The Hour and the Man Part 24

"What makes you say that Juste is here?" said Genifrede.

"I have seen him take five fowl in the last five minutes."

As he spoke, he plucked the top of a bulrush, and threw it with such good aim, that it struck a calabash which appeared to be floating among others on the surface of the pond. That particular calabash immediately rose, and the face of a negro child appeared, to the consternation of the fowl, whose splashing and screaming might be heard far and wide.

Juste came out of the water, displaying at his belt the result of his sport. He had, as Denis had said, taken five ducks in five minutes by pulling them under the water by the feet, while lying near them with his head covered by the calabash. The little fellow was not satisfied with the admiration of the beholders; he ran homewards, with his clothes in his hand, Denis at his heels, and his game dangling from his waist, and dripping as he ran.

"Many a white would shudder to see that child," said Moyse, as Juste disappeared. "That is the way Jean's blacks wore their trophies during the first days of the insurrection."

"Trophies!" said Genifrede. "You mean heads: heads with their trailing hair;" and her face worked with horror as she spoke. "But it is not for the whites to shudder, after what they did to Oge, and have done to many a negro since."

"But they think we do not feel as they do."

"Not feel! O Christ! If any one of them had my heart before I knew you--in those days at Breda, when Monsieur Bayou used to come down to us!"

"Here comes that boy again," cried Moyse. "Let us go into the thicket, among the citrons."

Denis found them, however--found Moyse gathering the white and purple blossoms for Genifrede, while she was selecting the fruit of most fragrant rind from the same tree, to carry into the house.

"You must come in--you must come to dinner," cried Denis. "Aimee has had a drawing lesson, while you have been doing nothing all this while.

They said you were sketching; but I told them how idle you were."

"I will go back with Denis," said Genifrede. "You threw away my sketch-book, Moyse. You may find it, and follow us."

Their path lay together as far as the garden-house. When there, Moyse seized Denis unawares, shot him through the window into the house, and left him to get out as he might, and bring the book. The boy was so long in returning, that his sister became uneasy, lest some snake or other creature should have detained him in combat. She was going to leave the table in search of him, because Moyse would not, when he appeared, singing, and with the book upon his head.

"Who calls Genifrede idle?" cried he, flourishing the book. "Look here!" And he exhibited a capital sketch of herself and Moyse, as he had found them, gathering fruits and flowers.

"Can it be his own?" whispered Genifrede to her lover.

Denis nodded and laughed, while Azua gravely criticised and approved, without suspicion that the sketch was by no pupil of his own.

In the cool evening, Genifrede was really no longer idle. While Denis and Juste were at play, they both at once stumbled and fell over something in the long gra.s.s, which proved to be a marble statue of a Naiad, lying at length. Moyse seized it, and raised it where it was relieved by a dark green back-ground. The artist declared it an opportunity for a lesson which was not to be lost: and the girls began to draw, as well as they could for the attempts of the boys to restore the broken urn to the arm from which it had fallen. When Denis and Juste found that they could not succeed, and were only chidden for being in the way, they left the drawing party seated under their clump of cocoa-nut trees, and went to hear what Madame was relating to Bellair and Deesha, in the hearing of Monsieur Moliere, Laxabon, and Vincent.

Her narration was one which Denis had often heard, but was never tired of listening to. She was telling of the royal descent of her husband-- how he was grandson of Gaou Guinou, the king of the African tribe of Arrudos: how this king's second son was taken in battle, and sold, with other prisoners of war, into slavery: how he married an African girl on the Breda estate, and used to talk of home and its wars, and its haunts, and its sunshine idleness--how he used thus to talk in the evenings, and on Sundays, to the boy upon his knee; so that Toussaint felt, from his infancy, like an African, and the descendant of chiefs. This was a theme which Madame L'Ouverture loved to dwell on, and especially when listened to as now. The Congo chief and his wife hung upon her words, and told in their turn how their youth had been spent at home--how they had been kidnapped, and delivered over to the whites. In the eagerness of their talk, they were perpetually falling unconsciously into the use of their negro language, and as often recalled by their hearers to that which all could understand. Moliere and Laxabon listened earnestly; and even Loisir, occupied as he was still with the architecture of the mansion, found himself impatient if he lost a word of the story.

