Alas! the phonograph was invented three-quarters of a century too late. If type could entrap one-half the pretty oddities of Aurora’s speech,–the arch, the pathetic, the grave, the earnest, the matter-of-fact, the ecstatic tones of her voice,–nay, could it but reproduce the movement of her hands, the eloquence of her eyes, or the shapings of her mouth,–ah! but type–even the phonograph–is such an inadequate thing! Sometimes she laughed; sometimes Clotilde, unexpectedly to herself, joined her; and twice or thrice she provoked a similar demonstration from the ox-like apothecary,–to her own intense amusement. Sometimes she shook her head in solemn scorn; and, when Frowenfeld, at a certain point where Palmyre’s fate locked hands for a time with that of Bras-Coupe, asked a fervid question concerning that strange personage, tears leaped into her eyes, as she said:
“Ah! ‘Sieur Frowenfel’, iv I tra to tell de sto’y of Bras-Coupe, I goin’ to cry lag a lill bebby.”
The account of the childhood days upon the plantation at Cannes Brulees may be passed by. It was early in Palmyre’s fifteenth year that that Kentuckian, ‘mutual friend’ of her master and Agricola, prevailed with M. de Grapion to send her to the paternal Grandissime mansion,–a complimentary gift, through Agricola, to Mademoiselle, his niece,–returnable ten years after date.
The journey was made in safety; and, by and by, Palmyre was presented to her new mistress. The occasion was notable. In a great chair in the centre sat the _grandpere_, a Chevalier de Grandissime, whose business had narrowed down to sitting on the front veranda and wearing his decorations,–the cross of St. Louis being one; on his right, Colonel Numa Grandissime, with one arm dropped around Honore, then a boy of Palmyre’s age, expecting to be off in sixty days for France; and on the left, with Honore’s fair sister nestled against her, “Madame Numa,” as the Creoles would call her, a stately woman and beautiful, a great admirer of her brother Agricola. (Aurora took pains to explain that she received these minutiae from Palmyre herself in later years.) One other member of the group was a young don of some twenty years’ age, not an inmate of the house, but only a cousin of Aurora on her deceased mother’s side. To make the affair complete, and as a seal to this tacit Grandissime-de-Grapion treaty, this sole available representative of the “other side” was made a guest for the evening. Like the true Spaniard that he was, Don Jose Martinez fell deeply in love with Honore’s sister. Then there came Agricola leading in Palmyre. There were others, for the Grandissime mansion was always full of Grandissimes; but this was the central group.
In this house Palmyre grew to womanhood, retaining without interruption the place into which she seemed to enter by right of indisputable superiority over all competitors,–the place of favorite attendant to the sister of Honore. Attendant, we say, for servant she never seemed. She grew tall, arrowy, lithe, imperial, diligent, neat, thorough, silent. Her new mistress, though scarcely at all her senior, was yet distinctly her mistress; she had that through her Fusilier blood; experience was just then beginning to show that the Fusilier Grandissime was a superb variety; she was a mistress one could wish to obey. Palmyre loved her, and through her contact ceased, for a time, at least, to be the pet leopard she had been at the Cannes Brulees.
Honore went away to Paris only sixty days after Palmyre entered the house. But even that was not soon enough.
“‘Sieur Frowenfel’,” said Aurora, in her recital, “Palmyre, she never tole me dad, _mais_ I am shoe, _shoe_ dad she fall in love wid Honore Grandissime. ‘Sieur Frowenfel’, I thing dad Honore Grandissime is one bad man, ent it? Whad you thing, ‘Sieur Frowenfel’?”
“I think, as I said to you the last time, that he is one of the best, as I know that he is one of the kindest and most enlightened gentlemen in the city,” said the apothecary.
“Ah, ‘Sieur Frowenfel’! ha, ha!”
“That is my conviction.”
The lady went on with her story.
“Hanny’ow, I know she _con_tinue in love wid ‘im all doze ten year’ w’at ‘e been gone. She baig Mademoiselle Grandissime to wrad dad ledder to my papa to ass to kip her two years mo’.”
Here Aurora carefully omitted that episode which Doctor Keene had related to Frowenfeld,–her own marriage and removal to Fausse Riviere, the visit of her husband to the city, his unfortunate and finally fatal affair with Agricola, and the surrender of all her land and slaves to that successful duellist.
M. de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement concerning Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own astonishment, responded favorably to a letter from Honore’s sister, irresistible for its goodness, good sense, and eloquent pleading, asking leave to detain Palmyre two years longer; but this response came only after the old master and his pretty, stricken Aurora had wept over it until they were weak and gentle,–and was not a response either, but only a silent consent.
Shortly before the return of Honore–and here it was that Aurora took up again the thread of her account–while his mother, long-widowed, reigned in the paternal mansion, with Agricola for her manager, Bras-Coupe appeared. From that advent, and the long and varied mental sufferings which its consequences brought upon her, sprang that second change in Palmyre, which made her finally untamable, and ended in a manumission, granted her more for fear than for conscience’ sake. When Aurora attempted to tell those experiences, even leaving Bras-Coupe as much as might be out of the recital, she choked with tears at the very start, stopped, laughed, and said:
“_C’est tout_–daz all. ‘Sieur Frowenfel’, oo you fine dad pigtu’ to loog lag, yonnah, hon de wall?”
She spoke as if he might have overlooked it, though twenty times, at least, in the last hour, she had seen him glance at it.
“It is a good likeness,” said the apothecary, turning to Clotilde, yet showing himself somewhat puzzled in the matter of the costume.
The ladies laughed.
“Daz ma grade-gran’-mamma,” said Clotilde.
“Dass one _fille a la cassette_,” said Aurora, “my gran’-muzzah; _mais_, ad de sem tarn id is Clotilde.” She touched her daughter under the chin with a ringed finger. “Clotilde is my gran’-mamma.”
Frowenfeld rose to go.
“You muz come again, ‘Sieur Frowenfel’,” said both ladies, in a breath.
What could he say?
CHAPTER XXVI
A RIDE AND A RESCUE
“Douane or Bienville?”
Such was the choice presented by Honore Grandissime to Joseph Frowenfeld, as the former on a lively brown colt and the apothecary on a nervy chestnut fell into a gentle, preliminary trot while yet in the rue Royale, looked after by that great admirer of both, Raoul Innerarity.
“Douane?” said Frowenfeld. (It was the street we call Custom-house.)
“It has mud-holes,” objected Honore.
“Well, then, the rue du Canal?”
“The canal–I can smell it from here. Why not rue Bienville?”
Frowenfeld said he did not know. (We give the statement for what it is worth.)
Notice their route. A spirit of perversity seems to have entered into the very topography of this quarter. They turned up the rue Bienville (up is toward the river); reaching the levee, they took their course up the shore of the Mississippi (almost due south), and broke into a lively gallop on the Tchoupitoulas road, which in those days skirted that margin of the river nearest the sunsetting, namely, the _eastern_ bank.
Conversation moved sluggishly for a time, halting upon trite topics or swinging easily from polite inquiry to mild affirmation, and back again. They were men of thought, these two, and one of them did not fully understand why he was in his present position; hence some reticence. It was one of those afternoons in early March that make one wonder how the rest of the world avoids emigrating to Louisiana in a body.
“Is not the season early?” asked Frowenfeld.
M. Grandissime believed it was; but then the Creole spring always seemed so, he said.
The land was an inverted firmament of flowers. The birds were an innumerable, busy, joy-compelling multitude, darting and fluttering hither and thither, as one might imagine the babes do in heaven. The orange-groves were in blossom; their dark-green boughs seemed snowed upon from a cloud of incense, and a listening ear might catch an incessant, whispered trickle of falling petals, dropping “as the honey-comb.” The magnolia was beginning to add to its dark and shining evergreen foliage frequent sprays of pale new leaves and long, slender, buff buds of others yet to come. The oaks, both the bare-armed and the “green-robed senators,” the willows, and the plaqueminiers, were putting out their subdued florescence as if they smiled in grave participation with the laughing gardens. The homes that gave perfection to this beauty were those old, large, belvidered colonial villas, of which you may still here and there see one standing, battered into half ruin, high and broad, among foundries, cotton-and tobacco-sheds, junk-yards, and longshoremen’s hovels, like one unconquered elephant in a wreck of artillery. In Frowenfeld’s day the “smell of their garments was like Lebanon.” They were seen by glimpses through chance openings in lofty hedges of Cherokee-rose or bois-d’arc, under boughs of cedar or pride-of-China, above their groves of orange or down their long, overarched avenues of oleander; and the lemon and the pomegranate, the banana, the fig, the shaddock, and at times even the mango and the guava, joined “hands around” and tossed their fragrant locks above the lilies and roses. Frowenfeld forgot to ask himself further concerning the probable intent of M. Grandissime’s invitation to ride; these beauties seemed rich enough in good reasons. He felt glad and grateful.
At a certain point the two horses turned of their own impulse, as by force of habit, and with a few clambering strides mounted to the top of the levee and stood still, facing the broad, dancing, hurrying, brimming river.
The Creole stole an amused glance at the elated, self-forgetful look of his immigrant friend.
“Mr. Frowenfeld,” he said, as the delighted apothecary turned with unwonted suddenness and saw his smile, “I believe you like this better than discussion. You find it easier to be in harmony with Louisiana than with Louisianians, eh?”
Frowenfeld colored with surprise. Something unpleasant had lately occurred in his shop. Was this to signify that M. Grandissime had heard of it?
“I am a Louisianian,” replied he, as if this were a point assailed.
“I would not insinuate otherwise,” said M. Grandissime, with a kindly gesture. “I would like you to feel so. We are citizens now of a different government from that under which we lived the morning we first met. Yet”–the Creole paused and smiled–“you are not, and I am glad you are not, what we call a Louisianian.”
