_ CHAPTER XXIX. THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPE, CONTINUED
Bras-Coupe let the autumn pass, and wintered in his den.
Don Jose, in a majestic way, endeavored to be happy. He took his senora to his hall, and under her rule it took on for a while a look and feeling which turned it from a hunting-lodge into a home. Wherever the lady's steps turned--or it is as correct to say wherever the proud tread of Palmyre turned--the features of bachelor's-hall disappeared; guns, dogs, oars, saddles, nets, went their way into proper banishment, and the broad halls and lofty chambers--the floors now muffled with mats of palmetto-leaf--no longer re-echoed the tread of a lonely master, but breathed a redolence of flowers and a rippling murmur of well-contented song.
But the song was not from the throat of Bras-Coupe's "_piti zozo_." Silent and severe by day, she moaned away whole nights heaping reproaches upon herself for the impulse--now to her, because it had failed, inexplicable in its folly--which had permitted her hand to lie in Bras-Coupe's and the priest to bind them together.
For in the audacity of her pride, or, as Agricola would have said, in the immensity of her impudence, she had held herself consecrate to a hopeless love. But now she was a black man's wife! and even he unable to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she had hoped to teach him. She had heard of San Domingo; for months the fierce heart within her silent bosom had been leaping and shouting and seeing visions of fire and blood, and when she brooded over the nearness of Agricola and the remoteness of Honore these visions got from her a sort of mad consent. The lesson she would have taught the giant was Insurrection. But it was too late. Letting her dagger sleep in her bosom, and with an undefined belief in imaginary resources, she had consented to join hands with her giant hero before the priest; and when the wedding had come and gone like a white sail, she was seized with a lasting, fierce despair. A wild aggressiveness that had formerly characterized her glance in moments of anger--moments which had grown more and more infrequent under the softening influence of her Mademoiselle's nature--now came back intensified, and blazed in her eye perpetually. Whatever her secret love may have been in kind, its sinking beyond hope below the horizon had left her fifty times the mutineer she had been before--the mutineer who has nothing to lose.
"She loves her _candio_" said the negroes.
"Simple creatures!" said the overseer, who prided himself on his discernment, "she loves nothing; she hates Agricola; it's a case of hate at first sight--the strongest kind."
Both were partly right; her feelings were wonderfully knit to the African; and she now dedicated herself to Agricola's ruin.
The senor, it has been said, endeavored to be happy; but now his heart conceived and brought forth its first-born fear, sired by superstition--the fear that he was bewitched. The negroes said that Bras-Coupe had cursed the land. Morning after morning the master looked out with apprehension toward the fields, until one night the worm came upon the indigo, and between sunset and sunrise every green leaf had been eaten up and there was nothing left for either insect or apprehension to feed upon.
And then he said--and the echo came back from the Cannes Brulees--that the very bottom culpability of this thing rested on the Grandissimes, and specifically on their fugleman Agricola, through his putting the hellish African upon him. Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown before, fell upon his slaves. Those to whom life was spared--but to whom strength did not return--wandered about the place like scarecrows, looking for shelter, and made the very air dismal with the reiteration, "_No' ouanga_ (we are bewitched), _Bras-Coupe fe moi des grigis_ (the voudou's spells are on me)." The ripple of song was hushed and the flowers fell upon the floor.
"I have heard an English maxim," wrote Colonel De Grapion to his kinsman, "which I would recommend you to put into practice--'Fight the devil with fire.'"
No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents.
But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one?
No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch Bras-Coupe, why, let him go. The overseer tried the hounds once more and came home with the best one across his saddle-bow, an arrow run half through its side.
Once the blacks attempted by certain familiar rum-pourings and nocturnal charm-singing to lift the curse; but the moment the master heard the wild monotone of their infernal worship, he stopped it with a word.
Early in February came the spring, and with it some resurrection of hope and courage. It may have been--it certainly was, in part--because young Honore Grandissime had returned. He was like the sun's warmth wherever he went; and the other Honore was like his shadow. The fairer one quickly saw the meaning of these things, hastened to cheer the young don with hopes of a better future, and to effect, if he could, the restoration of Bras-Coupe to his master's favor. But this latter effort was an idle one. He had long sittings with his uncle Agricola to the same end, but they always ended fruitless and often angrily.
