In the Shadow/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
DESSALINES' GARDEN PARTY
MANNING had gone up to London in response to an invitation. It had been the habit of the Maltbys to remain in the country every other year, for Sir Henry was devoted to his horticulture, Giles to the open air, and Lady Maltby herself cared but little for the life in town; consequently the London house was closed for the greater part of the time.
Manning had asked Virginia to go up with him until his sailing date, but seeing that she preferred to remain at Fenwick Towers he had not pressed the matter. Virginia herself loved the country; also she loved Giles, Sir Henry, Lady Maltby, the place, a few animals; on the whole there was no particular reason why she should not remain. Besides this she was deeply interested in Dr. Leyden, from whom, it seemed to her, she obtained much at every conversation, and she did not wish to miss his visit.
Then there was Dessalines, whose calls had become almost daily, and whose unique personality was a never-failing source of curiosity. Since Dr. Leyden's extraordinary exposé of his racial psychology, Dessalines had lost for Virginia much of his vague uncomfortable fascination; in its place there had been developed the sort of sympathetic interest one might feel for a savage of almost civilized talents and disposition.
After Leyden's reproof, Virginia did not see him again upon his stallion; instead, he rode a large, docile animal. To her surprise and a trifle to her amusement he had, upon next meeting Leyden, burst immediately into a roar of typical negro laughter, accompanied by thigh slappings, wags of the head, utterly forgetful, as far as Virginia could see, of the naturalist's curt reprimands, and remembering only his jokes; yet it was most evident that he was afraid of Leyden; not coweringly, but respectfully; also, that he liked him, was rather devoted to him, and pleased beyond expression at any mark of approval from the Hollander.
The quality in Dessalines which had first appealed to Virginia, his uncouth superhuman strength, had lately been dormant of demonstration. His calls had been conventional; the weather had been too bad for out of door athletics—riding, boating, tennis; Dessalines told them that he had been working hard reading international law and political economy. Giles was evidently very fond of the Haytian, as what right-minded Englishman would not be after the heroic manner in which he had saved Virginia's life and his own, to say nothing of the wonderful way in which he had maintained the honor of the county on the cricket field.
Sir Henry approved of Dessalines and was interested in him and his work. Lady Maltby was mildly fascinated; there never arose a question regarding his caste; he was a gentleman, a nobleman for that matter, although of a patent at which one might smile indulgently; but he was clean and well conducted, well educated, and possessed of a style and presence which carried with it no admission that he was not the equal of any.
Leyden looked on with no comment; talked with Virginia, joked with Sir Henry, chatted with Guijon, who worshiped him, took daily diminishing doses of a fever decoction in a green bottle, and missed not one detail or vibration of the conditions about him.
"Dessalines wants us for Saturday afternoon," Giles announced at luncheon. "Due notice will arrive later, so nobody must make other plans. He is going to give us what he calls a fête aquatique on the river."
"He has the Haddington cottage, Maurits," said Sir Henry. "Directly on the river. He told me that he had taken it for the summer, as he wanted a quiet place in which to read. It is rather odd that he should have chosen England as his educational field; most Haytians go to France, do they not?"
"Ten out of ten go to Paris," replied Leyden. "I have heard of their going to Germany, to England, but it is rare. None by any chance ever goes to the United States."
"Dessalines once spoke of that," said Giles. "He told me that Haytians went to Paris, studied a little, were petted and made a good deal of, and usually ended by getting in debt and going home to take it out of the country. He said that he came to England because the life was cleaner and more wholesome, and he was over here to go ahead and not backward. He said that it was easy enough to go backward in Hayti, … what?"
"I think that it does him great credit," said Lady Maltby. "I have never known a negro before, socially, and Count Dessalines had quite altered my ideas in regard to the possibilities of his race." She turned to Virginia with a smile. "I suppose that Manning would be quite furious to hear me say that, my dear."
"I do not think that Manning is a fair judge," replied Virginia.
"From what I have read," observed Sir Henry, in his somewhat pedantic manner, "I should say that it was very difficult to get a fair judgment on the negro question; there is the opinion of the man who has known him on the West Coast where he is pure savage, the opinion of the man who knows him as a recently liberated slave—Manning's opinion—the opinion of the man who knows him in the northern United States as a political if scarcely social equal, and then the opinions of people like ourselves who know him at his best, a finished product like Count Dessalines." Each of his points Sir Henry had carefully tallied upon his slender, white fingers: his thin, ascetic face, intellectual, broad browed, narrow of chin which was fringed with a square-cut beard of an open, separate-haired consistency and seemed less masculine than none; the whole face was flushed with the nervous shyness characteristic of him.
