CHAPTER XXIII THEY MEET

Grand Anse is just a little town, gone rather to decay, on a cliff forever swept by the sun and the trade wind.

It is the most lonely place in the world and the most quaint.

At St. Pierre, on the west side of the island, the sea is deep and still, morning comes late because of the shadow of the mountains, and the sunset blazes up the streets like a conflagration. The first rays of sunlight touch Grande Anse, morning rushes on the town across great wastes of violet-coloured sea; the dawns are immense here, what you see is the lighting up of a world; on the one side, all the world of ocean quivering and leaping in light, on the other, all the island world. Mountains springing to life against a sky still showing a trace of stars, the cloud turban of Pelée, first a luminous haze like some vast nebula just born, then a burning fleece of gold. Then, just as though the shadows of night were a garment unloosed and let slip, the great mountain undrapes itself and stands a cone of emerald green, a pyramid of colour in the blue and voiceless sky.

St. Pierre is still in shadow, but the whole eastward side of the island is burning in the sun. St. Pierre has its feet in the Caribbean Sea, but Grande Anse is washed by the Atlantic. The south equatorial current and the trade wind keep the shore forever booming with waves.

145 Marie, as she came along the national road, could hear the sea like the breathing of a vast shell, before the first houses of the town came in sight. She entered the main street, which is a continuation of the road, stopped at the shop of M. Carbet, an old sun-dried Creole trader, who could remember the time when Grande Anse was prosperous with sugar mills and plantations worked under the old regime of slavery. M. Carbet inspected the goods sent him by M. Sartine, loaded the tray with other goods to be returned, and invited the girl to sit down and rest and have some refreshment.

When she had rested herself, having still an hour before she would start on her return to St. Pierre, she left the old man to take his siesta and came out to look at the sea.

Always, when she came to Grande Anse, she would, if she had time, come to the cliff edge to look at the sea.

It is a wonderful sight, for the emerald waves come racing in on a soot-black beach. Nowhere else is there a beach like that or such curious colour effects; white foam, white gulls, blue sea, curving emerald waves, black sand. Over all the sunlight and the boom of the water.

As she stood, the trade wind blowing in her face and fluttering her robe, she saw by the sea edge two white figures, the figure of an old man and a young man.

The old man was M. Seguin, the young man was Gaspard.

M. Seguin, who had a house at Grand Anse and who lived there the greater part of the year, finding the climate much more invigorating and far less rainy than the climate of St. Pierre, had met Gaspard yesterday evening, after having parted with him in the forenoon, and the inspiration came to him to invite his new-found friend to Grande Anse. They had driven over and Gaspard was to return to-day.

146 And away up on the Morne du Midi, Marie, quite unknowing the interest that Fate was taking in her affairs, had struggled against the impulse to return to St. Pierre. Duty had won its struggle against Love, yet Love had gained his end. It was as though some subtle strategy had been working behind the face of things.

She recognized the two figures instantly, she caught her breath—“It is He!”

Almost as she sighted them, the two men began to turn their steps from the sea edge, and the first thing that struck their eyes was the gem-like figure on the little cliff outlined against the burning blue of the sky.

M. Seguin, despite his sixty years, was as keen-sighted as his companion. He recognized the girl instantly, he had spoken to her often. The prettiest porteuse in Martinique had no greater admirer than M. Seguin.

He raised his stick by way of salutation and she on the cliff raised her hand.

Then she waited as the two men came across the black sand of the beach and began to climb the cliff path. She had no false modesty, she did not palter with the truth, the being her soul craved to meet was ascending the cliff path and she waited to meet him, without a tremor or blush or pretence of turning away.

“It is Marie of Morne Rouge, La Petite Marie,” said the old man (as if Gaspard did not know), “the prettiest porteuse in the island and the best girl—but tenez, I will shew her to you.”

The sun shewed her to him. The sun had taken her little, perfectly-shaped head between his great golden hands and was raining kisses on her forehead, her face, her neck, her feet; the sea wind was fluting and folding her striped robe, which, caught up at the waist, exposed her perfectly147 formed ankles; she might have been a Greek girl on the sea cliffs of Latmos, Troy might still have been a city and Hector a living hero, so far removed from present times did she seem. Only, no Greek girl could have boasted those eyes dark and luminous, eyes that held in their depths some trace of the gloom of the tropic forests.

