In the Shadow/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
JULES, "THE RAVEN"
GILES looked up with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. Dessalines was still standing, leaning against a post, his great shoulders drooping, head pitched forward, mouth slightly agape; there was a dull, dazed, troubled look in his blue-black eyes, and the thick skin across his forehead was furrowed. The trained but primitive brain was striving to grasp the countless problems contained in that simple slip of paper; dazed, bewildered before the contemplation of the numberless tasks, conditions, responsibilities with which he found himself suddenly beset.
Giles, glancing up at him, misinterpreted the expression. He accepted it as one of deep and powerful thought; he felt suddenly shy, as such a nature does in the presence of an intimate, personal crisis.
He moved slightly. Dessalines' dull, lack-luster eyes fell upon him; the sable face cleared and the brain, with a mental sigh at the relief of the pressure, flew back to the present, to words, which with the negro are so essential to the crystallizing of a thought.
"Ah, Giles, it has come; this paper!" He took it from Giles's hand. "Think, my friend, what it represents; it is a call, a summons; the appeal of a groping people." The ring of the great voice, inspiring to Giles was likewise inspiring to Dessalines. "The time has come, Giles; sooner than I expected, it is true, but none the less welcome!" The black face, but a moment before so sunk in dejection, began to beam, the rich voice to choke with an emotion inspired of his words. "Hayti—Hayti—how little you realize that your deliverance is at hand!"
Giles, powerfully stirred, looked up with glowing eyes. He felt that he had been caught up in the wheels of destiny, carried along by the juggernaut of history. He was very young; also, one could scarcely blame him for being stirred in the presence of that great vitality, rich, inspiring voice, powerful emotion. Yet his British practicality did not desert him.
"Are you ready, Aristide?" he asked eagerly. The exultation on the face of the negro vanished as though flicked away; a beam thrown from a mirror. A look almost of vexation replaced it.
"My patron will not have been idle, nor my agent. It is to them that I am to look for the active preparations of the campaign."
"But you can't leave it all to other people!" cried Giles. "Gad, how I envy you! Think of what is ahead in the way of organization and equipping and collecting your staff and your cabinet and all the rest of it; then there are the foreign relations to consider, and the projection of matters of policy and diplomacy and municipal and civil affairs! Jove, how I wish that I could have a hand in it, Aristide!" He looked wistfully at the Haytian. "Couldn't you—eh—couldn't you take me on in some way?"
Dessalines' face lighted suddenly, then as quickly grew somber.
"I would give anything if I could, Giles, but it can't be done. One of the conditions of my patron is that there shall be no offices held by white men in the new dynasty. It must be purely a negro empire; my agent, Rosenthal, does not appear in any active way; he is simply a paid servant. It would hurt the Cause with the people if there was a white man in office." His voice grew dejected.
"I see that it would," admitted Giles. "It would look as if you could not handle the thing alone—had to call in outside help … what?"
Dessalines relapsed into his first apathy; Giles's words had presented with renewed force the perplexities of his ambitious undertaking. He brooded, striving painfully to select for consideration the first great problem, and scarce realizing that to do this he must first possess a detailed knowledge of the present political position of his country. His education, reading, theory arose against him; he tried to apply it in the place of his common sense. Giles, mistaking his abstraction, arose.
"I will run along, old chap; you will want to do some solid thinking, I fancy."
Dessalines threw out a detaining arm. "Don't go. Giles … don't!" he implored. Giles, still mistaking his purpose, smiled.
"Really must, old chap. Got some things to attend to. Good luck! And, I say, my best congratulations you know and all that, …" he added bashfully.
Dessalines seized him by the hand. "Thank you, my friend."
After Giles had gone the negro relapsed into a brooding melancholy. He began to think aloud; to tabulate the various essential elements of his campaign. The sound of his voice encouraged him, gave him confidence; yet to obtain this fully he must have a listener. He raised his great voice.
"Hold! Jules! Jules!"
From the house there came an answering cry; thin, raucous, resembling the call of a peacock. "Oui, monsieur, I come!"
With his servant Dessalines naturally conversed in French.
A moment later Jules entered the pagoda. Jules, the valet of Dessalines, was most aptly described by his petit nom of "le corbeau." Crowlike, or, more properly, ravenlike, he was in appearance, voice, and habit. Dessalines had secured him in a peculiar way; the way in which one would naturally secure so wary a bird.
It was while he was occupying apartments in a hotel in Paris that Dessalines, whose instincts were as keenly accurate as those of a cat, became aware that some one was in the habit of spying upon him through a crack in his door. Wishing to catch and cuff the offender, whom he correctly judged to be one of the servants of the house, he laid a snare. Without appearing conscious of having noticed the espionage, he moved toward the door as though to hang up his coat; then, quick as a cat, he threw the door open, clutched through the aperture with one great hand and drew into his room a squirming, struggling creature, who in his terror was able only to squawk like a fowl.
"Aha, my fine fellow," cried Dessalines, throwing him across the room after he had closed and locked the door, "now that I have got you I will teach you a lesson!" Dessalines, though not cruel, was as merciless as an animal. He slipped a strap from his portmanteau, then looked curiously at his catch.
He saw a meager little individual of perhaps thirty years. At the moment the creature was standing where the Haytian had hurled him, his birdlike head cocked to one side, his black, beady eyes fixed upon his captor with a regard less frightened than fascinated. The scrutiny puzzled the Haytian; aroused his self-consciousness; put him ill at ease.
"Why do you stare at me in that way?" he demanded.
"Because I have never seen a gentleman of the magnificent proportions of monsieur, and it is to admire," replied the little fellow, in a curiously discordant voice.
