The Hour and the Man, An Historical Romance Read online

  Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

  The Hour and the Man, by Harriet Martineau.

  ________________________________________________________________________The following is taken with acknowledgements from Chambers Dictionary ofBiography, about the subject of this book.

  Pierre Dominique Toussaint l'Ouverture (1746-1803). Haitian blackrevolutionary leader (the surname derives from his bravery in oncemaking a breach in the ranks of the enemy). Born of African slaveparents in Haiti, he was freed in 1777. In 1791 he joined the blackinsurgents, and in 1797 was made commander-in-chief in the island by theFrench Convention. He drove out British and Spaniards, restored orderand prosperity, and about 1800 began to aim at independence. Napoleonproclaimed the re-establishment of slavery, but Toussaint declined toobey. He was eventually overpowered and taken prisoner, and died in aprison in France.

  Harriet Martineau wrote this book in 1839, during which year she alsowrote "Deerbrook", and published an analysis of her tour of America,from which she had returned in 1836.

  ________________________________________________________________________THE HOUR AND THE MAN, BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  WAITING SUPPER.

  The nights of August are in Saint Domingo the hottest of the year. Thewinds then cease to befriend the panting inhabitants; and while thethermometer stands at 90 degrees, there is no steady breeze, as duringthe preceding months of summer. Light puffs of wind now and then fanthe brow of the negro, and relieve for an instant the oppression of theEuropean settler; but they are gone as soon as come, and seem only tohave left the heat more intolerable than before.

  Of these sultry evenings, one of the sultriest was the 22nd of August,1791. This was one of five days appointed for rejoicings in the town ofCap Francais--festivities among the French and Creole inhabitants, whowere as ready to rejoice on appointed occasions as the dulness ofcolonial life renders natural, but who would have been yet more livelythan they were if the date of their festival had been in January or May.There was no choice as to the date, however. They were governed inregard to their celebrations by what happened at Paris; and never hadthe proceedings of the mother-country been so important to the colony asnow.

  During the preceding year, the white proprietors of Saint Domingo, whohad hailed with loud voices the revolutionary doctrines before whichroyalty had begun to succumb in France, were astonished to find theircries of Liberty and Equality adopted by some who had no business withsuch ideas and words. The mulatto proprietors and merchants of theisland innocently understood the words according to their commonlyreceived meaning, and expected an equal share with the whites in therepresentation of the colony, in the distribution of its offices, and inthe civil rights of its inhabitants generally. These rights having beendenied by the whites to the freeborn mulattoes, with every possiblemanifestation of contempt and dislike, an effort had been made to wringfrom the whites by force what they would not grant to reason; and anill-principled and ill-managed revolt had taken place, in the precedingOctober, headed by Vincent Oge and his brother, sons of the proprietressof a coffee plantation, a few miles from Cap Francais. These young menwere executed, under circumstances of great barbarity. Their sufferingswere as seed sown in the warm bosoms of their companions and adherents,to spring up, in due season, in a harvest of vigorous revenge. Thewhites suspected this; and were as anxious as their dusky neighbours toobtain the friendship and sanction of the revolutionary government athome. That government was fluctuating in its principles and in itscounsels; it favoured now one party, and now the other; and on thearrival of its messengers at the ports of the colony, there ensuedsometimes the loud boastings of the whites, and sometimes quiet, knowingsmiles and whispered congratulations among the depressed section of theinhabitants.

  The cruelties inflicted on Vincent Oge had interested many influentialpersons in Paris in the cause of the mulattoes. Great zeal wasexorcised in attempting to put them in a condition to protect themselvesby equal laws, and thus to restrain the tyranny of the whites. The AbbeGregoire pleaded for them in the National Assembly; and on the 10th ofMarch was passed the celebrated decree which gave the mulattoes theprivileges of French citizens, even to the enjoyment of the suffrage,and to the possession of seats in the parochial and colonial assemblies.To Europeans there appears nothing extraordinary in the admission tothese civil functions of freeborn persons, many of whom were wealthy,and many educated; but to the whites of Saint Domingo the decree wasonly less tremendous than the rush of the hurricane.

