Berthe’s face was in shadow and we were both looking out to sea, but a change in the volume of her voice told me that she had turned her head in my direction, when she said, ‘To show you how quickly the events of the last few minutes had happened, when I picked myself up I found that I was still holding in my hand the silver spoon that I had used for opening Josephine’s letter.’ Her voice resumed its normal pitch. ‘Then our breakneck descent continued. To the right of the path the forest sloped to a narrow creek that was thickly choked by mangroves and then, curling round the foot of the hill, it led to a small lagoon separated by a tongue of land from the Mouillage. The Serindan boathouse, the starting point for so many happy bathing parties in the past, was built out here on piles among the arching mangrove trunks. They broke open the lock with their cutlasses. We all climbed into the little skiff, the two men put out their lamps and shoved out into the sea with their oars.
‘In the darkness of the bay, the ship’s light was still burning. It shed a still red line of light across the windless water. It was no longer snowing, and apart from the splash of the oar-blades and the creaking of the rowlocks, all was silent. As we drew level with the cape that separated the little lagoon from Plessis and the Mouillage, the glow of carnival lamps began to reappear through the palm tree stems along the headland and the sounds of rejoicing once more sounded in our ears. We passed the rock where a conclave of pelicans was always huddled, and our passing scattered them unwieldily into the dark.’
Berthe’s narrative was punctuated every few minutes or so by the necessity of lighting a new cigarette to replace the one which had just come to an end: an unbroken life-line of tobacco in which these knots measured off her story in regular but arbitrary periods. Before taking up the thread of her story after the next of these caesurae, she digressed for a while in a more speculative tone of voice. ‘I don’t think any of us had a clear idea of what we would say and do if we succeeded in overtaking the runaways. Everything had happened so quickly and we had set off at such speed that there had been no time for a definite plan. I felt sure, however, that it would not have been difficult to persuade Josephine of the madness of continuing her flight. Her letter, I thought, showed the state of turmoil in her mind. We could always tax Sciocca with the fact that he was running away from a duel, and, still more pertinently, that he already had a wife in France – a fact which, still judging by Josephine’s letter, he had not disclosed to her. As a last resort, I suppose there remained force, though this might not be easy on board a ship which had plainly been specially chartered, and presumably from another island, by Sciocca for the elopement. Perhaps we could have appealed to the crew, or, in the last event, have refused to disembark once we got on board. The revelation that Sciocca was already married had come as no surprise. It was, in fact, if properly handled, a distinct advantage on our side, as, should we catch them up, the confrontation of Sciocca with the fact might – though I didn’t know how many shocks Josephine’s infatuation could survive – have been the one thing that would decide Josephine to return with us to Plessis. If we should fail to overtake them, Sciocca’s marriage would still, in the long run, be an advantage, as any form of marriage with Josephine would be invalid – a thing that would reinforce the fact that she was still a minor. Also, with the delays involved in a divorce, it would give Josephine a longer breathing space before there was any question of her contracting a civil marriage. But, as I said, I felt convinced that none of all this would be necessary and that, the moment we appeared, Josephine would fly into our arms.
‘The more I thought of it, the more certain I became that Sciocca had virtually cast a spell over Josephine. It was obvious that the elopement had been planned some time ago, and the reason for Josephine’s insistence on the change of parts in the play became apparent all at once. Knowing her, I felt sure that she had not broken her promise to me that she would not see Sciocca. But they had obviously been in contact by letter – Gentilien thought that the new servant, Hiram Abif, had been the go-between – in order to arrange the preparations for flight; and, indeed, Sciocca could not have chosen a night more likely to succeed. I suddenly understood something of her curious state the last few weeks. The poor darling wretch had been wandering about with her enormous and guilty secret in a sort of trance, a condition from which she only emerged to break into semi-hysterical tears, or behaviour that was very close to real folly. I am afraid I have made her appear a terrible cry-baby. Very often she had seemed to be on the point of telling me something, and each time something had stopped her, and when we were in the same room, whenever I looked up, I had found her eyes gazing at me with a sort of pathetic questioning fixity. And now, here she was, in the thick of a tenth-rate melodrama with unlimited possibilities of unhappiness and squalor – a mess that might well mean the destruction of her whole life just as it was about to begin. Apart from any other defects that Sciocca may have possessed, the fact that he could consciously involve so young and beautiful and vulnerable a creature in such a programme of inevitable sordidness, was an apt measure of his vanity and his lack of sensibility. I will spare you the feelings of desperate misery that I felt, and of powerless anger at the waste and destruction ahead, should the expedition we were embarked on come to nothing.’
