The Ship of Coral

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Things always worked in a diabolical manner in favour of Sagesse: If he lent a man money something was sure to happen to prevent that man paying the interest or working off the debt; then, when his business had been seized by the money-lender things would take a turn, trade would revive, crops would be splendid—and the benefit would fall to Sagesse.

It was so with the father of Marie. The year after his property had fallen into the hands of the money-lender a wave of prosperity passed over Martinique. He still lived at Morne Rouge, the paid servant of Sagesse, overseeing the little farm that once was his own, he saw the canes growing so heavy and so tall that the harvesters could scarcely make way amidst them, the bananas bending beneath the weight of their huge yellow clusters, yet he did not grumble; it was Fate, and he made the best of the business for himself and Marie.

When Marie was fifteen and old enough to begin the business of porteuse, Ti Finotte died, and Marie came to live with the aunt in the Street of the Precipice and to act as porteuse in the employ of M. Sartine, the dealer in foulards, ribbons, madras handkerchiefs, and women’s apparel, whose shop was in the Rue Victor Hugo. The death of Ti Finotte had stricken the child to the heart, for she was still but a child despite her fifteen years and her figure, tall, straight, supple—almost the figure of a woman; the change from the sun-blaze of Morne Rouge to the shadowy old street of the Precipice had seemed part of the mournful change that had come in her life with the death of the woman who had been a second mother to her; her aunt, Man’m Charles, a calendeuse by trade, was a stern woman, religious, a devotee, and without much heart or sympathy for young people—yet in a fortnight the girl had adapted herself to her new life and had come to love the old street, its voices, its colours, its dimness, and its mystery.

It had told her its secret. A secret that could only be told to a poet or a child. Man’m Charles knew nothing of this secret, the traders and hawkers, the brazier who lived by the passageway into the Rue Buonaparte, the baker whose shop was opposite the brazier’s, knew nothing of it. For them it was just a street, for Marie it was a mystery half understood. The old houses, the shadows, the steps moss-grown and tread-worn, the twilight of early morning, the whispering of the gouyave water, all these spoke to her, telling her things—things about the past, things about the future, hints of the mystery of life—as though the people who had once lived there and loved there had left some voice behind them, some echo of their story.

Three days a week, early in the morning, just as Pelée was showing hard against the dawn, she would leave for M. Sartine’s, receive her tray of goods and start on her journey, carrying it as though it were a thing of no weight.

To see her life and work, one must follow her as, leaving the Rue Victor Hugo, up through the steep and twilit streets, she passes, moving as no woman can move who does not walk bare-footed, passing with the silence of a ghost and the grace of Atalanta, giving good-day to every one she meets, friends or strangers, up, up, past the Rue Peysette, the Rue Petit Versailles, till the houses begin to disappear and the road turns from a street to a country road set on either side with balisiers, gigantic ferns, whispering canes; scented with damp earth and the perfume of the night jasmine.

Up here, were she to look back, she would see the city at her feet still twilit and half asleep, the bay blue but still filled with night, and beyond the shadow of the island, away to the west, the sea sparkling in the sunlight.

But she does not look back nor turn her head. Her eyes, ever on the watch for the dreaded fer de lance, are fixed on the roadway before her.

Every moment, the sky above is becoming more filled with light, and as she climbs it seems to her that she is climbing to the sunlight; now, the road, more level, is turning the great shadow of Pelée, and before her the twilight of morning is turning to the blue of day.

The road takes a sharp bend, she turns it, and she is enveloped in a flame of sunshine, the warm blowing trade wind which the mountains shut off from St. Pierre blows in her face. Zombis, snakes, evil spirits, all the Fears that haunt darkness, are banished by the sunlight, blown away by the wind.