_ CHAPTER LV. CAUGHT
The fig-tree, in Louisiana, sometimes sheds its leaves while it is yet summer. In the rear of the Grandissme mansion, about two hundred yards northwest of it and fifty northeast of the cottage in which Agricola had made his new abode, on the edge of the grove of which we have spoken, stood one of these trees, whose leaves were beginning to lie thickly upon the ground beneath it. An ancient and luxuriant hedge of Cherokee-rose started from this tree and stretched toward the northwest across the level country, until it merged into the green confusion of gardened homes in the vicinity of Bayou St. Jean, or, by night, into the common obscurity of a starlit perspective. When an unclouded moon shone upon it, it cast a shadow as black as velvet.
Under this fig-tree, some three hours later than that at which Honore bade Joseph good-night, a man was stooping down and covering something with the broad, fallen leaves.
"The moon will rise about three o'clock," thought he. "That, the hour of universal slumber, will be, by all odds, the time most likely to bring developments."
He was the same person who had spent the most of the day in a blacksmith's shop in St. Louis street, superintending a piece of smithing. Now that he seemed to have got the thing well hid, he turned to the base of the tree and tried the security of some attachment. Yes, it was firmly chained. He was not a robber; he was not an assassin; he was not an officer of police; and what is more notable, seeing he was a Louisianian, he was not a soldier nor even an ex-soldier; and this although, under his clothing, he was encased from head to foot in a complete suit of mail. Of steel? No. Of brass? No. It was all one piece--_a white skin_; and on his head he wore an invisible helmet--the name of Grandissime. As he straightened up and withdrew into the grove, you would have recognized at once--by his thick-set, powerful frame, clothed seemingly in black, but really, as you might guess, in blue cottonade, by his black beard and the general look of a seafarer--a frequent visitor at the Grandissime mansion, a country member of that great family, one whom we saw at the _fete de grandpere_.
Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime was a man of few words, no sentiments, short methods; materialistic, we might say; quietly ferocious; indifferent as to means, positive as to ends, quick of perception, sure in matters of saltpetre, a stranger at the custom-house, and altogether--_take him right_--very much of a gentleman. He had been, for a whole day, beset with the idea that the way to catch a voudou was--to catch him; and as he had caught numbers of them on both sides of the tropical and semi-tropical Atlantic, he decided to try his skill privately on the one who--his experience told him--was likely to visit Agricola's doorstep to-night. All things being now prepared, he sat down at the root of a tree in the grove, where the shadow was very dark, and seemed quite comfortable. He did not strike at the mosquitoes; they appeared to understand that he did not wish to trifle. Neither did his thoughts or feelings trouble him; he sat and sharpened a small penknife on his boot.
His mind--his occasional transient meditation--was the more comfortable because he was one of those few who had coolly and unsentimentally allowed Honore Grandissime to sell their lands. It continued to grow plainer every day that the grants with which theirs were classed--grants of old French or Spanish under-officials--were bad. Their sagacious cousin seemed to have struck the right standard, and while those titles which he still held on to remained unimpeached, those that he had parted with to purchasers--as, for instance, the grant held by this Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime--could be bought back now for half what he had got for it. Certainly, as to that, the Capitain might well have that quietude of mind which enabled him to find occupation in perfecting the edge of his penknife and trimming his nails in the dark.
By and by he put up the little tool and sat looking out upon the prospect. The time of greatest probability had not come, but the voudou might choose not to wait for that; and so he kept watch. There was a great stillness. The cocks had finished a round and were silent. No dog barked. A few tiny crickets made the quiet land seem the more deserted. Its beauties were not entirely overlooked--the innumerable host of stars above, the twinkle of myriad fireflies on the dark earth below. Between a quarter and a half-mile away, almost in a line with the Cherokee hedge, was a faint rise of ground, and on it a wide-spreading live-oak. There the keen, seaman's eye of the Capitain came to a stop, fixed upon a spot which he had not noticed before. He kept his eye on it, and waited for the stronger light of the moon.
Presently behind the grove at his back she rose; and almost the first beam that passed over the tops of the trees, and stretched across the plain, struck the object of his scrutiny. What was it? The ground, he knew; the tree, he knew; he knew there ought to be a white paling enclosure about the trunk of the tree: for there were buried--ah!--he came as near laughing at himself as ever he did in his life; the apothecary of the rue Royale had lately erected some marble headstones there, and--
"Oh! my God!"
While Capitain Jean-Baptiste had been trying to guess what the tombstones were, a woman had been coming toward him in the shadow of the hedge. She was not expecting to meet him; she did not know that he was there; she knew she had risks to run, but was ignorant of what they were; she did not know there was anything under the fig-tree which she so nearly and noiselessly approached. One moment her foot was lifted above the spot where the unknown object lay with wide-stretched jaws under the leaves, and the next, she uttered that cry of agony and consternation which interrupted the watcher's meditation. She was caught in a huge steel-trap.
Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime remained perfectly still. She fell, a snarling, struggling, groaning heap, to the ground, wild with pain and fright, and began the hopeless effort to draw the jaws of the trap apart with her fingers.