"It seems to me," he pursued, "that to talk at all intelligently upon the negro question a man must know the negro in all of his phases; to know him too well in any one alone, would be less advantageous than to have merely observed him casually in all; it is simply the case of the 'Ten Blind Men of Hindoostan' who went to see an elephant and decided that he resembled a rope, a tree, a fan, a spear, a wall, as different ones felt his tail, leg, ear, tusk, and I do not know what besides; you know the rhyme."
"Right," exclaimed Giles. "I have heard Manning say more than once that there is nobody who knows more of the African than he … yet he has never even seen Africa. According to that, some negro in the States who has only seen Americans might set up to be an authority upon all of the English because they are Anglo-Saxons."
"I think," said Leyden, "that there is really very little difference between an African negro and one from Carolina; the chief cause of their perplexity in the United States seems to me to be because they attempt to class the yellow with the black; a mulatto to my mind is less a negro than a white. There are really not enough pure negroes left in the United States to construct a racial problem on. I think that in time the mulatto will prove the antitoxin of the black." He glanced at Virginia and abruptly changed the topic.
•••••••
It was the day of the fête to which they had been asked by Dessalines. A bright sun temporarily obscured by huge cumulus clouds, alternated areas of high light and shadow, the chiaroscuro of the Italians. The temperature was high, a trifle too high for the comfort of all but Leyden.
Dessalines' cottage was on the bank of the river, the stream at this point expanding into a diminutive lake. Just below, it was crossed by the bridge of the private road leading to Chelton House, then unoccupied. The cottage was a part of the large estate; it had been built, by the last proprietor, as a summer studio for his brother-in-law, a landscape painter. As it was intended only for summer residence it had been patterned after a Japanese villa, and oddly enough the peculiar formation of the site had been found to permit of certain semitropical trees and shrubs which would grow nowhere else in the locality, if, indeed, anywhere in England. It is a curious thing, known to those thoroughly familiar with a vicinity, that there are certain spots of this character which will carry straight through the year a small local climate quite distinct from the surrounding country.
"Irasshai," for the place was named after the Japanese "come in," was one of these spots; whether it was the sheltered river bottom or, as Guijon claimed, something in the soil, it was the earliest and latest place to find wild flowers, and the former tenant had succeeded in growing there, live oaks, mimosa, crape myrtle, and others which it was necessary to protect in winter.
The site of the cottage was several feet above the water; a broad veranda, inclosed by jalousies, swept the southeast corner; Japanese ivy overgrew the greater part of the cottage; a fence of woven bamboo formed a miniature compound. On the edge of the stream a pavilion built on spiles sheltered the boats, while the upper story furnished a little pagoda where it was the custom to have tea served. Beds of purple iris were planted along the banks; masses of hydrangeas, blue and white, seemed to grow in wild profusion about the pagoda; everywhere were flowers.
One entered this oriental fairyland beneath a huge red-lacquered torii; stone lanterns stood on either side, and in one corner of the garden there was a tiny shrine, the sand upon the altar bristling with joss sticks.
Virginia had visited the cottage before, but never at this season of the year. The party from Fenwick Towers included the Misses O'Connor, Irish girls, schoolmates of Virginia. They had come in the drag, but were obliged, owing to the low-growing boughs, to leave it at the beginning of the turf road, a distance of five hundred yards from the house. This had previously been arranged by Giles, at the request of Dessalines. They were expecting some surprise, something unique, but were scarcely prepared for the charming innovation devised for their reception.
As they descended from the drag four Japanese, each with a jinrikisha, stepped from a leafy thicket and kotowed before the ladies. Lady Maltby uttered a little scream of delight.
"How awfully jolly! It has been the dream of my life to ride in a 'rikisha."
"What a lark!" cried Virginia. She eyed the smiling little jins doubtfully. "But surely we are too heavy on this turf road; it is quite soft in spots."
"What a duck of a perambulator!" cried Miss O'Connor. "But what if the horse should take fright and run away! How ever could you stop him? You remember, Kathleen, how Cousin Ned was forever talking about the 'rikishas when first he came back from India?"
"And is this a 'rikisha?" asked Miss Kathleen, who had always possessed a vague idea that the word signified some oriental dish.
The little Japanese, who, after their first objections to performing the menial duty had been overcome by the persuasive tongue of the valet, Jules, had quite entered into the spirit of the thing, continued to bow and smile and motion toward the vehicles. Leyden stepped to Lady Maltby's side. "Permit me," he said, and assisted her into the 'rikisha, then turned and said a few rapid words to the jin. The four men started, stared, looked incredulous, then glancing at one another, broke into an excited rattle of short, monosyllabic words; Leyden chattered also, smiled, ducked, laughed in the childlike way peculiar to the Japanese.
"You amazing person!" cried Virginia, "is there any tongue which you do not speak?"
"There are few in which I cannot make myself understood," answered Leyden, with a smile. "There is none which I speak well, but for my purpose vocabulary is of more value than rhetoric."
