Marie, when she passed the gates, always looked in fascinated and half frightened at the silent riot of trees and shrubs; but to-day it seemed less gloomy; the voice of the bird seemed to fill it with light.
“Marie! Marie! Marie! Bonjour, Marie—Marie de Morne Rouge,” sang the bird. She made a lovely picture as she stood in the sunlit road, listening with a half smile to the liquid golden notes of the siffleur de montagne.
“Marie! Marie! Marie! Bonjour, Marie—Marie de Morne Rouge.”
Then she sighed, turned, and passed on her way. It was as though the old garden where lovers had walked in days gone by had told her something, just as the old street of the Precipice had told her something. But what the garden told her was far less understandable; something new and strange and sad had spoken in the voice of the bird, in the silence of the green gloom. It was as though she had seen the vision of some lovely country, unattainable, a moment glimpsed, and then gone forever.
But she came through the Place du Fort and across the bridge spanning the Rivière Roxelane.
The washerwomen below were busy; she could hear their voices and their laughter; the Rue Victor Hugo was filled with people; she knew many of them, sister porteuses, shop-keepers, idlers, and gave them good-day as she passed.
The crowd was thinner as she drew near the little Place de la Fontaine, and she could see the water of the fountain like a diamond flower in the sunshine. As she was crossing the Place she saw a figure in white clothes coming towards her. Her eye, keen and trained to observation, noted at once that this was some stranger to St. Pierre, some man from the foreign ships, no Creole.
As she passed him, she looked him straight in the face, frankly, just as she looked everyone in the face, man or woman; his eyes met her eyes full, lit up, and—she had passed on.
The crowd was around her, but she did not see it. Someone had spoken to her without words; she had spoken to someone. The world for a moment seemed empty of people, containing only herself and that mysterious someone. She scarcely remembered his face except that it was dark, and vaguely good-looking; but the eyes held her soul. He had spoken to her as a man speaks to a woman with a glance; that was nothing compared with the fact that she had spoken to him. It was as though something dumb in her, something of which she had never suspected the existence, had awoken from sleep, escaped from darkness, spoken in a strange language, and then sank back to darkness, leaving her bewildered and astonished.
For a moment as she went on her way the vision of the Jardin des Plantes rose before her, and the voice of the siffleur de montagne followed her: “Marie! Marie! Marie! Marie de Morne Rouge.” The old love-haunted garden and the bird seemed trying to tell her something—something impossible to understand, something beyond all sadness sad, and beyond all beauty beautiful.