The Hour and the Man Part 9

"That depends on how soon we can make good soldiers of them," said he, cheerfully. "Come, Moyse, have you changed your mind again? Or will you stay and plait hammocks, while my boys are trained to arms?"

"I shall not stay behind, if the others go. But why should not we all go together? I am sure there is room enough in yonder valley for all the people on this coast."

"Room enough, but my family are better beside your father than among soldiers and the hunters of the mountains. Stay with them, or go with me. Shoot ducks, and pick up sh.e.l.l-fish here; or go with me, and prepare to be General Moyse some day."

Moyse looked as if he would have knocked his uncle down at the supposition that he would stay to pick up sh.e.l.l-fish. He could not but laugh, however, at hearing himself greeted as General Moyse by all the boys; and even Genifrede smiled.

Margot moved, sighing, towards the rocks, to put up for her boys such comforts as she could muster, and to prepare the meal which they must have before they went. Her girls went with her; and Denis shouted after them, that he was to get the cabbage from the palmetto, adding, that if they gave him a good knife, he would take it off as neatly as the Paris people took off the king. His father grasped his arm, and said--

"Never name the king, my boy, till you feel grieved that you have lost him. You do not know what you say. Remember--never mention the king unless we ask you."

Denis was glad to run after his cabbage. His father remembered to praise it at dinner. No one else praised or liked anything. Margot and Aimee were tearful; Genifrede was gloomy. The lads could think of nothing but the new life before them, which yet they did not like to question their father about, till they should have left the tears behind. No sooner were they past the first turn up the ridge, than they poured out their inquiries as to life in the camp, and the prospects of the war. Their eager gestures were watched by those they left behind; and there was a feeling of mortification in each woman's heart, on seeing this evidence that home was already forgotten for busier scenes.

They persuaded themselves, and believed of each other, that their grief was for the fearful death of the king; and they spoke as if this had been really the case.

"We have no one to look up to, now," said Margot, sobbing; "no one to protect us. Who would have thought, when I married, how desolate we should be one day on the sea-sh.o.r.e--with our master at Baltimore, and the king dead, and no king likely to come after him! What will become of us?"

"But Margot," interposed Dessalines, "how should we be better off at this moment, if the king were alive and flouris.h.i.+ng at Paris?"

"How?" repeated Margot, indignantly. "Why, he would have been our protector, to be sure. He would have done some fine thing for my husband, considering what my husband has done for him. If our beloved king (on his throne) knew of my husband's victory at Plaisance, and of his expedition to Saint Marc, and of his keeping quiet all these plantations near Marmalade, and of the thousands that he had brought over from the rebels, do you think a good master like the king would have left us to pine here among the rocks, while Jean Francais is boasting all day long, as if he had done everything with his own hand?

No, our good king would never have let Jean Francais' wife dress herself in the best jewels the white ladies left behind, while the wife and daughters of his very best officer are living here in a hut, on a rock, with no other clothes to wear than they brought away from Breda. No, no; as my husband says, in losing the king we are orphans."

"I can get you as good clothes as ever Jean's wife wore, Margot," said Paul, whose soft heart was touched by her grief. "I can run my boat along to a place I know of, where there are silks and trinkets to be had, as well as brandy. I will bring you and the girls some pretty dresses, Margot."

"No, Paul, not here. We cannot wear them here. And we shall have no pleasure in anything, now we have lost the only one who could take care of us. And who knows whether we shall ever see our boys again?"

"Curse the war!" muttered Paul, wiping his brows.

"Mother," said Aimee in a low voice, "have we not G.o.d to protect us still? One master may desert us, and another may die; but there is still G.o.d above all. Will not he protect us?"

"Yes, my dear. G.o.d takes care of the world; but then He takes care of our enemies as well as of us."

"Does he?" exclaimed Denis, in a tone of surprise.

"Yes; ask your father if Father Laxabon does not say so. The name of G.o.d is for ever in the mouths of the whites at Cap; but they reviled the king; and, true enough, the king was altogether on our side,--we had all his protection."

"All that is a good deal changed now, I hear," said Paul. "The whites at Cap are following the example of the rebels at Paris, and do not rely upon G.o.d, as on their side, as they used to do."

"Will G.o.d leave off taking care of them, then?" asked Denis, "and take care only of us?"

"No," said Aimee. "G.o.d is willing, Isaac says, to take care of all men, whether they serve him or not."

