Georges

by Alexandre Dumas

  Darkness fell rapidly, as heavy black clouds gathered in the sky. From time to time, violent gusts of wind shook the building and then passed, leaving an ominous, deep silence. Sara gazed out the pavilion window into the courtyard, where the mango trees trembled as if in terror of the awful battle about to take place among wind, earth, and sky, and the Chinese lilacs—trees indigenous to the colonies, which are placed on tombs instead of the cypresses we employ—drooped mournfully toward the ground. The girl felt a profound sense of terror and clasped her hands together, murmuring, “Please, Lord, protect him!”

  “Sara?” It was M. de Malmédie, calling for her.

  She opened the door.

  “There you are, my child,” M. de Malmédie said. “Come into the house; you’re not safe out here in the pavilion.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” Sara said. She stepped outside and closed and locked the pavilion door, slipping the key into her pocket. She followed M. de Malmédie into the house, but instead of joining him and Henri in the drawing room she went straight to her chamber. When her uncle came looking for her a moment later, he found her on her knees before the small crucifix that hung at the foot of her bed.

  “Sara,” he said, “whatever are you doing here, instead of coming to take tea with Henri and me?”

  “I was praying, Uncle,” said the girl. “For—for all the travelers.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, my dear,” M. de Malmédie said genially. “I doubt there’s any fool crazy enough to be on the road tonight.”

  “I pray you’re right, Uncle,” said Sara—but she did not rise from the crucifix.

  There could no longer be any doubt that a hurricane, that terror of the colonies, was approaching île de France; Jacques’s sailor’s intuition had been spot-on. Night had fallen with frightening speed, but flashes of lightning illuminated the sky so brilliantly and so often that the island was flooded with an eerie bluish light, which gave everything the cadaverous color of the bygone worlds Byron had visited on Cain, under the direction of Satan himself. Thunder crashed and growled in accompaniment to the incessant lightning, rolling down the hillsides to rumble, as loudly as if the mountains were being reborn, through Port Louis and out to be lost in the depths of the horizon. Powerful gusts of wind rattled windows and walls, bending even the strongest trees nearly double as easily as if they were baguettes, dying away only to begin again even stronger than before.

  It was at the center of the island, especially in Moka and on the Williams Plains, that the storm had freest rein and raged most spectacularly. This only served to increase Pierre Munier’s alarm when first Jacques, then Georges insisted on leaving the shelter of home; but of course he could do nothing, and backed down—as he always did—when faced with a will stronger than his own. Georges, however, felt no fear. Where his father turned pale at each clap of thunder, he drew himself up. Where Pierre started at each flash of lightning, his son only smiled. Georges had spent his adult life fighting other men; the hour had come for him to fight God himself.

  It was time to depart. With the unshakable resolve that marked his character—something he had not learned in school, but instilled in himself—Georges moved toward Pierre Munier. Clasping his father’s trembling hand without seeming to understand why the old man quivered as he did, he strode to the front door with an expression as calm and untroubled as if he were simply going out on an ordinary day. Ali, with the passive obedience typical of Orientals, was waiting at the door with Antrim. The horse seemed to hear the whispering of the simoom wind or the roaring of the khamsin as if he were back in the desert. He whinnied nervously, but Georges’s voice calmed him, and his wide eyes and flaring nostrils relaxed a bit. Georges slapped his flank lightly, and with an impossibly graceful motion the young man leapt unaided into the saddle. He whispered a few words in Arabic to his steed—Ali let go of the bridle—and they were off like a shot. Georges had not turned back to look at Pierre Munier, who stood in the doorway and watched his son until he disappeared at the end of the avenue leading to the Port Louis road.