Frowenfeld’s color increased. He turned quickly in his saddle as if to say something very positive, but hesitated, restrained himself and asked:
“Mr. Grandissime, is not your Creole ‘we’ a word that does much damage?”
The Creole’s response was at first only a smile, followed by a thoughtful countenance; but he presently said, with some suddenness:
“My-de’-seh, yes. Yet you see I am, even this moment, forgetting we are not a separate people. Yes, our Creole ‘we’ does damage, and our Creole ‘you’ does more. I assure you, sir, I try hard to get my people to understand that it is time to stop calling those who come and add themselves to the community, aliens, interlopers, invaders. That is what I hear my cousins, ‘Polyte and Sylvestre, in the heat of discussion, called you the other evening; is it so?”
“I brought it upon myself,” said Frowenfeld. “I brought it upon myself.”
“Ah!” interrupted M. Grandissime, with a broad smile, “excuse me–I am fully prepared to believe it. But the charge is a false one. I told them so. My-de’-seh–I know that a citizen of the United States in the United States has a right to become, and to be called, under the laws governing the case, a Louisianian, a Vermonter, or a Virginian, as it may suit his whim; and even if he should be found dishonest or dangerous, he has a right to be treated just exactly as we treat the knaves and ruffians who are native born! Every discreet man must admit that.”
“But if they do not enforce it, Mr. Grandissime,” quickly responded the sore apothecary, “if they continually forget it–if one must surrender himself to the errors and crimes of the community as he finds it–“
The Creole uttered a low laugh.
“Party differences, Mr. Frowenfeld; they have them in all countries.”
“So your cousins said,” said Frowenfeld.
“And how did you answer them?”
“Offensively,” said the apothecary, with sincere mortification.
“Oh! that was easy,” replied the other, amusedly; “but how?”
“I said that, having here only such party differences as are common elsewhere, we do not behave as they elsewhere do; that in most civilized countries the immigrant is welcome, but here he is not. I am afraid I have not learned the art of courteous debate,” said Frowenfeld, with a smile of apology.
“‘Tis a great art,” said the Creole, quietly, stroking his horse’s neck. “I suppose my cousins denied your statement with indignation, eh?”
“Yes; they said the honest immigrant is always welcome.”
“Well, do you not find that true?”
“But, Mr. Grandissime, that is requiring the immigrant to prove his innocence!” Frowenfeld spoke from the heart. “And even the honest immigrant is welcome only when he leaves his peculiar opinions behind him. Is that right, sir?”
The Creole smiled at Frowenfeld’s heat.
“My-de’-seh, my cousins complain that you advocate measures fatal to the prevailing order of society.”
“But,” replied the unyielding Frowenfeld, turning redder than ever, “that is the very thing that American liberty gives me the right–peaceably–to do! Here is a structure of society defective, dangerous, erected on views of human relations which the world is abandoning as false; yet the immigrant’s welcome is modified with the warning not to touch these false foundations with one of his fingers.”
“Did you tell my cousins the foundations of society here are false?”
“I regret to say I did, very abruptly. I told them they were privately aware of the fact.”
“You may say,” said the ever-amiable Creole, “that you allowed debate to run into controversy, eh?”
Frowenfeld was silent; he compared the gentleness of this Creole’s rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and felt humiliated. But M. Grandissime spoke with a rallying smile.
“Mr. Frowenfeld, you never make pills with eight corners eh?”
“No, sir.” The apothecary smiled.
“No, you make them round; cannot you make your doctrines the same way? My-de’-seh, you will think me impertinent; but the reason I speak is because I wish very much that you and my cousins would not be offended with each other. To tell you the truth, my-de’-seh, I hoped to use you with them–pardon my frankness.”
“If Louisiana had more men like you, M. Grandissime,” cried the untrained Frowenfeld, “society would be less sore to the touch.”
“My-de’-seh,” said the Creole, laying his hand out toward his companion and turning his horse in such a way as to turn the other also, “do me one favor; remember that it _is_ sore to the touch.”
The animals picked their steps down the inner face of the levee and resumed their course up the road at a walk.
“Did you see that man just turn the bend of the road, away yonder?” the Creole asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“It was–my landlord, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Did he not have a conversation with you lately, too?”
“Yes, sir; why do you ask?”
“It has had a bad effect on him. I wonder why he is out here on foot?”
The horses quickened their paces. The two friends rode along in silence. Frowenfeld noticed his companion frequently cast an eye up along the distant sunset shadows of the road with a new anxiety. Yet, when M. Grandissime broke the silence it was only to say:
“I suppose you find the blemishes in our state of society can all be attributed to one main defect, Mr. Frowenfeld?”
Frowenfeld was glad of the chance to answer:
“I have not overlooked that this society has disadvantages as well as blemishes; it is distant from enlightened centres; it has a language and religion different from that of the great people of which it is now called to be a part. That it has also positive blemishes of organism–“
“Yes,” interrupted the Creole, smiling at the immigrant’s sudden magnanimity, “its positive blemishes; do they all spring from one main defect?”
“I think not. The climate has its influence, the soil has its influence–dwellers in swamps cannot be mountaineers.”
“But after all,” persisted the Creole, “the greater part of our troubles comes from–“
“Slavery,” said Frowenfeld, “or rather caste.”
“Exactly,” said M. Grandissime.
“You surprise me, sir,” said the simple apothecary. “I supposed you were–“
“My-de’-seh,” exclaimed M. Grandissime, suddenly becoming very earnest, “I am nothing, nothing! There is where you have the advantage of me. I am but a _dilettante_, whether in politics, in philosophy, morals, or religion. I am afraid to go deeply into anything, lest it should make ruin in my name, my family, my property.”
He laughed unpleasantly.
The question darted into Frowenfeld’s mind, whether this might not be a hint of the matter that M. Grandissime had been trying to see him about.
“Mr. Grandissime,” he said, “I can hardly believe you would neglect a duty either for family, property, or society.”
“Well, you mistake,” said the Creole, so coldly that Frowenfeld colored.
They galloped on. M. Grandissime brightened again, almost to the degree of vivacity. By and by they slackened to a slow trot and were silent. The gardens had been long left behind, and they were passing between continuous Cherokee-rose hedges on the right and on the left, along that bend of the Mississippi where its waters, glancing off three miles above from the old De Macarty levee (now Carrollton), at the slightest opposition in the breeze go whirling and leaping like a herd of dervishes across to the ever-crumbling shore, now marked by the little yellow depot-house of Westwego. Miles up the broad flood the sun was disappearing gorgeously. From their saddles, the two horsemen feasted on the scene without comment.
But presently, M. Grandissime uttered a low ejaculation and spurred his horse toward a tree hard by, preparing, as he went, to fasten his rein to an overhanging branch. Frowenfeld, agreeable to his beckon, imitated the movement.
“I fear he intends to drown himself,” whispered M. Grandissime, as they hurriedly dismounted.
“Who? Not–“
“Yes, your landlord, as you call him. He is on the flatboat; I saw his hat over the levee. When we get on top the levee, we must get right into it. But do not follow him into the water in front of the flat; it is certain death; no power of man could keep you from going under it.”
The words were quickly spoken; they scrambled to the levee’s crown. Just abreast of them lay a flatboat, emptied of its cargo and moored to the levee. They leaped into it. A human figure swerved from the onset of the Creole and ran toward the bow of the boat, and in an instant more would have been in the river.
“Stop!” said Frowenfeld, seizing the unresisting f.m.c. firmly by the collar.
Honore Grandissime smiled, partly at the apothecary’s brief speech, but much more at his success.
“Let him go, Mr. Frowenfeld,” he said, as he came near.
The silent man turned away his face with a gesture of shame.
M. Grandissime, in a gentle voice, exchanged a few words with him, and he turned and walked away, gained the shore, descended the levee, and took a foot-path which soon hid him behind a hedge.
“He gives his pledge not to try again,” said the Creole, as the two companions proceeded to resume the saddle. “Do not look after him.” (Joseph had cast a searching look over the hedge.)
They turned homeward.
“Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld,” said the Creole, suddenly, “if the _immygrant_ has cause of complaint, how much more has _that_ man! True, it is only love for which he would have just now drowned himself; yet what an accusation, my-de’-seh, is his whole life against that ‘caste’ which shuts him up within its narrow and almost solitary limits! And yet, Mr. Frowenfeld, this people esteem this very same crime of caste the holiest and most precious of their virtues. My-de’-seh, it never occurs to us that in this matter we are interested, and therefore disqualified, witnesses. We say we are not understood; that the jury (the civilized world) renders its decision without viewing the body; that we are judged from a distance. We forget that we ourselves are too _close_ to see distinctly, and so continue, a spectacle to civilization, sitting in a horrible darkness, my-de’-seh!” He frowned.
“The shadow of the Ethiopian,” said the grave apothecary.
M. Grandissime’s quick gesture implied that Frowenfeld had said the very word.
“Ah! my-de’-seh, when I try sometimes to stand outside and look at it, I am _ama-aze_ at the length, the blackness of that shadow!” (He was so deeply in earnest that he took no care of his English.) “It is the _Nemesis_ w’ich, instead of coming afteh, glides along by the side of this morhal, political, commercial, social mistake! It blanches, my-de’-seh, ow whole civilization! It drhags us a centurhy behind the rhes’ of the world! It rhetahds and poisons everhy industrhy we got!–mos’ of all our-h immense agrhicultu’e! It brheeds a thousan’ cusses that nevva leave home but jus’ flutter-h up an’ rhoost, my-de’-seh, on ow _heads_; an’ we nevva know it!–yes, sometimes some of us know it.”
He changed the subject.
They had repassed the ruins of Fort St. Louis, and were well within the precincts of the little city, when, as they pulled up from a final gallop, mention was made of Doctor Keene. He was improving; Honore had seen him that morning; so, at another hour, had Frowenfeld. Doctor Keene had told Honore about Palmyre’s wound.
“You was at her house again this morning?” asked the Creole.
