Chapter Thirty.
Speculation in the Plateaux.
Pongaudin was no longer safe, as head-quarters for the Commander-in-chief, his family, and guests. The defeats which had been sustained were bad enough; but the defection was worse. Amidst the contagion of defection there was no saying who, out of the circle of immediate friends, might next join the French for the sake of peace; and for the sake of peace, perhaps, deliver up the persons of the Ouvertures, with their wounded friend, Dessalines, and the brave young officers who formed the guard of the household. Christophe’s letters had already proved to Toussaint and his secretary, that no reliance was to be placed on the honour of the French, in their dealings with negroes. Cajolery in speech, covering plots against their persons, appeared to be considered the conduct appropriate to business with blacks, who had no concern, it seemed, with the usages of war, as established among whites. La Plume had fallen by bribery; Clerveaux by cajolery; and both means had been attempted with Christophe. The troops were assailed on the side of their best affections. They were told that Leclerc came to do honour to L’Ouverture—to thank him for his government of the island during the troubles of France, and to convoy to him the approbation of the First Consul, in papers enclosed in a golden box. It is probable that, if they had not heard from Toussaint’s own lips of the establishment of slavery in the other French colonies, the authorisation of the slave-trade, and the threat to do what was convenient with Saint Domingo—all the negroes would have made the French welcome, as Clerveaux had done. As it was, large numbers unquestionably remained faithful to their liberties and their chief—enough, as Toussaint never doubted, to secure their liberties at last: but how many, and after how long and arduous a struggle, it remained for time to show.
Many houses had been offered as a retreat for the household of the Commander-in-chief. The one chosen this day was his friend Raymond’s cacao-plantation, Le Zéphyr, in the Mornes du Chaos—among the mountains which retired above the light bank of the Artibonite. It was a spacious mansion, sheltered from storms, but enjoying a pleasant mountain air—the most wholesome that could be found, if the retreat should continue through the hot season. It was surrounded with never-failing springs of pure water. There were kids on all the hills, and cattle in every valley round. Grain and fruits were in the fields and gardens; and it was thought that one well-guarded post, at a pass below the Plateaux de la Ravine, would render the place inaccessible to the enemy. To the satisfaction of Raymond and his daughter, and the delight of Euphrosyne, this, their beloved summer mansion, was fixed on for the abode of the whole party, provided Toussaint should find, on examination, that it would answer his purposes as well as was now supposed.
Such was the plan settled presently after the deputation had left the gates—settled among the few confidential friends, whose tastes, as well as interests, Toussaint chose to consult. Madame Dessalines was among those; and one of the most eager to be gone. She engaged to remove her husband safely to a place where his recovery must proceed better than among the agitations of Pongaudin. By one of these agitations her desire to go had been much quickened. Before the departure of the deputation, she had chanced to meet Monsieur Papalier in one of the corridors, equipped for his journey. She could not avoid passing him; and he had greeted her with a significant “Au revoir, Thérèse.” Fervently she prayed that she might never meet him again; and anxious was she to be gone to a place where he could not come.
Before noon, L’Ouverture, with Placide riding by his side, and followed by some officers, who were themselves followed by a few soldiers, was among the heights which commanded the plain of the Artibonite on one side, and on the other the valleys which lay between their party and the Gros Morne. They had visited Le Zéphyr, and were now about to examine the pass where their post was to be established.
“This heat, Placide,” said his father, as the sun beat down upon their heads, “is it not too much for you? Perhaps you had better—But I beg your pardon,” he added, smiling; “I had forgotten that you are no longer my growing boy, Placide, whom I must take care of. I beg your pardon, Placide; but it is so new to me to have a manly son beside me—!”
And he looked at him with eyes of pride.
Placide told how often at Paris he had longed to bask in such a sunshine as this, tempered by the fragrant breezes from the mountain-side. He was transported now to hear the blows of the axe in the woods, and the shock of the falling trunks, as the hewers of the logwood and the mahogany trees were at their hidden work. He was charmed with the songs of the cultivators which rose from the hot plain below, where they were preparing the furrows for the indigo-sowing. He greeted every housewife who, with her children about her, was on her knees by the mountain-stream, washing linen, and splashing her little ones in sport. All these native sights and sounds, so unlike Paris, exhilarated Placide in the highest degree. He was willing to brave either heats or hurricanes on the mountains, for the sake of thus feeling himself once more in his tropical home.
“One would think it a time of peace,” said he, “with the wood-cutters and cultivators all about us. Where will be the first cropping from those indigo-fields? And, if that is saved, where will be the second!”
“Of that last question, ask me again when we are alone,” replied his father. “As for the rest, it is by no will of mine that our people are to be called off from their wood-cutting and their tillage. To the last moment, you see, I encourage the pursuits of peace. But, if you could see closely these men in the forest and the fields, you would find that, as formerly, they have the cutlass at their belt, and the rifle slung across their shoulders. They are my most trusty soldiery.”
