The Marquise of O and Other Stories (27 page)

Toni, who in the course of just a few minutes had witnessed this whole scene, stood as if thunderstruck, numbed into immobility. For a moment she considered waking the stranger, but for one thing she knew that because of the troops in the courtyard he could not possibly escape, and in addition she foresaw that he would seize his weapons and thus, with the negroes outnumbering him as they did, be struck down and killed at once. Indeed, the most terrible thought of all those that occurred to her was that the
unfortunate man, finding her standing beside his bed at such a time, would assume that she had betrayed him and, driven to despair by so disastrous an illusion, would ignore her advice and senselessly rush into the negro Hoango's arms. At this moment of unspeakable anguish her eyes fell upon a piece of rope which, by some unaccountable chance, was hanging from a hook on the wall. God himself, she thought, as she snatched it down, had put it there to save her and her lover. In a trice she wound it round the young man's hands and feet, knotting it firmly and ignoring his stirrings and resistance; then, when she had pulled the ends tight and tied them fast to the bedstead, she pressed a kiss on his lips and, delighted to have regained control of the situation for a moment, rushed out to meet Hoango who was already clattering up the stairs.

When the negro, still incredulous of the old woman's report about Toni, saw her emerging from the room which had been pointed out to him, he stopped in amazement and confusion and stood still in the corridor at the head of his troop of torchbearers and armed men. ‘Disloyal traitress!' he cried out, and turning to Babekan, who had advanced a few steps towards the stranger's door, he asked: ‘Has the stranger escaped?' Babekan, who had found the door open but not looked through it, returned to him with a face of fury, exclaiming: ‘The deceitful hussy! She has let him get away. Be quick and set guards on every exit, before he reaches open country!' ‘What's the matter?' asked Toni, staring with an air of astonishment at the old man and the negroes who stood round him. ‘The matter?' retorted Hoango, and so saying he seized her by her bodice and dragged her to the bedroom. ‘Are you all crazy?' cried Toni, repulsing the old negro, who stood rooted to the spot at the sight that met his eyes. ‘There lies your stranger, tied up in his bed by me; and by heaven, this is not the worst deed I have done in my lifetime!' So saying she turned her back on him and sat down at a table, apparently in tears. The
old man turned to her mother, who was standing on one side in confusion, and said: ‘Oh, Babekan, what tale is this you have been deceiving me with?' ‘Thank heavens!' replied the old woman, examining in some embarrassment the rope that held the stranger captive, ‘he is here, although I don't understand how all this came about.' The negro, sheathing his sword, went to the bed and asked the stranger who he was, where he had come from, and where he was going. But since the prisoner merely struggled convulsively to free himself and could utter no words except an anguished moan of ‘Oh, Toni! Oh, Toni!', Babekan spoke for him and told Hoango that he was a Swiss called Gustav von der Ried, and that he was on his way from the harbour town Fort Dauphin with a whole family of European dogs who were at this moment hiding in the mountain caves by the seagull pond. Hoango, seeing the girl sitting there disconsolately with her head propped on her hands, went over to her, called her his dear girl, patted her on the cheeks and asked her to forgive him for the over-hasty suspicion of her that he had expressed. The old woman, who had also gone up to her daughter, stood with her hands on her hips, shaking her head. ‘But why' she asked her, ‘did you rope the stranger to the bed, when he had no idea of the danger he was in?' Toni, actually weeping with distress and rage, turned suddenly to her mother and answered: ‘Because you are blind and deaf! Because he knew perfectly well the danger that was hanging over him! Because he was trying to get away; because he had asked me to help him escape; because he was plotting against your own life, and would quite certainly have carried out his intention before daybreak if I had not tied him up while he was asleep.' The old negro caressed and comforted the girl and ordered Babekan to say no more on the subject. He ordered two of his musketeers to come forward with their guns and execute immediately upon the stranger the law to which his life had fallen forfeit; but Babekan whispered secretly
to him: ‘No, for heaven's sake, Hoango!' She took him aside and pointed out to him that the stranger, before they executed him, must write a letter asking his family to join him, so that by this means the family could be enticed into the plantation, whereas it would be in many respects dangerous to attack them in the forest. Hoango, taking into account the probability that the family would not be unarmed, approved this suggestion; since it was now too late to have the agreed letter written, he detailed two of his men to guard the white fugitive, and after taking the further precaution of examining the ropes and even, since he found them too loosely tied, summoning two or three of his followers to tighten them, he left the room with his whole troop, and before very long the whole household had retired to bed.

