No Defense Part 19

But those days when Biatt and I went treasure-s.h.i.+p hunting were not without their trials. If we had failed, then no more could this land have been home or resting-place for us. We should only have been sojourners with no name, in debt, in disgrace, a pair of braggart adventurers, who had worked a master-man of the island for a s.h.i.+p, and money and men, and had lost all except the s.h.i.+p! Though to be sure, the money was not a big thing--a few hundred pounds; but the s.h.i.+p was no flea-bite. It was a biggish thing, for it could be rented to carry sugar--it was, in truth, a sugar-s.h.i.+p of four hundred tons--but it never carried so big a cargo of sugar as it did on the day when that treasure-box was brought to the surface of the sea.

I'm bound to say this--one of the straightest men I ever met, liar withal, was Ca.s.sandro Biatt. He took his jewels and vanished up the seas in a flourish. He would not even have another try at the gold in the bowels of the s.h.i.+p.

"I've got plenty to fill my paunch, and I'll go while I've enough.

It's the men not going in time that get left in the end"--that's what he said.

And he was right; for other men went after the gold and got some of it, and were caught by French and South American pirates and lost all they had gained. Still another group went and brought away ten thousand pounds, and lost it in fighting with Spanish buccaneers.

So Biatt was right, and went away content, while I stayed here-- because I must--and bought the land and house where I have my great sugar-plantation. It is an enterprise of volume, and all would be well if I were normal in mind and body; but I am not. I have a past that stinks to heaven, as Shakespeare says, and I am an outlaw of the one land which has all my soul and name and heritage. Yes, that is what they have done to me--made a convict, an outlaw of me. I may live--but not in the British Isles; and if any man kills me, he is not liable to the law.

Men do not treat me badly here, for I have property and money, and this is a land where these two things mean more than anywhere else, even more than in a republic like that where you live. Here men live according to the law of the knife, fork, and bottle, yet nowhere in the world is there deeper national morality or wider faith or endurance. It is a land where the sea is master, where naval might is the chief factor, and weighs down all else.

Here the navies of the great powers meet and settle their disputes, and every being in the island knows that life is only worth what a hundred-ton brig-of-war permits. I have seen here in Jamaica the off-scourings of the French and Spanish fleets on parole; have seen them entering King's House like loyal citizens; have even known of French prisoners being used as guards at the entrance of King's House, and I have informed the chief justice of dismal facts which ought to have moved him. But what can you expect of a chief justice who need not be a lawyer, as this one is not, and has other means of earning income which, though not disloyal, are lowering to the status of a chief justice? And not the chief justice alone. I have seen French officers entertained at Government House who were guilty of shocking inhumanities and cruelties. The governor, Lord Mallow, is much to blame. On him lies the responsibility; to him must go the discredit. For myself, I feel his enmity on every hand. I suffer from his suggestions; I am the victim of his dark moods.

If I want a concession from a local council, his hand is at work against me; if I see him in the street, I get a courtesy tossed, as you would toss a bone to a dog. If I appear at the king's ball, which is open to all on the island who are respectable, I am treated with such disdain by the viceroy of the king that all the island is agog. I went one day to the king's ball the same as the rest of the world, and I went purposely in dress contrary to the regulations.

Here was the announcement of the affair in the Royal Gazette, which was reproduced in the Chronicle, the one important newspaper in the island:

KING'S HOUSE, October 27th, 1797.

KING'S BALL.

There will be a Ball given by His Honour the Lieutenant- Governor, on Tuesday evening, the 6th day of December next, in honour of

HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY.

To prevent confusion, Ladies and Gentlemen are requested to order their carriages to come by the Old Court House, and go off by the Long Room.

N.B.--No gentlemen can possibly be admitted in boots, or otherwise improperly dressed.

Well, in a spirit of mutiny--in which I am, in a sense, an expert-- I went in boots and otherwise "improperly dressed," for I wore my hair in a queue, like a peasant. What is more, I danced with a negress in the great quadrille, and thereby offended the governor and his lady aunt, who presides at his palace. It matters naught to me. On my own estate it was popular enough, and that meant more to me than this goodwill of Lord Mallow.

He does not spare me in his recitals to his friends, who carry his speech abroad. His rancour against me is the greater, I know, because of the wealth I got in the treasure-s.h.i.+p, to prevent which he tried to prohibit my leaving the island, through the withholding of a leave-ticket to me. His argument to the local authorities was that I had no rights, that I am a murderer and a mutineer, and confined to the island, though not on parole. He almost succeeded; but the man to whom I went, the big rich man intervened, successfully--how I know not--and I was let go with my permit- ticket.

