· · ·
In Port au Prince, on the French part of the Island of Santo Domingo, at the start of this century,* when the blacks slaughtered the whites, there lived on the plantation of Guillaume de Villeneuve a dreadful old Negro named Congo Hoango. Originally from the Gold Coast of Africa, this man, who in his youth appeared to be of a faithful and honest nature, having saved his master from drowning on a crossing to Cuba, was rewarded by the latter with endless kindnesses. Not only did Monsieur Guillaume grant him his freedom on the spot, and upon their return to Santo Domingo, pass to him the title to a house and yard; a few years thereafter, contrary to the custom of the land, he even named him overseer of his considerable land holdings, and because Congo Hoango did not wish to marry again, gave him, in lieu of a bride, an old mulatto woman named Babekan from his plantation with whom the planter was closely related by marriage through his late wife. Indeed, when Congo Hoango turned sixty, he let him retire with a generous pension and topped off his magnanimity by including a bequest to him in his will; and yet all these marks of gratitude did not spare Monsieur Villeneuve from the wrath of this murderous man. In the course of the widespread excesses that flared up on these plantations in the wake of the ill-considered steps taken by the Convention National,* Congo Hoango was one of the first to take up arms, and mindful of the tyranny that had snatched him from his native land, put a bullet through his master’s head. He set fire to the house, in which the master’s wife along with their three children and all the other whites on the estate had taken refuge, lay waste to the entire plantation, to which the heirs who lived in Port au Prince might have laid claim, and once all the Villeneuve holdings had been reduced to ashes, set out for neighboring lands with the band of Negroes he had gathered and armed to aid his brothers in the fight against the whites. Sometimes he lay in wait for the itinerant armed bands of Frenchmen who crisscrossed the land; sometimes in broad daylight he attacked the planters themselves who holed up on their estates and he cut down every living soul he found. In his inhuman bloodlust, he even forced Babekan and her daughter, a fifteen year old mestizo* named Toni, to take part in these grim doings that made him feel young again; and since the main house of the plantation in which he now resided loomed as a lone habitation abutting the highway, and in his absence whites or Creole fugitives would often knock at the door, seeking food or refuge, he instructed the women to delay these white dogs, as he called them, with sustenance and acts of kindness, until his return. In such cases, Babekan, who suffered from consumption as a consequence of a brutal punishment she had endured in her youth, enlisted the aid of young Toni, who, on account of her yellowish complexion, proved particularly useful in these deadly deceptions, to which end the mother dressed up the daughter in her best clothes; she encouraged her not to spare the strangers any tender caresses, except for the most intimate, which were forbidden on pain of death; and when Congo Hoango returned with his troops from their bloody incursions, the poor souls who’d allowed themselves to be taken in by Toni’s charms were promptly put to death.
Now everyone knows that in 1803, as General Dessalines† advanced on Port au Prince with an army of 30,000 Negroes, every white-skinned soul gathered in that place to resist. For the city represented the last hope of French power on the island, and if it fell all remaining whites were doomed to die. So it came to pass in the darkness of one stormy night, while old Hoango was off with his band of blacks breaking through French lines to bring the general a shipment of gunpowder and lead, that someone knocked on the back door of his house. Old Babekan, who had already gone to bed, got up, and with nothing but a frock wrapped around her hips, opened the window and asked: “Who’s there?” “For the love of Maria and all the saints,” the stranger whispered, pressing up against the wall beneath the window, “just answer this one question before I identify myself!” Whereupon he stretched his hand out in the dark of night to grab hold of the old woman’s hand: “Are you a Negress?” To which Babekan replied: “Well, you’re definitely a white, if you’d rather peer into the pitch black night than into the eyes of a Negress! Come in,” she added, “and have no fear; this is the home of a mulatto, and the only other person left in the house is my daughter, a mestizo!” At that she shut the window, as if she intended to go straight down and open the door for him; but instead, under the pretense of not immediately being able to find the key, grabbing some clothes that she hastily snatched out of the closet, she dashed upstairs to wake her daughter. “Toni!” she said. “What is it, mother?” “Quick!” she said. “Get up and get dressed! Take these, a white petticoat and stockings! A white man on the run is at the door and begs entry!” “A white?” Toni asked, as she roused herself in bed. She took the clothes the old woman held out and said: “Is he alone, Mother? And do we have nothing to fear if we let him in!” “Nothing, nothing at all!” the old woman replied, lighting a lamp. “He’s unarmed and alone, and trembling in every limb with the fear that we may assault him!” With these words, while Toni got up and pulled on frock and stockings, Babekan lit the big lantern that stood in a corner of the room, hastily bound the girl’s hair up in a bun, in the local manner, and after fastening her pinafore, plunked a hat on her head, put the lantern in her hand and bid her go down to the yard to let the stranger in.
Meanwhile, a boy named Nanky, whom Hoango had fathered out of wedlock with a Negress, and who slept with his brother Seppy in the storehouse next door, was awakened by the barking of some yard dogs; and since he saw a man standing alone on the back stoop of the house, he promptly hastened, as he was instructed to do in such cases, to the back gate, through which said person had entered, to lock it behind him. The stranger, who had no idea what to make of all this, asked the boy, whom he recognized with a shock upon drawing near as black: “Who lives on this estate?” And upon the latter’s reply: “Since the death of Monsieur Villeneuve, ownership fell to the Negro Hoango,” the white man was just about to knock the boy down, grab the key to the back gate from him and take flight, when Toni stepped outside, lantern in hand. “Quick,” she said, reaching for his hand and pulling him toward the door, “in here!” She took pains while saying this to tilt the light so that its glow lit up her face. “Who are you?” cried the stranger, stunned for more than one reason, taking in the sight of her lovely young figure. “Who lives in this house, in which, as you maintain, I am to find safe refuge?” “No one, I swear by the light of the sun,” said the girl, “but my mother and me!” and made every effort to pull him in. “No one!” cried the stranger, taking a step back and tearing his hand free. “Did that boy not just tell me that a Negro named Hoango resides here?” “I tell you, no!” said the girl, stamping her foot impatiently, “and even if the house belongs to a ruffian of that name, he’s out at the moment and a good ten miles away!” Whereupon with both her hands she drew the stranger in, instructed the boy to tell no one of his presence, and after shutting the door, took the stranger’s hand and led him up the steps to her mother’s room.
