ruin hovering so close over them that they cried to heaven for
succor. Providence raised up Étienne de Boré. "And if Étienne is
successful," cried the news-bearer, "and gets the juice of the
sugar-cane to crystallize, so shall all of us, after him, and shall yet
save our lands and homes. Oh, Señor, it will make you strong again to
see these fields all cane and the long rows of negroes and negresses
cutting it, while they sing their song of those droll African numerals,
counting the canes they cut," and the bearer of good tidings sang them
for very joy:
[Illustration: music]
An-o-qué, An-o-bia, Bia-tail-la, Qué-re-qué, Nal-le-oua,
Au-mon-dé, Au-tap-o-té, Au-pé-to-té, Au-qué-ré-qué, Bo.
"And Honoré Grandissime is going to introduce it on his lands," said Don
José.
"That is true," said Agricola Fusilier, coming in. Honoré, the
indefatigable peacemaker, had brought his uncle and his brother-in-law
for the moment not only to speaking, but to friendly, terms.
The señor smiled.
"I have some good tidings, too," he said; "my beloved lady has borne me
a son."
"Another scion of the house of Grand--I mean Martinez!" exclaimed
Agricola. "And now, Don José, let me say that _I_ have an item of rare
intelligence!"
The don lifted his feeble head and opened his inquiring eyes with a
sudden, savage light in them.
"No," said Agricola, "he is not exactly taken yet, but they are on his
track."
"Who?"
"The police. We may say he is virtually in our grasp."
* * * * *
It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having just played
a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game being about to
end between the white champions of two rival faubourgs, the beating of
tom-toms, rattling of mules' jawbones and sounding of wooden horns drew
the populace across the fields to a spot whose present name of Congo
Square still preserves a reminder of its old barbaric pastimes. On a
grassy plain under the ramparts, the performers of these hideous
discords sat upon the ground facing each other, and in their midst the
dancers danced. They gyrated in couples, a few at a time, throwing their
bodies into the most startling attitudes and the wildest contortions,
while the whole company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the
weird music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed
in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in time
with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting, in that
wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten, the
unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with their
ejaculatory burdens of "_Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!_" and "_Aie Calinda!
Dancé Calinda!_" The volume of sound rose and fell with the augmentation
or diminution of the dancers' extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and
supple, bounding into the ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers
and trumpeters; now a wearied dancer, finding his strength going,
gathered all his force at the cry of "_Dancé zisqu'a mort!_" rallied to
a grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at
the mouth.
The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been lugged
out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the enthusiasm had
risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring the blackest of
black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches of "Indienne"--the
stuff used for slave women's best dresses--jingling with bells, his feet
in moccasins, his tight, crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace
of alligator's teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined
about his neck.
It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent
there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from
a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside,
faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with
which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally
leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head,
the multitude howled with rapture.
Ill-starred Bras-Coupé. He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible
condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as
"drunk again."
By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some
design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the
woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had
interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gazed
upon, and then distinctly recognized, his whilom driver. Five minutes
later the Spanish police were putting their heads together to devise a
quick and permanent capture; and in the midst of the sixth minute, as
the wonderful fellow was rising in a yet more astounding leap than his
last, a lasso fell about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt
tree, face upward upon the turf.
"The runaway slave," said the old French code, continued in force by the
Spaniards, "the runaway slave who shall continue to be so for one month
from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice shall
have his ears cut off and shall be branded with the flower de luce on
the shoulder; and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in
during one month of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be
marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third
offence he shall die." Bras-Coupé had run away only twice. "But," said
Agricola, "these 'bossals' must be taught their place. Besides, there is
Article 27 of the same code: 'The slave who, having struck his master,
shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital punishment'--a very
necessary law!" He concluded with a scowl upon Palmyre, who shot back a
glance which he never forgot.
The Spaniard showed himself very merciful--for a Spaniard; he spared the
captive's life. He might have been more merciful still; but Honoré
Grandissime said some indignant things in the African's favor, and as
much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as to punish the runaway, he
would have repented his clemency, as he repented the momentary truce
with Agricola, but for the tearful pleading of the señora and the hot,
dry eyes of her maid. Because of these he overlooked the offence against
his person and estate, and delivered Bras-Coupé to the law to suffer
only the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by
attempting to be a free man.
We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for Bras-Coupé.
But what it cost her to make that intercession, knowing that his death
would leave her free, and that if he lived she must be his wife, let us
not attempt to say.
