The Hour and the Man Part 8

"Indeed I wish so too, Dessalines. But you shall have some wine."

"Ay, send us some. Jacques will tell you what I like. Don't forget, Toussaint Breda. They talk of palm wine in the season; but I do not believe we shall get any worth drinking from the palms hereabouts."

"What is the matter with our palms?" cried Moyse, firing up for the honour of the northern coast. "I will get you a cabbage for dinner every day for a month to come," he added, moderating his tone under his uncle's eye--"every day, till you say that our palms, too, are as good as any you have in the plain; and as for palm wine, when the season comes--"

"No, let me--let me cut the cabbage!" cried Denis. "I can climb as quick as a monkey now--a hundred feet in two minutes. Let me climb the palmetto, Moyse."

"First take back my horse to those soldiers, my boy," said his father, setting Denis upon his horse, "and then let us all sit down here in the shade."

"All those horses," said Margot, anxiously: "what is to be done with them to-day? There are so many!"

"They will return presently," replied her husband. "I am not going to stay with you to-day. And, Margot, I shall take the lads with me, if they are disposed to go."

"The lads! my boys!"

"Yes," said Toussaint, throwing himself down in the shade. "Our country and its people are orphaned; and the youngest of us must now make himself a soldier, that he may be ready for any turn of affairs which Providences may appoint. Do you hear, my boys?"

"Yes, father," answered Placide in an earnest tone.

"They have then murdered the king?" asked Margot; "or did he die of his imprisonment?"

"They brought him to trial, and executed him. The apes plucked down the evening star, and quenched it. We have no king. We and our country are orphaned."

After a pause, Paul said--

"It is enough to make one leave one's fis.h.i.+ng, and take up a gun."

"I rejoice to hear you say so, brother," said Toussaint.

"Then, father, you will let me go," cried Moyse. "You will give me your gun, and let me go to the camp."

"Yes, Moyse: rather you than I. You are a stout lad now, and I know nothing of camps. You shall take the gun, and I will stay and fish."

"Leave your father his gun, if he chooses to remain, Moyse. We will find arms for you. Placide! Isaac!" he continued, looking from one to the other of his sons.

"And Denis," cried the boy, placing himself directly in his father's eye, as he returned breathless from the discharge of his errand.

"Yes, my boy, by-and-bye, when you are as strong as Placide. You shall come to the camp when we want you."

"I will go to-day, father," said Placide.

"What to do?" said Isaac. "I do not understand."

Other eyes besides Aimee's were fixed on Toussaint's face, in anxiety for his reply.

"I do not know, my son, what we are to do next. When the parent of a nation dies, it may take some time to decide what is the duty of those who feel themselves bereaved. All I now am sure of is, that it cannot but be right for my children to be fitted to serve their country in any way that they may find to be appointed. I wish to train you to arms, and the time has come. Do not you think so?"

Isaac made no direct reply, and Aimee had strong hopes that he was prepared with some wise, unanswerable reason for remaining where he was.

Meanwhile, his father proceeded--

"In all that I have done, in all that I now say, I have the sanction of Father Laxabon."

"Then all is right, we may be sure," said Margot. "I have no doubt you would be right, if you had not Father Laxabon to consult; but if he thinks you right, everything must be done as you wish. My boys,"

pursued the tearful mother, "you must go with your father: you hear Father Laxabon thinks so."

"Do you think so?" whispered Aimee to Isaac.

He pressed her arm, which was within his, in token of silence, while his father went on:

"You heard the proclamation I sent out among our people a few weeks ago."

"Yes," said Placide; "that in which you tell them that you prefer serving with Spaniards who own a king, than with French who own none."

"Yes. I have had to make the same declaration to the two commissaries who have arrived at Cap under orders from the regicides at Paris. These commissaries have to-day invited me to their standard by promises of favour and consideration."

"What do they promise us?" asked Margot eagerly.

"Nothing that we can accept. I have written a letter in reply, saying that I cannot yield myself to the will of any member of the nation, seeing that, since nations began, obedience has been due only to kings.

We have lost the king of France; but we are beloved by the monarch of Spain, who faithfully rewards our services, and never intermits his protection and indulgence. Thus, I cannot acknowledge the authority of these commissaries till they shall have enthroned a king. Such is the letter which, guided by Father Laxabon, I have written."

"It is a beautiful letter, I am sure," said Margot. "Is it not, Paul."

"I don't doubt Father Laxabon is right," said Dessalines; "only I do not see the use of having a king, if people are turned out of house and home for being loyal--as we all are. If we had not cared anything about the king's quarrel, we might have been under our vines at home, as I have often said before."

"And how would it have been with us here?" said Toussaint, laying his hand on his breast.

"Put your hand a little lower, and I say it would have been all the better for us," said the old negro, laughing, "for we should not have gone without wine all this time."

"What do you think?" Aimee, as usual, asked Isaac.

"I think it was good for my father to be loyal to the king, as long as the king lived. I think it was good for us to be living here free, with time to consider what we should do next. And I think it has happened very well that my father has shown what a soldier he is, which he could not so well have done if we had stayed at Breda. As for Dessalines, he is best where the vines grow thickest, or where the cellars are deepest.

It is a pity he should have taken upon him to be loyal."

"And what do you think of going to the camp with my father? Look at Moyse--how delighted he is!"

Moyse certainly did look possessed with joy. He was rapidly telling all his warlike intentions to Genifrede, who was looking in his face with a countenance of fear and grief.

"You think nothing of us," she cried at length, giving way to a pa.s.sion of tears. "We have been so happy here, all together; and now you are glad to go, and leave us behind! You will go and fight, without caring for us--you will be killed in this horrid war, and we shall never see you again--we shall never know what has become of you."

Moyse's military fire was instantly quenched. It immediately appeared to him the greatest of miseries to have to leave his cousins. He a.s.sured Genifrede he could not really intend to go. He had only been fancying what a war with the white masters would be. He hated the whites heartily; but he loved this place much more. Placide and Isaac might go, but he should stay. Nothing should part him from those he loved best.

Toussaint was not unmindful of what was pa.s.sing. Genifrede's tones of distress, and Moyse's protestations, all reached his ear. He turned, and gently drew his daughter towards him.

"My child," said he, "we are no longer what we have been--slaves, whose strength is in the will of their masters. We are free; and to be free requires a strong heart, in women as well as in men. When Monsieur Bayou was our master, we rose and slept every day alike, and went out to our work, and came in to our food, without having to think of anything beyond. Now we are free, and G.o.d has raised us to the difficult duties which we have always reverenced in the whites. We men must leave our homes to live in camps, and, if necessary, to fight; and you, women and girls, must make it easy for us to do our duty. You must be willing to see us go--glad to spare us--and you must pray to G.o.d that we may not return till our duty is done."

"I cannot--I shall not," Genifrede muttered to herself, as she cast down her eyes under her father's compa.s.sionate gaze. He looked towards Aimee, who answered, with tearful eyes--

"Yes, father. They must go; and we will not hinder them; but they will soon be back, will not they?"