But Toni had only been acting a part when the old man had grasped her again by the hand and she had said good night to him and retired to her room; as soon as all was quiet in the house she got up again, slipped through a back door and out into the open country, and with the wildest despair in her heart ran along the road that intersected the main highway, towards the place from which Herr Strömli's family would be coming. For the glances full of contempt which the stranger had cast at her from his bed had pierced her heart like knife wounds; a burning feeling of bitterness now mingled with her love for him, and she exulted in the prospect of dying in this enterprise designed to save his life. Fearing to miss the family, she stood waiting under a pine tree past which they would all have to come if they had accepted the invitation; and sure enough, as agreed, the first ray of dawn had scarcely appeared on the horizon when the voice of the boy Nanky, who was acting as their guide, could be heard from some way off among the trees.

The procession consisted of Herr Strömli and his wife, the latter riding on a mule; his five children, two of whom, Adelbert and Gottfried, young men of eighteen and seventeen,
were walking beside the mule, three servants and two maids, one of whom was riding the other mule with an infant at her breast; twelve persons in all. They advanced slowly along the path, which was criss-crossed with tree-roots, and reached the trunk of the pine; whereupon Toni, very quietly in order not to give alarm, stepped out from the shadow of the tree and called to the procession to stop. The boy at once recognized her, and when she asked where Herr Strömli was he eagerly introduced her to the elderly head of the family, while men and women and children surrounded her. She addressed Herr Strömli in resolute tones, interrupting his words of greeting. ‘Noble sir!' she said, ‘the negro Hoango has quite unexpectedly returned to the settlement with his whole troop of followers. You cannot enter it now without exposing your lives to the utmost danger; indeed your cousin, who was unfortunate enough to be admitted to the house, is doomed unless you take your weapons and follow me to the plantation, where the negro Hoango is holding him prisoner!' ‘Merciful heavens!' exclaimed the whole family in alarm; and the mother, who was ill and exhausted from the journey, fainted and fell from her mule to the ground. While the maidservants, called by Herr Strömli, ran up to help their mistress, Toni was besieged with questions by the young men, and fearing the boy Nanky she took Herr Strömli and the other men aside. Not withholding her tears of shame and remorse, she told them all that had happened: how matters had stood at the moment of the young man's arrival at the house, and how her private conversations with him had quite incomprehensibly changed everything; what she had done, almost mad with fear, when the negro had come back, and how she was resolved to risk her life to free him again from the trap in which she herself had caught him. ‘My weapons!' cried Herr Strömli, hastening to his wife's mule and taking down his musket. And as his stalwart sons Adelbert and Gottfried and the three sturdy servants were also arming
themselves, he said: ‘Cousin Gustav has saved the life of more than one of us: now it is our turn to do him the same service.' Thereupon he lifted his wife, who had recovered herself, back on to the mule, took care to have the boy Nanky's hands tied so that he would be a kind of hostage, and sent all his womenfolk and children back to the seagull pond guarded only by his thirteen-year-old son Ferdinand who was also armed. Then he questioned Toni, who had taken a helmet and a pike for her own use, about the numerical strength of the negroes and how they were positioned in the courtyard, and after promising her to do his utmost in this enterprise to spare both Hoango and her mother, courageously placed himself, trusting in God, at the head of his small company and began, with Toni as guide, to advance towards the settlement.