“Yes,” said Frowenfeld.
M. Grandissime shook his head warningly.
“‘Tis a dangerous business. You are almost sure to become the object of slander. You ought to tell Doctor Keene to make some other arrangement, or presently you, too, will be under the–” he lowered his voice, for Frowenfeld was dismounting at the shop door, and three or four acquaintances stood around–“under the ‘shadow of the Ethiopian.'”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FETE DE GRANDPERE
Sojourners in New Orleans who take their afternoon drive down Esplanade street will notice, across on the right, between it and that sorry streak once fondly known as Champs Elysees, two or three large, old houses, rising above the general surroundings and displaying architectural features which identify them with an irrevocable past–a past when the faithful and true Creole could, without fear of contradiction, express his religious belief that the antipathy he felt for the Americain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in his ante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative Providence. There is, for instance, or was until lately, one house which some hundred and fifteen years ago was the suburban residence of the old sea-captain governor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the oranges as silent and gray as a pelican, and, so far as we know, has never had one cypress plank added or subtracted since its master was called to France and thrown into the Bastile. Another has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, when the setting sun strikes the panes, reminds one of a man with spectacles standing up in an audience, searching for a friend who is not there and will never come back. These houses are the last remaining–if, indeed, they were not pulled down yesterday–of a group that once marked from afar the direction of the old highway between the city’s walls and the suburb St. Jean. Here clustered the earlier aristocracy of the colony; all that pretty crew of counts, chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons, etc., who loved their kings, and especially their kings’ moneys, with an _abandon_ which affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.
Among these stood the great mother-mansion of the Grandissimes. Do not look for it now; it is quite gone. The round, white-plastered brick pillars which held the house fifteen feet up from the reeking ground and rose on loftily to sustain the great overspreading roof, or clustered in the cool, paved basement; the lofty halls, with their multitudinous glitter of gilded brass and twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; the immense encircling veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walk abreast; the great front stairs, descending from the veranda to the garden, with a lofty palm on either side, on whose broad steps forty Grandissimes could gather on a birthday afternoon; and the belvidere, whence you could see the cathedral, the Ursulines’, the governor’s mansion, and the river, far away, shining between the villas of Tchoupitoulas Coast–all have disappeared as entirely beyond recall as the flowers that bloomed in the gardens on the day of this _fete de grandpere_.
Odd to say, it was not the grandpere’s birthday that had passed. For weeks the happy children of the many Grandissime branches–the Mandarins, the St. Blancards, the Brahmins–had been standing with their uplifted arms apart, awaiting the signal to clap hands and jump, and still, from week to week, the appointed day had been made to fall back, and fall back before–what think you?–an inability to understand Honore.
It was a sad paradox in the history of this majestic old house that her best child gave her the most annoyance; but it had long been so. Even in Honore’s early youth, a scant two years after she had watched him, over the tops of her green myrtles and white and crimson oleanders, go away, a lad of fifteen, supposing he would of course come back a Grandissime of the Grandissimes–an inflexible of the inflexibles–he was found “inciting” (so the stately dames and officials who graced her front veranda called it) a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means of transatlantic letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud, rekindled by the Fusilier-Nancanou duel, to a little foul smoke. The main difficulty seemed to be that Honore could not be satisfied with a clean conscience as to his own deeds and the peace and fellowships of single households; his longing was, and had ever been–he had inherited it from his father–to see one unbroken and harmonious Grandissime family gathering yearly under this venerated roof without reproach before all persons, classes, and races with whom they had ever had to do. It was not hard for the old mansion to forgive him once or twice; but she had had to do it often. It seems no over-stretch of fancy to say she sometimes gazed down upon his erring ways with a look of patient sadness in her large and beautiful windows.
And how had that forbearance been rewarded? Take one short instance: when, seven years before this present _fete de grandpere_, he came back from Europe, and she (this old home which we cannot help but personify), though in trouble then–a trouble that sent up the old feud flames again–opened her halls to rejoice in him with the joy of all her gathered families, he presently said such strange things in favor of indiscriminate human freedom that for very shame’s sake she hushed them up, in the fond hope that he would outgrow such heresies. But he? On top of all the rest, he declined a military commission and engaged in commerce–“shopkeeping, _parbleu!_”
However, therein was developed a grain of consolation. Honore became–as he chose to call it–more prudent. With much tact, Agricola was amiably crowded off the dictator’s chair, to become, instead, a sort of seneschal. For a time the family peace was perfect, and Honore, by a touch here to-day and a word there to-morrow, was ever lifting the name, and all who bore it, a little and a little higher; when suddenly, as in his father’s day–that dear Numa who knew how to sacrifice his very soul, as a sort of Iphigenia for the propitiation of the family gods–as in Numa’s day came the cession to Spain, so now fell this other cession, like an unexpected tornado, threatening the wreck of her children’s slave-schooners and the prostration alike of their slave-made crops and their Spanish liberties; and just in the fateful moment where Numa would have stood by her, Honore had let go. Ah, it was bitter!
“See what foreign education does!” cried a Mandarin de Grandissime of the Baton Rouge Coast. “I am sorry now”–derisively–“that I never sent _my_ boy to France, am I not? No! No-o-o! I would rather my son should never know how to read, than that he should come back from Paris repudiating the sentiments and prejudices of his own father. Is education better than family peace? Ah, bah! My son make friends with Americains and tell me they–that call a negro ‘monsieur’–are as good as his father? But that is what we get for letting Honore become a merchant. Ha! the degradation! Shaking hands with men who do not believe in the slave trade! Shake hands? Yes; associate–fraternize! with apothecaries and negrophiles. And now we are invited to meet at the _fete de grandpere_, in the house where he is really the chief–the _cacique!_”
No! The family would not come together on the first appointment; no, nor on the second; no, not if the grandpapa did express his wish; no, nor on the third–nor on the fourth.
“_Non, Messieurs_!” cried both youth and reckless age; and, sometimes, also, the stronger heads of the family, the men of means, of force and of influence, urged on from behind by their proud and beautiful wives and daughters.
Arms, generally, rather than heads, ruled there in those days. Sentiments (which are the real laws) took shape in accordance with the poetry, rather than the reason, of things, and the community recognized the supreme domination of “the gentleman” in questions of right and of “the ladies” in matters of sentiment. Under such conditions strength establishes over weakness a showy protection which is the subtlest of tyrannies, yet which, in the very moment of extending its arm over woman, confers upon her a power which a truer freedom would only diminish; constitutes her in a large degree an autocrat of public sentiment and thus accepts her narrowest prejudices and most belated errors as veriest need-be’s of social life.
The clans classified easily into three groups; there were those who boiled, those who stewed, and those who merely steamed under a close cover. The men in the first two groups were, for the most part, those who were holding office under old Spanish commissions, and were daily expecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana thereby ruined. The steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family–the timid, the apathetic, the “conservative.” The conservatives found ease better than exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so much easier–and the warm weather coming on with a rapidity-wearying to contemplate.
“The Yankee was an inferior animal.”
“Certainly.”
“But Honore had a right to his convictions.”
“Yes, that was so, too.”
“It looked very traitorous, however.”
“Yes, so it did.”
“Nevertheless, it might turn out that Honore was advancing the true interests of his people.”
“Very likely.”
“It would not do to accept office under the Yankee government.”
“Of course not.”
“Yet it would never do to let the Yankees get the offices, either.”
“That was true; nobody could deny that.”
“If Spain or France got the country back, they would certainly remember and reward those who had held out faithfully.”
“Certainly! That was an old habit with France and Spain.”
“But if they did not get the country back–“
“Yes, that is so; Honore is a very good fellow, and–“
And, one after another, under the mild coolness of Honore’s amiable disregard, their indignation trickled back from steam to water, and they went on drawing their stipends, some in Honore’s counting-room, where they held positions, some from the provisional government, which had as yet made but few changes, and some, secretly, from the cunning Casa-Calvo; for, blow the wind east or blow the wind west, the affinity of the average Grandissime for a salary abideth forever.
Then, at the right moment, Honore made a single happy stroke, and even the hot Grandissimes, they of the interior parishes and they of Agricola’s squadron, slaked and crumbled when he wrote each a letter saying that the governor was about to send them appointments, and that it would be well, if they wished to _evade_ them, to write the governor at once, surrendering their present commissions. Well! Evade? They would evade nothing! Do you think they would so belittle themselves as to write to the usurper? They would submit to keep the positions first.
But the next move was Honore’s making the whole town aware of his apostasy. The great mansion, with the old grandpere sitting out in front, shivered. As we have seen, he had ridden through the Place d’Armes with the arch-usurper himself. Yet, after all, a Grandissime would be a Grandissime still; whatever he did he did openly. And wasn’t that glorious–never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad? It was not everyone who could ride with the governor.
And blood was so much thicker than vinegar that the family, that would not meet either in January or February, met in the first week of March, every constituent one of them.
The feast has been eaten. The garden now is joyous with children and the veranda resplendent with ladies. From among the latter the eye quickly selects one. She is perceptibly taller than the others; she sits in their midst near the great hall entrance; and as you look at her there is no claim of ancestry the Grandissimes can make which you would not allow. Her hair, once black, now lifted up into a glistening snow-drift, augments the majesty of a still beautiful face, while her full stature and stately bearing suggest the finer parts of Agricola, her brother. It is Madame Grandissime, the mother of Honore.
One who sits at her left, and is very small, is a favorite cousin. On her right is her daughter, the widowed senora of Jose Martinez; she has wonderful black hair and a white brow as wonderful. The commanding carriage of the mother is tempered in her to a gentle dignity and calm, contrasting pointedly with the animated manners of the courtly matrons among whom she sits, and whose continuous conversation takes this direction or that, at the pleasure of Madame Grandissime.
