Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/101

for a time, but that he would return soon—perhaps.

"He left that night, and though I did not follow him I knew quite well that his road was the great national road that had led him so often toward Grand Anse and the home of his girl.

"You know at St. Pierre everyone knew everyone—the washerwomen by the river Roxalanne—the fruit-sellers in the market by the fort—the old women selling carossoles at the street corners—they were like a big family as far as rumors were concerned: a story started at dawn in the Rue du Morne Mirail would travel down to the Rue Victor Hugo by noon and be on the front by night, and you may be sure that the story of Baidaux wasn't slow in traveling, but no repercussion of it came back to me till one day a porteuse in from the hills stopped to speak to my old landlady, Maman Jean, and gave her word of Baidaux.

"I must tell you a porteuse is—alas! was—a sort of girl commercial traveler; barefooted and with a great bundle on her head she would take goods from the city all over the island through the country parts, and this girl just in from the northwest had seen Baidaux near Grande Anse. He was looking very wild, living on the plantation of a creole named Jean Labat and—it was a pity.

"Those were her words.

"Yes, it was a pity, a thousand pities when I remembered him as he had been, so bright, intelligent, well-groomed and efficient, and he had been fond of me.

"The fondness of a good servant for his master, and conversely, is a thing apart from all other forms of attachment, and those four words of the porteuse seemed somehow intended for me, as one might say, 'Can you do nothing for him?"

"I took them to heart and determined to go over to Grande Anse, hunt about, try to find him and if possible bring him back to himself and my service. I started next day, taking with me a bag with a few things and hiring a two-horse trap.

"It was only twenty miles from St. Pierre to Grande Anse—all the same a long journey; for the great national road winds over hill and dale and it is squealing brakes and laboring horses a good part of the way, but no road in the world is just like that for scenery; the purple mornes and blue distances, the fields of cane and the high woods of balisier and palm and mahogany all lie beneath a blinding light that has got in it something of the mournful nature of darkness.

"Here, indeed, to the European mind, is a land of things unknown, half known, and dimly suspected, for under this riot of color and light lies the poison of the manchaneel apple and the centipede and the fer de lance, the poison of plants dealing in death, delirium or madness and old superstitions from the shores of far-off Africa transplanted but growing firmly.

"Grand Anse is a little town lying right on the coast. Here there are great cliffs hundreds of feet in height and the beach is of black sand and nearly always alive with a thunderous surf. The cliffs form two promontories, the Pointe du Rochet and the Pointe de Croche Mort. Such is Grande Anse, and I put up at the chief inn of the town and later that day began to make inquiries about Baidaux.

"No one knew of him.

"He was interesting to St. Pierre folk because he had been born there, but here he was of no interest. Then I asked about Maman Robert, the mother of Finotte.

"Ah, yes, Finotte, she who had died some months ago. Well, she and her mother had lived in the little hamlet