His dark half-brother had seen Palmyre and loved her. Honore would gladly have solved one or two riddles by effecting their honorable union in marriage. The previous ceremony on the Grandissime back piazza need be no impediment; all slave-owners understood those things. Following Honore's advice, the f.m.c., who had come into possession of his paternal portion, sent to Cannes Brulees a written offer, to buy Palmyre at any price that her master might name, stating his intention to free her and make her his wife. Colonel De Grapion could hardly hope to settle Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the planter of the Cannes Brulees.
But the idea of retreat had left Citizen Fusilier.
"She is already married," said he to M. Honore Grandissime, f.m.c. "She is the lawful wife of Bras-Coupe; and what God has joined together let no man put asunder. You know it, sirrah. You did this for impudence, to make a show of your wealth. You intended it as an insinuation of equality. I overlook the impertinence for the sake of the man whose white blood you carry; but h-mark you, if ever you bring your Parisian airs and self-sufficient face on a level with mine again, h-I will slap it."
The quadroon, three nights after, was so indiscreet as to give him the opportunity, and he did it--at that quadroon ball to which Dr. Keene alluded in talking to Frowenfeld.
But Don Jose, we say, plucked up new spirit..
"Last year's disasters were but fortune's freaks," he said. "See, others' crops have failed all about us."
The overseer shook his head.
"_C'est ce maudit cocodri' la bas_ (It is that accursed alligator, Bras-Coupe, down yonder in the swamp)."
And by and by the master was again smitten with the same belief. He and his neighbors put in their crops afresh. The spring waned, summer passed, the fevers returned, the year wore round, but no harvest smiled. "Alas!" cried the planters, "we are all poor men!" The worst among the worst were the fields of Bras-Coupe's master--parched and shrivelled. "He does not understand planting," said his neighbors; "neither does his overseer. Maybe, too, it is true as he says, that he is voudoued."
One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever.
The third noon after--the sad wife sitting by the bedside--suddenly, right in the centre of the room, with the door open behind him, stood the magnificent, half-nude form of Bras-Coupe. He did not fall down as the mistress's eyes met his, though all his flesh quivered. The master was lying with his eyes closed. The fever had done a fearful three days' work.
"_Mioko-Koanga oule so' femme_ (Bras-Coupe wants his wife)."
The master started wildly and stared upon his slave.
"_Bras-Coupe oule so' femme_!" repeated the black.
"Seize him!" cried the sick man, trying to rise.
But, though several servants had ventured in with frightened faces, none dared molest the giant. The master turned his entreating eyes upon his wife, but she seemed stunned, and only covered her face with her hands and sat as if paralyzed by a foreknowledge of what was coming.
Bras-Coupe lifted his great black palm and commenced:
"_Mo ce voudrai que la maison ci la, et tout ca qui pas femme' ici, s'raient encore maudits_! (May this house, and all in it who are not women, be accursed)."
The master fell back upon his pillow with a groan of helpless wrath.
The African pointed his finger through the open window.
"May its fields not know the plough nor nourish the herds that overrun it."
The domestics, who had thus far stood their ground, suddenly rushed from the room like stampeded cattle, and at that moment appeared Palmyre.
"Speak to him," faintly cried the panting invalid.
She went firmly up to her husband and lifted her hand. With an easy motion, but quick as lightning, as a lion sets foot on a dog, he caught her by the arm.
"_Bras-Coupe oule so' femme_," he said, and just then Palmyre would have gone with him to the equator.
"You shall not have her!" gasped the master.
The African seemed to rise in height, and still holding his wife at arm's length, resumed his malediction:
"May weeds cover the ground until the air is full of their odor and the wild beasts of the forest come and lie down under their cover."
With a frantic effort the master lifted himself upon his elbow and extended his clenched fist in speechless defiance; but his brain reeled, his sight went out, and when again he saw, Palmyre and her mistress were bending over him, the overseer stood awkwardly by, and Bras-Coupe was gone.
The plantation became an invalid camp. The words of the voudou found fulfilment on every side. The plough went not out; the herds wandered through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room--rag-weed, smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed--until the burning skies of midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank and dingy flowers.
"Why in the name of--St. Francis," asked the priest of the overseer, "didn't the senora use her power over the black scoundrel when he stood and cursed, that day?"
"Why, to tell you the truth, father," said the overseer, in a discreet whisper, "I can only suppose she thought Bras-Coupe had half a right to do it."
"Ah, ah, I see; like her brother Honore--looks at both sides of a question--a miserable practice; but why couldn't Palmyre use _her_ eyes? They would have stopped him."
"Palmyre? Why Palmyre has become the best _monture_ (Plutonian medium) in the parish. Agricola Fusilier himself is afraid of her. Sir, I think sometimes Bras-Coupe is dead and his spirit has gone into Palmyre. She would rather add to his curse than take from it."