“So,” said the old woman, who had overheard the entire conversation from her perch at the window, and had noticed in the gleam of the light that he was an officer, “what are we to make of the rapier dangling at the ready under your arm? At the risk of our own lives,” she added, putting on her spectacles, “we granted you safe haven in our house. Did you enter, in the manner of your countrymen, to repay our kindness with betrayal?” “Heaven forbid!” replied the stranger, who strode directly in front of her chair. He reached for the old woman’s hand and pressed it against his heart, and after casting a few furtive glances around the room, unbuckled the blade which he wore at the hip, and said: “You see before you the most miserable of men, but not an ingrate and a cad!” “Who are you?” asked the old woman; she shoved a chair in his direction with her foot and ordered the girl to go to the kitchen and prepare him as good a supper as she could hastily throw together. The stranger replied: “I am an officer in the French forces, although, as you yourself will have noticed by my accent, not a Frenchman; I am Swiss by birth and my name is Gustav von der Ried. Oh, if only I had never left my native land and traded it for this godless isle! I come from Fort Dauphin, where, as you know, all the whites have been slaughtered, and it is my intention to reach Port au Prince before General Dessalines and his troops manage to surround and take the city.” “From Fort Dauphin!” cried the old woman. “And you, with the color of your face, managed to make it in one piece such a long way through a country overrun by angry blacks?” “God and all his saints protected me!” the stranger replied. “And I am not alone, my good little mother; my traveling companions, whom I left some distance from here, include my uncle, a noble old gentleman, with his wife and five children; not to mention several servants and maids who belong to the family; a party of twelve in all, I’ve had to drag them along with me on unspeakably difficult night marches, with the help of two tired old pack mules, as we could not show ourselves on the highway by day.” “Good heavens!” cried the old woman with a sympathetic shake of the head, taking a pinch of tobacco. “Where at the moment are your fellow travelers holed up?” “To you,” the stranger replied after a moment’s hesitation, “to you I can confide; in your complexion I can see reflected a shimmer of my own. The family, if you must know, is camped out in the wild near the seagull pond at the edge of the forest; hunger and thirst compelled us to stop there the day before yesterday. Last night we sent out the servants on a fruitless attempt to obtain a crust of bread and a swallow of wine from the locals; fear of being captured and killed kept them from risking contact, consequently I myself had to set out this morning to try my luck at the risk of my own life. Heaven led me, lest I be mistaken,” he added, pressing the old woman’s hand in his, “to kindhearted people who don’t share the murderous hatred that has gripped the people of this island. Please be so kind, in exchange for ample payment, as to fill a few baskets with food and drink; we still have five day’s journey to Port au Prince, and if you fetch us the provisions to reach this city we will be eternally grateful to you as the people who saved our lives.” “Yes, this mad hatred!” the old woman feigned sympathy. “Is it not as if the hands of the same body, or the teeth of the same mouth, were to rise up against each other just because the two were not made alike? What am I, whose father hails from Santiago on the island of Cuba, to make of that shimmer of light that flashes from my face at daybreak? And what does my daughter, who was conceived and born in Europe, have to do with the fact that the daylight hue of that part of the world is reflected in her face?” “What?” cried the stranger. “Do you mean that you, whose every facial feature belies your mulatto blood and your African ancestry, that you and this lovely young mestizo who opened the door for me, are doomed along with us Europeans?” “By God,” replied the old woman, plucking the spectacles from her nose, “do you think that the meager possessions we’ve managed to scrape together by the sweat of our brow over back-breaking miserable years haven’t caught the fancy of that murderous hell-bent band of thieves? If we were not able by craftiness and the very embodiment of the artful ways necessity teaches the meek to survive their persecution, the shadow of kinship that covers our face wouldn’t do the trick, I assure you!” “That’s not possible!” the stranger cried; “and who on this island is after you?” “The owner of this house,” said the old woman, “the black man Congo Hoango! Ever since the death of Monsieur Guillaume, the former owner of this plantation, who fell to the blackguard’s hand at the start of the uprising, we, who, as the dead man’s next of kin, took charge of the place, attracted his wanton outbursts of rage. Every crust of bread, every liquid refreshment we give out of kindness to one or the other of the white fugitives who sometimes pass this way, we must pay for with his curses and abuse; and he craves nothing more than to goad the wrath of the blacks against us white and Creole half-dogs, as he calls us, in part to rid himself of us who check his savagery against the whites, in part to lay his thieving hands on the meager possessions we would leave behind.” “You poor unfortunates!” said the stranger. “You piteous souls! And where is that blackguard at the moment?” “He’s gone with the other blacks from this plantation to deliver a shipment of gunpowder and lead badly needed by General Dessalines,” the old woman replied. “We’re expecting him back in ten or twelve days, unless he sets out on other expeditions; and if upon his return, God forbid he should find out that we gave safe haven and shelter to a white on his way to Port au Prince, while he was busy exterminating their race on the island, I assure you we’d all soon be knocking at Heaven’s door.” “Merciful Heaven above,” said the stranger, “will protect you for the kindness you have shown a suffering soul!” Taking a step closer to the old woman, he added, “And since, in defying his orders this one time, you will doubtless have drawn the Negro’s eternal wrath, your subsequent subservience to his will, should you choose to return to the fold, would surely do you no good; might I then persuade you, ask what price you may, to give shelter for a day or two to my uncle and his family, worn out from the hardships of their journey, to let them recoup their strength?” “Young Sir,” said the old woman, taken aback, “do you know what you are asking? How in Heaven’s name is it possible to shelter a group as large as yours in a house on the highway without being found out and denounced by one of the locals?” “Why not?” retorted the stranger with great urgency. “What if I were to set off immediately for the seagull pond and lead them back to the house before daybreak; if you hid them all, masters and servants, in the same room, and to be extra-cautious, kept the doors and windows of that room shut tight?” The old woman replied, after weighing his suggestion a while: “If the gentleman attempted this very night to lead the group from their hideout to the plantation, on his way back he would surely fall into the hands of a troop of armed Negroes, alerted by scouts lying in wait on the highway.” “Very well then,” replied the stranger, “we’ll have to make do for the moment by sending them a basket of provisions, and put off the business of bringing them back to the plantation until tomorrow night. Will you do that for me, little mother?” “Alright,” she said, amidst a flurry of kisses from the stranger’s lips on her bony hands, “for the sake of the European, my daughter’s father, I will do you, his countryman, this favor. Sit yourself down at daybreak and write your kin a letter inviting them to make their way to the settlement; the boy you met in the yard will take them enough provisions to tide them over for the night, and if they accept the invitation, he will lead them back here at dawn.”
