The Hour and the Man Part 6

"Here I am, Jacques!" he exclaimed in some surprise, as he addressed himself to a short, stout-built young negro. "You are the first townsman among us, Jacques. Where is old Dessalines?"

"Here is my master," said Jacques.

"Not the better for being a master," said the old tiler, who was himself a negro. "I found myself no safer than Jacques in the town; so I came away with him, and we have been among the rocks all day, tired enough."

"Have not you a horse for him?" asked Jacques. Toussaint stepped back, to desire Aimee and Isaac to give up their mule to Dessalines; but before it was done, Dessalines was mounted on Papalier's horse. Jacques had told Papalier, on finding that he had not been walking at all, that his horse was wanted, and Papalier had felt all the danger of refusing to yield it up. He was walking moodily by the side of Therese, when Toussaint offered him the mule, which he haughtily declined.

When Dessalines was mounted, Jacques came running forward to Toussaint, to ask and to tell much concerning their singular circ.u.mstances.

"Your party is too noisy," said he. "The whole country is up; and I saw, not far-off, two hours ago, a party that were bringing ammunition from Cap. There may be more; and, if we fall in their way, with a white in company--"

"True, true." And Toussaint turned back to command silence. He told every one that the safety of all might depend on the utmost possible degree of quietness being observed. He separated Isaac from Aimee, as the only way of obtaining silence from them, and warned the merry blacks in the rear that they must be still as death. He and Jacques, however, exchanged a few more words in a low whisper, as they kept in advance of the party.

"How do they get ammunition from Cap?" asked Toussaint. "Have they a party in the town? I thought the town negroes had been sent on board ship."

"The suspected ones are. They are the silly and the harmless who have still wit and mischief enough to give out powder and ball slyly for the plantation negroes. Once over the river, what will you do with your party?"

"My wife and children will be safe with my brother Paul--you know he fishes on the coast, opposite the Seven Brothers. I shall enter the Spanish ranks; and every one else here will do as he thinks proper."

"Do not you call yourself a commander, then! Why do you not call us your regiment, and take the command as a matter of course, as Jean has done?"

"If it is desired, I am ready. Hark!"

There was evidently a party at some distance, numerous and somewhat noisy, and on the approach from behind. Toussaint halted his party, quickly whispered his directions, and withdrew them with all speed and quietness within the black shade of a cacao-plantation, on the left of the road. They had to climb an ascent; but there they found a green recess, so canopied with interwoven branches that no light could enter from the stars, and so hedged in by the cacao plants, growing twelve feet high among the trees, that the party could hardly have been seen from the road in broad daylight. There they stood crowded together in utter darkness and stillness, unless, as Genifrede feared, the beating of her heart might be heard above the hum of the mosquito, or the occasional rustle of the foliage.

The approaching troop came on, tramping, and sometimes singing and shouting. Those in the covert knew not whether most to dread a shouting which should agitate their horses, or a silence which might betray a movement on their part. This last seemed the most probable. The noise subsided; and when the troop was close at hand, only a stray voice or two was singing. They had with them two or three trucks, drawn by men, on which were piled barrels of ammunition. They were now very near.

Whether it was that Therese, in fear of her infant crying, pressed it so close to her bosom as to awaken it, or whether the rumbling and tramping along the road roused its sleeping ear--the child stirred, and began what promised to be a long shrill wawl, if it had not been stopped. How it was stopped, the trembling, sickening mother herself did not know.

She only knew that a strong hand wrenched the child from her grasp in the black darkness, and that all was still, unless, as she then and ever after had a shuddering apprehension, there was something of a slight gurgle which reached her strained ear. Her own involuntary moan was stopped almost before it became a sound--stopped by a tap on the shoulder, whose authoritative touch she well knew.

No one else stirred for long after the troop had pa.s.sed. Then Toussaint led his wife's horse down into the road again, and the party resumed their march as if nothing had happened.

"My child!" said Therese, fearfully. "Give me my child!" She looked about, and saw that no one seemed to have the infant.