Dessalines' susceptible, negro vanity was flattered, but he was suspicious.
"And I suppose that is the reason why you have been spying upon me," he observed.
"It is true, monsieur," replied the man candidly. "Monsieur possesses for me a fascination. It is not possible that monsieur desires a valet de chambre? I would serve him at a nominal wage, so attractive to me is the personality of monsieur!" He tilted his narrow face with its birdlike profile to the other side, and studied Dessalines with a curious mixture of admiration and impudence. The fact that he showed no sign of fear without doubt saved him a beating.
Dessalines' fancy was keenly tickled; a Parisian valet! The idea was very chic; it would increase his prestige at home and abroad; there was also something in the manner of the creature which stroked his vanity.
"What do you call yourself?" he asked.
"Jules, monsieur. By many I am called 'le corbeau.’"
Dessalines laughed explosively; the nickname stirred his broad negro humor.
"Mon Dieu, but they name you well!" He chuckled, giggled, bit his fingers, in his mirth. "Would you like to travel, Jules?"
"To the ends of the earth in the service of monsieur."
"Can you shave?" asked Dessalines, laughing again.
"I can do all that is required of a valet, monsieur."
"Very well; you may enter my service. I will give you your clothes and ninety francs the month."
"Monsieur is munificent!" squawked Jules; and thus he entered the service of the Haytian.
Dessalines soon discovered that the man had told him the truth. Apparently there was nothing in which Jules took the same satisfaction as in the society of his master. His constant exclamations of awe and admiration at the herculean proportions of Dessalines were a huge source of gratification to the latter, a massage to the vanity. He grew much attached to Jules; being of a generous nature, he gave him handsome presents for which the little Frenchman was grateful, but which he never seemed to solicit. He was, in fact, profusely attached to his master; they were complementary parts.
The characteristics of Dessalines which Jules strongly disapproved were his religion and his morality; he could not understand how a creature of the super-abundant vitality of his master could fear either God or Satan. Jules himself was cheerfully atheistic; cautious, but quite fearless.
"But monsieur is triste!" he would protest. "Ah, if monsieur could but see how the ladies he passes on the street regard him!"
"Hush, Jules, it is necessary to think of one's soul to please le bon Dieu." And Jules would shrug into silence.
It had not taken Dessalines long to discover that his valet was marvelously astute. He had at length confided in him his plans, his ambitions. Jules had become valet, counselor, and friend.
Now as he joined his master his crowlike face was expressionless as ever, but the beady eyes glinted with excitement. He had guessed at what the cablegram contained; one glance at the face of his master confirmed this surmise.
"Jules," said Dessalines in a hollow voice, "the moment has arrived."
Jules hopped forward; in the service of Dessalines he wore a black cutaway coat which enhanced the aptness of his nickname. His small black eyes shone.
"Oh, monsieur le Comte is to be congratulated, why then is monsieur triste?"
Dessalines groaned. He made no pretenses to Jules.
"It is the doubt … the uncertainty … the fear that I may be tried and found wanting. O Jules, the good God has laid a heavy burden upon his servant!" Dessalines covered his face with both huge hands. His great chest swelled beneath the deep-drawn breaths.
Jules looked at him, his head on one side and the pupils of the beady eyes dilated. Dessalines under emotion of any sort never failed to stir the pulses of his valet. Small, meager, ill formed as was Jules, with narrow, sunken chest, and spindling limbs, there was no object under heaven that so moved him as physical redundancy, whether it were in man or woman or beast; he would spend his last cent to witness an athletic contest, preferably, something brutal; and it was on this account that he adored England. The strain and heave of great living bodies excited him; the sight of Dessalines upon his mammoth stallion was in itself a debauch; it was purely artistic, this trait, but then Jules was an artist in more ways than one. Now, as he watched his master, he was strangely moved, for despite his expressionless features Jules was a creature of powerful emotions; he was moved less by his distress than by the heave of the great chest with every indrawn breath, the crushing force with which the black face was buried in the enormous hands, the slack droop to the big shoulders.
"Ah, but that is only the modesty of monsieur!" he answered. "It is also that Monsieur le Comte is somewhat unnerved from too deep study—and the lack of gayety. For several days monsieur has been depressed. I, Jules, have observed it." Dessalines' hands slipped slowly downward; a wrinkle or two smoothed on the broad forehead. Jules continued: "One cannot judge of oneself; who is so able as I to estimate the abilities of Monsieur le Comte? I who see him daily in all of his moods, in all of his occupations!" A ray of light crept into the black face. "And is there anyone, I should like to know, more fitted to rule than Monsieur le Comte? is there any other man possessed of such power of mind and body?" Dessalines' arms fell slowly to his sides where they hung, elbows bent from the tonic contraction of the heavy biceps. "Who," Jules continued, "has such a magnificent presence for the council chamber; such wisdom for the laws of statecraft?" Dessalines' eyes brightened. "Such honesty, such goodness, to endear him to his people!" The negro face assumed an expression of ineffable good nature. "Such a figure to follow into the combat!" Dessalines drew himself to his full height, the flat nostrils began to dilate. "Or," continued the valet, "such a voice with which to hurl forth his battle cry and lead his victorious troops!"
"Holà!" cried Dessalines. His bulging eyes were bright; the whole expression, was exultant. He turned to his valet. "You give me courage, my good Jules! What should I do without you, camarade? You show me things in their real light!" He threw his great arms above his head, fists clenched; drew the sweet evening air deeply into his spacious lungs. "Courage, Dessalines! Courage, mon ami! God willing, you shall yet lead your troops to glorious victory!" The tears gushed from his eyes; he threw both hands upward with a gesture of adoration.
"Leave me, Jules. I wish to pray."