In the meantime Toni returned with a meal she’d whipped up in the kitchen, and winking at the stranger as she set the table, asked the old woman: “Mother, tell me, did the gentleman recover from the shock that gripped him at the door? Is he convinced that neither poison nor the prick of a blade await him here, and that the Negro Hoango is not home?” The mother said with a sigh: “My child, he who’s been burned fears fire, as the saying goes. The gentleman would have been a fool to have ventured into the house before convincing himself of the race of its residents.” The girl came close to her mother and told her how she’d held the lantern such that its light fell full in her face. “But his mind was full of spooks and Negroes; and even had it been a pretty damsel from Paris or Marseille who’d opened the door, he’d have taken her for a Negress.” Gently slinging an arm around her waist, the stranger said, a bit embarrassed: “The hat you had on kept me from seeing your face.” And pressing her to his breast, he went on: “Had I looked you in the eye, as I do now, even if the rest of you were black as night, I’d have drunk with you from the same cup of poison.” The mother pressed the young white man, who turned red at these words, to be seated, whereupon Toni sat down beside him, and with her arms propped on the table, watched him as he ate. The stranger asked how old she was and where she’d been born; whereupon the mother spoke up: “Toni was conceived and born in Paris fifteen years ago on a trip I took to Europe with Monsieur Villeneuve, my former master,” adding that Komar, the black man whom she later married, adopted her as his child, but that her real father was a rich Marseille merchant named Bertrand, after whom she was named Toni Bertrand. Toni asked him if he was acquainted with said gentleman in France. “No,” said the stranger, “it’s a big country, and I’ve never crossed paths with any person of that name in the course of my sojourn in the West Indies.” The old woman added that she had it on good authority that Monsieur Bertrand no longer resided in France. “His ambitious and aspiring nature,” she said, “was not content to while away its time in staid bourgeois pursuits; at the outbreak of the Revolution he got involved with the insurgents, and in 1795, went with a French delegation to the Turkish court, from whence, to my knowledge, he has not yet returned.” Whereupon the stranger said with a smile to Toni, reaching for her hand: “Which, in that case, would make you a rich society girl.” He encouraged her to profit from the advantages and maintained that she had every reason to hope that she would one day be led down the aisle on her father’s arm to live in somewhat more auspicious circumstances than she did today. “Unlikely,” remarked the old woman with a restrained wince. “During my pregnancy in Paris, Monsieur Bertrand denied in court having fathered this child, to spare the feelings of a wealthy young bride whom he hoped to marry. I will never forget the oath he had the gall to swear in my face, a bilious fever being the consequence, along with, shortly thereafter, sixty strokes of the whip ordered by Monsieur Villeneuve, as a consequence of which I still suffer from consumption.” Toni, who lay her head thoughtfully on her hand, asked the stranger who he was, where he came from and where he was headed; whereupon the latter, following an embarrassed silence in the wake of the old woman’s embittered declaration, replied that he was Monsieur Strömli, that he and his uncle’s family, whom he had left behind in a clearing near the seagull pond, came from Fort Dauphin. On the girl’s urging, he told in some detail of the insurrection that broke out in that city; how at midnight, when everyone was asleep, at a traitorous signal the mob of blacks fell upon the whites; how the leader of the Negroes, a sergeant in the French Pioneer Corps, had been malicious enough to set all the boats in the harbor on fire so as to cut off the escape of the whites to Europe; how his family had hardly had time enough to flee with a few necessities through the gates of the city; and how, given the simultaneous flare-up of hostilities along the coastline, they had had no other recourse but to make their way inland, with the aid of a pair of pack mules, traversing the length of the entire country, hoping to reach Port au Prince, the sole place that, for the moment at least, thanks to the protection of a strong French military presence, still put up a resistance to the advancing forces of the Negro rebels who were gaining ground everywhere else. Toni asked: “How did the whites makes themselves so hated?” To which the stranger replied, with some hesitation: “By the nature of the relationship which they, as masters of the island, had with the blacks, and which, if truth be told, I dare not defend; a situation that had, however, been in place on this island for several centuries! The frenzy of freedom that suddenly gripped all the plantations drove the Negroes and Creoles to break the chains that held them, and the many contemptible abuses they suffered at the hands of a few malicious whites led them to wreak revenge on the entire race. I was particularly stunned and horrified,” he went on after a moment of silence, “by the actions of one young girl. At the very moment of the uprising, this girl, a young Negress, lay ill with Yellow Fever, an outbreak that doubled the misery in the city. Three years before she had been the slave of a white planter, who, because of her refusal to succumb to his advances, had badly beaten her and then sold her to a Creole planter. When the girl learned at the onset of the uprising that the planter, her former master, had fled, the wrath of the Negroes hot on his heels, and taken refuge in a nearby woodshed, remembering the mistreatment she had suffered, she sent her brother to him at dawn the next day inviting him to spend the night with her. The poor white wretch, who neither knew that she was ailing nor with what dread malady, came and wrapped her in his arms out of gratitude for saving him; but no sooner had he spent a half hour in her bed showering her with amorous caresses, than she suddenly turned to him with a fierce expression and cold fury, got up and said: “You have just kissed a plague-infected girl with death burning in her breast; go and give a gift of Yellow Fever to all your kind!” While the old woman loudly expressed her horror at this, the officer asked Toni if she would be capable of such an act. “No!” said Toni, casting him a bewildered look. Putting the cloth on the table, the stranger responded: “By my way of thinking, no tyrannous act the whites committed could ever justify such a base and abominable betrayal. Such treachery,” he said, rising from the table with a pained expression, “undermined the wrath of God; the scandalized angels themselves will stand on the side of those who’d been unjustly treated and take up their cause to uphold the human and sacred order!” At these words he strode to the window and peered out at the storm clouds that covered the moon and stars; and since it seemed to him as if mother and daughter gave each other knowing looks, though he had not noticed them exchanging winks, he was left with an uneasy, downright queasy feeling; he turned around and asked to be led to his room to catch up on lost sleep.
Turning to the wall clock, the mother noticed that it was going on midnight, took a candle in her hand and motioned for the stranger to follow. She led him down long corridors to the room she’d readied for him; Toni carried the stranger’s overcoat and the other things he’d removed; the mother showed him to his bed piled up with comfortable pillows, and after telling Toni to give him a footbath, bid him goodnight and took her leave. The stranger set his sword in the corner and plucked a pair of pistols out of his belt and lay them on the table. While Toni shoved the bed forward and covered it with a white sheet, he looked around the room; and since he concluded from the luxury and taste of the decor that these furnishings must have belonged to the former owner of the plantation, a feeling of trepidation hovered like a vulture round his heart, and he wished himself, hungry and thirsty as he’d come, back in the woods with his relations. The girl had meanwhile fetched a vessel filled with warm, sweet-scented water from the adjoining kitchen, and bid the officer, who had been leaning at the window, to come refresh himself. Silently shedding scarf and vest, he sank into a chair to bear his feet, and while the girl knelt down before him, busying herself with all the small preparations for the bath, he gazed at her fetching figure. As she knelt down her hair fell in dark billowing curls on her young breasts; a disarming comeliness played upon her lips and graced the long eyelashes that fell upon her downcast eyes; he could have sworn, except for her skin color, which he found objectionable, that he had never set eyes on anything as lovely. Watching her now, he was once again struck, as he had been at first sight of her at the door, by a vague resemblance she bore to someone, though he could not say to whom, and the impression overwhelmed him body and soul. He reached for her hand as, all her preparations completed, she rose from the floor, and since he accurately gauged that there was but one way to test if the girl had a heart, he pulled her down on his lap and asked: “Are you already betrothed to a fiancé?” “No!” the girl said in a hushed voice, casting her big black eyes to the ground with a stunning modesty. And without budging from his lap, she added: “Connelly, the young Negro from the neighboring plantation, did propose to me three months ago, but I declined because I was too young.” The stranger, who with both his hands now grasped her slender body, said: “Where I come from, as the saying goes, at fourteen years and seven months a girl is old enough to marry.” He asked, as she eyed a little golden cross he wore against his breast, “How old are you?” “Fifteen,” she replied. “Well then!” said the stranger. “Does he lack sufficient means to make you happy, this lad?” “Oh no!” replied Toni, without looking up, fingering and letting go of the cross, “Connolly has become a rich man since the recent turn of events; his father took title of the whole plantation that once belonged to their master.” “Then why did you refuse him?” asked the stranger, and gently stroked the hair from her brow. “Did you not find him attractive?” With a quick toss of the head, the girl laughed; and answering his own question he jokingly whispered in her ear: “Might it perhaps have to be a white man who could