In the Shadow/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
A SUMMONS
IT was a golden day toward the end of July; Giles had dropped in at Dessalines' cottage while riding, and they were sitting in the pagoda on the edge of the little lake.
"You must have been working very hard, Aristide," said Giles. "We haven't seen a sign of you since the Moultries left. Don't wonder you want to get away … must be a deuced bore plugging along here all by yourself at all this rot!" He glanced at the book which the Haytian had laid down at his approach: "‘Psychologic des Foules'! Jove! pretty solid for a day like this—what?"
"It is intensely interesting, Giles. Leyden recommended it; it is just the sort of stuff I need, as the success of my work will depend a great deal upon my comprehension of the popular mind."
"The pater wishes you to dine with us before you go; he wondered that you hadn't been over, but I told him that you were hard at work. Are you going directly to Hayti?"
"No," replied Dessalines slowly, "I am going first to New York; there are some matters of business to be looked after and," his eyes lighted, "I wish to see the place."
"You don't mean to say that you have never been to New York?"
Dessalines' face lowered, became sinister, cruel. "But once, simply to transship. It was the first time that I went to Europe; I was not well treated in New York—" Again he glanced away, and a faint rim of white was all that Giles could see of the brooding eyes. "I was very young, fifteen, perhaps; it was the first time that I had ever been away from the island. We are a peculiar people in Hayti, Giles; I do not to this day know who gave me birth. I never knew a mother, but my father was afterwards the President of Hayti and immensely rich; he was rich at that time, although few knew it, and I grew up in an atmosphere not of luxury as you know it, for Hayti is crude, but taught to believe myself inferior to none. The people about me were my slaves; I had everything. I firmly believed my people to be the greatest on earth; Hayti the garden spot of the world; myself destined to be a power in Hayti; for you see, Giles, my father recognized early that I was the superior of those about me; he was ambitious for me and he needed me to aid in carrying out a long-formed project."
Giles had listened, absorbed, embarrassed at first and uncomfortable at Dessalines' reference to things the mere hint of which was a matter of shame and anger to an Anglo-Saxon. Dessalines' origin had never occurred to him; had been shrouded in the vague glamour of strangeness and mystery which seemed to envelop the man. If he had thought of the matter at all, Giles might have imagined the Haytian's father as the half-naked chief of a cannibal tribe and his mother as an African princess abducted in some savage foray. It was not the lack of convention which shocked Giles's sense of propriety, it was the presence of any convention at all.
Dessalines was brooding dejectedly when Giles, embarrassed and a trifle uncomfortable, interrupted.
"But about that matter in New York, Aristide; what happened to you?"
"Ah, yes; I was about to tell you. I had come from Hayti with these ideas, and there was nothing in my treatment on the voyage to New York to prepare me for what was to follow. On landing I took a cab and told the driver to go to the Windsor Hotel. Even at that time my English was fairly good, for as a child I had been cared for by a woman from Jamaica who taught me the language—" Dessalines arose suddenly, threw out both great arms, clinched his fists, and strode across the pagoda; and when he turned, with the body sling of a caged tiger, Giles shrank back instinctively. The wide nostrils were distended, the thick lips drawn back in a grimace which bared the white teeth, the low forehead was corrugated; but most appalling of all was the sinister looming of the whole great figure, the poise of the head downward and forward, the elbow-bent hang of the long arms.
"Tonnerre les écrase!" thundered the tremendous voice. And then, as the rolling eyes, the whites of which were most conspicuous, fell upon Giles there was a change, almost as startling as the first. Something in the blank expression of the ruddy-faced Englishman, an imbecile expression of astonished dismay, a drop to the jaw, the startled stare of the eyes, pulled quickly at the hair trigger of the negro risibilities. The savagery was swept from Dessalines in a breath; throwing back his great head he exploded with laughter.
Giles, uncomfortable, vexed, puzzled, stared at him resentfully.
"Don't be angry, Giles; I lose my temper each time I think of the indignities"—the shadow fell again—"but the expression of your face was—amusing." The broad smile swept away the shadow which returned on the instant. "I will not tell you what happened, Giles; it is enough to say that I was outraged, insulted, humiliated from the time that I set foot upon the gang plank to go ashore; and at last I was maddened. My race develops early, Giles, and even at that age I was physically powerful and had never been taught the necessity of controlling my temper. You can imagine the result. I was in jail, bruised and bleeding, before I had been an hour ashore."
