the street of the precipice hung literally between sea and sky; almost as steep as a ladder, so steep that the causeway here and there broke into flights of steps, just as a river breaks into waterfalls. you saw, looking upwards, far above you, the green of the high woods, and looking downwards, far below you the harbour, blue at noon and emerald in the morning. nothing could be more beautiful in its way than this old, narrow, unfashionable street during those hours in the morning when the harbour, gauze-green and ghostly, gazed up as through a well of twilight at the woods, black-green against the brightening sky.
old as the time of josephine, the street of the precipice held in these morning hours the twilight of romance. the murmurs of the sea below and the woods above, the trickling and tinkling of the gouyave water flowing down its runnels seemed voices speaking of the past, times long gone, women vanished, men once brave—now ghosts.
in the full blaze of noon, the old street shone out bright with colours and moving with people; then, as the hour of siesta approached, it gradually emptied, the great heat of afternoon seemed to dry up its stream of life, the song of the calendeuse over her work, the note of a guitar, voices from the harbour side seemed less sounds than echoes of sound, green lizards slipped from shadow to123 shadow or basked openly in the heat. then as the sun declined, the old street began to speak again and live, the sunset rushed up it like a torchbearer, setting fire to roof and gable, yellow house wall, coloured garments of women, up, up, lighting the woods far above—lighting the stars and leaving them burning and leaping in the dusky blue.
this was the children’s hour. you could hear their voices as they played, told their stories, sang their songs, whilst the blue above became more dark, more definite, more filled with stars.
it was here in this old street that marie lived with her aunt, man’m charles, in a house on the right as you went up from the harbour and close to the passageway leading to the rue buonaparte.
born sixteen years ago up at the village of morne rouge, she had paid for life the greatest payment that life can extract from a human being. she had lost her mother. her father, who owned the only shop in the village, had been fairly prosperous in a small way; besides the shop he owned a small farm, and three times a week he would come into the market at st. pierre to sell his produce, leaving the shop to the care of his sister, ti finotte, a woman of forty, a woman once tall, stately, beautiful as any woman in martinique, but now a cripple, broken down, slain by hard work. she had been a porteuse.
the porteuse of martinique is a race apart; she is in reality a peddler, selling everything from fruit to ribbons. she carries her tray upon her head and her goods upon the tray, and her load would break an englishman down were he to carry it half a dozen miles. she thinks nothing of it. wonderful is not the word for the work done by these women, graceful, sometimes slightly built, often beautiful, who, with their loads perfectly balanced, bare-footed,124 dressed in clothing slight as the clothing of the ancient greeks, will travel fifty miles in a day from village to village, over hill and dale, under the tropical sun, joyous as children, pleasant, sweet to look upon, yet fated to die at last—from overwork!
yet they do not complain, nor do they look back on their lives with bitterness; hard though the work is, it is free from constraint of walls and houses and masters; it is lonely passing from village to village amidst the mountains, but they have the companionship of sun and wind and distance. so ti finotte, though she was dying from the hardships of life and though she loved little marie, made no opposition when marie’s father declared his intention of making a porteuse of the child.
marie was four years of age when he came to this decision, and he came to it because he could see no better future for her. since the birth of marie he had fallen upon evil days; wishing to extend his farm, he had borrowed money, and he had borrowed it from sagesse, then a rising power in st. pierre; a bad crop and a tornado crippled him in this new development of his business, he had to apply to sagesse for another loan, and from that dated his ruin.
things always worked in a diabolical manner in favour of sagesse: if he lent a man money something was sure to happen to prevent that man paying the interest or working off the debt; then, when his business had been seized by the money-lender things would take a turn, trade would revive, crops would be splendid—and the benefit would fall to sagesse.
it was so with the father of marie. the year after his property had fallen into the hands of the money-lender a wave of prosperity passed over martinique. he still125 lived at morne rouge, the paid servant of sagesse, overseeing the little farm that once was his own, he saw the canes growing so heavy and so tall that the harvesters could scarcely make way amidst them, the bananas bending beneath the weight of their huge yellow clusters, yet he did not grumble; it was fate, and he made the best of the business for himself and marie.
when marie was fifteen and old enough to begin the business of porteuse, ti finotte died, and marie came to live with the aunt in the street of the precipice and to act as porteuse in the employ of m. sartine, the dealer in foulards, ribbons, madras handkerchiefs, and women’s apparel, whose shop was in the rue victor hugo. the death of ti finotte had stricken the child to the heart, for she was still but a child despite her fifteen years and her figure, tall, straight, supple—almost the figure of a woman; the change from the sun-blaze of morne rouge to the shadowy old street of the precipice had seemed part of the mournful change that had come in her life with the death of the woman who had been a second mother to her; her aunt, man’m charles, a calendeuse by trade, was a stern woman, religious, a devotee, and without much heart or sympathy for young people—yet in a fortnight the girl had adapted herself to her new life and had come to love the old street, its voices, its colours, its dimness, and its mystery.