“Ah, Marie,” cried the old man, “petite Marie—see, I have got a friend with me, see, what do you think of him, hey, Marie—? He is the snake-killer, the man who does not fear the fer de lance, he saved a man yesterday from the fer de lance, yes, and that man was Paul Seguin. Me. Yes, one does not forget that.”

The girl was standing, as the old man chattered on, looking up under her arched eyebrows in a most charming way, half evasively, with a half smile; she had met Gaspard with a glance of recognition and now she stood like this, scarcely looking at him, yet still looking at him, scarcely seeming to hear the old man, yet hearing him, smiling at his words, yet seeming to smile through the veil of some mysterious thought.

Gaspard, fascinated, looked at her; she seemed a being elusive, scarcely real; as though she had slipped through some crystal doorway in the air to stand in the blue porch in the sunlight for a moment. Half child, half woman, half spirit, half human being—indeterminate as a dream.

“Oh, thou art pretty—thou art sweet.”

He recalled her words spoken to the fleur d’amour.

“Yes,” went on the old man, “one does not forget that—a live fer de lance with death on the tip of its tongue, and he killed it with his naked hand—give him thy hand. Marie, for the love of Paul Seguin, who knew thy father when he was prosperous and before he fell into the hands of that fer de lance, Pierre Sagesse.”

148 She came forward like a child and placed her little hand in the broad palm of Gaspard. Since the day before when she had thanked him with a glance for the flower, she had been filling his thoughts. From the first moment when he met her in the little Place de la Fontaine, she had been filling his thoughts; he was direct in love as in hate, a man without any of the false refinement of society, but he was a man and now, as he held her hand in his, for the first time in his life he felt abashed, timorous as a woman, awkward as a boy.

He had spoken to her bravely enough on the Place du Fort when he had given her the flower, but now it was different, the touch of her hand, the glance of her eyes, filled him with confusion.

She, on the other hand, was calm and confident, and had some observer been present, more keen-eyed than M. Seguin to the delicacies of expression, he would have read in her face something of triumph.

His confusion told her all, told her that she had been in his thoughts, told her of his attitude of mind towards her—It was homage without words.

When he released her hand M. Seguin took him by the arm and they turned from the sea, Marie walking with them in the direction of M. Seguin’s house.

It was a low, frame building, the best house in the town, set round with a garden where the tamarinds and the tree ferns all had a bend towards the west as though warped by the eternally blowing trade wind.

“And you are going back to St. Pierre, Marie?” asked the old man when they reached the gate.

“Oui, Missie.”

“Walking all the way?”

“Oui, Missie.”

149 “Well, good luck to thee and a safe journey, ah, that I had thy youth and strength—”

He was turning to the gate when Gaspard, with a half glance at the girl, said: “I too, am returning to St. Pierre, would Mademoiselle object to my walking with her on the road; it is a lonely road—”

“You,” said the old man, before Marie could speak. “Mon Dieu, do you think that you could keep up with a porteuse?”

Gaspard glanced at Marie and smiled, shewing his white teeth, the question seemed absurd, contrasting his strong form with the girl’s slight figure. Marie was also smiling. Their eyes met for a second.

“I will try—If Mademoiselle does not object to so feeble a companion.”

M. Seguin laughed, not without a touch of grim humour, but he offered no further opposition. Instead, he accompanied them to the shop of M. Carbet where the girl had left her tray.

M. Carbet, himself, helped to put it on her head and stood with M. Seguin watching them as they departed.

It was a little after two o’clock and the white national road lay before them, balisiers, palmistes, tamarinds on either side and fields of bending cane. The island before them leaping up to the sky in great bouquets of happy colour, purple and blue and mauve of mountain, black-blues and green of ravine and morne: above all, Pelée, with his turban of cloud. One might have imagined that some giant in play had put gum on Pelée’s head and a tuft of cotton wool on the gum.

It was the only cloud in the blue sky, and as they walked, some wind, suddenly born in the upper air, began to play with it so that it seemed to fume and rise like smoke.

