VII.
… MY friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the
region of the Vosges, with the muscles and energies of a
mountaineer, and cheeks pink as a French country-girl's;—he had
never seemed to me physically adapted for acclimation; and I
feared much for him on hearing of his first serious illness.
Then the news of his convalescence came to me as a grateful
surprise. But I did not feel reassured by his appearance the
first evening I called at the little house to which he had been
removed, on the brow of a green height overlooking the town. I
found him seated in a berceuse on the veranda. How wan he was,
and how spectral his smile of welcome,—as he held out to me a
hand that seemed all of bone!
… We chatted there a while. It had been one of those tropic
days whose charm interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler
life of sensation, and becomes a luminous part of it forever,—
steeping all after-dreams of ideal peace in supernal glory of
color,—transfiguring all fancies of the pure joy of being.
Azure to the sea-line the sky had remained since morning; and the
trade-wind, warm as a caress, never brought even one gauzy cloud
to veil the naked beauty of the peaks.
And the sun was yellowing,—as only over the tropics he yellows
to his death. Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from
the west;—mornes facing the light began to take wondrous glowing
color,—a tone of green so fiery that it looked as though all the
rich sap of their woods were phosphorescing. Shadows blued;—far
peaks took tinting that scarcely seemed of earth,—iridescent
violets and purples interchanging
through vapor of gold. … Such
the colors of the
carangue, when the beautiful tropic fish is
turned in the light, and its gem-greens shift to rich azure and
prism-purple.
Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from
the veranda of the little cottage,—saw the peaked land slowly
steep itself in the aureate glow,—the changing color of the
verdured mornes, and of the sweep of circling sea. Tiny birds,
bosomed with fire, were shooting by in long curves, like embers
flung by invisible hands. From far below, the murmur of the city
rose to us,—a stormy hum. So motionless we remained that the
green and gray lizards were putting out their heads from behind
the columns of the veranda to stare at us,—as if wondering
whether we were really alive. I turned my head suddenly to look
at two queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid themselves
again. Papillon-lanmó,—Death's butterflies,—these were called in
the speech of the people: their broad wings were black like
blackest velvet;—as they fluttered against the yellow light,
they looked like silhouettes of butterflies. Always through my
memory of that wondrous evening,—when I little thought I was
seeing my friend's face for the last time,—there slowly passes
the black palpitation of those wings. …
… I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which
I thought might have a cheerful interest for him; and more than
once I had been happy to see him smile. … But our converse
waned. The ever-magnifying splendor before us had been
mesmerizing our senses,—slowly overpowering our wills with the
amazement of its beauty. Then, as the sun's disk—enormous,—
blinding gold—touched the lilac flood, and the stupendous
orange glow flamed up to the very zenith, we found ourselyes awed
at last into silence.
The orange in the west deepened into vermilion.
Softly and very
swiftly night rose like an indigo exhalation from the land,—filling
the valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only
the points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson glow. Forests and
fields began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents, always deepening,
—made up of the instrumentation and the voices of numberless little
beings: clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping
silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the
cabritt-bois, and
the chirruping of tree-frogs, and the
k-i-i-i-i-i-i of
crickets. Immense trembling sparks began to rise and fall among
the shadows,—twinkling out and disappearing all mysteriously:
these were the fire-flies awakening. Then about the branches of
the
bois-canon black shapes began to hover, which were not birds
—shapes flitting processionally without any noise; each one in
turn resting a moment as to nibble something at the end of a
bough;—then yielding place to another, and circling away, to
return again from the other side … the
guimbos, the great bats.
But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us:
that ghostly emotion which is the transmitted experience of a
race,—the sum of ancestral experiences innumerable,—the mingled
joy and pain of a million years. … Suddenly a sweet voice
pierced the stillness,—pleading:—
—"Pa combiné, chè!—pa combiné conm ça!" (Do not think, dear!—
do not think like that!)
… Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender
half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading
soundlessly with her slim bare feet. … "And you, Missié", she said
to me, in a tone of gentle reproach;—"you are his friend! why do you
let him think? It is thinking that will prevent him getting well."
Combiné in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore
to be unhappy,—because, with this artless race, as with children,
to think intensely about anything is possible only under great
stress of suffering.
—"Pa combiné,—non, chè," she repeated, plaintively, stroking
Felicien's hair. "It is thinking that makes us old. … And it
is time to bid your friend good-night." …
—"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;
—"I could never tell you how good. But she does not understand.
She believes I suffer if I am silent. She is contented only when
she sees me laugh; and so she will tell me creole stories by the
hour to keep me amused, as if I were a child." …
As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.
—"Doudoux," she persisted;—and her voice was a dove's coo,—"Si
ou ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!"
And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress,
the velvet witchery of her eyes,—it seemed to me that I beheld a
something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,—a something
weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh, and
murmuring to each lured wanderer:—"If thou wouldst love me, do
not think" …