The expression of savagery returned. This time Giles understood, although, being an Englishman, he was unable to conceive the conditions which would attend a negro in Dessalines' position in the New York of fifteen years before.
"Fortunately I had plenty of money," said Dessalines, "so I sent for the captain of the steamer, a friend of my father's, and he straightened matters with the authorities. The municipal administration of New York being no different from that of Hayti it was only a question of money enough to set me at liberty. The following day I sailed on the French steamer, and since then when I have crossed it has been always by the French mail from Martinique."
"But I fancy you must have been a bit cheeky, brought up as you were," said Giles. "They'd hardly bait a man in New York just because his skin happened to be black; besides, there are lots of your people there."
"Very true, but at that time all of these occupied menial positions, made no pretense of any social equality, and, in fact, it was but a year or two before my going there that they were permitted to ride in the same trams with the whites; all of that is changed now."
"It was not altogether unnatural, when you think of it," replied Giles. "Consider what the liberation of your people from slavery had cost the States but a few years before; it is not to be wondered at that they were a bit sore with the whole race. They could not understand the view point of a Haytian."
"All that is changed to-day," said Dessalines. "That is, it is changed in the North. Negroes are now admitted everywhere, I understand, just as they are in England. I do not anticipate any difficulty in this direction, because not only are the conditions changed, but I am older and more a man of the world. By the way"—there was the faintest alteration in the timbre of the voice which seemed to grow softer, richer, more unctuous—"what do you hear from Miss Moultrie?"
A swift shadow crossed Giles's face.
"She is in New York," he answered, a trifle shortly; "or at least she was. I believe that she is now in a place called Manchester, near Boston; she was going there first, to visit some friends."
"She will not go South until the autumn?" asked Dessalines.
"I believe not." There was a curtness to Giles's tone. "I must be off," he added, rising. "Will you dine with us Thursday next, Aristide?"
"With pleasure, Giles." Dessalines arose and walked with him to the miniature stable, led out the horse, and stood at his head as Giles mounted, then watched him long and thoughtfully as he cantered down the drive; the black face was brooding, morose, moping.
A sudden sharp noise smote his ear; turning swiftly he saw that a fox-terrier pup, given him some weeks before by Giles, in trotting about the corner of the house had run unexpectedly upon a large cat which had sprung at him, spitting. Ki-yi-yi! yelped the puppy, as it fled, ears back, eyes wide with terror, tail snugly tucked between its fat legs.
Dessalines roared with laughter, slapped his thigh, rocked back and forth in a gust of uncontrollable mirth; then threw himself upon the grass and rolled, still roaring.
That night Dessalines read late; he was fond of reading. By choice he preferred subjects thoughtful, elegantly written with floreate rhetoric and high-sounding phrases, but elementary and simple in principle. Let a thought be subtle, abstruse, combined, attendant upon something previously or later demonstrated and the broad, black forehead would wrinkle, the mouth draw down, the slightly protruding eyes would grow vacant, confused. Sometimes the effort to cerebrate would develop a sensation of physical pain beneath the heavy temporal bones, and before long he would throw down the book, growl, pick it up again, make another effort, then rise suddenly and if the day was fair, order his horse, deciding that his brain was overworked, unwilling to acknowledge that it was simply overtaxed. On the other hand, let a subject be broad, simple, voluble, but expressed directly in words chosen for brevity without regard to style or euphony, and Dessalines would throw the book aside in disgust. "The man does not know how to write!" he would exclaim. "He has no vocabulary; one would think that he was writing a child's primer! Here is an entire paragraph without a single well-sounding word … tiens! there is nothing instructive in such a book!" These monologues were usually carried on aloud; negrolike he was given to audible self-communication. Perhaps it crystallized thoughts otherwise vague; the habit of talking aloud in the primitive nature is equivalent to the need of pencil and paper to record arithmetical calculations in the higher one; some other sense, visual, auditory, is called in to assist the insufficient brain cells.
A few days later Giles called to bring Dessalines a book in which he thought he would be interested—"The Races of Man," by Denniker. He found the Haytian in the pagoda, his favorite retreat. Dessalines held a letter in his hand and his great black face was troubled, dazed—wore the look which came to him when wrestling with a problem beyond the grasp of his strong but simple mentality. The vexed expression vanished as his eyes fell upon his friend.
"The very man I most wanted to see!" He sprang up, radiant, dilating with welcome. Something in the jubilant attitude reminded Giles for the instant of the behavior of his Danes when he loosed them for their morning romp; if Dessalines had possessed a tail he would have wagged it violently.