150 It gave them something to talk about. He found it very difficult to follow what she said, speaking as she did, in the patois of the island and this difficulty in understanding one another gave them something to laugh about so that soon they were like two good companions almost forgetting, for a moment, the mysterious attraction that had drawn them one towards the other. At times she would seem to forget him, the old mesmerism of the road would seize her, the mesmerism of distance and light, the rock-a-bye of movement; she would hum to herself as though she were alone, once she put words to the tune, it was an old Creole song, simple, and sorrowful; she only sang a few bars and then remembering that her companion was beside her, ceased. She had not forgotten him for a moment, she was singing to him in her mind, but she had half forgotten the fact that he was listening in the flesh.

She was happy, entirely happy. He was beside her. She knew nothing more of love than that, two birds flying forever side by side through the blue sky, that was her dim conception of love, two beings accompanying each other through life just as now, he and she were accompanying each other along the national road, what more could one want?

They passed over mornes and through valleys, following the great white road; they were cutting canes in the fields and the negroes looked after Marie of Morne Rouge accompanied by a man, she had found a mate at last.

They called after her, but what they said was swallowed up, dissolved in the langourous air of afternoon, it seemed like voices coming across the fields of dreamland. A siffleur de montagne, singing in the woods of balisier, sent its bell-like notes to follow them.

On the Morne du Midi they paused. The world and the151 far off sea swam in a golden haze, the mountains were blue cloud shapes, vague purple cones; nothing was definite but the peak of Pelée, now stripped entirely of cloud and standing shrill in the blue. Then they passed on, following the road as it dipped into the valley and rose again over the Morne d’Avril.

It was now that Gaspard remembered M. Seguin’s words: “You can never keep pace with a porteuse.” The girl beside him, laden though she was with the heavy tray, seemed to move without effort, swift, and silent as a cloud shadow. He was beginning to tire, but he would not give in. “Mon Dieu,” thought he, “to be outwalked by a girl. I would die first.”

To hide his weariness he began to sing. He had a good voice and he sent The Girls of Avignon across the cane fields, floating on the warm wind of afternoon, so that the cane cutters paused in their work to listen. Marie had never heard a song like that, though she only half-caught the meaning of the words it seemed to open new vistas before her. This was one of the songs from the land he came from, joyous and strange, far different from the Creole songs that are all set to the same key—Melancholy.

He sang Jean Fran?ois de Nantes, and the topsail-haul chanty of the French merchant service, songs strange as sea gulls amidst these green mornes and waving cane fields.

The sun was well in the west now, casting his light full in their faces, their shadows stretched far back along the white road, the valleys between the mornes were beginning to fill with shadow, shadow that, like some blue luminous fluid, would fill them to the brim, overflow, and flood the mornes, the fields, and the road.

“I would sooner die than give in,” that was the real burthen of the songs with which he tried to give himself152 heart, his head ached, his limbs ached, he would have given half he possessed to cast himself down amidst the green stuff on the roadside—yet she kept on as fresh as when she started, listening to his songs, chatting, saying things that he only half understood, singing, sometimes, herself, when he ceased—what a girl!—it was as though a man had matched himself against an immortal.

Here and there along the road were shrines to the Virgin and occasionally a fountain fed by one of the innumerable little streams from the hills.

They had passed the Morne de la Croix when, by one of these wayside fountains, his determination to die before giving in left him. There was a green bank by the fountain, huge tree ferns grew above the bank and in the shadow of their fronds the fountain water, escaping from a lion’s head carved in stone, sang, and whispered forever to the ferns.

He sat down on the bank and Marie standing before him, saw for the first time the true state of affairs. She took the little flask of ratifia which the porteuse always carried and a cup from her girdle, put some of the ratifia in the cup, filled it with water and gave it to him.

He drank it off. It was like drinking life. Then she pointed to the tray on her head and asked him to help her to remove it.

The porteuse, once loaded, cannot remove the heavy tray from her head without help. She dare not bend her neck lest it should be dislocated by the weight.

He rose and helped her, she placed the tray by the road and then sat down on the bank beside him. Ah, how good it was to rest in the cool shadow of the ferns, his tiredness cast from him like a dropped cloak.

He almost forgot that the being beside him was a girl.153 It was as if he were sitting beside a good companion after a long journey; after four hours in the stokehold he had often felt the same, resting for a moment with Yves on the engine-room hatch.

Great exertion often leaves the mind clear to perception: the passions, desires, and craving of life are stilled and over the resting body the mind floats clear of perception, lazy, alive to feeling, but half dead to thought.