win your favor?” To which, after flashing him a fleeting, dreamy look, she responded with a ravishing blush that swept over her sun-kissed face, and suddenly lay her head on his chest. Stirred by her comeliness and sweetness, the stranger called her his dear girl, and feeling as though delivered from all his troubles by the hand of God, wrapped her in his arms. He found it impossible to believe that all of these gestures could merely be the miserable expression of a cold-blooded and cruel-hearted betrayal. The troubled thoughts that had clouded his spirit lifted like a flock of vultures; he chided himself for having doubted her for a single second, and as he rocked her on his knees and inhaled her sweet breath he kissed her on the forehead as a sign of reconciliation and forgiveness between them. Meanwhile, suddenly pricking up her ears, as if she’d heard someone drawing near outside the door, the girl bolted upright; she thoughtfully and dreamily rearranged the cloth that had slipped from over her breasts; and only once she fathomed that it had been a false alarm did she turn back to the stranger with a cheerful look and remind him that if he did not soon make use of the hot water it would get cold. “Heavens,” she said, a bit taken aback, as the stranger peered at her in thoughtful silence, “why are you looking at me in such a strange way?” Fiddling with her pinafore, she tried to hide her growing embarrassment, and laughed out loud: “Strange Sir, what strikes you amiss at the sight of me?” The stranger, who wiped his brow with his hand, suppressing a sigh as he lifted her off his lap, replied: “A wondrous resemblance between you and a girl I once knew!” Noticing that he had been distracted from his merry mood, she gaily and attentively grabbed him by the hand and asked: “What girl?” Whereupon, reflecting a moment, the young man spoke up: “Her name was Marianne Congreve and she hailed from Strasbourg. I met her there, where her father was a merchant, shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution, and was fortunate enough to have received a yes to my proposal and her mother’s approval. Dear God, she was the most faithful soul under the sun, and the terrible and stirring circumstances under which I lost her leap to mind when I look at you, so that I cannot keep from crying.” Toni tenderly and intimately pressed her body close to his. “Is she no longer living?” “She died,” replied the stranger, “and it was only at her death that I fathomed that I had lost the epitome of all goodness and virtue. God knows,” he went on, leaning his aching head on her shoulder, “how I could have been so foolish as to criticize the recently established revolutionary tribunal one evening in a public place. I was accused of treason, they came looking for me; in my absence, as I was fortunate enough to have escaped to the outskirts of the city, the raving mob that craved a victim rushed to the house of my bride, and upon her truthful assurance that she did not know my whereabouts, under the pretense that she was in cahoots with me, the embittered hooligans simply dragged her off to the scaffold instead of me. No sooner was I informed of this terrible news than I emerged from my hideout, and shoving my way through the crowd to the place of execution, cried out at the top of my lungs: “Here, you inhuman beasts, am I!” But in response to the questions of several revolutionary judges who, alas, did not seem to know me, standing there on the platform in front of the guillotine, she turned away from me with a look indelibly etched into my soul and said: “I don’t know that person!” Whereupon, moments later, at the sound of the drumbeat and the howl of the mob, egged on by the trumped up charges of the bloodthirsty judges, the blade dropped and her head fell from her shoulders. How I was saved I cannot tell; I found myself a quarter of an hour later in the apartment of a friend, where I staggered from one faint to another, and toward evening, was loaded, half-mad, onto a carriage, and dispatched across the Rhine.” At these words, letting go of the girl, the stranger hastened to the window, and as she saw him bury his profoundly troubled face in a handkerchief, stirred by a deep sympathy for his plight, she impulsively rushed over to him, wrapped her arms around his neck and mingled her tears with his.
What happened next need not be told, since everyone who gets to this point in the tale can guess. Rousing himself afterwards, the stranger had no idea where the impetuous thing he’d done would lead him; in the meantime, however, he fathomed this much, that he had been saved and that he had nothing to fear from the girl in this house. Seeing her lying there on the bed with her arms crossed beneath her, crying her eyes out, he did his best to try and comfort her. He took off the little golden cross, a gift from his faithful Marianne, his dead bride; and leaning over Toni, whispering endless words of endearment, hung it around her neck as an engagement gift, as he called it. And since she kept weeping, heedless of his words, he sat himself down on the edge of the bed, stroking her hand, covering her with kisses, and said that he would speak to her mother the next morning and ask for her hand in marriage. He described for her the small property he possessed on the shore of the Aar River; a house comfortable and big enough to accommodate her and her mother, if the old woman’s age would still allow for the journey; fields, gardens, meadows and vineyards; and a venerable old father who would receive her with gratitude and love, since she had saved his son. And since her never-ending flood of tears drenched the pillow, he took her in his arms and asked her, himself gripped by emotion: “What have I done to hurt you? Can you not find it in your heart to forgive me?” He swore that his love for her would never fade from his heart and that it was only the mad frenzy of emotions, a mingling of desire and the shock of fear she had aroused, that could have induced him to do what he had done. Finally he reminded her that the morning stars sparkled and that if she remained lying in his bed her mother would come and surprise her there; he implored her, for the sake of her health, to get up and rest for a few more hours in her own bed; worried sick by her condition, he asked if perhaps he should pick her up and carry her to her room; but since she made no reply to all his entreaties and lay, quietly sobbing, with her head pressed into her folded arms on the wrinkled pillow, as the light of dawn was already streaming in through both windows, he finally had no choice but, without any further words, to pick her up; he carried her, hanging like a lifeless corpse from his shoulders, up the stairs to her room, and after laying her in her bed and repeating with a thousand endearments all that he had said before, once again calling her his beloved bride, he pressed a gentle kiss on her forehead and rushed back to his room.
As soon as daylight had completely swept away the dark, old Babekan made her way up to her daughter’s room, and sitting herself down on the edge of her bed, revealed what she had in mind for the stranger as well as his traveling companions. She said that, since the Negro Congo Hoango would only be back in two days, everything depended on their keeping the stranger in the house for that time, without, however, welcoming his relatives, whose presence, on account of their number, might, in her opinion, jeopardize their plans. To this end, she said, she intended to make out as if she had just learned that General Dessalines was headed this way with his army, and consequently, because the risk was too great, they would have to wait three days, until the general’s army had passed, to safely bring his family into the house as he wished. The travelers would, in the meantime, have to be supplied with provisions so that they stayed put, and also, to lure them into the trap, would have to be kept under the illusion that they would find safe haven in the house. She remarked, furthermore, upon the importance of the matter at hand, since the family’s possessions would probably bring them rich booty; and insisted that her daughter do everything in her power to aid in this endeavor. Propping herself up in bed, her face flushed with the blush of her reluctance, Toni replied: “It’s scandalous and contemptible to abuse the laws of guest friendship with innocent people lured into the house.” She added that a fugitive who sought their protection ought to be doubly safe; and she assured Babekan that if she did not give up the bloody plan she’d just revealed, that she, Toni, would go forthwith to the stranger and reveal to him what a den of cutthroats was this house in which he had thought to find safe refuge. “Toni!” said the mother, putting her hands to her hips and looking into her daughter’s eyes. “I mean it!” the daughter replied. “What ill deed did this young man, not even a Frenchman by birth, but a Swiss, as he said, ever do to us that we should want to fall upon him like thieves, kill him and rob him? Do the accusations made against the planters here also hold true for those on the side of the island he comes from? Does not everything about him rather show that he is the noblest and finest of men, and surely does not share responsibility for the injustices for which the blacks blame his race?” Taking in the strange expression on the girl’s face, the old woman simply remarked with quivering lips: “I can’t believe my ears!” Then she asked: “What guilt did the young Portuguese gentleman bear who was recently clubbed to death in the doorway? What did the two Dutchmen do to deserve to be shot down in the yard by the Negroes three weeks ago? What blame do the three Frenchmen and all the other white-skinned fugitives bear who were mowed down in this house with flintlock, lance and sword, since the outbreak of the uprising?” “By the light of the sun,” said the daughter, leaping up wildly, “you do me wrong to remind me of all these atrocities! The inhumanities you compelled me to take part in have long since disgusted me in my heart of hearts; and to expiate my sins for all that happened in the eyes of God, I swear to you that I would rather die a tenfold death than permit you to harm even a hair on the head of that young man as long as he is in this house.” “Very well,” said the old woman, with a sudden look of compliance, “let the stranger travel in peace. But when Congo Hoango gets back,” she added, getting up to leave the room, “and finds out that a white man spent the night in this house, you can beg him to show you the same mercy that moved you to disobey his express orders.”
