Chapter Three.What to do!The report brought by Toussaint was astounding to his hearers, even after the preparation afforded by the events of the evening. It was clear that the negroes had everything in their own hand, and that the spirit roused in them was so fierce, so revengeful, as to leave no hope that they would use their power with moderation. The Breda estate, and every one near it, was to be ravaged when those on the north side of the plain were completely destroyed. The force assembled at Latour’s already amounted to four thousand; and no assistance could be looked for from the towns at all adequate to meet such numbers, since the persons and property of the whites, hourly accumulating in the towns as the insurrection spread, required more than all the means of protection that the colony afforded. The two gentlemen agreed, as they sat at the table covered with supper, wine, and glittering arms, that to remain was to risk their lives with no good object. It was clear that they must fly.Toussaint suggested that a quantity of sugar from the Breda estate was now at Port Paix, lying ready for shipment. There was certainly one vessel, if not more, in that port, belonging to the United States. If the gentlemen would risk the ride to the coast with him, he thought he could put them on board, and they might take with them this sugar, intended for France, but now wanted for their subsistence in their exile. Bayou saw at once that this was the best plan he could adopt. Papalier was unwilling to turn his back so soon, and so completely, on his property. Bayou was only attorney to the Breda estate, and had no one but himself to care for. Papalier was a proprietor, and he could not give up at once, and for ever, the lands which his daughters should inherit after him. He could not instantly decide upon this. He would wait some hours at least. He thought he could contrive to get into some town, or into the Spanish territory, though he might be compelled to leave the plain. He slept for this night with his arms at hand, and under the watch of Placide, who might be trusted to keep awake and listen, as his father vouched for him. Bayou was gone presently; with such little money as he happened to have in the house; and in his pockets, the gold ornaments which Toussaint’s wife insisted on his accepting, and which were not to be despised in this day of his adversity. He was sorry to take her necklace and ear-rings, which were really valuable; but she said, truly, that he had been a kind master for many years, and ought to command what they had, now that they were all in trouble together.Before the next noon, Monsieur Bayou was on board the American vessel in the harbour of Port Paix, weary and sad, but safe, with his sugar, and pocketsful of cash and gold trinkets. Before evening, Toussaint, who rode like the wind, and seemed incapable of fatigue, was cooling himself under a tamarind-tree, in a nook of the Breda estate.He was not there to rest himself, while the world seemed to be falling into chaos around him. He was there for the duty of the hour—to meet by appointment the leader of the insurgents, Jean Français, whom, till now, he had always supposed to be his friend, as far as their intercourse went, though Jean had never been so dear to him as Henri. He had not sat long, listening for sounds of approach amidst the clatter of the neighbouring palm-tree tops, whose stiff leaves struck one another as they waved in the wind, when Jean appeared from behind the mill.“You have stopped our wheel,” said Toussaint, pointing to the reeking water-mill. “It will be cracked in the sun before you can set it going again.”“Yes, we have stopped all the mills,” replied Jean. “Every stream in the colony has a holiday to-day, and may frolic as it likes. I am afraid I made you wait supper last night?”“You gave me poison, Jean. You have poisoned my trust in my friends. I watched for you as for a friend; and what were you doing the while? You were rebelling, ravaging, and murdering!”“Go on,” said Jean. “Tell me how it appears to you; and then I will tell you how it appears to me.”“It appears to me, then, that if the whites are to blame towards those who are in their power—if they have been cruel to the Ogés, and their party—if they have oppressed their negroes, as they too often have, our duty is clear—to bear and forbear, to do them good in return for their evil. To rise against them cunningly, to burn their plantations, and murder them—to do this is to throw back the gospel in the face of Him who gave it!”“But you do not understand this rising. It is not for revenge.”“Why do I not understand it. Because you knew that I should disapprove it, and kept me at home by a false appointment, that I might be out of the way. Do you say all this is not for revenge? I look at the hell you have made of this colony between night and morning, and I say that if this be not from revenge, there must be something viler than revenge in the hearts of devils and of men.”“And now, hear me,” said Jean, “for I am wanted at Latour’s, and my time is short. It was no false appointment last night. I was on my way to you, when I was stopped by some news which altered our plans in a moment, and made us rise sooner, by three days, than we expected. I was coming to tell you all, and engage you to be one of our chiefs. Have you heard that theCalypsohas put into port at the other end of the island?”“No.”“Then you do not know the news she brought. She has a royalist master, who is in no hurry to tell his news to the revolutionary whites. The king and all his family tried to escape from France in June. They were overtaken on the road, and brought back prisoners to Paris.”Toussaint, who always uncovered his head at the name of the king, now bent it low in genuine grief.“Is it not true,” said Jean, “that our masters are traitors? Do they not insult and defy the king? Would there not have been one shout of joy through all Cap last night, if this news had been brought to the deputies after dinner with their wine?”“It is true. But they would still have been less guilty than those who add ravage and murder to rebellion.”“There was no stopping the people when the messengers from theCalypsocrossed the frontier, and sent the cry, ‘Vive le Roi! et l’ancien régime,’ through the negro quarters of every estate they reached. The people were up on the Noé plantation at the word. Upon my honour, the glare of the fire was the first I knew about it. Then the spirit spread among our people, like the flames among our masters’ canes. I like murder no better than you, Toussaint; but when once slaves are up, with knife and firebrand, those may keep revenge from kindling who can—I cannot.”“At least, you need not join—you can oppose yourself to it.”“I have not joined. I have saved three or four whites this day by giving them warning. I have hidden a family in the woods, and I will die before I will tell where they are. I did what I could to persuade Gallifet’s people to let Odeluc and his soldiers turn back to Cap: and I believe they would, but for Odeluc’s obstinacy in coming among us. If he would have kept his distance, he might have been alive now. As it is—”“And is he dead?—the good Odeluc?”“There he lies; and half-a-dozen of the soldiers with him. I am sorry, for he always thought well of us; but he thrust himself into the danger. One reason of my coming here now is to say that this plantation and Arabie will be attacked to-night, and Bayou had better roost in a tree till morning.”“My master is safe.”“Safe? Where?”“On the sea.”“You have saved him. Have you—I know your love of obedience is strong—have you pledged yourself to our masters, to oppose the rising—to fight on their side?”“I give no pledges but to my conscience. And I have no party where both are wrong. The whites are revengeful, and rebel against their king; and the blacks are revengeful, and rebel against their masters.”“Did you hear anything on the coast of the arrival of theBlondefrigate from Jamaica?”“Yes; there again is more treason. The whites at Cap have implored the English to take possession of the colony. First traitors to the king, they would now join the enemies of their country. Fear not, Jean, that I would defend the treason of such; but I would not murder them.”“What do you mean to do? this very night your estate will be attacked. Your family is almost the only one remaining on it. Have you thought what you will do?”“I have; and your news only confirms my thought.”“You will not attempt to defend the plantation?”“What would my single arm do? It would provoke revenge which might otherwise sleep.”“True. Let the estate be deserted, and the gates and doors left wide, and no mischief may be done. Will you join us then?”“Join you! no! Not till your loyalty is free from stain. Not while you fight for your king with a cruelty from which your king would recoil.”“You will wait,” said Jean, sarcastically, “till we have conquered the colony for the king. That done you will avow your loyalty.”“Such is not my purpose, Jean,” replied Toussaint, quietly. “You have called me your friend; but you understand me no more than if I were your enemy. I will help to conquer the colony for the king; but it shall be to restore to him its lands as the King of kings gave them to him—not ravaged and soaked in blood, but redeemed with care, to be made fair and fruitful, as held in trust for him. I shall join the Spaniards, and fight for my king with my king’s allies.”Jean was silent, evidently struck with the thought. If he had been troubled with speculations as to what he should do with his undisciplined, half-savage forces, after the whites should have been driven to entrench themselves in the towns, it is possible that this idea of crossing the Spanish line, and putting himself and his people under the command of these allies, might be a welcome relief to his perplexity.“And your family,” said he: “will the Spaniards receive our women and children into their camp?”“I shall not ask them. I have a refuge in view for my family.”“When will you go?”“When you leave me. You will find the estate deserted this night, as you wish. The few negroes who are here will doubtless go with me; and we shall have crossed the river before morning.”“You would not object,” said Jean, “to be joined on the road by some of our negro force; on my pledge, you understand, that they will not ravage the country.”“Some too good for your present command?” said Toussaint, smiling. “I will command them on one other condition—that they will treat well any white who may happen to be with me.”“I said nothing about your commanding them,” said Jean. “If I send men I shall send officers. But whites! what whites? Did you not say Bayou was on the sea?”“I did; but there may be other whites whom I choose to protect, as you say you are doing. If, instead of hiding whites in the woods, I carry them across the frontier, what treatment may I expect for my party on the road?”“I will go with you myself, and that is promising everything,” said Jean, making a virtue of what was before a strong inclination. “Set out in two hours from this time. I will put the command of the plain into Biasson’s hands, and make a camp near the Spanish lines. The posts in that direction are weak, and the whites panic-struck, if indeed they have not all fled to the fort. Well, well,” he continued, “keep to your time, and I will join you at the cross of the four roads, three miles south of Fort Dauphin. All will be safe that far, at least.”“If not, we have some strong arms among us,” replied Toussaint. “I believe my girls (or one of them at least) would bear arms where my honour is at stake. So our king is a prisoner! and we are free! Such are the changes which Heaven sends!”“Ay, how do you feel, now you are free?” said Jean. “Did you not put your horse to a gallop when you turned your back on your old master?”“Not a word of that, Jean. Let us not think of ourselves. There is work to do for our king. He is our task-master now.”“You are in a hurry for another master,” said Jean. “I am not tired of being my own master yet.”“I wish you would make your people masters of themselves, Jean. They are not fit for power. Heaven take it from us, by putting all power into the hand of the king!”“We meet by starlight,” said Jean. “I have the business of five thousand men to arrange first; so, more of the king another time.”He leaped the nearest fence and was gone. Toussaint rose and walked away, with a countenance so serious, that Margot asked if there was bad news of Monsieur Bayou.When the family understood that the Breda estate was to be attacked this night, there was no need to hasten their preparations for departure. In the midst of the hurry, Aimée consulted Isaac about an enterprise which had occurred to her, on her father’s behalf; and the result was, that they ventured up to the house, and as far as Monsieur Bayou’s book-shelves, to bring away the volumes they had been accustomed to see their father read. This thought entered Aimée’s mind when she saw him, busy as he was, carefully pocket the Epictetus he had been reading the night before. Monsieur Papalier was reading, while Thérèse was making packages of comforts for him. He observed the boy and girl, and when he found that the books they took were for their father, he muttered over the volume he held—“Bayou was a fool to allow it. I always told him so. When our negroes get to read like so many gentlemen, no wonder the world is turned upside down.”“Do your negroes read, Monsieur Papalier?” asked Isaac.“No, indeed! not one of them.”“Where are they all, then?”Aimée put in her word.“Why do they not take care of you, as father did of Monsieur Bayou?”