But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those children who are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails of the front stair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of beautiful girls, which every few minutes, at an end of the veranda, appears, wheels and disappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics of face and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of the new-blown flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there, indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that one has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of their eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a less vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creole stature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes. There is scarcely a rose in all their cheeks, and a full red-ripeness of the lips would hardly be in keeping; but there is plenty of life in their eyes, which glance out between the curtains of their long lashes with a merry dancing that keeps time to the prattle of tongues. You are not able to get a straight look into them, and if you could you would see only your own image cast back in pitiful miniature; but you turn away and feel, as you fortify yourself with an inward smile, that they know you, you man, through and through, like a little song. And in turning, your sight is glad to rest again on the face of Honore’s mother. You see, this time, that she _is_ his mother, by a charm you had overlooked, a candid, serene and lovable smile. It is the wonder of those who see that smile that she can ever be harsh.
The playful, mock-martial tread of the delicate Creole feet is all at once swallowed up by the sound of many heavier steps in the hall, and the fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles and nephews of the great family come out, not a man of them that cannot, with a little care, keep on his feet. Their descendants of the present day sip from shallower glasses and with less marked results.
The matrons, rising, offer the chief seat to the first comer, the great-grandsire–the oldest living Grandissime–Alcibiade, a shaken but unfallen monument of early colonial days, a browned and corrugated souvenir of De Vaudreuil’s pomps, of O’Reilly’s iron rule, of Galvez’ brilliant wars–a man who had seen Bienville and Zephyr Grandissime. With what splendor of manner Madame Fusilier de Grandissime offers, and he accepts, the place of honor! Before he sits down he pauses a moment to hear out the companion on whose arm he had been leaning. But Theophile, a dark, graceful youth of eighteen, though he is recounting something with all the oblivious ardor of his kind, becomes instantly silent, bows with grave deference to the ladies, hands the aged forefather gracefully to his seat, and turning, recommences the recital before one who hears all with the same perfect courtesy–his beloved cousin Honore.
Meanwhile, the gentlemen throng out. Gallant crew! These are they who have been pausing proudly week after week in an endeavor (?) to understand the opaque motives of Numa’s son.
In the middle of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of fifty, with the usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue. That is Colonel Agamemnon Brahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family’s military pride, conservator of its military glory, and, after Honore, the most admired of the name. Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away from Frowenfeld’s shop in the carriage, essays to engage Agamemnon in conversation, and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman’s nether limbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with which the graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter, grapples the subject of boots. A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who prefixes to Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wife is, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on a step, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-looking black-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned boy, below. Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, goes quite down to the bottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade. He is a large, broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands smoking a cigar, with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances at the sky with the eye of a hunter–or, it may be, of a sailor.
“Valentine will not marry,” says one of two ladies who lean over the rail of the veranda above. “I wonder why.”
The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her shoulders and pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the answer to which would only put Valentine in a numerous class and do him no credit.
Such were the choice spirits of the family. Agricola had retired. Raoul was there; his pretty auburn head might have been seen about half-way up the steps, close to one well sprinkled with premature gray.
“No such thing!” exclaimed his companion.
(The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)
“I give you my sacred word of honor!” cried Raoul.
“That Honore is having all his business carried on in English?” asked the incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)
“I swear–” replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge–“on a stack of Bibles that high!”
“Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!”
This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodic flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.
“Ask him! ask him!” cried Raoul.
“Honore!” called Sylvestre, rising up. Two or three persons passed the call around the corner of the veranda.
Honore came with a chain of six girls on either arm. By the time he arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.
“Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be written in English,” said Sylvestre.
“Well?”
“It is not true, is it?”
“Yes.”
The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory “Ah!” except Honore’s mother. She turned upon him a look of silent but intense and indignant disappointment.
“Honore!” cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, “Honore!”
But Honore was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens of girls.
“Honore!” cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap of writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of a boot-heel, “how do you spell ‘la-dee?'”
There was a moment’s hush to hear the answer.
“Ask Valentine,” said Honore.
Everybody laughed aloud. That taciturn man’s only retort was to survey the company above him with an unmoved countenance, and to push the ashes slowly from his cigar with his little finger. M. Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, could not read.
“Show it to Agricola,” cried two or three, as that great man came out upon the veranda, heavy-eyed, and with tumbled hair.
Sylvestre, spying Agricola’s head beyond the ladies, put the question.
“How is it spelled on that paper?” retorted the king of beasts.
“L-a-y–“
“Ignoramus!” growled the old man.
“I did not spell it,” cried Raoul, and attempted to seize the paper. But Sylvestre throwing his hand behind him, a lady snatched the paper, two or three cried “Give it to Agricola!” and a pretty boy, whom the laughter and excitement had lured from the garden, scampered up the steps and handed it to the old man.
“Honore!” cried Raoul, “it must not be read. It is one of your private matters.”
But Raoul’s insinuation that anybody would entrust him with a private matter brought another laugh.
Honore nodded to his uncle to read it out, and those who could not understand English, as well as those who could, listened. It was a paper Sylvestre had picked out of a waste-basket on the day of Aurore’s visit to the counting-room. Agricola read:
“What is that layde want in thare with Honore?” “Honore is goin giv her bac that proprety–that is Aurore De Grapion what Agricola kill the husband.”
That was the whole writing, but Agricola never finished. He was reading aloud–“that is Aurore De Grap–“
At that moment he dropped the paper and blackened with wrath; a sharp flash of astonishment ran through the company; an instant of silence followed and Agricola’s thundering voice rolled down upon Sylvestre in a succession of terrible imprecations.
It was painful to see the young man’s face as, speechless, he received this abuse. He stood pale and frightened, with a smile playing about his mouth, half of distress and half of defiance, that said as plain as a smile could say, “Uncle Agricola, you will have to pay for this mistake.”
As the old man ceased, Sylvestre turned and cast a look downward to Valentine Grandissime, then walked up the steps, and passing with a courteous bow through the group that surrounded Agricola, went into the house. Valentine looked at the zenith, then at his shoe-buckles, tossed his cigar quietly into the grass and passed around a corner of the house to meet Sylvestre in the rear.
Honore had already nodded to his uncle to come aside with him, and Agricola had done so. The rest of the company, save a few male figures down in the garden, after some feeble efforts to keep up their spirits on the veranda, remarked the growing coolness or the waning daylight, and singly or in pairs withdrew. It was not long before Raoul, who had come up upon the veranda, was left alone. He seemed to wait for something, as, leaning over the rail while the stars came out, he sang to himself, in a soft undertone, a snatch of a Creole song:
“La pluie–la pluie tombait,
Crapaud criait,
Moustique chantait–“
The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had been dipped in quicksilver.
In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or seven dark forms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of their cigars to be occasionally seen and their voices to reach his ear; but he did not listen. In a little while there came a light footstep, and a soft, mock-startled “Who is that?” and one of that same sparkling group of girls that had lately hung upon Honore came so close to Raoul, in her attempt to discern his lineaments, that their lips accidentally met. They had but a moment of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustled forth by a feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of the great rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimes were gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languishing fire, waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of each, from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul Innerarity.
“But mark,” they cried unitedly, “you have got to wind up with the story of Bras-Coupe!”
“A song! A song!”
“_Une chanson Creole! Une chanson des negres!_”
“Sing ‘ye tole dance la doung y doung doung!'” cried a black-eyed girl.
Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.
“Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on.”
But instead he sang them this:
“_La premier’ fois mo te ‘oir li,
Li te pose au bord so lit;
Mo di’, Bouzon, bel n’amourese!
L’aut’ fois li te si’ so la saise Comme vie Madam dans so fauteil,
Quand li vive cote soleil.
So gies ye te plis noir passe la nouitte, So de la lev’ plis doux passe la quitte! Tou’ mo la vie, zamein mo oir
Ein n’ amourese zoli comme ca!
Mo’ blie manze–mo’ blie boir’– Mo’ blie tout dipi c’ temps-la–
Mo’ blie parle–mo’ blie dormi, Quand mo pense apres zami!_”
“And you have heard Bras-Coupe sing that, yourself?”
“Once upon a time,” said Raoul, warming with his subject, “we were coming down from Pointe Macarty in three pirogues. We had been three days fishing and hunting in Lake Salvador. Bras-Coupe had one pirogue with six paddles–“
“Oh, yes!” cried a youth named Baltazar; “sing that, Raoul!”
And he sang that.
“But oh, Raoul, sing that song the negroes sing when they go out in the bayous at night, stealing pigs and chickens!”
“That boat song, do you mean, which they sing as a signal to those on shore?” He hummed.
[Illustration: Music]
“De zabs, de zabs, de counou ouaie ouaie, De zabs, de zabs, de counou ouaie ouaie, Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie ouaie,
Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie ouaie,
Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie, momza; Momza, momza, momza, momza,
Roza, roza, roza-et–momza.”
This was followed by another and still another, until the hour began to grow late. And then they gathered closer around him and heard the promised story. At the same hour Honore Grandissime, wrapping himself in a greatcoat and giving himself up to sad and somewhat bitter reflections, had wandered from the paternal house, and by and by from the grounds, not knowing why or whither, but after a time soliciting, at Frowenfeld’s closing door, the favor of his company. He had been feeling a kind of suffocation. This it was that made him seek and prize the presence and hand-grasp of the inexperienced apothecary. He led him out to the edge of the river. Here they sat down, and with a laborious attempt at a hard and jesting mood, Honore told the same dark story.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPE
“A very little more than eight years ago,” began Honore–but not only Honore, but Raoul also; and not only they, but another, earlier on the same day,–Honore, the f.m.c. But we shall not exactly follow the words of any one of these.