He took his pipe from his pocket—the same pipe he had been smoking beneath the palm trees that day when Yves, returning from the north of the islet had flung the crabs beside him on the sand—filled it and lit it, whilst Marie, beside him, her hands folded and resting upon her knees, sat, her eyes gazing at the road before her yet seeming not to see it.

These fits of abstraction were characteristic of her, caused perhaps, partly by her business in life, partly by her nature.

It was as though the far off mountains, the blue distances, the visions of remote sea that made her everyday horizon, followed her through life and every now and then closed in around her, separating her for the moment from her fellow beings.

She seemed now to have forgotten the existence of Gaspard, then, a field rat from the canes scuttled across the road and the sight of it brought her back from her reverie, she shuddered, then she gave a little laugh, drew her robe tightly round her, and drew up her little naked feet under her robe.

“Ahn—voici Missie Sagesse—ah, did you see him—more crafty than the fer de lance.” With head half turned she was watching the grass still vibrating where Missie Sagesse had whisked in.

154 Gaspard laughed, the great fat field rat—and the West Indian field rat is the cunningest thing in nature, and looks it—did carry with it a suggestion of the Captain.

He had forgotten Sagesse, La Belle Arlésienne, and the forthcoming expedition, for the moment.

“Sagesse,” said he, “what do you know about Captain Sagesse, little one?”

She cast her eyes up and made a movement with her hand. One of the charming things about her was the way she could speak without speaking, just by a gesture, a glance, she could tell things that would take many words to say. Her up-cast eyes and the movement she made with her hand told the character of the Captain without speech.

She nodded towards the long grass where the rat had disappeared: “He hides amidst the canes, he kills the little birds that cannot yet fly, he comes to the henroosts of the poor people and kills the little chickens—egg-sucker—ahn—of all things the meanest. Once—” said Marie, leaving description for romance “a fer de lance bit him.”

“Did he die?”

“No, it was the fer de lance who died.” She laughed. Voltaire, sitting in his study at Ferney had once made the same jest about the man who poisoned the snake. Goldsmith used the same idea with a dog for the chief protagonist of his story. She had never heard of Voltaire or Goldsmith—she just wanted to describe Sagesse.

Then she rose to her feet and pointed to her shadow strewn away down the road, then to the sun nearing the mountain tops. It was time to be going, and Gaspard, rising, helped her to lift the heavy tray to her head.

Already it was cooler, the great haze of afternoon light had faded and distant things were becoming definite, the sun was fast approaching the mountains.

155 “You know this Sagesse—” said Gaspard as he walked beside her, “well I know him too. I am going with him soon on a voyage.”

She stopped and turned, facing him fully. “Going with him—a voyage.”

“Not far—I will return.”

“Going with him—ah, you are going with him—”

“I will return.”

The trouble in her face and voice affected him strangely. He did not know how Sagesse had entered into her life before this, ruining her father, casting a blight on her home. Sagesse was to her like an evil spirit. She had seen his blight on many people, he had blighted her own life once and now his shadow had fallen across her path again, he was taking Gaspard away.

Gaspard took her unresisting hand.

“I have promised to go with him, but I will return.”

“Ah, you have promised—”

That was final. With her, a promise once given was binding as a thing accomplished.

“And when?”

“We will not go for some weeks.”

He was still holding her hand; as yet they had said no word of love, yet they stood like a pair of lovers about to part, her trouble had communicated itself in some subtle way to him. The very air around them seemed suddenly filled with sadness, it was the light which was beginning to fade.

The sun had half descended behind the mountains, cut in two by the sharp edge of the hills; what remained of him was still furiously alive, palpitating, and seeming to fight against fate; but the valleys between the mornes were now filled with shadow and over-brimming, dusk was rising156 like a tide, waves of violet shadow passing over the landscape. Behind them, had they turned to look, they would have seen the ghost of a moon in the lilac of the eastern sky.

St. Pierre would soon be in the full blaze of sunset, there were miles still to be travelled, she gently released her hand, turned, and they passed on. They did not say a word but in that moment of sadness, hand in hand, the future of the one had become a part of the future of the other. He was hers and she was his.

Never had love come to mortals in a more idyllic fashion, speechless, through the fading light, there on the white road with the straight palms for only witness.