Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/100

topped against the burning blue of the sky, its old French houses looked down upon a bay of sapphire rarely stirred by the great winds and heavy seas that torment the northeastern side of the island.

"I lived in the Rue Victor Hugo, a street that traversed the whole length of the town, and I had only to step on to my balcony to look down on a crowd more astonishing than any dream of the Arabian Nights. Nearly all creoles of all tints from the octoroon to the chabine, the women gay as tropical birds; idlers, loungers, chatterers, street-singers, itinerant sellers of fruit, fish, pastry and heaven knows what; a moving market; a business scene, touched with the charm of the unreal.

"I had three rooms all on the same floor and for personal servant, Baidaux, a young man, a creole, handsome, dark-eyed, serious and entirely devoted to me; he bought everything and I was never robbed and always sure of the finest mangoes, sapotas and avocats in the market; his coffee was the best in Martinique, and he was always there when wanted. Except on Sundays. It seems he had a girl; she lived away over beyond Morne Rouge toward Grande Anse, a town on the seaboard to the northwest and twenty miles from St. Pierre; her name was Finotte; and every Sunday he would vanish before dawn, taking his way on foot by the great national road La Trace, which, winding like a ribbon over hill and dale, by morne and mountain, cocoa plantation and cane field, took him to Finotte.

"But always on Monday morning at eight o'clock he would be in my room pulling up my blind and handing me my morning coffee.

"'Bonjour, M'sieur.'

"'Bonjour, Baidaux—and how is Finotte?'

"I dreaded Finotte and the day surely to come when marriage would join them and separate me from Baidaux.

"Life has many losses; not the least is the loss of a good servant, but Baidaux was not of the precipitate sort; he was laying by and building his nest as a bird might build, only with francs instead of sticks and feathers. I judged from what he said that it would be at least a year before the happy day—and unhappy for me—when Finotte would come to St. Pierre to take her place in that little shop in the Rue du Morne Mirail which he had marked down as their future home.

"Ah, well! One Monday morning he did not return; on the Wednesday he returned, but it was not Baidaux—it was a much older man.

"'Bonjour, M'sieur.'

"'Bonjour, Baidaux—and how is Finotte?'

"He put up his hands without a word; then I knew she was dead.

"He made the coffee as usual and put out my clothes.

"Yes, she was dead—it all came out gradually; he had arrived to find her dying—she was dead and buried. Of what had she died? He did not know. She was dead. He had seen her buried and had returned. That was all.

"He went on with his work. There was nothing else to do except die, and he was not of that sort, and time passed till a month had slipped away and the carnival came and passed with its rioting and drums sharply cut off by Lent. Then—it might have been a month later—one evening I found him at the street door talking to an old woman, a capresse, very old and wrinkled, her head bound up in a foulard turban. It was Maman Robert, the mother of Finotte.

"He told me that, speaking with a look in his eyes I had never seen before, a wild, far-gazing look disturbing as his manner; for he seemed like a person cut off from all reality and he said that he must go away, leave me