"_Ah! bon Dieu, bon Dieu!_ Quit a-_bi-i-i-i-tin' me_! Oh! Lawd 'a' mussy! Ow-ow-ow! lemme go! Dey go'n' to kyetch an' hang me! Oh! an' I hain' done nutt'n' 'gainst _no_body! Ah! _bon Dieu! ein pov' vie negresse_! Oh! Jemimy! I cyan' gid dis yeh t'ing loose--oh! m-m-m-m! An' dey'll tra to mek out't I voudou' Mich-Agricole! An' I did n' had nutt'n' do wid it! Oh Lawd, oh _Lawd_, you'll be mighty good ef you lemme loose! I'm a po' nigga! Oh! dey had n' ought to mek it so _pow_'ful!"
Hands, teeth, the free foot, the writhing body, every combination of available forces failed to spread the savage jaws, though she strove until hands and mouth were bleeding.
Suddenly she became silent; a thought of precaution came to her; she lifted from the earth a burden she had dropped there, struggled to a half-standing posture, and, with her foot still in the trap, was endeavoring to approach the end of the hedge near by, to thrust this burden under it, when she opened her throat in a speechless ecstasy of fright on feeling her arm grasped by her captor.
"O-o-o-h! Lawd! o-o-oh! Lawd!" she cried, in a frantic, husky whisper, going down upon her knees, "_Oh, Miche! pou' l'amou' du bon Dieu! Pou' l'amou du bon Dieu ayez pitie d'ein pov' negresse! Pov' negresse, Miche_, w'at nevva done nutt'n' to nobody on'y jis sell _calas_! I iss comin' 'long an' step inteh dis-yeh bah-trap by acci_dent_! Ah! _Miche, Miche_, ple-e-ease be good! _Ah! mon Dieu_!--an' de Lawd'll reward you--'deed 'E will, _Miche_!"
"_Qui ci ca?_" asked the Capitain, sternly, stooping and grasping her burden, which she had been trying to conceal under herself.
"Oh, Miche, don' trouble dat! Please jes tek dis yeh trap offen me--da's all! Oh, don't, mawstah, ple-e-ease don' spill all my wash'n' t'ings! 'Tain't nutt'n' but my old dress roll' up into a ball. Oh, please--now, you see? nutt'n' but a po' nigga's dr--_oh! fo' de love o' God, Miche Jean-Baptiste, don' open dat ah box! Y'en a rien du tout la-dans, Miche Jean-Baptiste; du tout, du tout_! Oh, my God! _Miche_, on'y jis teck dis-yeh t'ing off'n my laig, ef yo' _please_, it's bit'n' me lak a _dawg_!--if you _please, Miche_! Oh! you git kill' if you open dat ah box, Mawse Jean-Baptiste! _Mo' parole d'honneur le plus sacre_--I'll kiss de cross! Oh, _sweet Miche Jean, laisse moi aller_! Nutt'n' but some dutty close _la-dans_." She repeated this again and again, even after Capitain Jean-Baptiste had disengaged a small black coffin from the old dress in which it was wrapped. "_Rien du tout, Miche_; nutt'n' but some wash'n' fo' one o' de boys."
He removed the lid and saw within, resting on the cushioned bottom, the image, in myrtle-wax, moulded and painted with some rude skill, of a negro's bloody arm cut off near the shoulder--a _bras coupe_--with a dirk grasped in its hand.
The old woman lifted her eyes to heaven; her teeth chattered; she gasped twice before she could recover utterance. "_Oh, Miche_ Jean-Baptiste, I di' n' mek dat ah! _Mo' te pas fe ca_! I swea' befo' God! Oh, no, no, no! 'Tain' nutt'n' nohow but a lill play-toy, _Miche_. Oh, sweet _Miche Jean_, you not gwan to kill me? I di' n' mek it! It was--ef you lemme go, I tell you who mek it! Sho's I live I tell you, _Miche Jean_--ef you lemme go! Sho's God's good to me--ef you lemme go! Oh, God A'mighty, _Miche Jean_, sho's God's good to me."
She was becoming incoherent.
Then Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime for the first time spoke at length:
"Do you see this?" he spoke the French of the Atchafalaya. He put his long flintlock pistol close to her face. "I shall take the trap off; you will walk three feet in front of me; if you make it four I blow your brains out; we shall go to Agricole. But right here, just now, before I count ten, you will tell me who sent you here; at the word ten, if I reach it, I pull the trigger. One--two--three--"
"Oh, _Miche_, she gwan to gib me to de devil wid _houdou_ ef I tell you--Oh, good _Lawdy_!"
But he did not pause.
"Four--five--six--seven--eight--"
"Palmyre!" gasped the negress, and grovelled on the ground.
The trap was loosened from her bleeding leg, the burden placed in her arms, and they disappeared in the direction of the mansion.
* * * * *
A black shape, a boy, the lad who had carried the basil to Frowenfeld, rose up from where he had all this time lain, close against the hedge, and glided off down its black shadow to warn the philosophe.
When Clemence was searched, there was found on her person an old table-knife with its end ground to a point. _