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Page 41
My friend stopped the carriage before a gateway set into a hedge full
of flowers that looked like pink-and-white butterflies. "I have to
make a call here," he said;--"come in with me." We dismounted, and he
knocked on the gate with the butt of his whip. Within, at the end of
a shady garden, I could see the porch of a planter's house; beyond
were rows of cocoa palms, and glimpses of yellowing cane. Presently
a negro, wearing only a pair of canvas trousers and a great straw
hat, came hobbling to open the gate,--followed by a multitude, an
astonishing multitude, of chippering chickens. Under the shadow of
that huge straw hat I could not see the negro's face; but I noticed
that his limbs and body were strangely shrunken,--looked as if
withered to the bone. A weirder creature I had never beheld; and I
wondered at his following of chickens.
"Eh!" exclaimed the notary, "your chickens are as lively as ever!... I
want to see Madame Floran."
"_Moin k� di_," the goblin responded huskily, in his patois; and he
limped on before us, all the chickens hopping and cheeping at his
withered heels.
"That fellow," my friend observed, "was bitten by a _fer-de-lance_
about eight or nine years ago. He got cured, or at least half-cured,
in some extraordinary way; but ever since then he has been a skeleton.
See how he limps!"
The skeleton passed out of sight behind the house, and we waited a
while at the front porch. Then a m�tisse--turbaned in wasp colors, and
robed in iris colors, and wonderful to behold--came to tell us that
Madame hoped we would rest ourselves in the garden, as the house was
very warm. Chairs and a little table were then set for us in a shady
place, and the m�tisse brought out lemons, sugar-syrup, a bottle of
the clear plantation rum that smells like apple juice, and ice-cold
water in a _dobanne_ of thick red clay. My friend prepared the
refreshments; and then our hostess came to greet us, and to sit with
us,--a nice old lady with hair like newly minted silver. I had never
seen a smile sweeter than that with which she bade us welcome; and I
wondered whether she could ever have been more charming in her Creole
girlhood than she now appeared,--with her kindly wrinkles, and argent
hair, and frank, black, sparkling eyes....
* * * * *
In the conversation that followed I was not able to take part, as
it related only to some question of title. The notary soon arranged
whatever there was to arrange; and, after some charmingly spoken words
of farewell from the gentle lady, we took our departure. Again the
mummified negro hobbled before us, to open the gate,--followed by
all his callow rabble of chickens. As we resumed our places in the
carriage we could still hear the chippering of the creatures, pursuing
after that ancient scarecrow.
"Is it African sorcery?" I queried.... "How does he bewitch those
chickens?"
"Queer--is it not?" the notary responded as we drove away. "That negro
must now be at least eighty years old; and he may live for twenty
years more,--the wretch!"
The tone in which my friend uttered this epithet--_le
miserable!_--somewhat surprised me, as I knew him to be one of the
kindliest men in the world, and singularly free from prejudice. I
suspected that a story was coming, and I waited for it in silence.
"Listen," said the notary, after a pause, during which we left the
plantation well behind us; "that old sorcerer, as you call him, was
born upon the estate, a slave. The estate belonged to M. Floran,--the
husband of the lady whom we visited; and she was a cousin, and the
marriage was a love-match. They had been married about two years when
the revolt occurred (fortunately there were no children),--the black
revolt of eighteen hundred and forty-eight. Several planters were
murdered; and M. Floran was one of the first to be killed. And the old
negro whom we saw to-day--the old sorcerer, as you call him--left the
plantation, and joined the rising: do you understand?"
"Yes," I said; "but he might have done that through fear of the mob."
"Certainly: the other hands did the same. But it was he that killed M.
Floran,--for no reason whatever,--cut him up with a cutlass. M. Floran
was riding home when the attack was made,--about a mile below the
plantation.... Sober, that negro would not have dared to face M.
Floran: the scoundrel was drunk, of course,--raving drunk. Most of
the blacks had been drinking tafia, with dead wasps in it, to give
themselves courage."
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