The report brought by Toussaint was astounding to his hearers, even after the preparation afforded by the events of the evening. It was clear that the negroes had everything in their own hand, and that the spirit roused in them was so fierce, so revengeful, as to leave no hope that they would use their power with moderation. The Breda estate, and every one near it, was to be ravaged when those on the north side of the plain were completely destroyed. The force assembled at Latour’s already amounted to four thousand; and no assistance could be looked for from the towns at all adequate to meet such numbers, since the persons and property of the whites, hourly accumulating in the towns as the insurrection spread, required more than all the means of protection that the colony afforded. The two gentlemen agreed, as they sat at the table covered with supper, wine, and glittering arms, that to remain was to risk their lives with no good object. It was clear that they must fly.
Toussaint suggested that a quantity of sugar from the Breda estate was now at Port Paix, lying ready for shipment. There was certainly one vessel, if not more, in that port, belonging to the United States. If the gentlemen would risk the ride to the coast with him, he thought he could put them on board, and they might take with them this sugar, intended for France, but now wanted for their subsistence in their exile. Bayou saw at once that this was the best plan he could adopt. Papalier was unwilling to turn his back so soon, and so completely, on his property. Bayou was only attorney to the Breda estate, and had no one but himself to care for. Papalier was a proprietor, and he could not give up at once, and for ever, the lands which his daughters should inherit after him. He could not instantly decide upon this. He would wait some hours at least. He thought he could contrive to get into some town, or into the Spanish territory, though he might be compelled to leave the plain. He slept for this night with his arms at hand, and under the watch of Placide, who might be trusted to keep awake and listen, as his father vouched for him. Bayou was gone presently; with such little money as he happened to have in the house; and in his pockets, the gold ornaments which Toussaint’s wife insisted on his accepting, and which were not to be despised in this day of his adversity. He was sorry to take her necklace and ear-rings, which were really valuable; but she said, truly, that he had been a kind master for many years, and ought to command what they had, now that they were all in trouble together.
Before the next noon, Monsieur Bayou was on board the American vessel in the harbour of Port Paix, weary and sad, but safe, with his sugar, and pocketsful of cash and gold trinkets. Before evening, Toussaint, who rode like the wind, and seemed incapable of fatigue, was cooling himself under a tamarind-tree, in a nook of the Breda estate.
He was not there to rest himself, while the world seemed to be falling into chaos around him. He was there for the duty of the hour—to meet by appointment the leader of the insurgents, Jean Français, whom, till now, he had always supposed to be his friend, as far as their intercourse went, though Jean had never been so dear to him as Henri. He had not sat long, listening for sounds of approach amidst the clatter of the neighbouring palm-tree tops, whose stiff leaves struck one another as they waved in the wind, when Jean appeared from behind the mill.
“You have stopped our wheel,” said Toussaint, pointing to the reeking water-mill. “It will be cracked in the sun before you can set it going again.”
“Yes, we have stopped all the mills,” replied Jean. “Every stream in the colony has a holiday to-day, and may frolic as it likes. I am afraid I made you wait supper last night?”
“You gave me poison, Jean. You have poisoned my trust in my friends. I watched for you as for a friend; and what were you doing the while? You were rebelling, ravaging, and murdering!”
“Go on,” said Jean. “Tell me how it appears to you; and then I will tell you how it appears to me.”
“It appears to me, then, that if the whites are to blame towards those who are in their power—if they have been cruel to the Ogés, and their party—if they have oppressed their negroes, as they too often have, our duty is clear—to bear and forbear, to do them good in return for their evil. To rise against them cunningly, to burn their plantations, and murder them—to do this is to throw back the gospel in the face of Him who gave it!”
“But you do not understand this rising. It is not for revenge.”
“Why do I not understand it. Because you knew that I should disapprove it, and kept me at home by a false appointment, that I might be out of the way. Do you say all this is not for revenge? I look at the hell you have made of this colony between night and morning, and I say that if this be not from revenge, there must be something viler than revenge in the hearts of devils and of men.”
“And now, hear me,” said Jean, “for I am wanted at Latour’s, and my time is short. It was no false appointment last night. I was on my way to you, when I was stopped by some news which altered our plans in a moment, and made us rise sooner, by three days, than we expected. I was coming to tell you all, and engage you to be one of our chiefs. Have you heard that theCalypsohas put into port at the other end of the island?”
“No.”
“Then you do not know the news she brought. She has a royalist master, who is in no hurry to tell his news to the revolutionary whites. The king and all his family tried to escape from France in June. They were overtaken on the road, and brought back prisoners to Paris.”
Toussaint, who always uncovered his head at the name of the king, now bent it low in genuine grief.
“Is it not true,” said Jean, “that our masters are traitors? Do they not insult and defy the king? Would there not have been one shout of joy through all Cap last night, if this news had been brought to the deputies after dinner with their wine?”
“It is true. But they would still have been less guilty than those who add ravage and murder to rebellion.”
“There was no stopping the people when the messengers from theCalypsocrossed the frontier, and sent the cry, ‘Vive le Roi! et l’ancien régime,’ through the negro quarters of every estate they reached. The people were up on the Noé plantation at the word. Upon my honour, the glare of the fire was the first I knew about it. Then the spirit spread among our people, like the flames among our masters’ canes. I like murder no better than you, Toussaint; but when once slaves are up, with knife and firebrand, those may keep revenge from kindling who can—I cannot.”
“At least, you need not join—you can oppose yourself to it.”
“I have not joined. I have saved three or four whites this day by giving them warning. I have hidden a family in the woods, and I will die before I will tell where they are. I did what I could to persuade Gallifet’s people to let Odeluc and his soldiers turn back to Cap: and I believe they would, but for Odeluc’s obstinacy in coming among us. If he would have kept his distance, he might have been alive now. As it is—”
“And is he dead?—the good Odeluc?”
“There he lies; and half-a-dozen of the soldiers with him. I am sorry, for he always thought well of us; but he thrust himself into the danger. One reason of my coming here now is to say that this plantation and Arabie will be attacked to-night, and Bayou had better roost in a tree till morning.”
“My master is safe.”
“Safe? Where?”
“On the sea.”
“You have saved him. Have you—I know your love of obedience is strong—have you pledged yourself to our masters, to oppose the rising—to fight on their side?”
“I give no pledges but to my conscience. And I have no party where both are wrong. The whites are revengeful, and rebel against their king; and the blacks are revengeful, and rebel against their masters.”
“Did you hear anything on the coast of the arrival of theBlondefrigate from Jamaica?”
“Yes; there again is more treason. The whites at Cap have implored the English to take possession of the colony. First traitors to the king, they would now join the enemies of their country. Fear not, Jean, that I would defend the treason of such; but I would not murder them.”
“What do you mean to do? this very night your estate will be attacked. Your family is almost the only one remaining on it. Have you thought what you will do?”
“I have; and your news only confirms my thought.”
“You will not attempt to defend the plantation?”
“What would my single arm do? It would provoke revenge which might otherwise sleep.”
“True. Let the estate be deserted, and the gates and doors left wide, and no mischief may be done. Will you join us then?”
“Join you! no! Not till your loyalty is free from stain. Not while you fight for your king with a cruelty from which your king would recoil.”
“You will wait,” said Jean, sarcastically, “till we have conquered the colony for the king. That done you will avow your loyalty.”
“Such is not my purpose, Jean,” replied Toussaint, quietly. “You have called me your friend; but you understand me no more than if I were your enemy. I will help to conquer the colony for the king; but it shall be to restore to him its lands as the King of kings gave them to him—not ravaged and soaked in blood, but redeemed with care, to be made fair and fruitful, as held in trust for him. I shall join the Spaniards, and fight for my king with my king’s allies.”
Jean was silent, evidently struck with the thought. If he had been troubled with speculations as to what he should do with his undisciplined, half-savage forces, after the whites should have been driven to entrench themselves in the towns, it is possible that this idea of crossing the Spanish line, and putting himself and his people under the command of these allies, might be a welcome relief to his perplexity.
“And your family,” said he: “will the Spaniards receive our women and children into their camp?”
“I shall not ask them. I have a refuge in view for my family.”
“When will you go?”
“When you leave me. You will find the estate deserted this night, as you wish. The few negroes who are here will doubtless go with me; and we shall have crossed the river before morning.”
“You would not object,” said Jean, “to be joined on the road by some of our negro force; on my pledge, you understand, that they will not ravage the country.”
“Some too good for your present command?” said Toussaint, smiling. “I will command them on one other condition—that they will treat well any white who may happen to be with me.”
“I said nothing about your commanding them,” said Jean. “If I send men I shall send officers. But whites! what whites? Did you not say Bayou was on the sea?”
“I did; but there may be other whites whom I choose to protect, as you say you are doing. If, instead of hiding whites in the woods, I carry them across the frontier, what treatment may I expect for my party on the road?”
“I will go with you myself, and that is promising everything,” said Jean, making a virtue of what was before a strong inclination. “Set out in two hours from this time. I will put the command of the plain into Biasson’s hands, and make a camp near the Spanish lines. The posts in that direction are weak, and the whites panic-struck, if indeed they have not all fled to the fort. Well, well,” he continued, “keep to your time, and I will join you at the cross of the four roads, three miles south of Fort Dauphin. All will be safe that far, at least.”
“If not, we have some strong arms among us,” replied Toussaint. “I believe my girls (or one of them at least) would bear arms where my honour is at stake. So our king is a prisoner! and we are free! Such are the changes which Heaven sends!”
“Ay, how do you feel, now you are free?” said Jean. “Did you not put your horse to a gallop when you turned your back on your old master?”
“Not a word of that, Jean. Let us not think of ourselves. There is work to do for our king. He is our task-master now.”
“You are in a hurry for another master,” said Jean. “I am not tired of being my own master yet.”
“I wish you would make your people masters of themselves, Jean. They are not fit for power. Heaven take it from us, by putting all power into the hand of the king!”
“We meet by starlight,” said Jean. “I have the business of five thousand men to arrange first; so, more of the king another time.”
He leaped the nearest fence and was gone. Toussaint rose and walked away, with a countenance so serious, that Margot asked if there was bad news of Monsieur Bayou.
When the family understood that the Breda estate was to be attacked this night, there was no need to hasten their preparations for departure. In the midst of the hurry, Aimée consulted Isaac about an enterprise which had occurred to her, on her father’s behalf; and the result was, that they ventured up to the house, and as far as Monsieur Bayou’s book-shelves, to bring away the volumes they had been accustomed to see their father read. This thought entered Aimée’s mind when she saw him, busy as he was, carefully pocket the Epictetus he had been reading the night before. Monsieur Papalier was reading, while Thérèse was making packages of comforts for him. He observed the boy and girl, and when he found that the books they took were for their father, he muttered over the volume he held—
“Bayou was a fool to allow it. I always told him so. When our negroes get to read like so many gentlemen, no wonder the world is turned upside down.”
“Do your negroes read, Monsieur Papalier?” asked Isaac.
“No, indeed! not one of them.”
“Where are they all, then?”
Aimée put in her word.
“Why do they not take care of you, as father did of Monsieur Bayou?”