“Because they love you best, and owe most to you. What has Vincent discovered below there—far-off? Have you your glass, father?”
“The deputation, perhaps,” said Toussaint.
“Yes: there they are! They have crossed the Trois Rivières, and they are creeping up towards Plaisance. What a mere handful the party looks at this distance! What mere insects to be about to pull the thunder down upon so many heads! What an atom of space they cover! Yet Vincent’s heart is on that little spot, I believe. Is it not so, father?”
“Yes! unless some of it is, as I fear, with the fleet beyond the ridge.”
“He will be missing, some day soon, then.”
“For his own sake and Aimée’s, I trust not. This step of hers has disconcerted me: but no harm can be done by detaining Vincent in honour near me, till the turn of events may decide his inclinations in favour of Aimée’s father, and of his own race. Detained he must be, for the present, in dishonour, if not in honour: for he knows too much of my affairs to be allowed to see Leclerc. If Aimée returns to us, or if we gain a battle, Vincent will be ours without compulsion. Meantime, I keep him always employed beside me.”
“This is the place for our post, surely,” said Placide. “See how the rocks are rising on either hand above this level! No one could pass here whom we choose to obstruct.”
“Yes: this is the spot; these are the Plateaux,” replied his father, awaiting the officers and soldiers—the latter being prepared with tools, to mark out and begin their work.
While the consultations and measurements were going on, Placide’s eye was caught by the motion of a young fawn in the high grass of a lawny slope, on one side of the valley. He snatched the loaded rifle which one of the soldiers had exchanged for a spade and fired. The passion for sport was instantly roused by the act. Kids were seen here and there on the rocks. Marks were not wanting: and first Vincent, and then one and another, followed Placide’s example; and there were several shots at the same instant, whose echoes reverberated to the delighted ear of Placide, who was sorry when the last had died away among the mountain-tops.
“Your first and last sport for to-day,” observed Toussaint. “You have given the game a sufficient alarm for the present.”
“We must find our game, as we have shot it,” exclaimed Vincent. “My kid is not far-off.”
“After it, then! You will find me under the large cotton-tree yonder. The heat is too great here, Placide, between these walls of rock.”
Every man of the party was off in pursuit of his game, except Placide, who remained to ask his father, now they were alone, what was to happen at the season of the second indigo-cutting. They threw themselves down beneath the cotton-tree, which with its own broad shades, deepened by the masses of creepers which twined and clustered about it, and weighed it down on every side, afforded as complete a shelter from the shower of sun-rays as any artificial roof could have done.
“The second indigo-cutting is in August, you know,” said Toussaint. “August will decide our freedom, if it is not decided before. August is the season when Nature comes in as our ally—comes in with her army of horrors, which we should not have the heart to invoke, but which will arrive, with or without our will; and which it will be the fault of the French themselves if they brave.”
“Foul airs and pestilence, you mean!” said Placide.
“I mean foul airs and pestilence. All our plans, my son—(it is a comfort to make a counsellor of my own son!)—all the plans of my generals and myself are directed to provide for our defence till August, certain that then the French will be occupied in grappling with a deadlier foe than even men fighting for their liberties.”
“Till August!” repeated Placide. “Nearly six months! I scarcely think the French could hold their footing so long, if—but that—”
“If what? Except for what?”
“If it were not for the tremendous reinforcements which I fear will be sent.”
“I thought so,” said his father.
“All France is eager to come,” continued Placide. “The thousands who are here (about twelve thousand, I fancy; but they did what they could to prevent our knowing the numbers exactly)—the thousands who are here are looked upon with envy by those who are left behind. The jealousy was incredible—the clamour to gain appointments to the Saint Domingo expedition.”
“To be appointed to pestilence in the hospitals, and a grave in the sands!” exclaimed Toussaint. “It is strange! Frenchmen enough have died here, in seasons of trouble, to convince all France that only in times of peace, leisure, stillness, and choice of residence, have Europeans a fair chance of life here, for a single year. It is strange that they do not foresee their own death-angels clustering on our shores.”
“The delusion is so strong,” said Placide, “that I verily believe that if these twelve thousand were all dead to-day, twenty thousand more would be ready to come to-morrow. If every officer was buried here, the choicest commanders there would press forward over their graves. If even the Leclercs should perish, I believe that other relatives of the First Consul, and perhaps some other of his sisters, would kneel to him, as these have done, to implore him to appoint them to the new expedition to Saint Domingo.”
“The madness of numbers is never without an open cause,” said Toussaint. “What is the cause here?”
