Two Years in the French West Indies Part 15

--"Ess Vitaline?"

--"Non ce pa ca."

--"Ess Aza?"

--"Non, ce pa ca."

--"Ess Nini?"

--"Chache enc."

--"Ess t.i.te"

--"Ou pa save,--tant pis pou ou!"

--"Ess Youma?"

--"Pouki ou 'le save nom moin?--ca ou ke epi y?"

--"Ess Yaiya?"

--"Non, ce pa y."

--"Ess Maiyotte?"

--"Non! ou pa ke janmain trouve y!"

--"Ess Sounoune?--ess Loulouze?"

She does not answer, but quickens her pace and begins to sing,--not as the half-breed, but as the African sings,--commencing with a low long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone, and descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:--

"a te--moin ka dmi toute longue; Yon pailla.s.se se fai main bien, Doudoux!

a te--moin ka dmi toute longue; Yon robe biese se fai moin bien, Doudoux!

a te--moin ka dmi toute longue; De jolis foula se fai moin bien, Doudoux!

a te--moin ka dmi toute longue; Yon joli madras se fai moin bien, Doudoux!

a te--moin ka dmi toute longue: ce a te..."

... Obliged from the first to lengthen his stride in order to keep up with her, Fafa has found his utmost powers of walking overtaxed, and has been left behind. Already his thin attire is saturated with sweat; his breathing is almost a panting;--yet the black bronze of his companion's skin shows no moisture; her rhythmic her silent respiration, reveal no effort: she laughs at his desperate straining to remain by her side.

--"Marche toujou' dee moin,--anh, che?--marche toujou' dee!"...

And the involuntary laggard--utterly bewitched by supple allurement of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the savage melody of her chant--wonders more and more who she may be, while she waits for him with her mocking smile.

But Gabou--who has been following and watching from afar off, and sounding his fruitless oukle betimes--suddenly starts, halts, turns, and hurries back, fearfully crossing himself at every step.

He has seen the sign by which She is known...

VI.

... None ever saw her by night. Her hour is the fulness of the sun's flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of windless noons,--when colors appear to take a very unearthliness of intensity,--when even the flash of some colibri, bosomed with living fire, shooting hither and thither among the grenadilla blossoms, seemeth a spectral happening because of the great green trance of the land....

Mostly she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to plantation, from hamlet to hamlet,--sometimes dominating huge sweeps of azure sea, sometimes shadowed by mornes deep-wooded to the sky.

But close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she has been seen at mid-day upon the highway which overlooks the Cemetery of the Anchorage, behind the cathedral of St. Pierre.... A black Woman, simply clad, of lofty stature and strange beauty, silently standing in the light, _keeping her eyes fixed upon the Sun!_...

VII.

Day wanes. The further western alt.i.tudes shift their pearline gray to deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the changing of the light--dead indigoes, fuliginous purples, rubifications as of scoriae,--ancient volcanic colors momentarily resurrected by the illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes takes a faint warm ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look like thin golden hairs against the glow,--blond down upon the skin of the living hills.

Still the Woman and her follower walk together,--chatting loudly, laughing--chanting s.n.a.t.c.hes of song betimes. And now the valley is well behind them;--they climb the steep road crossing the eastern peaks,--through woods that seem to stifle under burdening of creepers.

The shadow of the Woman and the shadow of the man,--broadening from their feet,--lengthening prodigiously,--sometimes, mixing, fill all the way; sometimes, at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge ma.s.ses of frondage, catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;--the sun's rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of volcanic silhouettes....

Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise.... The dawn, upflaming swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no awful blossoming--as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors, dove-tints, and yellows,--pale yellows as of old dead gold, in horizon and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has charged all the blue air with translucent vapor, colors become strangely changed, magnified, transcendentalized when the sun falls once more below the verge of visibility. Nearly an hour before his death, his light begins to turn tint; and all the horizon yellows to the color of a lemon. Then this hue deepens, through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world for a little s.p.a.ce; and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes--not descending, but rising, as if from the ground--all within a few minutes. And during those brief minutes peaks and mornes, purpling into richest velvety blackness, appear outlined against pa.s.sions of fire that rise half-way to the zenith,--enormous furies of vermilion.

... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,--begins to mount a steep narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the left. But Fafa hesitates,--halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge orange face sink down,--sees the weird procession of the peaks vesture themselves in blackness funereal,--sees the burning behind them crimson into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the darkling path to the left. Whither is she now going?

--"Oti ou kalle la?" he cries.

--"Mais conm ca!--chimin tala plis cou't,--coument?"

It may be the shortest route, indeed;--but then, the fer-de-lance!...

--"Ni sepent ciya,--en pile."

No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken that path too often not to know:

--"Pa ni sepent piess! Moin ni coutime pa.s.se la;--pa ni piess!"

... She leads the way.... Behind them the tremendous glow deepens;--before them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of ceiba, balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pa.s.s; ma.s.ses of viny drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine tone. For a little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of the Woman before him;--then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he can descry only the white turban and the white foulard;--and then the boughs meet overhead: he can see her no more, and calls to her in alarm:--

--"Oti ou?--moin pa pe oue arien!"

Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge fire-flies sparkle by,--like atoms of kindled charcoal thinkling, blown by a wind.

--"Icitt!--quimbe lanmain-moin!"...

How cold the hand that guides him!...She walks swiftly, surely, as one knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the incandescent color flames again between the trees;--the high vaulting of foliage fissures overhead, revealing the first stars. A _cabritt-bois_ begins its chant. They reach the summit of the morne under the clear sky.

The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward between a long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,--as between a waving of prodigious black feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier alt.i.tudes dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast rushing sound rises into the night.... Is it the speech of hurrying waters, or only some tempest of insect voices from those ravines in which the night begins?...