CAUGHT
The fig-tree, in Louisiana, sometimes sheds its leaves while it is yet
summer. In the rear of the Grandissme mansion, about two hundred yards
northwest of it and fifty northeast of the cottage in which Agricola had
made his new abode, on the edge of the grove of which we have spoken,
stood one of these trees, whose leaves were beginning to lie thickly
upon the ground beneath it. An ancient and luxuriant hedge of
Cherokee-rose started from this tree and stretched toward the northwest
across the level country, until it merged into the green confusion of
gardened homes in the vicinity of Bayou St. Jean, or, by night, into the
common obscurity of a starlit perspective. When an unclouded moon shone
upon it, it cast a shadow as black as velvet.
Under this fig-tree, some three hours later than that at which Honoré
bade Joseph good-night, a man was stooping down and covering something
with the broad, fallen leaves.
"The moon will rise about three o'clock," thought he. "That, the hour of
universal slumber, will be, by all odds, the time most likely to bring
developments."
He was the same person who had spent the most of the day in a
blacksmith's shop in St. Louis street, superintending a piece of
smithing. Now that he seemed to have got the thing well hid, he turned
to the base of the tree and tried the security of some attachment. Yes,
it was firmly chained. He was not a robber; he was not an assassin; he
was not an officer of police; and what is more notable, seeing he was a
Louisianian, he was not a soldier nor even an ex-soldier; and this
although, under his clothing, he was encased from head to foot in a
complete suit of mail. Of steel? No. Of brass? No. It was all one
piece--_a white skin_; and on his head he wore an invisible helmet--the
name of Grandissime. As he straightened up and withdrew into the grove,
you would have recognized at once--by his thick-set, powerful frame,
clothed seemingly in black, but really, as you might guess, in blue
cottonade, by his black beard and the general look of a seafarer--a
frequent visitor at the Grandissime mansion, a country member of that
great family, one whom we saw at the _fête de grandpère_.
Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime was a man of few words, no
sentiments, short methods; materialistic, we might say; quietly
ferocious; indifferent as to means, positive as to ends, quick of
perception, sure in matters of saltpetre, a stranger at the
custom-house, and altogether--_take him right_--very much of a
gentleman. He had been, for a whole day, beset with the idea that the
way to catch a voudou was--to catch him; and as he had caught numbers of
them on both sides of the tropical and semi-tropical Atlantic, he
decided to try his skill privately on the one who--his experience told
him--was likely to visit Agricola's doorstep to-night. All things being
now prepared, he sat down at the root of a tree in the grove, where the
shadow was very dark, and seemed quite comfortable. He did not strike at
the mosquitoes; they appeared to understand that he did not wish to
trifle. Neither did his thoughts or feelings trouble him; he sat and
sharpened a small penknife on his boot.
His mind--his occasional transient meditation--was the more comfortable
because he was one of those few who had coolly and unsentimentally
allowed Honoré Grandissime to sell their lands. It continued to grow
plainer every day that the grants with which theirs were classed--grants
of old French or Spanish under-officials--were bad. Their sagacious
cousin seemed to have struck the right standard, and while those titles
which he still held on to remained unimpeached, those that he had
parted with to purchasers--as, for instance, the grant held by this
Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime--could be bought back now for half
what he had got for it. Certainly, as to that, the Capitain might well
have that quietude of mind which enabled him to find occupation in
perfecting the edge of his penknife and trimming his nails in the dark.
By and by he put up the little tool and sat looking out upon the
prospect. The time of greatest probability had not come, but the voudou
might choose not to wait for that; and so he kept watch. There was a
great stillness. The cocks had finished a round and were silent. No dog
barked. A few tiny crickets made the quiet land seem the more deserted.
Its beauties were not entirely overlooked--the innumerable host of stars
above, the twinkle of myriad fireflies on the dark earth below. Between
a quarter and a half-mile away, almost in a line with the Cherokee
hedge, was a faint rise of ground, and on it a wide-spreading live-oak.
There the keen, seaman's eye of the Capitain came to a stop, fixed upon
a spot which he had not noticed before. He kept his eye on it, and
waited for the stronger light of the moon.
Presently behind the grove at his back she rose; and almost the first
beam that passed over the tops of the trees, and stretched across the
plain, struck the object of his scrutiny. What was it? The ground, he
knew; the tree, he knew; he knew there ought to be a white paling
enclosure about the trunk of the tree: for there were buried--ah!--he
came as near laughing at himself as ever he did in his life; the
apothecary of the rue Royale had lately erected some marble headstones
there, and--
"Oh! my God!"
While Capitain Jean-Baptiste had been trying to guess what the
tombstones were, a woman had been coming toward him in the shadow of the
hedge. She was not expecting to meet him; she did not know that he was
there; she knew she had risks to run, but was ignorant of what they
were; she did not know there was anything under the fig-tree which she
so nearly and noiselessly approached. One moment her foot was lifted
above the spot where the unknown object lay with wide-stretched jaws
under the leaves, and the next, she uttered that cry of agony and
consternation which interrupted the watcher's meditation. She was caught
in a huge steel-trap.
Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime remained perfectly still. She fell, a
snarling, struggling, groaning heap, to the ground, wild with pain and
fright, and began the hopeless effort to draw the jaws of the trap apart
with her fingers.