Vincent alone, negro as he was, was careless and unmoved. He presently sauntered away, and n.o.body missed him.

He looked over the shoulder of the architect.

"What pains you are taking!" he said. "You have only to follow your own fancy and convenience about Christophe's house. Christophe has never been to France. Tell him, or any others of my countrymen, that any building you choose to put up is European, and in good taste, and they will be quite pleased enough."

"You are a sinner," said Loisir; "but be quiet now."

"Nay--do not you find the blacks one and all ready to devour your travellers' tales--your prodigious reports of European cities? You have only to tell like stories in stone and brick, and they will believe you just as thankfully."

"No, no, Vincent. I have told no tales so wicked as you tell of your own race. My travellers' tales are all very well to pa.s.s an hour, and be forgotten; but Christophe's mansion is to stand for an age--to stand as the first evidence, in the department of the arts, of the elevation of your race. Christophe knows, as well as you do without having been to Paris, what is beautiful in architecture; and, if he did not, I would not treacherously mislead him."

"Christophe knows! Christophe has taste!"

"Yes. While you have been walking streets and squares, he has been studying the aisles of palms, and the crypts of the banyan, which, to an open eye, may teach as much as a prejudiced mind can learn in all Rome."

"So Loisir is of those who flatter men in power?" said Vincent, laughing.

"I look further," said Loisir; "I am working for men unborn. I am ambitious; but my ambition is to connect my name honourably with the first great house built for a negro general. My ambition is to build here a rival to the palaces of Europe."

"Do what you will, you will not rival your own tales of them--unless you find Aladdin's lamp among these ruins."

"If you find it, you may bring it me. Azna has found something half as good--a really fine statue in the gra.s.s."

Vincent was off to see it. He found the drawing party more eager in conversation than about their work. Aimee was saying as he approached--

"General Vincent declares that he is as affectionate to us as if we were the nearest to him of all the children of the empire.--Did you not say so?" she asked, eagerly. "Is not the First Consul's friendship for us real and earnest? Does he not feel a warm regard for my father? Is he not like a father to my brothers?"

"Certainly," said Vincent. "Do not your brothers confirm this in their letters?"

"Do they not, Genifrede?" repeated Aimee.

"They do; but we see that they speak as they think: not as things really are."

"How can you so despise the testimony of those who see what we only hear of?"

"I do not despise them or their testimony. I honour their hearts, which forget injuries, and open to kindness. But they are young; they went from keeping cattle, and from witnessing the desolations of war here, to the first city of the world, where the first men lavish upon them instructions, and pleasures, and flatteries; and they are pleased. The greatest of all--the First of the Whites, smiles upon the sons of the First of the Blacks; and their hearts beat with enthusiasm for him. It is natural. But, while they are in Paris, we are in Saint Domingo; and we may easily view affairs, and judge men differently."

"And so," said Aimee, "distrust our best friends, and despise our best instructors; and all from a jealousy of race!"

"We think the jealousy of race is with them," said Moyse, bitterly.

"There is not a measure of L'Ouverture's which they do not neutralise-- not a fragment of authority which they will yield. As to friends, if the Consul Bonaparte is our best friend among the Whites, may we be left thus far friendless!"

"You mean that he has not answered my father's letters. Monsieur Vincent doubts not that an answer is on the way. Remember, my brothers have been invited to his table."

"There are blacks in Paris, who look on," replied Moyse, drily.

"And are there not whites too, from this island, who watch every movement?"

"Yes: and those whites are in the private closet, at the very ear of Bonaparte, whispering to him of L'Ouverture's ambition; while your brothers penetrate no further than the saloon."

"My brothers would lay down their lives for Bonaparte and France," said Aimee; "and you speak treason. I am with them."

"And with me," said Vincent, in a whisper at her ear. "Where I find the loyal heart in woman, mine is ever loyal too."

Aimee was too much excited to understand in this what was meant. She went on--

"Here is Monsieur Vincent, of our own race, who has lived here and at Paris--who has loved my father.--You love my father and his government?"

she said, with questioning eyes, interrupting herself.

"Certainly. No man is more devoted to L'Ouverture."

"Devoted to my father," pursued Aimee, "and yet devoted to Bonaparte.

He is above the rivalry of races--as the First Consul is, and as Isaac is."

"Isaac and the First Consul--these are the idols of Aimee's worship,"