Such were the thoughts that revolved in the mind of Berthe as she sat at the tiller of the skiff. They were probably not very different in the main from the cogitations at work in the two heads, now bent in silence over the oars, of Sosthène and Gentilien. The old fort on the headland, and then the revolving glow of the lighthouse at the end of the mole, were soon behind them; and as they advanced at a slant across the bay towards the far-away point where the ship’s light still beckoned them, the Mouillage with its shoal of canoes and fishing boats and the long lantern-hung tangle of the masts of the sloops and the Leeward Island schooners, lengthened with each stroke of the oars. The long waterfront expanded. The distances widened between the statues posturing along the quay and spaced out the white balloons of the gasoliers. The little skiff reached the causeway, which was marked by two buoys at the ends of the coral reefs enclosing the harbour’s entrance, exactly opposite the centre of the town; and the procession of the glowing water-front pillars, linked by the spans of arches diminishing along an oblique vista in the lessening trajectories of a bouncing ball, slowly readjusted itself into symmetry. Above this arcade the steep and shining amphitheatre of Plessis climbed in an acute-angled triangle of houses that was veined and split up by the streets – all of them choked, as though brilliant insects thronged them, by the heaving and torch-bearing revellers. Every roof and ledge and lintel was deep in the saltpetre-snow, and, in the lamplight, everything flashed white and gold. Plessis had been turned by magic into a chryselephantine town. Antlers and horns and bats’ wings and feathered headdresses leapt and turned in the ascending highways, showing black for a moment in mid-air and then subsiding into the rocking and sparkling anonymity of the crowd. Scores of drums rattled and the air trembled with the percussion of bamboo, while the long wooden horns moaned as though the hosts of Joshua were loosening the parapets of Jericho. The metamorphosis of night and snow and the many flames of carnival had turned the small Antillean town into a high and fabulous city poetically sailing into the darkness to outleap the ghosts of Troy and Ecbatana and balance on its uttermost pinnacle the overflowing and lamplit trees, the hanging gardens and the statued terraces of the Count de Serindan. The lilt of strings floated down through the hot and swooning air and carried the shadows of the dancers and the bulbous turbans of the servants floating and spinning and fading and reforming past the great golden oblongs of the ballroom windows.
As the little boat drew further off into the night, an exact reflection of the magical and triangular city hung in the still water like a bright honeycomb. Joining along the line of the waterfront, the two towns grew together in a golden lozenge. The structure of the submarine city swayed for a few moments in the ripples left by the oars and then, as the soft d
islocation subsided, cohered once more in silent and shining congruency.
But, away from the strangely resplendent town, the night ahead was black and forbidding. The sea beyond the coral bar was as motionless as the water inside the broken zone of lagoons that girdled the island, and the light of the ship, in spite of the long silent labour of the two oarsmen, remained as far away as ever. Plessis and its reflection shrank into a distant rhomboid. Looking back over her shoulder, Berthe saw that the flames of the Salpetrière, so angry and menacing a short time ago, had sunk once more below the crater’s edge. The crater itself was only to be singled out by the faint pink undersides of the clouds of smoke that everlastingly streamed upwards into the dark. Outside the town, all on the island was black, except for the lantern of some belated, or early, traveller, climbing the steep track that led through the forest above Plessis and over the watershed to windwardside.