"I will not let it cry," she said. "Give me back my child!"

"What is it?" asked Papalier, coming beside her horse. She told her grief, as she prepared to spring down.

"No, keep your seat! Don't get down," said he, in a tone she dared not disobey. "I will inquire for the child."

He went away, and returned--without it. "This is a sad thing," said he, leading her horse forward with the rest. "No one knows anything about the poor thing. Why did you let it go?"

"Have you asked them all? Who s.n.a.t.c.hed it from me? Oh, ask who took it! Let me look for it. I will--I will--"

"It is too late now. We cannot stop or turn back. These sad accidents will happen at such times."

"Leave me behind--oh, leave me in the wood! I can follow when I have found it. Leave me behind!"

"I cannot spare you, my dear. I should never see you again; and I cannot spare you. It is sad enough to have lost the child."

"It was your child," said she, pleadingly.

"And you are mine too, my dear. I cannot spare you both."

Therese had never felt before. All that had moved her during her yet short life--all emotions in one were nothing to the pa.s.sion of this moment--the conditional hatred that swelled her soul; conditional--for, from moment to moment, she believed and disbelieved that Papalier had destroyed her child. The thought sometimes occurred that he was not the only cruel one. No one seemed to pity or care for her--not even Margot or the girls came near her. She more than once was about to seek and appeal to them; but her master held her bridle, and would not permit her to stop or turn, saying occasionally that the lives of all depended on perfect quiet and order in the march. When they arrived at the cross, at the junction of the four roads, they halted, and there she told her story, and was convinced that the grieved women knew nothing of her loss till that moment. It was too late now for anything but compa.s.sion.

Jean Francais soon appeared with a troop so numerous, that all necessity for caution and quiet was over. They could hardly meet an equal force during the remainder of the march, and might safely make the forests and ravines echo to their progress. Jean took off his c.o.c.ked hat in saluting Toussaint, and commended his punctuality and his arrangements.

"Jean always admires what my husband does," observed Margot to her acquaintance Jacques. "You hear how he is praising him for what he has done to-night."

"To be sure. Everybody praises Toussaint Breda," replied Jacques.

The wife laughed with delight.

"Everybody praises him but me," pursued Jacques. "I find fault with him sometimes; and to-night particularly."

"Then you are wrong, Jacques. You know you have everybody against you."

"Time will show that I am right. Time will show the mischief of sending away any whites to do us harm in far countries."

"Oh, you do not blame him for helping away Monsieur Bayou!"

"Yes, I do."

"Why, we have been under him ever since we were children--and a kind youth he was then. And he taught my husband to read, and made him his coachman; and then he made him overseer; and he has always indulged the children, and always bought my young guinea-fowl, and--"

"I know that. All that will not prevent the mischief of helping him away. Toussaint ought to have seen that if we send our masters to all the four sides of the world, they will bring the world down upon us."

"Perhaps Toussaint did see it," said the man himself, from the other side of his wife's horse. "But he saw another thing, too--that any whites who stayed would be murdered."

"That is true enough; and murdered they ought to be. They are a race of tyrants and rebels that our warm island hates."

"n.o.body hated Monsieur Bayou," said Margot.

"Yes, I did. Every one who loves the blacks hates the whites."

"I think not," said Toussaint. "At least, it is not so with Him who made them both. He is pleased with mercy, Jacques, and not with murder."

Jacques laughed, and muttered something about the priests having been brought in by the whites for a convenience; to which Toussaint merely replied that it was not a priest, nor an ally of white masters, who forgave His enemies on the cross.

"Father," said Placide, joining the group, "why is Jean commanding your march? He speaks to you as if you were under him."

"Because he considers it his march."

"He praised your father--very much, Placide," said his mother.

"Yes--just as if my father were under him--as if the march were not ours. We began it."

"I command those who began it--that is, my own family, Placide. I command you to obey Jean, while you are with him. On the other side the river, you shall be commander, all the way to your uncle's house. You will follow his lead, Margot?"