  It arrived at Cap Francais on the 30th of June, and the tidingspresently spread. At first, no one believed them but the mulattoes.When it was no longer possible to doubt--when the words of Robespierrepassed from mouth to mouth, till even the nuns told them to one anotherin the convent garden--"Perish the colonies, rather than sacrifice oneiota of our principles!" the whites trampled the national cockade undertheir feet in the streets, countermanded their orders for the fete ofthe 14th of July (as they now declined taking the civic oath), andproposed to one another to offer their colony and their allegiance toEngland.

  They found means, however, to gratify their love of power, and theirclass-hatred, by means short of treason. They tried disobedience first,as the milder method. The governor of the colony, Blanchelande,promised that when the decree should reach him officially, he wouldneglect it, and all applications from any quarter to have it enforced.This set all straight. Blanchelande was pronounced a sensible andpatriotic man. The gentlemen shook hands warmly with him at every turn;the ladies made deep and significant curtseys wherever they met him; theboys taught their little negroes to huzza at the name of Blanchelande;and the little girls called him a dear creature. In order to lose notime in showing that they meant to make laws for their own colony out oftheir own heads, and no others, the white gentry hastened on theelection of deputies for a new General Colonial Assembly. The deputieswere elected, and met, to the number of a hundred and seventy-six, atLeogane, in the southern region of the island, so early as the 9th ofAugust. After exchanging greetings and vows of fidelity to theirclass-interests, under the name of patriotism, they adjourned theirassembly to the 25th, when they were to meet at Cap Francais. It wasdesirable to hold their very important session in the most importantplace in the colony, the centre of intelligence, the focus of news fromEurope, and the spot where they had first sympathised with theungrateful government at home, by hoisting, with their own white hands,the cap of liberty, and shouting, so that the world might hear, "Libertyand Equality!" "Down with Tyranny!"

  By the 20th, the deputies were congregated at Cap Francais; and dailytill the great 25th were they seen to confer together in coteries in theshady piazzas, or in the Jesuits' Walk, in the morning, and to dinetogether in parties in the afternoon, admitting friends and well-wishersto these tavern dinners. Each day till the 25th was to be a fete-day inthe town and neighbourhood; and of these days the hot 22nd was one.

  Among these friends and well-wishers were the whites upon all theplantations in the neighbourhood of the town. There was scarcely anestate in the Plaine du Nord, or on the mountain steeps which overlookedthe cape, town, and bay, on all sides but the north, which did notfurnish guests to these dinners. The proprietors, their bailiffs, theclergy, the magistrates, might all be seen along the roads, in the coolof the morning; and there was a holiday air about the estates they leftbehind. The negroes were left for this week to do their work prettymuch as they liked, or to do none at all. There was little time tothink of them, and of ordinary business, when there were the mulattoesto be ostentatiously insulted, and the mother-country to be defied. Sothe negroes slep
t at noon, and danced at night, during these few Augustdays, and even had leave to visit one another to as great an extent aswas ever allowed. Perhaps they also transacted other affairs of whichtheir masters had little suspicion.

  All that ever was allowed was permitted to the slaves on the Bredaestate, in the plain, a few miles from Cap Francais. The attorney, orbailiff of the estate, Monsieur Bayou de Libertas, was a kind-heartedman, who, while insisting very peremptorily on his political and socialrights, and vehemently denouncing all abstract enmity to them, likedthat people actually about him should have their own way. Whileransacking his brain for terms of abuse to vent on Lafayette andCondorcet, he rarely found anything harsh to utter when Caton got drunk,and spoiled his dinner; when Venus sent up his linen darker than it wentdown to the quarter, or when little Machabee picked his pocket of smallcoin. Such a man was, of course, particularly busy this week; and ofcourse, the slaves under his charge were particularly idle, andparticularly likely to have friends from other plantations to visitthem.

  Some such visitor seemed to be expected by a family of these Bredanegroes, on the Monday evening, the 22nd. This family did not live inthe slave-quarter. They had a cottage near the stables, as ToussaintBreda had been Monsieur Bayou's postillion, and, when he was latelypromoted to be overseer, it was found convenient to all parties that heshould retain his dwelling, which had been enlarged and adorned so as toaccord with the dignity of his new office. In the piazza of hisdwelling sat Toussaint this evening, evidently waiting for some one toarrive; for he frequently put down his book to listen for footsteps, andmore than once walked round the house to look abroad. His wife, who waswithin, cooking supper, and his daughter and little boy, who were besidehim in the piazza, observed his restlessness; for Toussaint was a greatreader, and seldom looked off the page for a moment of any spare hourthat he might have for reading either the books Monsieur Bayou lent him,or the three or four volumes which he had been permitted to purchase forhimself.