What big things hang on small issues! If my Lord Mallow had prevented me leaving the island, I shouldn't now own a great plantation and three hundred negroes. I shouldn't be able to pay my creditors in good gold Portuguese half-johannes and Spanish doubloons, and be free of Spanish silver, and give no heed to the bitt, which, as you perhaps know, is equal to fivepence in British money, such as you and I used to spend when you were Queen of Ireland and I was your slave.

Then I wors.h.i.+pped you as few women have been wors.h.i.+pped in all the days of the world--oh, cursed spite of life and time that I should have been jailed for killing your bad father! Aye, he was a bad man, and he is better in his grave than out of it, but it puts a gulf between you and me which nothing will ever bridge--unless it should some day be known I did not kill him, and then, no doubt, it will be too late.

On my soul, I don't believe I put my sword into him; but if I did, he well deserved it, for he was worse than faithless to your mother, he was faithless to his country--he was a traitor! I did not tell that story of his treachery in court--I did not tell it because of you. You did not deserve such infamy, and the truth came not out at the trial. I, in my view, dared not, lest it might injure you, and you had suffered enough--nay, more than enough--through him.

I wonder how you are, and if you have changed--I mean in appearance.

I am sure you are not married; I should have felt it in my bones, if you were. No, no, my sweet la.s.s, you are not married. But think--it is more than seven long years since we met on the hills above Playmore, and you put your hand in mine and said we should be friends for all time. It is near three years since a letter came to me from you, and in the time I have made progress.

I did not go to the United States, as you asked me to do. Is it not plain I could not? My only course was to avoid you. You see, your mother knows the truth--knows that I was jailed for killing your father and her divorced husband. Therefore, the only way to do was as I did. I could not go where you were. There should be hid from you the fact that Erris Boyne was a traitor. This is your right, in my mind. Looking back, I feel sure I could have escaped jail if I had told what I knew of Erris Boyne; and perhaps it would have been better, for I should, no doubt, have been acquitted. Yet I could not have gone to you, for I am not sure I did not kill him.

So it is best as it is. We are as we are, and nothing can make all different for us. I am a dissolute planter of Jamaica who has s.n.a.t.c.hed from destiny a living and some riches. I have a bad name in the world. Yet by saving the king's navy from defeat out here I did a good turn for my country and the empire.

So much to the good. It brought me freedom from the rope and pardon for my chief offence. Then, in company with a rogue, I got wealth from the depths of the sea, and here I am in the bottom of my luxury, drunken and obscene--yes, obscene, for I permit my overseers and my manager to keep black women and have children by them. That I do not do so myself is no virtue on my part, but the virtue of a girl whom I knew in Connemara. I fill myself with drink. I have a bottle of madeira or port every night, and pints of beer or claret.

I am a creature of low habits, a man sodden with self-indulgence.

And when I am in drink, no slaver can be more cruel and ruthless.

Yet I am moderate in eating. The meals that people devour here almost revolt me. They eat like cormorants and drink like dry ground; but at my table I am careful, save with the bottle. This is a land of wonderful fruits, and I eat in quant.i.ties pineapple, tamarind, papaw, guava, sweet-sop, star-apple, granadilla, hog-plum, Spanish-gooseberry, and pindal-nut. These are native, but there are also the orange, lemon, lime, shaddock, melon, fig, pomegranate, cinnamon, and mango, brought chiefly from the Spanish lands of South America. The fruit-market here is good, Heaven knows, and I have my run of it. Perhaps that is why my drink does not fatten me greatly.

Yes, I am thin--thinner even than when you saw me last. How wonderful a day it was! You remember it, I'm sure.

We stood on the high hills, you and I, looking to the west. It was a true Irish day. A little in front of us, in the sky, were great cl.u.s.ters of clouds, and beyond them, as far as eye could see, were hills so delicately green, so spotted with settlements, so misty and full of glamour, and so cheerful with the western light. And the storm broke--do you remember it? It broke, but not on us. It fell on the middle of the prospect before us, and we saw beyond it the bright area of sunny country where men work and prophesy and slave, and pray to the ancient G.o.ds and acclaim the saints, and die and fructify the mould; where such as Christopher Dogan live, and men a thousand times lower than he. Christopher came to the jail the day I was released--with Michael Clones he came. He read me my bill of life's health--what was to become of me--the black and the white of it, the good and the bad, the fair and the foul. Even the good fortune of the treasure from the sea he foresaw, and much else that has not come to me, and, as I think, will never come; for it is too full a cup for me so little worthy of it.

It seems strange to me that I am as near to the United States here in Jamaica, or almost as near, as one in London is to one in Dublin; and yet one might as well be ten thousand leagues distant for all it means to her one loves in the United States. Yes, dear Sheila, I love you, and I would tear out the heart of the world for you. I bathe my whole being in your beauty and your charm. I hunger for you--to stand beside you, to listen to your voice, to dip my prison fingers into the pure cauldron of your soul and feel my own soul expand. I wonder why it is that to-day I feel more than I ever felt before the rare splendour of your person.