Stunned by this outburst, in which, despite a feigned tone of benevolence, the old woman had given vent to her fury, the girl lingered in her room. She was all too familiar with her mother’s hatred of the whites to think that Babekan might let slip such an occasion to satisfy it. The fear that the old woman would presently send word to the neighboring plantations and call upon the Negroes to fall upon the stranger impelled her to throw on her clothes and follow her mother down to the dining room below. And just as her mother returned, distracted, from the pantry, where she appeared to have had some pressing matter to attend to, and sat herself down on a bale of flax, the daughter stood at the door, onto which a mandate had been tacked forbidding all blacks, at the risk of their life, from aiding and abetting the whites; and pretending, as though gripped with terror, to grasp the error of her ways, she suddenly turned to her mother, who, she knew, had been watching from behind, and flung herself at her feet. Clasping her knees, the daughter begged her to forgive the wild words she had spoken in defense of the stranger; she lay the blame on the half-dreaming, half-waking state from which she was suddenly roused by her mother’s plans to trick him; and assured the old woman that she would do everything in her power to deliver him for judgment, which, based on the present law of the land, demanded his execution. Looking the girl squarely in the eyes, the old woman said after a while: “In Heaven’s name, child, your declaration just saved his life for today! Seeing as you’d threatened to take him under your wing, that pot was already spiked with the poison that would at least have delivered him up dead to Congo Hoango, true to his command.” Whereupon she got up, took the pot of milk on the table and dumped it out the window. Gripped with horror, unable to believe her eyes, Toni stared at her mother. Sitting herself down again and turning to the girl, who crouched before her on her knees, Babekan picked her up off the floor and asked: “What in the course of a single night could have so muddled your thoughts? Yesterday, after giving him a footbath, did you stay with him a while longer? Did you speak much with him?” Yet Toni, whose heart heaved in her breast, held her tongue, but for a few meaningless words; her eyes cast to the floor, she stood there holding her head, lost in a dream. “A look at the bosom of my unhappy mother,” she said, bowing and kissing her hand, “reminded me of the inhumanity of the race to which that stranger belongs,” and turning around and pressing her face into her apron, she assured the old woman, “as soon as the Negro Hoango gets back you’ll see what kind of daughter you have.”
Babekan sat lost in thought, wondering what the devil could have stirred such a strange passion in the girl, when the fugitive entered the room with a note he’d written, stuffed in the pocket of his nightgown, inviting his family to spend a few days at the plantation of the Negro Hoango. He extended a cheerful and friendly greeting to mother and daughter, handed the note to the old woman and asked that someone immediately take it to the clearing along with a few provisions for his kinfolk, as he’d been promised. Babekan stood up, and with a worried look, took the note, stuffed it into the cupboard and said: “Sir, we must ask you to immediately return to your bedroom. The highway is teeming with lone Negro troops rushing by, who’ve informed us that General Dessalines and his army are headed this way. In this house, which is open to everyone, you will find no safe haven unless you hide in your room facing the yard and shut tight the door and all the windows.” “What?” said the stunned stranger, “General Dessalines . . . ?” “Don’t ask any questions!” Babekan interrupted, knocking three times with a stick on the wooden floor. “I’ll follow you and explain everything in your room.” Hustled off by the old woman who feigned worried looks, the stranger turned and called out at the dining room door: “But won’t you at least send a messenger to my family waiting for me in the woods, informing them of that . . . ?” “It will all be attended to,” she cut him short, just as the bastard boy whom we already know came rushing in; whereupon she ordered Toni, who stood before a mirror with her back to the stranger, to take up the basket of provisions in the corner of the room; and mother, daughter, the boy, and the stranger went up to his bedroom.
Here, easing herself slowly into a chair, the old woman told how they’d seen the fires of General Dessalines shimmering all night long on the mountains that blocked the horizon, a verifiable fact indeed, although not a single Negro from his army advancing in a southwestern direction toward Port au Prince had shown his face in the immediate surroundings. She thereby succeeded in sending the stranger into a frenzied panic, which she promptly managed to still with the assurance that, even in the worst-case scenario, if soldiers were quartered in her house, she would do everything possible to ensure his safety. And upon the latter’s imploring reminder that, under these circumstances, his family at least be furnished with provisions, she took the basket from her daughter’s hands, and handing it to the boy, instructed him to go to the clearing at the edge of the seagull pond and bring it to the officer’s family that was camped out there. “The officer himself is safe,” she told him to tell them, “friends of the whites, who, on account of their sympathies, had been made to suffer much at the hands of the blacks, have given him shelter.” In conclusion, she said to assure them that, as soon as the highway was free of the armed Negro bands they expected soon, efforts would be made to bring the family here too and offer them safe haven in this house. “Do you understand?” she asked. Hoisting the basket onto his head, the boy replied that he was very familiar with the seagull pond, where he liked to go fishing with his friends, and that he would do everything he’d been told to help the stranger’s family camping out there for the night. And upon the old woman’s question if he had anything to add, the stranger proceeded to pull a ring from his finger and gave it to the boy, instructing him to pass it to the head of the family, Monsieur Strömli, as a sign that the conveyed message was true. Hereupon the old woman took numerous precautionary measures to assure the stranger’s safety, as she maintained; she ordered Toni to close the shutters, and in order to shed a little light in the darkness, she ignited, not without difficulty, as the flint at first refused to function, a kerosene lamp on the mantelpiece. The stranger took advantage of this moment of chaos to gently sling an arm around Toni and whisper in her ear: “How did you sleep?” And: “Should I not inform your mother of what happened?” But Toni ignored the first question, and pulling herself free of his embrace, whispered back a hasty “No!” in response to the second. “If you love me, don’t say a word!” She did her best to hide the terror that all these deceitful maneuvers stirred up in her; and with the pretext of having to prepare the stranger’s breakfast, she scrambled down to the dining room.
Taking from her mother’s cupboard the note the stranger had written to his family, in which he had, in all innocence, invited them to the house, she decided to follow the boy to their camp; and having resolved, if worst came to worst, and her mother noticed it was missing, to share her lover’s death, she rushed after the boy who had already set off along the highway. For she now no longer saw the young officer, before God, in her heart of hearts, as merely a wanderer to whom she had given shelter, but as her betrothed husband-to-be, and she was determined, once his kinfolk had entered the house in full force, to openly declare this to her mother without worrying about her stupefied reaction. “Nanky,” she gasped, out of breath, having run after and finally caught up with the boy on the highway, “mother changed her plan concerning the family of Monsieur Strömli. Take this letter! It is addressed to Monsieur Strömli himself, the old head of the family, and contains an invitation for them all to come spend a few days at our place. Use your head and do everything in your power to bring it off without a hitch; Congo Hoango will reward you upon his return!” “Good, good, Miss Toni!” the boy replied. And carefully folding and stashing the letter in his pocket, he asked: “And am I to serve them as a guide on the walk back?” “Definitely,” said Toni, “since they don’t know the way. But to avoid running into any troops that might be patrolling the highway you’ll have to hold off your return until after midnight, but then make sure to walk quickly so as to get them here before the break of day. Can I count on you, Nanky?” she asked. “You can count on Nanky!” the boy replied. “I know why you’re luring these white fugitives to the plantation, and Hoango will be well pleased!”