"Giles, I want your advice; can you spare half an hour?"
"Certainly, old chap; fire away." Giles had advised Dessalines before, in regard to matters of etiquette, dress, English social customs, in all of which the Haytian had proved a quick and apt pupil.
The black face clouded again; he glanced at the letter which he held, and began to mumble the words as if seeking to impress something upon his mind. His brow furrowed, he raised one huge hand to the kinky scalp—the action of a perplexed schoolboy; finally he looked up with an expression of despair.
"I'll have to begin at the very start, if you don't mind," he said.
"Right," said Giles, pulling out his cigarette case.
"When you were here the other day," began Dessalines slowly, "I told you something of my personal history. …" He paused. Giles moved uneasily; he had not anticipated the resumption of a subject which had been disagreeable to him. Dessalines leaned back, brought together the tips of his thick fingers, stared down at the lake, and continued in his heavy, hollow-mouthed negro voice.
"I told you that my father was a man high in Haytian politics; also of his ambitions for me. Some weeks ago I received a letter from him in which he informed me that there was approaching an important political crisis in Hayti; that he—eh—that President Sam would probably abdicate in August, and that as a result there would be several adverse factions striving for the presidency."
Giles looked infinitely relieved; he had feared that he was to be called upon to listen to further items of family history. Britishlike he was shy of looking at a man's naked past; he disliked personal confidences, as do all men strong enough to keep their troubles to themselves. Politics interested him; his career was to be political. His face showed his added interest, and Dessalines, seeing his change of expression, grew himself more confident.
"The government of Hayti as it now exists," he resumed, "is unstable; it cannot stand; there is no credit; everything is running down. The people are dissatisfied, the powers thoroughly so. If President McKinley is reflected it will only be a question of months before Hayti is assimilated by the United States. Such a people cannot be held together as a republic; all of my knowledge of my race, all that I have learned in my reading confirms this view. Hayti must be an empire; an acknowledged autocracy; a theoretical autocracy, instead of merely the practical one which it is to-day."
Giles nodded. Dessalines, inspired by his own eloquence, went on rapidly; he spoke well.
"My father understands this; he is a very clever man; also, as I have told you, he is very rich. He is himself too old to found the dynasty of which he might be the head, yet it is his intention to found one."
Giles leaned forward eagerly, eyes wide with excitement, cheeks flushed. "And he wishes you—you— to. …"
Dessalines arose suddenly to his full height, chest expanded, massive head high, nostrils dilated.
"To be Empereur de Haiti!" he cried in his resonant voice. This voice, the pose, the great savage stature of the man, all impressed Giles powerfully; sent quivers down his spine; excited him.
"Dessalines!"
"Yes, Giles, Dessalines the Second, Emperor of Hayti!" The negro voice choked with emotion inspired by his own words. He folded his arms across his broad chest and stared out across the lake. It is probable that for the moment his thoughts were negative; he was all emotion and appearance.
He resumed quietly, still standing. Dessalines disliked to sit.
"To this end, my father has been making preparations in Hayti while I have been preparing myself over here. Through an agent named Rosenthal, a Jew, a white man, but brave and clever, he has been secretly securing recruits for my cause from many points on the island of Hayti. Rosenthal is to purchase a vessel, properly armed and equipped, which will serve the double purpose of transport for the troops and man-of-war; the only armed vessel of any importance now belonging to Hayti is the Crête-à-Pierrot, commanded by a renegade Scotchman or Irishman, Admiral Killik. As soon as Rosenthal has completed his preparations, the President will abdicate—then I will strike!"
Giles leaned forward quickly, then checked himself. "Go on!" he said eagerly.
"In the confusion which will follow the abdication, it should be easy, for an able general equipped as I shall be, to step in and seize the loose reins of government … well?" He raised his voice in impatient interrogation; his French valet was hurrying up the steps of the pavilion. "Why do you interrupt me, Jules?"
"A cablegram for M. le Comte"
Dessalines started as if the man had struck him; his shoulders seemed to shrivel, his eyes to bulge; their whites became conspicuous. Giles had never before witnessed the phenomenon of a negro turning pale; he stared, amazed at the ashen hue of the Haytian's face.
Dessalines waved his hand feebly to Giles.
"Open it please, my friend. Open it and—read it to me." His voice was husky, the articulation thick.
With a pounding heart Giles took the cablegram from the hand of the valet, ripped it open, and read:
"Sam abdicated. Expect you French steamer. Rosenthal."