Clensy turned round and found himself face to face with President Gravelot’s daughter, Sestrina! Her rich tresses were ornamented with hibiscus blossoms. And as she stood smiling before Clensy, she did look as perfect as a young man’s dream of woman.
“So you are here in the palace, Suvam kari, Engleesman?” the girl said, speaking in a land of Haytian patois in an undecided way, as though she was uncertain as to which language Clensy would understand the best.
“Yes, I am here,” replied Clensy, hardly knowing what else to say, as he gazed into the girl’s dark, beautiful eyes as she laughed like a happy child. And as he gazed, he heard the buzz and weird hum of the native orchestra’s stringed instruments playing in the ball-room. Those sounds meant that his absence from the piano would not be missed, for the dancing had commenced to the strains of the four Haytian musicians, who had sat silent in the ball-room when Clensy had presided at the piano. Though it was night, the trees, the fountains, and even the colour of the flowers, were distinctly visible. Every hanging bough sparkled with the steady lights of the hundreds of hanging garden lamps. The mystery of night and the stars and the dark orange groves was in perfect harmony with Sestrina’s type of beauty. Perhaps Sestrina knew this, for she stood perfectly still under the mahogany tree’s branches, staring earnestly at Clensy as the warm scented winds drifted her tresses in confusion over her shoulder. The young Englishman could hardly believe his luck as the girl took his arm and walked away with him into the shadows as though he was a very, very old acquaintance! Though she had made a great impression on his mind when he had first seen her, he had endeavoured to thrust her from his memory as something quite unattainable, beyond his hopes and the ordinary possibilities of his humble position in Hayti. But there he stood, Sestrina holding his arm, gazing into his face with a childlike expression in her eyes. Yes, it was all true enough. Fate had thrown them together, some immutable law had decreed that it should be, that all that was to happen in their lives afterwards, had been carefully planned out and sighed over by destiny. Clensy’s heart thumped with happiness, no premonition of coming sorrow in far-off days came to dispel his unbounded joy as they both, in mutual secrecy, stole away by the tropical fuchsia trees so that they could get away from the prying eyes of the stragglers near the palace.
“Have you come to stay in Hayti, Engleesman?” whispered Sestrina, as she gave Clensy a swift bright glance.
“I don’t know yet,” responded Clensy. And as he gazed down the moonlit orange groves he fancied he could see the happy phantoms of his imagination dancing in impish delight on the footpath. The rich odours from decaying pineapples and the hanging overripe lemons and limes made a perfect atmosphere for Clensy’s romantic meditations. And Sestrina?—her heart fluttered, it was almost like a dream to her, too!
“Oh, how different are the sun-tanned flushed faces of the handsome Englishmen to the yellow-skinned Haytian men,” she thought as she sighed and looked at Clensy again. Everything in nature seemed to feel kindly disposed towards them both. The moon intensified the dark loveliness of Sestrina’s eyes as the scented warm zephyrs lifted her tresses and tumbled them in artless confusion about her neck and shoulders.
“I am only in Hayti for a holiday, I’m travelling. I’m a tourist, you know,” said Clensy. Then he remembered under what circumstances Sestrina had first seen him, and added with excusable mendacity. “I’ve been most unfortunate, I lost all my money in a shipwreck just before I arrived in Hayti.”
“Oh, how sad!” exclaimed Sestrina, then she gave a low, merry peal of hushed laughter. Clensy wondered why the girl should laugh so, and cursed the very memory of Adams. For, if ever he had wanted to appear refined and gentle, and one who loved delicate associations, it was at that moment in his life. However, Clensy was wrong in his suspicions, the girl had believed every word he uttered. Sestrina was unworldly. She was Gravelot’s only daughter. Her mother was an inmate of an asylum at Rio Grande, a fact of which Sestrina was not aware, she having been brought up to think that her mother was dead. She had led a secluded life in the palace since her father had been made President of the Black Republic. Her father had had her reared with jealous care. The girl’s constant companion had been and was still, an aged negress nurse named Claircine. Claircine had ever watched over the girl with that affection which is characteristic in the coloured people when they become attached to those who are placed in their care. This negress had cultivated Sestrina’s imagination by telling her pretty legends and, as Gravelot had wished, had kept her mind childlike, quite ignorant of the world and ways of men and women. The only knowledge of the world that she had acquired had come to her through the medium of the sensational French novels which she obtained and read in secret. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say, that Sestrina, like many Haytian maids, had educated herself and obtained her knowledge of the great world around her, from French novels. Of course, the girl did not realise the meaning of a deal that she read. And so, to her mind, the words—“Passion, and passionate,” only conveyed some idea that the hero or heroine possessed bad tempers, or were endowed with a poetic passion which resembled the wild moanings of the mahogany trees when the fierce tornadoes broke over Hayti. And whenever she asked the negress uncomfortable questions, Claircine adroitly changed the conversation or misinformed the girl. And so Sestrina went every day with great punctiliousness to confess to the aged Catholic priest, Père Chaco, also knelt every night by her bedside to pray with absolute faith over the goodness of men and the boundless mercy of God.
Such was the simple wisdom of Sestrina’s mind. And Royal Clensy, as he stood in the palace gardens with Sestrina that night, did not misunderstand her when she boldly intimated that she was supremely happy in his company. A girl’s character is generally clearly imaged in the mirrors of her soul—her eyes. And Clensy’s mind was not the kind that gives a distorted view of the truth. When she took a flower from her hair, touched it with her lips, and then placed it in the lapel of his coat, he realised that it was all innocent enough. And he was happy as they both walked up and down in the moonlit shades of the orange groves. “Adams’s wretched accordion-music has its compensations,” he thought as he realised that had he not gone off busking with Adams he might never have met Sestrina. “It’s fate, Sestrina was destined to come into my life like this,” he mused as Sestrina stumbled, and nearly fell over the cactus hedge. Sestrina gave a little cry of distress.
“Destiny!” was his mental ejaculation as he leaned forward, and with an apologetic look in his eyes, said “Allow me!”