  "Do you see Jean?" asked the wife from within. "Shall we wait supperfor him?"

  "Wait a little longer," said Toussaint. "It will be strange if he doesnot come."

  "Are any more of Latour's people coming with Jean, mother?" askedGenifrede, from the piazza.

  "No; they have a supper at Latour's to-night; and we should not havethought of inviting Jean, but that he wants some conversation with yourfather."

  "Lift me up," cried the little boy, who was trying in vain to scrambleup one of the posts of the piazza, in order to reach a humming-bird'snest, which hung in the tendrils of a creeper overhead, and which alight puff of wind now set swinging, so as to attract the child's eye.What child ever saw a humming-bird thus rocking--its bill sticking outlike a long needle on one side, and its tail at the other, withoutlonging to clutch it? So Denis cried out imperiously to be lifted up.His father set him on the shelf within the piazza, where the calabasheswere kept--a station whence he could see into the nest, and watch thebird, without being able to touch it. This was not altogethersatisfactory. The little fellow looked about him for a calabash tothrow at the nest; but his mother had carried in all her cups for theservice of the supper-table. As no more wind came at his call, he couldonly blow with all his might, to swing the tendril again; and he wasamusing himself thus when his father laid down his book, and stepped outto see once more whether Jean was approaching.

  "Lift me down," said the boy to his sister, when his head was giddy withblowing. Genifrede would fain have let him stay where he was, out ofthe way of mischief; but she saw that he was really afraid of falling,and she offered her shoulders for him to descend upon. When down, shewould not let him touch her work; she took her scissors from his busyhands, and shook him off when he tried to pull the snowberries out ofher hair; so that there was nothing left for the child to play with buthis father's book. He was turning it over, when Toussaint re-appeared.

  "Ha! boy, a book in your hands already? I hope you may have as muchcomfort out of that book as I have had, Denis."

  "What is it? what is it about?" said the boy, who had heard many a storyout of books from his father.

  "What is it? Let us see. I think you know letters enough to spell itout for yourself. Come and try."

  The child knew the letter E, and, with a good deal of help, made out, atlast, Epictetus.

  "What is that?" asked the boy.

  "Epictetus was a negro," said Genifrede, complacently.

  "Not a negro," said her father, smiling. "He was a slave; but he was awhite."

  "Is that the reason you read that book so much more than any other?"

  "Partly; but partly because I like what is in it."

  "What is in it--any stories?" asked Denis.

  "It is all about bearing and forbearing. It has taught me many thingswhich you will have to learn by-and-by. I shall teach you some of themout of this book."

  Denis made all haste away from the promised instruction, and his fatherwas presently again absorbed in his book. From respect to him,Genifrede kept Denis quiet by signs of admonition; and for some littletime nothing was heard but the sounds that in the plains of SaintDomingo never cease--the humming and buzzing of myriads of insects, theoccasional chattering of monkeys in a neighbouring wood, and, with apassing gust, a chorus of frogs from a distant swamp. Unconscious ofthis din, from being accustomed always to hear more or less of it, theboy amused himself with chasing the fireflies, whose light began toglance around as darkness descended. His sister was poring over herwork, which she was just finishing, when a gleam of greenish light madeboth look up. It came from a large meteor which sailed past towards themountains, whither were tending also the huge masses of cloud whichgather about the high peaks previous to the season of rain andhurricanes. There was nothing surprising in this meteor, for the skywas full of them in August nights; but it was very beautiful. The globeof green light floated on till it burst above the mountains,illuminating the lower clouds, and revealing along the slopes of theuplands the coffee-groves, waving and bowing their heads in thewandering winds of that high region. Genifrede shivered at the sight,and her brother threw himself upon her lap. Before he had asked halfhis questions about the lights of the sky, the short twilight was gone,and the evening star cast a faint shadow from the tufted posts of thepiazza upon the white wall of the cottage. In a low tone, full of awe,Genifrede told the boy such stories as she had heard from her father ofthe mysteries of the heavens. He felt that she trembled as she told ofthe northern lights, which had been actually seen by some travelledpersons now in Cap Francais. It took some time and argument to give himan idea of cold countries; but his uncle Paul, the fisherman, had seenhail on the coast, only thirty miles from hence; and this was a greatstep in the evidence. Denis listened with all due belief to hissister's description of those pale lights shooting up over the sky, tillhe cried out vehemently, "There they are! look!"