"Ah!" said the jovial divine, with a fat smile, "castigation would help her case; the whip is a great sanctifier. I fancy it would even make a Christian of the inexpugnable Bras-Coupe."
But Bras-Coupe kept beyond the reach alike of the lash and of the Latin Bible.
By and by came a man with a rumor, whom the overseer brought to the master's sick-room, to tell that an enterprising Frenchman was attempting to produce a new staple in Louisiana, one that worms would not annihilate. It was that year of history when the despairing planters saw ruin hovering so close over them that they cried to heaven for succor. Providence raised up Etienne de Bore. "And if Etienne is successful," cried the news-bearer, "and gets the juice of the sugar-cane to crystallize, so shall all of us, after him, and shall yet save our lands and homes. Oh, Senor, it will make you strong again to see these fields all cane and the long rows of negroes and negresses cutting it, while they sing their song of those droll African numerals, counting the canes they cut," and the bearer of good tidings sang them for very joy:
An-o-que, An-o-bia, Bia-tail-la, Que-re-que, Nal-le-oua,
Au-mon-de, Au-tap-o-te, Au-pe-to-te, Au-que-re-que, Bo.
"And Honore Grandissime is going to introduce it on his lands," said Don Jose.
"That is true," said Agricola Fusilier, coming in. Honore, the indefatigable peacemaker, had brought his uncle and his brother-in-law for the moment not only to speaking, but to friendly, terms.
The senor smiled.
"I have some good tidings, too," he said; "my beloved lady has borne me a son."
"Another scion of the house of Grand--I mean Martinez!" exclaimed Agricola. "And now, Don Jose, let me say that _I_ have an item of rare intelligence!"
The don lifted his feeble head and opened his inquiring eyes with a sudden, savage light in them.
"No," said Agricola, "he is not exactly taken yet, but they are on his track."
"Who?"
"The police. We may say he is virtually in our grasp."
* * * * *
It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having just played a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game being about to end between the white champions of two rival faubourgs, the beating of tom-toms, rattling of mules' jawbones and sounding of wooden horns drew the populace across the fields to a spot whose present name of Congo Square still preserves a reminder of its old barbaric pastimes. On a grassy plain under the ramparts, the performers of these hideous discords sat upon the ground facing each other, and in their midst the dancers danced. They gyrated in couples, a few at a time, throwing their bodies into the most startling attitudes and the wildest contortions, while the whole company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the weird music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in time with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting, in that wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten, the unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with their ejaculatory burdens of "_Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!_" and "_Aie Calinda! Dance Calinda!_" The volume of sound rose and fell with the augmentation or diminution of the dancers' extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and supple, bounding into the ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers and trumpeters; now a wearied dancer, finding his strength going, gathered all his force at the cry of "_Dance zisqu'a mort!_" rallied to a grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at the mouth.
The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been lugged out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the enthusiasm had risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring the blackest of black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches of "Indienne"--the stuff used for slave women's best dresses--jingling with bells, his feet in moccasins, his tight, crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace of alligator's teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined about his neck.
It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head, the multitude howled with rapture.
Ill-starred Bras-Coupe. He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as "drunk again."
By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gazed upon, and then distinctly recognized, his whilom driver. Five minutes later the Spanish police were putting their heads together to devise a quick and permanent capture; and in the midst of the sixth minute, as the wonderful fellow was rising in a yet more astounding leap than his last, a lasso fell about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt tree, face upward upon the turf.
"The runaway slave," said the old French code, continued in force by the Spaniards, "the runaway slave who shall continue to be so for one month from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice shall have his ears cut off and shall be branded with the flower de luce on the shoulder; and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in during one month of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third offence he shall die." Bras-Coupe had run away only twice. "But," said Agricola, "these 'bossals' must be taught their place. Besides, there is Article 27 of the same code: 'The slave who, having struck his master, shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital punishment'--a very necessary law!" He concluded with a scowl upon Palmyre, who shot back a glance which he never forgot.
The Spaniard showed himself very merciful--for a Spaniard; he spared the captive's life. He might have been more merciful still; but Honore Grandissime said some indignant things in the African's favor, and as much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as to punish the runaway, he would have repented his clemency, as he repented the momentary truce with Agricola, but for the tearful pleading of the senora and the hot, dry eyes of her maid. Because of these he overlooked the offence against his person and estate, and delivered Bras-Coupe to the law to suffer only the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by attempting to be a free man.