Chapter Four.Whither Away?Monsieur Papalier did not much relish the idea of roosting in a tree for the night; especially as, on coming down in the morning, there would be no friend or helper near, to care for or minister to him. Habitually and thoroughly as he despised the negroes, he preferred travelling in their company to hiding among the monkeys; and he therefore decided at once to do as Toussaint concluded he would—accompany him to the Spanish frontier.The river Massacre, the boundary at the north between the French and Spanish portions of the island, was about thirty miles distant from Breda. These thirty miles must be traversed between sunset and sunrise. Three or four horses, and two mules which were left on the plantation, were sufficient for the conveyance of the women, boys, and girls; and Placide ran, of his own accord, to Monsieur Papalier’s deserted stables, and brought thence a saddled horse for the gentleman, who was less able than the women to walk thirty miles in the course of a tropical summer’s night.“What will your Spanish friends think of our bringing so many women and children to their post?” said Papalier to Toussaint, as soon as they were on their way. “They will not think you worth having, with all the incumbrances you carry.”“I shall carry none,” said Toussaint.“What do you mean to do with your wife and children?”“I shall put them in a safe place by the way. For your own sake, Monsieur Papalier, I must ask you what you mean to do in the Spanish post—republican as you are. You know the Spaniards are allies of the king of France.”“They are allies of France, and will doubtless receive any honourable French gentleman,” said Papalier confidently, though Toussaint’s question only echoed a doubt which he had already spoken to himself. “You are acting so like a friend to me here, Toussaint, that I cannot suppose you will do me mischief there, by any idle tales about the past.”“I will not; but I hear that the Marquis d’Hermona knows the politics of every gentleman in the colony. If there have been any tales abroad of speeches of yours against the king, or threats, or acts of rebellion, the Marquis d’Hermona knows them all.”“I have taken less part in politics than most of my neighbours; and Hermona knows that, if he knows the rest. But what shall I do with Thérèse, if your women stop short on the way? Could you make room for her with them?”“Not with them, but—”“My good fellow, this is no time for fancies. I am sorry to see you set your girls above their condition and their neighbours. There is no harm about poor Thérèse. Indeed, she is very well educated; I have had her well taught; and they might learn many things from her, if you really wish them to be superior. She is not a bit the worse for being a favourite of mine; and it will be their turn soon to be somebody’s favourites, you know. And that before long, depend upon it,” he continued, turning on his saddle to look for Génifrède and Aimée. “They are fine girls,—very fine girls for their age.”When he turned again, Toussaint was no longer beside his horse. He was at the head of the march.“What a sulky fellow he is!” muttered the planter, with a smile. “The airs of these people are curious enough. They take upon them to despise Thérèse, who has more beauty than all his tribe, and almost as much education as the learned Toussaint himself.”He called to the sulky fellow, however, and the sulky fellow came. What Papalier wanted to say was—“You seem to know more of these Spaniards than I. What will become of Thérèse, if I take her among them; which, you see, you oblige me to do?”“I proposed to her,” said Toussaint, “to leave her with some of our people near Fort Dauphin.”“Fort Égalité, you mean. That is its present name, you know. So you asked her! Why did you not speak to me about it? It is my affair, not hers.”“I thought it her affair. She will not remain behind, however. She begged me to say nothing to you about her leaving you.”“Indeed! I will soon settle that.” And the planter immediately overtook the horse on which sat Thérèse, with her infant on her arm. Thérèse smiled as she saw him coming; but the first few words he said to her covered her face with tears. Blinded by these tears, she guided her horse among the tough aloes which grew along the border of the bridle-path, and the animal stumbled, nearly jerking the infant from her arms. Her master let her get over the difficulty as she might, while he rode on in the midst of the green track.Placide disdained to ride. He strode along, singing in a low voice, with a package on his shoulders, and his path marked by the fireflies, which new round his head, or settled on his woollen cap. Isaac had made Aimée happy by getting on her mule. Génifrède heard from the direction in which they were, sometimes smothered laughter, but, for the most part, a never-ending, low murmur of voices, as if they were telling one another interminable stories. Génifrède never could make out what Isaac and Aimée could be for ever talking about. She wondered that they could talk now, when every monkey-voice from the wood, every click of a frog from the ponds, every buzz of insects from the citron-hedge, struck fear into her. She did not ask Placide to walk beside her horse; but she kept near that on which her mother rode, behind Denis, who held a cart-whip, which he was forbidden to crack—an accomplishment which he had learned from the driver of the plantation.It soon became clear that Jean had made active use of the hours since he parted from Toussaint. He must have sent messengers in many directions; for, from beneath the shadow of every cacao grove, from under the branches of many a clump of bamboos, from the recess of a ravine here—from the mouth of a green road there, beside the brawling brook, or from their couch among the canes, appeared negroes, singly or in groups, ready to join the travelling party. Among all these, there were no women and children. They had been safely bestowed somewhere; and these men now regarded themselves as soldiers, going to the camp of the allies, to serve against their old masters on behalf of the king. “Vive le Roi, et l’ancien régime!” was the word as each detachment joined—a word most irritating to Papalier, who thought to himself many times during this night, that he would have put all to hazard on his own estate, rather than have undertaken this march, if he had known that he was to be one of a company of negroes, gathering like the tempest in its progress, and uttering at every turning, as if in mockery of himself, “Vive le Roi, et l’ancien régime!” He grewverycross, while quite sensible of the necessity of appearing in a good mood to every one—except, indeed, poor Thérèse.“We are free—this is freedom!” said Toussaint more than once as he laid his hand on the bridle of his wife’s horse, and seemed incapable, of uttering any other words. He looked up at the towering trees, as if measuring with his eye the columnar palms, which appeared to those in their shade as if crowned with stars. He glanced into the forest with an eye which, to Margot, appeared as if it could pierce through darkness itself. He raised his face in the direction of the central mountain-peaks, round which the white lightning was exploding from moment to moment; and Margot saw that tears were streaming on his face—the first tears she had known him shed for years. “We are free—this is freedom!” he repeated, as he took off his cap; “but, thank God! we have the king for our master now.”“You will come and see us,” said she. “We shall see you sometimes while you are serving the king.”“Yes.” He was called away by another accession of numbers, a party of four who ran down among them from a mountain path. Toussaint brushed away his unwonted tears, and went forward, hearing a well-known voice inquire for Toussaint Breda.“Here I am, Jacques!” he exclaimed in some surprise, as he addressed himself to a short, stout-built young negro. “You are the first townsman among us, Jacques. Where is old Dessalines?”“Here is my master,” said Jacques.“Not the better for being a master,” said the old tiler, who was himself a negro. “I found myself no safer than Jacques in the town; so I came away with him, and we have been among the rocks all day, tired enough.”“Have not you a horse for him?” asked Jacques. Toussaint stepped back, to desire Aimée and Isaac to give up their mule to Dessalines; but before it was done, Dessalines was mounted on Papalier’s horse. Jacques had told Papalier, on finding that he had not been walking at all, that his horse was wanted, and Papalier had felt all the danger of refusing to yield it up. He was walking moodily by the side of Thérèse, when Toussaint offered him the mule, which he haughtily declined.When Dessalines was mounted, Jacques came running forward to Toussaint, to ask and to tell much concerning their singular circumstances.“Your party is too noisy,” said he. “The whole country is up; and I saw, not far-off, two hours ago, a party that were bringing ammunition from Cap. There may be more; and, if we fall in their way, with a white in company—”“True, true.” And Toussaint turned back to command silence. He told every one that the safety of all might depend on the utmost possible degree of quietness being observed. He separated Isaac from Aimée, as the only way of obtaining silence from them, and warned the merry blacks in the rear that they must be still as death. He and Jacques, however, exchanged a few more words in a low whisper, as they kept in advance of the party.“How do they get ammunition from Cap?” asked Toussaint. “Have they a party in the town? I thought the town negroes had been sent on board ship.”“The suspected ones are. They are the silly and the harmless who have still wit and mischief enough to give out powder and ball slyly for the plantation negroes. Once over the river, what will you do with your party?”“My wife and children will be safe with my brother Paul—you know he fishes on the coast, opposite the Seven Brothers. I shall enter the Spanish ranks; and every one else here will do as he thinks proper.”“Do not you call yourself a commander, then! Why do you not call us your regiment, and take the command as a matter of course, as Jean has done?”“If it is desired, I am ready. Hark!”There was evidently a party at some distance, numerous and somewhat noisy, and on the approach from behind. Toussaint halted his party, quickly whispered his directions, and withdrew them with all speed and quietness within the black shade of a cacao-plantation, on the left of the road. They had to climb an ascent; but there they found a green recess, so canopied with interwoven branches that no light could enter from the stars, and so hedged in by the cacao plants, growing twelve feet high among the trees, that the party could hardly have been seen from the road in broad daylight. There they stood crowded together in utter darkness and stillness, unless, as Génifrède feared, the beating of her heart might be heard above the hum of the mosquito, or the occasional rustle of the foliage.The approaching troop came on, tramping, and sometimes singing and shouting. Those in the covert knew not whether most to dread a shouting which should agitate their horses, or a silence which might betray a movement on their part. This last seemed the most probable. The noise subsided; and when the troop was close at hand, only a stray voice or two was singing. They had with them two or three trucks, drawn by men, on which were piled barrels of ammunition. They were now very near. Whether it was that Thérèse, in fear of her infant crying, pressed it so close to her bosom as to awaken it, or whether the rumbling and tramping along the road roused its sleeping ear—the child stirred, and began what promised to be a long shrill wawl, if it had not been stopped. How it was stopped, the trembling, sickening mother herself did not know. She only knew that a strong hand wrenched the child from her grasp in the black darkness, and that all was still, unless, as she then and ever after had a shuddering apprehension, there was something of a slight gurgle which reached her strained ear. Her own involuntary moan was stopped almost before it became a sound—stopped by a tap on the shoulder, whose authoritative touch she well knew.No one else stirred for long after the troop had passed. Then Toussaint led his wife’s horse down into the road again, and the party resumed their march as if nothing had happened.“My child!” said Thérèse, fearfully. “Give me my child!” She looked about, and saw that no one seemed to have the infant.“I will not let it cry,” she said. “Give me back my child!”“What is it?” asked Papalier, coming beside her horse. She told her grief, as she prepared to spring down.“No, keep your seat! Don’t get down,” said he, in a tone she dared not disobey. “I will inquire for the child.”He went away, and returned—without it. “This is a sad thing,” said he, leading her horse forward with the rest. “No one knows anything about the poor thing. Why did you let it go?”“Have you asked them all? Who snatched it from me? Oh, ask who took it! Let me look for it. I will—I will—”“It is too late now. We cannot stop or turn back. These sad accidents will happen at such times.”“Leave me behind—oh, leave me in the wood! I can follow when I have found it. Leave me behind!”“I cannot spare you, my dear. I should never see you again; and I cannot spare you. It is sad enough to have lost the child.”“It was your child,” said she, pleadingly.