As soon as they had all crept in by the back gate, Toni pointed out to Herr Strömli the room in which Hoango and Babekan lay asleep; and while he and his men silently entered the unlocked house and took possession of all the negroes' firearms, she slipped off round to the stable in which Nanky's five-year-old half-brother Seppy was sleeping. For Nanky and Seppy, Hoango's bastard children, were very dear to the old negro, especially the latter, whose mother had recently died; and even if they were to succeed in liberating her captured lover, it would clearly still be very difficult for them to get back to the seagull pond and from there to Port-au-Prince, where she intended to escape with them. She therefore rightly concluded that it would be very advantageous for the company of fugitives to be in possession of both the little boys, as a form of guarantee for their safety should they be pursued by the negroes. She succeeded, without being seen, in lifting the boy out of his bed and carrying him in her arms, half asleep and half awake, over into the main building. Meanwhile Herr Strömli and his men, as stealthily as possible, had entered Hoango's bedroom: but Hoango and Babekan, instead of being in bed
as he expected to find them, had been wakened by the noise and were both standing in the middle of the room, although half naked and helpless. Herr Strömli, musket in hand, shouted to them to surrender or he would kill them; but Hoango, instead of replying, snatched a pistol from the wall and fired a wild shot at the company, grazing Herr Strömli's head. This was the sign for the latter's followers to attack him furiously; after Hoango had fired a second shot which went through the shoulder of one of the servants, a blow from a cutlass wounded him in the hand, and both he and Babekan were overpowered and lashed with ropes to the frame of a large table. In the meantime Hoango's negroes, twenty or more in number and sleeping in the outbuildings, had been wakened by the shots, and hearing old Babekan screaming in the house, had rushed out and were furiously trying to force their way into it to regain their weapons. In vain Herr Strömli, whose wound was insignificant, stationed his men at the windows and tried with musket fire to check the advance of the negro rabble; heedless of the fact that two of them already lay dead in the courtyard, they were about to fetch axes and crowbars in order to break down the door of the house which Herr Strömli had bolted, when Toni, trembling with apprehension and carrying the boy Seppy in her arms, entered Hoango's room. Herr Strömli, greatly relieved to see her, snatched the boy from her and, drawing his hunting knife, turned to Hoango and vowed that he would instantly kill his son if he did not call out to his negroes and order them to withdraw. Hoango, whose strength was broken by the sword-wound in three fingers of his hand, and whose own life would have been in danger if he had refused, consented after a moment's consideration to do this, and asked them to lift him from the ground. Led by Herr Strömli, he stood at the window and taking a handkerchief in his left hand he waved it and shouted to his negroes in the yard, telling them that he had no need of their help to save his life, and
that they were to leave the door untouched and get back into their outhouses. This brought about a lull in the fighting; at Herr Strömli's insistence, Hoango sent a negro who had been taken prisoner in the house out into the yard to repeat his order to some of his men who were still standing there discussing what to do; and since the blacks, although they could make neither head nor tail of the matter, could not disregard this official communication, they abandoned their enterprise, for which everything was already prepared, and gradually, although grumbling and cursing, retired to their sleeping-quarters. Herr Strömli had the boy Seppy's hands tied up in front of Hoango and told the latter that his intention was simply and solely to free the officer, his cousin, from his imprisonment on the plantation, and that if no obstacles were put in the way of their escape to Port-au-Prince, then neither his, Hoango's, life nor those of his children would be in any danger and the two boys would be returned to him. Toni approached Babekan and, full of an emotion which she could not suppress, tried to give her her hand in farewell, but the old woman vehemently repulsed her. She called her a contemptible traitress and, bound as she was to the legs of the table, twisted herself round and predicted that God's vengeance would strike her even before she could enjoy the fruits of her vile deed. Toni replied: ‘I have not betrayed you; I am a white girl and betrothed to this young man whom you are holding prisoner; I belong to the race of those with whom you are openly at war and I will be answerable before God for having taken their side.' Herr Strömli then set a guard on the negro Hoango, having again as a precaution had the ropes secured round him and firmly fixed to the doorposts; he had the servant who was lying unconscious on the ground with a shattered shoulder-blade lifted and carried away; and after finally telling Hoango that in a few days' time he would have both children, Nanky as well as Seppy, fetched back from Sainte Luce, where the first French outposts were
stationed, he took Toni by the hand; overcome by a variety of emotions she could not forbear weeping as, with Babekan and old Hoango hurling curses after them, he led her from the bedroom.