Hereupon Toni rushed back to the house and brought the stranger his breakfast; and after bringing back the dirty dishes, the daughter rejoined her mother in the front dining room to attend to household chores. A little while later, without fail, the mother went to the cupboard and, of course, found the message missing. Doubting her memory, she put her hand to her head and asked Toni: “Where in Heaven’s name could I have put the letter the stranger gave me?” After a moment’s silence, during which she looked down at the floor, Toni replied: “As I recall, the stranger took it back and tore it up in our presence in his room!” The mother gave the girl a puzzled look: “I’m quite sure I remember him handing me the letter and my putting it in that cupboard for safekeeping!” But after rummaging through all the shelves and still not finding it, not trusting her memory, on account of several such apparent lapses, she finally had no other recourse but to believe her daughter’s recollection. In the meantime, busying herself with other tasks, she could not hide her considerable vexation, muttering that the letter would have been of the greatest importance to the Negro Hoango, as it would have enabled them to lure the entire family to the plantation. At lunch and again at suppertime, as Toni served the stranger his meal, Babekan, who kept him company at table, took advantage of the opportunity to ask after the letter; but as soon as the talk turned to this dangerous issue, Toni managed skillfully to deflect or muddle the conversation, such that the mother was unable to make hide or hair of the stranger’s explanation concerning the letter. And so the day went by; after the evening meal, Babekan locked the stranger’s door, for his safety, she assured him; and after hashing out with Toni by what ruse she might lay her hands on such a letter the next day, she retired for the night and likewise told her daughter to go to bed.
But as soon as Toni got to her room and assured herself that her mother was sound asleep, having longed for this moment, she took the painting of the Holy Virgin from where it hung on the wall beside her bed, set it on a chair, and knelt down before it with folded hands. In a fervent prayer, she implored, her godly Son, the Savior, to grant her the courage and perseverance to confess to the young man, her betrothed, all the crimes that burdened her young bosom. She swore not even to hide from him, however painful it might be to reveal, her merciless and terrible intent when she lured him into the house the previous day; but for the sake of the things she’d done since then to save him, she begged him to forgive her and to take her with him to Europe as his faithful wife. Feeling wonderfully fortified by this prayer, she rose, and reaching for the pass key to every room in the house, slowly made her way in the dark down the narrow corridor that ran through the middle of the house, feeling her way toward the stranger’s room. Quietly she unlocked the door and walked over to his bed, where he lay fast asleep. The moon lit up his radiant face, and the night wind that wafted through the open window played with the hair on his forehead. She gently leaned over him and whispered his name, inhaling his sweet breath; but he was preoccupied by a deep dream of which she appeared to be the object: for several times she heard his feverish, fluttering lips whisper back, “Toni!” Overcome by an indescribable wistfulness, she could not bring it upon herself to tear him out of his sweet heavenly illusions down into a mundane and miserable reality; and convinced that he would awaken sooner or later of his own accord, she knelt down beside his bed and covered his precious hand with kisses.
But who can describe the horror that gripped her breast moments later upon suddenly hearing the sound of people, horses and rattling arms in the courtyard, and clearly recognizing among them the voice of the Negro Congo Hoango, unexpectedly returned with his entire band from General Dessalines’ encampment. Careful to avoid being seen in the moonlight, she scrambled for cover behind the window curtains, and already heard her mother informing Hoango of everything that happened while he was gone, including the presence of the European fugitive. With a muffled voice the Negro ordered his men to be still in the yard. He asked the old woman where the stranger was at that moment, whereupon she told him the room the white man was in and promptly proceeded to report the curious conversation she had had with her daughter concerning him. She assured the Negro that the girl was a traitor and that because of her daughter her entire plan of capturing the fugitive’s family threatened to fall through. The little fox, she said, had secretly taken advantage of the cover of night to sneak off to his bed, where she was sleeping soundly at this moment; and in all likelihood, if the stranger hadn’t already flown the coop, she’d warned him and conspired to facilitate his escape. Having already tested the girl’s trustworthiness under similar circumstances, the Negro replied: “I can’t believe it!” And “Kelly!” he cried in a rage. And “Omra! Get your guns!” And without wasting another word, he scampered up the steps with his entire entourage and barged into the stranger’s room.
Toni, before whose eyes and ears the entire scene had transpired, stood paralyzed in every limb, as though she’d been struck by lightning. At one point she thought of waking the stranger; but she immediately fathomed that, given the presence of Hoango’s troops, escape was no longer an option, and that since he was likely to reach for his weapons, and the Negro held the advantage by strength of number, she already saw him stretched out dead on the floor. She was indeed compelled to take into account the likelihood of the poor man’s assumption, upon finding her beside his bed at that moment, that she had betrayed him, and so, instead of following her advice, of flying in a frenzy and rashly falling right into Hoango’s clutches. In this unspeakable paroxysm of terror she suddenly laid eyes on a rope that, God knows by what coincidence, hung from a hook on the wall. God himself, she felt, had placed it there to save her and her beloved. She took it and bound the young man’s hands and feet, tying several knots; and not concerning herself with the fact that he had begun to stir and struggle to break free, she fastened the rope ends tightly to the bed frame; and happy to have mastered the moment, pressed a kiss on his lips and hurried off to greet Hoango, who was already clambering up the steps.
Still doubting the old woman’s account of Toni’s betrayal, upon seeing the girl rush out of the stranger’s room the Negro stood stunned and bewildered in the corridor with his armed and torch-bearing retinue. “The false-hearted turncoat!” he cried out, and turning to Babekan, who had taken several steps toward the door, asked her: “Has he escaped?” Finding the door open, without herself going in, Babekan turned back and howled like a lunatic: “The lying little cheat! She let him get away! Hurry up and man the gates before he makes it to the open fields!” “What’s the matter?” asked Toni, seeing the look of fury on the faces of the old woman and the blacks in attendance. “What the matter is?” Hoango replied, whereupon he seized her chest and dragged her into the room. “Are you all mad?” she yelled, breaking free of Hoango, who stood there stunned by what he saw. “Here’s your fugitive festooned by my own hand in his bed; and, by God, it’s not the worst deed I’ve ever done in my life!” At these words, she turned her back to him and sat down at a table, pretending to burst into tears. The old man turned in a rage at the mother who stood to the side: “Oh Babekan, with what fairy tales have you deceived me?” “Thank heaven,” replied the bewildered mother, examining the rope with which the stranger was tied; “here he is, indeed, though I can’t for the life of me understand what’s going on.” Sheathing his sword, the Negro strode to the bed and asked the stranger who he was, where he came from and where he was headed. But since the latter, twisting and turning to break free, made no reply but the pitifully muttered words: “Oh, Toni! Oh, Toni!” the mother spoke up and said he was a Swiss by the name of Gustav von der Ried, and that he and his filthy brood of European dogs, who at this very moment were hiding out in caves by the seagull pond, came from the coastal outpost of Fort Dauphin. Hoango, who saw the girl seated in a woeful state with her head buried in her hands, walked over to her and called her his dear girl, clapped her on the cheeks and begged her to forgive his having hastily suspected her. The old woman, who likewise approached the girl, shaking her head, flung her hands in the air, and asked: “Why then, if the stranger knew nothing of the impending danger he was in, did you bind him to the bed?” Turning suddenly to her mother, Toni, who was now crying real tears of heartache and fury, replied: “Because you have no eyes and ears! Because he did indeed grasp the danger he was in! Because he wanted to escape and begged me to help him! Because he intended to make an attempt on your own life, and had I not tied him up while still asleep, would surely have carried out his plan at daybreak!” Old Hoango covered the girl with caresses, trying to calm her down, and ordered Babekan to speak no more of this. He called for several guards with muskets to promptly carry out the sentence prescribed by the law on the stranger, but Babekan whispered in his ear: “For heaven’s sake, no, Hoango!” She took him aside and gave him to understand: “Before being executed, the stranger must be made to write an invitation, with the help of which we will lure to the plantation his family, whose capture would otherwise involve considerable risk.” Considering the fact that the family was most likely not unarmed, Hoango concurred with this recommendation; but seeing as it was too late to make the prisoner write such a letter, he posted two guards at his bedside; and after once again inspecting the rope himself, finding that it was too loose, and calling upon two of his men to tie it more tightly, he left the room with his retinue, and things settled back into an apparent calm.