“And you are mine too, my dear. I cannot spare you both.”Thérèse had never felt before. All that had moved her during her yet short life—all emotions in one were nothing to the passion of this moment—the conditional hatred that swelled her soul; conditional—for, from moment to moment, she believed and disbelieved that Papalier had destroyed her child. The thought sometimes occurred that he was not the only cruel one. No one seemed to pity or care for her—not even Margot or the girls came near her. She more than once was about to seek and appeal to them; but her master held her bridle, and would not permit her to stop or turn, saying occasionally that the lives of all depended on perfect quiet and order in the march. When they arrived at the cross, at the junction of the four roads, they halted, and there she told her story, and was convinced that the grieved women knew nothing of her loss till that moment. It was too late now for anything but compassion.Jean Français soon appeared with a troop so numerous, that all necessity for caution and quiet was over. They could hardly meet an equal force during the remainder of the march, and might safely make the forests and ravines echo to their progress. Jean took off his cocked hat in saluting Toussaint, and commended his punctuality and his arrangements.“Jean always admires what my husband does,” observed Margot to her acquaintance Jacques. “You hear how he is praising him for what he has done to-night.”“To be sure. Everybody praises Toussaint Breda,” replied Jacques.The wife laughed with delight.“Everybody praises him but me,” pursued Jacques. “I find fault with him sometimes; and to-night particularly.”“Then you are wrong, Jacques. You know you have everybody against you.”“Time will show that I am right. Time will show the mischief of sending away any whites to do us harm in far countries.”“Oh, you do not blame him for helping away Monsieur Bayou!”“Yes, I do.”“Why, we have been under him ever since we were children—and a kind youth he was then. And he taught my husband to read, and made him his coachman; and then he made him overseer; and he has always indulged the children, and always bought my young guinea-fowl, and—”“I know that. All that will not prevent the mischief of helping him away. Toussaint ought to have seen that if we send our masters to all the four sides of the world, they will bring the world down upon us.”“Perhaps Toussaint did see it,” said the man himself, from the other side of his wife’s horse. “But he saw another thing, too—that any whites who stayed would be murdered.”“That is true enough; and murdered they ought to be. They are a race of tyrants and rebels that our warm island hates.”“Nobody hated Monsieur Bayou,” said Margot.“Yes, I did. Every one who loves the blacks hates the whites.”“I think not,” said Toussaint. “At least, it is not so with Him who made them both. He is pleased with mercy, Jacques, and not with murder.”Jacques laughed, and muttered something about the priests having been brought in by the whites for a convenience; to which Toussaint merely replied that it was not a priest, nor an ally of white masters, who forgave His enemies on the cross.“Father,” said Placide, joining the group, “why is Jean commanding your march? He speaks to you as if you were under him.”“Because he considers it his march.”“He praised your father—very much, Placide,” said his mother.“Yes—just as if my father were under him—as if the march were not ours. We began it.”“I command those who began it—that is, my own family, Placide. I command you to obey Jean, while you are with him. On the other side the river, you shall be commander, all the way to your uncle’s house. You will follow his lead, Margot?”“Oh, yes, if he leads straight. Jean is a commander, Placide. Look at his cocked hat.”“And he calls himself commander-in-chief of the armies of France.”“In Saint Domingo. Well, so he is,” said Toussaint, smiling, and pointing to the troop. “Here are the armies of the King of France in Saint Domingo; and here Jean commands.”At this moment, Jean made proclamation for Toussaint Breda; and Toussaint joined him, leaving his wife saying, “You see he wants my husband at every turn. I am sure he thinks a great deal of my husband.”“Toussaint,” said Jean, “I shall introduce you to the Marquis d’Hermona; and I have no doubt he will give you a command.”“I shall introduce myself to him, Jean.”“But he will be expecting you. He will receive you according to my report—as a man of ability, and a most valuable officer. I sent messengers forward to tell him of my approach with reinforcements; and I gave a prodigious report of you.”“Still I shall speak for myself, Jean.”“What I now have to ask of you is, that you will dress like an officer—like me. The uniform is, on the whole, of no great consequence at this season, when the whites wear all the linen, and as little cloth as they can. But the hat. Toussaint—the hat! You will not show yourself to the Marquis d’Hermona in a cap! For my sake, do not show yourself till you have procured a cocked hat.”“Where did you get yours, Jean?”Jean could only say that it was from one who would never want it again.“We will go as we are,” said Toussaint. “You look like a commander, as you are—and I look what I am, Toussaint Breda.”“But he will not believe what I shall say of you, if he sees a mere common negro.”“Then let him disbelieve, till I have shown what I am. We shall find daylight on the other side this ridge.”They had been for some time ascending the ridge which lies north and south between Fort Dauphin and the river Massacre, the Spanish boundary. In the covert of the woods which clothed the slope all was yet darkness; but when the travellers could catch a glimpse upwards through the interwoven branches, they saw that the stars were growing pale, and that the heavens were filling with a yellower light. On emerging from the woods on the summit of the ridge, they found that morning was indeed come, though the sun was not yet visible. There was a halt, as if the troops now facing the east would wait for his appearance. To the left, where the ridge sank down into the sea, lay Mancenillo Bay, whose dark grey waters, smooth as glass, as they rolled in upon the shore, began to show lines of light along their swell. A dim sail or two, small and motionless, told that the fishermen were abroad. From this bay, the river Massacre led the eye along the plain which lay under the feet of the troops, and between this ridge and another, darkly wooded, which bounded the valley to the east; while to the south-east, the view was closed in by the mass of peaks of the Cibao group of mountains. At the first moment, these peaks, rising eight thousand feet from the plain, appeared hard, cold, and grey, between the white clouds that encumbered their middle height and the kindling sky. But from moment to moment their aspect softened. The grey melted into lilac, yellow, and a faint blushing red, till the start, barren crags appeared bathed in the hues of the soft yielding clouds which opened to let forth the sun. The mists were then seen to be stirring,—rising, curling, sailing, rolling, as if the breezes were imprisoned among them, and struggling to come forth. The breezes came, and, as it seemed, from those peaks. The woods bent before them at one sweep. The banyan-tree, a grove in itself, trembled through all its leafy columns, and shook off its dews in a wide circle, like the return shower of a playing fountain. Myriads of palms which covered the uplands, till now still as a sleeping host beneath the stars, bowed their plumed heads as the winds went forth, and shook off dews and slumber from the gorgeous parasitic beauties which they sustained. With the first ray that the sun levelled among the woods, these matted creepers shook their flowery festoons, their twined, green ropes, studded with opening blossoms and bells, more gay than the burnished insects and gorgeous birds which flitted among their tangles. In the plain, the river no longer glimmered grey through the mists, but glittered golden among the meadows, upon which the wild cattle were descending from the clefts of the hills. Back to the north the river led the eye, past the cluster of hunters’ huts on the margin,—past the post where the Spanish flag was flying, and whence the early drum was sounding—past a slope of arrowy ferns here, a grove of lofty cocoa-nut trees there, once more to the bay, now diamond-strewn, and rocking on its bosom the boats, whose sails were now specks of light in contrast with the black islets of the Seven Brothers, which caught the eye as if just risen from the sea.“No windmills here! No cattle-mills!” the negroes were heard saying to one another. “No canes, no sugar-houses, no teams, no overseers’ houses, no overseers! By God, it is a fine place, this! So we are going down there to be soldiers to the king! those cattle are wild, and yonder are the hunters going out! By God, it is a fine place!”In somewhat different ways, every one present, but Papalier and Thérèse, was indulging the same mood of thought. There was a wildness in the scene which made the heart beat high with the sense of freedom. For some the emotion seemed too strong. Toussaint pointed out to his boys the path on the other side of the river which would lead them to the point of the shore nearest to Paul’s hut, instructed them how to find or make a habitation for their mother and sisters till he could visit them, gave his wife a letter to his brother, and, except to bid his family a brief farewell for a brief time, spoke no more till he reached the Spanish post, and inquired for the General.Jean stepped before him into the general’s presence, taking possession of the centre of the green space before the tent, where the Marquis d’Hermona was enjoying the coolness of the morning. After having duly declared his own importance, and announced the accession of numbers he was likely to bring, Jean proceeded to extol Toussaint as one of the valuables he had brought. After apologising for his friend’s want of a cocked hat, he proceeded to exhibit his learning, declaring that he had studied “Plutarch,” “Caesar’s Commentaries,” “Epictetus,” “Marshal Saxe’s Military Reveries—”Here he was stopped by the grasp of Toussaint’s hand upon his arm. Toussaint told the General that he came alone, without chief and without followers: the few men who had left Breda with him having ranged themselves with the force of Jean Français. He came alone to offer the strength of his arm, on behalf of his king, to the allies of royalist France.The Spanish soldiers, who glittered all around in their arms and bright uniform, looked upon the somewhat gaunt negro in his plantation dress, dusty with travel, and his woollen cap in hand, and thought, probably, that the king of France would not be much aided by such an ally. It is probable; for a smile went round, in which Jean joined. It is probable that the Marquis d’Hermona thought differently, for he said—“The strength of your arm! Good! And the strength of your head, too, I hope. We get more arms than heads from your side of the frontier. Is it true that you have studied the art of war?”“I have studied it in books.”“Very well. We want officers for our black troops—all we can raise in the present crisis. You will have the rank of colonel in a regiment to be immediately organised. Are you content?”Toussaint signified his assent, and orders were given for a tent to be prepared for his present repose. He looked around, as if for some one whom he did not see. On being asked, he said that if there was at the post a priest who spoke French, he could wish to converse with him.“Laxabon understands French, I think,” said the marquis to a gentleman of his staff. The aide assented.“Your excellent desire shall be gratified,” said the General. “I doubt not Father Laxabon will presently visit you in your tent.”Father Laxabon had heard rumours of the horrors perpetrated in the French colony within the last two nights. On being told that his attendance was equally desired by a fugitive negro, he recoiled for a moment from what he might have to hear.When he entered the tent, he found Toussaint alone, on the ground, his bosom bursting with deep and thick-coming sobs, “How is this, my son?” said the priest. “Is this grief, or is it penitence?”“I am free,” said Toussaint, “and I am an oppression to myself. I did not seek freedom. I was at ease, and did not desire it, seeing how men abuse their freedom.”“You must not, then, abuse your freedom, my son,” said the priest, wholly relieved.“How shall I appear before God—I who have ever been guided, and who know not whether I can guide myself—my master gone—my employment gone—and I, by his will, a free man, but unprepared, unfit?—Receive my confession, father, and guide me from this time.”“Willingly, my son. He who has appointed a new lot to you will enable me to guide you in it.”The tent was closed; and Toussaint kneeled to relieve his full heart from its new sense of freedom, by subjecting himself to a task-master of the soul.
Monsieur Papalier did not much relish the idea of roosting in a tree for the night; especially as, on coming down in the morning, there would be no friend or helper near, to care for or minister to him. Habitually and thoroughly as he despised the negroes, he preferred travelling in their company to hiding among the monkeys; and he therefore decided at once to do as Toussaint concluded he would—accompany him to the Spanish frontier.
The river Massacre, the boundary at the north between the French and Spanish portions of the island, was about thirty miles distant from Breda. These thirty miles must be traversed between sunset and sunrise. Three or four horses, and two mules which were left on the plantation, were sufficient for the conveyance of the women, boys, and girls; and Placide ran, of his own accord, to Monsieur Papalier’s deserted stables, and brought thence a saddled horse for the gentleman, who was less able than the women to walk thirty miles in the course of a tropical summer’s night.
“What will your Spanish friends think of our bringing so many women and children to their post?” said Papalier to Toussaint, as soon as they were on their way. “They will not think you worth having, with all the incumbrances you carry.”
“I shall carry none,” said Toussaint.
“What do you mean to do with your wife and children?”
“I shall put them in a safe place by the way. For your own sake, Monsieur Papalier, I must ask you what you mean to do in the Spanish post—republican as you are. You know the Spaniards are allies of the king of France.”