Denis shook his head, as if he did not quite approve this.

"Our priest told Isaac," continued Aimee, "that G.o.d sends his rain on the just and on the unjust. And do not you know that he does? When the rains come next month, will they not fall on all the plantations of the plain, as well as in the valley where the camp is? Our waterfalls will be all the fresher and brighter for the rains, and so will the springs in Cap."

"But if he is everybody's master, and takes care of everybody," said Denis, "what is all this fighting about? We are not fighting for Him, are we?"

"Your father is," said Margot; "for G.o.d is always on the side of kings.

Father Laxabon says so."

The boy looked puzzled, till Aimee said--

"I think there would be none of this fighting if everybody tried to please G.o.d and serve Him, as is due to a master--as father did for the king. G.o.d does not wish that men should fight. So our priest at Breda told Isaac."

"Unless wicked rebels force them to it, as your father is forced," said Margot.

"I suppose so," said Aimee, "by Isaac's choosing to go."

CHAPTER SIX.

THE HOUR.

The lads found some of the details of military training less heroic and less agreeable than they had imagined--scarcely to be compared, indeed, under either aspect, to the chase of the wild goats, and search for young turtle, to which they had been of late accustomed. They had their pleasures, however, amidst the heats, toils, and laborious offices of the camp. They felt themselves men, living among men: they were young enough to throw off, and almost to forget, the habits of thought which belong to slavery; and they became conscious of a spirit growing up within them, by which they could look before and after, perceive that the future of their lives was in their own hands, and therefore understand the importance of the present time. Their father looked upon them with mixed feelings of tender pride in them, and regret for his own lost youth. The strong and busy years on which they were entering had been all spent by him in acquiring one habit of mind, to which his temperament and his training alike conduced--a habit of endurance. It was at this time that he had acquired the power of reading enough to seek for books; and the books that he had got hold of were Epictetus, and some fragments of Fenelon. With all the force of youth, he had been by turns the stoic and the quietist; and, while busied in submitting himself to the pressure of the present, he had turned from the past, and scarcely dreamed of the future. If his imagination glanced back to the court of his royal grandfather, held under the palm shades, or pursuing the lion-hunt amidst the jungles of Africa, he had hastily withdrawn his mind's eye from scenes which might create impatience of his lot; and if he ever wondered whether a long succession of ignorant and sensual blacks were to be driven into the field by the whip every day in Saint Domingo, for evermore, he had cut short the speculation as inconsistent with his stoical habit of endurance, and his Christian principle of trust. It was not till his youth was past that he had learned anything of the revolutions of the world--too late to bring them into his speculations and his hopes. He had read, from year to year, of the conquests of Alexander and of Caesar; he had studied the wars of France, and drawn the plans of campaigns in the sand before his door till he knew them by heart; but it had not occurred to him, that while empires were overthrown in Asia, and Europe was traversed by powers which gave and took its territories, as he saw the negroes barter their cocoa-nuts and plantains on Sat.u.r.day nights--while such things had happened in another hemisphere, it had not occurred to him that change would ever happen in Saint Domingo. He had heard of earthquakes taking place at intervals of hundreds of years, and he knew that the times of the hurricane were not calculable; but, patient and still as was his own existence, he had never thought whether there might not be a convulsion of human affections, a whirlwind of human pa.s.sion, preparing under the grim order of society in the colony. If a master died, his heir succeeded him; if the "force" of any plantation was by any conjuncture of circ.u.mstances dispersed or removed, another negro company was on the sh.o.r.e, ready to re-people the slave-quarter. The mutabilities of human life had seemed to him to be appointed to whites--to be their privilege and their discipline; while he doubted not that the eternal command to blacks was to bear and forbear. When he now looked upon his boys, and remembered that for them this order was broken up, and in time for them to grasp a future, and prepare for it--that theirs was the lot of whites, in being involved in social changes, he regarded them with a far deeper solicitude and tenderness than in the darkest midnight hours of their childish illnesses, or during the sweetest prattle of their Sabbath afternoons, and with a far stronger hopefulness than can ever enter the heart or home of a slave. They had not his habitual patience; and he saw that they were little likely to attain it; but they daily manifested qualities and powers--enterprise, forecast, and aspiration of various kinds, adorning their youth with a promise which made their father sigh at the retrospect of his own. He was amused, at the same time, to see in them symptoms of a boyish vanity, to which he had either not been p.r.o.ne, or which he had early extinguished. He detected in each the secret eagerness with which they looked forward to displaying their military accomplishments to those with whom they were always exchanging thoughts over the ridge. He foresaw that when they should have improved a little in certain exercises, he should be receiving hints about a visit to the sh.o.r.e, and that there would then be such a display upon the sands as should excite prodigious admiration, and make Denis break his heart that he must not go to the camp.