He placed Miss Kathleen in her 'rikisha and they started, the men walking rapidly to keep pace with the short trot of the Japanese. They plunged into the miniature forest, wound between bushes of holly, across a toy Japanese bridge which spanned a singsong little rivulet; on its bank a tiny temple was half hid in a clump of hazels; dainty stone steps led to the door. They entered a fen where the same little rill wound about to form a tiny paddy, diked, flooded, green with sprouting rice.
"If Manning saw that," said Giles, "he would give tongue … what?"
"He would probably drive Dessalines out to irrigate," said Leyden, flippantly. They turned a corner and came suddenly upon the most striking spectacle. Just ahead the torii marked the entrance of the inclosure, forming the frame, as it were, for the lustrous green of the ivy-grown cottage and the banks of purple iris. Directly in the center of this frame stood Dessalines, clad in spotless white, bareheaded, smiling, towering, a majestic figure in the midst of those Lilliputian surroundings. The sable face smiling a welcome, the flashing teeth white as the immaculate white serge, the gigantic figure; all was less grotesque than impressive; there was an imperial quality in the man's calm unconsciousness of his amazing inappropriateness. Giles, receiving guests, intimate friends, conventional folk, at his father's door would have been less at his ease.
The tableau was greeted by an instant of involuntary silence. "Ach!" muttered Leyden, beneath his breath. "That is fine … that spectacle. I did not think that he had it in him, this negro." Like many men who spend much of their lives in solitude of thought, Leyden had the habit of audible self-communing when suddenly impressed. Virginia overheard him.
Then Dessalines did a graceful thing; a Gallic action. He threw out both great arms, the massive head went back.
"Welcome, mes amis," he called, in his deep voice. "Welcome to Japan!" He stepped quickly to the side of Lady Maltby. "My poor house is honored, chère madame."
"And your guests are delighted, Count Dessalines." She gave him her hand; he took it in his, bent over it, the thick lips brushed her fingers. Virginia, glancing with a gasp toward Lady Maltby, saw the faint quiver which passed over her face. The other women Dessalines greeted, each with a bow.
"Then we may dismiss the 'rikishas," he said, and nodded to the men, who laid down the shafts and disappeared. Dessalines turned to speak to Sir Henry, to Giles, then his eyes rolled and he chuckled as he greeted Leyden.
"Oh, mon chèr docteur, I suppose you will make me die of laughter again to-day!" He laughed with the irrepressible mirth of a small boy amused in church; it was a laugh which rises suddenly and with explosive force just under the soft palate and bursts at the same time through nose and mouth; the laugh of a negro, a child. Leyden smiled, glanced at Virginia, laughed outright, then clapped the Haytian violently upon the shoulder.
"Tiens camarade!" his tongue whirled in a short blast of Creole, then joined Dessalines in a light laugh.
The Misses O'Connor had drawn Virginia aside.
"Did ever you see the like of that!" whispered Miss Kathleen. She was a pretty girl in an aggressively healthy way, and richly endowed with hair, color, and teeth. "Is he not the darling?"
"But fancy meeting him of a dark night!" cried Miss O'Connor, in a low voice. She was prettier than her sister and even more vivacious, if that were possible. "I would die of fright entirely!"
"Is he a cannibal, do you think?" whispered the elder, staring at Dessalines with wide, fascinated eyes.
"He's very good-looking, as one gets used to him," declared her sister. "And what an elegant voice!"
"Saints, here he's coming to speak to us!" cried Miss Kathleen. "Now, what ever in, the world shall I say to him! Don't leave me, girls."
Dessalines drew near, smiling. Leyden had just complimented him upon the ingenuity of his reception and the Haytian was as pleased as a dog who has just been petted for a well-performed trick. As a matter of fact the French valet, Jules, had devised the details of the fête, but with such dexterity that Dessalines was quite convinced that all was the result of his own happy inspiration.
"You must pardon me, ladies, for my lack of chivalry, but this dear chap, Leyden … his blageur … it will be my death! What did you think of the 'rikishas?"
"We were delighted!" exclaimed Virginia.
"You have brought us into Japan!" cried Miss O'Connor. "I am sure that I must be dreaming. Are we really still in England, Count Dessalines?"
"It's the loveliest place that ever I saw!" said Kathleen.
"It is charming," replied Dessalines. "I confess that I hate to leave it, but when I do it will be to go home."
"To Africa?" queried Miss O'Connor.
"No," replied Dessalines shortly. "To Hayti."
"Oh, that is in the South Seas, is it not?" exclaimed Miss Kathleen, proud of her knowledge. "I had a schoolmate from there … a lovely French girl, but quite—quite—dark complexioned!" she ended, in a crumbling way.
"You are thinking of Tahiti, Miss O'Connor," said Dessalines, politely. "That is in the South Pacific and belongs to France. Hayti is in the West Indies and belongs to … Hayti!" he ended proudly.