‘Dr Whitaker, your Excellency, sah,’ the man in red livery answered, grinning respectfully.
‘Call him back!’ the governor said in a tone of command. ‘There’s an awful thunderstorm coming. No man will ever get down alive to the bottom of the valley until it’s over.’
‘It doan’t no use, sah,’ the negro answered. ‘His horse’s canterin’ down de hillside de same as if him starin’ mad, sah!’ And as he spoke, Dr Whitaker’s white shirt-front gleamed for a second in the moonlight far below, at a turn of the path beside the threatening gully.
Almost before any one could start to recall him, the rain and thunder were upon them with tropical violence. The clouds had drifted rapidly across the sky; the light of the moon was completely effaced; black darkness reigned over the mountains; not a star, not a tree, not an object of any sort could now be discerned through the pitchy atmosphere. Rain! it was hardly rain, but rather a continuous torrent outpoured as from some vast aërial fountain. Every minute or two, a terrific flash lighted up momentarily the gloomy darkness; and almost simultaneously, loud peals of thunder bellowed and re-echoed from peak to peak. The dance was interrupted for the time at least, and everybody crowded out silently to the veranda and the corridors, where the lightning and the rain could be more easily seen, mingling with the thunder in one hideous din, and forming torrents that rushed down the dry gullies in roaring cataracts to the plains below.
And Dr Whitaker? On he rode, the lightning terrifying his little mountain pony at every flash, the rain beating down upon him mercilessly with equatorial fierceness, the darkness stretching in front of him and below him, save when, every now and then, the awful forks of flame illumined for a second the gulfs and precipices that yawned beneath in profoundest gloom. Yet still he rode on, erect and heedless, his hat now lost, bareheaded to the pitiless storm, cold without, and fiery hot at heart within. He cared for nothing now—for nothing—for nothing. Nora had put the final coping-stone on that grim growth of black despair within his soul, that palace of nethermost darkness which alone he was henceforth to inhabit. Nay, in the heat and bitterness of the moment, had he not even sealed his own doom? Had he not sunk down actually to the level of those who despised and contemned him? Had he not been guilty of contemptuous insolence to his own colour, in the words he had flung so wildly at the head of the negro in livery? What did it matter now whatever happened to him? All, all was lost; and he rode on recklessly, madly, despairingly, down that wild and precipitous mountain pathway, he knew not and he cared not whither.
It was a narrow track, a mere thread of bridle-path, dangerous enough even in the best of seasons, hung half-way up the steep hillside, with the peak rising sheer above on one hand, and the precipice yawning black beneath on the other. Stones and creepers cumbered the ground; pebbles and earth, washed down at once by the violence of the storm, blocked and obliterated the track in many places; here, a headlong torrent tore across it with resistless vehemence; there, a little chasm marked the spot where a small landslip had rendered it impassable. The horse floundered and reared and backed up again and again in startled terror; Dr Whitaker, too reckless at last even to pat and encourage him, let him go whatever way his fancy led him among the deep brake of cactuses and tree ferns. And still the rain descended in vast sheets and flakes of water, and still the lightning flashed and quivered among the ravines and gullies of those torn and crumpled mountain-sides. The mulatto took no notice any longer; he only sang aloud in a wild, defiant, half-crazy voice the groaning notes of his own terrible Hurricane Symphony.
So they went, on and down, on and down, on and down always, through fire and water, the horse plunging and kicking and backing; the rider flinging his arms carelessly around him, till they reached the bend in the road beside Louis Delgado’s mud cottage. The old African was sitting cross-legged by himself at the door of his hut, watching the rain grimly by the intermittent light of the frequent flashes. Suddenly, a vivider flash than any burst in upon him with a fearful clap; and by its light, he saw a great gap in the midst of the path, twenty yards wide, close by the cottage; and at its upper end, a horse and rider, trembling on the very brink of the freshly cut abyss. Next instant, the flash was gone, and when the next came, Louis Delgado saw nothing but the gap itself and the wild torrent that had so instantly cut it. The old man smiled an awful smile of gratified malevolence. ‘Ha, ha!’ he said to himself aloud, hugging his withered old breast in malicious joy; ‘I guess dat buckra lyin’ dead by now, down, down, down, at de bottom ob de gully. Ha, ha; ha, ha, ha; him lyin’ dead at de bottom ob de gully; an’ it one buckra de less left alive to bodder us here in de island ob Trinidad.’ He had not seen the mulatto’s face; but he took him at once to be a white man because, in spite of rain and spattered mud, his white shirt-front still showed out distinctly in the red glare of the vivid lightning.
UNPOPULAR RELATIONSHIPS.
Historians for the most part recount only the great events of the world; though, by brief anecdotes and familiar illustrations, they sometimes glance at the manners and morals of a particular period. But, in reality, human happiness depends far more on harmonious social relations than on changes of dynasties or the aggrandisement of empires; and a philosophical consideration of the weaknesses of human nature in connection with home-life may be as profitable to us as poring over a description of those striking events which apparently led to the rise and fall of nations. We say apparently, for the causes of most things which happen are a good deal more remote than we may fancy them.
We see how individual characters and interests and public events act and react on one another; but our reason is very apt to play at cross-purposes and mistake cause for effect. One thing, however, is certain, that the family life of a nation is the greatest of all factors in its ill or well being. A happy well-ordered home is, as a rule, the nest in which wise men and good women are most likely to be reared. Yet the ideal patriarchal life is not certain to be realised, even by those most fitted to lead it. The happiest of married couples do not always live to see their children grown up, much less to behold their children’s children to the third and fourth generation. Undoubtedly, the loss of a wise and loving mother is one of the greatest misfortunes which can befall a family. This truth is in all its bearings so much a truism that it is needless to dilate on it. What we are about to consider is the prejudice which so often prevails against Step-mothers.