“They are allies of France, and will doubtless receive any honourable French gentleman,” said Papalier confidently, though Toussaint’s question only echoed a doubt which he had already spoken to himself. “You are acting so like a friend to me here, Toussaint, that I cannot suppose you will do me mischief there, by any idle tales about the past.”
“I will not; but I hear that the Marquis d’Hermona knows the politics of every gentleman in the colony. If there have been any tales abroad of speeches of yours against the king, or threats, or acts of rebellion, the Marquis d’Hermona knows them all.”
“I have taken less part in politics than most of my neighbours; and Hermona knows that, if he knows the rest. But what shall I do with Thérèse, if your women stop short on the way? Could you make room for her with them?”
“Not with them, but—”
“My good fellow, this is no time for fancies. I am sorry to see you set your girls above their condition and their neighbours. There is no harm about poor Thérèse. Indeed, she is very well educated; I have had her well taught; and they might learn many things from her, if you really wish them to be superior. She is not a bit the worse for being a favourite of mine; and it will be their turn soon to be somebody’s favourites, you know. And that before long, depend upon it,” he continued, turning on his saddle to look for Génifrède and Aimée. “They are fine girls,—very fine girls for their age.”
When he turned again, Toussaint was no longer beside his horse. He was at the head of the march.
“What a sulky fellow he is!” muttered the planter, with a smile. “The airs of these people are curious enough. They take upon them to despise Thérèse, who has more beauty than all his tribe, and almost as much education as the learned Toussaint himself.”
He called to the sulky fellow, however, and the sulky fellow came. What Papalier wanted to say was—
“You seem to know more of these Spaniards than I. What will become of Thérèse, if I take her among them; which, you see, you oblige me to do?”
“I proposed to her,” said Toussaint, “to leave her with some of our people near Fort Dauphin.”
“Fort Égalité, you mean. That is its present name, you know. So you asked her! Why did you not speak to me about it? It is my affair, not hers.”
“I thought it her affair. She will not remain behind, however. She begged me to say nothing to you about her leaving you.”
“Indeed! I will soon settle that.” And the planter immediately overtook the horse on which sat Thérèse, with her infant on her arm. Thérèse smiled as she saw him coming; but the first few words he said to her covered her face with tears. Blinded by these tears, she guided her horse among the tough aloes which grew along the border of the bridle-path, and the animal stumbled, nearly jerking the infant from her arms. Her master let her get over the difficulty as she might, while he rode on in the midst of the green track.
Placide disdained to ride. He strode along, singing in a low voice, with a package on his shoulders, and his path marked by the fireflies, which new round his head, or settled on his woollen cap. Isaac had made Aimée happy by getting on her mule. Génifrède heard from the direction in which they were, sometimes smothered laughter, but, for the most part, a never-ending, low murmur of voices, as if they were telling one another interminable stories. Génifrède never could make out what Isaac and Aimée could be for ever talking about. She wondered that they could talk now, when every monkey-voice from the wood, every click of a frog from the ponds, every buzz of insects from the citron-hedge, struck fear into her. She did not ask Placide to walk beside her horse; but she kept near that on which her mother rode, behind Denis, who held a cart-whip, which he was forbidden to crack—an accomplishment which he had learned from the driver of the plantation.
It soon became clear that Jean had made active use of the hours since he parted from Toussaint. He must have sent messengers in many directions; for, from beneath the shadow of every cacao grove, from under the branches of many a clump of bamboos, from the recess of a ravine here—from the mouth of a green road there, beside the brawling brook, or from their couch among the canes, appeared negroes, singly or in groups, ready to join the travelling party. Among all these, there were no women and children. They had been safely bestowed somewhere; and these men now regarded themselves as soldiers, going to the camp of the allies, to serve against their old masters on behalf of the king. “Vive le Roi, et l’ancien régime!” was the word as each detachment joined—a word most irritating to Papalier, who thought to himself many times during this night, that he would have put all to hazard on his own estate, rather than have undertaken this march, if he had known that he was to be one of a company of negroes, gathering like the tempest in its progress, and uttering at every turning, as if in mockery of himself, “Vive le Roi, et l’ancien régime!” He grewverycross, while quite sensible of the necessity of appearing in a good mood to every one—except, indeed, poor Thérèse.
“We are free—this is freedom!” said Toussaint more than once as he laid his hand on the bridle of his wife’s horse, and seemed incapable, of uttering any other words. He looked up at the towering trees, as if measuring with his eye the columnar palms, which appeared to those in their shade as if crowned with stars. He glanced into the forest with an eye which, to Margot, appeared as if it could pierce through darkness itself. He raised his face in the direction of the central mountain-peaks, round which the white lightning was exploding from moment to moment; and Margot saw that tears were streaming on his face—the first tears she had known him shed for years. “We are free—this is freedom!” he repeated, as he took off his cap; “but, thank God! we have the king for our master now.”
“You will come and see us,” said she. “We shall see you sometimes while you are serving the king.”
“Yes.” He was called away by another accession of numbers, a party of four who ran down among them from a mountain path. Toussaint brushed away his unwonted tears, and went forward, hearing a well-known voice inquire for Toussaint Breda.
“Here I am, Jacques!” he exclaimed in some surprise, as he addressed himself to a short, stout-built young negro. “You are the first townsman among us, Jacques. Where is old Dessalines?”
“Here is my master,” said Jacques.
“Not the better for being a master,” said the old tiler, who was himself a negro. “I found myself no safer than Jacques in the town; so I came away with him, and we have been among the rocks all day, tired enough.”
“Have not you a horse for him?” asked Jacques. Toussaint stepped back, to desire Aimée and Isaac to give up their mule to Dessalines; but before it was done, Dessalines was mounted on Papalier’s horse. Jacques had told Papalier, on finding that he had not been walking at all, that his horse was wanted, and Papalier had felt all the danger of refusing to yield it up. He was walking moodily by the side of Thérèse, when Toussaint offered him the mule, which he haughtily declined.
When Dessalines was mounted, Jacques came running forward to Toussaint, to ask and to tell much concerning their singular circumstances.
“Your party is too noisy,” said he. “The whole country is up; and I saw, not far-off, two hours ago, a party that were bringing ammunition from Cap. There may be more; and, if we fall in their way, with a white in company—”
“True, true.” And Toussaint turned back to command silence. He told every one that the safety of all might depend on the utmost possible degree of quietness being observed. He separated Isaac from Aimée, as the only way of obtaining silence from them, and warned the merry blacks in the rear that they must be still as death. He and Jacques, however, exchanged a few more words in a low whisper, as they kept in advance of the party.
“How do they get ammunition from Cap?” asked Toussaint. “Have they a party in the town? I thought the town negroes had been sent on board ship.”
“The suspected ones are. They are the silly and the harmless who have still wit and mischief enough to give out powder and ball slyly for the plantation negroes. Once over the river, what will you do with your party?”
“My wife and children will be safe with my brother Paul—you know he fishes on the coast, opposite the Seven Brothers. I shall enter the Spanish ranks; and every one else here will do as he thinks proper.”
“Do not you call yourself a commander, then! Why do you not call us your regiment, and take the command as a matter of course, as Jean has done?”
“If it is desired, I am ready. Hark!”
There was evidently a party at some distance, numerous and somewhat noisy, and on the approach from behind. Toussaint halted his party, quickly whispered his directions, and withdrew them with all speed and quietness within the black shade of a cacao-plantation, on the left of the road. They had to climb an ascent; but there they found a green recess, so canopied with interwoven branches that no light could enter from the stars, and so hedged in by the cacao plants, growing twelve feet high among the trees, that the party could hardly have been seen from the road in broad daylight. There they stood crowded together in utter darkness and stillness, unless, as Génifrède feared, the beating of her heart might be heard above the hum of the mosquito, or the occasional rustle of the foliage.
The approaching troop came on, tramping, and sometimes singing and shouting. Those in the covert knew not whether most to dread a shouting which should agitate their horses, or a silence which might betray a movement on their part. This last seemed the most probable. The noise subsided; and when the troop was close at hand, only a stray voice or two was singing. They had with them two or three trucks, drawn by men, on which were piled barrels of ammunition. They were now very near. Whether it was that Thérèse, in fear of her infant crying, pressed it so close to her bosom as to awaken it, or whether the rumbling and tramping along the road roused its sleeping ear—the child stirred, and began what promised to be a long shrill wawl, if it had not been stopped. How it was stopped, the trembling, sickening mother herself did not know. She only knew that a strong hand wrenched the child from her grasp in the black darkness, and that all was still, unless, as she then and ever after had a shuddering apprehension, there was something of a slight gurgle which reached her strained ear. Her own involuntary moan was stopped almost before it became a sound—stopped by a tap on the shoulder, whose authoritative touch she well knew.
No one else stirred for long after the troop had passed. Then Toussaint led his wife’s horse down into the road again, and the party resumed their march as if nothing had happened.
“My child!” said Thérèse, fearfully. “Give me my child!” She looked about, and saw that no one seemed to have the infant.
“I will not let it cry,” she said. “Give me back my child!”
“What is it?” asked Papalier, coming beside her horse. She told her grief, as she prepared to spring down.
“No, keep your seat! Don’t get down,” said he, in a tone she dared not disobey. “I will inquire for the child.”
He went away, and returned—without it. “This is a sad thing,” said he, leading her horse forward with the rest. “No one knows anything about the poor thing. Why did you let it go?”
“Have you asked them all? Who snatched it from me? Oh, ask who took it! Let me look for it. I will—I will—”
“It is too late now. We cannot stop or turn back. These sad accidents will happen at such times.”
“Leave me behind—oh, leave me in the wood! I can follow when I have found it. Leave me behind!”
“I cannot spare you, my dear. I should never see you again; and I cannot spare you. It is sad enough to have lost the child.”
“It was your child,” said she, pleadingly.
“And you are mine too, my dear. I cannot spare you both.”
Thérèse had never felt before. All that had moved her during her yet short life—all emotions in one were nothing to the passion of this moment—the conditional hatred that swelled her soul; conditional—for, from moment to moment, she believed and disbelieved that Papalier had destroyed her child. The thought sometimes occurred that he was not the only cruel one. No one seemed to pity or care for her—not even Margot or the girls came near her. She more than once was about to seek and appeal to them; but her master held her bridle, and would not permit her to stop or turn, saying occasionally that the lives of all depended on perfect quiet and order in the march. When they arrived at the cross, at the junction of the four roads, they halted, and there she told her story, and was convinced that the grieved women knew nothing of her loss till that moment. It was too late now for anything but compassion.
Jean Français soon appeared with a troop so numerous, that all necessity for caution and quiet was over. They could hardly meet an equal force during the remainder of the march, and might safely make the forests and ravines echo to their progress. Jean took off his cocked hat in saluting Toussaint, and commended his punctuality and his arrangements.
“Jean always admires what my husband does,” observed Margot to her acquaintance Jacques. “You hear how he is praising him for what he has done to-night.”
“To be sure. Everybody praises Toussaint Breda,” replied Jacques.
The wife laughed with delight.
“Everybody praises him but me,” pursued Jacques. “I find fault with him sometimes; and to-night particularly.”
“Then you are wrong, Jacques. You know you have everybody against you.”
“Time will show that I am right. Time will show the mischief of sending away any whites to do us harm in far countries.”
