The Marquise of O and Other Stories (25 page)

Toni's mother, looking at the clock on the wall, observed that in any case it was nearly midnight; and taking a candle she asked the stranger to follow her. She led him to the room assigned to him, at the end of a long corridor; Toni brought his coat and various other things he had discarded; her mother showed him the very comfortably made-up bed where he would sleep, and after telling Toni to get a footbath ready for the gentleman, she wished him good night and took her leave. The stranger put his sword in a corner of the room and laid on the table a pair of pistols he carried at his waist. As Toni pushed the bed forward and spread a white sheet over it he looked round the room. He very soon concluded from the luxury and taste with which it was furnished that this must have been the bedroom of the plantation's former owner; a feeling of apprehension seized his heart like the beak and talons of a bird of prey, and he began to wish himself back with his friends in the woods, hungry and thirsty as when he had come here. Meanwhile, from the kitchen nearby, the girl had fetched a basinful of hot water, spiced with aromatic herbs, and invited the officer, who was leaning against the window, to refresh himself with it. The officer, silently removing his neckcloth and his waistcoat, sat down on a chair; he began baring his feet, and as the girl, crouching before him on her knees, continued the little preparations that were needed for his bath, he gazed at her attractive figure. Her hair, in its abundance of dark curls, had rolled over her young breasts when she knelt down; there was something extraordinarily graceful about her limbs and about the long lashes that drooped over her lowered eyes; but for her complexion, which repelled him, he could have sworn that he had never seen anything more beautiful. He was also struck by a remote resemblance, he did not himself yet rightly know to whom, which he had noticed as soon as he entered the house and which drew his whole heart towards her. When she rose after completing her tasks he caught hold of her
hand, and knowing that there was only one way of finding out whether the girl had sincere feelings or not he drew her down on to his knees and asked her whether she was already engaged to be married. ‘No!' she murmured, lowering her great black eyes with a sweet air of modesty; and without stirring on his lap she added that a young negro called Konelly who lived in that neighbourhood had proposed to her three months earlier, but that she had refused him because she was too young. The stranger, embracing her narrow waist with his two hands, replied that in his country there was a proverb that a girl of fourteen years and seven weeks was old enough to marry. As she gazed at the small golden cross he wore around his neck, he asked her how old she was. ‘Fifteen,' replied Toni. ‘Well then!' said the stranger. ‘Has he not got enough money to set up house with you in the way you would like?' Toni, without raising her eyes to him, answered: ‘Oh no! On the contrary,' she added, letting go of the cross which she was holding in her hand, ‘Konelly has become a rich man as a result of the things that have happened recently; his father has gained possession of the whole settlement that used to belong to his master the planter.' ‘Then why did you refuse his offer?' asked the stranger. He tenderly stroked the hair back from her forehead and said: ‘Perhaps he didn't attract you?' The girl shook her head briefly and laughed; and when the stranger, whispering playfully into her ear, asked whether it was necessary to be a white man in order to gain her favour, she suddenly, after a fleeting pensive pause, and with a most charming blush spreading suddenly over her sunburnt face, sank against his breast. The stranger, moved by her sweetness and grace, called her his darling girl and clasped her in his arms, feeling that the hand of God had swept away all his anxieties. He could not possibly believe that all these signs of emotion she showed him were merely the wretched antics of cold-hearted, hideous treachery. The thoughts that had preyed on his mind were dispersed
like a host of ominous birds; he reproached himself for having failed even for a moment to appreciate her true feelings, and as he rocked her on his knees and drank in the sweet breath that rose from her lips towards him, he pressed a kiss on her forehead, as if in token of reconciliation and forgiveness. Meanwhile the girl had sat upright with a strange startled suddenness, as if listening for steps in the passage approaching the door; in a kind of pensive reverie she readjusted the clothing over her breast which had become disarranged; and only when she realized that her alarm had been mistaken did she turn again to the stranger with a mischievous smile, reminding him that if he did not use the hot water soon it would get cold. ‘Well?' she asked in some surprise, as the stranger said nothing but went on gazing at her thoughtfully, ‘why are you examining me so closely?' She tried to conceal the embarrassment that had overcome her by busying herself with lacing up her bodice, then exclaimed laughingly: ‘You strange gentleman, whatever do you find so remarkable in my appearance?' The stranger had passed his hand across his brow; he suppressed a sigh, lifted her from his lap and replied: ‘An extraordinary resemblance between you and a friend of mine!' Toni, obviously noticing that his happy mood had left him, took him kindly and sympathetically by the hand and asked: ‘Who is she?' Whereupon, after reflecting for a moment or two, he made the following answer: ‘Her name was Marianne Congreve and she came from Strasbourg. Her father was a merchant in that city, I had met her there shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution and had been lucky enough to obtain her consent to marry me, as well as her mother's approval. Oh, she was the most loving, the most faithful creature on earth; and when I look at you, the terrible and moving circumstances in which I lost her come back so vividly to my mind and fill me with such sorrow that I cannot restrain my tears.' ‘What?' asked Toni, pressing herself tenderly and lovingly