Bras-Coupe, they said, had been, in Africa and under another name, a prince among his people. In a certain war of conquest, to which he had been driven by _ennui_, he was captured, stripped of his royalty, marched down upon the beach of the Atlantic, and, attired as a true son of Adam, with two goodly arms intact, became a commodity. Passing out of first hands in barter for a looking-glass, he was shipped in good order and condition on board the good schooner _Egalite_, whereof Blank was master, to be delivered without delay at the port of Nouvelle Orleans (the dangers of fire and navigation excepted), unto Blank Blank. In witness whereof, He that made men’s skins of different colors, but all blood of one, hath entered the same upon His book, and sealed it to the day of judgment.
Of the voyage little is recorded–here below; the less the better. Part of the living merchandise failed to keep; the weather was rough, the cargo large, the vessel small. However, the captain discovered there was room over the side, and there–all flesh is grass–from time to time during the voyage he jettisoned the unmerchantable.
Yet, when the reopened hatches let in the sweet smell of the land, Bras-Coupe had come to the upper–the favored–the buttered side of the world; the anchor slid with a rumble of relief down through the muddy fathoms of the Mississippi, and the prince could hear through the schooner’s side the savage current of the river, leaping and licking about the bows, and whimpering low welcomes home. A splendid picture to the eyes of the royal captive, as his head came up out of the hatchway, was the little Franco-Spanish-American city that lay on the low, brimming bank. There were little forts that showed their whitewashed teeth; there was a green parade-ground, and yellow barracks, and cabildo, and hospital, and cavalry stables, and custom-house, and a most inviting jail, convenient to the cathedral–all of dazzling white and yellow, with a black stripe marking the track of the conflagration of 1794, and here and there among the low roofs a lofty one with round-topped dormer windows and a breezy belvidere looking out upon the plantations of coffee and indigo beyond the town.
When Bras-Coupe staggered ashore, he stood but a moment among a drove of “likely boys,” before Agricola Fusilier, managing the business adventures of the Grandissime estate, as well as the residents thereon, and struck with admiration for the physical beauties of the chieftain (a man may even fancy a negro–as a negro), bought the lot, and, both to resell him with the rest to some unappreciative ‘Cadian, induced Don Jose Martinez’ overseer to become his purchaser.
Down in the rich parish of St. Bernard (whose boundary line now touches that of the distended city) lay the plantation, known before Bras-Coupe passed away as La Renaissance. Here it was that he entered at once upon a chapter of agreeable surprises. He was humanely met, presented with a clean garment, lifted into a cart drawn by oxen, taken to a whitewashed cabin of logs, finer than his palace at home, and made to comprehend that it was a free gift. He was also given some clean food, whereupon he fell sick. At home it would have been the part of piety for the magnate next the throne to launch him heavenward at once; but now, healing doses were administered, and to his amazement he recovered. It reminded him that he was no longer king.
His name, he replied to an inquiry touching that subject, was ——–, something in the Jaloff tongue, which he by and by condescended to render into Congo: Mioko-Koanga; in French Bras-Coupe; the Arm Cut Off. Truly it would have been easy to admit, had this been his meaning, that his tribe, in losing him, had lost its strong right arm close off at the shoulder; not so easy for his high-paying purchaser to allow, if this other was his intent: that the arm which might no longer shake the spear or swing the wooden sword was no better than a useless stump never to be lifted for aught else. But whether easy to allow or not, that was his meaning. He made himself a type of all Slavery, turning into flesh and blood the truth that all Slavery is maiming.
He beheld more luxury in a week than all his subjects had seen in a century. Here Congo girls were dressed in cottons and flannels worth, where he came from, an elephant’s tusk apiece. Everybody wore clothes–children and lads alone excepted. Not a lion had invaded the settlement since his immigration. The serpents were as nothing; an occasional one coming up through the floor–that was all. True, there was more emaciation than unassisted conjecture could explain–a profusion of enlarged joints and diminished muscles, which, thank God, was even then confined to a narrow section and disappeared with Spanish rule. He had no experimental knowledge of it; nay, regular meals, on the contrary, gave him anxious concern, yet had the effect–spite of his apprehension that he was being fattened for a purpose–of restoring the herculean puissance which formerly in Africa had made him the terror of the battle.
When one day he had come to be quite himself, he was invited out into the sunshine, and escorted by the driver (a sort of foreman to the overseer), went forth dimly wondering. They reached a field where some men and women were hoeing. He had seen men and women–subjects of his–labor–a little–in Africa. The driver handed him a hoe; he examined it with silent interest–until by signs he was requested to join the pastime.
“What?”
He spoke, not with his lips, but with the recoil of his splendid frame and the ferocious expansion of his eyes. This invitation was a cataract of lightning leaping down an ink-black sky. In one instant of all-pervading clearness he read his sentence–WORK.
Bras-Coupe was six feet five. With a sweep as quick as instinct the back of the hoe smote the driver full in the head. Next, the prince lifted the nearest Congo crosswise, brought thirty-two teeth together in his wildly kicking leg and cast him away as a bad morsel; then, throwing another into the branches of a willow, and a woman over his head into a draining-ditch, he made one bound for freedom, and fell to his knees, rocking from side to side under the effect of a pistol-ball from the overseer. It had struck him in the forehead, and running around the skull in search of a penetrable spot, tradition–which sometimes jests–says came out despairingly, exactly where it had entered.
It so happened that, except the overseer, the whole company were black. Why should the trivial scandal be blabbed? A plaster or two made everything even in a short time, except in the driver’s case–for the driver died. The woman whom Bras-Coupe had thrown over his head lived to sell _calas_ to Joseph Frowenfeld.
Don Jose, young and austere, knew nothing about agriculture and cared as much about human nature. The overseer often thought this, but never said it; he would not trust even himself with the dangerous criticism. When he ventured to reveal the foregoing incidents to the senor he laid all the blame possible upon the man whom death had removed beyond the reach of correction, and brought his account to a climax by hazarding the asserting that Bras-Coupe was an animal that could not be whipped.
“Caramba!” exclaimed the master, with gentle emphasis, “how so?”
“Perhaps senor had better ride down to the quarters,” replied the overseer.
It was a great sacrifice of dignity, but the master made it.
“Bring him out.”
They brought him out–chains on his feet, chains on his wrists, an iron yoke on his neck. The Spanish Creole master had often seen the bull, with his long, keen horns and blazing eye, standing in the arena; but this was as though he had come face to face with a rhinoceros.
“This man is not a Congo,” he said.
“He is a Jaloff,” replied the encouraged overseer. “See his fine, straight nose; moreover, he is a _candio_–a prince. If I whip him he will die.”
The dauntless captive and fearless master stood looking into each other’s eyes until each recognized in the other his peer in physical courage, and each was struck with an admiration for the other which no after difference was sufficient entirely to destroy. Had Bras-Coupe’s eye quailed but once–just for one little instant–he would have got the lash; but, as it was–
“Get an interpreter,” said Don Jose; then, more privately, “and come to an understanding. I shall require it of you.”
Where might one find an interpreter–one not merely able to render a Jaloff’s meaning into Creole French, or Spanish, but with such a turn for diplomatic correspondence as would bring about an “understanding” with this African buffalo? The overseer was left standing and thinking, and Clemence, who had not forgotten who threw her into the draining-ditch, cunningly passed by.
“Ah, Clemence–“
“_Mo pas capabe! Mo pas capabe!_ (I cannot, I cannot!) _Ya, ya, ya! ‘oir Miche Agricol’ Fusilier! ouala yune bon monture, oui!_”–which was to signify that Agricola could interpret the very Papa Lebat.
“Agricola Fusilier! The last man on earth to make peace.”
But there seemed to be no choice, and to Agricola the overseer went. It was but a little ride to the Grandissime place.
“I, Agricola Fusilier, stand as an interpreter to a negro? H-sir!”
“But I thought you might know of some person,” said the weakening applicant, rubbing his ear with his hand.
“Ah!” replied Agricola, addressing the surrounding scenery, “if I did not–who would? You may take Palmyre.”
The overseer softly smote his hands together at the happy thought.
“Yes,” said Agricola, “take Palmyre; she has picked up as many negro dialects as I know European languages.”
And she went to the don’s plantation as interpreter, followed by Agricola’s prayer to Fate that she might in some way be overtaken by disaster. The two hated each other with all the strength they had. He knew not only her pride, but her passion for the absent Honore. He hated her, also, for her intelligence, for the high favor in which she stood with her mistress, and for her invincible spirit, which was more offensively patent to him than to others, since he was himself the chief object of her silent detestation.
It was Palmyre’s habit to do nothing without painstaking. “When Mademoiselle comes to be Senora,” thought she–she knew that her mistress and the don were affianced–“it will be well to have a Senor’s esteem. I shall endeavor to succeed.” It was from this motive, then, that with the aid of her mistress she attired herself in a resplendence of scarlet and beads and feathers that could not fail the double purpose of connecting her with the children of Ethiopia and commanding the captive’s instant admiration.
Alas for those who succeed too well! No sooner did the African turn his tiger glance upon her than the fire of his eyes died out; and when she spoke to him in the dear accents of his native tongue, the matter of strife vanished from his mind. He loved.
He sat down tamely in his irons and listened to Palmyre’s argument as a wrecked mariner would listen to ghostly church-bells. He would give a short assent, feast his eyes, again assent, and feast his ears; but when at length she made bold to approach the actual issue, and finally uttered the loathed word, _Work_, he rose up, six feet five, a statue of indignation in black marble.
And then Palmyre, too, rose up, glorying in him, and went to explain to master and overseer. Bras-Coupe understood, she said, that he was a slave–it was the fortune of war, and he was a warrior; but, according to a generally recognized principle in African international law, he could not reasonably be expected to work.
“As Senor will remember I told him,” remarked the overseer; “how can a man expect to plow with a zebra?”
Here he recalled a fact in his earlier experience. An African of this stripe had been found to answer admirably as a “driver” to make others work. A second and third parley, extending through two or three days, were held with the prince, looking to his appointment to the vacant office of driver; yet what was the master’s amazement to learn at length that his Highness declined the proffered honor.