  Georges rode nobly and fearlessly, seeming to move as quickly as the storm itself. He was Faust, riding his hellish steed to the Brocken. Disorder reigned all around him; tempest-ravaged tree boughs could be heard cracking and crashing, and stalks of sugarcane and manioc, ripped violently from the earth, whirled through the air. Birds, caught slumbering and lifted into the sky by forces they could not control, swooped around Georges’s head, shrieking sharply. Here and there a deer bolted across the path like an arrow launched from a hunter’s bow. Despite the chaos, the young man was happy. His heart swelled with pride; he alone was calm in the midst of the confusion, and he pushed onward relentlessly through the destruction swirling around him. Nothing could make him swerve from his path. Nothing possessed that much power.

  Still, the journey was slow and difficult. It took Georges nearly an hour to reach the foot of Mont Signaux; the way was choked with broken tree trunks, streams swollen to muddy torrents, and huge boulders uprooted from the ground and flung down the hillsides. The sea foamed and thrashed, enormous green waves bursting against the shore with a deafening roar, as if God himself could no longer restrain the ocean’s fury. Georges urged his steed onward, crossing the pont Bourgeois and turning right on the rue de la Côte-d’Or. He rode along the ramparts and down the rue de la Rampe, through the municipal gardens and deserted, debris-filled city streets until, finally, he reached the rue du Gouvernement. Turning into the narrow passageway there, he tied up his horse and vaulted easily over the gate separating the passage from the lane overlooking the Malmédie house. It was a simple matter to slide down the tiled roofs of the little houses built there into the shipyard, onto which opened the windows of Sara’s pavilion.

  During all this time Sara had kept to her chamber, listening to the howling of the wind and praying ceaselessly. She hoped the storm might have dissuaded Georges from coming to her, but she already knew his firm and determined character too well to believe it. Death alone, she was sure, would prevent her lover from keeping his rendezvous with her. In her mind’s eye she pictured him, crushed and bleeding beneath a fallen tree or boulder or drowned in some raging river, and at the sensation of horror that filled her she knew it was useless to resist her love for him. However much she might struggle, Georges already possessed her heart completely.

  As the hour of their meeting drew near, Sara’s agitation increased. She could not tear her eyes from the clock; every swing of the pendulum, she thought, brought Georges closer to her. Nine o’clock…nine-thirty…quarter to ten…and with every moment that passed, the storm outside grew worse. The house trembled and shook as if it were being torn from its foundations. The wind screamed in the filao branches, and mournful cries could be heard from the direction of the Negroes’ huts, which were none too solidly built and crumpled like houses of playing cards in the gale. From time to time the melancholy sound of a merchant ship’s distress call echoed distantly from the churning sea, signaling uselessly for help no human hand could provide.

  Then, above all these noises of devastation and chaos, Sara heard the faint whinny of a horse.

  She stood, her mind made up. This man had come to her despite impossible dangers, when the island’s bravest were trembling in their houses. He had come through uprooted forest, rushing rivers, crumbling precipices—and all that just to say to her I love you, Sara. Do you love me? Here was a man truly worthy of her love. He had saved her life. She was his, just as he was hers. It was no longer a decision she made of her own free will; it was the hand of God guiding her. She could not possibly resist. It was destiny, determined long ago. She no longer controlled her own fate; she simply submitted to it.

  Leaving her room, Sara crept down the hall and then the little outside staircase that quivered beneath her feet. Moving slowly, stumbling over bits of brick and wood, clinging to the side of the pavilion to keep from being caught by the wind, she reached the door. As she placed the key in the lock, a vivid flash of lightning
illuminated the courtyard, showing her the uprooted mango trees and the torn and scattered flowers. For a shuddering moment everything seemed uncertain; she thought she might have waited in vain; Georges would not come—not because he was afraid, but because he was dead. All else vanished in the wake of this terrible idea. Turning the key in its lock, she entered the pavilion.

  “I thank you, Sara,” Georges’s voice murmured, and she trembled all over. “Oh, I was not wrong—you do love me!”

