It was dark when they reached St. Pierre. The night had welled up from the harbour like a flood, the moon was up, and the stars alight in the dark pansy-blue above, but Pelée’s crest still held a touch of sunlight. One might have imagined the day standing there just before flight on that burning crest. Then, spreading wings westward as the light left the summit, leaving Martinique to night and the stars.
All the way along the road from the Jardin des Plantes the great fireflies had waltzed and drifted about them, they had heard the first shuddering of the night wind in the palms, they had paused to listen, the night had told them things beyond the comprehension of all but lovers and poets. The Creole French of the tropics still hold a veil between their minds, yet they understood one another perfectly.
They came by the sea way, the harbour was full of stars and the anchor lights of the ships in the bay, shone like glow-worms, the red port-light of a steamer sent a red ripple of light across the water. They could hear the wash of the little waves against the sea-steps, and from out there somewhere in the starlight the “creak-creak” of oars.
Some shore boat was putting off from a ship.
“See,” said Gaspard, “out there, that light near the steamer, that is La Belle Arlésienne.” He had told her on their way back of how Sagesse had pushed forward the expedition intending to start on Friday. The news had been a blow to her—how hard a blow he did not guess, for in the darkness he did not see the tears in her eyes, or the quivering of her lips.
She looked across the water at the fateful light. It seemed to her sinister, the eye of a Zombi staring straight at her, malignant, and threatening.
“I am taking him away,” said the light, “beyond the rim of the sea; you have seen the ships go there, great ships that become little ships, and then just specks that vanish utterly, just as people vanish when they die. Remember Ti Finotte; she passed away like that, and the sun remains and the blue sea, and sky, but she has not returned—she will never come back. Yes, I am taking him away. I am the Zombi who comes to take away happiness. I change my form as Zombis do; you saw me once before, I was then the coffin in which they placed Ti Finotte away there, amidst the blowing palms of Morne Rouge, now I am the light that will take away your love across the wind-blown sea.”
She turned to Gaspard, and casting her arms about his neck, pressing her face to his breast—sobbed. She could keep a brave heart when he told her of his going, she could keep the words back that would tell him of her despair, but she could no longer control her tears. Fate had spoken to her. That mind which knew nothing, knew everything. In days long past, by the blue Caribbean Sea, the women of her remote ancestry had seen their men going away, never, perhaps, to return, and had clasped them like this. Grief, who is ageless, had cast them upon the breasts of their lovers. Just as in her love she had resumed their love, so in her grief she was resuming their sorrow.
There by the starlit harbour of St. Pierre, this girl of the people, clasping this man of the people, formed with him a picture that the patient stars had watched for ages. The story of love and separation told by two forms clinging together—a vision statuesque, eternal.
“But I will come back—and it is not yet—not for some days—”