“Stop!” spoke the overseer again, detecting a look of alarm in Palmyre’s face as she turned away, “he doesn’t do any such thing. If Senor will let me take the man to Agricola–“
“No!” cried Palmyre, with an agonized look, “I will tell. He will take the place and fill it if you will give me to him for his own–but oh, messieurs, for the love of God–I do not want to be his wife!”
The overseer looked at the Senor, ready to approve whatever he should decide. Bras-Coupe’s intrepid audacity took the Spaniard’s heart by irresistible assault.
“I leave it entirely with Senor Fusilier,” he said.
“But he is not my master; he has no right–“
“Silence!”
And she was silent; and so, sometimes, is fire in the wall.
Agricola’s consent was given with malicious promptness, and as Bras-Coupe’s fetters fell off it was decreed that, should he fill his office efficiently, there should be a wedding on the rear veranda of the Grandissime mansion simultaneously with the one already appointed to take place in the grand hall of the same house six months from that present day. In the meanwhile Palmyre should remain with Mademoiselle, who had promptly but quietly made up her mind that Palmyre should not be wed unless she wished to be. Bras-Coupe made no objection, was royally worthless for a time, but learned fast, mastered the “gumbo” dialect in a few weeks, and in six months was the most valuable man ever bought for gourde dollars. Nevertheless, there were but three persons within as many square miles who were not most vividly afraid of him.
The first was Palmyre. His bearing in her presence was ever one of solemn, exalted respect, which, whether from pure magnanimity in himself, or by reason of her magnetic eye, was something worth being there to see. “It was royal!” said the overseer.
The second was not that official. When Bras-Coupe said–as, at stated intervals, he did say–“_Mo courri c’ez Agricole Fusilier pou’ ‘oir ‘namourouse_ (I go to Agricola Fusilier to see my betrothed,)” the overseer would sooner have intercepted a score of painted Chickasaws than that one lover. He would look after him and shake a prophetic head. “Trouble coming; better not deceive that fellow;” yet that was the very thing Palmyre dared do. Her admiration for Bras-Coupe was almost boundless. She rejoiced in his stature; she revelled in the contemplation of his untamable spirit; he seemed to her the gigantic embodiment of her own dark, fierce will, the expanded realization of her lifetime longing for terrible strength. But the single deficiency in all this impassioned regard was–what so many fairer loves have found impossible to explain to so many gentler lovers–an entire absence of preference; her heart she could not give him–she did not have it. Yet after her first prayer to the Spaniard and his overseer for deliverance, to the secret surprise and chagrin of her young mistress, she simulated content. It was artifice; she knew Agricola’s power, and to seem to consent was her one chance with him. He might thus be beguiled into withdrawing his own consent. That failing, she had Mademoiselle’s promise to come to the rescue, which she could use at the last moment; and that failing, there was a dirk in her bosom, for which a certain hard breast was not too hard. Another element of safety, of which she knew nothing, was a letter from the Cannes Brulee. The word had reached there that love had conquered–that, despite all hard words, and rancor, and positive injury, the Grandissime hand–the fairest of Grandissime hands–was about to be laid into that of one who without much stretch might be called a De Grapion; that there was, moreover, positive effort being made to induce a restitution of old gaming-table spoils. Honore and Mademoiselle, his sister, one on each side of the Atlantic, were striving for this end. Don Jose sent this intelligence to his kinsman as glad tidings (a lover never imagines there are two sides to that which makes him happy), and, to add a touch of humor, told how Palmyre, also, was given to the chieftain. The letter that came back to the young Spaniard did not blame him so much: _he_ was ignorant of all the facts; but a very formal one to Agricola begged to notify him that if Palmyre’s union with Bras-Coupe should be completed, as sure as there was a God in heaven, the writer would have the life of the man who knowingly had thus endeavored to dishonor one who _shared the blood of the De Grapions_. Thereupon Agricola, contrary to his general character, began to drop hints to Don Jose that the engagement of Bras-Coupe and Palmyre need not be considered irreversible; but the don was not desirous of disappointing his terrible pet. Palmyre, unluckily, played her game a little too deeply. She thought the moment had come for herself to insist on the match, and thus provoke Agricola to forbid it. To her incalculable dismay she saw him a second time reconsider and become silent.
The second person who did not fear Bras-Coupe was Mademoiselle. On one of the giant’s earliest visits to see Palmyre he obeyed the summons which she brought him, to appear before the lady. A more artificial man might have objected on the score of dress, his attire being a single gaudy garment tightly enveloping the waist and thighs. As his eyes fell upon the beautiful white lady he prostrated himself upon the ground, his arms outstretched before him. He would not move till she was gone. Then he arose like a hermit who has seen a vision. “_Bras-Coupe n’ pas oule oir zombis_ (Bras-Coupe dares not look upon a spirit).” From that hour he worshipped. He saw her often; every time, after one glance at her countenance, he would prostrate his gigantic length with his face in the dust.
The third person who did not fear him was–Agricola? Nay, it was the Spaniard–a man whose capability to fear anything in nature or beyond had never been discovered.
Long before the end of his probation Bras-Coupe would have slipped the entanglements of bondage, though as yet he felt them only as one feels a spider’s web across the face, had not the master, according to a little affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper. Many a day did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican; when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew nigh[3]. A goodly company had assembled. All things were ready. The bride was dressed, the bridegroom had come. On the great back piazza, which had been inclosed with sail-cloth and lighted with lanterns, was Palmyre, full of a new and deep design and playing her deceit to the last, robed in costly garments to whose beauty was added the charm of their having been worn once, and once only, by her beloved Mademoiselle.
[Footnote 3: An over-zealous Franciscan once complained bitterly to the bishop of Havana, that people were being married in Louisiana in their own houses after dark and thinking nothing of it. It is not certain that he had reference to the Grandissime mansion; at any rate he was tittered down by the whole community.]
But where was Bras-Coupe?
The question was asked of Palmyre by Agricola with a gaze that meant in English, “No tricks, girl!”
Among the servants who huddled at the windows and door to see the inner magnificence a frightened whisper was already going round.
“We have made a sad discovery, Miche Fusilier,” said the overseer. “Bras-Coupe is here; we have him in a room just yonder. But–the truth is, sir, Bras-Coupe is a voudou.”
“Well, and suppose he is; what of it? Only hush; do not let his master know it. It is nothing; all the blacks are voudous, more or less.”
“But he declines to dress himself–has painted himself all rings and stripes, antelope fashion.”
“Tell him Agricola Fusilier says, ‘dress immediately!'”
“Oh, Miche, we have said that five times already, and his answer–you will pardon me–his answer is–spitting on the ground–that you are a contemptible _dotchian_ (white trash).”
There is nothing to do but privily to call the very bride–the lady herself. She comes forth in all her glory, small, but oh, so beautiful! Slam! Bras-Coupe is upon his face, his finger-tips touching the tips of her snowy slippers. She gently bids him go and dress, and at once he goes.
Ah! now the question may be answered without whispering. There is Bras-Coupe, towering above all heads, in ridiculous red and blue regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him that keeps every one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that passed along the thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the bosom of Palmyre. Oh, Bras-Coupe–heroic soul! She would not falter. She would let the silly priest say his say–then her cunning should help her _not to be_ his wife, yet to show his mighty arm how and when to strike.
“He is looking for Palmyre,” said some, and at that moment he saw her.
“Ho-o-o-o-o!”
Agricola’s best roar was a penny trumpet to Bras-Coupe’s note of joy. The whole masculine half of the indoor company flocked out to see what the matter was. Bras-Coupe was taking her hand in one of his and laying his other upon her head; and as some one made an unnecessary gesture for silence, he sang, beating slow and solemn time with his naked foot and with the hand that dropped hers to smite his breast:
“‘_En haut la montagne, zami,
Mo pe coupe canne, zami,
Pou’ fe l’a’zen’ zami,
Pou’ mo baille Palmyre.
Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre mo c’ere,
Mo l’aime ‘ou’–mo l’aime ‘ou’_.'”
“_Montagne?_” asked one slave of another, “_qui est ca, montagne? gnia pas quic ‘ose comme ca dans la Louisiana?_ (What’s a mountain?” We haven’t such things in Louisiana.)”
“_Mein ye gagnein plein montagnes dans l’Afrique_, listen!”
“‘_Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre, mo’ piti zozo,’ Mo l’aime ‘ou’–mo l’aime, l’aime ‘ou’_.'”
“Bravissimo!–” but just then a counter-attraction drew the white company back into the house. An old French priest with sandalled feet and a dirty face had arrived. There was a moment of handshaking with the good father, then a moment of palpitation and holding of the breath, and then–you would have known it by the turning away of two or three feminine heads in tears–the lily hand became the don’s, to have and to hold, by authority of the Church and the Spanish king. And all was merry, save that outside there was coming up as villanous a night as ever cast black looks in through snug windows.
It was just as the newly-wed Spaniard, with Agricola and all the guests, were concluding the byplay of marrying the darker couple, that the hurricane struck the dwelling. The holy and jovial father had made faint pretence of kissing this second bride; the ladies, colonels, dons, etc.,–though the joke struck them as a trifle coarse–were beginning to laugh and clap hands again and the gowned jester to bow to right and left, when Bras-Coupe, tardily realizing the consummation of his hopes, stepped forward to embrace his wife.
“Bras-Coupe!”
The voice was that of Palmyre’s mistress. She had not been able to comprehend her maid’s behavior, but now Palmyre had darted upon her an appealing look.
The warrior stopped as if a javelin had flashed over his head and stuck in the wall.
“Bras-Coupe must wait till I give him his wife.”
He sank, with hidden face, slowly to the floor.
“Bras-Coupe hears the voice of zombis; the voice is sweet, but the words are very strong; from the same sugar-cane comes _sirop_ and _tafia_; Bras-Coupe says to zombis, ‘Bras-Coupe will wait; but if the _dotchians_ deceive Bras-Coupe–” he rose to his feet with his eyes closed and his great black fist lifted over his head–“Bras-Coupe will call Voudou-Magnan!”