We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for Bras-Coupe. But what it cost her to make that intercession, knowing that his death would leave her free, and that if he lived she must be his wife, let us not attempt to say.
In the midst of the ancient town, in a part which is now crumbling away, stood the Calaboza, with its humid vaults and grated cells, its iron cages and its whips; and there, soon enough, they strapped Bras-Coupe face downward and laid on the lash. And yet not a sound came from the mutilated but unconquered African to annoy the ear of the sleeping city.
("And you suffered this thing to take place?" asked Joseph Frowenfeld of Honore Grandissime.
"My-de'-seh!" exclaimed the Creole, "they lied to me--said they would not harm him!")
He was brought at sunrise to the plantation. The air was sweet with the smell of the weed-grown fields. The long-horned oxen that drew him and the naked boy that drove the team stopped before his cabin.
"You cannot put that creature in there," said the thoughtful overseer. "He would suffocate under a roof--he has been too long out-of-doors for that. Put him on my cottage porch." There, at last, Palmyre burst into tears and sank down, while before her, on a soft bed of dry grass, rested the helpless form of the captive giant, a cloth thrown over his galled back, his ears shorn from his head, and the tendons behind his knees severed. His eyes were dry, but there was in them that unspeakable despair that fills the eye of the charger when, fallen in battle, he gazes with sidewise-bended neck on the ruin wrought upon him. His eye turned sometimes slowly to his wife. He need not demand her now--she was always by him.
There was much talk over him--much idle talk. He merely lay still under it with a fixed frown; but once some incautious tongue dropped the name of Agricola. The black man's eyes came so quickly round to Palmyre that she thought he would speak; but no; his words were all in his eyes. She answered their gleam with a fierce affirmative glance, whereupon he slowly bent his head and spat upon the floor.
There was yet one more trial of his wild nature. The mandate came from his master's sick-bed that he must lift the curse.
Bras-Coupe merely smiled. God keep thy enemy from such a smile!
The overseer, with a policy less Spanish than his master's, endeavored to use persuasion. But the fallen prince would not so much as turn one glance from his parted hamstrings. Palmyre was then besought to intercede. She made one poor attempt, but her husband was nearer doing her an unkindness than ever he had been before; he made a slow sign for silence--with his fist; and every mouth was stopped.
At midnight following, there came, on the breeze that blew from the mansion, a sound of running here and there, of wailing and sobbing--another Bridegroom was coming, and the Spaniard, with much such a lamp in hand as most of us shall be found with, neither burning brightly nor wholly gone out, went forth to meet Him.
"Bras-Coupe," said Palmyre, next evening, speaking low in his mangled ear, "the master is dead; he is just buried. As he was dying, Bras-Coupe, he asked that you would forgive him."
The maimed man looked steadfastly at his wife. He had not spoken since the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those large, clear eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have taken refuge as in a citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a moment, and then, like an expiring beacon, went out.
"Is your mistress well enough by this time to venture here?" whispered the overseer to Palmyre. "Let her come. Tell her not to fear, but to bring the babe--in her own arms, tell her--quickly!"
The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the bed of sweet grass and set the child within the hollow of the African's arm. Bras-Coupe turned his gaze upon it; it smiled, its mother's smile, and put its hand upon the runaway's face, and the first tears of Bras-Coupe's life, the dying testimony of his humanity, gushed from his eyes and rolled down his cheek upon the infant's hand. He laid his own tenderly upon the babe's forehead, then removing it, waved it abroad, inaudibly moved his lips, dropped his arm, and closed his eyes. The curse was lifted.
"_Le pauv' dgiab'_!" said the overseer, wiping his eyes and looking fieldward. "Palmyre, you must get the priest."
The priest came, in the identical gown in which he had appeared the night of the two weddings. To the good father's many tender questions Bras-Coupe turned a failing eye that gave no answers; until, at length:
"Do you know where you are going?" asked the holy man.
"Yes," answered his eyes, brightening.
"Where?"
He did not reply; he was lost in contemplation, and seemed looking far away.
So the question was repeated.
"Do you know where you are going?"
And again the answer of the eyes. He knew.
"Where?"
The overseer at the edge of the porch, the widow with her babe, and Palmyre and the priest bending over the dying bed, turned an eager ear to catch the answer.
"To--" the voice failed a moment; the departing hero essayed again; again it failed; he tried once more, lifted his hand, and with an ecstatic, upward smile, whispered, "To--Africa"--and was gone. _