I have always admired you and loved you, always heard you calling me, as if from some sacred corner of a perfect world. Is it that yesterday's dissipation--yes, I was drunk yesternight, drunk in a new way. I was drunk with the thought of you, the longing for you.

I picked a big handful of roses, and in my mind gave them into your hands. And I thought you smiled and said:

"Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter Paradise." So I followed you to your home there in the Virginian country. It was a dream, all except the roses, and those I laid in front of the box where I keep your letters and a sketch I made of you when we were young and glad--when I was young and glad. For I am an old man, Sheila, in all that makes men old. My step is quick still, my eye is sharp, and my brain beats fast, but my heart is ancient. I am an ancient of days, without hope or pleasure, save what pleasure comes in thinking of one whom I wors.h.i.+p, yet must ever wors.h.i.+p from afar.

I wonder why I seem to feel you very near to-day! Perhaps it's because 'tis Christmas Day. I am not a religious man but Christmas is a day of memories.

Is it because of the past in Ireland? Am I only--G.o.d, am I only to be what I am for the rest of my days, a planter denied the pleasure of home by his own acts! Am I only a helpless fragment of a world of lost things?

I have no friends--but yes, I have. I have Michael Clones and Captain Ivy, though he's far away-aye, he's a friend of friends, is Captain Ivy. These naval folk have had so much of the world, have got the bearings of so many seas, that they lose all littleness, and form their own minds. They are not like the people who knew me in Ireland--the governor here is one of them--and who believe the worst of me. The governor--faugh, he was made for bigger and better things! He is one of the best swordsmen in the world, and he is out against me here as if I was a man of importance, and not a commonplace planter on an obscure river. I have no social home life, and yet I live in what is called a castle. A Jamaica castle has none of the marks of antiquity, chivalry, and distinction which castles that you and I know in the old land possess.

What is my castle like? Well, it is a squarish building, of bungalow type, set on a hill. It has stories and an attic, with a jutting dormer-window in the front of the roof; and above the lowest story there is a great verandah, on which the livingrooms and bedrooms open. It is commodious, and yet from a broad standpoint it is without style or distinction. It has none of those Corinthian pillars which your homesteads in America have. Yet there is in it a simple elegance. It has no carpets, but a s.h.i.+ning mahogany floor, for there are few carpets in this land of heat. It is a place where music and mirth and family voices would be fitting; but there are no family voices here, save such as speak with a negro lisp and oracularly.

I can hear music at this moment, and inside my castle. It comes from the irrepressible throats of my cook and my housemaid, who have more joy in the language of the plantation than you could have in the songs of St. Angelus. The only person in this castle out of spirits is its owner.

My castle is embowered in a loose grove of palms and acacias, pimento shrubs, splendid star-apples, and bully-trees, with wild lemon, mahogany, dogwood, Jerusalem-thorn, and the waving plumes of bamboo canes. There is nothing British in it--nothing at all. It stands on brick pillars, is reached by a stair of marble slabs, and has a great piazza on the front. You enter a fine, big hall, dark- you will understand that, though it is not so hot in Virginia, for the darkness makes for coolness. From the hall the bedrooms open all round. We are not so barbaric here as you might think, for my dining-room, which lies beyond the hall, with jalousies or movable blinds, exposed to all the winds, is comfortable, even ornate.

There you shall see waxlights on the table, and finger-gla.s.ses with green leaves, and fine linen and napkins, and plenty of silver--even silver wine-coolers, and beakers of fame and beauty, and flowers, flowers everywhere, and fruit of exquisite charm. I have to live in outward seeming as do my neighbours, even to keeping a black footman, gorgeously dressed, with bare legs.

Here at my window grows a wild aloe, and it is in flower. Once only in fifty years does this aloe flower, and I pick its sweet verdure now and offer it to you. There it lies, beside this letter that I am writing. It is typical of myself, for only once has my heart flowered, and it will be only once in fifty years. The perfume of the flower is like an everlasting bud from the last tree of Time.

See, my Sheila, your drunken, reckless lover pulls this sweet offering from his garden and offers it to you. He has no virtues; and yet he would have been a thousand times worse, if you had not come into his life. He had in him the seeds of trouble, the sproutings of shame, for even in the first days of his love there in Dublin he would not restrain himself. He drank, he played cards, he fought and went with bad company--not women, never that; but he kept the company of those through whom he came at last to punishment for manslaughter.

