Having but just read the terrible tidings from Martinique that St. Pierre has been utterly destroyed by volcanic eruption, and the fair island left an ash-heap, these one-time insignificant little pictures become at once inexpressibly dear to me; and I have been sitting here for a long, long time, looking first at one and then at another, with a tenderness born of sorrow and love.
Say what you may of the futility of a love which clings to places, it is nevertheless a passion so deeply rooted in some natures that neither life nor death seem able to cause its destruction. There is no reasoning with love; it is born to be, to exist, and why we love there is no finding out. Strange, this wonderful loving which comes to you and me! Not alone the love we lavish upon God’s creatures; upon father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, and children, and the whole world of humankind; but upon all of God’s handiwork: His trees, His flowers, His dear brown soil, His hills, His valleys, His broad, sweeping plains, His high, loftily crested peaks, His lonely byways, where shy birds and soft-footed beasts hold high carnival the livelong day.
Beloved as are all of God’s creatures, there are for each one of us a few, a very few, souls without whom loving would seem to pass away. Beautiful as is the great earth, there are chosen spots upon it for you and for me, to which our thoughts revert with an infinite tenderness; and were such sweet abiding-places suddenly to be blotted from the earth, it would seem to us as though beauty had died for ever.
Such a treasure-house was St. Pierre to me. In the midst of islands, each rivalling the other in loveliness, Martinique had a claim for homage which none other possessed. Its charm was felt even far out to sea, as its lofty headlands, with terrible Pelée looking over, struck a bold pace for the lesser isles to follow.
As we approached the still, deep harbour,—although the hour was late for landing,—we were so permeated by the puissant fascination of the place, that, against the protests of old wiseacres aboard, we nevertheless took the first available small boat, lured into the arms of St. Pierre by her irresistible summons.
And what was that summons? Who can tell?