it had told her its secret. a secret that could only be told to a poet or a child. man’m charles knew nothing of this secret, the traders and hawkers, the brazier who lived by the passageway into the rue buonaparte, the baker whose shop was opposite the brazier’s, knew nothing of it. for them it was just a street, for marie it was a mystery half understood. the old houses, the126 shadows, the steps moss-grown and tread-worn, the twilight of early morning, the whispering of the gouyave water, all these spoke to her, telling her things—things about the past, things about the future, hints of the mystery of life—as though the people who had once lived there and loved there had left some voice behind them, some echo of their story.
three days a week, early in the morning, just as pelée was showing hard against the dawn, she would leave for m. sartine’s, receive her tray of goods and start on her journey, carrying it as though it were a thing of no weight.
to see her life and work, one must follow her as, leaving the rue victor hugo, up through the steep and twilit streets, she passes, moving as no woman can move who does not walk bare-footed, passing with the silence of a ghost and the grace of atalanta, giving good-day to every one she meets, friends or strangers, up, up, past the rue peysette, the rue petit versailles, till the houses begin to disappear and the road turns from a street to a country road set on either side with balisiers, gigantic ferns, whispering canes; scented with damp earth and the perfume of the night jasmine.
up here, were she to look back, she would see the city at her feet still twilit and half asleep, the bay blue but still filled with night, and beyond the shadow of the island, away to the west, the sea sparkling in the sunlight.
but she does not look back nor turn her head. her eyes, ever on the watch for the dreaded fer de lance, are fixed on the roadway before her.
every moment, the sky above is becoming more filled with light, and as she climbs it seems to her that she is climbing to the sunlight; now, the road, more level, is turning the great shadow of pelée, and before her the twilight of morning is turning to the blue of day.
127 the road takes a sharp bend, she turns it, and she is enveloped in a flame of sunshine, the warm blowing trade wind which the mountains shut off from st. pierre blows in her face. zombis, snakes, evil spirits, all the fears that haunt darkness, are banished by the sunlight, blown away by the wind.
away up here, so high above everything, she seems the only person in the world; there is not a soul in sight; cane fields, valleys, mornes, mountains purple and blue, the dazzling azure sea—distances and colours lie before her. silence and sunlight.
she always pauses here as one pauses when one meets a friend. the greatest poet, the meanest man, would do the same in face of this supreme loveliness.
as she looks from the blue sea to the green mornes and from the mornes to the blue mountains over which la trace, the great white highroad, passes like a narrow white ribbon, she talks to it all in an undertone. she knows nothing of where the sea leads to, she knows nothing of the sun, or whether the earth moves round him or he round the earth, she is ignorant of these things as the prehistoric woman. that is perhaps why she understands it all so well, this great picture to which she speaks in an undertone, caressingly as a child speaks to its mother.
then the road draws her back again and she passes on with her burden on her head, walking swiftly and easily, straight as a flame, a beautiful picture against the whispering canes that line the road, the palmistes, and the ferns.
her journey may be as far as grande anse, she may be going to sell her goods at calabasse, at marigot, or vauclin; far or near, it is all the same to her.
at noon, she is travelling still; across those blue hills in the torrid light of midday you will find her passing128 on her way; she has sold some of her goods, and there are coins in the little bag at her girdle. but she is not thinking of them. of what is she thinking? ah, if you were to lead her life, always active, always in the open air, you would know that thought can live in suspension. not the suspension of sleep, but of half slumber, wide awake to all external things, yet dwelling on none especially. she would see, as she went, the hills change as the road turned, far mountains vanish as the road dipped, and reappear as it rose again, distant vistas of blue sea peeping at her between the mornes, fields of green cane waving to the breeze, woods breaking into view; and the woods would push the sea aside and the cane fields take the place of the woods, and the green mornes of the cane fields, and the sea of the mornes. so full was she of life and energy that movement, so far from tiring her, was more pleasant than rest, mesmerising her, lulling her, till at times it almost seemed as though she were not moving at all, that it was the scenery which was moving, hills, fields, mountains, and sea, shifting, altering, giving place one to the other to peep at her on her journey.
in a year she was known all over the island. the negroes cutting the cane would pause to look at marie of morne rouge, the prettiest porteuse in martinique, and give her good-day; at the villages where she called with her wares, she did a better trade than any other porteuse; her prettiness had little to do with this success, for her customers were women, but she had a way with her, an innocence, a sweetness, that made her pleasant as a rose.
needless to say, in martinique, where hearts are as inflammable as tinder, she had admirers, scores, hundreds—but she had no lover.
when young men came to talk to her they found themselves129 at a loss before this girl who spoke to them eye to eye, frankly, freely, as a friend might speak to a friend. she did not seem to know that she was a girl; other girls—all the girls in st. pierre of her age—had lovers, visions of love, visions of cupids with tinsel wings, wedding wreaths, all the frippery that goes to make marriage the woman’s pageant. marie had no visions of these things. her mind was of that rare order of woman’s mind which holds all the love of heaven in solution, but no image of love till the man she is fated to meet meets her, glances at her, speaks to her, and at a stroke makes her his forever.
these are the women who are the heroines of the real tragedies of life—and of the immortal tales of love.