But only pretending to go to bed, Toni bid good-night to the old Negro, who once again gave her his hand, and got up again as soon as the house was still, slipped out the back door and rushed into the field, and ran with her breast heaving in the darkest despair out to the highway to the path Monsieur Strömli’s family would have to take. The looks of contempt that the stranger shot at her from his bed pierced her heart like the thrusts of a knife; a feeling of hot bitterness mingled with the love she felt for him, and she exulted at the thought of dying in the course of carrying out his rescue. Afraid of missing the family if she tried to head them off, she waited by the trunk of a stone pine, by which, presuming they accepted the invitation, the group was bound to pass; and no sooner did the first flicker of dawn break on the horizon than, true to her instructions, Nanky’s voice could already be heard in the distance, leading them along.
The group comprised Monsieur Strömli and his wife, the latter riding on a mule, their five children, two of which, Adelbert and Gottfried, big strapping boys of eighteen and seventeen, respectively, walked beside the animal; three servants and two maids, one of whom, with a baby at her breast, rode the second mule; in all, they counted twelve. Making their way slowly over the protruding roots at the edge of the forest, they came to the stone pine, where Toni stepped out of the shadow as silently as possible, so as not to scare anyone, and called out: “Halt!” Nanky immediately recognized her and when she asked, as men, women, and children surrounded her, “Which one is Monsieur Strömli?” he cheerfully introduced her to the aging head of the family. “Noble Sir,” she said, with a firm voice interrupting the latter’s warm greeting, “the Negro Hoango unexpectedly returned home with his entire force. You cannot now find refuge here without risk to your life; indeed, your nephew, who, alas, was duped by the ploy, is lost if you don’t immediately take up arms and follow me to rescue him from the plantation where the Negro Hoango is holding him captive!” “God in Heaven!” all the members of the terror-stricken family cried out in unison; and the mother, who was ill and drained by the difficult journey, fell unconscious from the pack animal to the ground. While the maids leapt forward, on Monsieur Strömli’s orders, to help his wife, Toni, fearing Nanky’s inquisitive ears and all the while showered with questions from the sons, took Monsieur Strömli and the other men aside. And making no attempt to hold back her tears of shame and compunction, she told them everything that had happened; how matters stood at the moment the young man arrived at the house; how the intimate conversation she had with him unexpectedly changed everything; what she had done, half-crazy with terror, upon the Negro’s arrival, and how she was now resolved to risk her life to save him from the trap she herself had led him into. “My weapons!” cried Monsieur Strömli, rushing to his wife’s mule and pulling out his musket. And while his brave sons Adelbert and Gottfried and the three stout-hearted servants likewise reached for their arms, he said: “Our nephew Gustav saved more than one of our lives, now it’s up to us to do the same for him.” Whereupon he hoisted his wife, who had meanwhile regained consciousness, back onto the mule; as an added precaution, he had Nanky taken as a sort of hostage with his hands bound; sent his wife and little children and the maids, under the armed guard of his thirteen-year-old son Ferdinand back to the seagull pond; and after sounding out Toni, who had herself taken up helmet and sword, as to the strength of the Negro’s force and their positioning in the courtyard, and having assured her that he would do his best to spare Hoango as well as her mother, bravely putting himself in the hands of God, taking the lead of his little troop, he set off after Toni back to the plantation.
As soon as the group slipped through the rear gate, Toni pointed out to Monsieur Strömli the room in which Hoango and Babekan slept; and while Strömli and his people entered the house without making a sound and seized all of the Negroes’ guns, Toni slunk off to the stable in which Nanky’s five-year-old half-brother Seppy slept. For Nanky and Seppy, bastard sons of old Hoango, were both very dear to him, particularly the latter, whose mother had recently died; and since, if they succeeded in freeing the young captive, the return to the seagull pond and their escape from there to Port au Prince – as she resolved to join them – would still involve considerable risk, she reasoned, not incorrectly, that the two boys would come in very handy as hostages in their likely pursuit by the Negroes. She succeeded, unseen, in lifting the boy out of his bed and carrying him in her arms, half-asleep, half-awake, back to the main house. Meanwhile, Monsieur Strömli and his men managed as stealthily as possible to enter Hoango’s quarters; but instead of finding him and Babekan in bed, as Strömli expected, the two, roused by the sound, stood there, albeit half-naked and helpless, in the middle of the room. Musket raised, Monsieur Strömli cried out: “Yield or you’re dead!” But in lieu of a reply, Hoango tore a pistol from off the wall and fired, strafing Monsieur Strömli’s head. Hereupon, Strömli’s men fell upon the black man in a fury; following a second shot that pierced the shoulder of a servant, Hoango was wounded in the hand by the slash of a saber, and the two of them, Babekan and he, were shoved to the floor and bound tightly with ropes to the trestle of a big table. Awakened in the meantime by the sound of shots, Hoango’s Negroes, more than twenty in number, staggered out of their stalls, and hearing old Babekan screaming in the house, came running to get their weapons. Monsieur Strömli, whose wound was of no significance, stationed his people at the windows and had them fire, attempting in vain to hold off the onslaught; oblivious to the fact that two of their number already lay dead in the yard, the Negroes were just then fetching axes and crowbars to break open the door that Monsieur Strömli had bolted shut, when shaking and trembling, Toni burst into Hoango’s room with Seppy in her arms. Monsieur Strömli, who found their arrival most fortuitous, tore the boy from Toni’s arms; drawing his hunting knife, he turned to Hoango and swore to kill the boy on the spot if Hoango did not call out to his men to cease and desist. After a moment’s hesitation, Hoango, whose grip was broken by the blow of the blade on three fingers of his fighting hand, and who, if he chose to resist, would have forfeited his own life, motioned for them to raise him off the floor, muttering: “Alright.” Led by Monsieur Strömli to the window, and waving with a handkerchief in his left hand, Hoango called to the Negroes: “It’s no use, leave the door and return to your quarters!” Whereupon things quieted down a bit; on Monsieur Strömli’s bidding, Hoango sent one of the Negro guards captured in the house out to repeat the order to the hesitant, arguing stragglers remaining in the yard; and as little as they grasped of the situation, they were obliged to heed the words of this delegated messenger, and so the blacks gave up their attempt to break open the door, and one by one returned, albeit grumbling and cursing, to their quarters. Ordering Seppy’s hands to be bound then and there in front of his father, Monsieur Strömli said: “My intention is none other than to set free the officer, my nephew, and if we encounter no further obstacles along the way and succeed in safely making our escape to Port au Prince, you will have nothing to fear for your own life and that of your children, whom I will return to you forthwith.” Toni approached Babekan to bid farewell, reaching her hand out to her mother with a burst of emotion she could not suppress, but the old woman shoved her away. She called her daughter a contemptible traitress, and twisting on the trestle, hissed: “God’s wrath will mow you down before you manage to bring off your filthy deed!” Toni replied: “I did not betray you; I am a white woman, and betrothed to the young man you hold captive; I belong to the race of those with whom you are at war, and will answer to God alone for taking their side.” Hereupon Monsieur Strömli had one of his men stand guard beside Hoango, whom he had bound again and tied to the doorpost; he had the servant, who lay unconscious on the floor with a broken shoulder blade, picked up and carried out; and after repeating to Hoango that he could send for both boys, Nanky and Seppy, in a few days time at the French outpost in Sainte Luce, he turned to Toni, who, overcome by mixed emotions, could not stop crying, heaped as she was with the curses of Babekan and old Hoango, took her hand and led her out of the room.
