To hide his weariness he began to sing. He had a good voice and he sent The Girls of Avignon across the cane fields, floating on the warm wind of afternoon, so that the cane cutters paused in their work to listen. Marie had never heard a song like that, though she only half-caught the meaning of the words it seemed to open new vistas before her. This was one of the songs from the land he came from, joyous and strange, far different from the Creole songs that are all set to the same key—Melancholy.
He sang Jean François de Nantes, and the topsail-haul chanty of the French merchant service, songs strange as sea gulls amidst these green mornes and waving cane fields.
The sun was well in the west now, casting his light full in their faces, their shadows stretched far back along the white road, the valleys between the mornes were beginning to fill with shadow, shadow that, like some blue luminous fluid, would fill them to the brim, overflow, and flood the mornes, the fields, and the road.
“I would sooner die than give in,” that was the real burthen of the songs with which he tried to give himself heart, his head ached, his limbs ached, he would have given half he possessed to cast himself down amidst the green stuff on the roadside—yet she kept on as fresh as when she started, listening to his songs, chatting, saying things that he only half understood, singing, sometimes, herself, when he ceased—what a girl!—it was as though a man had matched himself against an immortal.
Here and there along the road were shrines to the Virgin and occasionally a fountain fed by one of the innumerable little streams from the hills.
They had passed the Morne de la Croix when, by one of these wayside fountains, his determination to die before giving in left him. There was a green bank by the fountain, huge tree ferns grew above the bank and in the shadow of their fronds the fountain water, escaping from a lion’s head carved in stone, sang, and whispered forever to the ferns.
He sat down on the bank and Marie standing before him, saw for the first time the true state of affairs. She took the little flask of ratifia which the porteuse always carried and a cup from her girdle, put some of the ratifia in the cup, filled it with water and gave it to him.
He drank it off. It was like drinking life. Then she pointed to the tray on her head and asked him to help her to remove it.
The porteuse, once loaded, cannot remove the heavy tray from her head without help. She dare not bend her neck lest it should be dislocated by the weight.
He rose and helped her, she placed the tray by the road and then sat down on the bank beside him. Ah, how good it was to rest in the cool shadow of the ferns, his tiredness cast from him like a dropped cloak.