After an hour’s silent rowing the light ahead began slowly to grow a little larger and Berthe, peering forward over the oarsmen’s shoulders, thought she discerned a dark shape on the water between the skiff and its goal. Every so often it blotted out the ship’s lantern. At first she thought that it might be an illusion, a result of her long scrutiny into the darkness ahead. But no, it appeared again, and the others, twisting their heads round, saw it as well. Resting on their oars a moment they could hear a faint and rhythmic splashing. Convinced that it was the boat carrying Josephine to the waiting vessel, they redoubled their efforts. After a while, Berthe lost track of it, but at last the ship began to appear with more distinctness. This belied their first fears that she was actually under way and creeping forward with whatever stray capful of wind might be loose over the motionless water. The port lantern hanging in the shrouds revealed that she was a schooner of considerable size. Her bowsprit, supported by a golden mermaid, pointed south. There was no sign of the smaller boat whose presence they had faintly perceived, and presumably the two runaways were by now on board. But the lack of wind had removed all hazard from the chase, and halting a minute, Sosthène and Berthe and Gentilien discussed what tactics they should follow.
If they were denied permission to board they would shout to Josephine and try to persuade her to return. If this should fail, or if Josephine were not allowed to talk to them, which could hardly be possible, they would row astern, learn the name of the schooner and severely harangue the captain and the crew; inform them of the guilty transaction to which – no doubt in all innocence!– they were making themselves accomplices; roundly summon them to surrender Josephine, after which, if they chose, they could sail away to the devil with the precious Sciocca. Failing this (they would shout) the pursuers could return to Plessis and follow them the moment the wind rose in the Count’s cutter, and chase them wherever they went. If the calm lasted until they got to the shore they would return at once with a posse of police and if necessary, with the entire population of Plessis; seize Josephine from their midst, put every man jack aboard under arrest and impound the schooner—that is, if they could hold the population back from setting her on fire outright. In all these deliberations it was Sosthène who took the initiative and when they stooped over their oars again, Berthe could see, by the distant glow of Plessis, that his face had kindled with anticipation. When, almost alongside, he leant forward and touched her on the knee with the words ‘on y va!’, she saw that his teeth were bared in a smile.
But, instead of hostility, they were hailed by friendly greetings from a row of dark figures leaning over the side. The rope ladder was down, and, as it had been pre-concerted, Sosthène, followed by Gentilien and then by Berthe, sped up the wooden steps. A newly-lighted lantern, hung from the mast to supplement the port and starboard lights, revealed a schooner as white with saltpetre snow as though she were made of icing sugar and rigged with a web of rock-crystal. Gripping the shrouds – the sudden pressure shaking out clouds of snow from the ropes – they hoisted themselves over the bulwarks and jumped down to the schooner’s deck.
‘These three figures,’ Berthe said, ‘a French officer of oddly juvenile appearance with his uniform in rags, an elderly negro with powdered hair dressed in black velvet and gold lace and silver buckles like a Haitian king, and, lastly, a fair-haired young woman in an elaborate green taffeta ball dress and bare feet, suddenly materialising out of the night and alighting one after the other on the planks – the first two grasping cutlasses like a boarding party at the battle of Lepanto – struck wonder and bewilderment that were obviously unfeigned into the hearts of the little community that had formed a semicircle in the lantern light.
‘They were all negroes, and at their centre, with steel-rimmed spectacles shining on his long bony face, stood one of the tallest men I have ever seen. Behind him was standing a smaller man with a stone jar under his arm and three glasses clenched between the fingers of his outstretched hand in a gesture of welcome. There was a long silence. The tall figure in spectacles was the first to recover. He raised a broad-brimmed hat and shook hands with us in turn, bidding us gravely welcome in English to the schooner Edith Fan of Carriacou in the Grenadines[10], of which he, Roderick Graham, was Captain.