The crowd retreated and the storm fell like a burst of infernal applause. A whiff like fifty witches flouted up the canvas curtain of the gallery and a fierce black cloud, drawing the moon under its cloak, belched forth a stream of fire that seemed to flood the ground; a peal of thunder followed as if the sky had fallen in, the house quivered, the great oaks groaned, and every lesser thing bowed down before the awful blast. Every lip held its breath for a minute–or an hour, no one knew–there was a sudden lull of the wind, and the floods came down. Have you heard it thunder and rain in those Louisiana lowlands? Every clap seems to crack the world. It has rained a moment; you peer through the black pane–your house is an island, all the land is sea.
However, the supper was spread in the hall and in due time the guests were filled. Then a supper was spread in the big hall in the basement, below stairs, the sons and daughters of Ham came down like the fowls of the air upon a rice-field, and Bras-Coupe, throwing his heels about with the joyous carelessness of a smutted Mercury, for the first time in his life tasted the blood of the grape. A second, a fifth, a tenth time he tasted it, drinking more deeply each time, and would have taken it ten times more had not his bride cunningly concealed it. It was like stealing a tiger’s kittens.
The moment quickly came when he wanted his eleventh bumper. As he presented his request a silent shiver of consternation ran through the dark company; and when, in what the prince meant as a remonstrative tone, he repeated the petition–splitting the table with his fist by way of punctuation–there ensued a hustling up staircases and a cramming into dim corners that left him alone at the banquet.
Leaving the table, he strode upstairs and into the chirruping and dancing of the grand salon. There was a halt in the cotillion and a hush of amazement like the shutting off of steam. Bras-Coupe strode straight to his master, laid his paw upon his fellow-bridegroom’s shoulder and in a thunder-tone demanded:
“More!”
The master swore a Spanish oath, lifted his hand and–fell, beneath the terrific fist of his slave, with a bang that jingled the candelabra. Dolorous stroke!–for the dealer of it. Given, apparently to him–poor, tipsy savage–in self-defence, punishable, in a white offender, by a small fine or a few days’ imprisonment, it assured Bras-Coupe the death of a felon; such was the old _Code Noir_. (We have a _Code Noir_ now, but the new one is a mental reservation, not an enactment.)
The guests stood for an instant as if frozen, smitten stiff with the instant expectation of insurrection, conflagration and rapine (just as we do to-day whenever some poor swaggering Pompey rolls up his fist and gets a ball through his body), while, single-handed and naked-fisted in a room full of swords, the giant stood over his master, making strange signs and passes and rolling out in wrathful words of his mother tongue what it needed no interpreter to tell his swarming enemies was a voudou malediction.
“_Nous sommes grigis!_” screamed two or three ladies, “we are bewitched!”
“Look to your wives and daughters!” shouted a Brahmin-Mandarin.
“Shoot the black devils without mercy!” cried a Mandarin-Fusilier, unconsciously putting into a single outflash of words the whole Creole treatment of race troubles.
With a single bound Bras-Coupe reached the drawing-room door; his gaudy regimentals made a red and blue streak down the hall; there was a rush of frilled and powdered gentlemen to the rear veranda, an avalanche of lightning with Bras-Coupe in the midst making for the swamp, and then all without was blackness of darkness and all within was a wild commingled chatter of Creole, French, and Spanish tongues,–in the midst of which the reluctant Agricola returned his dresssword to its scabbard.
While the wet lanterns swung on crazily in the trees along the way by which the bridegroom was to have borne his bride; while Madame Grandissime prepared an impromptu bridalchamber; while the Spaniard bathed his eye and the blue gash on his cheek-bone; while Palmyre paced her room in a fever and wild tremor of conflicting emotions throughout the night, and the guests splashed home after the storm as best they could, Bras-Coupe was practically declaring his independence on a slight rise of ground hardly sixty feet in circumference and lifted scarce above the water in the inmost depths of the swamp.
And amid what surroundings! Endless colonnades of cypresses; long, motionless drapings of gray moss; broad sheets of noisome waters, pitchy black, resting on bottomless ooze; cypress knees studding the surface; patches of floating green, gleaming brilliantly here and there; yonder where the sunbeams wedge themselves in, constellations of water-lilies, the many-hued iris, and a multitude of flowers that no man had named; here, too, serpents great and small, of wonderful colorings, and the dull and loathsome moccasin sliding warily off the dead tree; in dimmer recesses the cow alligator, with her nest hard by; turtles a century old; owls and bats, raccoons, opossums, rats, centipedes and creatures of like vileness; great vines of beautiful leaf and scarlet fruit in deadly clusters; maddening mosquitoes, parasitic insects, gorgeous dragon-flies and pretty water-lizards: the blue heron, the snowy crane, the red-bird, the moss-bird, the night-hawk and the chuckwill’s-widow; a solemn stillness and stifled air only now and then disturbed by the call or whir of the summer duck, the dismal ventriloquous note of the rain-crow, or the splash of a dead branch falling into the clear but lifeless bayou.
The pack of Cuban hounds that howl from Don Jose’s kennels cannot snuff the trail of the stolen canoe that glides through the sombre blue vapors of the African’s fastnesses. His arrows send no telltale reverberations to the distant clearing. Many a wretch in his native wilderness has Bras-Coupe himself, in palmier days, driven to just such an existence, to escape the chains and horrors of the barracoons; therefore not a whit broods he over man’s inhumanity, but, taking the affair as a matter of course, casts about him for a future.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPE, CONTINUED
Bras-Coupe let the autumn pass, and wintered in his den.
Don Jose, in a majestic way, endeavored to be happy. He took his senora to his hall, and under her rule it took on for a while a look and feeling which turned it from a hunting-lodge into a home. Wherever the lady’s steps turned–or it is as correct to say wherever the proud tread of Palmyre turned–the features of bachelor’s-hall disappeared; guns, dogs, oars, saddles, nets, went their way into proper banishment, and the broad halls and lofty chambers–the floors now muffled with mats of palmetto-leaf–no longer re-echoed the tread of a lonely master, but breathed a redolence of flowers and a rippling murmur of well-contented song.
But the song was not from the throat of Bras-Coupe’s “_piti zozo_.” Silent and severe by day, she moaned away whole nights heaping reproaches upon herself for the impulse–now to her, because it had failed, inexplicable in its folly–which had permitted her hand to lie in Bras-Coupe’s and the priest to bind them together.
For in the audacity of her pride, or, as Agricola would have said, in the immensity of her impudence, she had held herself consecrate to a hopeless love. But now she was a black man’s wife! and even he unable to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she had hoped to teach him. She had heard of San Domingo; for months the fierce heart within her silent bosom had been leaping and shouting and seeing visions of fire and blood, and when she brooded over the nearness of Agricola and the remoteness of Honore these visions got from her a sort of mad consent. The lesson she would have taught the giant was Insurrection. But it was too late. Letting her dagger sleep in her bosom, and with an undefined belief in imaginary resources, she had consented to join hands with her giant hero before the priest; and when the wedding had come and gone like a white sail, she was seized with a lasting, fierce despair. A wild aggressiveness that had formerly characterized her glance in moments of anger–moments which had grown more and more infrequent under the softening influence of her Mademoiselle’s nature–now came back intensified, and blazed in her eye perpetually. Whatever her secret love may have been in kind, its sinking beyond hope below the horizon had left her fifty times the mutineer she had been before–the mutineer who has nothing to lose.
“She loves her _candio_” said the negroes.
“Simple creatures!” said the overseer, who prided himself on his discernment, “she loves nothing; she hates Agricola; it’s a case of hate at first sight–the strongest kind.”
Both were partly right; her feelings were wonderfully knit to the African; and she now dedicated herself to Agricola’s ruin.
The senor, it has been said, endeavored to be happy; but now his heart conceived and brought forth its first-born fear, sired by superstition–the fear that he was bewitched. The negroes said that Bras-Coupe had cursed the land. Morning after morning the master looked out with apprehension toward the fields, until one night the worm came upon the indigo, and between sunset and sunrise every green leaf had been eaten up and there was nothing left for either insect or apprehension to feed upon.
And then he said–and the echo came back from the Cannes Brulees–that the very bottom culpability of this thing rested on the Grandissimes, and specifically on their fugleman Agricola, through his putting the hellish African upon him. Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown before, fell upon his slaves. Those to whom life was spared–but to whom strength did not return–wandered about the place like scarecrows, looking for shelter, and made the very air dismal with the reiteration, “_No’ ouanga_ (we are bewitched), _Bras-Coupe fe moi des grigis_ (the voudou’s spells are on me).” The ripple of song was hushed and the flowers fell upon the floor.
“I have heard an English maxim,” wrote Colonel De Grapion to his kinsman, “which I would recommend you to put into practice–‘Fight the devil with fire.'”
No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents.
But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one?
No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch Bras-Coupe, why, let him go. The overseer tried the hounds once more and came home with the best one across his saddle-bow, an arrow run half through its side.
Once the blacks attempted by certain familiar rum-pourings and nocturnal charm-singing to lift the curse; but the moment the master heard the wild monotone of their infernal worship, he stopped it with a word.
Early in February came the spring, and with it some resurrection of hope and courage. It may have been–it certainly was, in part–because young Honore Grandissime had returned. He was like the sun’s warmth wherever he went; and the other Honore was like his shadow. The fairer one quickly saw the meaning of these things, hastened to cheer the young don with hopes of a better future, and to effect, if he could, the restoration of Bras-Coupe to his master’s favor. But this latter effort was an idle one. He had long sittings with his uncle Agricola to the same end, but they always ended fruitless and often angrily.