  His hand grasped hers in the dark; his heart beat against her own; their breaths mingled together. A strange sensation swept over her, overwhelming and devouring, and she sank like a flower bent on its stem, breathless, dizzy, and exhausted from the two hours she had just endured, against his strong shoulder. “Georges,” she murmured with the last of her strength. “Oh, Georges, have pity on me…”

  He understood what she was asking of him: It was the appeal of fragility to strength, of a young girl to her lover. He knew, in every fiber of his being, that Sara was his. He would love this virginal maiden as his wife. He shivered with love, desire, happiness; moving so that they were in the faint light of the window, he bent his face closer to hers. “You are mine, Sara, aren’t you? Mine, for life?”

  “Oh, yes, Georges, yes! For life,” she whispered.

  “And nothing but death shall part us?”

  “No, Georges, nothing but death.”

  “Do you swear it, Sara?”

  “Yes—on the memory of my mother, dearest Georges.”

  “Well then,” murmured the young man, quivering with joy and pride. “From this moment on, Sara, you are my wife, and God have mercy on anyone who tries to take you away from me!”

  He pressed his lips to hers. Then, fearful of losing what remained of his self-control in the face of so much love, so much beauty, he wrenched himself away. Moving swiftly to the open window, he climbed through it and was gone.

  A peal of thunder crashed violently, and Sara fell to her knees. Just then, the pavilion’s door was flung open, revealing M. de Malmédie and Henri.

  XVI

  THE PROPOSAL

  The hurricane ended during the night, and next morning the residents of île de France ventured outside to assess the aftermath.

  Many of the ships in the harbor had sustained considerable damage. Some had been smashed against others by the wind; nearly all of them had lost their masts, which now lay like fallen logs on the surface of the water. Two or three, dragging their anchors, had been driven ashore on île des Tonneliers, and one—a merchant vessel—had foundered and gone down with all hands lost.

  The devastation on the island was just as brutal. Only a few houses had emerged from the storm unscathed. Roofs of slate, tile, shingles, copper, and tin had been ripped off and carried away—only the arga-masses, roofs built in the terraced style of India, had been able to resist the winds and remain intact. The streets were filled with debris; some buildings remained upright only because they had been braced with poles. On the parade grounds at champ de Mars, the stands erected for the forthcoming races had been completely leveled. Two enormous cannons mounted near the Grande-Rivière had spun 180 degrees in the gale.

  Farther inland, the damage was extensive as well. It was fortunate that most of the harvest had already been gathered and brought indoors; what remained had been entirely blown away. In several areas whole groves of trees had been flattened like ripe wheat cut by an immense sickle. No freestanding tree had been able to resist the hurricane’s power. Even the tamarind trees, strong and flexible—and, until now, regarded as indestructible—had been ravaged and broken by the fury of the storm.

  The Malmédie house, one of the tallest on the island, had been severely damaged. There had been a moment the night before when the walls rattled so violently that M. de Malmédie and his son had decided to seek refuge in the pavilion, which, one story high, built of stone, and sheltered from the wind by the terrace, seemed the safest possible place. Henri had gone to Sara’s chamber and found it empty; he assumed that she, terrified by the storm, had fled to the pavilion already. He and his father had gone down together and, indeed, they found that the girl had preceded them—but naturally they questioned neither her presence nor the terror she displayed at their arrival. Never, even for a moment, did M. de Malmédie or Henri suspect the real reason for Sara’s actions.

  The storm had finally abated, as I have said, around daybreak. No one in Port Louis had slept that night; they dared not sleep now. Every man was occupied in taking stock of his possessions to determine how much he had lost. The new governor was out in the streets at a very early hour; he ordered the garrison’s troops to provide assistance wherever it was needed, and by that evening some of the disorder had already been put to rights.

  If the citizens of Port Louis seemed especially anxious to erase all traces of the hurricane and return the town to its former appearance as quickly as possible, it was because they had a very special motive for wanting to do so. The festival of Yamsé, one of the most important annual events on the island, was rapidly drawing near. This festival, which is unknown in Europe, will play an important role in our story—so I must, I think, explain a bit about it.

