CHAPTER X.
A MEMORY OF MARTINIQUE
“La façon d’être du pays est si agréable, la température si bonne, et l’on y vit dans une liberté si honnête, que je n’aye pas vu un seul homme, ny une seule femme, qui en soient revenus, en qui je n’aye remarqué une grande passion d’y retourner.”—Le Père Dutertre, writing in 1667.
A FEW insignificant little photographs are lying on the desk before me. Some of them are blurred; some of them are out of focus. They have been for many months packed away among bundles of other photographs of a similar character, moved from their corner in the library amongst the books of travel, only to be occasionally dusted by the indifferent housemaid and packed away again out of sight.
Days come and days go, and things move on in uniform measure, and life glides silently away from us, and one day passes much as does the day before; and we plan and work and hope, and we build to-day upon the assurances of yesterday and to-morrow; and, although we know that there are times when love can be crushed out of a life, yet we base our hope upon the eternal fixedness of love; and, although constantly face to face with the mutability of all created things, we build upon the eternal stability of matter. We hope by reason of an undying faith in those we love; we build upon a belief in the immutability of the everlasting hills; and we go on building and hoping until, with some, there comes a day when the soul burns out, and the everlasting hills crumble to ashes, and loving and building is no more, and there is never loving or building again in the same way.
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Much as we touch the sacred belongings of the beloved dead, do I now bring forth from their lonely hiding-place the few photographs of St. Pierre and the fascinating shores of Martinique, which we took last winter, as we cruised through the Windward Islands.