  Genifrede screamed, and covered her face with her hands; while the boyshouted to his father, and ran to call his mother to see the lights.

  What they saw, however, was little like the pale, cold rays of theaurora borealis. It was a fiery red, which, shining to some height inthe air, was covered in by a canopy of smoke.

  "Look up, Genifrede," said her father, laying his hand upon her head."It is a fire--a cane-field on fire."

  "And houses, too--the sugar-house, no doubt," said Margot, who had comeout to look. "It burns too red to be canes only. Can it be atLatour's? That would keep Jean from coming.--It was the best supper Iever got ready for him."

  "Latour's is over that way," said Toussaint, pointing some distancefurther to the south-east. "But see! there is fire there, too! Godhave mercy!"

  He was silent, in mournful fear that he knew now too well the reason whyJean had not come, and the nature of the conversation Jean had desiredto have with him. As he stood with folded arms looking from the oneconflagration to the other, Genifrede clung to him trembling withterror. In a quarter of an hour another blaze appeared on the
horizon;and soon after, a fourth.

  "The sky is on fire," cried Denis, in more delight than fear. "Look atthe clouds!" And the clouds did indeed show, throughout their hugepile, some a mild flame colour, and others a hard crimson edge, asduring a stormy sunset.

  "Alas! alas! this is rebellion," said Toussaint; "rebellion against Godand man. God have mercy! The whites have risen against their king; andnow the blacks rise against them, in turn. It is a great sin. God havemercy!"

  Margot wept bitterly. "Oh, what shall we do?" she cried, "What willbecome of us, if there is a rebellion?"

  "Be cheerful, and fear nothing," replied her husband. "I have notrebelled, and I shall not. Monsieur Bayou has taught me to bear andforbear--yes, my boy, as this book says, and as the book of God says: Wewill be faithful, and fear nothing."

  "But they may burn this plantation," cried Margot. "They may come here,and take you away. They may ruin Monsieur Bayou, and then we may besold away; we may be parted--"

  Her grief choked her words.

  "Fear nothing," said her husband, with calm authority. "We are in God'shand; and it is a sin to fear His will. But see! there is another fire,over towards the town."

  And he called aloud the name of his eldest son, saying he should sendthe boy with a horse to meet his master. He himself must remain towatch at home.

  Placide did not come when called, nor was he at the stables. He wasgone some way off, to cut fresh grass for the cattle--a commonnight-labour on the plantation.

  "Call Isaac, then," said Toussaint.

  "Run, Genifrede," said her mother. "Isaac and Aimee are in the wood.Run, Genifrede."

  Genifrede did not obey. She was too much terrified to leave the piazzaalone; though her father gently asked when she, his eldest daughter, andalmost a woman, would leave off being scared on all occasions like achild. Margot went herself; so far infected with her daughter's fearsas to be glad to take little Denis in her hand. She was not long gone.As soon as she entered the wood she heard the sound of her children'slaughter above the noise the monkeys made; and she was guided by it tothe well. There, in the midst of the opening which let in thestarlight, stood the well, surrounded by the only grass on the Bredaestate that was always fresh and green; and there were Isaac and hisinseparable companion, Aimee, making the grass greener by splashing eachother with more than half the water they drew. Their bright eyes andteeth could be seen by the mild light, as they were too busy with theirsport to heed their mother as she approached. She soon made themserious with her news. Isaac flew to help his father with the horses,while Aimee, a stout girl of twelve, assisted her mother in earnest todraw water, and carry it home.

  They found Genifrede crouching alone in a corner of the piazza. Inanother minute Toussaint appeared on horseback, leading a saddled horse.

  "I am going for Monsieur Bayou myself," said he; adding, as he glancedround the lurid horizon, "it is not a night for boys to be abroad. Ishall be back in an hour. If Monsieur Bayou comes by the new road, tellhim that I am gone by Madame Oge's. If fire breaks out here, go intothe wood. If I meet Placide, I will send him home."

  He disappeared under the limes in the avenue; and his family heard thepace of the horses quicken into a gallop before the sound died away uponthe road.