‘It took less than two minutes’ talk and a freely granted permission to look all over the ship to prove that nobody on board had the faintest idea of the matter in hand. The Edith Fan was on her way back from Basseterre in Saint Kitts, where she had taken a cargo of the ponies that Captain Graham’s brother, a Seventh Day Adventist like himself, bred in Carriacou. They had taken on a cargo of grain in Antigua on the return trip and had run into a dead calm as they passed Saint-Jacques a few hours earlier; and, when we came on board, they were waiting for the wind that often blows up an hour or two before daybreak. And what about the boat we had seen a quarter of an hour before? It turned out to have been a dug-out canoe full of Caribs, heading for Rosalie in Dominica; probably smugglers. They had passed under the schooner’s bowsprit and there had been no white people on board. All the Captain said was quite plainly the truth. We believed him at once and our hearts sank.
‘What, then, had happened to Josephine? She could not possibly hide in the island, so Sciocca must have planned some other way out. I remembered all of a sudden the light I had seen moving through the forest heading for the windwardside. Of course! I caught hold of Sosthène and Gentilien and leading them to the bulwarks, pointed to the black mountainside where the same light, considerably higher now, but still with a long climb to the watershed ahead of it, faintly glimmered – a far remoter will o’ the wisp, it immediately struck me, even than the schooner’s lantern had first seemed through the fan-topped window in Plessis.
‘The high spirits that I thought I had divined in Sosthène just before we boarded the schooner, which had, rather naturally, subsided for a moment at the total failure of our expedition, suddenly, and, to me inexplicably at first, revived at this sudden sharp twist in our affairs. The plan of elopement became as plain as daylight as Sosthène explained it, and Gentilien and I nodded in agreement as his eager voice reconstructed the flight. The Governor had a summer holiday-house on windwardside at Anse Caraïbe, which is exactly where the watershed path led. It was here that the Government House yacht, the Felix Faure, lay permanently at anchor in the only natural harbour on the Atlantic coast of Saint-Jacques. He must have arranged for horses to be waiting at some distance outside the town at three o’clock, where he had appointed a rendezvous. Just over the watershed at the Etang du Cacique – a hamlet on the edge of a bottomless tarn below the Chaudières – a change of horses would be waiting, or a pony-trap a league and a half further on, where the mountain path rejoined the coast road that looped all the way – too long to cover during the hours of night-time – round the south of the island. And from there it was only one and a half hours to where they could weigh anchor and be off. And then where? Dominica was too near – Cousin Agénor was a friend of the English Governor, and they would be equally easy to trace in Guadeloupe, the Saints, or Marie Galante, or Martinique. No, th
ey would either head further north through the Faives islets to Antigua, Monserrat, Nevis or St Kitts, and thence through the Greater Antilles to Mexico or the United States; or south to St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada, or Trinidad, to disappear into Venezuela and the South American Republics. In fact, once out of the Leeward or the Windward Islands, they were lost.
‘ “We must stop them before they leave Jacobean waters,” Sosthène urged.
‘ “And we can. With any luck I’ll reach Anse Caraïbe by the Piton d’Esnambuc path before the wind rises and, if not, I will chase them in one of the fishing-boats there. Gentilien, you must come ashore with me and take a horse north to Cap d’Ivry and get one of the sloops to put to sea to watch the Northern route. Even if Messieurs Gontran and François are as drunk as Mademoiselle Berthe says, we’ll get one of them to write you a letter to the bailiff – though I don’t think you would need one; they all know you.” He turned to me and said, “And the Southern route, Berthe, is yours.” Before I could speak he had led us both over to the coil of rope where Captain Graham was sitting. Avoiding unnecessary details, he told him what was afoot and said that, though none of us had a centime with us, if he would trust us, his help would be well rewarded. The help we needed was this: would he, when the wind rose, sail the Edith Fan down to Cap d’Estaing, the southernmost point on the island, with me, and intercept the Felix Faure or any craft heading down the east coast for the Windwards?
The Violins of Saint-Jacques Page 9