one day, m. sartine sent marie to call at a house on the highroad that leads across the morne parnasse. her business was to shew some lace to a spanish lady, se?ora vigil, and to sell it if possible.
the se?ora had come to martinique by chance; she had taken this house—the chateau principe—by chance, and yesterday she had entered m. sartine’s shop by chance to buy some lace. she might just as easily have gone to the shop of m. custine, or to the fleur d’avril, or to the bon marché, but chance—whose other name is fate—led her into the shop of m. sartine.
marie, who had sold the whole quantity of lace to the se?ora, was returning to st. pierre well pleased and in high spirits. it was her sixteenth birthday and it had brought her the pleasantest surprise in the world.
finotte, dodotte, florine, honorine, all her girl friends and acquaintances, had remembered the day; each had brought a little present, a trifle, less than a trifle, a box of sea shells blazing with colour, a scarf, a string of beads—the brazier across the way and the baker, had remembered her; they did not bring presents, but they called out good wishes as she passed. her aunt gave her the rarest thing she ever gave to anyone—a smile. she had not known that any of these people had cared for her till this morning, when her birthday made them speak.131 and she had told no one of her birthday, or only one girl, finotte—she must have spread the news.
then, she had been entrusted with the lace selling by m. sartine, a most important business, in which she had succeeded. the se?ora had spoken kindly to her, asked her her age, and discovering that it was her birthday, had given her a little old-fashioned cross wrought in silver and with the blessed saviour upon it. “it has been blessed by the archbishop of santa cruz,” said the se?ora, “and whilst you keep it nothing evil can hurt you.”
it had been a wonderful morning. the sun was full in the sky as she came along the road past the jardin des plantes. the gates were open, they were always open, rusty and gone to decay; she could see in through the great arch of twilight made by the trees. in there amidst the palms and great tropical trees a bird was singing, calling, filling the echoes with its golden, flute-like notes. it was a siffleur de montagne. she paused and looked in. the great garden, once carefully tended, had gone to decay, the lianas hung like ropes between the trees; palmiste and tree fern, cedar and locust, all were roped and tangled by the lianas, the scent of vanilla came on the air from the green gloom, vanilla, and green orange, wet mould, the sad odour of decaying leaves.
it was a wonderful and mysterious place, the jardin des plantes; laid out when versailles was filled with courtiers, beautiful when josephine, not yet an empress, walked its paths, nothing dreaming of napoleon or her fate; long gone to decay and given over now to nature, who was slowly taking it back to herself.
marie, when she passed the gates, always looked in fascinated and half frightened at the silent riot of trees and shrubs; but to-day it seemed less gloomy; the voice of the bird seemed to fill it with light.
132 “marie! marie! marie! bonjour, marie—marie de morne rouge,” sang the bird. she made a lovely picture as she stood in the sunlit road, listening with a half smile to the liquid golden notes of the siffleur de montagne.
“marie! marie! marie! bonjour, marie—marie de morne rouge.”
then she sighed, turned, and passed on her way. it was as though the old garden where lovers had walked in days gone by had told her something, just as the old street of the precipice had told her something. but what the garden told her was far less understandable; something new and strange and sad had spoken in the voice of the bird, in the silence of the green gloom. it was as though she had seen the vision of some lovely country, unattainable, a moment glimpsed, and then gone forever.
but she came through the place du fort and across the bridge spanning the rivière roxelane.
the washerwomen below were busy; she could hear their voices and their laughter; the rue victor hugo was filled with people; she knew many of them, sister porteuses, shop-keepers, idlers, and gave them good-day as she passed.
the crowd was thinner as she drew near the little place de la fontaine, and she could see the water of the fountain like a diamond flower in the sunshine. as she was crossing the place she saw a figure in white clothes coming towards her. her eye, keen and trained to observation, noted at once that this was some stranger to st. pierre, some man from the foreign ships, no creole.
as she passed him, she looked him straight in the face, frankly, just as she looked everyone in the face, man or woman; his eyes met her eyes full, lit up, and—she had passed on.
133 the crowd was around her, but she did not see it. someone had spoken to her without words; she had spoken to someone. the world for a moment seemed empty of people, containing only herself and that mysterious someone. she scarcely remembered his face except that it was dark, and vaguely good-looking; but the eyes held her soul. he had spoken to her as a man speaks to a woman with a glance; that was nothing compared with the fact that she had spoken to him. it was as though something dumb in her, something of which she had never suspected the existence, had awoken from sleep, escaped from darkness, spoken in a strange language, and then sank back to darkness, leaving her bewildered and astonished.
for a moment as she went on her way the vision of the jardin des plantes rose before her, and the voice of the siffleur de montagne followed her: “marie! marie! marie! marie de morne rouge.” the old love-haunted garden and the bird seemed trying to tell her something—something impossible to understand, something beyond all sadness sad, and beyond all beauty beautiful.
then, drowning out everything, as though some belfry in the sky had flung open, came the sound of bells; it was the carillon of the cathedral that rings twice daily, silver bells and golden bells, tenor and alto, answered by a thousand singing echoes from high wood and harbour, street and place, floating up to the blue sky, floating out over the blue sea.
“marie, marie de morne rouge—bonjour, marie—little porteuse, child of the sun, listen to us, the bells, listen to us, the echoes—we are speaking the language he spoke, birds and echoes, bells and flowers, soul of woman and soul of man, one language only have they.”
“marie de morne rouge—marie.”