His dark half-brother had seen Palmyre and loved her. Honore would gladly have solved one or two riddles by effecting their honorable union in marriage. The previous ceremony on the Grandissime back piazza need be no impediment; all slave-owners understood those things. Following Honore’s advice, the f.m.c., who had come into possession of his paternal portion, sent to Cannes Brulees a written offer, to buy Palmyre at any price that her master might name, stating his intention to free her and make her his wife. Colonel De Grapion could hardly hope to settle Palmyre’s fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the planter of the Cannes Brulees.
But the idea of retreat had left Citizen Fusilier.
“She is already married,” said he to M. Honore Grandissime, f.m.c. “She is the lawful wife of Bras-Coupe; and what God has joined together let no man put asunder. You know it, sirrah. You did this for impudence, to make a show of your wealth. You intended it as an insinuation of equality. I overlook the impertinence for the sake of the man whose white blood you carry; but h-mark you, if ever you bring your Parisian airs and self-sufficient face on a level with mine again, h-I will slap it.”
The quadroon, three nights after, was so indiscreet as to give him the opportunity, and he did it–at that quadroon ball to which Dr. Keene alluded in talking to Frowenfeld.
But Don Jose, we say, plucked up new spirit..
“Last year’s disasters were but fortune’s freaks,” he said. “See, others’ crops have failed all about us.”
The overseer shook his head.
“_C’est ce maudit cocodri’ la bas_ (It is that accursed alligator, Bras-Coupe, down yonder in the swamp).”
And by and by the master was again smitten with the same belief. He and his neighbors put in their crops afresh. The spring waned, summer passed, the fevers returned, the year wore round, but no harvest smiled. “Alas!” cried the planters, “we are all poor men!” The worst among the worst were the fields of Bras-Coupe’s master–parched and shrivelled. “He does not understand planting,” said his neighbors; “neither does his overseer. Maybe, too, it is true as he says, that he is voudoued.”
One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever.
The third noon after–the sad wife sitting by the bedside–suddenly, right in the centre of the room, with the door open behind him, stood the magnificent, half-nude form of Bras-Coupe. He did not fall down as the mistress’s eyes met his, though all his flesh quivered. The master was lying with his eyes closed. The fever had done a fearful three days’ work.
“_Mioko-Koanga oule so’ femme_ (Bras-Coupe wants his wife).”
The master started wildly and stared upon his slave.
“_Bras-Coupe oule so’ femme_!” repeated the black.
“Seize him!” cried the sick man, trying to rise.
But, though several servants had ventured in with frightened faces, none dared molest the giant. The master turned his entreating eyes upon his wife, but she seemed stunned, and only covered her face with her hands and sat as if paralyzed by a foreknowledge of what was coming.
Bras-Coupe lifted his great black palm and commenced:
“_Mo ce voudrai que la maison ci la, et tout ca qui pas femme’ ici, s’raient encore maudits_! (May this house, and all in it who are not women, be accursed).”
The master fell back upon his pillow with a groan of helpless wrath.
The African pointed his finger through the open window.
“May its fields not know the plough nor nourish the herds that overrun it.”
The domestics, who had thus far stood their ground, suddenly rushed from the room like stampeded cattle, and at that moment appeared Palmyre.
“Speak to him,” faintly cried the panting invalid.
She went firmly up to her husband and lifted her hand. With an easy motion, but quick as lightning, as a lion sets foot on a dog, he caught her by the arm.
“_Bras-Coupe oule so’ femme_,” he said, and just then Palmyre would have gone with him to the equator.
“You shall not have her!” gasped the master.
The African seemed to rise in height, and still holding his wife at arm’s length, resumed his malediction:
“May weeds cover the ground until the air is full of their odor and the wild beasts of the forest come and lie down under their cover.”
With a frantic effort the master lifted himself upon his elbow and extended his clenched fist in speechless defiance; but his brain reeled, his sight went out, and when again he saw, Palmyre and her mistress were bending over him, the overseer stood awkwardly by, and Bras-Coupe was gone.
The plantation became an invalid camp. The words of the voudou found fulfilment on every side. The plough went not out; the herds wandered through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room–rag-weed, smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed–until the burning skies of midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank and dingy flowers.
“Why in the name of–St. Francis,” asked the priest of the overseer, “didn’t the senora use her power over the black scoundrel when he stood and cursed, that day?”
“Why, to tell you the truth, father,” said the overseer, in a discreet whisper, “I can only suppose she thought Bras-Coupe had half a right to do it.”
“Ah, ah, I see; like her brother Honore–looks at both sides of a question–a miserable practice; but why couldn’t Palmyre use _her_ eyes? They would have stopped him.”
“Palmyre? Why Palmyre has become the best _monture_ (Plutonian medium) in the parish. Agricola Fusilier himself is afraid of her. Sir, I think sometimes Bras-Coupe is dead and his spirit has gone into Palmyre. She would rather add to his curse than take from it.”
“Ah!” said the jovial divine, with a fat smile, “castigation would help her case; the whip is a great sanctifier. I fancy it would even make a Christian of the inexpugnable Bras-Coupe.”
But Bras-Coupe kept beyond the reach alike of the lash and of the Latin Bible.
By and by came a man with a rumor, whom the overseer brought to the master’s sick-room, to tell that an enterprising Frenchman was attempting to produce a new staple in Louisiana, one that worms would not annihilate. It was that year of history when the despairing planters saw ruin hovering so close over them that they cried to heaven for succor. Providence raised up Etienne de Bore. “And if Etienne is successful,” cried the news-bearer, “and gets the juice of the sugar-cane to crystallize, so shall all of us, after him, and shall yet save our lands and homes. Oh, Senor, it will make you strong again to see these fields all cane and the long rows of negroes and negresses cutting it, while they sing their song of those droll African numerals, counting the canes they cut,” and the bearer of good tidings sang them for very joy:
[Illustration: music]
An-o-que, An-o-bia, Bia-tail-la, Que-re-que, Nal-le-oua, Au-mon-de, Au-tap-o-te, Au-pe-to-te, Au-que-re-que, Bo.
“And Honore Grandissime is going to introduce it on his lands,” said Don Jose.
“That is true,” said Agricola Fusilier, coming in. Honore, the indefatigable peacemaker, had brought his uncle and his brother-in-law for the moment not only to speaking, but to friendly, terms.
The senor smiled.
“I have some good tidings, too,” he said; “my beloved lady has borne me a son.”
“Another scion of the house of Grand–I mean Martinez!” exclaimed Agricola. “And now, Don Jose, let me say that _I_ have an item of rare intelligence!”
The don lifted his feeble head and opened his inquiring eyes with a sudden, savage light in them.
“No,” said Agricola, “he is not exactly taken yet, but they are on his track.”
“Who?”
“The police. We may say he is virtually in our grasp.”
* * * * *
It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having just played a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game being about to end between the white champions of two rival faubourgs, the beating of tom-toms, rattling of mules’ jawbones and sounding of wooden horns drew the populace across the fields to a spot whose present name of Congo Square still preserves a reminder of its old barbaric pastimes. On a grassy plain under the ramparts, the performers of these hideous discords sat upon the ground facing each other, and in their midst the dancers danced. They gyrated in couples, a few at a time, throwing their bodies into the most startling attitudes and the wildest contortions, while the whole company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the weird music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in time with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting, in that wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten, the unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with their ejaculatory burdens of “_Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!_” and “_Aie Calinda! Dance Calinda!_” The volume of sound rose and fell with the augmentation or diminution of the dancers’ extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and supple, bounding into the ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers and trumpeters; now a wearied dancer, finding his strength going, gathered all his force at the cry of “_Dance zisqu’a mort!_” rallied to a grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at the mouth.
The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been lugged out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the enthusiasm had risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring the blackest of black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches of “Indienne”–the stuff used for slave women’s best dresses–jingling with bells, his feet in moccasins, his tight, crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace of alligator’s teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined about his neck.
It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner’s head, the multitude howled with rapture.
Ill-starred Bras-Coupe. He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as “drunk again.”
By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gazed upon, and then distinctly recognized, his whilom driver. Five minutes later the Spanish police were putting their heads together to devise a quick and permanent capture; and in the midst of the sixth minute, as the wonderful fellow was rising in a yet more astounding leap than his last, a lasso fell about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt tree, face upward upon the turf.
“The runaway slave,” said the old French code, continued in force by the Spaniards, “the runaway slave who shall continue to be so for one month from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice shall have his ears cut off and shall be branded with the flower de luce on the shoulder; and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in during one month of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third offence he shall die.” Bras-Coupe had run away only twice. “But,” said Agricola, “these ‘bossals’ must be taught their place. Besides, there is Article 27 of the same code: ‘The slave who, having struck his master, shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital punishment’–a very necessary law!” He concluded with a scowl upon Palmyre, who shot back a glance which he never forgot.
The Spaniard showed himself very merciful–for a Spaniard; he spared the captive’s life. He might have been more merciful still; but Honore Grandissime said some indignant things in the African’s favor, and as much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as to punish the runaway, he would have repented his clemency, as he repented the momentary truce with Agricola, but for the tearful pleading of the senora and the hot, dry eyes of her maid. Because of these he overlooked the offence against his person and estate, and delivered Bras-Coupe to the law to suffer only the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by attempting to be a free man.
We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for Bras-Coupe. But what it cost her to make that intercession, knowing that his death would leave her free, and that if he lived she must be his wife, let us not attempt to say.
In the midst of the ancient town, in a part which is now crumbling away, stood the Calaboza, with its humid vaults and grated cells, its iron cages and its whips; and there, soon enough, they strapped Bras-Coupe face downward and laid on the lash. And yet not a sound came from the mutilated but unconquered African to annoy the ear of the sleeping city.
(“And you suffered this thing to take place?” asked Joseph Frowenfeld of Honore Grandissime.
“My-de’-seh!” exclaimed the Creole, “they lied to me–said they would not harm him!”)