Away up here, so high above everything, she seems the only person in the world; there is not a soul in sight; cane fields, valleys, mornes, mountains purple and blue, the dazzling azure sea—distances and colours lie before her. Silence and sunlight.
She always pauses here as one pauses when one meets a friend. The greatest poet, the meanest man, would do the same in face of this supreme loveliness.
As she looks from the blue sea to the green mornes and from the mornes to the blue mountains over which La Trace, the great white highroad, passes like a narrow white ribbon, she talks to it all in an undertone. She knows nothing of where the sea leads to, she knows nothing of the sun, or whether the earth moves round him or he round the earth, she is ignorant of these things as the prehistoric woman. That is perhaps why she understands it all so well, this great picture to which she speaks in an undertone, caressingly as a child speaks to its mother.
Then the road draws her back again and she passes on with her burden on her head, walking swiftly and easily, straight as a flame, a beautiful picture against the whispering canes that line the road, the palmistes, and the ferns.
Her journey may be as far as Grande Anse, she may be going to sell her goods at Calabasse, at Marigot, or Vauclin; far or near, it is all the same to her.
At noon, she is travelling still; across those blue hills in the torrid light of midday you will find her passing on her way; she has sold some of her goods, and there are coins in the little bag at her girdle. But she is not thinking of them. Of what is she thinking? Ah, if you were to lead her life, always active, always in the open air, you would know that thought can live in suspension. Not the suspension of sleep, but of half slumber, wide awake to all external things, yet dwelling on none especially. She would see, as she went, the hills change as the road turned, far mountains vanish as the road dipped, and reappear as it rose again, distant vistas of blue sea peeping at her between the mornes, fields of green cane waving to the breeze, woods breaking into view; and the woods would push the sea aside and the cane fields take the place of the woods, and the green mornes of the cane fields, and the sea of the mornes. So full was she of life and energy that movement, so far from tiring her, was more pleasant than rest, mesmerising her, lulling her, till at times it almost seemed as though she were not moving at all, that it was the scenery which was moving, hills, fields, mountains, and sea, shifting, altering, giving place one to the other to peep at her on her journey.
In a year she was known all over the island. The negroes cutting the cane would pause to look at Marie of Morne Rouge, the prettiest porteuse in Martinique, and give her good-day; at the villages where she called with her wares, she did a better trade than any other porteuse; her prettiness had little to do with this success, for her customers were women, but she had a way with her, an innocence, a sweetness, that made her pleasant as a rose.
Needless to say, in Martinique, where hearts are as inflammable as tinder, she had admirers, scores, hundreds—but she had no lover.
When young men came to talk to her they found themselves at a loss before this girl who spoke to them eye to eye, frankly, freely, as a friend might speak to a friend. She did not seem to know that she was a girl; other girls—all the girls in St. Pierre of her age—had lovers, visions of Love, visions of Cupids with tinsel wings, wedding wreaths, all the frippery that goes to make marriage the woman’s pageant. Marie had no visions of these things. Her mind was of that rare order of woman’s mind which holds all the love of heaven in solution, but no image of Love till the man she is fated to meet meets her, glances at her, speaks to her, and at a stroke makes her his forever.
These are the women who are the heroines of the real tragedies of life—and of the immortal tales of Love.