Yet, without you, who can tell what he might have been? He might have fallen so low that not the wealth of ten thousand treasure- boxes could give him even the appearance of honesty. And now he offers you what you cannot accept--can never accept--a love as deep as the life from which he came; a love that would throttle the world for you, that would force the doors of h.e.l.l to bring you what you want.

What do you want? I know not. Perhaps you have inherited the vast property to which you were the heir. If you have, what can you want that you have not means to procure? Ah, I have learned one thing, my friend 'one can get nearly everything with money. It is the hidden machinery which makes the world of success go round. With brains, you say? Yes, money and brains, but without the money brains seldom win alone. Do not I know? When I was in prison, with estate vanished and home gone and my father in his grave, who was concerned about me?

Only the humblest of all G.o.d's Irish people; but with them I have somehow managed to win back lost ground. I am a stronger man than I was in all that men count of value in the world. I have an estate where I work like any youth who has everything before him. I have nothing before me, yet I shall go on working to the end. Why?

Because I have some faculties which are more than bread and b.u.t.ter, and I must give them opportunity.

Yet I am not always sane. Sometimes I feel I could march out and sweep into the sea one of the towns that dot the coast of this island. I have the b.l.o.o.d.y thirst, as said the great Spanish conquistador. I would like--yes, sometimes I would like to sweep to a watery grave one of the towns that are a glory to this island, as Savanna la Mar was swept to oblivion in the year 1780 by a hurricane. You can still see the ruins of the town at the bottom of the sea--I have sailed over it in what is now the harbour, and there beneath, on the deep sands, lost to time and trouble, is the slain and tortured town of Savanna la Mar. Was the Master of the World angry that day when, with a besom of wind and a tidal wave, He swept the place into the sea? Or was it some devil's work while the Lord of All slept? As the Spanish say, Quien sabe?

Then there was that other enormous incident which made a man to be swallowed by an earthquake, then belched out again into the sea and picked up and restored to life again, and to live for many years.

Indeed, yes, it is so. His tombstone may be seen even at this day at Green Bay, Kingston. His name was Lewis Galdy, and he is held in high repute in this land.

I feel sometimes as Beelzebub may feel, and I long to do what Beelzebub might do as part of his mission. Sometimes a madness of revolt comes over me, and I long to ravage all the places I see, all the people I know--or nearly all. Why I do not have negroes thrashed and mutilated, as some do, I know not. Over against the southern sh.o.r.e in the parish of St. Elizabeth is an estate called Salem, owned, it is said, by an American, where the manager does such things. I am told that savageries are found there. There are too many absentee owners of land in this island, and the wrongs done by agents who have no personal honour at stake are all too plentiful. If I could, I would have no slavery, would set all the blacks free, making full compensation to the owners, and less to the absentee owners.

I look out on a world of summer beauty and of heat. I see the sheep in hundreds on the far hills of pasturage--sheep with short hair, small and sweet as any that ever came from the South Downs. I see the natives in their Madras handkerchiefs. I see upon the road some planter in his ketureen--a sort of sedan chair; I see a negro funeral, with its strange ceremony and its gumbies of African drums.

I see yam-fed planters, on their horses, making for the burning, sandy streets of the capital. I see the Scots gra.s.s growing five and six feet high, food unsurpa.s.sed for horses--all the foliage too --beautiful tropical trees and shrubs, and here and there a huge breeding-farm. Yet I know that out beyond my sight there is the region known as Trelawney, and Trelawney Town, the headquarters of the Maroons, the free negroes--they who fled after the Spanish had been conquered and the British came, and who were later freed and secured by the Trelawney Treaty. I know that now they are ready to rise, that they are working among the slaves; and if they rise the danger is great to the white population of the island, who are outnumbered ten to one.

The governor has been warned, but he gives no heed, or treats it all lightly, pointing out how few the Maroons are. He forgets that a few determined men can demoralize a whole state, can fight and murder and fly to dark coverts in the tropical woods, where they cannot be tracked down and destroyed; and, if they have made supporters of the slaves, what consequences may not follow!

What do the Maroons look like? They are ferocious and isolated, they are proud and overbearing, they are horribly cruel, but they are potent, and are difficult to reach. They are not small and meagre, but are big, brawny fellows, clothed in wide duck trousers and s.h.i.+rts, and they are well-armed--cutla.s.s, powder-horn, haversack, sling, shot-gun, and pouch for ball. They dress as the country requires, and they are strong fighters against our soldiers who are burdened with heavy muskets, and who defy the climate, with their stuffed coats, their weighty caps, and their tight cross- belts. The Maroons are not to be despised. They have brains, the insolence of freedom among natives who are not free, and vast cruelty. They can be mastered and kept in subjection, can be made allies, if properly handled; but Lord Mallow goes the wrong way about it all. He permits things that inflame the Maroons.