“Clear and plain enough. The representations of the emigrants coming in aid of the secret wishes of Bonaparte, have, under his encouragement, turned the heads of his family, his court, and after them, of his people.”
“The emigrants sigh for their country (and it is a country to sigh after), and they look back on their estates and their power, I suppose; while the interval of ten years dims in their memories all inconveniences from the climate, and from the degradation of their order.”
“They appear to forget that any form of evil but Ogé and you, father, ever entered their paradise. They say that, but for you, they might have been all this while in paradise. They have boasted of its wealth and its pleasures, till there is not a lady in the court of France who does not long to come and dwell in palaces of perfumed woods, marbles, and gold and silver. They dream of passing the day in breezy shades, and of sipping the nectar of tropical fruits, from hour to hour. They think a good deal, too, of the plate and wines, and equipages, and trains of attendants, of which they have heard so much; and at the same time, of martial glory and laurel crowns.”
“So these are the ideas with which they have come to languish on Tortuga, and be buried in its sands! These emigrants have much to answer for.”
“So Isaac and I perpetually told them; but they would not listen to anything said by an Ouverture. Nor could we wonder at this, when persons of every colour were given to the same boastings; so that Isaac and I found ourselves tempted into a like strain upon occasion.”
“It appears as if the old days had returned,” said Toussaint; “the days of Columbus and his crows. We are as the unhappy Indians to the rapacity of Europe. No wonder, if mulattoes and blacks speak of the colony as if it were the old Hayti.”
“They do, from Lanville, the coffee-planter, to our Mars Plaisir. Mars Plaisir has brought orders for I do not know how many parrots; and for pearls, and perfumes, and spices, and variegated woods.”
“Is it possible?” said Toussaint, smiling. “Does he really believe his own stories? If so, that accounts for his staying with you, instead of going with Isaac; which I wondered at. I thought he could not have condescended to us, after having lived in France.”
“He condescends to be wherever he finds most scope for boasting. On Tortuga, or among the ashes of Cap, he can boast no more. With us he can extol France, as there he extolled Saint Domingo. If August brings the destruction we look for, the poor fellow ought to die of remorse; but he has not head enough to suffer for the past. You can hold out till August, father?”
“If Maurepas joins us here with his force, I have no doubt of holding out till August. In these mornes, as many as will not yield might resist for life; but my own forces, aided by those of Maurepas, may effectually keep off the grasp of the French from all places but those in which they are actually quartered. A few actions may be needful,—morally needful,—to show them that the blacks can fight. If this lesson will not suffice, August, alas! will exterminate the foe. What do I see stirring among the ferns there? Is it more game?”
Placide started up.
“Too near us for game,” he whispered; and then added aloud, “Shall we carry home another deer? Shall I fire?”
At these words, some good French was heard out of the tall, tree-like ferns,—voices of men intreating that no one would fire; and two Frenchman presently appeared, an army and a navy officer.
“How came you here, gentlemen? Are you residents in the colony?”
“If we had been, we should not have lost ourselves, as you perceive we have done. We are sent by the Captain-General to parley, as a last hope of avoiding the collision which the Captain-General deprecates. Here are our credentials, by which you will discover our names,—Lieutenant Martin,” pointing to his companion, “and Captain Sabès,” bowing for himself.
“It is too late for negotiation, gentlemen,” said L’Ouverture, “as the news from the south will already have informed the Captain-General. I regret the accident of your having lost your way, as it will deprive you for a time of your liberty. You must be aware that, voluntarily or involuntarily, you have fulfilled the office of spies; and for the present, therefore, I cannot part with you. Placide, summon our attendants, and, with them, escort these gentlemen to Le Zéphyr. I shall soon join you there, and hear anything that your charge may have to say.”
The officers protested, but in vain.
“It is too late, gentlemen. You may thank your own commanders for compelling me to run no more risks—for having made trust in a French officer’s honour a crime to my own people. You may have heard and seen so much that I am compelled to hold you prisoners. As I have no proof, however, that you are spies, your lives are safe.”
In answer to Placide’s shout—the well-known mountain-cry which he was delighted to revive—their followers appeared on all sides, some bringing in their game, some empty-handed. The French officers saw that escape was impossible. Neither had they any thought, but for a passing moment, of fighting for their liberty. The Ouvertures were completely armed; and there never was an occasion when a man would lightly engage, hand-to-hand, with Toussaint or his son.
Half the collected party, including Vincent, accompanied Toussaint to Pongaudin. The other half escorted Placide and his prisoners up the morne to Le Zéphyr; these carried all the game for a present provision.
Placide observed an interchange of glances between his prisoners as they passed the spades, pick-axes, and fresh-dug earth in the plateaus. He had little idea how that glance was connected with the romancing he had just been describing; nor how much of insult and weary suffering it boded to his father.