against him, ‘she is no longer alive?' ‘She died,' answered the stranger, ‘and it was her death alone that taught me the very essence of all goodness and nobility. God knows,' he continued, bowing his head in grief upon her shoulder, ‘how I allowed myself to be so utterly reckless as to make certain remarks one evening in a public place about the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal which had just been set up. I was denounced, my arrest was sought; and since I had been fortunate enough to escape to the outskirts of the city, the bloodthirsty band of my pursuers, failing to find me but insisting on some victim or other, even rushed to my fiancée's house; and so infuriated were they by her truthful declaration that she did not know where I was, that with outrageous cynicism, on the pretext that she was my accomplice, they dragged her instead of me to the scaffold. No sooner had this appalling news been conveyed to me than I emerged from the hiding-place into which I had fled, and hastened, pushing my way through the crowd, to the place of execution, where I shouted at the top of my voice: “Here I am, you inhuman monsters!” But she, already standing on the platform beside the guillotine, on being questioned by some of the judges who as ill-fortune would have it did not know me by sight, gave me one look which is indelibly imprinted on my soul, and then turned away, saying: “I have no idea who that man is!” And a few moments later, amid a roll of drums and a roar of voices, at the behest of those impatient butchers, the iron blade dropped and severed her head from her body. How I was saved I have no idea; a quarter of an hour later I was in a friend's house, swooning and recovering consciousness by turns, and towards evening, half bereft of my senses, I was lifted into a carriage and conveyed across the Rhine.' With these words the stranger, letting go of the girl, returned to the window, where she saw him, in deep emotion, bury his face in a handkerchief; at this, for more than one reason, she was overcome by a sense of human compassion, and impulsively
followed him, throwing her arms round his neck and mingling her tears with his.

There is no need to report what happened next, for it will be clear to anyone who has followed the narrative thus far. When the stranger regained possession of himself and realized what he had done, he had no idea what its consequences might be; but for the time being at least he understood that he was saved, and that in this house he had entered there was nothing for him to fear from the girl. Seeing her sitting on the bed, with her arms folded across her and weeping, he did everything he could to console her. He took from his breast the little golden cross which was a present from his dead fiancée, the faithful Marianne, and leaning over Toni and caressing her with the utmost tenderness he hung it round her neck, saying that it was his bridal gift to her. As she went on weeping and did not listen to him, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and told her, stroking and kissing her hand, that he would tomorrow morning seek her mother's permission to marry her. He described to her the little estate he possessed on the banks of the Aar; a house sufficiently comfortable and spacious to accommodate her and her mother as well, if the latter's age would permit her to make the journey; he described his fields, gardens, meadows and vineyards, and his venerable aged father who would welcome her there with gratitude and love for having saved his son's life. As her tears continued and poured down over the pillow he embraced her passionately, almost weeping himself, and begged her to tell him how he had wronged her and whether she could not forgive him. He swore that the love he felt for her would never fade from his heart and that it had only been the turmoil and confusion of his senses, the strange mixture of desire and fear she had aroused in him, that had led him to do such a deed. In the end he reminded her that the morning stars were glistening in the sky and that if she stayed in this bed any longer her mother would come and surprise her
there; he urged her, for the sake of her health, to get up and rest for a few hours in her own bed; filled with the direst alarm by her condition, he asked her if she would perhaps like him to lift her in his arms and carry her to her room. But since she made no answer to anything he said and simply lay there motionless among the scattered pillows, cradling her head in her arms and sobbing quietly, and since daylight was already gleaming through both the windows, he had no choice but to pick her up without further ado; he carried her, hanging over his shoulder like a lifeless thing, up the stairs to her bedroom, and after laying her on her bed and with many tender caresses repeating to her again everything he had said already, he once more called her his beloved bride and kissed her on both cheeks, then hurried back to his room.