  As everyone knows, the great religion of Islam is divided into two sects, so different from each other as to be enemies: the Sunnis and the Shiites. The former group, which includes Arabians and Turks, recognizes Abu Bekr, Omar, and Osman as the legitimate successors of the Prophet Muhammad. The latter group, made up of the Persians and the Indian Muslims, regards these three caliphs as usurpers and claims that only Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, was his true heir. During the many long wars fought between the Sunnis and the Shiites, Ali’s son Hussein and sixty of his relatives were massacred by Omar’s troops near the city of Kerbela, fighting bravely but vainly for their lives. It is the anniversary of this dreadful event that the Indian Muslims mark each year with a solemn festival they call Yamsé—a corruption of the cries of “Ai, Hussein!” chanted by the Persians. The festival is more than a religious celebration; it has come to include many native Indian customs and ceremonies born of other faiths, now long dead.

  It was on the Monday following the storm, the day of the full moon, that the Lascars—representing the Shiite sect on île de France—had planned to bring the strange spectacle of the Yamsé festival to life once again. This year, the festival had been anticipated with even more curiosity and eagerness than it normally was. The Lascars, you see, are divided into two groups—those of the sea, and those of the land. The Lascars of the sea wear green robes, and the Lascars of the land wear white. Usually, each group celebrates the festival in its own way, with each seeking to outdo the other in pomp and show. Very often, this rivalry causes dispute. The Lascars of the sea, poorer but more courageous than the Lascars of the land, frequently use sticks and even sword blows to vent their anger and resentment—and on these occasions the police are obliged to intervene, in order to prevent an outbreak of mortal combat. This year, however, thanks to the efforts of some unknown mediator and no doubt to religious zeal, the two groups had agreed to put aside their animosity and unite for a single, concerted Yamsé celebration. The colony was abuzz with rumors that this year’s festival would be both more peaceable and more lavish than it had been in a long time.

  In a place as isolated as île de France, such an event as the Yamsé festival is awaited with impatience, even by those who have seen it every year of their lives. Even three months before the festival, it is a universal topic of conversation. Of particular interest is the gouhn, the central ornament of the celebration. Now that I have described the festival for you, I will describe the gouhn. It is a type of pagoda, three stories tall and built of bamboo, with each story becoming smaller the higher it is off the ground. The entire structure is covered in brilliantly colored paper, and each story is constructed separately and then bound to the others with strong ropes. The Lascars often spend months scouring the colony for its most skilled workmen: Indians, Chinese, free bl
acks, slaves—all may be called upon, though of course the slaves’ wages are paid not to them but to their masters.

  So it was with a feeling of universal happiness that the dejected inhabitants of storm-battered Port Louis learned that the hut containing the completed gouhn, sheltered by the bulk of Mont Pouce, had weathered the hurricane entirely damage-free. The Yamsé celebration would take place after all, in undiminished glory. Furthermore, the governor—both to mark his arrival and as a sign of goodwill—had arranged for horse racing to be added to the festivities. He announced that he would bestow the prizes himself, on the gentlemanly condition that horses must be ridden only by the men who owned them, according to English custom.

  With the prospect of so much pleasure before them, the men and women of île de France banded together to clean away every trace of storm damage in short order. Scarcely a day had passed before the terror of the hurricane was replaced with the excitement of preparations for the Yamsé festival. Only Sara de Malmédie, absorbed in her own secret thoughts, appeared to have no interest in the event—which had always been a source of great anticipation for her in the past. It was customary for the island’s entire aristocracy to attend both the Yamsé festival and the races that accompanied it, seated either in stands erected expressly for them or in their own elegant carriages; for the pretty Creole girls, it was a perfect opportunity to display themselves in all their finery. Naturally Sara’s friends and family were shocked when the girl, who usually loved nothing more than to immerse herself in the social whirl, and for whom the announcement of a ball or any sort of spectacle was normally a cause for joyful excitement, seemed all but oblivious to the activity bustling around her. Even dear Henriette, who had raised Sara and could usually read her as clearly as if she were made of crystal, could not penetrate the mystery.