“Oh, you do not blame him for helping away Monsieur Bayou!”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why, we have been under him ever since we were children—and a kind youth he was then. And he taught my husband to read, and made him his coachman; and then he made him overseer; and he has always indulged the children, and always bought my young guinea-fowl, and—”
“I know that. All that will not prevent the mischief of helping him away. Toussaint ought to have seen that if we send our masters to all the four sides of the world, they will bring the world down upon us.”
“Perhaps Toussaint did see it,” said the man himself, from the other side of his wife’s horse. “But he saw another thing, too—that any whites who stayed would be murdered.”
“That is true enough; and murdered they ought to be. They are a race of tyrants and rebels that our warm island hates.”
“Nobody hated Monsieur Bayou,” said Margot.
“Yes, I did. Every one who loves the blacks hates the whites.”
“I think not,” said Toussaint. “At least, it is not so with Him who made them both. He is pleased with mercy, Jacques, and not with murder.”
Jacques laughed, and muttered something about the priests having been brought in by the whites for a convenience; to which Toussaint merely replied that it was not a priest, nor an ally of white masters, who forgave His enemies on the cross.
“Father,” said Placide, joining the group, “why is Jean commanding your march? He speaks to you as if you were under him.”
“Because he considers it his march.”
“He praised your father—very much, Placide,” said his mother.
“Yes—just as if my father were under him—as if the march were not ours. We began it.”
“I command those who began it—that is, my own family, Placide. I command you to obey Jean, while you are with him. On the other side the river, you shall be commander, all the way to your uncle’s house. You will follow his lead, Margot?”
“Oh, yes, if he leads straight. Jean is a commander, Placide. Look at his cocked hat.”
“And he calls himself commander-in-chief of the armies of France.”
“In Saint Domingo. Well, so he is,” said Toussaint, smiling, and pointing to the troop. “Here are the armies of the King of France in Saint Domingo; and here Jean commands.”
At this moment, Jean made proclamation for Toussaint Breda; and Toussaint joined him, leaving his wife saying, “You see he wants my husband at every turn. I am sure he thinks a great deal of my husband.”
“Toussaint,” said Jean, “I shall introduce you to the Marquis d’Hermona; and I have no doubt he will give you a command.”
“I shall introduce myself to him, Jean.”
“But he will be expecting you. He will receive you according to my report—as a man of ability, and a most valuable officer. I sent messengers forward to tell him of my approach with reinforcements; and I gave a prodigious report of you.”
“Still I shall speak for myself, Jean.”
“What I now have to ask of you is, that you will dress like an officer—like me. The uniform is, on the whole, of no great consequence at this season, when the whites wear all the linen, and as little cloth as they can. But the hat. Toussaint—the hat! You will not show yourself to the Marquis d’Hermona in a cap! For my sake, do not show yourself till you have procured a cocked hat.”
“Where did you get yours, Jean?”
Jean could only say that it was from one who would never want it again.
“We will go as we are,” said Toussaint. “You look like a commander, as you are—and I look what I am, Toussaint Breda.”
“But he will not believe what I shall say of you, if he sees a mere common negro.”
“Then let him disbelieve, till I have shown what I am. We shall find daylight on the other side this ridge.”
They had been for some time ascending the ridge which lies north and south between Fort Dauphin and the river Massacre, the Spanish boundary. In the covert of the woods which clothed the slope all was yet darkness; but when the travellers could catch a glimpse upwards through the interwoven branches, they saw that the stars were growing pale, and that the heavens were filling with a yellower light. On emerging from the woods on the summit of the ridge, they found that morning was indeed come, though the sun was not yet visible. There was a halt, as if the troops now facing the east would wait for his appearance. To the left, where the ridge sank down into the sea, lay Mancenillo Bay, whose dark grey waters, smooth as glass, as they rolled in upon the shore, began to show lines of light along their swell. A dim sail or two, small and motionless, told that the fishermen were abroad. From this bay, the river Massacre led the eye along the plain which lay under the feet of the troops, and between this ridge and another, darkly wooded, which bounded the valley to the east; while to the south-east, the view was closed in by the mass of peaks of the Cibao group of mountains. At the first moment, these peaks, rising eight thousand feet from the plain, appeared hard, cold, and grey, between the white clouds that encumbered their middle height and the kindling sky. But from moment to moment their aspect softened. The grey melted into lilac, yellow, and a faint blushing red, till the start, barren crags appeared bathed in the hues of the soft yielding clouds which opened to let forth the sun. The mists were then seen to be stirring,—rising, curling, sailing, rolling, as if the breezes were imprisoned among them, and struggling to come forth. The breezes came, and, as it seemed, from those peaks. The woods bent before them at one sweep. The banyan-tree, a grove in itself, trembled through all its leafy columns, and shook off its dews in a wide circle, like the return shower of a playing fountain. Myriads of palms which covered the uplands, till now still as a sleeping host beneath the stars, bowed their plumed heads as the winds went forth, and shook off dews and slumber from the gorgeous parasitic beauties which they sustained. With the first ray that the sun levelled among the woods, these matted creepers shook their flowery festoons, their twined, green ropes, studded with opening blossoms and bells, more gay than the burnished insects and gorgeous birds which flitted among their tangles. In the plain, the river no longer glimmered grey through the mists, but glittered golden among the meadows, upon which the wild cattle were descending from the clefts of the hills. Back to the north the river led the eye, past the cluster of hunters’ huts on the margin,—past the post where the Spanish flag was flying, and whence the early drum was sounding—past a slope of arrowy ferns here, a grove of lofty cocoa-nut trees there, once more to the bay, now diamond-strewn, and rocking on its bosom the boats, whose sails were now specks of light in contrast with the black islets of the Seven Brothers, which caught the eye as if just risen from the sea.
“No windmills here! No cattle-mills!” the negroes were heard saying to one another. “No canes, no sugar-houses, no teams, no overseers’ houses, no overseers! By God, it is a fine place, this! So we are going down there to be soldiers to the king! those cattle are wild, and yonder are the hunters going out! By God, it is a fine place!”
In somewhat different ways, every one present, but Papalier and Thérèse, was indulging the same mood of thought. There was a wildness in the scene which made the heart beat high with the sense of freedom. For some the emotion seemed too strong. Toussaint pointed out to his boys the path on the other side of the river which would lead them to the point of the shore nearest to Paul’s hut, instructed them how to find or make a habitation for their mother and sisters till he could visit them, gave his wife a letter to his brother, and, except to bid his family a brief farewell for a brief time, spoke no more till he reached the Spanish post, and inquired for the General.
Jean stepped before him into the general’s presence, taking possession of the centre of the green space before the tent, where the Marquis d’Hermona was enjoying the coolness of the morning. After having duly declared his own importance, and announced the accession of numbers he was likely to bring, Jean proceeded to extol Toussaint as one of the valuables he had brought. After apologising for his friend’s want of a cocked hat, he proceeded to exhibit his learning, declaring that he had studied “Plutarch,” “Caesar’s Commentaries,” “Epictetus,” “Marshal Saxe’s Military Reveries—”
Here he was stopped by the grasp of Toussaint’s hand upon his arm. Toussaint told the General that he came alone, without chief and without followers: the few men who had left Breda with him having ranged themselves with the force of Jean Français. He came alone to offer the strength of his arm, on behalf of his king, to the allies of royalist France.
The Spanish soldiers, who glittered all around in their arms and bright uniform, looked upon the somewhat gaunt negro in his plantation dress, dusty with travel, and his woollen cap in hand, and thought, probably, that the king of France would not be much aided by such an ally. It is probable; for a smile went round, in which Jean joined. It is probable that the Marquis d’Hermona thought differently, for he said—
“The strength of your arm! Good! And the strength of your head, too, I hope. We get more arms than heads from your side of the frontier. Is it true that you have studied the art of war?”
“I have studied it in books.”
“Very well. We want officers for our black troops—all we can raise in the present crisis. You will have the rank of colonel in a regiment to be immediately organised. Are you content?”
Toussaint signified his assent, and orders were given for a tent to be prepared for his present repose. He looked around, as if for some one whom he did not see. On being asked, he said that if there was at the post a priest who spoke French, he could wish to converse with him.
“Laxabon understands French, I think,” said the marquis to a gentleman of his staff. The aide assented.
“Your excellent desire shall be gratified,” said the General. “I doubt not Father Laxabon will presently visit you in your tent.”
Father Laxabon had heard rumours of the horrors perpetrated in the French colony within the last two nights. On being told that his attendance was equally desired by a fugitive negro, he recoiled for a moment from what he might have to hear.
When he entered the tent, he found Toussaint alone, on the ground, his bosom bursting with deep and thick-coming sobs, “How is this, my son?” said the priest. “Is this grief, or is it penitence?”
“I am free,” said Toussaint, “and I am an oppression to myself. I did not seek freedom. I was at ease, and did not desire it, seeing how men abuse their freedom.”
“You must not, then, abuse your freedom, my son,” said the priest, wholly relieved.
“How shall I appear before God—I who have ever been guided, and who know not whether I can guide myself—my master gone—my employment gone—and I, by his will, a free man, but unprepared, unfit?—Receive my confession, father, and guide me from this time.”
“Willingly, my son. He who has appointed a new lot to you will enable me to guide you in it.”
The tent was closed; and Toussaint kneeled to relieve his full heart from its new sense of freedom, by subjecting himself to a task-master of the soul.