As soon as day had fully dawned, old Babekan went upstairs to her daughter, sat down by her bed and told her the plan she had decided upon for dealing with the stranger and his travelling companions. Since the negro Congo Hoango would not be back for two days it was all-important, she thought, to delay the stranger in the house for that period without admitting his family of kinsmen, whose presence might be dangerous on account of their numbers. The scheme she had thought of for this purpose, she said, was to pretend to the stranger that according to a report just received General Dessalines and his army were about to march through this district, and that it would therefore be much too dangerous to accommodate the family in the house, as was their wish, until he had passed by in three days' time. Finally, she said, the party must be provided with food so that they would not move on, and otherwise delayed in the delusion that they would find refuge in the house, so that they might all be overpowered later on. She added that this was an important matter, since the family were probably carrying property of considerable value with them; and she told her daughter that she relied
on her full cooperation in the project she had just outlined to her. Toni, sitting up in her bed and flushing with anger, replied that it was shameful and contemptible to violate the laws of hospitality in this way against people whom one had lured into one's house. She said that a man who was being pursued and had entrusted himself to their protection ought to be doubly safe with them, and declared that if her mother did not abandon the bloodthirsty scheme she had proposed, she would at once go and tell the stranger that the house in which he had thought he had reached safety was a den of murderers. ‘Toni!' exclaimed her mother, pressing her hands against her sides and staring wide-eyed at the girl. ‘Yes, indeed!' replied Toni, lowering her voice. ‘What harm has this young man done to us? He is not even a Frenchman by birth, but a Swiss, as we have learned; so why should we fall on him like bandits and kill him and rob him? Do such grievances as we may have against the planters here exist in the part of the island from which he comes? Is it not, rather, quite obvious that he is an entirely noble-minded and honourable man who has in no way participated in the injustices committed by his race against the blacks?' The old woman, observing the remarkable vehemence with which the girl spoke, merely stammered her astonishment. She asked her what wrong the young Portuguese had done whom they had recently clubbed to death at the gateway; she asked what crime the two Dutchmen had committed whom the negroes had shot in the yard three weeks ago; she demanded to know what accusation could be brought against the three Frenchmen and against so many other individual fugitives of the white race who since the revolt had been executed in this house with muskets, pikes and daggers. ‘By the heavens above us,' replied her daughter, rising wildly to her feet, ‘you are very wrong to remind me of these atrocities! The inhuman deeds in which you all forced me to take part have for a long time sickened me to the very soul; and in
order to satisfy the vengeance of God upon me for all that has happened, I swear to you that I would rather die ten times over than allow a hair of that young man's head to be touched as long as he is in our house.' ‘Very well,' said the old woman, suddenly adopting a conciliatory tone. ‘Then the stranger can go on his way! But,' she added, rising to leave the room, ‘when Congo Hoango returns and finds out that a white man has spent the night in our house, then you may give an account to him of the compassionate feelings that moved you, in defiance of his express orders, to let such a visitor go again once he had been let in.'