In the midst of the ancient town, in a part which is now crumbling away,
stood the Calaboza, with its humid vaults and grated cells, its iron
cages and its whips; and there, soon enough, they strapped Bras-Coupé
face downward and laid on the lash. And yet not a sound came from the
mutilated but unconquered African to annoy the ear of the sleeping city.
("And you suffered this thing to take place?" asked Joseph Frowenfeld of
Honoré Grandissime.
"My-de'-seh!" exclaimed the Creole, "they lied to me--said they would
not harm him!")
He was brought at sunrise to the plantation. The air was sweet with the
smell of the weed-grown fields. The long-horned oxen that drew him and
the naked boy that drove the team stopped before his cabin.
"You cannot put that creature in there," said the thoughtful overseer.
"He would suffocate under a roof--he has been too long out-of-doors for
that. Put him on my cottage porch." There, at last, Palmyre burst into
tears and sank down, while before her, on a soft bed of dry grass,
rested the helpless form of the captive giant, a cloth thrown over his
galled back, his ears shorn from his head, and the tendons behind his
knees severed. His eyes were dry, but there was in them that unspeakable
despair that fills the eye of the charger when, fallen in battle, he
gazes with sidewise-bended neck on the ruin wrought upon him. His eye
turned sometimes slowly to his wife. He need not demand her now--she was
always by him.
There was much talk over him--much idle talk. He merely lay still under
it with a fixed frown; but once some incautious tongue dropped the name
of Agricola. The black man's eyes came so quickly round to Palmyre that
she thought he would speak; but no; his words were all in his eyes. She
answered their gleam with a fierce affirmative glance, whereupon he
slowly bent his head and spat upon the floor.
There was yet one more trial of his wild nature. The mandate came from
his master's sick-bed that he must lift the curse.
Bras-Coupé merely smiled. God keep thy enemy from such a smile!
The overseer, with a policy less Spanish than his master's, endeavored
to use persuasion. But the fallen prince would not so much as turn one
glance from his parted hamstrings. Palmyre was then besought to
intercede. She made one poor attempt, but her husband was nearer doing
her an unkindness than ever he had been before; he made a slow sign for
silence--with his fist; and every mouth was stopped.
At midnight following, there came, on the breeze that blew from the
mansion, a sound of running here and there, of wailing and
sobbing--another Bridegroom was coming, and the Spaniard, with much such
a lamp in hand as most of us shall be found with, neither burning
brightly nor wholly gone out, went forth to meet Him.
"Bras-Coupé," said Palmyre, next evening, speaking low in his mangled
ear, "the master is dead; he is just buried. As he was dying,
Bras-Coupé, he asked that you would forgive him."
The maimed man looked steadfastly at his wife. He had not spoken since
the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those large, clear
eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have taken refuge as in a
citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a moment, and then, like an
expiring beacon, went out.
"Is your mistress well enough by this time to venture here?" whispered
the overseer to Palmyre. "Let her come. Tell her not to fear, but to
bring the babe--in her own arms, tell her--quickly!"
The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the bed of
sweet grass and set the child within the hollow of the African's arm.
Bras-Coupé turned his gaze upon it; it smiled, its mother's smile, and
put its hand upon the runaway's face, and the first tears of
Bras-Coupé's life, the dying testimony of his humanity, gushed from his
eyes and rolled down his cheek upon the infant's hand. He laid his own
tenderly upon the babe's forehead, then removing it, waved it abroad,
inaudibly moved his lips, dropped his arm, and closed his eyes. The
curse was lifted.
"_Le pauv' dgiab'_!" said the overseer, wiping his eyes and looking
fieldward. "Palmyre, you must get the priest."
The priest came, in the identical gown in which he had appeared the
night of the two weddings. To the good father's many tender questions
Bras-Coupé turned a failing eye that gave no answers; until, at length:
"Do you know where you are going?" asked the holy man.
"Yes," answered his eyes, brightening.
"Where?"
He did not reply; he was lost in contemplation, and seemed looking far
away.
So the question was repeated.
"Do you know where you are going?"
And again the answer of the eyes. He knew.
"Where?"
The overseer at the edge of the porch, the widow with her babe, and
Palmyre and the priest bending over the dying bed, turned an eager ear
to catch the answer.
"To--" the voice failed a moment; the departing hero essayed again;
again it failed; he tried once more, lifted his hand, and with an
ecstatic, upward smile, whispered, "To--Africa"--and was gone.