Lizzie trembled as he left her, but she did not weep. Her stock of tears was exhausted. And had they not been, a cry from the infant in the next room would have dried them at their fount. She summoned Rosa, who was basking asleep in the verandah, to its assistance, and with a deep, deep sigh for her dead past, lifted her basket, and took her way to the coolie quarters.
CHAPTER VIII.
JERUSHA, the East Indian coolie, sat at the door of her hut, nursing her baby on her knee, and with a very sullen expression on her countenance. Indeed, all the hands on Beauregard had borne more or less of a rebellious look of late. They had no particular grudge against Mr Courtney, who was a kind, if rather an indolent master, delegating all his duties to his overseer; but they detested Henri de Courcelles, and the accounts of his cruelty, and selfishness, and dishonesty, formed the staple portion of their conversation. His very beauty, and evident self-consciousness of it, the vast superiority which he assumed over them, and the rigour with which he carried out the rules of the plantation, all combined to set the coolies against him, and they thirsted to find out something which might degrade him from his office. The reports from the Fort, too, the constant attempts at rising which had to be quelled, had incited them on to imitation, and altogether the plantation workers were seething under a sense of wrong, and ripe for rebellion. Poor little Jerusha, with her handsome half-caste baby in her arms, might have furnished them with a pretext for denouncing the overseer, had not her case been too common a one amongst them. But to the girl it meant the devastation of her life. She had not courted her destiny. She had been landed in San Diego, a poor trembling Indian coolie amongst a herd of fellow-sufferers, who had been persuaded to leave Calcutta under a promise of good wages, and plenty of food, and very little work, and after a voyage of four months (during which they had been herded between decks like so many swine), had been marched ashore at San Diego, too weak and frightened and disappointed to have any hope left in them, unless it were that they might die. They had been all standing together for hire, when De Courcelles had sauntered by and picked out the likely ones for Mr Courtney’s plantation. Jerusha well remembered how he came like a prince amongst them, and how handsome he had looked in his white linen suit and broad-brimmed hat, with the blue silk handkerchief knotted at his throat, and the crimson rose blooming in his button-hole,—and when he had stopped beside her and spoken to her in his low soft tone, she had thought him more glorious still. She had not sought him out, this poor little Indian girl, but he had pertinaciously come after her. He had asked for her the very day after she had entered the plantation, and put so many questions as to whether her hut was comfortable, and her food sufficient, that Jerusha was quite bewildered. And then he had given her new clothes, smart dresses—such as the natives love to deck themselves in—and gold earrings for her ears; and the usual consequence followed. She fell to the tempter’s seductive arts. It was a sort of heaven to the poor untaught coolie to be selected from all the other girls to be the favourite of the handsome young overseer. She never troubled her head to think how long his preference would last. She knew that he would never marry her—she would have laughed at so ludicrous an idea—and yet she fancied somehow that her happiness would never end, and was terribly disappointed and bitterly incensed when the day came that De Courcelles ordered her back to her quarters with the other coolies, and refused to make any difference between them. She had reproached him with his conduct on the occasion which has been related, but, if anything, it had had the effect of making him more severe with her, and Jerusha realised at last that all was over between them, and that she had been only a tool and a plaything to minister to his short-lived pleasure. She was pondering resentfully on his neglect as she sat on the ground, with both her hands clasped round her knees to make a cradle for her little Henri, as she would persist in calling the child, greatly to the annoyance of the overseer. Henri was a beautiful infant, large and round and buoyant, with much more of the father than the mother in his appearance. He was gaily dressed in a short calico shirt of red and white striped cotton, with bangles on his fat brown arms, and a string of blue beads round his neck, and as Jerusha rocked him to and fro, and heard him crow with delight at the exercise, the gloom on her face would suddenly disappear, and she would seize the boy in her arms and kiss him vehemently. As she was thus amusing herself, a shadow fell between her and the setting sun, and old Jessica from the White House stood before her. Jessica had been much put out by her young mistress leaving her behind when she started for the hill range. It was the first time such a thing had occurred, and the old nurse felt it accordingly. Had she not waited on Missy Quita, hand and foot, ever since she was a baby? and if she had been sharp enough to discover her secret, had she not kept it as faithfully as Missy would have done herself? And why should Missy Quita leave her behind just as she had obtained her wish and was on the road to make the great marriage that Jessica had always foretold for her? The faithful old negress felt aggrieved; and when sunset came, and Mr Courtney had gone out for his evening drive, and the White House seemed deserted, her heart turned to her old friends in the negro quarters, and she walked down to have a chat with them, and unburden herself of her troubles.
‘Eh, Jerusha, gal!’ she exclaimed, as she caught sight of the young East Indian, ‘and how’s de baby? He berry fine boy, Jerusha. He make big strong coolie, bime-by.’
‘Coolie,’ repeated Jerusha scornfully. ‘My little Henri never make coolie boy. I tell you dat, Aunty Jess. Henri’s a lord’s son, and he’ll be gennelman, bime-by.’
‘You go ways, Jerusha; you talking nonsense! Lords is only for great ladies like my Missy Quita.’
‘Missy Quita going to marry a lord?’ said Jerusha inquisitively, as Jessica took a seat beside her.