“I suppose we have got through more than half our journey, for see, blackie has eaten up the best part of his cane,” said the doctor; but he was mistaken, for our sable guide knew that he could get another at any estate we passed, and soon sucked up his first walking-stick.
We found that we were passing the village of Pamplemousses, close to which is an estate where, we heard, are to be seen the tombs of Paul and Virginia, whose history, written by Saint Pierre, I had read. Not a moment had I ever doubted the truth of their history; still, not being sentimentally disposed, I had no great wish to visit their graves, especially as I was in a hurry to hear of Alfred. Our guide, however, had no notion of our passing a spot which everybody visited, without paying it our respects; so, before we were aware of it, we found ourselves standing before two pretty urns in a garden of roses.
“And so here sleep at rest poor Paul and his devoted Virginia,” said I, with a sigh; for I was beginning to feel sentimental.
“Fiddlestick!” answered the doctor, laughing. “The Saint Geran was, I believe, wrecked hereabouts, and some of her passengers were drowned; but whether there was a Paul or a Virginia on board, I cannot say. Certainly the French author had no other foundation for his tale than the mere wreck of a ship of that name; and as the language is good, and the moral is less exceptionable than that of most French tales, it is put into the hands of most young people beginning to learn French, and has thus become universally known.”
I felt almost vexed to find that two such people as Paul and Virginia never really did exist, till the doctor laughed me back into my usual state of mind.
“Fictitious sentiment I cannot abide,” he observed. “There is quite enough of real sorrow and suffering in the world to excite our sympathies; and if we employ them on fiction, we are very apt to exhaust them before they can be employed to some useful end.”
The scenery at the foot of Pieter Bot is very fine, as, indeed, was all we passed through. It was only towards the evening that we reached my grandfather’s estate of Eau Douce, or Sweet Water, as he called it. How my heart beat as our guide pointed out the house, a single-storied building with a wide verandah round it, standing in a garden filled with trees and shrubs of the most luxuriant growth, and of every variety of shape and colour.
“Can Alfred himself be here?” I thought, as I eagerly jumped off my horse, and letting our negro guide take the reins, ran up the steps to the front door. The doctor followed slowly. Though the door was open, I did not like to go in. I waited and waited, and rang two or three times, and no one came. At last I heard a shuffling in the passage, and an old black man, dressed in a white shirt and trousers and yellow slippers, made his appearance. In broken English, with a French accent, he asked me what I wanted. I told him.
“Oh, Master Coventry! He gone away—no come back for one year, two years, or more,” he replied, with a grin.
I asked him if he knew where Mr Coventry was gone. His notions of geography were limited; he could not tell. I felt very dispirited.