Chapter Five.Griefs of the Loyal.Margot doubted much, at the end of the first week, and at the end of every following week, whether she liked freedom. Margot had had few cares during the many years that she had lived under the mild rule of Monsieur Bayou—her husband faithful and kind, and her children provided for without present anxiety on her part. Thoughts of the future would, it is true, occasionally trouble her, as she knew they weighed heavily on her husband’s mind. When she saw Génifrède growing up, handsome in her parents’ eyes, and so timid and reserved that her father sometimes said he wondered whether any one would ever know her mind better than her own family did—when Margot looked upon Génifrède, and considered that her lot in life depended on the will of Monsieur Bayou, she shuddered to think what it might be. When Monsieur Bayou told Génifrède that she was well coiffée, or that he wished she would show the other girls among the house-negroes how to make their Sunday gowns sit like hers, Génifrède invariably appeared not to hear, and often walked away in the midst of the speech; and then her mother could not but wonder how she would conduct herself, whenever the day should come that must come, when (as there was no one on the Breda estate whom Génifrède liked, or would associate with) Monsieur Bayou should bring some one to their cottage, and desire Génifrède to marry him. When Margot looked upon her sons, and upon Aimée, now so inseparable from Isaac, and considered that their remaining together depended not only on Monsieur Bayou’s will, but on his life, she trembled lest the day should be at hand when Placide might be carried away northward, and Isaac eastward, and poor Aimée left desolate. Such had been the mother’s passing cares in the situation in which nothing had been wanting to her immediate comfort. Now, amidst the perplexities of her new settlement, she was apt to forget that she had formerly had any cares.Where to house the party had been the first difficulty. But for old Dessalines, who, being no soldier, had chosen to hide himself in the same retreat with them, they would hardly have had good shelter before the rains. Paul had received them kindly; but Paul’s kindness was of a somewhat indolent sort; and it was doubtful whether he would have proceeded beyond looking round his hut, and lamenting that it was no bigger, if his spirited son Moyse, a fine lad of sixteen, had not been there to do something more effectual, in finding the place and the materials for the old tiler to begin his work. It was Moyse who convinced the whole party from the plain that a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves would fall in an hour before one of the hail-storms of this rocky coast; and that it would not do to build on the sands, lest some high tide should wash them all away in the night. It was Moyse who led his cousins to the part of the beach where portions of wrecks were most likely to be found, and who lent the strongest hand to remove such beams and planks as Dessalines wanted for his work. A house large enough to hold the family was soon covered in. It looked well, perched on a platform of rock, and seeming to nestle in a recess of the huge precipices which rose behind it. It looked well, as Dessalines could obtain neither of his favourite paints to smear it with. It stood, neither red nor blue, but nearly the colour of the rocks, against which it leaned, and thatched with palm-leaves, which projected so far as to throw off the rains, even to a depth below.Paul provided fish—as much as his relations chose to have; but the young people chose to have many other things, under the guidance of Moyse; and here lay their mother’s daily care. She believed that both boys and girls ran into a thousand dangers, and no one would help her to restrain them. Paul had always let Moyse have his own way; and Dessalines, when he had brought in drift-wood for her fires, which he daily chose to do, lay down in the sun when the sun shone, and before the fire when the clouds gathered, and slept away the hours. Paul wanted help in his fishing; and it was commonly Isaac who went with him; for Isaac was more fond of boating than rambling. Where Isaac was, there was Aimée. She gave no contemptible help in drawing in the nets; and when the fish was landed, she and Isaac sat for hours among the mangroves which bordered the neighbouring cove, under pretence of cleaning the fish, or of mending the nets, or of watching the cranes which stalked about the sands. Sometimes, in order to be yet more secure from disturbance, the brother and sister would put off again, when they had landed Paul with his prize, and get upon the coral reef, half a mile off—in calm weather collecting the shell-fish which were strewed there in multitudes, and watching the while the freaks and sports of the dolphins in the clear depths around; and in windy weather sitting in the midst of the spray, which was dashed over them from the heavy seas outside. Many times in a morning or evening did Margot look out from her doorway, and see their dusky forms upon the reef, now sitting motionless in talk, now stooping for mussels and crabs, and never till the last moment in the boat, on their way home. Sometimes Denis was with them—sometimes with her—but oftenest with the party led by Moyse.Moyse had first enticed Génifrède up the rocks behind their dwelling, to get grass for hammocks, and to make matting for the floors. Almost from the first day, it appeared as if Génifrède’s fears all melted away in the presence of Moyse; and her mother became sure of this when, after grass enough had been procured, Génifrède continued to accompany Placide and Moyse in their almost daily expeditions for sporting and pleasure. They brought guanas, tender young monkeys, and cocoa-nuts from the wood, wild kids from the rock, delicate ducks from the mountain-ponds, and sometimes a hog or a calf from the droves and herds which flourished in the rich savannahs on the southern side, on which they looked down from their ridge. In the joy of seeing her children home again, gladsome as they were, and feeling that they brought plenty and luxury into her cottage, Margot kept her cares to herself, from day-to-day, and did not interfere with their proceedings. She sometimes thought she was foolish, and always was glad to see them enjoying their freedom; but still, she felt doubtful whether she herself had not been happier at Breda. The only time when her heart was completely at ease and exulting was when Toussaint came to see his family, to open his heart to his wife, and to smile away her troubles. Her heart exulted when she saw him cross the ridge, with a mounted private behind him, urge his horse down the ascent, gallop along the sands to the foot of the rocks, throw the bridle to his attendant, and mount to the platform, looking up as he approached, to see whether she was on the watch. She was always on the watch. She liked to admire his uniform, and to hear his sword clatter as he walked. She liked to see him looking more important, more dignified, than Bayou or Papalier had ever appeared in her eyes. Then, her heart was always full of thoughts about their children, which he was as anxious to hear as she to tell; and he was the only one from whom she could learn anything of what was going on in the world, or of what prospects lay before themselves. He brought news from France, from Cap and the plain, and, after a while, from America—that Monsieur Bayou was settled at Baltimore, where he intended to remain till, as he said, the pacification of the colony should enable him to return to Breda. There was no fear, as Toussaint always found, but that Margot would be looking out for him.The tidings he brought were never very joyous, and often sad enough. He said little of his personal cares; but Margot gathered that he found it difficult to keep on good terms with Jean. Once he had resigned his rank of colonel, and had assumed an office of which Jean could not be jealous—that of physician to the forces—an office for which he was qualified by an early and extensive acquaintance with the common diseases of the country, and the natural remedies provided by its soil. When the Marquis d’Hermona had insisted upon his resuming his command, as the best officer the negro forces could boast, Jean had purposed to arrest him on some frivolous charge, and the foolish act had only been prevented by a frank and strong remonstrance from his old friend. All this time, Toussaint’s military successes had been great; and his name now struck such awe into the lawless forces of the insurgent blacks, that it was unnecessary for him to shed their blood. He held the post of Marmalade, and from thence was present with such unheard-of rapidity of march, wherever violence was expected, that the spirit of outrage throughout the colony was, at length, kept in check. This peaceful mode of standing by the rights of the king was more acceptable to the gentle Toussaint than the warfare by which he had gained his power over his own race; but he knew well that things could not go on as they were—that order of some kind must be established—order which could be reached only through a fierce final struggle; and of what nature this order was to be, depended wholly upon the turn which affairs took in Europe.He rarely brought good news from abroad. His countenance always grew sad when Margot asked what ships had arrived from France since his last visit. First he had to tell her that the people of Paris had met in the Champ de Mars, and demanded the dethronement of the king; then, that Danton had audaciously informed the representatives of France that their refusal to declare the throne vacant would be the signal for a general insurrection. After this, no national calamity could surprise the loyal colonists, Toussaint said; for the fate of Louis as a king, if not as a man, was decided. Accordingly, there followed humiliations, deposition, imprisonment, during which little could be known of the mind, and even of the condition of the king: and those who would have served him remained in anxious suspense. It happened, one warm day in the spring, when every trace of the winter hail-storms had passed away, that the whole party were amusing themselves in trying to collect enough of the ripening sea-side grape for a feast. The bright round leaves were broad and abundant; but the clusters of the fruit were yet only of a pale yellow, and a berry here and there was all that was fit for gathering. The grape-gathering was little more than a pretence for basking in the sun, or for lounging in the shade of the abundant verdure, which seemed to have been sown by the hurricane, and watered by the wintry surf, so luxuriantly did it spring from the sands and the salt waves. The stately manchineel overhung the tide; the mangroves sprang out of the waters; the sea-side grape overspread the sands with a thick green carpet, and kept them cool, so that as the human foot sought the spot, the glittering lizards forsook it, and darted away to seek the hot face of the rock. For full half a mile this patch of verdure spread; and over this space were dispersed Margot and her household, when Toussaint crossed the ridge, on one of his frequent visits. As he descended, he heard laughter and singing; and among the singing voices, the cracked pipe of old Dessalines. Toussaint grieved to interrupt this mirth, and to think that he must leave dull and sad those whom he found so gay. But he came with bad news, and on a mournful errand, and there was no help for it. As he pricked on his horse towards the party, the young people set up a shout and began to run towards him, but stopped short on seeing how unusually large a train he brought. Five or six mounted soldiers, instead of one, followed him this time, and they led several horses.“Oh, you are come to take us home!” cried Margot, joyfully, as she met him.He shook his head as he replied—“No, Margot, not yet. But the time may come.”“I wish you could tell us when it would come,” said Dessalines. “It is all very well gathering these things, and calling them grapes, for want of better; but give me the grapes that yield one wine. I wonder who has been gathering the grapes from my trellis all this time, while, the whole rainy season through, not a drop did I taste? I wish you had left your revolutions and nonsense till after my time, that I might have sat under my own vine and my own fig-tree, as the priest says, till the end of my days.”“Indeed I wish so too, Dessalines. But you shall have some wine.”“Ay, send us some. Jacques will tell you what I like. Don’t forget, Toussaint Breda. They talk of palm wine in the season; but I do not believe we shall get any worth drinking from the palms hereabouts.”“What is the matter with our palms?” cried Moyse, firing up for the honour of the northern coast. “I will get you a cabbage for dinner every day for a month to come,” he added, moderating his tone under his uncle’s eye—“every day, till you say that our palms, too, are as good as any you have in the plain; and as for palm wine, when the season comes—”“No, let me—let me cut the cabbage!” cried Denis. “I can climb as quick as a monkey now—a hundred feet in two minutes. Let me climb the palmetto, Moyse.”“First take back my horse to those soldiers, my boy,” said his father, setting Denis upon his horse, “and then let us all sit down here in the shade.”“All those horses,” said Margot, anxiously: “what is to be done with them to-day? There are so many!”“They will return presently,” replied her husband. “I am not going to stay with you to-day. And, Margot, I shall take the lads with me, if they are disposed to go.”“The lads! my boys!”“Yes,” said Toussaint, throwing himself down in the shade. “Our country and its people are orphaned; and the youngest of us must now make himself a soldier, that he may be ready for any turn of affairs which Providences may appoint. Do you hear, my boys?”“Yes, father,” answered Placide in an earnest tone.“They have then murdered the king?” asked Margot; “or did he die of his imprisonment?”“They brought him to trial, and executed him. The apes plucked down the evening star, and quenched it. We have no king. We and our country are orphaned.”After a pause, Paul said—“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 Aimée’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 Aimée 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 Aimée 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?” Aimée, 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 Génifrède, 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 Génifrède 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. Génifrède’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,” Génifrède muttered to herself, as she cast down her eyes under her father’s compassionate gaze. He looked towards Aimée, 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 Génifrède 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 Aimée were tearful; Génifrède 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 Français is boasting all day long, as if he had done everything with his own hand? No, our good king would never have let Jean Français’ 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 Aimée 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 Aimée. “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 Aimée, “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.”The boy looked puzzled, till Aimée said—“I think there would be none of this fighting if everybody tried to please God and serve Him, as is due to a master—as father did for the king. God does not wish that men should fight. So our priest at Breda told Isaac.”“Unless wicked rebels force them to it, as your father is forced,” said Margot.“I suppose so,” said Aimée, “by Isaac’s choosing to go.”
Margot doubted much, at the end of the first week, and at the end of every following week, whether she liked freedom. Margot had had few cares during the many years that she had lived under the mild rule of Monsieur Bayou—her husband faithful and kind, and her children provided for without present anxiety on her part. Thoughts of the future would, it is true, occasionally trouble her, as she knew they weighed heavily on her husband’s mind. When she saw Génifrède growing up, handsome in her parents’ eyes, and so timid and reserved that her father sometimes said he wondered whether any one would ever know her mind better than her own family did—when Margot looked upon Génifrède, and considered that her lot in life depended on the will of Monsieur Bayou, she shuddered to think what it might be. When Monsieur Bayou told Génifrède that she was well coiffée, or that he wished she would show the other girls among the house-negroes how to make their Sunday gowns sit like hers, Génifrède invariably appeared not to hear, and often walked away in the midst of the speech; and then her mother could not but wonder how she would conduct herself, whenever the day should come that must come, when (as there was no one on the Breda estate whom Génifrède liked, or would associate with) Monsieur Bayou should bring some one to their cottage, and desire Génifrède to marry him. When Margot looked upon her sons, and upon Aimée, now so inseparable from Isaac, and considered that their remaining together depended not only on Monsieur Bayou’s will, but on his life, she trembled lest the day should be at hand when Placide might be carried away northward, and Isaac eastward, and poor Aimée left desolate. Such had been the mother’s passing cares in the situation in which nothing had been wanting to her immediate comfort. Now, amidst the perplexities of her new settlement, she was apt to forget that she had formerly had any cares.