In the meantime, having finished the main fight, firing from the windows, Monsieur Strömli’s sons, Adelbert and Gottfried, hastened, on their father’s orders, to the room in which their cousin Gustav was being held prisoner, and managed, despite stiff resistance, to overwhelm the two blacks who guarded him. One of them lay dead on the floor of the room; the other dragged himself with a bad bullet wound out into the corridor. The brothers, the elder of whom had suffered a light wound to the thigh, untied their dear kinsman; they hugged and kissed him, and handing him pistols and a sword, jubilantly urged him to follow them to the front room, in which, seeing as the battle was won, Monsieur Strömli was calling them all to fall back. Raising himself half-upright in bed, Gustav pressed their hands and smiled without a word; but his mind was clearly elsewhere and instead of reaching for the pistols they held out to him he raised his right hand and stroked his forehead with an expression of unspeakable grief. Sitting themselves down beside him, the youths asked: “What’s the matter?” But no sooner did Gustav wrap his arms around them and silently rest his head on Gottfried’s shoulder, prompting Adelbert, fearing that his cousin was about to faint, to think of fetching him a drink of water, than Toni entered the room with Seppy in her arms, led by Monsieur Strömli. At the sight of her, Gustav went white in the face; rising from bed, he gripped his cousins’ shoulders as though he were about to fall; and before the youths fathomed what he intended to do with the pistol that he now took from their hands, seething with rage, he had already pressed the trigger and sent a bullet flying at Toni. The shot struck her square in the breast; and with a broken syllable of pain, she managed to take several steps forward, and handing the boy to Monsieur Strömli, sank to her knees before him; he hurled the pistol at her and shoved her away with his foot, calling her a filthy whore, then fell back down in bed. “You madman!” Monsieur Strömli and his two sons cried out in unison. The youths rushed to the girl, and picking her up, called for one of the old servants, who on several previous desperate occasions in the course of their journey had already delivered first aid; but with one hand pressed to the mortal wound, the girl gently pushed them from her, and stammered with a rattle in her throat: “Tell him . . . !” pointing to the one who shot her, and again: “Tell him . . . !” “What should we tell him?” asked Monsieur Strömli, as the effort of dying robbed her of the strength to speak. Adelbert and Gottfried leapt up and cried out to the inconceivably miserable murderer: “Do you know that this girl saved your life; that she loves you and that it had been her intention to forsake family, house and home, and escape with you to Port au Prince?” They howled in his ears “Gustav!” and asked: “Can’t you hear us?” and shook him and grabbed his hair, as he lay still and unresponsive on the bed. Then he sat up. He cast a look at the girl rolling in the blood he’d spilled; and the anger that had sparked this terrible act naturally gave way to compassion. Soaking his handkerchief with a flood of hot tears, Monsieur Strömli asked: “Oh, you poor miserable man, why did you do it?” Once again rising from bed, wiping the sweat from his brow, eying the girl, Gustav replied: “The vixen, she tied me up at night and handed me over to the Negro Hoango!” “Dear God,” cried Toni, reaching her hand out to him with an indescribable expression on her face, “I tied you, my best beloved, because . . . !” But she could neither finish the sentence nor reach him with her hand; drained of all strength, she suddenly fell back into Monsieur Strömli’s lap. “Why?” asked Gustav, kneeling before her, pale as death. After a long while, interrupted only by the rattle in Toni’s throat, during which they waited in vain for a word from her lips, Monsieur Strömli spoke up: “Because, upon Hoango’s return there was no other way to save you, you poor unfortunate man; because she wanted to avoid the mortal combat that you would surely have started; because she wanted to gain time enough for us, dispatched thanks to her ingenuity, to come to your rescue with weapons in hand.” Gustav covered his face in his hands. “Oh God,” he cried out, without looking up, feeling as though the ground gave way beneath his feet, “is what you tell me true?” He wrapped his arms around her and looked her in the eyes with a shattered heart. “Oh,” cried Toni, and these were her last words: “you should not have doubted me!” At which her beautiful soul gave up the ghost. Gustav tore at his hair. “God’s truth,” he cried, as his cousins wrenched him from the corpse, “I should not have doubted you; for you were betrothed to me by an oath, though we had not put it into words!” Sobbing, Monsieur Strömli pressed the displaced pinafore to the girl’s breast. He comforted his servant, who had done his best with the limited tools at hand to remove the bullet, which, he said, had entered her breastbone; but all his efforts, as has already been said, were to no avail, she was pierced by the lead and her soul had already departed for happier climes. In the meantime, Gustav staggered to the window; and while Monsieur Strömli and his sons deliberated with quiet tears on what to do with the body, and whether they ought not to go fetch her mother, Gustav fired the bullet with which the other pistol was loaded through his brain. This new dreadful deed was more than they could bear. All helping hands now turned to him; but, since he had put the pistol in his mouth, his poor shattered skull was in part plastered against the wall. Monsieur Strömli was the first to collect his wits. Since daylight once again shone brightly through the window and servants reported that the Negroes had once again begun to gather in the yard, he had no choice but to immediately think of their retreat. Not wanting to leave the two corpses to the ravages of the Negroes, they lay them on a bed, and after reloading their muskets, the sad party set off for the seagull pond. Monsieur Strömli, with Seppy in his arms, took the lead; he was followed by the two strongest servants carrying the dead bodies on their shoulders; the wounded servant hobbled behind on a stick; and Adelbert and Gottfried covered the slowly advancing funeral cortege with loaded muskets, one on each side. Catching sight of this poorly guarded group, the Negroes emerged from their quarters with pikes and pitchforks in hand, ready to attack; but Hoango, whom Monsieur Strömli had had the foresight to untie, stepped outside onto the steps of the house and signaled to his men to stop. “In Sainte Luce!” he cried to Monsieur Strömli, who had already advanced with the bodies to the gate. “In Sainte Luce!” the latter replied; whereupon the sad party crossed the open field and reached the edge of the woods, without being pursued. At the seagull pond, where they rejoined their family, shedding tears, they dug a grave; and after exchanging the rings of the dead, they lowered the dear ones with whispered prayers into the place of eternal rest. Monsieur Strömli was glad enough to safely reach Sainte Luce five days later with his wife and children; there, true to his word, he released the two Negro boys. He managed to make it to Port au Prince just in time to take to the ramparts shortly before the attack; and when finally, despite stubborn resistance, the city fell to the forces of General Dessalines, he managed to escape along with the French army on ships of the English fleet, sailed to Europe, and without further incident, journeyed home to Switzerland. With what was left of his modest fortune Monsieur Strömli bought lands near the Rigi; and a passing stranger in 1807 could still see in his garden in the shade of the bushes the monument he had erected to the memory of Gustav and his betrothed, the faithful Toni.
* The 19th century
* In 1794 the French Convention National abolished slavery on the French part of the Island of Santo Domingo in what today is Haiti, whereupon the white planters balked, refusing to abide by the law. A bitter struggle that would become the Haitian Revolution broke out between the blacks, at first supported by French revolutionary forces, and their former masters. Atrocities were committed by both sides. Putting economics over ethics, Napoleon subsequently backed the cause of the planters. But Haiti finally won its independence and declared itself a free republic in 1804.
* The child of a white and a mulatto.
† Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806), a former black slave who joined the French army, rising to the rank of officer, and subsequently fought the French as a military leader of the Haitian revolution. He became the first ruler of an independent Haiti and thereafter anointed himself Emperor Jacques I.