In the Shadow/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
JULES ENTERS THE VALLEY
FOR three days the orgy continued. The end of a week saw some few racked revelers still haunting the place; three nights of such terrific debauchery was the limit of the endurance of most of the participants. Daytimes they withdrew into temporary lairs; huts, hiding places; nights they drank, danced, gorged themselves with animal food; the last alone a debauch for a negro accustomed to a diet of fruit, fish, and cereals.
Jules found himself alone at the villa; Célèstine had disappeared with the others. Jules guessed where they had gone; he had listened half the night to the bamboula; had heard faint, frantic cries, and smelt the wood smoke. When his master failed to return late upon the following day the little Frenchman became anxious, less alarmed for Dessalines' safety than for the result of his absence at such a time; a time when action meant all; when any moment might bring the expected summons. He wondered that the Fouchères dared leave their house thus open and deserted. He did not know that Fouchère was the grandson of a vaudoux priestess; that not the hardiest thief upon the island would have dared rest covetous eyes upon the property of the descendant of a mama-loi.
Late in the afternoon his anxiety overcame his prudence. He saddled his master's great horse and rode down the mountain. A man directed him to the house of General Miragoane. He was absent. Though Dessalines had not observed him, he had been present at the dance.
Much troubled, Jules returned to La Coupe. The house was still deserted; shortly after his arrival the darkness fell and beneath him in the valley he heard the beat of the bamboula which he cursed heartily. He ate some food; drank a bottle of wine; lit one of Fouchère's cigars and meditated upon the situation. He had little knowledge of a vaudoux orgy. Dessalines, like all Haytians of the better class, felt the stigma of the thing and was reticent upon the subject; Rosenthal had given him some idea of the debauch, but a wrong one. Such orgies as the Jew had witnessed were sham affairs, vulgar saturnalia free from the superstitious ritual, usually held beneath a roof and from which foreigners were not excluded. Rosenthal's account was less impressive than jocose, yet something told the Frenchman that the valley would prove an unhealthy locality for a white man.
The evening passed and he saw no one; the little hamlet was almost deserted; Jules became a prey to nervousness. He lay down in the hammock, but could not sleep. Beneath him the drum pounded on with the evenness of a pendulum.
Then he heard another sound; from far beneath came the clatter of a pony's hoofs on the hard, packed clay of the road; the sounds increased; a horseman drew up at the gate.
"Who is that?" called Jules.
"Oh, m'cher, is this the house of the Doctor Fouchère?"
"Yes."
"Is Monsieur Dessalines within, oh, oh, m'sieur?" The man spoke in the Creole patois with which Jules was rapidly becoming familiar. Jules walked out to the gate. The horseman, seeing that he was white, started.
"Oh, you are Maître Jules, the attendant of Monsieur le Comte?"
"Si!"
"There is a letter for him, monsieur. It is important; there is no answer.
Jules took the letter from the man's hand. "Who gave you this?" he asked.
"A man in Port au Prince. I brought it immediately. It is a long ride—it makes one thirsty."
"Come into the house," said Jules, "and we will have a glass of wine together. Did this other man tell you anything?"
"No; only that he could be found at the house of Lucien Laroque, opposite the market; also, he said that you would pay me."
"What is your charge?"
"I throw myself upon the generosity of m'sieur."
"Here are ten gourdes."
"Merci, m'sieur!"
"Here also is a glass of wine."
"Merci plus, m'sieur!"
Jules opened the letter. It was written in a cipher prearranged which he had committed to memory. He read, reread, then fell back, faint, dazed, overcome. With an unsteady hand he poured himself a glass of wine. The note read simply:
We are betrayed by Fouchère. Captain bribed. Ship destroyed. Strike at once or all is lost. R.
"It is bad news?" asked the man, eyeing Jules over his glass.
"It is terrible!" wailed the quick-witted Frenchman. "Monsieur le Comte will be desolated! His mistress has died in childbed!"
"Oh, oh, that is a pity! Oh, m'cher!" cried the messenger. "But," he added, "there are women aplenty and much alike. One cannot choose the best on a tree of ripe mangoes."
"Nevertheless, Monsieur le Comte must be notified immediately." He eyed the man doubtfully, half minded to send him down into the valley with the note. But no! He, Jules, must find him. Perhaps Monsieur le Comte was not himself—"this devil of a Madam Fouchère," he said to himself, and added, "and this he-devil, Fouchère!"
He turned to the messenger. "Do you know the house of the General Miragoâne?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; a fine man, the brave general. If a few others, I will not mention who, were more like him—" he rattled on after the manner of the garrulous Haytian of the lower class.
"My master is there!"
"Your master! Oh, oh! a leblanc—the servant of"
"Be still!" snarled Jules.
"Oui, oui, m'cher!"
"Take this note to the general and ask him to give it to Monsieur le Comte." He duplicated the message, though doubting that Miragoâne possessed the key to the cipher. Still, if he did not, he might get it the sooner to Dessalines.
"Here are five gourdes besides. Perhaps the general may pay you more. Now go quickly."
"Oui, m'cher, merci, m'cher—oh, oh!" he shambled to the gate, remounted, and rattled off into the darkness.
For several minutes after he had gone Jules remained plunged in meditation; his master's cause was to his mind as good as lost; his master's fortune as well! He walked through the house to the veranda which overhung the valley, now laden with the night. Up from the depths welled in even, unruffled cadence the tireless beat of the drum. The mist-laden darkness hung like a wet pall, a shroud, a bier cloth. Jules looked down; he shivered.
"Peste!" muttered the faithful fellow. He twiddled the note in his fingers. "It is triste below, but—but"
He walked rapidly through the house, closing the door behind him.
"Peste!" he said again. "A thief could walk through the side of one of these ridiculous houses!"
He had located the path during the day; that is, he had strayed as far as the edge of the jungle. Jules shivered again but held upon his course.
He passed through the bananas, over the brink, entered the gloom. The shadows closed in about him.
These black shadows were his pall; the mist hanging from the treetops his winding sheet; the valley his tomb.