Where to house the party had been the first difficulty. But for old Dessalines, who, being no soldier, had chosen to hide himself in the same retreat with them, they would hardly have had good shelter before the rains. Paul had received them kindly; but Paul’s kindness was of a somewhat indolent sort; and it was doubtful whether he would have proceeded beyond looking round his hut, and lamenting that it was no bigger, if his spirited son Moyse, a fine lad of sixteen, had not been there to do something more effectual, in finding the place and the materials for the old tiler to begin his work. It was Moyse who convinced the whole party from the plain that a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves would fall in an hour before one of the hail-storms of this rocky coast; and that it would not do to build on the sands, lest some high tide should wash them all away in the night. It was Moyse who led his cousins to the part of the beach where portions of wrecks were most likely to be found, and who lent the strongest hand to remove such beams and planks as Dessalines wanted for his work. A house large enough to hold the family was soon covered in. It looked well, perched on a platform of rock, and seeming to nestle in a recess of the huge precipices which rose behind it. It looked well, as Dessalines could obtain neither of his favourite paints to smear it with. It stood, neither red nor blue, but nearly the colour of the rocks, against which it leaned, and thatched with palm-leaves, which projected so far as to throw off the rains, even to a depth below.
Paul provided fish—as much as his relations chose to have; but the young people chose to have many other things, under the guidance of Moyse; and here lay their mother’s daily care. She believed that both boys and girls ran into a thousand dangers, and no one would help her to restrain them. Paul had always let Moyse have his own way; and Dessalines, when he had brought in drift-wood for her fires, which he daily chose to do, lay down in the sun when the sun shone, and before the fire when the clouds gathered, and slept away the hours. Paul wanted help in his fishing; and it was commonly Isaac who went with him; for Isaac was more fond of boating than rambling. Where Isaac was, there was Aimée. She gave no contemptible help in drawing in the nets; and when the fish was landed, she and Isaac sat for hours among the mangroves which bordered the neighbouring cove, under pretence of cleaning the fish, or of mending the nets, or of watching the cranes which stalked about the sands. Sometimes, in order to be yet more secure from disturbance, the brother and sister would put off again, when they had landed Paul with his prize, and get upon the coral reef, half a mile off—in calm weather collecting the shell-fish which were strewed there in multitudes, and watching the while the freaks and sports of the dolphins in the clear depths around; and in windy weather sitting in the midst of the spray, which was dashed over them from the heavy seas outside. Many times in a morning or evening did Margot look out from her doorway, and see their dusky forms upon the reef, now sitting motionless in talk, now stooping for mussels and crabs, and never till the last moment in the boat, on their way home. Sometimes Denis was with them—sometimes with her—but oftenest with the party led by Moyse.
Moyse had first enticed Génifrède up the rocks behind their dwelling, to get grass for hammocks, and to make matting for the floors. Almost from the first day, it appeared as if Génifrède’s fears all melted away in the presence of Moyse; and her mother became sure of this when, after grass enough had been procured, Génifrède continued to accompany Placide and Moyse in their almost daily expeditions for sporting and pleasure. They brought guanas, tender young monkeys, and cocoa-nuts from the wood, wild kids from the rock, delicate ducks from the mountain-ponds, and sometimes a hog or a calf from the droves and herds which flourished in the rich savannahs on the southern side, on which they looked down from their ridge. In the joy of seeing her children home again, gladsome as they were, and feeling that they brought plenty and luxury into her cottage, Margot kept her cares to herself, from day-to-day, and did not interfere with their proceedings. She sometimes thought she was foolish, and always was glad to see them enjoying their freedom; but still, she felt doubtful whether she herself had not been happier at Breda. The only time when her heart was completely at ease and exulting was when Toussaint came to see his family, to open his heart to his wife, and to smile away her troubles. Her heart exulted when she saw him cross the ridge, with a mounted private behind him, urge his horse down the ascent, gallop along the sands to the foot of the rocks, throw the bridle to his attendant, and mount to the platform, looking up as he approached, to see whether she was on the watch. She was always on the watch. She liked to admire his uniform, and to hear his sword clatter as he walked. She liked to see him looking more important, more dignified, than Bayou or Papalier had ever appeared in her eyes. Then, her heart was always full of thoughts about their children, which he was as anxious to hear as she to tell; and he was the only one from whom she could learn anything of what was going on in the world, or of what prospects lay before themselves. He brought news from France, from Cap and the plain, and, after a while, from America—that Monsieur Bayou was settled at Baltimore, where he intended to remain till, as he said, the pacification of the colony should enable him to return to Breda. There was no fear, as Toussaint always found, but that Margot would be looking out for him.
The tidings he brought were never very joyous, and often sad enough. He said little of his personal cares; but Margot gathered that he found it difficult to keep on good terms with Jean. Once he had resigned his rank of colonel, and had assumed an office of which Jean could not be jealous—that of physician to the forces—an office for which he was qualified by an early and extensive acquaintance with the common diseases of the country, and the natural remedies provided by its soil. When the Marquis d’Hermona had insisted upon his resuming his command, as the best officer the negro forces could boast, Jean had purposed to arrest him on some frivolous charge, and the foolish act had only been prevented by a frank and strong remonstrance from his old friend. All this time, Toussaint’s military successes had been great; and his name now struck such awe into the lawless forces of the insurgent blacks, that it was unnecessary for him to shed their blood. He held the post of Marmalade, and from thence was present with such unheard-of rapidity of march, wherever violence was expected, that the spirit of outrage throughout the colony was, at length, kept in check. This peaceful mode of standing by the rights of the king was more acceptable to the gentle Toussaint than the warfare by which he had gained his power over his own race; but he knew well that things could not go on as they were—that order of some kind must be established—order which could be reached only through a fierce final struggle; and of what nature this order was to be, depended wholly upon the turn which affairs took in Europe.
He rarely brought good news from abroad. His countenance always grew sad when Margot asked what ships had arrived from France since his last visit. First he had to tell her that the people of Paris had met in the Champ de Mars, and demanded the dethronement of the king; then, that Danton had audaciously informed the representatives of France that their refusal to declare the throne vacant would be the signal for a general insurrection. After this, no national calamity could surprise the loyal colonists, Toussaint said; for the fate of Louis as a king, if not as a man, was decided. Accordingly, there followed humiliations, deposition, imprisonment, during which little could be known of the mind, and even of the condition of the king: and those who would have served him remained in anxious suspense. It happened, one warm day in the spring, when every trace of the winter hail-storms had passed away, that the whole party were amusing themselves in trying to collect enough of the ripening sea-side grape for a feast. The bright round leaves were broad and abundant; but the clusters of the fruit were yet only of a pale yellow, and a berry here and there was all that was fit for gathering. The grape-gathering was little more than a pretence for basking in the sun, or for lounging in the shade of the abundant verdure, which seemed to have been sown by the hurricane, and watered by the wintry surf, so luxuriantly did it spring from the sands and the salt waves. The stately manchineel overhung the tide; the mangroves sprang out of the waters; the sea-side grape overspread the sands with a thick green carpet, and kept them cool, so that as the human foot sought the spot, the glittering lizards forsook it, and darted away to seek the hot face of the rock. For full half a mile this patch of verdure spread; and over this space were dispersed Margot and her household, when Toussaint crossed the ridge, on one of his frequent visits. As he descended, he heard laughter and singing; and among the singing voices, the cracked pipe of old Dessalines. Toussaint grieved to interrupt this mirth, and to think that he must leave dull and sad those whom he found so gay. But he came with bad news, and on a mournful errand, and there was no help for it. As he pricked on his horse towards the party, the young people set up a shout and began to run towards him, but stopped short on seeing how unusually large a train he brought. Five or six mounted soldiers, instead of one, followed him this time, and they led several horses.
“Oh, you are come to take us home!” cried Margot, joyfully, as she met him.
He shook his head as he replied—“No, Margot, not yet. But the time may come.”
“I wish you could tell us when it would come,” said Dessalines. “It is all very well gathering these things, and calling them grapes, for want of better; but give me the grapes that yield one wine. I wonder who has been gathering the grapes from my trellis all this time, while, the whole rainy season through, not a drop did I taste? I wish you had left your revolutions and nonsense till after my time, that I might have sat under my own vine and my own fig-tree, as the priest says, till the end of my days.”
“Indeed I wish so too, Dessalines. But you shall have some wine.”
“Ay, send us some. Jacques will tell you what I like. Don’t forget, Toussaint Breda. They talk of palm wine in the season; but I do not believe we shall get any worth drinking from the palms hereabouts.”
“What is the matter with our palms?” cried Moyse, firing up for the honour of the northern coast. “I will get you a cabbage for dinner every day for a month to come,” he added, moderating his tone under his uncle’s eye—“every day, till you say that our palms, too, are as good as any you have in the plain; and as for palm wine, when the season comes—”
“No, let me—let me cut the cabbage!” cried Denis. “I can climb as quick as a monkey now—a hundred feet in two minutes. Let me climb the palmetto, Moyse.”
“First take back my horse to those soldiers, my boy,” said his father, setting Denis upon his horse, “and then let us all sit down here in the shade.”
“All those horses,” said Margot, anxiously: “what is to be done with them to-day? There are so many!”
“They will return presently,” replied her husband. “I am not going to stay with you to-day. And, Margot, I shall take the lads with me, if they are disposed to go.”
“The lads! my boys!”
“Yes,” said Toussaint, throwing himself down in the shade. “Our country and its people are orphaned; and the youngest of us must now make himself a soldier, that he may be ready for any turn of affairs which Providences may appoint. Do you hear, my boys?”
“Yes, father,” answered Placide in an earnest tone.
“They have then murdered the king?” asked Margot; “or did he die of his imprisonment?”
“They brought him to trial, and executed him. The apes plucked down the evening star, and quenched it. We have no king. We and our country are orphaned.”
After a pause, Paul said—
“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 Aimée’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 Aimée 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 Aimée 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?” Aimée, 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 Génifrède, 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 Génifrède 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. Génifrède’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,” Génifrède muttered to herself, as she cast down her eyes under her father’s compassionate gaze. He looked towards Aimée, 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 Génifrède 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 Aimée were tearful; Génifrède 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 Français is boasting all day long, as if he had done everything with his own hand? No, our good king would never have let Jean Français’ 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 Aimée 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 Aimée. “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 Aimée, “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.”
The boy looked puzzled, till Aimée said—
“I think there would be none of this fighting if everybody tried to please God and serve Him, as is due to a master—as father did for the king. God does not wish that men should fight. So our priest at Breda told Isaac.”
“Unless wicked rebels force them to it, as your father is forced,” said Margot.
“I suppose so,” said Aimée, “by Isaac’s choosing to go.”