Meantime, he amused them in the evenings, with as many of his officers as chose to look on, by giving them the history of the wars of Asia and Europe, as he had learned it from books, and thoroughly mastered it by reflection. Night after night was the map of Greece traced with his sword's point on the sand behind his tent, while he related the succession of the conflicts with Persia, with a spirit derived from old Herodotus himself. Night after night did the interest of his hearers arouse more and more spirit in himself, till he became aware that his sympathies with the Greeks in their struggles for liberty had hitherto been like those of the poet born blind, who delights in describing natural scenery--thus unconsciously enjoying the stir within him of powers whose appropriate exercise is forbidden. Amidst this survey of the regions of history, he felt, with humble wonder, that while his boys were like bright-eyed children sporting fearlessly in the fields, he was like one lately couched, by whom the order of things was gradually becoming recognised, but who was oppressed by the unwonted light, and inwardly ashamed of the hesitation and uncertainty of his tread. While sons, nephew, and a throng of his officers, were listening to him as to an oracle, and following the tracings of his sword, as he showed how this advance and that retreat had been made above two thousand years ago, he was full of consciousness that the spirit of the history of freedom was received more truly by the youngest of his audience than by himself--that he was learning from their natural ardour something of higher value than all that he had to impart.

As he was thus engaged, late one spring evening--late, because the rains would soon come on, and suspend all out-door meetings--he was stopped in the midst of explaining a diagram by an authoritative tap on the shoulder. Roused by an appeal to his attention now so unusual, he turned quickly, and saw a black, who beckoned him away.

"Why cannot you speak!--Or do you take me for some one else? Speak your business."

"I cannot," said the man, in a voice which, though too low to be heard by anyone else, Toussaint knew to be Papalier's. "I cannot speak here-- I must not make myself known. Come this way."

Great was the surprise of the group at seeing Toussaint instantly follow this black, who appeared in the dusk to be meanly clothed. They entered the tent, and let down the curtain at the entrance. Some saw that a woman stood within the folds of the tent.

"Close the tent," said Papalier, in the same tone in which he had been wont to order his plate to be changed at home. "And _now_, give me some water to wash off this horrid daubing. Some water--quick! Pah! I have felt as if I were really a negro all this day."

Toussaint said nothing; nor did he summon any one. He saw it was a case of danger, led the way into the inner part of the tent, poured out water, pointed to it, and returned to the table, where he sat down, to await further explanation.

Papalier at length re-appeared, looking like himself, even as to his clothes, which Therese must have brought in the bundle which she carried. She now stood leaning against one of the tent-poles, looking grievously altered--worn and wearied.

"Will you not sit down, Therese?" said Toussaint, pointing to a chair near his own, Papalier having seated himself on the other side of the table.

Therese threw herself on a couch at some distance, and hid her face.

"I must owe my safety to you again, Toussaint," said Papalier. "I understand General Hermona is here at present."

"He is."

"You have influence with him, and you must use it for me."

"I am sorry you need it. I hoped you would have taken advantage of the reception he gave you to learn the best time and manner of going to Europe. I hoped you had been at Paris long ago."

"I ought to have been there. If I had properly valued my life, I should have been there. But it seemed so inconceivable that things should have reached a worse pa.s.s than when I crossed the frontier! It seemed so incredible that I should not be able to preserve any wreck of my property for my children, that I have lingered on, staying month after month, till now I cannot get away. I have had a dreadful life of it. I had better have been anywhere else. Why, even Therese," he continued, pointing over his shoulder towards the couch, "Therese, who would not be left behind at Fort Egalite, the night we came from Breda--even Therese has not been using me as she should do. I believe she hates me."

"You are in trouble, and therefore I will not speak with you to-night about Therese," said Toussaint. "You are in danger, from the determination of the Spaniards to deliver up the enemies of the late king to--"

"Rather say to deliver up the masters to their revolted slaves. They make politics the pretence; but they would not be sorry to see us all cut to pieces, like poor Odeluc and Clement, and fifty more."