"_Ah! bon Dieu, bon Dieu!_ Quit a-_bi-i-i-i-tin' me_! Oh! Lawd 'a'
mussy! Ow-ow-ow! lemme go! Dey go'n' to kyetch an' hang me! Oh! an' I
hain' done nutt'n' 'gainst _no_body! Ah! _bon Dieu! ein pov' vié
négresse_! Oh! Jemimy! I cyan' gid dis yeh t'ing loose--oh! m-m-m-m! An'
dey'll tra to mek out't I voudou' Mich-Agricole! An' I did n' had
nutt'n' do wid it! Oh Lawd, oh _Lawd_, you'll be mighty good ef you
lemme loose! I'm a po' nigga! Oh! dey had n' ought to mek it so
_pow_'ful!"
Hands, teeth, the free foot, the writhing body, every combination of
available forces failed to spread the savage jaws, though she strove
until hands and mouth were bleeding.
Suddenly she became silent; a thought of precaution came to her; she
lifted from the earth a burden she had dropped there, struggled to a
half-standing posture, and, with her foot still in the trap, was
endeavoring to approach the end of the hedge near by, to thrust this
burden under it, when she opened her throat in a speechless ecstasy of
fright on feeling her arm grasped by her captor.
"O-o-o-h! Lawd! o-o-oh! Lawd!" she cried, in a frantic, husky whisper,
going down upon her knees, "_Oh, Miché! pou' l'amou' du bon Dieu! Pou'
l'amou du bon Dieu ayez pitié d'ein pov' négresse! Pov' négresse,
Miché_, w'at nevva done nutt'n' to nobody on'y jis sell _calas_! I iss
comin' 'long an' step inteh dis-yeh bah-trap by acci_dent_! Ah! _Miché,
Miché_, ple-e-ease be good! _Ah! mon Dieu_!--an' de Lawd'll reward
you--'deed 'E will, _Miché_!"
"_Qui ci ça?_" asked the Capitain, sternly, stooping and grasping her
burden, which she had been trying to conceal under herself.
"Oh, Miché, don' trouble dat! Please jes tek dis yeh trap offen me--da's
all! Oh, don't, mawstah, ple-e-ease don' spill all my wash'n' t'ings!
'Tain't nutt'n' but my old dress roll' up into a ball. Oh, please--now,
you see? nutt'n' but a po' nigga's dr--_oh! fo' de love o' God, Miché
Jean-Baptiste, don' open dat ah box! Y'en a rien du tout la-dans, Miché
Jean-Baptiste; du tout, du tout_! Oh, my God! _Miché_, on'y jis teck
dis-yeh t'ing off'n my laig, ef yo' _please_, it's bit'n' me lak a
_dawg_!--if you _please, Miché_! Oh! you git kill' if you open dat ah
box, Mawse Jean-Baptiste! _Mo' parole d'honneur le plus sacre_--I'll
kiss de cross! Oh, _sweet Miché Jean, laisse moi aller_! Nutt'n' but
some dutty close _la-dans_." She repeated this again and again, even
after Capitain Jean-Baptiste had disengaged a small black coffin from
the old dress in which it was wrapped. "_Rien du tout, Miché_; nutt'n'
but some wash'n' fo' one o' de boys."
He removed the lid and saw within, resting on the cushioned bottom, the
image, in myrtle-wax, moulded and painted with some rude skill, of a
negro's bloody arm cut off near the shoulder--a _bras coupé_--with a
dirk grasped in its hand.
The old woman lifted her eyes to heaven; her teeth chattered; she gasped
twice before she could recover utterance. "_Oh, Miché_ Jean-Baptiste, I
di' n' mek dat ah! _Mo' té pas fé ça_! I swea' befo' God! Oh, no, no,
no! 'Tain' nutt'n' nohow but a lill play-toy, _Miché_. Oh, sweet _Miché
Jean_, you not gwan to kill me? I di' n' mek it! It was--ef you lemme
go, I tell you who mek it! Sho's I live I tell you, _Miché Jean_--ef you
lemme go! Sho's God's good to me--ef you lemme go! Oh, God A'mighty,
_Miché Jean_, sho's God's good to me."
She was becoming incoherent.
Then Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime for the first time spoke at
length:
"Do you see this?" he spoke the French of the Atchafalaya. He put his
long flintlock pistol close to her face. "I shall take the trap off; you
will walk three feet in front of me; if you make it four I blow your
brains out; we shall go to Agricole. But right here, just now, before I
count ten, you will tell me who sent you here; at the word ten, if I
reach it, I pull the trigger. One--two--three--"
"Oh, _Miché_, she gwan to gib me to de devil wid _houdou_ ef I tell
you--Oh, good _Lawdy_!"
But he did not pause.
"Four--five--six--seven--eight--"
"Palmyre!" gasped the negress, and grovelled on the ground.
The trap was loosened from her bleeding leg, the burden placed in her
arms, and they disappeared in the direction of the mansion.
* * * * *
A black shape, a boy, the lad who had carried the basil to Frowenfeld,
rose up from where he had all this time lain, close against the hedge,
and glided off down its black shadow to warn the philosophe.
When Clemence was searched, there was found on her person an old
table-knife with its end ground to a point.